Streamers of Sunshine. 43 
ing that he has had no rain. When the sky is over- 
cast—large masses of cloud, with occasional breaks, 
passing slowly across it at a considerable elevation 
without rain—sometimes through these narrow slits 
long beams of light fall aslant upon the distant fields 
of the vale. They resemble, only on a greatly 
lengthened scale, the beams that may be seen in 
churches of a sunny afternoon, falling from the upper 
windows on the tiled floor of the chancel, and made 
visible by motes in the air. So through such slits in 
the cloudy roof of the sky the rays of the sun shoot 
downwards, made visible on their passage by the 
moisture or the motes floating in the atmosphere. 
They seem to linger in their place as the clouds drift 
with scarcely perceptible motion; and the labourers 
say that the sun is sucking up water there. 
In the evening of a fine day the mists may be 
seen from hence as they rise in the meadows far 
beneath: beginning first over the brooks, a long 
white winding vapour marking their course, next 
extending over the moist places and hollows. Higher 
in the air darker bars of mist, separate and distinct 
from the white sheet beneath them, perhaps a hundred 
feet above it,gradually come into sight as they grow 
thicker and blacker, one here one yonder—long and 
narrow in shape. These seem to approach more 
nearly in character to the true cloud than the mist 
which hardly rises higher than the hedges. The latter 
will sometimes move or draw across the meadows 
