“ Spring while we are writing, is complete. The winds have done their work. The shaken air, well 
tempered and equalized, has subsided ; the genial rains, however thickly they may come, do not saturate 
the ground, beyond the power of the sun to dry it up again. There are clear crystals mornings ; noons of 
blue sky and white cloud ; nights, in which growing moon seems to lie looking at the stars, like a young 
shepherdess at her flock. A few days ago she lay gazing in this manner at the solitary evening star, like 
Diana, on the slope of a valley, looking up at Endymion. His young eye seemed to sparkle out upon the 
world, while she bending inwards, her hands behind her head, watched him with an enamoured dumbness. 
But this is the quiet of Spring. Its voices and swift movements have come back also. The swallow 
shoots by us, like an embodied ardour of the season. We have not yet heard the nightingale or the cuckoo; 
but we can hear them with our imagination, and enjoy them through the content of those who have. 
Then the young green. This is the most apt and perfect mark of the season. The trees and bushes 
are putting forth their crisp fans ; the lilac is loaded with bud; the meadows are thick with the bright young 
grass, running into sweeps of white and gold with the daisies and buttercups. The orchards announce their 
riches, in a shower of silver blossoms. The earth in fertile woods is spread with yellow and blue carpets of 
primroses, violets, and hyacinths, over which the birch trees, like stooping nymphs, hang with their thick- 
ening hair. Lilies of the valley, stocks, columbines, lady-smocks, and the intensely red pioney which seems 
to anticipate the full glow of summer-time, all come out to wait upon the season, like fairies from their sub- 
terraneous palaces. 
Who is to wonder that the idea of love mingles itself with that of this cheerful and kind time of the 
year, setting aside even common associations ! 
All our kindly impulses are apt to have more sentiment in them, than the world suspects ; and it is by 
fetching out this sentiment, and making it the ruling association, that we exalt the impulse into generosity 
and refinement, instead of degrading it, as is too much the case, into what is selfish, and coarse, and pol- 
lutes all our systems. One of the greatest inspirers of love is gratitude, — not merely on its common grounds, 
but gratitude for pleasure, whether consciously or unconsciously conferred. Thus we are thankful for the 
delight given us by a kind and sincere face, and if we fall in love with it, one great reason is, that we long 
to return what we have received. The same feeling has a considerable influence in the love that has been 
felt for men of talents, whose persons or addresses have not been much calculated to inspire it. In spring 
time, joy awakens the hearts: with joy, awakens gratitude and nature ; and in our gratitude, we return, on 
its own principle of participation, the love that has been shown us.” The Indicator, by Leigh Hunt. 
Milton (no bad authority) desires that boys should leave their books in this delightful season, and have 
a peep at the country. This is from one of his prose works, the Tractate on Education, but we observe that 
a man of rhyme has dressed up the thought, as follows : 
Oh ! in that vernal season of the year, 
When the kind air breathes soft and wooingly, 
It were a sullenness and injury 
Against great Nature’s self, who doth appear 
Most brightly then, to pine in bookish gloom, 
Holding communion with spirits bold 
Of Greece, or Araby, or haughty Rome. 
Rich in sweet-thoughts, and leisure-giving gold 
Then let the high-born youth leave the fair page 
Of Tully, or of Plato, for a while; 
And guarded by some never-sleeping sage, 
As serpent wise, but free as dove from guile, 
Dear England’s inmost spirit let him seek, 
In wood, and plain, and hill, and sheltered creek. 
In the language of flowers, the Bitter-sweet is the emblem of Truth. 
