It is therefore very rare, quite an exceptional case, to find on the elevated heaths, or in our forests, any lakes or large pieces of water; nevertheless they are to be seen here and there, and then the cottage of the peasant, or the hut of the wood-*cutter is sure to raise its modest head on their banks; in time these humble edifices are augmented in number till they sometimes become a considerable village. If the spring, once a silvery thread, and now a brawling rivulet, changes its character to a deep and considerable stream, farm-houses, a chateau, or a hunting-box are soon erected near it. If it is merely a tiny source rising from the earth, or springing from some isolated rock, and soon lost in the moss, without even a murmur, calm and silent, as the life of the lowly peasant, which is slowly consumed in the scarcely varying path of labour,--then no one takes the least notice of it. Sometimes, however, the tears which the earth thus sheds, this crystal thread, scorned by the unobserving passer-by, is arrested in its timid course by some trifling obstacle--a rising path, a fallen branch or tree. This little streamlet swells, frets the immediate spot of ground, imperceptibly increases in size, and becomes after many efforts, the patient work of months and years, something like the basin of a large _jet d'eau_, a liquid cup lost in the recesses of the woods, reflecting only a very small portion of the blue heavens above; unknown to man, but always frequented by thousands of delighted and happy insects, and little birds that come there in the great heats of summer to refresh themselves, to skim across the surface, and sip, with head uplifted towards heaven, its pellucid waters. These little springs, lost in the thickness of the mossy turf and the dead leaves, like a gray hair in the dark tresses of some village beauty, which accident or a lover could alone discover, when thus interrupted and formed into a bowl of water, such as I have described, is called a _Mare_. If, therefore, the sportsman in traversing the depths of the forest should chance to discover one of these mirrors of the passing butterfly, of the flower which inclines its slender form towards it, or of the bird that sings and plays in the branches that overspread its surface, he must not look contemptuously upon it, for this little liquid pearl, thus concealed in the shade, which the hot rays of the sun would dry up like an Arabian well, if they could reach it, may prove to him a mine of varied reflections--a page of nature's great book, and in it he may possibly find, if he have an observing eye and an understanding heart, a type of this lower world, with all its hateful passions, its follies and virtues, its wars, rivalries, injustice and oppression.