io 4 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



lazily fans the air, uttering ever and anon its characteristic 

 and dispiriting cry. 



The bees at last have deserted the sycamore ; the blue 

 mist of the forget-me-nots has faded from the garden ; the 

 lapwing has ceased its cry above the glimmering gorse ; and 

 the swallow rests its wearied wings. 'Tis the hour of 

 tenebrae ! 



A sound of compline bells drift tunefully upon the air, 

 across the leafy distance, which fast grows to darker shades of 

 green. Up from the west are flung great strangely-formed 

 cumulus of faded mingled gold and rose above the smoulder- 

 ing fire of the sunset ; the clouds slowly rise, and, separating, 

 seems to drift swiftly apart until they hang suspended in the 

 clear night atmosphere. At last is dimmed, dying gradually 

 and unperceived, the "palpitating blue'* of May's daytime 

 hours ; and as slowly also has faded the beauty of earth, lit 

 with the glory of light-reflecting leaf. Beautiful to behold 

 are the many nocturnal effects which Nature sets before us ere 

 she keeps her hours of tenebrae, when everything is silenced 

 save one voice, the voice of Philomel, that sings through the 

 hours of darkness to the stars ; for its love, the rose, is yet 

 unborn. It is at this hour when sitting " between the lights," 

 and some softly diffused odour carries us back to the past in a 

 dream ; then our memories go gleaning to golden fields, whose 

 ungathered grain (treasured in the heart's garner) is the May- 

 times and Flowerlands that were ours in years agone ; or maybe 

 it is some garden we have loved in our youth. Such an one 

 as described by a writer in the Nineteenth Century : 



"On some of these the destroying hand has not yet 

 passed. There was a stamp of character and all the charms 



