of no mean repute; and your prose is allowed to be excellent, better far than the best paragraph in this our Morning Monologue. But you are sick of walking, and nothing will satisfy you but to fly. Be contented, as we are, with feet, and weep not for wings; and let us take comfort together from a cheering quotation from the philosophic Gray—

"For they that creep and they that fly,

Just end where they began!"

THE FIELD OF FLOWERS.

A MAY-MORNING on Ulswater and the banks of Ulswater—commingled earth and heaven! Spring is manycoloured as Autumn; but now Joy scatters the hues daily brightening into greener life, then Melancholy dropt them daily dimming into yellower death. The fear of Winter then-but now the hope of Summer; and Nature rings with hymns hailing the visible advent of the perfect year. If for a moment the woods are silent, it is but to burst forth anew into louder song. The rain is over and gone-but the showery sky speaks in the streams on a hundred hills; and the wide mountain gloom opens its heart to the sunshine, that on many a dripping precipice burns like fire. Nothing seems inanimate. The very clouds and their shadows look alivethe trees, never dead, are wide-awakened from their sleep-families of flowers are frequenting all the dewy places-old walls are splendid with the light of lichens— and birch-crowned cliffs up among the coves send down their fine fragrance to the Lake on every bolder breath that whitens with breaking wavelets the blue of its breezy bosom. Nor mute the voice of man. The shepherd is

whooping on the hill-the ploughman calling to his team somewhere among the furrows in some small late field, won from the woods; and you hear the laughter and the echoes of the laughter-one sound-of children busied in half-work half-play; for what else in vernal sunshine is the occupation of young rustic life? 'Tis no Arcadia-no golden age. But a lovelier scene-in the midst of all its grandeur-is not in merry and majestic England; nor did the hills of this earth ever circumscribe a pleasanter dwelling for a nobler peasantry, than these Cumbrian ranges of rocks and pastures, where the raven croaks in his own region, unregarded in theirs by the fleecy flocks. How beautiful the Church Tower!

On a knoll not far from the shore, and not high above the water, yet by an especial felicity of place gently commanding all that reach of the Lake with all its ranges of mountains-every single tree, every grove, and all the woods seeming to show or to conceal the scene at the bidding of the Spirit of Beauty-reclined two Figures— the one almost rustic, but venerable in the simplicity of old age the other no longer young, but still in the prime of life—and though plainly apparelled, with form and bearing such as are pointed out in cities, because belonging to distinguished men. The old man behaved towards him with deference but not humility; and between them too-in many things unlike-it was clear even from their silence that there was Friendship.

A little way off, and sometimes almost running, now up and now down the slopes and hollows, was a girl about eight years old-whether beautiful or not you could not

know, for her face was either half-hidden in golden hair, or when she tossed the tresses from her brow, it was so bright in the sunshine that you saw no features, only a gleam of joy. Now she was chasing the butterflies, not to hurt them, but to get a nearer sight of their delicate gauze wings the first that had come-she wondered whence to waver and wanton for a little while in the spring-sunshine, and then, she felt, as wondrously, one and all as by consent, to vanish. And now she stooped as if to pull some little wild-flower, her hand for a moment withheld by a loving sense of its loveliness, but ever and anon adding some new colour to the blended bloom intended to gladden her father's eyes-though the happy child knew full well, and sometimes wept to know, that she herself had his entire heart. Yet gliding, or tripping, or dancing along, she touched not with fairy foot one white clover-flower on which she saw working the silent bee. Her father looked too often sad, and she fearedthough what it was, she imagined not even in dreamsthat some great misery must have befallen him before they came to live in the glen. And such, too, she had heard from a chance whisper was the belief of their neighbours. But momentary the shadows on the light of childhood! Nor was she insensible to her own beauty, that with the innocence it enshrined combined to make her happy; and first met her own eyes every morning, when most beautiful, awakening from the hushed awe of her prayers. She was clad in russet, like a cottager's child; but her air spoke of finer breeding than may be met with among those mountains-though natural

grace accompanies there many a maiden going with her pitcher to the well-and gentle blood and old flows there in the veins of now humble men—who, but for the decay of families once high, might have lived in halls, now dilapidated, and scarcely distinguished through masses of ivy from the circumjacent rocks!

The child stole close behind her father, and kissing his cheek, said, "Were there ever such lovely flowers seen on Ulswater before, father? I do not believe that they will ever die." And she put them in his breast. Not a smile came to his countenance-no look of love-no faint recognition-no gratitude for the gift which at other times might haply have drawn a tear. She stood abashed in the sternness of his eyes, which, though fixed on her, seemed to see her not; and feeling that her glee was mistimed-for with such gloom she was not unfamiliar the child felt as if her own happiness had been sin, and, retiring into a glade among the broom, sat down and wept.

"Poor wretch, better far that she never had been born!"

The old man looked on his friend with compassion, but with no surprise; and only said, "God will dry up her tears."

These few simple words, uttered in a solemn voice, but without one tone of reproach, seemed somewhat to calm the other's trouble, who first looking towards the spot where his child was sobbing to herself, though he heard it not, and then looking up to heaven, ejaculated for her sake a broken prayer. He then would have