314 WILD FLOWEKS OF 



solaces the youths who are leaving the home of their 

 fathers to broil beneath a tropical sun : and the very 

 emigrant who, with panting heart and tearful eye, is 

 watching the last indistinct vision of his native shores, 

 yet as he progresses towards 



" Those blazing suns that dart a downward ray, 

 Aud fiercely shed intolerable day ; 

 Those matted woods where birds forget to sing, 

 But silent bats in drowsy clusters cling;" * 

 fondly conjures up pictures of adventure and explo- 

 ration, whose novelty shall help to erase the remem- 

 brance of his toils and sorrows. So it is in everyday 

 life, from the truant school-boy, seduced to a ramble 

 in the woods from the acquisitive love of spotted and 

 marbled eggs, to the grown-up child, who, with his 

 patent rod and morocco book of gorgeous artificial 

 flies, sallies out to wade amidst brooks and babbling 

 streams from morn to dewy eve rewarded, perhaps, 

 with a solitary lite or a glorious nibble ! But no ! if 

 this were all, " might we not laugh, my friend," as 

 HORACE says ; but is there no joy in tracing the 

 windings of the silver stream now placid as if stilled 

 to devotion now fro ward, wild, and turbulent, as if 

 the passions from. Pandora's box were struggling in 

 its liquid folds with or without a rod and line?t 



* GOLDSMITH'S Deserted Village. 



t So Mr. SCROPE, in his Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing, says " If 

 a wilder mood comes over me, let me clamber among the steeps of the 

 north, beneath the shaggy mountains where the river comes raging and 

 foaming everlastingly, wedging its way through the secret glen, whilst 

 the eagle, but dimly seen, cleaves the winds and the clouds, and the dun 

 deer gaze from the mosses above. There, among gigantic rocks, and the 

 din of mountain torrents, let me do battle with the lusty salmon till I drag 

 him into day rejoicing in his bulk." Why to such a scene among the 

 steeps of the north we would gladly go, independently of doing battle 

 with the lusty salmon, which we would leave to Mr. SCROPE to provide 

 for us, while we botanized, or transferred the exciting scene to the pages 

 of our sketch book. 



