2 



INTRODUCTION. 



vivid greens, the corn-growing lands, must 

 delight all, who have eyes, whatever their years 

 may be. The primrose, peeping from beneath 

 the heaps of withered leaves, which have all 

 the winter sheltered it, and repaying their 

 kindness by decorating with its knots of pale 

 petals the brown ruin, is sure to suit the taste 

 and feelings of old and young ; whilst the 

 warbling of the feathered choir, from the 

 broken notes of the twittering wren, to the 

 full and more continuous tunes of the blackbird 

 and the thrush, draw our attention now this 

 way and now that ; and the busy bee, by its I 

 ceaseless humming, proclaims its honourable 

 industry, and calls upon the indolent to follow 

 so good an example. 



The Summer ripens every beauty, and pre- 

 sents it — no longer, indeed, with the charms of 

 childhood, but — with the more satisfactory ful- 



