JULY. 181 



of beauty over waste and barren places. Some 

 species, particularly tbe musk-thistle, are really 

 noble plants, wearing their formidable arms, 

 their silken vest, and their gorgeous crimson 

 tufts of fragrant flowers issuing from a coronal 

 of interwoven down and spines, with a grace 

 which casts far into the shade many a favourite 

 of the garden. 



But whoever would taste all the sweetness 

 of July, let him go in pleasant company, if pos- 

 sible, into heaths and woods : it is there, in her 

 uncultured haunts, that Summer now holds her 

 court. The stern castle, the lowly convent, the 

 deer, and the forester, have vanished thence 

 many ages, yet nature still casts round the 

 forest-lodge, the gnarled oak, and lonely mere, 

 the same charms as ever. The most hot and 

 sandy tracks, which, we might naturally ima- 

 gine, would now be parched up, are in full 

 glory. The Erica Tetralix, or bell-heath, the 

 most beautiful of our indigenous species, is now 

 in bloom, and has converted the brown bosom 

 of the waste into one wide sea of crimson : the 

 air is charged with its honied odour : the dry 

 elastic turf glows, not only with its flowers, but 

 with those of the wild thyme, the clear blue 

 milkwort, the yellow asphodel, and that curious 

 plant, the sundew, with its drops of inexhausti- 

 ble liquor sparkling in the fiercest sun like 



