dahlias, asters, and other gorgeous flowers, each striving to outvie its neighbour in vividness and variety of colour, not less than in dignity of form and growth.

If we look on the fields,

"Extensive harvests hang the heavy head,

A calm of plenty."

Or, in the more emphatic language of Scripture," The little hills rejoice on every side, the valleys are covered with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing."

If we turn to the woodlands, there is just sufficient diversity in the tints to give beauty and richness to the scene, without reminding us too strongly of decay.

But it is, perhaps, in the orchard that the glory of autumn is most fully displayed. There

"Whate'er the wintry frost

Nitrous prepar'd, the various-blossom'd spring
Put in white promise forth, and summer suns

Concocted strong, rush boundless now to view,
Full, perfect all.”

In lands of "the sweet south," the olive, the fig, the orange, and, above all, the vine, are seen mingling their rich and varied fruitage. In our less genial climate, besides those fruits which require artificial heat, we can show plums of various kinds, pears, apples,

filberts; and not only in the orchard, but in every coppice, and haunting every stream, the hazel, so eulogized by the poet, so dear to our childhood.

Burns leads us adown many a hazelly path, where "twin nuts cluster thick ;" and we almost hear

"The little birdies blythely sing,

While o'er their heads the hazels hing,

Or lightly flit on wanton wing,

In the birks of Aberfeldy."

Virgil makes frequent mention of "the tangling hazel." Indeed, in the following passage, he gives it more honour than is due:

:

"Alcides' brows the poplar leaves surround,
Apollo's beamy locks with bays are crown'd,
The myrtle, lovely queen of smiles, is thine,
And jolly Bacchus loves the curling vine;
But while my Phyllis loves the hazel-spray,
To hazel yield the myrtle and the bay."

In his second Georgic, however, he is less complimentary to our favourite, positively forbidding, on account of some supposed noxious quality, its entrance into the vineyard:—

"The hurtful hazel in the vineyard shun."

Shakspeare, in the "Taming of the Shrew," says,

"Kate, like the hazel twig, is straight and slender; and brown in hue as hazel nuts, and sweeter than the kernels."

And Thomson, whom no rural sound or sight escapes, describing the various haunts which different birds select for their nests, mentions some as choosing

Steep and divided by a babbling brook,

Whose murmurs soothe them all the livelong day

When by kind duty fix'd. Among the roots

Of hazel, pendent o'er the plaintive stream,
They form the first foundation of their domes."

These are but a few of the poetical notices of this rural favourite; but it has other and dearer claims on our regard than those which arise from its classical fame. "When we think of the lovely scenes into which the careless steps of our youth have been led,” says a writer we have frequently quoted, "in search of its nuts, when autumn had begun to brown the points of their clusters, we are bound to it by threads of the most delightful associations with those beloved

ones who were the companions of such idle but happy days." How well can the heart respond to these reminiscences! for a proneness to dwell with pleasure on the sports of our early years, and to retrace those scenes

"Where erst our careless childhood stray'd,

A stranger yet to pain,"

is a universal passion; and among those sports nutting has ever held the foremost place. What a lively picture Thomson gives us of this rural pastime; and how feelingly, too, Wordsworth describes it, though, in this instance, his was a solitary joy:

"It seems a day

(I speak of one from many singled out),
One of those heavenly days which cannot die;
When, in the eagerness of boyish hope,

I left our cottage threshold, sallying forth,
With a huge wallet o'er my shoulder slung,
A nutting, crook in hand, and turned my steps
Towards the distant woods, - a figure quaint,
Trick'd out in proud disguise of cast-off weeds
Which for that service had been husbanded,

Motley accoutrement, of power to smile

At thorns and brakes and brambles, and in truth

More rugged than need was.

Among the woods,

And o'er the pathless rocks, I forced my way,

Until at length I came to one dear nook

Unvisited, where not a broken bough

Droop'd with its wither'd leaves, ungracious sign

Of devastation; but the hazels rose

Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung —
A virgin scene! A little while I stood,
Breathing with such suppression of the heart
As joy delights in; and with wise restraint
Voluptuous, fearless of a rival, eyed

The banquet -or beneath the trees I sate

Among the flowers, and with the flowers I play'd.

." Then up I rose,

And dragg'd to earth both branch and bough, with crash

And merciless ravage; and the shady nook

Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower,
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up
Their quiet being."

The hazel grows wild in almost every part of Great Britain, but it most prefers a sandy soil, and cold mountainous situations; indeed, it ranks amongst those hardy trees which are found in very high latitudes. It also thrives well, says Evelyn, "where quarries of limestone lie underneath, as at Hazelbury