38 OUR ROCK-GARDEN 



the unfolding flower. Even the dweller in the 

 town is buoyantly conscious that Spring has at last 

 arrived : even square miles of houses cannot wholly 

 shut out the welcome knowledge. Fires, once so 

 welcome, go untended, windows are thrown widely 

 open, and the soot-laden buds of the town park, 

 or suburban garden, burst into tender green and 

 remind us that not so very far away after all the 

 meadows are golden with countless buttercups, that 

 the lark in ecstasy is pealing his song of jubilant 

 welcome. 



Spring has in all ages evoked the encomiums of 

 the poets, and it would be needless indeed here 

 to repeat their glowing utterances, since these are 

 accessible readily enough to most of us ; besides, 

 raptures at second hand are, we take it, of no great 

 value to any one. Every one in Spring should 

 be his own poet, feel his own heart stirred within 

 him. The following passage, however, is, we feel, 

 too delightfully quaint to keep entirely to ourselves, 

 and is considerably less accessible than Keats, 

 Wordsworth, and such-like modern men. The 

 writer, one Bartholomeus, built up an old black- 

 letter tome, which he called " De proprietatibus 

 rerum" and this book, dealing most comprehen- 

 sively with the properties of things, was issued in 

 the year 1597. It will be readily detected that 

 his spelling is scarcely such as would pass him 



