X INTRODUCTION. 



forces you to leave your winter in-door pursuits, and 

 quaff the sparkling and invigorating cup presented 

 by Nature's own hand— when she fans you with her 

 blandest gales, cheers you with her brightest beams, 

 and enchants you with her loveliest scenes — what 

 life, what breadth, what finish do the feathered race 

 give to the whole ! How charming to see the 

 Swallow sweep past you with a speed that mocks 

 the wind and outstrips the hurricane — now sailing 

 in the blue expanse, now dashing past you, and 

 leaving you in doubt whether 'twas a bird or a spirit 

 that thus disturbed your meditations, and anon gli- 

 ding over the glittering pool whose bright surface 

 is darkened only where that aged hawthorn grows 

 in peaceful luxuriance by the brink. On advancing 

 towards yon beechen copse, the voice of nature's 

 flute, the " Cuckoo gray," salutes you with his ever- 

 same Cu-coo, Cu-coo — -which, mellowed by the 

 distance, falls on the ear with music-like sweetness. 

 Not a field, not a streamlet, not a bush but its inter- 

 est is a thousand-fold increased by the Lark, the 

 Wagtail, or the Warbler. Then amid then ver- 

 dant halls, erected by " Nature, the wisest architect," 

 how exquisitely beautiful 'tis to listen to the wood- 

 land minstrels pouring forth then rapturous songs, 

 and swelling the gale with their " liquid utterance." 

 All nature is so beautiful and the whole earth is so 

 admirably tuned — every scene and every object is 

 so beautifully adapted to the others with which it 

 is related — each so greatly enhances the charms of 



