21 June 1852 – 27 June 1852

Monday. 7 p.m.— To Cliffs via Hubbard Bathing-Place. Cherry-birds. I have not seen, though I think I have heard them before,—their fine seringo note, like a vibrating spring in the air. They are a handsome bird, with their crest and chestnut breasts. ‘There is no keep- ing the run of their goings and comings, but they will be ready for the cherries when they shall be ripe. The adder’s-tongue arethusa smells exactly like a snake. How singular that in nature, too, beauty and offensiveness should be thus combined! In flowers, as well as men, we demand a beauty pure and fragrant, which perfumes the air. The flower which is showy but has no, or an offensive, odor expresses the charac- ter of too many mortals. The swamp-pink bushes have many whitish spongy excrescences. Elder isblossoming; flowers opening now where black berries will be by and by. Panicled andro- meda, or privet andromeda. Nature has looked uncommonly bare and dry to me for a day or two. With our senses applied to the sur- rounding world we are reading our own physical and corresponding moral revolutions. Nature was so shal- low all at once I did not know what had attracted me all my life. I was therefore encouraged when, going through a field this evening, I was unexpectedly struck with the beauty of an apple tree. The perception of beauty is a moral test. When, in bathing, I rush hastily into the river the clamshells cut my feet. It is dusky now. Men are fishing on the Corner Bridge. I hear the veery and the huckleberry-bird and the catbird. It is a cool evening, past 8 o’clock. I see the tephrosia out through the dusk; a handsome flower. What rich crops this dry hillside has yielded! First I saw the Viola pedata here, and then the lupines and the snapdragon covered it; and now the lupines are done and their pods are left, the tephrosia has taken their place. This small dry hillside is thus a natural garden. I omit other flowers which grow here, and name only those which to some extent cover it or pos- sess it. No eighth of an acre in a cultivated garden would be better clothed, or with a more pleasing va- riety, from month to month, and while one flower is in bloom you little suspect that which is to succeed and perchance eclipse it. It 1s a warmly placed dry hillside beneath a wall, very thinly clad with grass. Such spots there are in nature, natural flower gardens. Of this succession I hardly know which to admire the most. It would be pleasant to write the history of one hillside for one year. First and last you have the colors of the rainbow and more, and the various fragrances, which it has not. Blackberries, roses, and dogsbane also are now in bloom here. I hear neither toads nor bullfrogs at present; they want a warmer night. I hear the sound of distant thunder, though no cloud is obvious, muttering like the roar of artillery. That is a phenomenon of this season. As you walk at evening, you see the light of the flashes in the horizon and hear the muttering of distant thun- der, where some village is being refreshed with the rain denied to Concord. We say that showers avoid us, that they go down the river, 2. e. go off down the Merrimack, or keep to the south. Thunder and lightning are re- markable accompaniments to our life, as if to remind us that there always is or should be a kind of battle waging. ‘The thunder is signal guns to us. The dwarf orchis (O. herbiola (Bigelow), Platanthera flava (Gray)) at the bathing-place in Hubbard’s meadow, not remarkable. The purple orchis is a good flower to bring home. It will keep fresh many days, and its buds open at last in a pitcher of water. Obtuse galium. I observe a rose (called by some moss rose), with a bristly reddish stem; another, with a smooth red stem and but a few prickles; another, with many prickles and bristles. Found the single-flowered broom-rape in Love Lane, under the oak.

8 p. M.— Up the Union Turnpike. We have had a succession of thunder-showers to- day and at sunset a rainbow. How moral the world is made! This bow is not utilitarian. Methinks men are great in proportion as they are moral. After the rain He sets his bow in the heavens! The world is not desti- tute of beauty. Ask of the skeptic who inquires, Cuz bono? why the rainbow was made. While men culti- vate flowers below, God cultivates flowers above; he takes charge of the parterres in the heavens. Is not the rainbow a faint vision of God’s face? How glorious should be the life of man passed under this arch! What more remarkable phenomenon than a rainbow, yet how little it is remarked! Near the river thus late, I hear the peetweet, with white-barred wings. The scent of the balm-of-Gilead leaves fills the road after the rain. There are the amber skies of evening, the colored skies of both morning and evening! Nature adorns these seasons. Unquestionable truth is sweet, though it were the announcement of our dissolution. | More thunder-showers threaten, and I still can trace those that are gone by. The fireflies in the meadows are very numerous, as if they had replenished their lights from the lightning. The far-retreated thunder-clouds low in the southeast horizon and in the north, emitting low flashes which reveal their forms, appear to lift their wings like fireflies; or it is a steady glare like the glow- worm. Wherever they go, they make a meadow. I hear no toads this cool evening.

