248 SEPTEMBER. 



When the clear depth of noontide with glittering motion 

 O'erflows the lone glens, an aerial ocean ; 

 When the earth and the heavens, in union profound, 

 Lie blended in beauty that knows not a sound. 

 As his eyes in the sunshiny solitude close, 

 'Neath a rock of the desert in dreaming repose, 

 He sees in his slumbers such visions of old 

 As wild Gaelic songs to his infancy told, 

 O'er the mountains a thousand plumed hunters are borne, 

 And he starts from his dream at the blast of the horn. 



Wilson. 



But let us leave the sportsman for the gene- 

 ral aspect of nature which is now decidedly 

 autumnal. The trees are beginning to change 

 colour, the orchards are affluent of pears, plums 

 and apples ; and the hedges are filled with the 

 abundance of their wild produce, crabs, black 

 glossy clusters of privet, buckthorn, and elder- 

 berries, which furnish the farmer with a cordial 

 cup on his return from market on a winter's 

 eve, and blackberries, reminding us of the Babes 

 in the Wood. 



Their little hands and pretty lips 



With blackberries were dyed ; 

 And when they saw the darksome night 



They sate them down and cried. 



The hedgerows are also brightened with a 

 profusion of scarlet berries of hips, haws, honey- 

 suckles, viburnum and bryony. The fruit of the 

 mountain-ash, woody nightshade and wildser- 



