tleman who was not so good as he looked: "So reserved as were his manners! and his countenance! a very tablet upon which the Ten Commandments seemed written."

JULY 23rd.-I think I never saw so many glow-worms together as on this balmy evening; and their sparkle is unusually vivid, occasioned, I suppose, by the delicious weather; for the glow-worm grows brighter or dimmer, as the air is warmer or colder. All the bank is on fire with these diamonds of the night, as Darwin calls them. If Titania had overturned a casket of jewels in a quarrel with Oberon, the grass would not have looked gayer. Thomson describes the appearance with his usual liveliness:

Among the crooked lanes, on ev'ry hedge

The glow-worm lights his gem, and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkles.

A

Perhaps he is slightly astray in his zoology; for although the male has two spots of faint lustre, the female is the real star of the wood-path. double portion of light is her compensation for the loss of wings. Her lamp is to bring to her the friend she is unable to visit. She may be seen in a summer evening climbing up a blade of grass, to make herself more conspicuous.

Good Mr. White, of Selborne, compared her to the classic lady who lighted the tower across the Hellespont, and of whom such pretty stories are related.

Coleridge, in a note to one of his own poems

Nor now, with curious sight,

I mark the glow-worm, as I pass,

Move with green radiance through the grass,
An emerald of light,

"That

drew attention to Wordsworth's epithet of green, applied to the light of this insect. Whereupon Miss Seward wrote to Cary, in 1798, light is perfectly stellar; and Ossian calls the stars green in twenty parts of his poetry, published before Wordsworth, who is a very young man, was born." The same ingenious lady mentions her feeling of surprise, in childhood, at finding the verdant colour of the stars and glowworms unobserved by poetic eyes. And certainly she appears to have forestalled Wordsworth, in a line of her Llangollen Vale :

While glow-worm lamps effuse a pale green light.

After all, it is only a question of reproduction; the green brightness is a literal translation of Lucretius.

The "twinkle" of Thomson is quite as illustrative; and in a Latin poem, written a hundred

years ago, by a Mr. Bedingfield, the glow-worm is shown casting a tremulous gleam along the wet path. This wavering uncertainty arises out of the power it has of withdrawing its light, as instinct may suggest. Glow-worms are the food of night-birds, which of course track them by their shining. To put out the candle, therefore, is the surest way of escaping the robber; and, perhaps, their apprehension of enemies may account for the short time of their illumination. Mr. Nowell quotes a curious experiment of White, who carried two glowworms from a field into his garden, and saw them extinguish their lamps between eleven and twelve o'clock. Later entomologists confirm this singular relation. If an anthology were woven about glow-worms, Shakspere would scarcely be allowed to compete for the prize. He never notices them without some incorrectness. His strangest mistake was placing the light in the eyes; whereas a momentary glance would have convinced him that it proceeded from the tail.

But I have been turning glow-worms to an use this evening, which no naturalist probably ever thought of-reading the Psalms by their cool green light. I placed six of the most luminous insects I could find in the grass at the top of the page; moving them from verse to verse, as

I descended. The experiment was perfectly successful. Each letter became clear and legible. I never felt so deeply and gratefully the inner life of the Psalmist's adoration: "O Lord, how manifold are thy works, in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy goodness."

I know that poetry has turned the fire-fly into a lantern. Southey enables Madoc to behold the features of his beautiful guide by the flame of two fire-flies, which she kept prisoners in a cage, or net of twigs, underneath her garments. But, surely, I am the discoverer of the glowworm-taper. And it answers the purpose admirably. By the help of this emerald of the hedgerow and mossy bank, I can read, not only the hymns of saints to God, but God's message to me. As the glittering grass of the Indian hills taught me wisdom, so these glow-worms are a light to my feet and a lantern to my path. I ought to employ my every-day blessings and comforts as I have been using these insects. I Icould not have read " 'Even-Song" among the trees by night, unless I had moved the lamp up and down. One verse shone, while the rest of the page was dark. Patience alone was needed. Line by line, the whole Psalm grew bright. What a lesson and consolation to me in my journey through the world! Perhaps to-day

is a cloudy passage in my little calendar : I am in pain, or sorrow of mind or body; my head throbs, or my heart is disquieted within me. But the cool, sequestered paths of the Gospel Garden are studded with glow-worms. I have only to stoop and pick them up. Yesterday was healthfuller and more joyous. My spirits were gayer; my mind was peacefuller; kind friends visited me; or God seemed to lift up the light of His countenance upon me. These recollections are my lanterns in the dark. The past lights up the present. I move my glow-worms lower on the page, and read to-day by yesterday.

Not for myself only should these thoughts be cherished. Every beam of grace that falls upon my path ought to throw its little reflection along my neighbour's. Whatever happens to one is for the instruction of another. Even the glow-worm, humblest of lights, has its shadow. Boyle, the friend of Evelyn, makes some excellent remarks on the spiritual eloquence of woods, fields, and water, and all their swarming inhabitants. They who pass summer time in the country are especially called to listen and look. The man who goes forth to his work and labours until the evening, has his teacher by his side. The hay-makers who

Drive the dusky wave along the mead,