150 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



barns pitched about in the oddest of ways, but all roofed over with 

 thick velvet mosses or tufts of whitlow-grass and stonecrop. The 

 cottage roofs and chimneys are covered with rich liverworts and 

 orange-coloured lichens, which harmonize most beautifully with the 

 hues of the cracked and twisted trees. There are timid wreaths of 

 smoke curling up among the tall branches of the elms, and you catch 

 the homely smell of ash-wood fires ; you gaze upon the scene, and 

 read, in the white- washed wall and the low cottage with its acre of 

 potatoes and well-stocked kitchen-garden, the unwritten history of 

 English worth, and the peaceful content of an English home, nestled 

 amid the land of ancient trees. You think of old customs, of May- 

 day, of sheep-shearing, and of harvest-home ; you remember that 

 such scenes were to be found long ago in the days of good King 

 David, upon the sunny slopes of Palestine ; and although you have 

 not the pencil of a Morland, a AVilson, or a Collins, such a picture is 

 painted for ever on the living canvass of your heart. As you turn 

 oflfinto the narrow by-path, to see whereabout the village church is 

 hiding itself, you come upon a picture which every artist has tried his 

 hand at. A quiet pond, overgrown with duckweeds and bulrushes, 

 with a group of cattle of white, russet, and grey, loitering about in the 

 most picturesque positions, the cows looking particularly motherly 

 and stupid, and all of them flickering their tails about to drive away 

 the swarms of insects which annoy them. There are two or three old 

 pollard-willows, and an oak tree with neither head nor limbs, stands 

 staggering at the brink in a half horizontal position, as if he contem- 

 plated suicide by drowning his body ; he is covered all over with scars, 

 and wounds, and blotches, which tell most significantly of the many 

 affrays he has had with the midnight-winds, and the north-east blasts 

 of January. If you come here next summer you shall find him lean- 

 ing over the water in the same melancholy pondering mood, shaking 

 a few green leaves in the wind, just to divert the attention of passers- 

 by from the deed he is evidently contemplating, and it will be many 

 summers before he will quite make up his mind to resign himself with 

 composure to a muddy sepulchre. 



The fields around wear the promise of plenty ; the rye wears a 

 yellow and a hearty look, the horned barley makes a rustling sound, 

 as the soft wind sweeps gently through its long plumy ears. The 

 pendulous oats quiver and tremble in the dancing sunlight, and the 

 wheat gets whiter and fatter day by day. The mole-hills on the com- 



