better for it all the year after. We will indulge in sweet thoughts and solacing interchanges of kindly 
feeling. — 
And now we are in a quiet, rural spot, far from the busy hum of men, 
so that a whispering blade 
Of grass, a wilful gnat, a bee, bustling 
Down in the blue-bells, or a wren light rustling 
Among the leaves and twigs, might all be heard. 
No sound strikes upon our ear but the grateful music of nature. “ There is a spirit of youth in every 
things — 
Through wood, and stream, and hill, and field, and ocean 
A quickening life from the earth’s heart has burst, 
As it has ever done, 
“ Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead reason’s bier and ah! — there is one of them — the primrose. 
See how it peeps from yon southern mossy bank, pale and motionless — “ not wagging its sweet head,” — so 
hushed and still is the atmosphere, that there is not even a playful breeze abroad “ to fondle the flowers! 
in its soft embrace.” This darling flower, this child of spring, “ that comes before the swallow dares, and 
takes the winds of March with beauty,” is my peculiar favorite. I never meet with a tuft of them for the 
first time, but there goes to my heart an intense feeling of their calm and innocent loveliness. They are to 
me heralds of young and fresh-bursting life, dear pledges of the renewed existence of nature. They tell me 
of the vernal joys that are at hand, awaiting me. This feeling I experience at every returning season : it is 
connected with many an early association. I delight to follow and trace it far back, into the years of 
childhood. 
And find no end, in wandering mazes lost. 
I can discover nothing but “the man’s thoughts dark within the infant’s brain.” How mysterious are the 
operations of the mind at that budding period ; To what point of our infancy are we to refer the first dim 
shadowy associations ? How can we trace the early dawning of 
that primal sympathy, 
Which, having been, must ever be, 
and which makes the same poet exclaim, in a line full of deep and philosophic thought, 
“ The child is father of the man ?” 
And then, again, by what insensible gradations do we progress to the laughing thoughtlessness of boy- 
hood ! Oh ! how I love to revert to those days of careless gaiety and unrestrained freedom ! Life then had 
no stern realities. Every object was clothed in the fairy hues of imagination. I lived and moved as in a 
dream; and hope was “as broad and easing as the general air.” Many of my happiest moments are de- 
rived from the golden recollections intertwined with the very heart-strings of my being, — old dwellers in my 
bosom, that ever linger with me. 
And, of the past, are all that cannot pass away ! 
Time and care make sad havoc with these aerial enjoyments. 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam ! 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream ! 
Youth invests all which it sees and desires, with the rainbow tints of fancy. 
Yet let us press on joyfully in our course. “There be delights, there be recreations, and jolly 
pastimes, that will fetch the day about from sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in a delightful dream.” 
A thousand pure pleasures remain to us. Foremost, and the most soothing among them, is natural 
scenery. I lately met with a passage, written some years ago, in a periodical work, which finely and feelingly 
expresses all that I would say on this subject. The author, writing from a lonely spot in Switzerland, 
describes it, and thus proceeds : — 
“ During those dreams of the soul, which our hopes and wishes create, and our reason is unable to 
destroy,— when we wish to retire from the loud and stirring world, and among the loveliness of some far- 
removed valley, to pass the days that fate may have assigned us, — where the mind endeavours to combine 
in one scene every beauteous image that memory can supply, or imagination picture, — it would be im- 
possible to conceive the existence of a more lovely landscape. So sweet is this spot, that the very winds 
of heaven seem slowly and fondly to pass over it, and the little summer birds sing more cheerily amid its 
holy solitude. Since I have seen it, I have not been conscious of feeling any emotion allied to evil. In- 
deed, what could make the heart evil-disposed among such general peace and happiness? No mind can 
withstand the influence of fair and lovely scenery, and the calmness of a fine summer-evening, when there 
is nothing to prevent its sinking into the very furthest recesses of the heart. For myself, at least, I can 
say that I never walked with my face towards a fine setting sun, without feeling it to be, as our own most 
majestic poet has expressed it, c a heavenly destiny.’ Nothing tends so powerfully to extinguish all bad 
passions as the contemplation of the still majesty of nature.” 
