and abundant cabbage-stumps. Innocent of London quackeries, I strolled
forth with the full hope of laying me down on a velvet carpet of
grass--the birds carolling around me--and, perchance, a flock of
lambkins, tunefully baying to their mammas!! "Said I to myself," when I
reached these fields, "what a fool I am!" I had contemplated a doze on
the grass.

But leaving all thoughts of disappointment, who will not allow that
there is something exceedingly delightful in dozing calmly beneath the
shade of an o'er-arching tree?

----"recubans sub tegmine fagi."

Of course, the weather should be fine, to admit of this luxurious
idleness. Let the blue-bosomed clouds be sailing along, like Peter
Bell's boat; let the sunbeams be gilding the face of nature, and tinging
the landscape with multiform hues; let the breezes be gentle, the spot
retired, and the heart at ease. Now, go and stretch yourself on the
grassy couch, while the branches of an aged tree shadow forth the imaged
leaves around you. What a congenial situation for philosophy--under an
old tree, on a sunny summer day! How much more becoming than the
immortal tub of the sour-minded Diogenes? Who will be able to refrain
from philosophizing. I repeat it, beneath such an old tree? 'Tis at such
times that the heart spontaneously unbends itself--that the fancy
tranquillizes its thoughts--and that memory awakens her

----"treasured pictures of a thousand scenes."

Place the palms of your hands beneath your pole, and survey the
skies!--calm, beautifully unconscious! By-gone times, and by-gone