5 A. M.—To Laurel Glen. The bobolink still sings, though not as in May. The tall buttercups do not make so much show in the meadows, methinks, as the others did. Or are they beaten down by last night’s rain? The small Solo- mon’s-seal is going out of flower and shows small ber- ries. The pretty little Muitchella repens, with its twin flowers, spots the ground under the pines with its downy-petalled, cross-shaped flowers and its purplish buds. Gray’s Pyrola asarifolia! for some days, with small roundish thick leaves, and his P. secunda, or one- sided pyrola, apparently a little later. Another ripe amelanchier berry, red inclining to purple, with a still downy peduncle, so I suppose it is Bigelow’s Pyrus ovalis. This is the next fruit after the strawberry. I t suppose the June berry (blue berry) [sic] will be the next. The first amelanchier berry I tasted corresponded in leaf to Bigelow’s P. sanguinea, which is a tree, though that was a low shrub. The grass is not nearly so wet after thunder-showers in the night as after an ordinary dew. Apparently the rain falls so swiftly and hard that it does not rest on the leaves, and then there is no more moisture to be deposited in dew. Yellow dier- villa must have been in bloom about a week. Round- leaved cornel resembles the panicled in flower. The mountain laurel, with its milk-white flower, in cool and shady woods, reminds one of the vigor of nature. It is perhaps a first-rate flower, considering its size and ever- greenness. Its flower-buds, curiously folded in a ten- angled pyramidal form, are remarkable. A profusion of flowers, with an innocent fragrance. It reminds me of shady mountain-sides where it forms the underwood. I hear my old Walden owl. Its first note is almost like a somewhat peevish scream or squeal of a child shrug- ging its shoulders, and then succeed two more moder- ate and musical ones. The wood thrush sings at all hours. I associate it with the cool morning, sultry noon, and serene evening. At this hour it suggests a cool vigor. What I have called the dwarf choke-cherry is the Cerasus Pennsylvanica of Gray, 2. e. wild red cherry. We have also the C. Virginiana (or obovata of Bigelow), the true choke-cherry, with a raceme. Both their fruits are now the size of small peas. When does the last blossom? Bigelow says a fortnight before the serotina. The herd’s-grass shows its tops. P. M.— To the mountain laurel in Mason’s pasture in Carlisle via old Carlisle road. I hear the trilled dream of many toads from a road- side pool, though not quite so loud, perchance, as in the spring, and from time to time, when very near, a sound somewhat like a hoarse chicken. It is what I call a washing day, such as we sometimes have when buttercups first appear in the spring, an agreeably cool and clear and breezy day, when all things appear as if washed bright and shine, and, at this season especially, the sound of the wind rustling the leaves is like the rippling of a stream, and you see the light-colored under side of the still fresh foliage, and a sheeny light is reflected from the bent grass in the meadows. Haze and sultriness are far off. The air is cleared and cooled by yesterday’s thunder-storms. The river too has a fine, cool, silvery sparkle or sheen on it. You can see far into the horizon, and you can hear the sound of crickets with such feelings as in the cool morning. The Canada thistles begin to show their purple. What great thistle is that by the wall near Dakin’s, not yet in bloom? In the Carlisle road, the rather slender veiny-leaved hawkweed. Rattlesnake-weed is in blossom quite commonly, like a small elevated dan- delion on a slender stalk taking the place of the true. These slight yellow flowers to cheer the traveller here; also a Hveraceum scabrum (rough) or else Gronovit (hairy) of Gray. I saw one of these last the 19th. These little hawkweeds are to me a rather interesting family, so unpretending, or if only because they make so distinct or marked a family by themselves. Also the barberry bushes hang now with small reddish-green fruit, and green huckleberries grow in this grassy road. Cheered by these’ promises, the traveller holds on his way. But I travel chiefly in the fields or pastures par- allel with the road. These are very agreeable pastures to me; no house in sight, no cultivation. I sit under a large white oak, upon its swelling instep, which makes an admirable seat, and look forth over these pleasant rocky and bushy pastures, where for the most part there are not even cattle to graze them, but patches of huckleberry bushes, and birches, and