FLOWERS OF THOUGHT. 09 
does, the lonely waste, and waving over weary miles 
of desolate moorland, where scarcely a tree breaks the 
long level line of the low hanging sky, and a human 
habitation but rarely heaves up to cheer the monotony 
of the scene. It recalls many a wild landscape: the 
bleak, broad mountain-side, which throughout the long 
winter and the slow-opening spring, looked black and 
barren, till toward the end of summer, when it was 
clothed every where with the rich carpet of crimson 
and purple heather, looking from the distance as if a 
sunshine, not of earth, had come down and bathed the 
whole mountain steep in subdued and rosy light. The 
Heath recalls scenes of solitude and of silence—vast 
plains of immeasurable extent, where only the wild 
bird flaps its wings—spaces which when the sun has 
traversed across, the day is ended, and upon the wide 
outstretched plains you see the night descend ; it brings 
before the eye still, out-of-the-way scenes, that go elbow¬ 
ing in where mighty woods meet together, where the 
bramble trails, and the blackthorn grows, and the red 
fox sits before the shadow of the steep bank, eyeing 
her young cubs as they play together among the 
crimson Heath-bells,—spots where lovers might sit and 
sigh away their souls in each other’s arms, without 
