XVI. 



MAY 



The month of May is often personified as a beautiful) 

 virgin, in the early ripeness of her charms ;. and he who- 

 is insensible to female beauty and loveliness,, seems to 

 be endowed with hardly less of the noble attributes of 

 humanity than he who, without rapture, can beh®ld the 

 lovely face of nature at the present time. Our spring 

 does not, like the same season, in high northern lati- 

 tudes, awake suddenly into perfect verdure, out of the 

 bosom of the snows ; but lingers along for more than 

 two months from its commencement, like that long 

 twilight of purple and crimson that leads up the morn- 

 ings in summer. And there is a benevolent provision 

 for our happiness in this prolongation of the season of 

 hopes and promises, though frequently interrupted by 

 short periods of wintry gloom. Anticipation thus pro- 

 longs its abode in our hearts, and affords us something 

 like an extension of the period of youth, and* its exhil- 

 arating fancies. 



Our ideas of the month of May, being in a great 

 measure derived from the descriptions of English poets- 

 and rural authors, abound in many pleasing fallacies.. 

 There are no seas of waving grass and bending grain,. 



