44 
BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
strife and terror, alternating between sunshine and storm, 
and, in some climates, the most to be dreaded for its 
ravages of wind and wave. The vernal equinox is not 
more strikingly marked here in its bright hues, its burst¬ 
ing of leaf-bud and flower-bud, its softness of sunshine, 
and its gush of song, than it is in other climes by its 
sweeping hurricanes, its sand-storms, and ice-storms, its 
crash of forests, and fall of avalanches—for it is every¬ 
where the season of rapid change, and the summer of 
fruitage which follows it is but the ripening of the influ¬ 
ence, which, in its birth, had so many startling features. 
The spring of the world has its analogies in the spring 
of time; for in the ages the seasons are repeated, and 
from the beginning to the end of creation, times, and 
seasons, and things, are counterparts of each other. 
Geology, astronomy, history,—each have their spring¬ 
time,—their Season of Buttercups. Bar back into the 
twilight of tradition, spring shows its mask of beauty, 
and its phase of many-coloured strife. The mountain- 
heights that crown the world were the growths of former 
springs of forces, as buttercups are now the growths of 
fair springs of sunshine. Entombed within the rocky 
ramparts are the ferns and flowers of that old season of 
renewal, and beside those very plants are the indelible 
traces of up-heaving forces, writhings, fusings, and con¬ 
tortions, by which the giant masses were blasted and 
flung about the world,—played with, as the March hur¬ 
ricane now plays with the stray feather of a bird, or as 
the ocean, whirled in the equinox, plays with the froth 
that forms the crest of its waves. Spring in the world 
and spring in man are only different sides of the same 
