224 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



the birthplace of woodland minstrelsy. But now no sound of 

 bird-song greets our ears, for all the land seems voiceless, one 

 harmonious silence, characteristic of the youth of Autumn. 



The cricket's chirp grows less in its favourite haunt, the 

 wayside's brown patches, burnt with the sun, where the lofty 

 stems of the yellow-blossomed mealy mullein are now up- 

 reared. 



All things in Nature are touched with a weariness ; even 

 the swallow, but late passing us on fleetest pinion, tarries on 

 tired wing. 



True to time, the Michaelmas daisies bring to the garden 

 its doom, the message of death, of which asters are the emblem. 

 But of all the many varieties of these Autumn daisies, none 

 are more worthy of thought than Aster Bessarabicus. It is of 

 dwarf habit, and to behold it with the sunlight upon its large 

 yellow-centred stars, massed together and of a vivid violet 

 hue, is a picture that will live in the memory until flowers 

 come again. But the hand of the year grows more feeble, 

 week by week, to keep the flowers it would ; and stretched 

 across the garden pathway are the long Summer-grown branches 

 from the rose-bushes, often tipped at the very end with a 

 cluster of pink-hearted roses, as if compelling one to admire 

 them. 



Very delightful are these present evenings, when in the 

 sunset breeze slender poplars and graceful elms shake from 

 their branches a shower of leaflets ; when in the beryl-tinted 

 light of after-sunset a crowd of swallows whirl against the 

 western sky dotted with purple clouds, the colour of the 

 birds ; when the rising moon burns behind the misty twilight 

 trees ; and in the sky the ever-falling stars, on earth the fall- 

 ing leaves ! 



