i39 IRature Stufcies in Berkshire. 



holding darker patches against the pale dry hay- 

 colour of the grass and stubble. The goldenrod is 

 a full fortnight early, and as it hurries into bloom 

 brings the same impression of precocity which one 

 gets from those poor children of want in city depths 

 who have grown old in hard experience before 

 they have done with their youth. There is some- 

 thing unwelcome, too, about this forwardness of the 

 golden blooms, for they hasten the omens of au- 

 tumnal change and keep the eye full of reminders 

 of the rate at which "the roaring looms of time " are 

 weaving their endless web. One cannot bear to 

 have the hands on the clock of nature turned ahead. 

 At their normal rate they outstrip all our estimates. 

 When they thus discount changes and times and 

 seasons to the eye, they seem to cheat us of some 

 actual fee-simple in the days. 



The way to the woods is but a short one, yet 

 now that the dust is thick in the road, and lies like a 

 dry frost over the burnt turf along the fences, and 

 makes conspicuous the cobwebs bespreading the 

 grass-tops, it is an uninviting path. The eye recoils 

 from the dreary monotony of dust, and the feet slip 

 painfully over the worn and polished carpet. One is 

 glad to reach the wood-road and turn aside from the 

 open, and welcomes the promise which these shady 

 coverts hold forth of a respite from this sense of 

 exhaustion and of thirst. But the woods have their 

 story to tell. The trees and the sturdier shrubs are 

 weathering the trouble well ; but mark how the ferns 



