54 FLIGHT OF EPHEMKirK. 



food) form the brief and brilliant consummation of their lives. 

 Spite of the pathetic enumeration above quoted of ephemeral 

 miseries, what, after all, is less deserving pity than our own 

 merry May-fly, even in its last estate ? In happy ignorance of 

 all surrounding perils sporting one moment on the sunset 

 beam engulphed the next in dark unconsciousness by 

 skimming swallow or by rising fish it is through the cruelty 

 of man alone that they are exposed, as they dangle on the line, 

 to a fate really worthy of commiseration. AYe have only to 

 watch their revels in the air, and instead of "the most wretched '' 

 we shall be disposed to call them the most happy of created 

 insects. The dullest and most dispirited of solitary strollers 

 that ever marred by his cold melancholy visage the warm 

 glowing face of a summer's eve, could hardly behold a trans- 

 lucent cloud of these buoyant creatures, as it comes glittering 

 betwixt himself and the setting sun, without feeling his very 

 heart illumined as though by some scattered sparks struck from 

 this mass of bright existence. Assembled in jocund groups 

 now sporting high above the tallest willows now descending 

 to the surface of the meadows or the stream now sailing like 

 hawks now rising and falling in undulating motion their 

 long tripple tails disparted, and by turns elevated and de- 

 pressed with the movement of their lightsome bodies thus with 

 the ephemeral crowd passes their live-long day, which, unless 

 prematurely ended, terminates at an hour of the day natural, 

 regulated by that of its commencement. 



