Thou, who didst deem divine Gush'd through the woods at noon? I have run my fervid race, I have wrought my task once more; There is treasure in the garner, Soon as in misty sadness, Sere Autumn yields her reign, Shall chase thee from the plain. Then shall these scenes elysian And each summer thought and vision Be thine till I return. W. H. FIELD PATHS are at this season particularly attractive. I love our real old English footpaths. I love those rustic and picturesque stiles opening their pleasant escapes from frequented places and dusty highways into the solitudes of nature. It is delightful to catch a glimpse of one on the old village-green; under the old elder-tree by some ancient cottage, or half hidden by the overhanging boughs of a wood. I love to see the smooth, dry track, winding away in easy curves, along some green slope to the church-yard-to the forest-grange -or to the embowered cottage. It is to me an object of certain inspiration. It seems to invite one from noise and publicity into the heart of solitude and of rural delight. It beckons the imagination on through green and whispering corn-fields, through the short but verdant pasture, the flowering mowing-grass, the odourous and sunny hay-field, the festivity of harvest; from lonely farm to farm, from village to village; by clear and mossy wells; by tinkling brooks and deep wood-skirted streams, to crofts where the daffodil is rejoicing in spring, or meadows where the large blue geranium embellishes the summer wayside; to heaths with their warm elastic sward and crimson bells-the chithering of grasshoppers, the foxglove, and the old gnarled oak; in short, to all the solitary haunts after which the city-pent lover of nature pants the hart panteth after the water-brooks." What is there so truly English? What is so truly linked with our rural tastes, our sweetest memories, and our sweetest poetry, as stiles and foot-paths? Goldsmith, Thomson, and Milton have adorned them with some of their richest wreaths. They have consecrated them to poetry and love. It is along the foot-path in secluded fields, upon the stile in the embowered lane, where the wild rose and the honeysuckle 66 as are lavishing their beauty and their fragrance, that we delight to picture to ourselves rural lovers, breathing, in the dewy sweetness of summer evening, vows still sweeter. There it is that the poet, seated, sends back his soul into the freshness of his youth, amongst attachments since withered by neglect,-rendered painful by absence, or broken by death; amongst dreams and aspirations which, even now that they pronounce their own fallacy, are lovely. It is there that he gazes upon the gorgeous sunsetthe evening star following with its silvery lamp the fading day, or the moon showering her pale lustre through the balmy night air-with a fancy that kindles and soars into the heavens before him; there, that we have all felt the charm of woods and green fields, and solitary boughs waving in the golden sunshine, or darkening in the melancholy beauty of evening shadows. Who has not thought how beautiful was the sight of a village congregation, pouring out from their old grey church on a summer day, and streaming off through the quiet meadows, in all directions to their homes? Or who that has visited Alpine scenery, has not beheld with a poetic feeling, the mountaineers come winding down out of their romantic seclusions on a sabbath morning, pacing the solitary heath-tracks, bounding with elastic step down the fern-clad dells, or along the course of a riotous stream, as cheerful, as picturesque, and yet as solemn as the scenes around them? Again I say, I love field-paths, and stiles of all species,-ay, even the most inaccessible piece of rustic erection ever set up in defiance of age, laziness, and obesity. How many scenes of frolic and merry confusion have I seen at a clumsy stile! What exclamations, and blushes, and fine eventual vaulting on the part of the ladies! and what an opportunity does it afford to beaux of exhibiting a variety of gallant and delicate attentions ! I consider a rude stile as anything but an impediment in the course of a rural courtship. Those good old turnstiles too can I ever forget them? the hours I have spun round upon them when a boy! or those in which I have almost laughed myself to death at the remembrance of my village pedagogue's disaster! Methinks I see him now!-the time a sultry day, the domine a goodly person of some eighteen or twenty stone, -the scene a footpath sentinelled with turnstiles, one of which held him fast as in amazement at his bulk. Never shall I forget his efforts and agonies to extricate himself; nor his lion-like roars which brought some labourers to his assistance, who, when they had recovered from their convulsions of laughter, knocked off the top of the turnstile and let him go. It is long since I saw a stile of this construction, and I suspect the Falstaffs have cried them down. But without a jest, stiles and foot-paths are vanishing everywhere. There is nothing upon which the advance of wealth and population has made so serious an inroad. As land has increased in value, wastes and heaths have been parcelled out and inclosed, but seldom have foot-paths been left. The poet and the naturalist, who before had, perhaps, the greatest real property in them, have had no allotment. They have been totally driven out of the promised land. Goldsmith complained in his day, that The man of wealth and pride Takes up a space that many poor supplied; And it is but too true that the pressure of contiguous pride has driven farther, from that day to this, the public from the rich man's lands. "They make a solitude and call it peace." Even the quiet and picturesque foot-path that led across his fields, or stole along his wood-side, giving to the poor man with his burden a cooler and nearer cut to the village, is become a nuisance. One would have thought that the |