Publisher's Synopsis
The most usual remark that people make after a visit to our little house on the hill is this: "How peaceful!"Even in the ordinary course of life-those times that now seem extraordinary to a world already accustomed to the universal struggle-when everyone in England was in peace, except where their own unquiet spirits may have marred it, even then this nest of ours seemed peace within peace. We do not know now whether the contrast is not the more acute. One of the thousands of homes dedicated to the quiet joys and innocencies of life, where no one ever wanted to quarrel, because all found the hours so full of sweet content, we do not flatter ourselves that we are singular: only typical. The shadow of the great cloud cast at first a hideous, unnatural darkness over our harmless ways.
