15–21 July 1839

Night in this enchanting season is not night, but a miscellany of lights. The journeying twi- light, the half-moon, the kindling Venus, the beaming Jove, — Saturn and Mars something less bright, and, fainter still, " the common peo- ple of the sky," as Crashaw said : then, below, the meadows and thickets flashing with the fire- flies, and all around the farms the steadier lamps of men com pose the softest, warmest illumination.