March — Sudden Change. 61 



Stung with the thoughts of home ; the thoughts of home 

 Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth 

 In many a vain attempt. 



****** 

 In vain for him the officious wife prepares 

 The fire fair-blazing, and the vestment warm ; 

 In vain his little children, peeping out 

 Into the mingling storm, demand their sire 

 With tears of artless innocence. Alas ! 

 Nor wife nor children, more shall he behold ; 

 Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve 

 The deadly Winter seizes ; shuts up sense ; 

 And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold, 

 Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse ! 

 Stretched out and bleaching in the northern blast.' 



XII. 



Sudden Change from Winter to Spring — Floods — Spring is come — 

 The Sweet Time — Thomson — Nash — Daubigny — The Spring 

 Feeling — Constable — His Love of Spring — Harmony of good Art- 

 Work — Nature not harmonious in the Spring — Charms peculiar to 

 Spring — The Regrets which the Spring suggests. 



WHEN the winter comes very late in our latitude, 

 as it does from time to time, we pass to spring 

 quite suddenly. The temperature rises in the course of 

 a single night as if we had travelled far southwards, and 

 felt the breezes from the African shore of the Mediter- 

 ranean. The snow and ice thaw rapidly ; the little 

 streams become impassable torrents ; the rivulets be- 



