The dripping garden we look down,
Warm touches on its grey and brown
   Her pleasant hand makes plain:
Here peeps a crocus, there the streak
On that closed tulip's wetted cheek
   Seems reddening in the rain.
And who can so much beauty drop,
Through Nature's grand kaleidoscope,
   As this beloved new comer?
Grouping anew old shapes and hues
In delicate transparent views,
   Through which we see the Summer.
One crimped currant-leaf we see,
In its full cup, an augury
   Of scarlet fruit discloses.
Those magic raindrops mirror shade,
Till wall and paling are o'erlaid
   With visionary roses.
What odours from Earth's freshened breast!
What push of growth! What quickened zest!
   And brooding from above!
A solemn, deep, delicious sense
Of a creative influence—
   An Energy of Love.
Town trees in silver tangles shine,
And roofs have all a beaded line
   Of crystal at their edges.
Gutter and spout, with gurgling call,
Answer the tinkling musical,
   Of drops from window-ledges.
The rain's last sprinkled benison
A glory from the west hath won:
   A lovely rainbow lying
Upon yon purple cloud the while,
That moves us like the tearful smile
   Of some dear friend when dying.
Hark! up, and up, and up the sky,
With warble of rich melody,
    Skylarks with joy ascend.
Ah, thus a thrill of faith can dart
A wingëd rapture:—lift the heart
   Up after that, dear friend!

HOW MONSIEUR FLAMMAND
DRAGGED HIS CHAIN.

I was in bad health, and very hard up. A
sharp attack of jungle-fever had obliged me to
leave India, where my regiment was quartered;
and wandering about the different watering-
places of France and Germany, trying to shake
off the effects of my illness, had considerably
reduced my purse. There were still some ten
months (out of my two years' leave of absence
on sick certificate) to run before I should be
obliged to rejoin my corps in the East; but the
bad effects of an English climate on my health,
forced me to spend that time somewhere abroad.
"Try a dry climate," said my London doctor;
but his advice was something like that of the
physician who recommended jelly and port wine
to the sick pauper. The few hundred pounds
of my patrimony which remained to me after
the purchase of my several commissions, were
long ago expended, and beyond my pay—three
months of which had been advanced by that
most kind-hearted and obliging of firms, Messrs.
Cox and Co., the army agents—I had nothing
whatever to depend upon. Under these
circumstances, the question was not so much where to
go, as where I could, without injury to my
health, spend least money for the next five or
six months; and thus reflecting; I was led to
remember that a lady cousin of my own, who
some ten years previously had married a French
gentleman resident somewhere near Bourges,
had often asked me to pay her and her adopted
home a visit. I therefore wrote to this relative,
and telling her and her husband exactly how I
was situated, asked them point blank whether
they could receive an invalid pauper for two or
three months, and if not, whether I could find
any cheap lodging in their neighbourhood. In
due time the answer came, begging that I would
make their home my home until my health was
restored, and urging upon me the consideration
that the district in which they resided was
considered an exceedingly dry climate, the very
thing, as I had told them, that my doctor
recommended for me.

In three days after the receipt of my cousin's
letter, I was at the London-bridge station,
thence to make my way via Folkestone, Boulogne,
Paris, Orléans, Blois, and Châteauroux, to Le
Blanc, a small chef d'arrondissement town in the
department of Indre, and the old province of
Le Berrie, in the days when departments were
not in France. At Le Blanc my cousin's
husband met me, and drove me over to his
château—which, by the way, in size and general
appearance, resembled greatly one of the many
"detached villa residences" common in the
neighbourhoods of Chalk Farm, Highgate, and
Stoke Newington—a distance of about three
leagues, or nine miles, over the very worst road
it has ever been my lot to travel on wheels.
Arrived at the château, nothing could exceed
the kindness with which I was received, and
although the view from the windows—extending
as it did over a vast plain quite as monotonous and
uninteresting as the desert between Cairo and
Suez—was not cheering to a sick man in bad
spirits, I began very soon to feel that my sojourn
in these parts would greatly benefit my health.

But country life in France is very different
from country life in England. In the former
country—unless amongst the few very rich
nobles who merely go to their châteaux for a
few months every year, or else amongst the
financial millionnaires who have in their country-
houses, as at Paris, every possible luxury, and
only look to their brief stay there as a
distraction during the intervals of money-
making—country life has very few, if any, of
the elegancies of life which with us are to be
found more or less in the household of every
country gentleman, no matter how modest his
means. My cousin's husband was by no means
badly off; in fact, for a French gentleman living
on his own estate, he passed for being almost
rich. And yet, day by day, he toiled—to say
that he merely worked would not convey half