of a commonplace man, giving us from memory mere theological doctrine which has been drilled into him, and which he repeats because he supposes it must be all right, seems inconsistent with all the material universe, or at least quite apart from it.  Yet, even listening to that excellent sermon (whose masculine thought was very superior to its somewhat slovenly style), I thought, as I looked at the beautiful tree rising in the silent churchyard,—­the stately sycamore, so bright green, with the blue sky all around it,—­how truly John Foster wrote, that when standing in January at the foot of a large oak, and looking at its bare branches, he vainly tried to picture to himself what that tree would be in June.  The reality would be far richer and finer than anything he could imagine on the winter day.  Who does not know this?  The green grass and the bright leaves in spring are far greener (you see when they come back) than you had remembered or imagined; the sunshine is more golden, and the sky more bright.  God’s works are better and more beautiful than our poor idea of them.  Though I have seen them and loved them now for more than thirty summers, I have felt this year, with something of almost surprise, how exquisitely beautiful are summer foliage and summer grass.  Here they are again, fresh from God!  The summer world is incomparably more beautiful than any imagination could picture it on a dull December day.  You did not know on New Year’s day, my reader, how fair a thing the sunshine is.  And the commonest things are the most beautiful.  Flowers are beautiful:  he must be a blackguard who does not love them.  Summer seas are beautiful, so exquisitely blue under the blue summer sky.  But what can surpass the beauty of green grass and green trees!  Amid such things let me live; and when I am gone, let green grass grow over me.  I would not be buried beneath a stone pavement, not to sleep in the great Abbey itself.

My summer sermon has never been written, and so has never been preached; I doubt whether I could make much of the subject, treated as it ought to be treated there.  But an essay is a different matter, notwithstanding that a dear, though sarcastic friend says that my essays are merely sermons played in polka time; the thought of sermons, to wit, lightened somewhat by a somewhat lighter fashion of phrase and illustration.  And all that has hitherto been said is introductory to remarking, that I stand in fear of what kind of day it may be when my reader shall see this essay, which as yet exists but vaguely in the writer’s mind; and upon, four pieces of paper, three large and one small.  If your eye lights upon this page on a cold, bleak day; if it be wet and plashy; above all, if there be east wind, read no further.  Keep this essay for a warm, sunshiny day; it is only then that you will sympathize with its author.  For amid a dismal, rainy, stormy summer, we have reached fair weather at last; and this is a lovely, sunny summer