Note 1 — THE HERMIT AND THE FIG-TREE.

The weather was fair, and his father’s friends by the way received him hospitably; but crossing the Sierra1, a violent storm came on, and he would soon have been drenched with rain. Right glad he was to see, perched on the mountain-ledge, a hermit’s cell, where he readily found shelter. In the morning, when the sky was serene again, he rose to take his leave; and as he stood on the threshold thanking the hermit for his care of him, he could not forbear pausing to admire the beauties around him. Far away stretched the plains below, studded with smiling cities and watered by the mazy windings of the rivers, and shaded by dark groves of ancient cork-trees; behind him were rocky heights reaching to the sky, presenting every degree of rich vegetation and solemn barrenness. But what attracted his sight most of all was a luxuriant plantation of fig-trees, which made a complete bower of the hermit’s cell.