ressions in
the following sonnet:--

It was an hour of calmest noon, at day
Of ripest summer: o'er the deep blue sky
White speckled clouds came sailing peacefully,
Half-shrouding in a chequer'd veil the ray
Of the sun, too ardent else,--what time we lay
By the smooth Loddon, opposite the high
Steep bank, which as a coronet gloriously
Wore its rich crest of firs and lime trees, gay
With their pale tassels; while from out a bower
Of ivy (where those column'd poplars rear
Their heads) the ruin'd boat-house, like a tower,
Flung its deep shadow on the waters clear.
My Emily! forget not that calm hour,
Nor that fair scene, by thee made doubly dear!

THE HARD SUMMER.

August 15th.--Cold, cloudy, windy, wet. Here we are, in the midst of
the dog-days, clustering merrily round the warm hearth like so many
crickets, instead of chirruping in the green fields like that other
merry insect the grasshopper; shivering under the influence of the
Jupiter Pluvius of England, the watery St. Swithin; peering at that
scarce personage the sun, when he happens to make his appearance, as
intently as astronomers look after a comet, or the common people stare
at a balloon; exclaiming against the cold weather, just as we used to
exclaim against the warm. 'What a change from last year!' is the first
sentence you hear, go where you may. Everybody remarks it, and everybody
complains of it; and yet in my mind it has its advantages, or at least
its compensations, as everything in nature has, if we would only take
the trouble to seek for them.

Last year, in spite of the love which we are now pleased to profess
towards that ardent luminary, not one of the sun's numerous admirers had
courage to look him in the face: there was no bearing the world till he
had said 'Good-night' to it. Then we might stir: then we began to wake
and to live. All day long we languished under his influence in a strange
dreaminess, too hot to work, too hot to read, too hot to write, too hot
even to talk; sitting hour after hour in a green arbour, embowered
in leafiness, letting thought and fancy float as they would. Those
day-dreams were pretty things in their way; there is no denying that.
But then, if one half of the world were to dream through a whole summer,
like the sleeping Beauty in the wood, what would become of the other?

The only office requiring the slightest exertion,