Saturday Afternoon Rambles Round London Author:Henry Walker Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: No. III. LONDON PARK AND FOREST TREES. For June is full of invitations sweet. 'Tis good to lie beneath a tree, While the blithe season comforts eve... more »ry sense, Steeps all the brain in rest, Brimming it o'er with sweetness unawares. Under the lfilloiai.—J. R. Lowell. j|UE suburban explorations on the Saturday afternoon have hitherto engaged us on the underside phenomena and mysteries of the ground beneath us. We have begun an acquaintance, to be continued hereafter, with the underlying worlds of fossil creatures—organic forms of beauty, of terror, or of wonder; and have had some glimpses far back into the " speechless past " of our venerable earth's long history. But how different the aspect, and how opposite the charm which never-resting Nature— Great Nature! ever young yet full of eld! has provided since the first afternoon of our rambles ! It was the month of the still lingering winter, when from beneath the ribs of death the earth began feebly to send up her tentacles in search of the sunlight. How transfigured now is the landscape, with its blossoming hedge-rows, its leafy woodlands, its ample vesture of verdant grass, which everywhere conceals and adorns the aged world! This Spring-time of floral birth is daily dedicating new beauties to the sun, and inspiring once more the grateful strain— Thou renewest the face of the earth! To some of us Londoners, who have been used in earlier years to "walk the woodland aisles among," it is one of the freshest delights of the returning Spring to renew our acquaintance with our forest trees. True, there are other resources than those of tranquil Nature to beguile our Saturday Half-holiday hours. But how many among us are unequal to the muscular sports to which,for the most part, the newer generation of men in...« less