288 WOOD-PATHS. 



well in the leaf -cups of the sarracenia, and incense from 

 her altar in branches of eglantine and sweet-fern. We 

 will sit under these wide-spreading oaks and take our re- 

 past with the squirrel, while from the tall tree-top he 

 watches our motions. 



We pass, as it were, in a happy dream, through vistas, 

 under tall trees, forming with their foliage and the sky a 

 netted canopy of green and blue, where delicate aerial 

 voices of mingled chirping and song inspire every wan- 

 derer with their own cheerfulness. Sometimes there is a 

 stillness almost sublime ; in a moment are awakened certain 

 musical and mysterious sounds that fill the mind with 

 dim conceptions of something more beautiful still unseen 

 and unknown ; then a confusion of voices without dis- 

 cord; a universal hum, so soft and so melodious that 

 every bird that sings may be distinctly heard above it, 

 his voice made sweeter by this harmonious din. As we 

 view the surface of some still water, embossed with the 

 reflection of embowering shrubbery and of the herbs that 

 fringe the border, the fountain seems to look upon us with 

 distinct vision and to know us. Suddenly we are under 

 the open sky ; we have been led out of the wood into the 

 retreat of the hare, who is startled from her repose by our 

 unexpected intrusion. 



O happy path to blisses unknown in the outer world ! 

 Guide to joys that revellers cannot feel nor the ambitious 

 know. Wherever there is gladness or beauty, or melody 

 of birds and fountains, or little dells full of roses and 

 honeysuckles, or dripping rocks green with velvet mosses 

 and variegated lichens, - to all this wood-path leads the 

 way ; now safe through copses of tangled green-brier and 

 clematis ; through borders of roses, untrained by art and 

 not planted by man ; through beds of raspberries inter- 

 mingled with ferns, and thickets of tremulous aspens 

 interwoven with sunshine; then under solemn pines, 



