is a scattered rain of larks’ songs falling all around; and, on a hedge near by, the short plaintive cadence of the yellow-hammer’s few notes. [Illustration] Grass is always beautiful,--thus I am led to think as, leaning on one arm, I inspect the material of my couch. Beautiful after the winter lethargy, and when it grows lush and green, vividly green, and taller and taller under the showers, at the roots of the pines that step forward here and there from the shrubberies into the lawn. Beautiful again, when the scythe and mowing-machine have destroyed _this_ beauty, and substituted that of the smooth, well-kept velvet sward. Beautiful, growing in the meadows, and deepening for hay; a sweet close under-growth of white or dull pink clover; of orange-flowered trefoil; of purple self-heal; of bright yellow-rattle; of small red orchis; of orchis pale lilac specked with dark; and, more desultory and thinner, above these the tall grass and flower-stalks: “all grass of silky feather”; bright rose ragged-robin; white ox-eye daisy; brimstone toad-flax; tall buttercups; pale pink centaury; numberless varieties of fringed flowers, all yellow; and bobbing myriads of the ribwort plantain, to which we are all, when children, very Henry VIII.’s; tall slight sorrel; tougher dock. Beautiful, when the scythe has laid all this in broad, lowly lines upon the whole face of the field; and the mowers advance yet steadily upon the long yielding ranks. Beautiful when the green has turned grey, and the brighter colours of the flowers are dull, the clover not yet brown, only faded, the yellow tassels showing, as they droop, the paler under-wing of the closing flower, the buttercups spoiled of their square varnished petals, and showing only the green spiked ball, the miniature head of Gog or Magog’s mace. Beautiful to lie in the grey mounds of the soft, fragrant, new-made hay, dying, if this be to die, so graciously, and sweetly, and blessingly; lovely in life, and sweet in death. Beautiful when even this bloom-grey has gone, and we shake out from their close-pressed sleep the loose masses of the yellow hay, and brown leaves and flowers, all, however, still fragrant, and full of hints in Winter days, of the warm Summer. Beautiful when the last cart is carried, and the rick is being thatched, and a pale bright under-growth has given to the dry hot field, in the parched Summer-time, something of a faint imitation of the early green of Spring. So I lean, listless, idle, and examine my couch. Much I find to examine in it; besides the embalmed flowers, there is a small zoological garden--brown ants climbing up the pole of an upright grass-stem; leopard-spotted lady-birds; alligator grasshoppers; woolly-bear caterpillars; bird-of-paradise butterflies. I am left alone with these, and so can be quite quiet; for I am in the rear of the haymakers.