can scarcely endure; and those still softer clouds which floated above them wreathing and curling into a thousand fantastic forms, as thin and changeful as summer smoke, are defined and deepened into grandeur, and edged with ineffable, insufferable light! Another minute and the brilliant orb totally disappears, and the sky above grows every moment more varied and more beautiful as the dazzling golden lines are mixed with glowing red and gorgeous purple, dappled with small dark specks, and mingled with a pale, clear blue. To look up at that glorious sky, and then to see that magnificent picture reflected in the clear and lovely Loddon water, is a pleasure never to be described and never forgotten. My heart swells, and my eyes fill as I write of it, and think of the immeasurable majesty of nature, and the unspeakable goodness of God, who has spread an enjoyment so pure, so peaceful, and so intense before the meanest and the lowliest of His creatures.

MISS MITFORD.

TO THE CUCKOO.

O BLITHE new-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wandering voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off and near.

Though babbling only to the vale

Of sunshine and of flowers,

Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

TO THE NIGHTINGALE.

WHEN twilight's grey and pensive hour
Brings the low breeze, and shuts the flower,
And bids the solitary star

Shine in pale beauty from afar :

When gathering shades the landscapes veil,
And peasants seek their village dale,
And mists from river-wave arise,
And dew in every blossom lies:

When Evening's primrose opes to shed
Soft fragrance round her grassy bed;
When glow-worms in the wood-walk light
Their lamp to cheer the traveller's sight:

At that calm hour, so still, so pale,
Awakes the lonely nightingale,
And from a hermitage of shade,
Fills with her voice the forest glade.

And sweeter far that melting voice,
Than all which through the day rejoice;
And still shall bard and wanderer love
The twilight music of the grove.

MRS. HEMANS.

FELLING TIMBER.

WE proceeded on our way through winding lanes, between hedgerows tenderly green, till we reached the hatch-gate, with the white cottage beside it embosomed in fruit trees, which forms the entrance to the Pinge, and in a moment the whole scene was before our eyes.

A wood is generally a pretty place; but this wood-imagine

a smaller forest, full of glades and sheepwalks,

surrounded

by irregular cottages

with their blooming

stream winding about the brakes, and a road intersecting it, and giving life and light to the picture; and you will have a faint idea of the Pinge. Every step was opening a new point of view, a fresh combination of glade, and path, and thicket. The accessories, too, were changing every moment; ducks, geese, pigs, and children giving way, as we advanced into the wood, to sheep and forest ponies; and these again disappearing as we became more entangled in its mazes, till we heard nothing but the song of the nightingale, and saw only the silent flowers. What a piece of fairy-land! The tall elms overhead just

bursting into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak, or a silver-barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of woodbines and wild briers ;—what a fairy-land !

We had nearly threaded the wood, and were approaching an open grove of magnificent oaks on the other side, when sounds other than of nightingales burst on our ear, the deep and frequent strokes of a woodman's axe,—and emerging from the Pinge we discovered the havoc which that axe had committed. Above twenty of the finest trees lay stretched on the velvet turf. There they lay in every shape and form of devastation ;—some, bare trunks stripped ready for the timber carriage, with the bark built up in long piles at the side; some with the spoilers busy about them, stripping, hacking, hewing; others with their noble branches, their brown and fragrant shoots all fresh as if they were alive-majestic corses, the slain of to-day! The grove was like a field of battle. The young lads who were stripping the bark, the very children who were picking up the chips, seemed awed and silent, as if conscious that death was around them. The nightingales sang faintly and interruptedly-a few low frightened notes like a requiem.

Ah! here we are at the very scene of murder, beside the very tree that they are felling; they have just hewn round the trunk with those slaughtering axes, and are about to saw it asunder. After all, it is a fine and thrilling operation, as the work of death usually is. Into how grand an attitude was that young man thrown as he gave the final strokes round the root; and how wonderful is the effect of that supple and apparently powerless saw, bending like a riband, and yet overmastering that giant of the woods, conquering and overthrowing that thing of life! Now it has passed half through