202 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



and stand about in their bewilderment gazing upwards at the sky, 

 as though wondering if the sun was only some gigantic golden flower, 

 and the gleaming stars which gem tlie darkness were such humble 

 blossoms as themselves, planted in the blue meadows of the night. 

 Then there are rich twilight beds of lavender, looking, as the sun 

 goes down, like a phosphorescent sea, rippled all over its surface 

 with crimson-crested waves ; and as the night drops down from 

 heaven, it fades into the sombre purple of the autumn moorland, 

 and with its sweet fragrance sends the very air to sleep. On the arid 

 and barren ground, the large ox-eye daisy stands blinking in the sun- 

 shine, with no other green or flowery thing to bear it company but the 

 wild tansy and the knotgrass ; and only cheered in its solitiide by the 

 merry chirping of the grasshopper, as he skips here and there over 

 the leaves and stems, in the bounding exhilaration of his happy 

 heart. Down beside the stagnant pool, and along the borders of the 

 corn-field, the tall golden rod bears its yellow flowers, and amid the 

 ripening corn the rich crimson pheasant's eye — the rose-a-ruby of 

 the sweet old time — comes into bloom, beside the wild mignonette, 

 and the thread-like spurrey, and the wild marigold. Amid the brakes 

 and bushes of the heath and along the skirts of the old woods the 

 gushing clusters of the nightshade mingle with its own purple blos- 

 soms, and with the brilliant coral berries of the hawthorn, and the 

 wild rose. And there, too, the ferns come towering up in broad, rich 

 masses of emerald green ; and form little gold-gapped underwoods, 

 like those which covered the earth in that gone-time when a tropical 

 luxuriance prevailed in northern climes, and which still prevails in 

 the jungled and exuberant savannahs of the south. If you peep 

 down at the mossy roots of the bushes and old trees, where the moist 

 darkness seems suggestive of snakes and creeping things, you will 

 see rich golden groups of fungi, and silver sprinkled lichens, and 

 white snowy pufF-balls, and all the strange fantastic tencintry of 

 Shakspere's fairy land. 



The woods now begin to take their deepest dye, and the hectic 

 flush of quick decay comes upon the forest leaves before they fall. 

 The lime becomes stained with a pale orange ; the maple, poplar, and 

 birch, lose their deep green of health, and take a wan, straw-like 

 hue ; the wild cherry, the crab, the dogwood, the spindle tree, and 

 the guelder rose, assume different shades of burning red ; the elm 

 fringes the woods with rich autumnal brown, the oak and chestnut 



