X PREFACE. 



prisoner by the shop, the counter, or the machine ? 

 Spring, with its regenerating influences, may wake 

 the clods of the valley into life, may wreathe the 

 black twigs with their garb of green and white, and 

 give to the trees their livery ; but men who should 

 read the lessons they teach know nothing of the 

 rejoicings that gladden the glades and make merry 

 the woods. Nevertheless, proof positive that the 

 love of nature — scourged, crushed, and overlaid, it 

 may be, with anxious cares for existence — never dies 

 out may be found in customs still lingering among 

 us. In the blackest iron districts, where the surface 

 is one great ink-blotch, where clouds of dust and 

 columns of smoke obscure the day, where scoria 

 heaps, smouldering fires, and never-ceasing flames 

 give a scorched aspect to the scene, the quickening 

 influences that renew creation are felt, teaching men 

 — ignorant as Wordsworth's " Peter Bell *' — to take 

 part in the festival of the year. When the sap 

 has risen in the tree when the south wind stirs the 

 young leaves, and the mechanism of the woods is in 

 motion, when the blackbird has taken his place in 

 the bush, and the thrush has perched itself upon the 

 spray, in the month of pelting showers and laughing 

 sunshine, when the first note of the cuckoo is heard 



