18 THE CHKONICLES OF A GARDEN. 



watch it, study it, and every season of the year, every 

 change in the weather, will bring out new beauties. 



" No plot so narrow, be but Nature there, 

 No waste so vacant, but may well employ 

 Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart 

 Awake to love and beauty." 



If, as Arthur Helps truly says, '' the moral experiments 

 of the world may be tried with the smallest quantities," so 

 may the pleasures of the woodlands. One tree may afford 

 diversified enjoyment, not only by its form, its shade, its 

 fohage, but by the effects its leaves give to light, whether 

 it be the "cool green light" that is so exquisitely refresh- 

 ing, or the brilliant glow of carmine or orange seen glinting 

 through the flickering foliage at noon or dewy eve. . 



" In this bower, 

 This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark'd 

 Much that has pleased me ? Pale beneath the blaze 

 Hung the transparent foliage : and I watch'd 

 Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see 

 The shadow of the leaf and stem above 

 Dappling its sunshine ! And that walnut tree 

 Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay 

 Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps 

 Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass, 

 Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue 

 Through the late twilight." 



Then there is the tender revival in sj>ring, tlic green 

 tassels and red cones of the larch, the gummy fragrant 

 buds of the poplar, the catkins of liazel or willow, the 

 black buds of the ash, and the green buds of tlie sycamore : 

 a little later and the hawthorn, the lilac, and laburnum, 



