with the breeze. It is luxury to plunge into the cool river. To steal away into a quiet valley by a 
winding stream, buried, completely buried, in fresh grass; the foam-like flowers of the meadow-sweet, the 
crimson loose-strife, and the large blue geranium nodding beside us; the dragon-fly, the ephemera, and 
the king-fisher glancing to and fro; the trees above casting their flickering shadows on the stream; and one 
of our ten thousand volumes of our delightful literature in our pockets. What luxurious images would 
there float through the mind ! It is in the flowery lap of June that we can best climb 
Up to the sunshine of encumbered ease. 
How delicious too are the evenings become. The frosts and damps of spring are past ; the earth is 
dry, the night air is balmy and refreshing; the glow-worm has lit her lamp: the bat is circling about ; the 
fragrant breath of flowers steals into our houses ; and the moth flutters against the darkening pane. Go 
forth when the business of the day is over, thou who art pent in city toils, and stray through the newly- 
shot corn along the grassy and hay-scented fields ; linger beside the solitary woodland ; the gale of heaven 
is stirring its mighty and umbrageous branches; the wild rose, with its flowers of most delicate odour, and 
of every tint from the deepest red to the purest pearl ; the wreathed and luscious honey suckle, and the 
verdurous, snowy-flowered elder embellish every way-side, or light up the most shadowy region of the wood. 
Field peas and beans in full flower, add their spicy aroma ; the red clover is at once splendid, and profused 
of its honied breath. The young corn is bursting into ear ; the awned heads of rye, wheat and barley, and 
the nodding panicles of oats shoot from their green and glaucous stems, in broad, level, and waving ex- 
panses of present beauty and future promise. The very waters are strewn with flowers ; the buck-bean, the 
water-violet, the elegant flowering-rush, and the queen of the waters, the pure and the splendid white lily, 
invest every stream and lonely moor with grace. The mavis and the merle, those worthy favourites of the 
olden bards, and the woodlark, fill the solitude with their elegant evening songs. 
Over its own sweet voice the stock-dove broods; 
and the cuckoo pours its mellowest note from some region of twilight shadow. The Sunsets of this month 
are transcendantly glorious, the mighty luminary goes down pavilioned amidst clouds of every hue : the 
splendour of burnished gold, the deepest mazarine blue fading away into the deepest heavens to the palest 
azure, and an ocean of purple is flung over the twilight woods, or the far stretching and lonely horizon. 
The heart of the spectator is touched ; it is melted and wrapt into dreams of past and present, pure, 
elevated, and tinged with a poetic tenderness. 
*********** 
Sheep-Shearing, began last month, is generally completed this. It is one of the most picturesque 
operations of rural life, and from the most ancient times, it has been regarded as a scene of gladness and 
joy. 
Like most of our old festivities, however, this has for late years declined, yet two instances in which it 
has been attempted to keep it alive, on a noble scale, worthy of a country so renowned for its flocks and its 
fleeces, will occur to the reader, — those of Holkham and Woburn; and in the wilds of Scotland, and the more 
rural parts of England, the ancient glory of sheep-shearing has not entirely departed. And, indeed, its 
picturesqueness can never depart, however its jollity may. The sheep washing, however, which precedes 
the shearing, has more of rural beauty about it. As we stroll over some sunny heath, or descend into some 
sylvan valley in this sweet month, we are apt to come upon such scenes. We hear afar off the bleating of 
flocks ; as we approach some clear stream, we behold the sheep penned on its banks ; in mid stream stand 
sturdy hinds ready to receive them as they are plunged in, one by one, and after squeezing their saturated 
fleeces well between their hands, and giving them one good submersion, they guide them to the opposite 
bank. The clear running waters, the quiet fields, the whispering fresh boughs that thicken around, and the 
poor dripping creatures themselves, that, after giving themselves a staggering shake, go off gladly to their 
pasture, form to the eye an animated and splendid tout ensemble. 
