e a gravelled surface, but which the soil accumulating
from the decay of leaves, and washing down from the bank, has now almost
covered. The sunshine comes down on the pathway, with the bright glow of
noon, at certain points; in other places, there is a shadow as deep as
the glow; but along the greater portion sunshine glimmers through
shadow, and shadow effaces sunshine, imaging that pleasant mood of mind
when gayety and pensiveness intermingle. A bird is chirping overhead
among the branches, but exactly whereabout you seek in vain to
determine; indeed, you hear the rustle of the leaves, as he continually
changes his position. A little sparrow, however, hops into view,
alighting on the slenderest twigs, and seemingly delighting in the
swinging and heaving motion which his slight substance communicates to
them; but he is not the loquacious bird, whose voice still comes, eager
and busy, from his hidden whereabout. Insects are fluttering around.
The cheerful, sunny hum of the flies is altogether summer-like, and so
gladsome that you pardon them their intrusiveness and impertinence,
which continually impel them to fly against your face, to alight upon
your hands, and to buzz in your very ear, as if they wished to get into
your head, among your most secret thoughts. In truth, a fly is the most
impertinent and indelicate thing in creation,--the very type and moral
of human spirits with whom one occasionally meets, and who, perhaps,
after an existence troublesome and vexatious to all with whom they come
in contact, have been doomed to reappear in this congenial shape. Here
is one intent upon alighting on my nose. In a room, now,--in a human
habitation,--I could find in my conscience to put him to death; but here
we have intruded upon his own domain, which he holds in common with all
other children of earth and air; and we have no right to slay him on his
own ground. Now we look about us more minutely, and observe that the
acorn-cups of last year are strewn plentifully on the bank and on the
path. There is always pleasure in examining an acorn-cup,--perhaps
associated with fairy banquets, where they were said to compose the
table-service. Here, too, are those balls which grow as excrescences on
the leaves of the oak, and which young kittens love so well to play
with, rolling them over the carpet. We see mosses, likewise, growing on
the banks, in as great variety as the trees of the wood. And how strange
is the gradual process wi