A WALK IN SPRING. 285 



and innocent, derived from contemplation of the world of na- 

 ture. It is doubtless, at times, more agreeable to glide indo- 

 lently over the surface of things in the shallow bark of 

 ignorance, than to explore their 'depths in the diving-bell of 

 research. This is a reason, amongst others, why the pleasures 

 of childhood, and sometimes those also of the superficial and 

 uneducated, are so vivid and unalloyed ; but though to the 

 former we look back with a sigh, and are now and then 

 tempted to regard the latter with a feeling almost akin to 

 envy, few of us would purchase them at the price of a single 

 pearl of mental acquisition. 



As we have before observed, nothing can have a greater 

 general tendency to augment our enjoyment of the country, 

 than the study of Entomology ; yet one day, as has happened 

 occasionally before, our little learning on the subject of insects 

 served to cast a shade, though it was but a passing one, over 

 the cheerful feelings inspired by early spring. We were out 

 in the morning while the dews yet hung heavy in the shade, a 

 few remaining drops still brightly twinkling in the sun. The 

 day was as fresh as the year, and the face of nature as gay in her 

 renovated youth, as if never embrowned by nigh six thousand 

 summer suns, or pinched and wrinkled by as many winter frosts. 

 Leaving the beaten foot-path across the fields, we pursued, over 

 the grass, a little private track of our own making, towards an 

 old willow pollard, which from long acquaintance, and, we be- 

 lieve, sole discovery and appropriation of certain of its venerable 



