[•92 



A SPRING GOSSIP. 



ness that the world is young again ; that 

 he spring has come round; that we shall 

 aot all cease, and be no world. Nature has 

 begun again, and not begun for nothing. 

 One fancies somehow that she could not 

 have the heart to put a stop to us in April 

 or May. She may pluck away a poor little 

 life here and there ; nay, many blossoms of 

 youth, — but not all, — not the whole garden 

 of life. She prunes, but does not destroy. 

 If she did, — if she were in the mind to 

 have done with us, — to look upon us as a 

 sort of experiment not worth going on with, 

 as a set of ungenial and obstinate com- 

 pounds, which refused to co-operate in her 

 sweet designs, and could not be made to 

 answer in the working, — depend upon it, 

 she would take pity on our incapability and 

 bad humours, and conveniently quash us in 

 some dismal, sullen winter's day, just at 

 the natural dying of the year, most likely 

 in November; for Christmas is a sort of 

 spring itself — a winter flowering. We care 

 nothing for arguments about storms, earth- 

 quakes, or other apparently unseasonable 

 interruptions of our pleasures. We imi- 

 tate, in that respect, the magnanimous in- 

 difference, or what appears to be such of 

 the great mother herself, knowing that she 

 means us the best in the gross ; and also 

 that we may all get our remedies for these 

 evils in time, if we will only co-operate. 

 People in South America, for instance, may 

 learn from experience, and build so as to 

 make a comparative nothing of those rock- 

 ings of the ground. It is of the gross it- 

 self that we speak ; and sure we are, that 

 with an eye to that, Nature does not feel 

 as Pope ventures to say she does, or sees 

 " with equal eye" — 



" Atoms or systems into ruin hurl'd, 

 And now a bubble burst, and now a world " 



" He may have flattered himself that he 

 should think it a fine thins: for his little 



poetship to sit upon a star, and look grand 

 in his own eyes, from an eye so very dis- 

 passionate; but Nature, who is the author 

 of passion, and joy, and sorrow, does not 

 look upon animate and inanimate, depend 

 upon it, with the same want of sympathy. 

 "A world" full of hopes, and loves, and en- 

 deavors, and of her own life and loveliness, is 

 a far greater thing in her eyes, rest assured, 

 than a " bubble ;" and, a fortiori, many 

 worlds, or a " system," far greater than the 

 " atom," talked of with so much compla- 

 cency by this divine little whipper-snapper. 

 Ergo, the moment the kind mother gives 

 promise of a renewed year, with these green 

 and budding signals, be certain she is not 

 going to falsify them ; and that being sure 

 of April, we are sure as far as November. 

 As for an existence any further, that, we 

 conceive, depends somewhat upon how we 

 behave ourselves ; and therefore we would 

 exhort everybody to do their best for the 

 earth, and all that is upon it, in order that 

 it and they may be thought worth continu- 

 ance. 



" What ! Shall we be put into a beautiful 

 garden, and turn up our noses at it, and 

 call it a "-vale of tears," and all sorts of 

 bad names (helping thereby to make it so,) 

 and yet confidently reckon that nature will 

 never shut it up, and have done with it, or 

 set about forming a better stock of inhabi- 

 tants ? Recollect, we beseech you, dear 

 " Lord Worldly Wiseman," and you, " Sir 

 Having," and my " Lady Greedy," that 

 there is reason for supposing that man was 

 not always an inhabitant of this very fash- 

 ionable world, and somewhat larger globe ; 

 and that perhaps the chief occupant before 

 him was only an inferior species to our- 

 selves (odd as you may think it,) who could 

 not be brought to know what a beautiful 

 place he lived in, and so had a different 

 chance given him in a different shape. 



