MAY 123 



colours. Are not these colours beautiful ? You breathe 

 vegetable fragrance. Is not that fragrance grateful ? You 

 see the sun rising from behind a mountain, and the heavens 

 painted with light. Is not that renewal of the light of the 

 morning sublime ? " It is all beautiful, but it must be beheld 

 unfettered; it must be sought for in the open air. Some- 

 where in one of his poems, Emerson confesses 



" I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, 



Singing at dawn on the alder bough ; 

 I brought him home, in his nest, at even ; 



He sings his song, but it pleases not now ; 

 For I did not bring home the river and sky ; 

 He sang to my ear they sang to my eye." 



Before these tints " sing to the eye," in any loud or pronounced 

 note, there are beauties on every hedge, lying so tenderly and 

 bright, that one is fain to stay and admire. 



Apple blossoms ! Is there anything more beautiful or 

 more suggestive of loveliness, or for perfect delicacy of 

 colouring among the gifts of Spring than this blending of 

 white and rose and red ? Apple blossom, the blue sky, a 

 soft white cloud, a bird's song the whole of Spring's story 

 told in the fewest of words. There is no month in all the 

 twelve when each thing in Nature is so busy : hastening 

 clouds and swift showers, with swifter coming sunlight ; 

 birds busy with nesting operations ; the tail growing spikes 

 of green that seem to add an inch every day ; fast-opening 

 blossoms ; leaves in all haste to expand. All these things 

 with one voice acclaim hope personified, beauty perfected ! 

 Under the apple-trees laden with roseate bloom, amid so 

 simple a scene one could muse, and yet never know the 

 mysterious meaning underlying the beauty of it all ; why this 



