JUNE. 167 



mere with grace. The mavis and the merle, those 

 worthy favourites of the olden bards, and the wood- 

 lark, fill the solitude with, their eloquent evening 

 songs. 



Over its own sweet voice the stock-dove broods ; 



the turtle in southern woodlands coos plaintively ; 

 arid the cuckoo pours its mellowest note from some 

 region of twilight shadow. The sunsets of this 

 month are transcendently glorious : the mighty lu- 

 minary goes down pavilioned amidst clouds of every 

 hue the splendour of burnished gold, the deepest 

 mazarine blue fading away into the highest heavens, 

 to the palest azure ; and an ocean of purple is flung 

 over the twilight-woods, or the far-stretching and 

 lonely horizon. The heart of the spectator is 

 touched : it is melted and rapt into dreams of past 

 and present pure, elevated, and tinged with a poetic 

 tenderness, which can never awake amid the crowds 

 of mortals or of books. 



The state of nature I have described is just that 

 which might be supposed to exist with perpetual 

 summer; there are sunshine, beauty, and abundance, 

 without a symptom of decay. But this will not last- 

 We soon perceive the floridity of Nature merging 

 into a verdant monotony : we find a silence stealing 

 over the landscape, so lately filled with the voice of 

 every creature's exultation. The nightingale is gone, 

 and the cuckoo will depart in less time than is 

 allowed him in the peasant's traditionary calendar. 



