SYLVAN LANDSCAPES. 
95 
existence far more agreeable than that of the lazy lotos-eaters of 
Tennyson, who, having lost the faculty of admiration, had lost also the 
faculty of enjoyment : — ■ 
" Most weary seemed the sea, weary the oar, 
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam." 
To men thus disconsolate it might be a source of happiness, 
" 111 the hollow lotos-land to live and lie reclined. 
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind. " 
But most of US would desire some activity of life around us. Mr. 
Gosse paints a glorious picture of the palm-girdled heights of an island- 
mountain, the peak of which is densely covered with the finest ferns ; 
scores of species and thousands of individuals displaying their graceful 
fronds among the herbage, and numerous others springing in feathery 
tufts from the crevices of the mossy trunks, or festooning the horizontal 
branches of the trees. But, he adds, as the ferns are eminently 
characteristic of the botany of this lofty elevation, so is the lively 
long- tailed humming-bird of its ornithology. " The velvet crest, and 
emerald gorget, and long streaming tail-plumes of this lustrous living 
gem, flit and flutter and hover about this shady lane all day long and 
all the year round ; but it is especially numerous in the spring, when 
scores and even hundreds may be seen rifling the perpetually blossom- 
ing shrubs that are its denizens." And now for a picture of earthly 
happiness. To sit in the cool, fresh shadow of the mountain palms, 
with beauty and fragrance around, listening to the musical voices of 
the minstrels of Nature, and watching the golden-gleaming humming- 
birds as they sip the sweets of the flowers above your head ; this, says 
Mr. Gosse, — this is delightful. 
But a charming sylvan landscape is drawn by Mr. Edwards ; and as 
in it too the humming-birds figure, it is difficult to determine which 
pleases us the more. Let us cross again the haunted threshold of 
the virgin forest, and lo I wherever a creeping vine opens its fragrant 
clusters, or wherever a tree-flower expands to the warm rays of heaven, 
we shall see the glancing jewelled plumage of the humming-birds. 
