COMING OF SUMMER. 259 



man, which, however curious or costly they may be, the 

 same energies that are giving life and growth to the 

 whole rural world, are mouldering and consuming. 

 That which is a fact with the rest of living nature, 

 may always be in some manner found as a feeling with 

 man ; he wishes to hybernate in the cold months, but 

 to have " free range" when they are gone; but fashion 

 stifles the voice of nature, and rules that the first day 

 of partridge shooting should also be the first of the 

 summer. 



In Britain, at least in the southern and more genial 

 parts of it, the progress towards summer is so gentle, 

 that it steals upon us before we are aware, and the first 

 fruit is ripe before the last blossom be gone the early 

 cherry before the mulberry be completely in leaf. The 

 progress, though thus slow, and therefore to many im- 

 perceptible, is not on that account the less extensive, 

 or the less worthy of study. It is from the small spi- 

 culse of -ice which, whether they ride firm and solid 

 upon the mountain blast, and strike like so many 

 needles, or dissolving in the warm stratum of air over 

 the city, form a literal " paste of fog" with the floating 

 particles of charcoal contained in the smoke, to an 

 atmosphere of living rainbows that are all in motion 

 and in music ; from the single chirp of the little wren, 

 as feeling the influence of an occasional mid-day 

 glimmer, it hops out of the heap of withered sticks to 

 hop in again whenever the cloud comes, to that full 

 chorus of nature which swells, and rings, and reverbe- 

 rates from field to hedge, from hedge to coppice, from 

 coppice to forest, from forest to wild, and from wild to 

 the sea -beaten promontory where the voice of the 



