NATURE IN ENGLAND. 19 



Along the Avon, the meadow-sweet id full bloom, 

 with a fine cinnamon odor. A wild rose here and 

 there in the hedge-rows. The wild clematis nearly 

 ready to bloom, in appearance almost identical with 

 our own. The wheat and oats full-grown, but not 

 yet turning. The clouds soft and fleecy. Prunella 

 dark purple. A few paces farther on I enter a high- 

 way, one of the broadest I have seen, the road-bed 

 fcard and smooth as usual, about sixteen feet wide, 

 with grassy margins twelve feet wide, redolent with 

 white and red clover. A rich farming landscape 

 spreads around me, with blue- hills in the far west. 

 Cool and fresh like June. Bumble-bees here and 

 there, more hairy than at home. A plow in a field 

 by the road-side is so heavy I can barely move it 

 at least three times as heavy as an American 

 plow ; beam very long, tails four inches square, the 

 mould-board a thick plank. The soil like putty; 

 where it dries, crumbling into small, hard lumps, but 

 sticky and tough when damp, Shakespeare's soil, 

 the finest and most versatile wit of the world, the 

 product of a sticky, stubborn clay-bank. Here is a 

 field where every alternate swell is small. The 

 Large swells heave up in a very mol ten-like way 

 real turfy billows, crested with white clover-blos- 

 soms." 



" July 17. On the road to Warwick, two miles 

 from Stratford. Morning bright, with sky full of 

 white, soft, high-piled thunderheads. Plenty of pink 

 blackberry blossoms along the road ; herb Robert in 



