Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies, The musk-rose, and the well-attired woodbine, And daffodillies fill their cups with tears." We have before alluded to the silence of the birds during this month. It is generally remarked that July and August are the stillest months of the year, in consequence of the cessation of their songs; for the nightingale is no longer heard, and the cuckoo is gone: the swallow tribe have, however, become numerous from the accession of young ones, which are easily distinguished. "Silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue Dry summer's dust, in fearful whisperings stirr'd, About this period a small tribe of warblers called willowwrens, of which we have three sorts, begin to be numerous. The wood-wren is the largest, and is often seen among oaks and other large trees, with its rich plumage of yellow and olive green. The willow-wren is the next in size, and is fond of frequenting the willow-trees and ozier-holts. The third are called pettychaps, and inhabit large trees, particularly the pine and fir. The rainy weather affords good opportunity of watching these birds, as they may then be seen flitting and running along the boughs of trees and shrubs in pursuit of insects. The golden-crested wren may sometimes be seen mounted on the highest branch of a lofty oak, looking no larger than one of the leaves, and only to be distinguished by his burnished crown. What a contrast is there then-the smallest of our English birds perched upon the largest production of our island, like Titania on Mount Atlas ! How noble appears an aged oak, either towering above its brethren of the wood, or standing in lonely majesty upon a heath, or in an old English park! Abraham sat under an oak in the heat of the day,—so sayeth one of the old fathers, Eusebius. Jacob hid the idols under the oak by Shechem. Rebecca's nurse was also buried under an oak; and beneath its shadow was the angel of the Lord seated. The ancient druids made it the emblem of their deity, and paid it divine honours. Poets have sung its praises. Shakspeare calls it "The unwedgeable and gnarled oak." Spenser has beautifully described it verging to decay :— "A huge oak, dry and dead, Still clad with reliques of its trophies old; Lifting to heaven its aged, hoary head, And half disbowelled stands above the ground, It is alike suited to the crumbling castle and the sequestered cottage; it adds solemnity to the venerable abbey or the ruined turret; and by throwing its fantastic and mossy arms over the ivied wall, makes it more venerable. Even in age it retains a beauty, when the boughs are withered or fallen away, and the desolate trunk only remains to brave the storms which it has faced for centuries. Almost every other tree shoots out its branches in level lines from the trunk; while the oak twists its boughs into grotesque forms, like a serpent coiling itself into a thousand fanciful figures as it moves along. There is nothing that grows upon the eternal hills which fills the soul with such emotions of sublimity as a mighty oak in all the glory of bough and foliage. The most magnificent ever grown in England was doubtless one which was dug from Hatfield Bog: it was an hundred and twenty feet in length. How very often in our wood-ramblings have we inhaled the fragrance of the wild honeysuckle (woodbine)! and, allured by its sweet smell, we have plunged into the thick underwood. and at length discovered it coiled perhaps around some young oak, which it has enwreathed with garlands, and almost smothered with flowers and perfumes. What lovely images it has furnished for our poets, entwining and clinging to the stem it decorates, and filling the air far around with odours! What a charm is there in the words "a wood!" what a fancied coolness seems to play upon one's cheek at the mention of its name! what a fluttering of green leaves! How beautifully has Spenser described "Those green-robed senators of mighty woods," the old hoary trees! "And forth they pass with pleasure forward led, Which therein shrouded from the tempests dread, The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry; The builder oak, sole king of forests all; The aspen, good for staves; the cypress funeral; The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors The myrrh, sweet bleeding of the bitter wound; The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the plantain round; The carver holm, the maple seldom inward sound." From among the many beauties in the British Naturalist we extract the following:- "The charm of a summer's morning is in the upland and the extensive view: they who have never K beheld the rising sun from a mountain-top know not how fair the world is. Early though it be, there is a sentinel upon the heath: a shrill whistle comes sharp and clear upon the morning breeze, which makes all the echoes of the West answer. But be not alarmed-there is no danger, no guerrilla, not even a solitary robber upon the British uplands, and the eagle and the raven are yet on the rocks, and reynard just leaving his earth in the coppice below. That whistle is his revellie, to warn those birds that nestle among the grass in the heath that the enemy is coming abroad. It is the note of the plover. "The place to be chosen for a view of sunrise on a summer morning is not the centre of a mountain-ridge-the chine of the wilderness; but some elevation near the sea-coast-the eastern coast, where, from the height of about a thousand feet, one can look down upon the chequered beauty of the land and the wide expanse of the ocean; where the morning fog is found white and fleecy in the valleys along the courses of the streams, and the more elevated trees and castles, and houses, show like islands floating in the watery waste; when the uplands are clear and well defined, and the beam yet gilds the higher peaks, while the streak upon the sea is of that soft purple which is really no colour and every colour at the same time. The whole landscape is so soft, so undefined, and so shadowy, that one is left to fill up the outline by conjecture; and it seems to get more indefinite still as the sun comes nearer the horizon. The dews feel the coming radiance, and they absolutely ascend by anticipation. At length there is one streaming pencilling of golden light, which glitters and breaks as if it were the momentary lightning of a cloud; the dewdrops at your feet are rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and opals, for an instant, and then it is gone. If the horizon be perfectly clear, this blink' of the rising sun has a very curious effect. It comes momentarily, and when it is gone, all seems darker than before. But the darkness is of as brief duration as the light, and the rising grounds are soon brought out with a grouping of light and shade that never can be observed when the sun is at any height, as the shadow is from eminence to eminence, filling all the hollows; and though deep, it is remarkably transparent, as evaporation has not yet begun to give its fluttering indistinctness to the outlines of objects. By the time that half of the solar disk is above the horizon, the sea is peculiarly fine, and it is better if the view be down an estuary. In the distant offing it is one level sheet, more brilliant than burnished gold, in which the boats, with their dark sails, as they return from the deep-sea fishing, project their streaking shadows for miles, though each seems but a speck. The lands on the opposite side of the estuary pay their morning salutations, in soft breezes wafted across, as the sun touches a point of the one here, and of the other there; for the summer sun no sooner beams out upon one part of the landscape than the little zephyrs from all the others hasten thither to worship, so instantly does the genial beam put the atmosphere in motion, and as those breezes come from more moist places there is still dew upon the summits at sunrise. Those cross winds, rippling the water this way and that, give an opal play to the whole; while behind you, if the estuary stretches that way, it passes into a deep blue, as from the small angle at which the rays fall they are all reflected forward; and the very same cause that makes the water so brilliant before you gives it that deep tint in the rear. By-and-by, the trees and buildings in lateral position come out with a line of golden light on their eastern sides; while to the west, every pane in the windows beams and blazes like a beacon fire. The fogs, too, melt away, except a few trailing fleeces, over the streams and lakes, that lie sheltered beneath steep or wooded banks; and they soon fade from these also, and the mingled fields, and woods, and streams, are all arrayed in green and gold. The cottage smokes begin to twine upward in their blue volumes; the |