210 JULY. 



yard to the forest grange or to the embowered 

 cottage. It is to me an object of certain inspiration. 

 It seems to invite one from noise and publicity into 

 the heart of solitude and of rural delight. It beckons 

 the imagination on through green and whispering 

 corn-fields, through the short but verdant pasture, 

 the flowering mowing-grass, the odorous and sunny 

 hay-field, the festivity of harvest ; from lonely farm 

 to farm; from village to village; by clear and 

 mossy wells; by tinkling brooks and deep wood 

 skirted streams, to crofts where the daffodil is re- 

 joicing in spring, or meadows where the large blue 

 geranium embellishes the summer wayside; to 

 heaths with their warm elastic sward and crimson 

 bells the chithering of grasshoppers, the fox- 

 glove, and the old gnarled oak ; in short, to all the 

 solitary haunts after which the city-pent lover of 

 nature pants " as the hart panteth after the water- 

 brooks." 



What is there so truly English ? What is so truly 

 linked with our rural tastes, our sweetest memories, 

 and our sweetest poetry, as stiles and foot-paths? 

 Goldsmith, Thomson, and Milton have adorned them 

 with some of their richest wreaths. They have con- 

 secrated them to poetry and love. It is along the foot- 

 path in secluded fields, upon the stile in the embow- 

 ered lane, where the wild rose and the honeysuckle 

 are lavishing their beauty and their fragrance, that 

 we delight to picture to ourselves rural lovers, breath- 

 ing, in the dewy sweetness of summer evening, vows 

 still sweeter. There it is that the poet, seated, sends 



