XVI. 



MAY 



THE month of May is often personified as a beautiful 

 virgin, in the early ripeness of her charms ; and he who 

 is insensible to female beauty and loveliness, seems to 

 be endowed with hardly less of the noble attributes of 

 humanity than he who, without rapture, can behold the 

 lovely face of nature at the present time- Our spring 

 does not, like the same season, in high northern lati 

 tudes, awake suddenly into perfect verdure, out of the 

 bosom of the snows ; but lingers along for more than 

 two months from its commencement, like that long 

 twilight of purple and crimson that leads up the morn 

 ings in summer. And there is a benevolent provision 

 for our happiness in this prolongation of the season of 

 hopes and promises, though frequently interrupted by 

 short periods of wintry gloom. Anticipation thus pro 

 longs its abode in our hearts, and affords us something 

 like an extension of the period of youth, and its exhil 

 arating fancies. 



Our ideas of the month of May, being in a great 

 measure derived from the descriptions- of English poets- 

 and rural authors, abound in many pleasing fallacies. 

 There are no seas of waving grass and bending grain, 