pitch pines, and barberry bushes, and creeping juniper in great circles, its edges curving upward, and wild roses spotting the green with red, and numerous tufts of indigo-weed, and, above all, great gray boulders lying about far and near, with some barberry bush, perchance, growing half-way up them; and, between all, the short sod of the pasture here and there appears. The beauty and fragrance of the wild rose are wholly agreeable and wholesome and wear well, and I do not wonder much that men have given the preference to this family of flowers, notwithstanding their thorns. It is hardy and more complete in its parts than most flowers, —its color, buds, fragrance, leaves, the whole bush, frequently its stem in particular, and finally its red or scarlet hips. Here is the sweet-briar in blossom, which to a fragrant flower adds more fragrant leaves. I take the wild rose buds to my chamber and put them in a pitcher of water, and they will open there the next day, and a single flower will perfume a room; and then, after a day, the petals drop off, and new buds open. I am inclined to think that my hat, whose lining is gathered in midway so as to make a shelf, is about as good a botany-box as I could have and far more con- venient, and there is something in the darkness and the vapors that arise from the head—at least if you take a bath — which preserves flowers through a long walk. Flowers will frequently come fresh out of this botany- box at the end of the day, though they have had no sprinkling. As I walk through these old deserted wild orchards, half pasture, half huckleberry-field, the air is filled with fragrance from I know not what source. How much purer and sweeter it must be than the atmos- phere of the streets, rendered impure by the filth about our houses! It is quite offensive often when the airis heavy at night. The roses in the front yard do not atone for the sink and pigsty and cow-yard and jakes in the rear. , I sit on one of these boulders and look south to Ponkawtasset. Looking west, whence the wind comes, you do not see the under sides of the leaves, but, look- ing east, every bough shows its under side; those of the maples are particularly white. All leaves tremble like aspen leaves. Perhaps on those westward hills where I walked last Saturday the fields are somewhat larger than commonly with us, and I expand with a sense of freedom. The side of the hill commonly makes but one field. They begin to partake of the character of up- country pastures a little more. Two or three large boulders, fifteen or twenty feet square, make a good foreground in this landscape, for the gray color of the rock contrasts well with the green of the surrounding and more distant hills and woods and fields. They serve instead of cottages for a wild landscape as perches or points d’appui for the eye. The red color of cattle, also, is agreeable in a land- scape; or let them be what color they may, — red, black, white, or mouse-color, or spotted, all which I have seen this afternoon. The cows which, confined to the barn or barn-yard all winter, were covered with filth, after roaming in flowery pastures possess now clean and shining coats, and the cowy odor is without alloy. Indeed they make such an impression of neatness (I think of a white cow, spotted with red, and her two sizable calves of like color, which I saw this afternoon) that one who was unacquainted with etymology might be excused if he gave a new signification to the word neat as applied to cattle, and did not refer it to knittan, to butt (2. e. horned cattle). It seems natural that rocks which have lain under the heavens so long should be gray, as it were an inter- mediate color between the heavens and the earth. The air is the thin paint in which they have been dipped and brushed with the wind. Water, which is more fluid and like the sky in its nature, is still more lke it in color. ‘Time will make the most discordant materials harmonize. I see the silk-green-abdomened fly on cow-dung in the road. | There are some very handsome white pines and pine groves on the left of the road just before you enter the woods. They are of second growth, of course, broad and perfect, with limbs almost to the ground, and al- most as broad as they are high, their fine leaves trem- bling with silvery light, very different from the tall masts of the primitive wood, naked of limbs beneath and crowded together. So soft, and with such a mass of foliage through which the wind soughs. But you must be careful how you sit beneath them on account of pitch. Somewhat of a conical form.

