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consequential expression, are unsealed, and the bells gossip 
of their honey secrets to every wandering wind. 
“ The green and gi’aceful Fern ” I have grouped with the 
Foxglove in the illustrative plate; for where we meet one^ 
we generally find the other. Foxgloves and Fern have so 
constantly been associated in my Autumn garlands, that I 
never think of dissolving their partnership of beanty: indeed, 
both would suffer by separation. Dearly as I have, from 
childhood, loved the Fern, yet now it is yet more welcome; 
for it always recalls to my mind’s eye a magnificent scene, 
to which it added peculiar beauty. 
In the neighbourhood of a friend’s house at which I was 
visiting, in Bedfordshire, was (and I hope still is) a grand 
oak wood. The trees, of unusual height in England, were 
remarkably erect and pillar-like, as if gi'own “ to be the 
masts of some great ammirals.” They sprung into the air, 
seeming to support the very clouds; and with their dense 
mass of foliage spread like a roof above, and stately ti'unks, 
like columns standing round, with here and there a distant 
avenue offering a peep of sunlit meadow scenery, the place 
might well appear a glorious temple framed by Natures 
hand. Beneath waved an ocean of Fern, so high, that when 
walking on the ground we had a verdant wall, or rather 
arcade, on each side, reaching far above the head of an 
ordinary-sized person. But in some places ttees had recently 
been felled, and by climbing upon their prostrate trunks and 
branches, and looking over the Fern, we gained a scene of 
