BLOSSOMING LIMES 271 



off and in my face for many months past ; and from 

 shadeless heaths and windy downs, and last of all, 

 from the intolerable heat and dusty desolation of 

 London in mid -July, it was a delightful change to 

 this valley. 



During the very hot days that followed it was 

 pleasure enough to sit in the shade of the limes 

 most of the day; there was coolness, silence, melody, 

 fragrance; and, always before me, the sight of that 

 moist green valley, which made one cool simply to 

 look at it, and never wholly lost its novelty. The 

 grass and herbage grow so luxuriantly in the water- 

 meadows that the cows grazing there were half-hidden 

 in their depth; and the green was tinged with the 

 purple of seeding grasses, and red of dock and sorrel, 

 and was everywhere splashed with creamy white of 

 meadow-sweet. The channels of the swift many- 

 channelled river were fringed with the livelier green 

 of sedges and reed-mace, and darkest green of bul- 

 rushes, and restful grey of reeds not yet in flower. 



The old limes were now in their fullest bloom ; and 

 the hotter the day the greater the fragrance, the 

 flower, unlike the woodbine and sweetbriar, needing 

 no dew nor rain to bring out its deliciousness. To 

 me, sitting there, it was at the same time a bath and 

 atmosphere of sweetness, but it was very much more 

 than that to all the honey-eating insects in the neigh- 

 bourhood. Their murmur was loud all day till dark, 

 and from the lower branches that touched the grass 



