THE HONEY BEE. 271 



nated with the breath of flowers ! Sweet is the joyous concert 

 of feathered choristers above and about thee ! Sweet is the 

 memory of those few happy days when we have drank 

 freely of scenes Hke these, and basked in the early sunshine 

 on some fragrant bed of thyme, " dazzled and drunk with 

 beauty " — the beauty of nature. 



Gentle reader ! has thy soul never sympathized with nature — 

 has it never been so deeply steeped in the love of nature as to 

 have assumed, for a passing moment, her rosy hue ? Young 

 love lends a light to woods and fields that is not all their 

 own — we have felt it, but feel it no longer. 



Oh ! the days are gone when beauty bright 



Our heart's-chain wove, 

 When our dream of life, from morn to night, 



Was love — still love. 



The "milder, calmer" days are now come, and we love 

 nature for her own sake ; our delight in her is perhaps a little 

 diminished in intensity since objects have ceased to reflect the 

 glowing tints of our thoughts, but there is a soberer, purer, 

 more endui'ing beauty in the colours which are truly her own, and 

 the soul now receives at her hands those hues which, in earlier 

 life, it had the power to impart. Love invests objects with a 

 joyous dancing splendour that is not real, as the glare of a 

 noon-day sun gives a quivering motion to the white stones in a 

 churchyard, while, in reality, they partake of all the deathy 

 quiet of those whose tale they tell. 



Gentle reader ! we will now give thee a few directions about 

 thy bees ; and these, not thrown together at random, but the 

 result of much observation and experience. Select the site for 

 thy colony with care ; let not the wide and rapid river roll by 

 it, nor the pool stagnate near it; these are often sources of 

 great loss of life to bees, especially in windy weather ; yet a 

 gently murmuring brook, bubbling, in all its transparent purity, 

 over flattened pebbles, may harmlessly meander through thy 

 clovery meadows, or even through thy garden, stored, as it 

 must be, with honey-distilling flowers. Let a high wall or a 

 close hedge protect thy colony from the biting north-wind, yet 

 take care that it be not placed so as to hide the hives from thy 

 view as thou art sitting in thy parlour, for thine eye should be 

 continually upon thy treasure, taking instant cognizance of 

 any thing that is amiss. Let each hive be placed on a stand. 



