by, and there is to be no more cold weather; tepid showers vivify
the ground, an exuberant botany begins and continues to make daily
claims both on your notice and on your memory; and so on till the
swallows are gone, till the solitary _tree aster_ has announced October,
and till the pale petals of the autumnal colchicum begin to appear; a
month after Gouts and Rheumatisms, for which they grow, have left Vichy
and are returned to Paris for the winter. We arrived long before this,
in the midst of the butterfly month of July. It was warm enough then for
a more southern summer, and both insect and vegetable life seemed at
their acme. The flowers, even while the scythes were gleaming that were
shortly to unfound their several pretensions in that leveller of all
distinctions, _Hay_, made great muster, as if it had been for some
horticultural show-day. Amongst then we particularly noticed the purple
orchis and the honied daffodil, fly-swarming and bee-beset, and the
stately thistle, burnished with many a _panting goldfinch_, resting
momentarily from his butterfly hunt, and clinging timidly to the slender
stem that bent under him. Close to the river were an immense number of
_yellow_ lilies, who had placed themselves there for the sake, as it
seemed, of trying the effect of _hydropathy_ in improving their
_complexions_. But what was most striking to the eye was the appearance
of the immense white flowers (whitened sepulchres) of the _Datura
strammonium_, growing high out of the shingles of the river; and on this
same Seriphus, outlawed from the more gentle haunts of their innocuous
brethren, congregated his associates, the other prisoners, of whom, both
from his size and bearing, he is here the chief!

THE CONTRAST.

What a change from the plains of Latium!-a change as imposing in its
larger and more characteristic features, as it is curious in its
minutest details; and who that has witnessed the return of six summers
calling into life the rank verdure of the Colosseum, can fail to
contrast these jocund revels of the advancing year in this gay region of
France, with the blazing Italian summers, coming forth with no other
herald or attendant than the gloomy green of the "_hated_ cypress," and
the unrelieved glare of the interminable Campagna? Bright, indeed, was
that Italian heaven, and deep beyond all language was its blue; but the
spirit of transitory and changeable creatures is quelled and
overmastered by this permanent