• >2 MARCH. 



abroad not only a gladdening splendour, but 

 an almost summer glow. The world seems 

 suddenly aroused to hope and enjoyment. 

 The fields are assuming a vernal greenness — 

 the buds are swelling in the hedges — the banks 

 are displaying amidst the brown remains of 

 last year's vegetation, the luxuriant weeds of 

 this. There are arums, ground-ivy, chervil, the 

 glaucus leaves, and burnished flowers of the 

 pilewort, 



The first gilt thing 

 That wears the trembling pearls of spring ; 



and many other fresh and early bursts of green- 

 ery. All unexpectedly, too, in some embowered 

 lane, you are arrested by the delicious odour 

 of violets, those sweetest of Flora's children, 

 which have furnished so many pretty allusions 

 to the poets, and which are not yet exhausted : 

 they are like true friends, we do not know half 

 their sweetness till they have felt the sunshine 

 of our kindness : and again, they are like the 

 pleasures of our childhood, the earliest and the 

 most beautiful. Now, however, they are to 

 be seen in all their glory — blue and white — 

 modestly peering through their thick, cluster- 

 ing leaves. The lark is carolling in the blue 

 fields of air ; the blackbird and thrush are again 

 shouting and replying to each other, from the 

 tops of the highest trees. As you pass cot- 



