its mazes, till we heard nothing but the song of the nightingale,
and saw only the silent flowers.

What a piece of fairy land! The tall elms overhead just bursting
into tender vivid leaf, with here and there a hoary oak or a
silver-barked beech, every twig swelling with the brown buds, and
yet not quite stripped of the tawny foliage of autumn; tall hollies
and hawthorn beneath, with their crisp brilliant leaves mixed with
the white blossoms of the sloe, and woven together with garlands of
woodbines and wild-briers;--what a fairy land!

Primroses, cowslips, pansies, and the regular open-eyed white
blossom of the wood anemone (or, to use the more elegant Hampshire
name, the windflower), were set under our feet as thick as daisies
in a meadow; but the pretty weed that we came to seek was coyer; and
Ellen began to fear that we had mistaken the place or the season.--
At last she had herself the pleasure of finding it under a brake of
holly--'Oh, look! look! I am sure that this is the wood-sorrel!
Look at the pendent white flower, shaped like a snowdrop and veined
with purple streaks, and the beautiful trefoil leaves folded like a
heart,--some, the young ones, so vividly yet tenderly green that the
foliage of the elm and the hawthorn would show dully at their side,-
-others of a deeper tint, and lined, as it were, with a rich and
changeful purple!--Don't you see them?' pursued my dear young
friend, who is a delightful piece of life and sunshine, and was half
inclined to scold me for the calmness with which, amused by her
enthusiasm, I stood listening to her ardent exclamations--'Don't you
see them? Oh how beautiful! and in what quantity! what profusion!
See how the dark shade of the holly sets off the light and delicate
colouring of the flower!--And see that other bed of them springing