206 JULY. 



flowers issuing 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 possible, 

 into heaths and woods: it is there, in her uncul- 

 tured 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 tracks, which, we might 

 naturally imagine, 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 honeyed odour: the dry elastic 

 turf glows, not only with its flowers, but with those 

 of the wild thyme, the clear blue milkwort, the 

 yellow asphodel, and that, curious plant the sun- 

 dew, with its drops of inexhaustible liquor spark- 

 ling in the fiercest sun like diamonds. There wave 

 the cotton-rush, the tall foxglove, and the taller 

 golden mullein : there grows the classical grass of 

 Parnassus, the elegant favourite of every poet; 

 there creep the various species of heathberries, 

 cranberries, bilberries, etc. furnishing the poor with 

 a source of profit, and the rich of simple luxury. 

 What a pleasure it is to throw ourselves down be- 

 neath the verdant screen of the beautiful fern, or in 



