round you, and swarm
along the hedges, lighting each other to bed, till about midnight,
which is their curfew; for you seldom meet one of these
lantern-bearers later, though you may still, in returning from a late
party, be stopped with momentary admiration at beholding a magnificent
glow-worm burning her tail away at a great rate, and lighting up some
dark recess unvisited by star or moon, herself a star, and giving
sufficient light to enable you to read the small print of a newspaper
a foot off! But who shall attempt to describe his first acquaintance
with the fire-fly! We have seen birthday illuminations in London and
in Paris; we have seen the cupola of St Peter's start into pale yellow
light, as the deepening shadows of night shrouded all things around;
we have seen the Corso, on _Moccoletti_ night, a long fluctuating line
of ever renewed light, from the street to the fourth story--an
illumination _sui generis_, and "beautiful exceedingly;" but noise and
confusion are around all these as you approach them. But, oh! to
plunge suddenly into an atmosphere filled with _Lucciole_ in the quiet
gloaming of an Italian sky, amidst the olive groves and plantations of
Indian corn, with no noise but the drowsy hum of the huge _stag
beetle_, (the only patrole of the district,) or the yet fainter sounds
of frogs complaining to each other of the sultriness of the night, or
the monotonous hymn, at the peasant's door, addressed to the Virgin!
Your first impression is unmixed delight--your next, a wish probably
that you could introduce the fire-fly into England. Could one empty a
few hatfuls along Pall-Mall or Bond Street, on opera nights, what an
amazement would seize the people! We swept them up into the crown of
our hat, and could not get enough of them; then we set them flying
about our room, putting out the lights and shutting the shutters; and
then we caught them, and began to look more closely at the sources of
our delight, and to examine the acts and deeds of these wonderful
little creatures. As to the light itself, we soon perceived that, in
reality, the fire-fly emitted it from _two sources_; for, besides his
_steady_ light, which never varied, there came, we saw, at intervals,
flicks or sparks of far greater brilliancy, like the revolving light
of the beacon on the sea-shore, only that the light here was never
wholly eclipsed, but merely much abated. We soon perceived, too, that
those sudden jets of light came and went at