he wood-vetch, the woodroof, the
campanulas, and the orchises of summer;--for all the English orchises
are here: that which so curiously imitates the dead oak leaf, that again
which imitates the human figure; the commonest but most pretty bee
orchis, and the parallel ones which are called after the spider, the
frog, and the fly. Strange freak of nature this, in a lower order of
creation, to mimic her own handyworks in a higher!--to mimic even our
human mimicry!--for that which is called the man orchis is most like the
imitation of a human figure that a child might cut from colored paper.
Strange, strange mimicry! but full of variety, full of beauty, full of
odor. Of all the fragrant blossoms that haunt the woods, I know none so
exquisite as that night-scented orchis which is called indifferently,
the butterfly or the lily of the valley. Another glory of these woods,
an autumnal glory, is the whole fungus tribe, various and innumerable as
the mosses; from the sober drab-colored fungi, spotted with white, which
so much resemble a sea-egg, to those whose deep and gorgeous hues would
shame the tinting of an Indian shell. Truffles, too, are found beneath
the earth; and above it are deposited huge masses of the strange
compound called in modern geological phrase Agglomerate. Flint and
coral, and gravel, and attrited pebbles enter into the combination of
this extraordinary natural conglomeration, which no steel, however
hardened, can separate, and which seems to have been imitated very
successfully by the old builders in their cements and the substances
used in the filling up of their grandest structures, as may be seen in
the layers which unite the enormous slabs of granite in the Roman walls
at Silchester, as well as in the works of the old monkish architects at
Reading Abbey. Another beauty of this country is to be found in the
fields,--now of the deep-red clover, with its shining crimson tops, now
of the gay and brilliant saintfoin (the holy hay), the bright pink of
whose flowery spikes gives to the ground the look of a bed of roses.

And now we reach the gate that admits us down a steep descent to the
Rectory-house, a large substantial mansion, covered with Banksia roses,
and finely placed upon a natural terrace,--a fertile valley below, and
its own woods and orchard-trees above.

My friend the rector, raciest of men, is an Oxford divine of the old
school; a ripe scholar; one who has travelled wide and far, and is
learne