th which we detect objects that are right
before the eyes! Here now are whortleberries, ripe and black, growing
actually within reach of my hand, yet unseen till this moment.
Were we to sit here all day,--a week, a month, and doubtless a
lifetime,--objects would thus still be presenting themselves as new,
though there would seem to be no reason why we should not have detected
them all at the first moment.

Now a cat-bird is mewing at no great distance. Then the shadow of a bird
flits across a sunny spot. There is a peculiar impressiveness in this
mode of being made acquainted with the flight of a bird; it impresses
the mind more than if the eye had actually seen it. As we look round to
catch a glimpse of the winged creature, we behold the living blue of the
sky, and the brilliant disk of the sun, broken and made tolerable to the
eye by the intervening foliage. Now, when you are not thinking of it,
the fragrance of the white pines is suddenly wafted to you by a slight,
almost imperceptible breeze, which has begun to stir. Now the breeze is
the softest sigh imaginable, yet with a spiritual potency, insomuch that
it seems to penetrate, with its mild, ethereal coolness, through the
outward clay, and breathe upon the spirit itself, which shivers with
gentle delight. Now the breeze strengthens so much as to shake all the
leaves, making them rustle sharply; but it has lost its most ethereal
power. And now, again, the shadows of the boughs lie as motionless as if
they were painted on the pathway. Now, in the stillness, is heard the
long, melancholy note of a bird, complaining above of some wrong or
sorrow that man, or her own kind, or the immitigable doom of mortal
affairs, has inflicted upon her, the complaining, but unresisting
sufferer. And now, all of a sudden, we hear the sharp, shrill chirrup of
a red squirrel, angry, it seems, with somebody--perhaps with
ourselves--for having intruded into what he is pleased to consider his
own domain. And hark! terrible to the ear, here is the minute but
intense hum of a mosquito. Instinct prevails over all sentiment; we
crush him at once, and there is his grim and grisly corpse, the ugliest
object in nature. This incident has disturbed our tranquillity. In
truth, the whole insect tribe, so far as we can judge, are made more for
themselves, and less for man, than any other portion of creation. With
such reflections, we look at a swarm of them, peopling, indeed, the
whole air, but only v