ho allow each other access through
their respective grounds, from pure kindness and neighbourly feeling;
a privilege never abused: and the fields on the other side of the water
are reached by a rough plank, or a tree thrown across, or some such
homely bridge. We ourselves possess one of the most beautiful; so
that the strange pleasure of property, that instinct which makes Lizzy
delight in her broken doll, and May in the bare bone which she has
pilfered from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfoundland, is
added to the other charms of this enchanting scenery; a strange pleasure
it is, when one so poor as I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by the
poor, with the rich it may be less intense--too much diffused and spread
out, becoming thin by expansion, like leaf-gold; the little of the poor
may be not only more precious, but more pleasant to them: certain that
bit of grassy and blossomy earth, with its green knolls and tufted
bushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and its bright and babbling
waters, is very dear to me. But I must always have loved these meadows,
so fresh, and cool, and delicious to the eye and to the tread, full
of cowslips, and of all vernal flowers: Shakspeare's 'Song of Spring'
bursts irrepressibly from our lips as we step on them.

*Walking along these meadows one bright sunny afternoon, a year or two
back, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of noticing
a curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the edge of
the stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a large tuft of flags.
It looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yet
transparent, intermingled with brilliant tubes of bright blue or shining
green. On examining this phenomenon more closely, it turned out to
be several clusters of dragon-flies, just emerged from their deformed
chrysalis state, and still torpid and motionless from the wetness of
their filmy wings. Half an hour later we returned to the spot and they
were gone. We had seen them at the very moment when beauty was complete
and animation dormant. I have since found nearly a similar account of
this curious process in Mr. Bingley's very entertaining work, called
'Animal Biography.'

'When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree--'

'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' cried Lizz