PLEASURES OF THE SENSES. 191 



Not less richly fares the Hearing, as it now drinks in the 

 melodies of spring, the music of happy birds, the hum of 

 new-born insects, the whisper of opening leaves, the morning 

 hymn of nature fresh awakened. 



Spring odours, rising meanwhile from foliage, from flower, 

 and from field, regale as gloriously the sense of Smell. And 

 Taste fails not to come in also for her share of new delights, 

 yet is she, perhaps, of all her sister senses, (among whom she 

 is the least refined,) the one least specially treated in this pure 

 and delicate banquet of the spring. The pleasures of taste, 

 accordingly, are now less actual than anticipative pleasures 

 enjoyed through the promise of advancing vegetable and of 

 budding or flowering fruit-tree. 



Again, not with one simple viand, but with a delicious 

 compound, the Feeling (which we shall venture to call a sense 

 general, derived from all others) quivers with new delight, as 

 spring influences send the blood dancing through our frames, 

 like the rivulets, so lately frost-bound, careering through the 

 flowery meadows. 



Such is the grand spring-festival of the senses ; and shall we, 

 towards whom these sisters, five or seven,* are employed to 

 do the honours of such a banquet, sit down or rise from the 

 repast without a "grace" rendered to the Great Provider of 



* Dr. Virey divides the senses into three intellectual viz., sight, hearing, and 

 the internal sense of thought; and four physical viz., touch, love, taste, and 

 smell. 



