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EXERCISES IN DEFINITION.

1. We do not learn by tuition to appreciate these objects. 2. There is no architecture so sublime as that of a forest.

3. He is governed only by his ideas of utility and convenience. 4. We experience within it a true sensation of nature.

5. Flowers always become numerous in these woodland paths.

XVI.-RAIN IN SUMMER.

OW beautiful is the rain!

How

After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,

How beautiful is the rain!

2. How it clatters along the roofs, Like the tramp of hoofs!

How it gushes and struggles out

From the throat of the overflowing spout!

Across the window-pane

It pours and pours;

And swift and wide,

With a muddy tide,

Like a river down the gutter roars

The rain, the welcome rain!

3. The sick man from his chamber looks

At the twisted brooks;

He can feel the cool

Breath of each little pool;

His fevered brain

Grows calm again,

And he breathes a blessing on the rain.

4. From the neighboring school

Come the boys,

With more than their wonted noise

And commotion;

And down the wet streets

Sail their mimic fleets,

Till the treacherous pool

Engulfs them in its whirling
And turbulent ocean.

5. In the country, on every side,

Where far and wide,

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,

Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and drier grain,
How welcome is the rain!

6. In the furrowed land,

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;
Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,
With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale

The clover-scented gale,

And the vapors that arise

From the well-watered and smoky soil.

For this rest in the furrow after toil,

Their large and lustrous eyes

Seem to thank the Lord,

More than man's spoken word.

7. Near at hand,

From under the sheltering trees,
The farmer sees

His pastures, and his fields of grain,

As they bend their tops

To the numberless beating drops
Of the incessant rain.

He counts it as no sin

That he sees therein

Only his own thrift and gain.

H. W. Longfellow..

THE

XVII. THE BOBOLINK.

HE happiest bird of the American spring, and one that rivals the European lark, in my estimation, is the bobolink. He arrives at that choice portion of the year which, in this latitude, answers to the description of the month of May, so often given by the poets. With us it begins about the middle of May, and lasts until nearly the middle of June.

2. Earlier than this, winter is apt to return on its traces, and to blight the opening beauties of the year; and later than this, begin the parching, and panting, and dissolving heats of summer. But in this genial interval, nature is in all her freshness and fragrance: "the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land."

3. The trees are now in their fullest foliage and brightest verdure; the woods are gay with the clustered flowers of the laurel; the air is perfumed by the sweet-brier and the wild rose; the meadows are enameled with clover blossoms; while the young

apple, the peach, and the plum, begin to swell, and the cherry to glow, among the green leaves.

4. This is the chosen season of revelry of the bobolink. He comes amid the pomp and fragrance of the season; his life seems all sensibility and enjoyment, all song and sunshine. He is to be found in the soft bosoms of the freshest and sweetest meadows; and is most in song when the clover is in blossom.

5. He perches on the topmost twig of a tree, or on some long, flaunting weed, and, as he rises and sinks with the breeze, pours forth a succession of rich, tinkling notes, crowding one upon another, like the outpouring melody of the skylark, and possessing the same rapturous character.

6. Sometimes he pitches from the summit of a tree, begins his song as soon as he gets upon the wing, and flutters tremulously down to the earth, as if overcome with ecstasy at his own music. Sometimes he is in pursuit of his mate-always in full song, as if he would win her by his melody, and always with the same appearance of delight.

7. Of all the birds of our groves and meadows, the bobolink was the envy of my boyhood. He crossed my path in the sweetest weather, and the sweetest season of the year, when all nature called to the fields, and the rural feeling throbbed in every bosom; but when I, luckless urchin, was doomed to be mewed up, during the livelong day, in a schoolroom, it seemed as if the little varlet mocked at me, as he flew by in full song, and sought to taunt me with his happier lot. Oh, how I envied him! No lessons, no task, no school—nothing but holiday, frolic, green fields, and fine weather.

8. Further observation and experience have given me a different idea of this little feathered voluptuary, which I will venture to impart for the benefit of my school-boy readers, who may regard him with the same unqualified envy and admiration which I once indulged. As the year advances, as the clover blossoms disappear, and the spring fades into summer, he gradually gives up his elegant tastes and habits, doffs his poetical suit of black, assumes a russet, dusty garb, and sinks to the gross enjoyments of common, vulgar birds.

9. His notes no longer vibrate on the ear; he is stuffing himself with the seeds of the tall weeds on which he lately swung and chanted so melodiously. He has become a bon vivant, a gormand: with him now there is nothing like the "joys of the table." In a little while he grows tired of plain, homely fare, and is off on a gastronomic tour in quest of foreign luxuries.

10. We next hear of him, with myriads of his kind, banqueting among the reeds of the Delaware, and grown corpulent with good feeding. He has changed his name in traveling. Bobolink no more, he is the reed-bird now, the much-sought-for titbit of Pennsylvania epicures, the rival in unlucky fame of the ortolan. Wherever he goes, pop! pop! pop! every rusty firelock in the country is blazing away. He sees his companions falling by thousands around. him.

11. Does he take warning and reform? Alas! not he. Again he wings his flight. The rice swamps of the south invite him. He gorges himself among them almost to bursting; he can scarcely fly for corpulency. He has once more changed his name,

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