MATTHEW ARNOLD'S PLANT ALLUSIONS. 83 
“ Those for whom I write will like to have their attention called 
to the following passages among the lyric poems in the second 
volume : — 
“ ‘ They see the Indian 
Drifting, knife in hand, 
His frail boat moor’d to 
A floating isle thick-matted 
With large-leaved, low-creeping melon-plants, 
And the dark cucumber. 
He reaps, and stows them, 
Drifting — drifting ; — round him, 
Round his green harvest-plot, 
Flow the cool lake-waves, 
The mountains ring them.’ 
“ I do not know to what part of India this description refers. 
Melons in the southern part of that peninsula are much grown 
in the beds of the great rivers — the fruit coming to maturity just 
as the hot weather begins ; but Mr. Arnold’s habits of study were 
so careful that I am sure he could have produced chapter and 
verse for the proceedings of the Indian, as well as for those of 
his more northern brother, who appears in the next extract : — 
“ ‘ They see the Scythian 
On the wide stepp, unharnessing 
His wheel’d house at noon. 
He tethers his beast down, and makes his meal — 
Mares’ milk, and bread 
Baked on the embers ; — all around 
The boundless, waving grass-plains stretch, thick-starr’d 
With saffron and the yellow hollyhock 
And flag-leaved iris-flowers.’ 
“ The transition from this scene to the English Midlands de- 
scribed in the first lines of Bacchanalia is complete : — 
“ ‘ The evening comes, the fields are still, 
The tinkle of the thirsty rill. 
Unheard all day, ascends again; 
Deserted is the half-mown plain, 
Silent the swaths ! the ringing wain. 
The mower’s cry, the dog’s alarms. 
All housed within the sleeping farms ! 
The business of the day is done. 
The last-left haymaker is gone. 
And from the thyme upon the height. 
And from the elder-blossom white 
And pale dog-roses in the hedge, 
And from the mint-plant in the sedge, 
In puffs of balm the night-air blows 
The perfume which the day foregoes.’ 
“ The next passage I shall cite is from the Youth of Man, and 
belongs to the same kind of country 
“ ‘ Here they stand to-night — 
Here, where this grey balustrade 
Crowns the still valley ; behind 
Is the castled house, with its woods, 
Which shelter’d their childhood — the sun 
