SUMMEE-DAY PIPERS. 253 



season, and when even the little plough-boy wipes his face, 

 and only wets his whistle. Wherein lies the music of such 

 times of muteness nature's "piping times of peace?" Ety- 

 mology can doubtless tell, and Entomology may, as we take 

 it, throw some light also on the subject. 



Well, nothing could be more generally characteristic of 

 " still life " than the day and hour, about a year ago, which 

 we would now recall, when, book in hand, we crept from our 

 little sun-baked domicile, and throwing ourselves under the 

 shade of a huge elm-pollard, plunged not, we confess it, into 

 our provided volume, but into a reverie about as drowsy and 

 dreamy as the heated face of Dame Nature. And here we 

 must notice, that while all the other children, animal and 

 vegetable, of our nursing-mother Earth, were taking their 

 noontide slumber on her lap, one portion of her family, that, 

 namely, composed of the insect crew, seemed resolved to keep 

 the world stirring, or at least to make a stir in the world, 

 whose sunny places seemed to be entirely abandoned to their 

 use. These little impertinents, the pipers, and eke the dancers 

 of the hour, seemed, in truth, to have taken complete posses- 

 sion of three elements air, earth, and water together with 

 a large portion of the fourth, diffused through all by the fiery 

 sun; and, in thus possessing, gave apparent life to the ele- 

 ments themselves, making them reel again with insect 



" Mirth and revelry, 

 Tipsy dance, and jollity." 



