A GOOD TIME COMING. 



45 



of Foote's chariot as a motto of singular appropriateness and meaning. 

 How delighted, by the way, must our amphibious friend Mr. Symons 

 be in the midst of all this rainfall ! His crest again should be a 

 man's head on a fish's body in an overflowed meadow, natant, and 

 his supporters an anemometer and rain-gauge proper ! It is need- 

 less to say that anything like spring work is with us not only in a 

 very backward state, but has hardly been commenced. Before the 

 end of February we had our own corn seed and potatoes in the 

 ground last year. If we get them down this year any time during 

 the next month, it wiU be earlier than the weather at the date of 

 the present writing promises. Our ornithological studies extend 

 over a greater number of years than we care at this moment very 

 accurately to count ; but never have we known our wild-birds so 

 listless and loveless on Shrovetide Eve as they are this season. 

 Except an occasional carol from the wren, who has a soul as big as 

 that of his namesake Sir Christopher, who built the dome of St. 

 Paul's (the wren also, by the way, is a dome-builder), and an 

 irregular strophe at rare intervals from the redbreast, our woods 

 are songless, and of nidification there is not a sign. Meliora sperdre, 

 nevertheless, is sound philosophy. Let us hope for better things : 

 He is faithful that promised that while the earth remaineth, seed- 

 time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and 

 day and night, shall not cease. Scott has few finer passages than 

 the following, which we are fond of repeating in such a season as 

 this. It occurs in his epistle to William Stewart Eose, introductory 

 to the first canto of Marmion, and, though very beautiful, is seldom 

 quoted : — 



" No longer Autumn's glowing red 

 Upon our Forest hills is shed ; 

 No more, beneath the evening beam, 

 Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam ; 

 Away hath passed the heather bell 

 That bloomed so rich on Needpath fell ; 



