JULY. 229 



diffuse a glow of beauty over waste and barren 

 places. Some species, particularly the musk- 

 thistle, are really noble plants, wearing their 

 formidable arms, their silken vest, and their 

 gorgeous crimson tufts of fragrant flowers is- 

 suing from a coronal of interwoven down and 

 spines, with a grace which casts far into the 

 shade many a favourite of the garden. 



But whoever would taste all the sweetness 

 of July, let him go in pleasant company, if pos- 

 sible, into heaths and woods : it is there, in her 

 uncultured haunts, that summer now holds her 

 court. The stern castle, the lowly convent, the 

 deer, and the forester have vanished thence 

 many ages, yet nature still casts round the 

 forest-lodge, the gnarled oak, and lonely mere, 

 the same charms as ever. The most hot and 

 sandy tracts, which, we might naturally ima- 

 gine, would now be parched up, are in full 

 glory. The Erica Tetralix, or bell-heath, the 

 most beautiful of our indigenous species, is now 

 in bloom, and has converted the brown bosom 

 of the waste into one wide sea of crimson : the 

 air is charged with its honied odour : the dry 

 elastic turf glows, not only with its flowers, 

 but with those of the wild thyme, the clear 



