4 TIMES AND SEASONS. 



and firs. The sun shines out. What a glitter of light ! 

 How the beams, broken, as it were, into ten thousand 

 fragments, sparkle and dance, as they are reflected from 

 the trees ! Yet it is as fragile as beautiful. A slight 

 shock from a rude hand is sufficient to destroy it. The 

 air is filled with a descending shower of the glittering 

 fragments, and the spell is broken at once ; the crystal 

 pageant has vanished, and nothing remains but a brown, 

 leafless tree. 



But all this is the beauty of death ; and the naturalist, 

 though he may, and does, admire its peculiar loveliness, 

 yet longs for the opening of spring. To his impatience it 

 has seemed as if it would never come ; but, at last, on 

 some morning toward the end of April, the sun rises 

 without a cloud, the south-west wind blows softly, and he 

 walks forth, " wrapt in Elysium." Life is now abroad : 

 larks, by scores, are pouring forth sweet carols, as they 

 hang and soar in the dazzling brightness of the sky; the 

 blackbird is warbling, flute-like, in the coppice; swallows, 

 newly come across the sea, are sweeping and twittering 

 joyously; the little olive-clad warblers and white-throats 

 are creeping about like mice among the twigs of the 

 hedges ; and, ha ! sweetest of all sounds of spring ! 

 there are those two simple notes, that thrill through the 

 very heart, the voice of the cuckoo ! 



Here, too, are the butterflies. The homely " whites " 

 of the garden are flitting about the cabbages, and the 

 tawny " browns " are dancing along the hedge-rows that 

 divide the meadows; the delicate "brimstone" comes 



