TIMES AND SEASONS. x ' 



ter, and more especially when, as in the country 

 I speak of, it suddenly bursts forth in a whole 

 orchestra at once. The song-sparrow is the chief 

 performer in this early concert ; a very melodious 

 little creature, though of unpretending plumage. 



Much of all this charm lies in the circumstan- 

 tials, the associations. It may be that there is 

 something in the psychical, perhaps even in the 

 physical condition of the observer, superinduced 

 by the season itself, that makes him in spring 

 more open to pleasurable emotions from the 

 sights and sounds of nature. But much depends 

 on association and contrast : novelty has much to 

 do with it. Everything tells of happiness; and we 

 cannot help sympathising with it. We contrast 

 the ^ufj with the Mvaroc, and our minds revert 

 to adavaola. Here is, where before there was not, 

 at least for us ; and this is novelty. The hundreds 

 of rich and fragrant violets that we find in April 

 are not less rich in hue or less fragrant in odour 

 than the first; yet the first violet of spring had a 

 charm that all these combined possess not. We 

 can never hear the cuckoo's voice, we can never 

 mark the swallow's flight, without pleasure; but 

 the first cuckoo, the first swallow, sent a thrill 

 through our hearts which is not repeated.* 



* Darwin, writing of the Australian forest, observes :— ** The 

 leaves are not shed periodically : this character appears common 

 to the entire southern hemisphere, namely, South America, Aus- 

 tralia, and the Cape of Good Hope. The inhabitants of this 

 hemisphere, and of the inter-tropical regions, thus lose perhaps 

 one of the most glorious, though to our eyes common, spectacles 

 in the world,— the first bursting into full foliage of the leafless 

 tree. They may, however, say that we pay dearly for this by 

 having the land covered with mere naked skeletons for so many 

 months. This is too true : but our senses acquire a keen relish 

 for the exquisite green of the spring, which the eyes of those liv- 

 ing within the tropics, sated during the long year with the gor- 

 geous productions of those glowing climates, can never experi- 

 ence."— " Nat. Voy." (ed. 1852), p. 433. 

 2 17 



