The weather this week has been dry again, but without excessive heat, the wind being generally in the north-west. This wind, probably from its freshness or from some association, always suggests to me the neighbourhood of the sea; and I remember that before I write my next notes I shall have exchanged the narrow though beautiful limits of the garden for the wild coast of Arran.

AUGUST.

I heard or seemed to hear the chiding Sea
Say, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?
Am I not always here, thy summer home?
Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?
My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,
My touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath?
Was ever building like my terraces ?
Was ever couch magnificent as mine?
Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn
A little hut suffices like a town.

RALPH WALDO EMERSON, Sea-Shore.

XXX.-ON THE COAST OF ARRAN: WILD
FLOWERS AND THE FIRST ASPECT.

Corrie: August 6.

THIS morning has brought round a not unwelcome change in the weather. During the night there has been much heavy rain, coming not before it was wanted on the burnt pastures and the dusty roads. There must have been wind also, for very early the sea was what the fisher-folk call 'heavy,' and the waves were flinging about and breaking themselves to pieces on the rocks as if they still felt the agony of some trouble which itself had passed away. Now

the water is calmer, and is only weltering about in a lazy and exhausted manner. There is a light wind from the south-east; and though the sky is all grey and clouded, we feel that before long there will be sunshine abroad again.

It is just the morning for rest. How far away, how alien to all that we see, seems now to us the 'fitful fever,' and turmoil of life! We are trying to persuade ourselves that idleness is a virtue, and have almost succeeded. And why should we go hurrying up and down? The sea is before us; the mountains are behind; what more do we need? Why, even, should we succumb to the desire to take ship and sail away farther and farther into the wild North? It is surely enough to be here.

One of the first things one has to do when absent on a long vacation is to find a point of pleasant contact between the old home and the new. Life loses half its charm to me when it is robbed of that quality which we call continuity. To-day is but a poor thing if it be not at once dependent upon yesterday, and contributory to to-morrow. As Nature is said, from the scientific side, to abhor a vacuum, so from the æsthetic side she revolts more than at anything else against any violent breach of continuity. The hiatus is that which she can least of all endure. It was

this feeling, no doubt, which lay at the root of the poet's desire

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety

Be the bond what it may-whether 'natural piety,' or some other bond--those days are certainly the happiest which are 'bound each to each,' and that life is the most undesirable which is made up of isolated and incongruous sections.

And this point of contact we find chiefly in the wild-flowers. Many things here are more beautiful than at home ;—

The sunshine in the happy glens is fair,

And by the sea, and in the brakes.

The grass is cool, the sea-side air
Buoyant and fresh, the mountain-flowers
More virginal and sweet than ours.

They may be sweeter, but they are none the less the same. In the thicket behind the garden here the wild bramble trails its prickly stem and its white flowers up and down, just as it is doing now in the thorn-hedge above the foxglove bed in our own garden far away; and as we ascend the lower and pastoral slopes of the mountain, we see all our old favourites-the brilliant dandelion; the little redtipped bird's-foot; the delicate eye-bright; the blue campanula swinging its airily hung bells in every

faint breeze; and the daisy, with its yellow disk and its white rays reduced to one-fourth their usual size, but brighter than ever-a perfect diamond in the green pasture. I think I notice that the higher we climb, the smaller, and at the same time the more vivid in colour, do all the flowers become. And then in the hedges there are herb-robert, and meadowsweet, and yarrow, and willow-herb, and the white. convolvulus, of which in the garden at home we have a hundred times too much, gadding up and down as it does in all places where it has never been asked to grow. Those who think of these northerly shores as being sterile would wonder to find so many flowers quite close to the sea. At the edge of a wood only a few yards from the water, and where the salt spray itself must often fall, there are diminutive rose-bushes now covered with ripe berries; the wild chrysanthemum; the purple vetch; the woodruff, tiny in size, but sweet as ever; and even the dainty forgetme-not; while the woodbine festoons the trees, climbing up them to a height of twenty feet. There is one other connecting link which I must not omit to mention. The last bird which we saw on the lawn at home was the merry little pied-wagtail; and here, after the gulls, I find him, to my surprise, the most prominent of feathered creatures. How could I help