EERBS. 193 



buttercups. Standing by these ponds, I beard a 

 cuckoo call, and saw a rook sail over them ; there was 

 no other sound but that of the birds and the merry 

 laugh of children rolling down the slopes. 



The midsummer hum was audible above; the 

 honeydew glistened on the leaves of the limes. There 

 is a sense of repose in the mere aspect of large trees 

 in groups and masses of quiet foliage. Their breadth 

 of form steadies the roving eye ; the rounded slopes, 

 the wide sweeping outline of these hills of green 

 boughs, induce an inclination, like them, to rest. To 

 recline upon the grass and with half-closed eyes gaze 

 upon them is enough. 



The delicious silence is not the silence of night, of 

 lifelessness ; it is the lack of jarring, mechanical 

 noise ; it is not silence but the sound of leaf and grass 

 gently stroked by the soft and tender touch of the 

 summer air. It is the sound of happy finches, of 

 the slow buzz of humble-bees, of the occasional splash 

 of a fish, or the call of a moorhen. Invisible in the 

 brilliant beams above, vast legions of insects crowd 

 the sky, but the product of their restless motion is a 

 slumberous hum. 



These sounds are the real silence; just as a tiny 

 ripple of the water and the swinging of the shadows 

 as the boughs stoop are the real stillness. If they 

 were absent, if it was the soundlessness and stillness 

 of stone, the mind would crave for something. But 

 these fill and content it. Thus reclining, the storm 

 and stress of life dissolve — there is no thought, no 

 care, no desire. Somewhat of the Nirvana of the 

 earth beneath — the earth which for ever produces and 



