friends--the thousand commingling scenes of varied life--how they all
recur to you now! You fancy you could lie beneath the tree for
eternity--so soothing is the employment of doing nothing--or field
philosophy! Yet, to speak correctly, you are doing a great deal; your
imagination is flying in all directions--from the death of Caesar to the
last cup of Congou that you took with a regretted friend. What a mystery
your existence is! The world turns round as gently as ever; the flowers
bud into life; and the winter nips them. Man lives, thinks, and dies.
All very wondrous truisms. Well, after a half-hour--or perchance
more--you will be gradually relapsing into a state of soporific
nothing-at-all-ness (the best word I can find to express my meaning.)
May there be some clear little stream just behind you, laughing along
its idle way;--some chirping birds, singing their roundelay--some
buzzing flies--you will then be lulled into doziness. However, with or
without the purling murmur of the brook--the joyous warbling of the
birds--the busy bustling flies--you will not be able to resist the
dozing temptations that will steal over you. Your eyes will close gently
as flower-leaflets--your thoughts die away in a heavenly confusion--and
then you doze!--neither sleeping nor waking, but absolved in delicious
dreaminess! O, for such a doze!--_Monthly Magazine_.

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THE SELECTOR,
AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

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