ETCETERA. 



215 



tress or becomes Archbishop of Canterbury. She has her own 

 springs of gladness and sadness, and with these a stranger 

 intermeddleth not. It seems to me that the difference 

 between the beetle and us just amounts to this : that she 

 hopes and rejoices, sighs and suffers, toils in anxiety or rests 

 with satisfaction, and does not know that she is doing any of 

 these things. We arc like the squad of recruits whom the 

 Irish drill-sergeant, in the depths of his despair, sarcastically 

 invited to "stip out now and look at yersilves." We can 

 get, in a manner, outside of ourselves, and look on at the 

 tempest of misdirected affections, illusive hopes, and stupid 

 fears on which we are tossing about. Which is happier, 

 then, the beetle or the man ? The beetle, unquestionably, 

 in my judgment, unless man can call to his aid a voice 

 with power to say to the tempest, " Peace ! be still ! " 



I began in June, and now it is May. A year has gone 

 round, and once more the land is gasping under the op- 

 pression of the sun, and the soft green which should be 

 Nature's garb is carrying on a last expiring struggle 

 against the tyranny of all-subduing dust. And again the 

 birds, open-mouthed, seek the friendly shelter of my ver- 

 andah. Bacon says that friendship "redoubleth joyes and 

 cutteth griefes in halfes," and I suppose, since these little 

 birds endure so much of the heat, they leave the less for 



