210 HARMONIES OF THE TEMPERATE ZONE. 



clioly and joyaimce, we owe the tempered, the powerful personality of 

 our West. Rain wearies us to-day ; fine weather will come witli tlie 

 morrow. The splendours of the East, the marvels of the Tropics, 

 taken together, are not worth the first violet of Easter, the first song 

 of April, the blossom of the hawthorn, the glee of the young girl who 

 resumes her robes of white. 



In the morning a potent voice, of singular freshness and clearness, 

 of keen metallic thnbre, the voice of the mavis, rises aloft, and there 

 is no heart so sick or so sour as to hear it without a smile. 



One spring, on my way to Lyons, among the intertangled vines 

 which the peasants laboured to raise up again, I heard a poor, old, 

 miserable, and blind woman singing, with an accent of extraordinary 

 gaiety, this ancient village lay : 



" Nous quittons nos grands habits, 

 Pour en prendre de plus potits." 











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