SUMMER PICTURES. 153 



iniquity against the universal spirit of love, which fills the earth with 

 gladness. 



Push on, for the voices multiply both near and far, and the sunset 

 is not far off. We must cross the sheep-lea and the broad lawn 

 meadows before we can rest our limbs, and get our daily dinner of 

 brown bread and water- cresses. What is that sharp rasping sound ? 

 Why, the mower wetting his scythe in yonder meadows, where the 

 work of hay-making has commenced. What a rich waving sea of 

 emerald and golden billows is the unmown hay-field ! How calm it 

 lies in the beauty of the sunlight, with its spikes of chaffy blossoms 

 and sprinkling of buttercups and cowslips ! And beyond, the homely 

 farmstead rises half-hidden amid tall elms, and leaning upon the sky 

 like the shadowy painting of a dream. There are groups of sturdy 

 men with iron sinews and sunburnt faces, all occupied in the busy 

 work of the field. The mower sweeps down grass and flowers alto- 

 gether, laying prostrate the pride of the summer, and turning swath 

 upon swath with his sinewy arm, mingling the star-like daisy, the 

 honey-scented clover, the butter- cups, yellow trefoils, and long grass 

 altogether ; and before the sun has sunk into the west, their beauty 

 will have perished for ever. He heeds not their beauty, but goes on 

 and on, like a death- destroying fiend, hewing down all before him, 

 while his eyes gleam with the grim satisfaction of destruction ; and 

 leaving them piled ridge upon ridge, until the field is at last filled 

 with round hillocks, beneath which the flowers lie, withered and dead, 

 as in sepulchres, whence they throw rich perfumes upon the air, to 

 tell how sweet was the sunny current of their lives, and as assurances 

 that their spirits still hover above the spots which their beauty had 

 sanctified. 



Now, down the steep hill-side into the old wood, and feel the 

 mystery which always hangs about these ancient trees, and the thick 

 underwood which gathers at their feet. 



" How sweet the shade of this magnificent wood ! — 

 The knarled oaks, upon whose hoary 

 Tempest-stricken brows, Old Time 

 Has chronicled a thousand years." 



Who can tell what flowers grow in these dark untrodden solitudes, 

 what birds have made their homes amid these leafy coverts ; what 

 strange beasts and reptiles crawl and prowl among the moist leaves, 

 which lie rotting in fragrant masses where the underwood forms an 



