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KIDD'S LONDON JOURNAL. 



A DAY OF SPRING, 



Wild flowers! sweet friends of our youth 

 and age, 

 We come to your haunts again, 

 Eager as birds that have burst the cage, 



Or steeds that have snapped their rein. 

 Fill your bright cups in the balmy air; 

 We have thirsted long for the draught they 

 bear. 



We have languished all for the sunny day 



That should call us back to the green-wood's 

 shade, 



Our dreams have been of the songster's glade, 

 And starry showers of the fragrant May. 

 The fairy moth, and the dark wild bee, 



Mingle together the gleaming wing; 

 And the squirrel skips from tree to tree ; 



And sunbeams dance in the pebbly spring. 



Sweet are thy waters, rippling pool ! 



There do the first green cresses grow, 

 And the Meadow-queen on thy margin cool 



Sheddeth perfume from her tuft of snow : 

 And there, on the sedgy bank beneath, 



Love's tender flower, with sorrowing eye, 

 Is telling still of her true knight's death, 



Or looking above on her own blue sky. 



Again in the mossy wood and glen 



We track our steps by the feathery fern, 



Startling awhile from her happy nest 

 The thrush or the gentle wren. 



A graceful lesson of life we learn ; 

 Happy and free our footsteps roam, 

 Seeking and finding the violet's home: 



But like the loved of our early day, 



Fairest and first, they have passed away. 



Cuckoo — hark ! 'tis the joyous sound I 



Bird of promise, we hear thee nigh, 

 In the wood's green depths profound : 



Oh, welcome, child of a sunny sky ! 

 How could we trust capricious Spring, 



Though her bright garlands floated free, 

 The flowering thorn, the balmy morn, 



Or e'en the dusky swallow's wing? — 

 Loved stranger, no — we looked for thee. 



Welcome, with all things sweet and fair, 



May's bright crown for beauty's brow, 

 Hope and health in the fresh pure air, 



Blossom fruits for the orchard bough: 

 Say, have ye brought from the happy land 



One charmed gift for a heart of care ? 

 I know ye have; for, as flowers distilled, 

 My spirit with essence sweet is filled ; 



I look around, and I gaze on high ; 

 My thoughts with a thrilling power expand — 



I feel there is beauty and harmony. 



Earnest, and faithful, and pardoning wrong, 

 Surely the heart, as an opening rose, 



Touched by the season of bloom and song, 

 Sheddeth perfume as her leaves unclose. 



Loved ones of earth — may ye soar and bring 



Such gifts to Heaven in youh days of 

 Spring ! 



OUR NOTE BOOK. 



Protection to Nightingales. — A curious 

 order of the police exists at Berlin. With a 

 view to prevent the diminution of nightingales 

 in their natural state of liberty, it is decreed that 

 every person in Prussia who keeps a nightingale 

 in a cage, shall pay an annual tax of ten thalers 

 (forty francs), and that any person putting a 

 nightingale into a cage, without giving infor- 

 mation to the police, shall be fined ninety thalers. 



[We wish our English police were armed 

 with similar power, and that the "fine" were 

 fifty shillings for the first, and one hundred for 

 each subsequent offence.] 



The World Beyond the Eye. — Nature has 

 made nothing in vain. Wherever she has pre- 

 pared a habitation, she peoples it. She is never 

 straitened for want of room. She has placed 

 animals, furnished with fins, in a single drop of 

 water, and in such multitudes, that Lowenhock, 

 the natural philosopher^reckoned up two thou- 

 sand of them. Many others after him, and 

 among the rest Robert Hook, have seen in one 

 drop of water, as small as a grain of millet, some 

 ten, others eighty, and some as far as forty -five 

 thousand. Those who know not how far the 

 patience and sagacity of an observer can go, 

 might perhaps call in question the accuracy of 

 these observations, if Lyonnet, who relates them 

 in u Lesser's Theology of Insects," book ii., 

 chap. 3, had not demonstrated the possibility of 

 it, by a piece of mechanism abundantly simple. 

 We are certain, at least, of the existence of those 

 beings whose different figures have actually been 

 drawn. Others are found, whose feet are armed 

 with claws, on the body of the fly, and even on 

 that of the flea. It is credible, then, [from 

 analogy, that there are animals feeding on the 

 leaves of plants, like our cattle on our meadows, 

 and on our mountains; which repose under the 

 shade of a down imperceptible to the naked eye, 

 and which from goblets^ formed like so many 

 suns, quaff nectar, of the color of gold and silver. 

 Each part of the flower must present to them a 

 spectacle of which we can form no idea. The 

 yellow anther ce of flowers, suspended by fillets of 

 white, exhibit to their eyes double rafters of gold 

 in equilibrio, on pillars fairer than ivory; the 

 corolla, an arch of unbounded magnitude, em- 

 bellished with the ruby and the topaz ; rivers of 

 nectar and honey; the other parts of" the floweret, 

 cups, urns, pavilions, domes, which the human 

 architect and. goldsmith have not yet learned to 

 imitate. 



Distinctions. — All our distinctions are acci- 

 dental. Beauty and deformity, though personal 

 qualities, deserve neither praise nor censure. 

 Yet do they color our opinion of those qualities 

 to which mankind have attached responsibility. 



London : Published for William Kidd, by William 

 Spooner, 379, Strand, (to whom all Letters, Parcels, 

 and Communications. Addressed to "the Editor," 

 and Books for Review, are to be forwarded) ; and 

 Procurable, by order, of every Bookseller and News- 

 vendor in the*Kingdom. Agents. Dublin, Edward Mil- 

 liken ; Edinburgh, John JUenzies; Glasgow, Murray 

 and Son. 



M. S. Myers, Printer, 22, Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. 



