APRIL. 



DEAR to the poet and to the lover of nature is the month 

 of April, when she tirst timidly plants her footsteps upon 

 the dank meadow and the mossy hillside, clothing the 

 dark brown sods with tufts of greenery, waking the early 

 birds, and cherishing the tender field-flowers. Her hands 

 are ever busy, hanging purple fringes upon the elm and 

 golden tassels upon the willow bough, and weaving for 

 the maple a vesture of crimson. She brings life to the 

 frozen streams, verdure to the seared meadows, and music 

 to the woods, which have heard nothing for months save 

 the solemn moaning of their own boughs and the echoes of 

 the woodman's axe from an adjoining fell. We welcome 

 April as the comforter of our weariness after long con- 

 finement, as the bearer of pleasures which her bounty 

 only can offer, as a sweet maiden entering the door of 

 our prison with hands full of budding flowers and breath 

 scented with violets. 



A gladness and hopefulness attend us on the return of 

 spring which are unfelt at other seasons, and produce 

 a sensation like that of the renewal of youth. We are 

 certainly more hopeful at this time than in the autumn, 

 and we look back upon the lapse of the three winter months 

 witli a less painful sense of the loss of so much of our 

 allotted period of life than upon the lapse of the three 

 summer months. Though the flight of any season carries 

 us equally onward in our mortal progress, we cannot 

 avoid the feeling that the lapse of winter is our gain 

 as that of summer was our loss. And surely, of these 



