“How intoxicating, how rich, is a summer’s day in Little Russia! How overwhelmingly hot are those hours of noonday silence and haze! Like a boundless azure sea, the dome of the sky, bending as though with passion over the world, seems to have fallen asleep, all drowned in softness, and clasps and caresses the beautiful earth with a celestial embrace. There is no cloud in the sky; and the stream is silent. Everything is as if it were dead; only aloft in the deeps of the sky a lark quivers, and its silvery song echoes down the vault of heaven, and reaches the lovesick earth. And from time to time the cry of the seagull or the clear call of the quail is heard in the plain. “Lazily and thoughtlessly, as though they were idling vaguely, stand the shady oaks; and the blinding rays of the sun light up the picturesque masses of foliage, while the rest of the tree is in a shadow dark as night, and only when the wind rises, a flash of gold trembles across it. “Like emeralds, topazes and amethysts, the diaphanous insects flutter in the many-coloured fruit gardens, which are shaded by stately sun-flowers. Grey haycocks and golden sheaves of corn stand in rows along the field like hillocks on the immense expanse. Broad boughs bend under their load of cherries, plums, apples, and pears. The sky is the transparent mirror of the day, and so is the river, with its high green frame of trees.... How luscious and how soft is the summer in Little Russia! “It was just such a hot day in August 18--, when the road, ten versts from the little town of Sorochinetz, was seething with people hurrying from all the farms, far and near, to the fair. With the break of day an endless chain of waggons laboured along, carrying salt and fish. Mountains of pots wrapped in hay moved slowly on as if they were weary of being cut off from the sunshine. Only here and there some brightly-painted soup tureen or earthenware saucepan proudly emerged on the tilt of the high-heaped waggon, and attracted the eyes of lovers of finery; many passers-by looked with envy on the tall potter, the owner of all these treasures, who with slow steps walked beside his goods.” Why are we never told of these azure Russian days, of these laden fruit-trees and jewelled insects?