P. M.— To White Pond. The keys of the white ash cover the trees profusely, a sort of mulberry brown, an inch and a half long, handsome. The Vaccinium macrocarpon, probably for some days. The Calopogon pulchellus (Cymbidium of Bigelow), grass pink of some, a pretty purple arethusa-like flower in a shady low copse on Corner road, near the Asclepias quadrifolia, a rather striking flower with two umbels of small pink and white flowers standing above the sur- rounding herbage. Spirea salicifolia by the roadsides. Archangelica atropurpurea, interesting for its great umbels and vigorous growth of its purplish but rank- smelling stem. Itis one of the most forward early leaves in warm springy places. I perceive excrescences on the grape leaves and vines, resembling in their form and disposition the grape clusters that are to be. The drifting white downy clouds are to the landsman what sails on the sea are to him that dwells by the shore, — objects of a large, diffusive interest. When the laborer lies on the grass or in the shade for rest, they do not too much tax or weary his attention. They are unobtrusive. I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one’s eyes ache. They are the flitting sails in that ocean whose bounds no man has visited. They are like all great themes, always at hand to be considered, or they float over us unregarded. Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects, or, near and low, they smite us with their lightnings and deafen us with their thunder. We know no Ternate nor Tidore grand enough whither we can imagine them bound. There are many mare’s-tails to- day, if that is the name. What could a man learn by watching the clouds? The objects which go over our heads unobserved are vast and indefinite. Even those clouds which have the most distinct and interesting outlines are commonly below the zenith, somewhat low in the heavens, and seen on one side. They are among the most glorious objects in nature. A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails. Some days we have the mackerel fleet. But our devil- ishly industrious laborers rarely lie in the shade. How much better if they were to take their nooning like the Italians, relax and expand and never do any work in the middle of the day, enjoy a little sabbath in the middle of the day. I still perceive that wonderful fragrance from the meadow (?) on the Corner causeway, intense as ever. It is one of those effects whose cause it is best not to know, perchance. Uncommonly cool weather now, after warm days and nights for a week or more. I see many grasshoppers for the first time (only single ones before), in the grass in the White Pond road. They describe a thousand little curves as I walk, — with an ominous dry fame rustling of their wings, about three quarters of an inch long. Come to eat the grass? It is the biggest game our dog starts. Much of the June-grass is dead; most of it in dry fields.. White Pond very handsome to-day. The shore alive with pollywogs of large size, which ripple the water on our approach. There is a fine sparkle on the water, though not equal to the fall one quite. The water is very high, so that you cannot walk round it, but it is the more pleasant while you are swimming to see how the trees actually rise out of it on all sides. It bathes their feet. The pines now hold somewhat of a subordi- nate rank amid the flourishing evergreens. The dog worried a woodchuck, half grown, which -did not turn its back and run into its hole, but backed into it and faced him and us, gritting its teeth and pre- pared to die. But even this little fellow was able to defend himself against the dog with his sharp teeth. That fierce gritting of their teeth is a remarkable habit with these animals. I am disappointed to notice to-day that most of sie pine-tops incline to the west, as if the wind had to do with it. The panicled andromeda has froth on it. The Linnea borealis just going out of blossom. I should have found it long ago. Its leaves densely cover the ground.

Just as the sun was rising this morning, under clouds, I saw a rainbow in the west horizon, the lower parts quite bright. *“‘ Rainbow in the morning, Sailors take warning; Rainbow at night Sailors’ delight.” A few moments after, it rained heavily for a half-hour; and it has continued cloudy as well as cool most of the day. I observe that young birds are usually of a duller color and more speckled than old ones, as if for their protection in their tender state. They have not yet the markings (and the beauty) which distinguish their species, and which betray it often, but by their colors are merged in the variety of colors of the season. P. M. — To Cliffs, 4 p. m. It is cool and cloudy weather in which the crickets, still heard, remind you of the fall, —a clearer ring to their creak. Also the prunella, cool in the grass, and the johnswort make you think it late in the year. Maruta Cotula, or mayweed,— why so named ? — just begins, with its strong-scented leaf. It has taken up its position by the roadside close to the ruts, —in bad taste. The Prinos verticillatus, with its small, neat, scentless white flower. Dogwood (Rhus venenata). The bobolink and golden robin are occasionally heard now- adays. Sometimes the lambkill flowers form a