DECEMBEE. 



543 



to mingle with the weeping patter of the woodland 

 rill, truly might they sportive cry 

 " Where we are it is no place 

 For a lazy foot to trace ; 

 Over heath and over field 



He must scramble who would find us ; 

 In the copse-wood close conceal'd, 

 With a running-brook behind us." 



Here we go, then, dash at once upon beds of silken 

 velvet Hypni ; or the Dicranum scoparium, covering 

 the bank with its long pecteniform foliage, offers a 

 seat of unrivalled softness a thousand moss-encrusted 

 stalwart forest arms form around us a labyrinth of 

 dim melancholy obscurity; so with the "hoary gown" 

 about us, we may at once look the character of the 

 hermit, whether of MILTON, PAEKELL, or any other 

 poet, in strict keeping with the occupation allotted by 



COLEEIDGKE in his Ancient Mariner, to the 

 " Hermit good, who lives in that wood 



Which slopes down to the sea. 



* * * * 



He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve- 

 He hath a cushion plump ; 



It is the moss that wholly hides 

 The rotted old oak stump." 



Having thus, under the guise of botanical searching, 

 introduced our friends into this gloomy forest recess, 

 we might here inflict a long moralization with impu- 

 nity; but we shall imitate Nature in her beautiful 

 contrasts like the luminous vapour's march along 

 the mountain and now exhibit a beam of brightness 

 from a poet who was no botanist, but who, as a close 

 observer of nature, images his love as " a lovely little 

 flower ' in a cave, by which I presume he intended a 

 beauteous moss, and, thus circumstanced, defies the 



