290 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
Midsummer. The plains of Judea, and the valleys of 
Jordan, though extolled by travellers, are, nevertheless, 
during the most charming portion of the year, nothing 
more than wide carpets of a dull melancholy green; for 
the shapeless olive-bushes, which grow so numerously in 
those districts, wear, when in their most luxuriant con¬ 
dition, nothing but a mass of dull, dingy leaves, destitute 
altogether of either grace or verdant beauty. We shall 
therefore turn with some gratulation to glance on a few 
pictures from our own fields, drawn, it is true, with a 
very weak pen, but still copied from nature, and if not 
truly in the letter, at least in the spirit by which they 
were prompted—genuine transcripts of the real thousand 
brambles, and rose-blooms, and fruitful fields, for which 
our beloved country is so justly celebrated. 
Well, there are so many, I scarcely know with which 
to begin. Do you see yonder gipsy-tent-, sending up a 
blue wreath of smoke among the elm trees—a soft curl¬ 
ing stream of the purest azure, flinging a most beautiful 
shadow upon the leafy branches, and diffusing an odour 
more potent than that of violets—to give an idea of the 
comfort of the country ? There is an old knotted oak to 
the right, which looks as venerable as St. Pierre; just 
below it is a wooden bridge, which cracked its ribs long 
ago, and now threatens to go m the back, and let some 
poor fellow souse into the water, some fine morning 
before breakfast. The water-weeds and forget-me-nots 
are fond of these maimed and broken-winded tim¬ 
bers, and grow in rich festoons of green and blue 
about them, as if they were adorning the portico 
of Plora's temple. The elongated mass of green algae 
