166 JUNE. 



How delicious, too, are the evenings become ! The 

 frosts and damps of spring are past: the earth is 

 dry: the night air is balmy and refreshing: the 

 glow-worm has lit her lamp : the bat is circling 

 about: the fragrant breath of flowers steals into 

 our houses : the bees hum sonorous music amid the 

 pendent flowers of the tall sycamore tree : the cock- 

 chaffer is hovering around it : the stag-beetle in the 

 south soars cheerily in the clear air : and the moth 

 flutters against the darkening pane. Go forth when 

 the business of the day is over, thou who art pent 

 in city toils, and stray through the newly shot corn, 

 along the grassy and hay-scented fields ; linger beside 

 the solitary woodland, the gale of heaven is stirring 

 its mighty and umbrageous branches. The wild 

 rose, with its flowers of most delicate odour, and of 

 every tint, from the deepest red to the purest pearl ; 

 the wreathed and luscious honeysuckle, and the ver- 

 durous, snowy-flowered elder, embellish every way 

 side, or light up the most shadowy region of the 

 wood. Field-peas and beans, in full flower, add 

 their spicy aroma : the red clover is at once splendid 

 and profuse of its honeyed breath. The young corn 

 is bursting into ear ; the awned heads of rye, wheat, 

 and barley, and the nodding panicles of oats, shoot 

 from their green and glaucous stems, in broad, level, 

 and waving expanses of present beauty and future 

 promise. The very waters are strewn with flowers ; 

 the buck-bean, the water-violet, the elegant flower- 

 ing-rush, and the queen of the waters, the pure and 

 splendid white lily, invest every stream and lonely 



