X. 



A SPEING GOSSIP. 



May, 1860. 

 " TF any man feels no joy in the spring, then has he no warm 

 J- blood in his veins ! " So said one of the old dramatists, two 

 hundred years ago ; and so we repeat his very words in this month 

 of May, eighteen hundred and fifty. Not to feel the sweet influences 

 of this young and creative season, is indeed like being blind to the 

 dewy brightness of the rainbow, or deaf to the rich music of the 

 mocking-bird. Why, every thing feels it ; the gushing, noisy brook ; 

 the full-throated robin ; the swallows circling and sailing through 

 the air. Even the old rocks smile, and look less hard and stony ; 

 or at least try to by the help of the moss, lately grown green in the 

 rain and sunshine of April. And, as Lowell has so finely said, 



" Every clod feela a stir of m^htj 

 An instinct within it that reaches and towers ; 



And grasping blindly above it ^or light, 

 Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers." 



From the time when the maple hangs out its little tufts of ruddy 

 threads on the wood side, or the first crocus astonishes us with its au- 

 dacity in embroidering the ground with gold almost before the snow 

 has left it, until June flings us her first garlands of roses to tell us 

 that summer is at hand, aU is excitement in the country — real po- 

 etic excitement — some spark of which even the dullest souls that 

 follow the oxen must feel. 



' UTo matter how barren the past may have been, 

 "Tis enough for us now that the leaves are green." 

 5 