very even rounded, close cylinder, six inches long and two and a half in diameter, of rich red saucer-like flowers, the counterpart of the latzfolia in flowers and flower- buds, but higher colored. I regard it as a beautiful flower neglected. It has a slight but not remarkable scent. The Convolvulus sepium, bindweed; morning- glory is the best name. It always refreshes me to see it. Some saw it the 19th. In the morning and cloudy weather, says Gray. I associate it with holiest morn- ing hours. It may preside over my morning walks and thoughts. There is a flower for every mood of the mind. Methinks roses oftenest display their high colors, colors which invariably attract all eyes and betray them, against a dark ground, as the dark green or the shady recesses of the bushes and copses, where they show to best advantage. Their enemies do not spare the open flower for an hour. Hence, if for no other reason, their buds are most beautiful. Their promise of perfect and dazzling beauty, when their buds are just beginning to expand,— beauty which they can hardly contain, — as in most youths, commonly surpasses the fulfillment of their expanded flowers. The color shows fairest and brightest in the bud. The expanded flower has no higher or deeper tint than the swelling bud exposed. This raised a dangerous expectation. The season when wild roses are in bloom should have some preémi- nence, methinks. Agreeable is this cool cloudy weather, favorable to thought, after the sultry days. Linaria vulgaris, butter- and-eggs, toad-flax, on Fair Haven. (Was seen the 19th.) It is rather rich-colored, with a not disagreeable scent. It is called a troublesome weed. Flowers must not be too profuse nor obtrusive; else they acquire the reputation of weeds. It grows almost like a cotton- grass, so above and distinct from its leaves, in wander- ing patches higher and higher up the side of the hill. I see no reddish ferns in the meadows now (looking from the hill), but much of the grass and the ferns, perhaps, is of a yellowish green, as if retaining the sunlight in this cloudy weather. Grateful the coolness which compels me to wear a thick coat. One man lies in his words, and gets a bad reputa- tion; another in his manners, and enjoys a good one. The air is clear, as if a cool, dewy brush had swept the vales and meadows of all haze. A liquid coolness invests them, as if their midnight aspect were suddenly revealed to midday. The mountain outline is remark- ably distinct, and the intermediate earth appears more than usually scooped out, like a vast saucer sloping up- ward to its sharp mountain rim. The mountains are washed in air. The sunshine, now seen far away on fields and hills in the northwest, looks cool and whole- some, like the yellow grass in the meadows. 1 am too late for the white pine flowers. The cones are half an inch long and greenish, and the male flowers effete. The sun now comes out bright, though westering, and shines on Fair Haven, which, rippled by the wind, is of an unusual clay-muddy color. The Specularia perfoliata, clasping bellflower, on the Cliffs is very pretty, and has apparently been out several days. There are little recesses, a rod or two square, in bosky woods which have not grown fast, where a fine, wiry grass in- vites to lie down in the shade, under the shrub oaks, on the edge of the Well Meadow Head field. 8.30 p. mM. — To Conantum. Moon half full. Fields dusky; the evening star and one other bright one near the moon. It is a cool but pretty still night. Methinks I am less thoughtful than I was last year at thistime. The flute I now hear from the Depot Field does not find such caverns to echo and resound in in my mind,—no such answering depths. Our minds should echo at least as many times as a Mammoth Cave to every musical sound. It should awaken reflections in us. I hear not many crickets. Some children calling their kitten home by some en- dearing name. Now his day’s work is done, the laborer plays his flute, — only possible at this hour. Contrasted with his work, what an accomplishment! Some drink and gamble. He plays some well-known march. But the music is not in the tune; it isin the sound. It does not proceed from the trading nor political world. He practices this ancient art. There are light, vaporous clouds overhead; dark, fuscous ones in the north. The trees are turned black. As candles are lit on earth, stars are lit in the heavens. I hear the bullfrog’s trump from afar. Now I turn down the Corner road. At this quiet hour the evening wind is heard to moan in the hollows of your face, mysterious, spirit-like, conversing with you. It can be heard now only. The whip-poor-will sings. I hear a laborer going home, coarsely singing to himself. Though he has scarcely had a thought all day, killing weeds, at this hour he sings or talks to himself. His humble, earthy contentment gets expression. It is kindred in its origin with the notes or music of many creatures. A more fit and natural expression of his mood, this humming, than conversation is wont to be. The fireflies appear to be flying, though they may be stationary on the grass stems, for their perch and the nearness of the ground are obscured by the darkness, and now you see one here and then another there, as if it were one