n it a
little way, become motionless, reposing as they stand, every line of
their large limbs expressing delight in physical ease and idleness.

Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken;
if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some
distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not
creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or
to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the
flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the
waggon and its rising load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of
appearance.

The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of the waggon, toned down
by years of weather, the green woods near at hand, darkening in the
distance and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the
heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to float rather than to
grow or stand, the shadowless field, all are there, and yet are not
there, but far away and vision-like. The waggon, at last laden, travels
away, and seems rather to disappear of itself than to be hidden by the
trees. It is an effort to awake and move from the spot.

FOOTPATHS

"Always get over a stile," is the one rule that should ever be borne in
mind by those who wish to see the land as it really is--that is to say,
never omit to explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet
which did not pass something of interest.

In the meadows, everything comes pressing lovingly up to the path. The
small-leaved clover can scarce be driven back by frequent footsteps from
endeavouring to cover the bare earth of the centre. Tall buttercups,
round whose stalks the cattle have carefully grazed, stand in ranks;
strong ox-eye daisies, with broad white disks and torn leaves, form with
the grass the tricolour of the pasture--white, green, and gold.

When the path enters the mowing grass, ripe for the scythe, the
simplicity of these cardinal hues is lost in the multitude of shades and
the addition of other colours. The surface of mowing grass is indeed
made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is confusing; and
hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever has an artist succeeded in
getting the effect upon canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two
are of the same shade.

Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side and this is at once
evident. Nor is any single blade the same shade al