Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by Ticknor andFields, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District ofMassachusetts.
Transcriber's Note: Minor typos have been corrected and footnotes movedto the end of the article. Table of contents has been created for the HTML version.
AMONG THE HONEY-MAKERS.
COUNTESS LAURA.
STRATEGY AT THE FIRESIDE.
AROUND MULL.
JOHN BRIGHT AND THE ENGLISH RADICALS.
NEEDLE AND GARDEN.
THE WILLOW.
MY SECOND CAPTURE.
DOCTOR JOHNS.
LETTER TO A SILENT FRIEND.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
PEACE.
RECONSTRUCTION AND NEGRO SUFFRAGE.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS.
The luxury of all summer's sweet sensation is to be found when one liesat length in the warm, fragrant grass, soaked with sunshine, aware ofregions of blossoming clover and of a high heaven filled with the hum ofinnumerous bees.
It is that happy hum—which seems to the closed eyes as if the silentsunbeams themselves had found a voice and were brimming the bending bluewith music as they went about their busy chemistry—that gives the chiefcharm to the moment; for it tunes the mind to its own key, the murmuringexpression of all pleasant things, the chord of sunshine and perfume andflowers.
And it is, indeed, the sound of a process scarcely less subtile than thesunbeams' own, of that alchemy by which the limpid drop of sweetinsipidity at the root of any petal is transformed to the pungent flavorand viscid drip of honey. A beautiful woman, weary of her frivolities,once half in jest envied the fate of Io, dwelling all day in the sun,all night in the starshine and dew, and fed on pasturage of violets; butthere is the morning beam, the evening ray, the breeze, the dew, thespirit of the violet and of the cowslip, all gathered like adistillation and sealed into the combs, and this is the tune to which itis harvested. Beyond doubt there is no such eminent sound of gladness inall the world. The cricket seems to speak of more spiritual things thanthose of this sphere. As to bird-song, poets differ.
exclaims one in compromise with all the others. Every echo is full