artist, and then in the humbler office of attempting a faint
transcript of my own impressions in the following sonnet:--

It was an hour of calmest noon, at day
Of ripest summer: o'er the deep blue sky
White speckled clouds came sailing peacefully,
Half-shrouding in a chequer'd veil the ray
Of the sun, too ardent else,--what time we lay
By the smooth Loddon, opposite the high
Steep bank, which as a coronet gloriously
Wore its rich crest of firs and lime trees, gay
With their pale tassels; while from out a bower
Of ivy (where those column'd poplars rear
Their heads) the ruin'd boat-house, like a tower,
Flung its deep shadow on the waters clear.
My Emily! forget not that calm hour,
Nor that fair scene, by thee made doubly dear!



THE HARD SUMMER.

August 15th.--Cold, cloudy, windy, wet. Here we are, in the midst
of the dog-days, clustering merrily round the warm hearth like so
many crickets, instead of chirruping in the green fields like that
other merry insect the grasshopper; shivering under the influence of
the Jupiter Pluvius of England, the watery St. Swithin; peering at
that scarce personage the sun, when he happens to make his
appearance, as intently as astronomers look after a comet, or the
common people stare at a balloon; exclaiming against the cold