SUMMER PICTURES. 
293 
and bulrushes to play in, and which nature must have 
dug for the wood-birds to go to and drink, when the July 
sun had sucked up all the forest runnels. Amid the 
reedy brakes, you sometimes start the black water-hen, 
and she shrieks with alarm for her downy family of help¬ 
less little ones; and at the same moment down goes the 
water-rat with a deep plash, to rise again at some goodly 
distance, and immediately commence swimming round 
and round some broken branch which dips into the 
pond, and nibble a leaf here and there, as if trying to 
persuade himself that nothing has happened, and that 
there is no need to fear intruding bipeds. 
Sometimes you come suddenly upon a quiet village 
embowered in ancient trees, on the border of a thick 
wood; and there are two or three huge sign-posts, and 
sundry stacks of hay, with homesteads and barns pitched 
about in the oddest of ways, but all roofed over with 
thick velvet mosses or tufts of whitlow-grass and stone- 
crop. The cottage roofs and chimneys are covered with 
snapdragons and orange-coloured lichens, which har¬ 
monize most beautifully with the hues of the cracked and 
twisted trees. There are timid wreaths of smoke curling 
up among the tall branches of the elms, and you catch 
the homely smell of ash-wood fires; you gaze upon the 
scene, and read, in the white-washed w^all and the low 
cottage, with its acre of potatoes and vrell-stocked 
kitchen-garden, the unwritten history of English worth, 
and the peaceful content of an English home, nestled 
amid the land of ancient trees. You think of old 
customs—of May-day, of sheep-shearing, and of harvest- 
home; you remember that such scenes w r ere to be found 