in motion. Their light is singularly bright and glowing to proceed from a living creature. Nature loves variety in all things, and so she adds glow-worms to fireflies, though I have not noticed any this year. The great story of the night is the moon’s adventures with the clouds. What innumerable en- counters she has had with them! When I enter on the moonlit causeway, where the light is reflected from the glistening alder leaves, and their deep, dark, liquid shade beneath strictly bounds the firm damp road and narrows it, it seems like autumn. The rows of willows completely fence the way and appear to converge in perspective, as I had not noticed by day. The bullfrogs are of various tones. Some horse in a distant pasture whinnies; dogs bark; there is that dull, dumping sound of frogs, as if a bubble containing the lifeless sultry air of day burst on the surface, a belching sound. When two or more bullfrogs trump together, it is a ten-pound- ten note. In Conant’s meadow I hear the gurgling of unwearied water, the trill of a toad, and go through the cool, primordial liquid air that has settled there. As I sit on the great door-step, the loose clapboards on the old house rattle in the wind weirdly, and I seem to hear some wild mice running about on the floor, and sometimes a loud crack from some weary timber trying to change its position. On Conantum-top, all white objects like stones are observed, and dark masses of foliage, at a distance even. How distant is day and its associations! The light, dry cladonia lichens on the brows of hills reflect the moon- light well, looking like rocks. The night wind comes cold and whispering, murmuring weirdly from distant mountain-tops. No need to climb the Andes or Hima- layas, for brows of lowest hills are highest mountain-tops in cool moonlight nights. Is it a cuckoo’s chuckling note I heard? Occasionally there is something enor- mous and monstrous in the size and distance of objects. A rock, is it? or an elephant asleep? Are these trees on an upland or a lowland? Or do they skirt the brink of a sea-beach? When I get there, shall I look off over the sea? ‘The whiteweed is the only obvious flower. I see the tops of the rye wave, and grain-fields are more interesting than by day. The water is dull-colored, hardly more bright than a rye-field. There is dew only in the low grounds. What were the firefly’s light, if it were not for darkness? ‘The one implies the other. You may not suspect that the milk of the cocoanut which is imported from the other side of the world 1s mixed. So pure do some truths come to us, I trust. What a mean and wretched creature is man! By and by some Dr. Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man, this seems to me the worst, as it is the most be- lated. You would learn more by once paring the toe- nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed, and in which it has left fewer significant traces.

I have not put darkness, duskiness, enough into my night and moonlight walks. Every sentence should contain some twilight or night. At least the hight in it should be the yellow or creamy light of the moon or the fine beams of stars, and not the white light of day. The peculiar dusky serenity of the sentences must not allow the reader to forget that it is evening or night, without my saying that it is dark. Otherwise he will, of course, presume a daylight atmosphere. The earliest water surfaces, as I remember, as soon as the ice is melted, present as fair and matured scenes, as soft and warm, reflecting the sky through the clear atmosphere, as in midsummer, — far in advance of the earth. The earliest promise of the summer, — is it not in the smooth reflecting surface of woodland lakes in which the ice is just melted? Those liquid eyes of na- ture, blue or black or even hazel, deep or shallow, clear or turbid; green next the shore, the color of their iris. P. M. — Boated up the Assabet. The Nymphea odorata, water nymph, sweet water- lily, pond-lily, in bloom. A superb flower, our lotus, queen of the waters. Now is the solstice in still waters. How sweet, innocent, wholesome its fragrance! How pure its white petals, though its root is in the mud! It must answer in my mind for what the Orientals say of the lotus flower. Probably the first a day or two since. To-morrow, then, will be the first Sabbath when the young men, having bathed, will walk slowly and so- berly to church in their best clothes, each with a lily in his hand or bosom, — with as long a stem as he could get. At least I used to see them go by and come into church smelling a pond-lily, when I used to go myself. So that the flower is to some extent associated with bathing in Sabbath mornings and going to church, its odor contrasting and atoning for that of the sermon. We now have roses on the land and lilies on the water, — both land and water have done their best, — now qust after the longest day. Nature says, “ You be- hold the utmost I can do.” And the young women carry their finest roses on the other hand. Roses and lilies. The floral days. The red rose, with the intense color of many suns concentrated, spreads its tender petals perfectly fair,-its flower not to be overlooked, modest yet queenly, on the edges of shady copses and meadows, against its