THEIR BEAUTY. 77 



Apples, these I mean, unspeakably fair, apples 

 not of Discord, but of Concord ! Yet not so rare but 

 that the homeliest may have a share. Painted by 

 the frosts ?&amp;gt; some a uniform clear bright yellow, or red, 

 or crimson, as if their spheres had regularly revolved, 

 and enjoyed the influence of the sun on all sides 

 alike, some with the faintest pink blush imagin 

 able, some brindled with deep red streaks like a 

 cow, or with hundreds of fine blood-red rays running 

 regularly from the stem-dimple to the blossom-end, 

 like meridional lines, on a straw-colored ground, 

 some touched with a greenish rust, like a fine lichen, 

 here and there, with crimson blotches or eyes more 

 or less confluent and fiery when wet, and others 

 gnarly, and freckled or peppered all over on the stem 

 side with fine crimson spots on a white ground, as if 

 accidentally sprinkled from the brush of Him who 

 paints the autumn leaves. Others, again, are some 

 times red inside, perfused with a beautiful blush, 

 fairy food, too beautiful to eat, apple of the Hes- 

 perides, apple of the evening sky! But like shells 

 and pebbles on the sea-shore, they must be seen as 

 they sparkle amid the withering leaves in some dell 

 in the woods, in the autumnal air, or as they lie in 

 the wet grass, and not when they have wilted and 

 faded in the house. 



THE NAMING OF THEM. 



It would be a pleasant pastime to find suitable 

 names for the hundred varieties which go to a single 

 heap at the eider-mill. Would it not tax a man s in 

 vention, no one to be named after a man, and all 

 in the lingua vernocula ? l Who shall stand godfather 

 1 Lingua verna cula, common speech. 



