3 8 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



What a happy blending of natural and poetic truth have we 

 in these lines of Coleridge ! 



" Many a glowworm in the shade 

 Lights up her love torch ;" 



for, like Hero, who lit her nightly torch to guide her fond Le- 

 ander, even so the glowworm gives this bright token to her 

 ardent flame hovering above the grass, the glowworm being in 

 truth but the wingless mate of the fire-fly. 



But in all our midnight stroll I have said comparatively little 

 of the dew, yet in the whimseys of the dew alone there is a suffi- 

 cient invitation to "let the moon shine on thee in thy solitary 

 walk." The path of the night rambler is paved and illuminated 

 with brilliants, and to the tyro in these fields seems especially 

 decked out for the occasion. A sheen of iridescent silver flashes 

 through the grass on right and left at every swing of the lantern, 

 like a flitting phantom of a rainbow. The mazes of the spider 

 festoon the grass in a drapery of diaphanous silver lace pendent 

 in sparkling spans from clover head to grass tip, and enveloping 

 the entire meadow beneath its glistening meshes. An answer- 

 ing pearly spangle greets your passage hither and yon from the 

 wheel -shaped gossamers everywhere hung among the herbage, for 

 nature crowns this airy marvel with a rare diadem. These in- 

 numerable "wheels of lace," such as remain intact, are mostly 

 invisible by day, except to a quiet searching eye, and the greater 

 portion of their number are renewed or freshly brought into be- 

 ing during the twilight, and are quickly baptized with dew, every 

 thread and strand strung with brilliants, suggesting a possible 

 clew to the old-time popular belief that gossamers were "com- 

 posed of dew burned by the sun." 



In the caprice of the various leaves in their attitude towards 

 moisture there is much of interest ; the fastidiousness of this leaf, 

 the eager affinity of that, one appearing as dry as at midnoon, 

 and another laved and revelling in the nocturnal bath. Here is 

 the common plantain at our feet as wet as though fresh from 