green leaves, surrounded by blush- ing buds, of perfect form; not only beautiful, but right- fully commanding attention; unspoiled by the admira- tion of gazers. And the water-lily floats on the smooth surface of slow waters, amid rounded shields of leaves, bucklers, red beneath, which simulate a green field, perfuming the air. Each instantly the prey of the spoiler, — the rose-bug and water-insects. How transi- tory the perfect beauty of the rose and lily! The high- est, intensest color belongs to the land, the purest, perchance, to the water. The lily is perhaps the only flower which all are eager to pluck; it may be partly because of its inaccessibility to most. The farmers’ sons will frequently collect every bud that shows itself above the surface within half a mile. They are so in- fested by insects, and it is so rare you get a perfect one which has opened itself, —though these only are per- fect, — that the buds are commonly plucked and opened by hand. I have a faint recollection of pleasure derived from smoking dried lily stems before I was a man. I had commonly a supply of these. I have never smoked anything more noxious. I used to amuse myself with making the yellow drooping stamens rise and fall by blowing through the pores of the long stem. I see the nests of the bream, with each its occu- pant, hollowed, scooped in the sunny water, and partly shaded by the leaves of the liimnanthemum, or floating heart, now in blossom, and the Potamogeton natans, or pondweed. Under the cool, glossy green leaves of small swamp white oaks, and leaning against their scaly bark near the water, you see the wild roses, five or six feet high, looking forth from the shade; but al- most every bush or copse near the river or in low land which you approach these days emits the noisome odor of the carrion-flower, so that you would think that all the dead dogs had drifted to that shore. All things, both beautiful and ugly, agreeable and offensive, are expressed in flowers, — all kinds and degrees of beauty and all kinds of foulness. For what purpose has nature made a flower to fill the lowlands with the odor of car- rion? Just so much beauty and virtue as there is in the world, and just so much ugliness and vice, you see expressed in flowers. Each human being has his flower, which expresses his character. In them nothing is con- cealed, but everything published. Many a villager whose garden bounds on the river, when he approaches the willows and cornels by the river’s edge, thinks that some carrion has lodged on his shore, when it is only the carrion-flower he smells. Though the water is many feet deep, I hear very plainly the grating sound of the pole on the sandy bot- tom communicated through the wood. Some of the hemlock twigs, especially those that hang low about the trunks, broad, flat, and triangular like fans, edged with the recent yellowish green leaves about an inch deep, are very handsome and rich, shaped, the whole, like a fan or reticule, a foot base by eight or nine inches altitude. So many rich green drooping fans edged with yellowish hanging about the trunk. All shadows or shadowlets on the sandy bottom of the river are inter- esting. All are circular, or nearly so, almost lenticular, for they appear to have thickness; even the shadows of grass blades are broken into several separate circles of shade. Such is the fabulous or Protean character of the water lights. A skater insect casts seven flat glob- ular shades, — G a Ff & four smaller in front, two larger be- y hind, and the small-. est of all in the centre. From the shadow on the @ (2 bottom you cannot guess the form on the surface; everything is transmuted by the water. The shadow, however small, is black within, edged with a sunny halo, corresponding to the day’s twilights; and a certain liquidness is imparted to the whole by the incessant motion from the undulation of the surface. The oblong leaves of the Potamogeton hybridus,' now in seed, make a circular shadow also, — somewhat coin-like. A halo produced by the thick at- mosphere which the water is. These bright, sparkling brook and river bottoms are the true gold washings, — where the stream has washed the pebbly earth so long. It is pleasant to walk in sprout-lands now in June, there is so much light reflected from the under side of the new foliage. The rich meadows, too, reflect much of the bluish light from the bent grass. We land on the south side opposite 8. Barrett’s, where the innocent forest trees, become dead logs, are unceasingly and re- lentlessly, I know not for what crime, drawn and quar- tered and sawn asunder (after being torn limb from limb), with an agony of sound. There are some inter- esting retired natural meadows here, concealed by the woods near the river-bank, which are never cut, long, narrow, and winding, full of a kind of stiff, dry cut- grass and tender meadow-sweet and occasional cran- berry patches (now in bloom), with a high border, almost as high as the meadows are wide, of maples, birches, swamp white oaks, and alders, ete. The flash- ing, silvery light from the under sides of the maple leaves, — high, rippling, washing towers, far and near, —such a cool, refreshing, breezy, light-flashing look, they are very memorable. When you think you have reached