cries fly to inner haunts they wot of; the trees writhe; the mighty beast rolls from the thunder cloud that blackens and blots out the sultry sky, and with its swift and yearning rains makes the cool odours of the refreshed earth "forth from far recesses fern scents rush." And with such gracious legacies departs the heated day in the imposing grandeur of the storm.

T

Looking Unto the Hills

HE earth in our latitude is now at the height of vigorous life. Now is all

growth thrifty and spirited; in the hot days which wilt down poor humanity the great forest trees luxuriate, and show such shining glory of foliage as brings close to the lover of Nature the delight of all this proud vegetation, -the joy of the maples, the elms, the oaks, the beeches, the birches,-the sempiternal pines and hemlocks in the July sun. What luxury is expressed in the imperial chestnut, blossoming on all the hills and asserting its lordship over thousands of acres of woodland! In the city there are also the European lindens in honeyed bloom, and the catalpas, kælreuterias, and honeysuckles.

It is a season emphatic in its wealth of life. The flowering of the fields and the thickets is less in number and variety than in the spring, but it is gorgeous in colour. The predominance of yellow has begun, and the black-eyed Susans produce concrete sunshine over meadows and pastures.

The ox-eye daisies company these closely; amid the tall grasses bloom the gay nodding lilies of orange, and the upright red lilies at the edge of the copse fill the eye with noble flame. The first goldenrods are out, and all the loosestrife family, even to the steironema; the Canada thistle, as sweet and pretty as if every farmer did not detest it, the pretty but even more greedy shrubby cinquefoil, and the mulleins are in evidence. But not the yellows alone,-that other hue of the later days is beginning to show itself, the purple scale of colour, descending from the linaria to the lobelia, in advance of the thistles and vervains, and with the asters and ironweed in prospect; while yet the daintiest of all the compositæ, the daisy fleabanes, are profuse in bloom. Everywhere in forest shades and pasture hillsides, the multitudinous ferns are fruiting in their lavish frondage. All trees and shrubs, in this early summer climax, fill the prospect with a sense of high rejoicing in vital warmth and stored moisture.

This pervasive and potent sense of life in all the earth takes possession of the senses as one wanders through the wildwood pleasaunces, or reclines upon the breezy mountain-top, content to rest in the embracement of the divine Spirit that utters by its lightest breath all these wondrous and lovely phenomena. Only to look upon the

tossing woods in a summer breeze, only to feel the life of the air as it passes, is to be filled with a sacred possession of endless power and grace. So moved the Spirit upon the face of the waters when the firmament was formed above the fogs of the inchoate earth; so moved that Spirit when the angel was set at the gates of Paradise to forbid forever the access of the sons of Adam. But now we do not care for any Paradise where life was not conditioned by work, we have a higher world, in which work is the requisite of rest and reward. Let us be thankful that this is so, and that never more may sluggards claim what they have not rightly earned.

For what can all the glory of the earth mean. to those who have done nothing to justify even their existence among sentient living things? Nothing is more true than the dictum of the old Scripture: "He that will not work, neither shall he eat." And this is not meant for physical food alone; but as well for spiritual food, which cannot be gained by spiritual indolence, that waits to be fed. Those who desert duty and court pleasure forfeit all that pertains to the soul, for that requires vast nourishment, which must come from the roots of practical human life, through which the spirit's atmosphere is generated. And it is in the free realm of air, in the wide fields, on the bare