CHAP. V.] THE FOT7ETH DAT. 155 



about you, and see how pleasantly that meadow looks ; nay, 

 and the earth smells as sweetly too. Come let me tell you 

 what holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and flowers as 

 these ; and then we will thank Grod that we enjoy them ; 

 and walk to the river and sit down quietly, and try to catch 

 the other brace of trouts. 1 



Sweet day ! so cool, so calm, so bright ; 

 The bridal of the earth and sky ; 

 Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 



for thou must die. 



Sweet rose ! whose hue, angry and brave, 

 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye ; 

 Thy root is ever in its grave, 



and thou must die. 



beheld one of those insects doing in the bud of an oak. See Malpighi, "De 

 Gallis," p. 47; also Dr. Plot's "History of Staffordshire," p. 224. 

 Dr. Derham says, he himself ''had the good fortune to see an oak-ball 

 ichneumon strike its terebra into an oak-apple divers times, no doubt to lay 

 its eggs therein." Derham's Phys. Theol. book 8, chap. vi. note 66. H. 



There are many vegetable excrescences called galls, and which owe 

 their origin to an egg having been deposited in the substance out of which 

 they grow. These galls are of various forms and sizes. One of the most 

 beautiful of them is that found on the common wild dog-rose. The fly 

 which occasions them cuts round the tender bark of a small succulent 

 branch of the rose, and turns up a portion of it. Where the sap recedes, 

 not having a conductor to the roots, a pretty tuft of reddish moss-like fibres 

 is thrown out, which shelters the newly hatched egg till the following 

 spring. ED. 



1 I regard this as one of the most pleasing scenes in Walton's delightful 

 pastoral. Whether we look at his cheerfulness, the kindness of his heart, 

 or the contentment of his mind, it is plain that his chief enjoyment con- 

 sisted, not in the capture of a trout, but in strolling on the banks of a 

 river on a summer's day, and in contemplating the works of Creation, 

 which afforded him a boundless theme of praise and admiration. How well 

 has Otway described what Walton must have felt at such moments : 



' ' No cares or business here disturb our hours, 

 While underneath these shady, peaceful bowers 

 In cool delight and innocence we stray, 

 And midst a thousand pleasures pass the day. 

 Sometimes upon a river's bank we lie, 

 Where skimming swallows o'er the surface fly ; 

 Just as the sun declining with his beams 

 Kisses, and gently warms the gliding streams ; 

 Amidst whose current rising fishes play, 

 And roll in wanton liberty away." ED. 



