MOSQUITOS. 67 



inclined to visit Gnat offenders very roughly. Even at the risk 

 of being taken for cousins once removed of the old lady, whose 

 partiality for Fleas stands recorded, we must confess to a 

 sneaking kindness for Gnats, be they plumed or plumeless, 

 honey-sippers or blood-suckers. Xot only at this season, but 

 always, we love their shrilly hum, because it comes associate, 

 if with one painful, with many pleasant experiences and pleas- 

 ant memories ; such as of summer sun-sets, warm window- 

 seats, and above all, of such bright winter noon-days as that 

 on which we yesterday attended their assembly beneath the 

 " brown wood tree." But, of course, we can plead only for 

 the Gnats of England (not even for thes&in her countries of 

 morass and fen), and only with England's stay at home 

 daughters. As for those, who in colonial climates seek 

 matrimony and find Mosquitos, who could attempt to propi- 

 tiate their wounded sensibilities ? There, where tropic suns 

 soften the heart of man, and woman loves to stamp her image 

 on its wax-like impressibility, to retire to sleep a Venus and 

 wake a Medusa, a foul thing of bumps and blotches, who 

 can wonder, that under such a visitation the gentlest of 

 bosoms should swell with wrath and vengeance, and who 

 would dare to deprecate the Nero-like desire, that Mosquitos, 

 Gnats, in all their varieties and in all their countless myriads, 

 possessed but one common body to be crushed to atoms be- 

 neath the sufferer's stamping foot. 



The following lively lines from the pen of that poet of 



