8 TIMES AND SEASONS. 



association and contrast: novelty has much to do with 

 it. Everything tells of happiness ; and we cannot help 

 sympathising with it. We contrast the ^coij with the 

 Ocivaro^, and our minds revert to dOavaaia. Here is, 

 where before there was not, at least for us ; and this is 

 novelty. The hundreds of rich and fragrant violets that 

 we find in April are not less rich in hue or less fragrant 

 in odour than the first ; yet the first violet of spring had 

 a charm that all these combined possess not. We can 

 never hear the cuckoo's voice, we can never mark the 

 swallow's flight, without pleasure ; but the first cuckoo, 

 the first swallow, sent a thrill through our hearts which 

 is not repeated.* 



Akin to this is the rose-coloured atmosphere through 

 which every thing in nature is seen by childhood and 

 youth ; to wdiom the robin's breast appears of the bright- 

 est scarlet, and the sloe and blackberry are delicious 

 fruits. Love nature as we may, — and one who has ever 

 wooed can never cease to love her, — we cannot help being 



* Darwin, writing of the Australian forest, observes : — " The leaves 

 are not shed periodically : this character appears common to the entire 

 southern hemisphere, namely, South America, Avistralia, and the Cape 

 of Good Hope. The inhabitants of this hemisphere, and of the inter- 

 tropical regions, thus lose perhaps one of the most glorious, though to 

 our eyes common, spectacles in the world, — the first bursting into full 

 foliage of the leafless tree. They may, however, say that we pay dearly 

 for this by having the land covered with mere naked skeletons for so 

 many months. This is too true ; but our senses acquire a keen relish 

 for the exquisite green of the spring, which the eyes of those living 

 within the tropics, sated during the long year with the gorgeous pro- 

 ductions of those glowing climates, can never experience." — Nat. Voy., 

 (ed. 1852,) p. 433. 