the end of such a winding meadow, you pass between two alders where the copses meet, and emerge into another meadow beyond. I suppose that these meadows are as nearly in their primitive state as any; that we see there how this country looked (in one of its aspects) a thousand years ago. What difference to the meadow-sweet or the swamp white oak, or to the silver-flashing maple leaves, a thousand years ago or to-day? We noticed two or three large wood tortoises, showing but little of their orange-skins, there. The meadows, for the most part, dry enough for walking. The prevalence of the meadow-sweet (at least) -distin- guishes these meadows from the ordinary ones. Picked two blue blueberries where they lay over a rock. Forded the river with our clothes on our heads. The rounded heaps of stones, whether made by suckers or lamprey eels, are among the curiosities of the river. From the sand-bank we looked at the arched bridge while a traveller in a simple carriage with a single pair of wheels went over it. It interested me because the stratum of earth beneath him was so thin that he ap- peared quite in the air, while he sat with his elbows on his knees, entertaining all earthly thoughts, or thoughtless, while [we] looked directly beneath him through much air to a fair and distant landscape be- yond. Channing says that is what men go to Italy to see. I love to see the firm earth mingled with the sky, like the spray of the sea tossed up. Is there not always, whenever an arch is constructed, a latent reference to its beauty? The arch supports itself, like the stars, by gravity, — by always falling never falls (semper cadendo nunquam cadit). But it should not be by their archi- tecture but by their abstract thoughts that a nation should seek to commemorate itself. How much more admirable the Bhagavat Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Methinks there are few specimens of archi- tecture so perfect as a verse of poetry. Architectural remains are beautiful not intrinsically and absolutely, but from association. They are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince, nor is its material silver and gold, or marble. The American’s taste for architecture, whether Grecian or Gothic, is like his taste for olives and wine, though the last may be made of logwood. Consider the beauty of New York architecture, — and there is no very material difference between this and Baalbec, — a vulgar adornment of what is vulgar. To what end pray is so much stone hammered? An insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. Such is the glory of nations. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? Is not the builder of more consequence than the material? One sensible act will be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. She was not simple, and why should I be imposed on by the hundred gates of her prison? More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man’s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has mistaken the true end of life, that places hammered marble before honesty. The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples, but Christianity does not. It needs no college-bred architect. All the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.’ The too exquisitely cultured I avoid as I do the theatre. Their life lacks reality. They offer me wine instead of water. They are sur- rounded by things that can be bought. The alders, birches, etc., are covered with white winged aphides (? ), which whiten my clothes, — perfect showers of them. In some shallow parts of the North River, as at the Leaning Hemlocks, where some large rocks partially bridge the stream, I notice smaller stones strewn be- tween in a low wall, as if they had helped form an Indian weir once. Some names are to be retained, not because they are descriptive, but because they strike the fancy and sug- gest ideas in harmony with the flower.

Sunday. P. M.— To Bear Hill, Lincoln. The epilobium, spiked willow herb, shows its showy pale-purple spikes (pinkish?). It showed some color the 15th. I will set it down to the 20th. Epilobium angustifolium, one of the most conspicuous flowers at this season on dry open hillsides in the woods, sprout- lands. That tree-like cornel by the Heywood Meadow Brook, now showing green fruit, must be the alternate- leaved cornel. I perceive the morning-glory open at midday, but the worse for the wear. I still perceive that ambrosial sweetness from the meadows in some places. Give me the strong, rank scent of ferns in the spring for vigor; just blossoming late in the spring. A healthy and refined nature would always derive pleasure from the landscape. As long as the bodily vigor lasts, man sympathizes with nature. Looking from Bear Hill, I am struck by the yellowish green of meadows, almost like an ingrained sunlight. Perhaps they have that appearance because the fields generally incline now to a reddish-brown green. The freshness of the year in most fields is already past. The tops of the early grass are white, killed by the worm. It is somewhat hazy, yet I can just distinguish Monadnock. It is a good way to describe the density of a haze to say how distant a mountain can be dis- tinguished through it, or how near a hill is obscured by it.