overcomes all of it that is in the whole field. I cannot, define it,
except by calling the hours of winter to mind--they are silent; you hear
a branch crack or creak as it rubs another in the wood, you hear the
hoar-frost crunch on the grass beneath your feet, but the air is without
sound in itself. The sound of summer is everywhere--in the passing
breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it
swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in
motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass
and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square
miles of grass blades--for they would cover acres and square miles if
reckoned edge to edge--are drawing their strength from the atmosphere.
Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may
give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the
ear. Besides the quivering leaf, the swinging grass, the fluttering
bird's wing, and the thousand oval membranes which innumerable insects
whirl about, a faint resonance seems to come from the very earth itself.
The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the
strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet
unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful
instrument of nature.

By the apple tree there is a low bank, where the grass is less tall and
admits the heat direct to the ground; here there are blue flowers--bluer
than the wings of my favourite butterflies--with white centres--the
lovely bird's-eyes, or veronica. The violet and cowslip, bluebell and
rose, are known to thousands; the veronica is overlooked. The ploughboys
know it, and the wayside children, the mower and those who linger in
fields, but few else. Brightly blue and surrounded by greenest grass,
imbedded in and all the more blue for the shadow of the grass, these
growing butterflies' wings draw to themselves the sun. From this island I