all hannony—the music of natm’e. 1 often listen to the 
happy creatures, suiging so merrily in their greenwood haunts, 
and flitting airily along in search of materials for their nests, 
those wonderful little things! or looking for food for the young 
callow brood within; and I do marvel how any being can be 
so wantonly cruel, how any spirit can be so blind to the glory 
and happiness of natiue, as to ensnare or destroy creatures 
so harmless, so glad, so beautiful, as birds. 
The fathers of English poetry have so lauded this, their 
favourite season, in undying verse, that of all poetical subjects 
“ Spring” has perhaps the least chance of receiving any thiirg 
like original treatment at the hands of their descendants, who 
must not only shrink to stars of small magnitude indeed beside 
the greater luminaries, but be content to appear, for the most 
part, as shining only with reflected light. 
The Bards of old looked on nature with the eye of the natu¬ 
ralist, the fancy of the poet, and the grace of the painter. The 
simjrlest flower, or the most trivial incident, is described by the 
pencilling picture-like verse of Chaucer with a bright, clear, 
glecsome expression, only equalled in its peculiar beauty by his 
simple, impressive, and touching pathos. He revelled in the 
merry Spring-time, and many are the bright and sparkling 
descriptions of reviving nature which he has left us, telling how 
The shoures sote of rain descended soft 
Causing the ground fele tiiuis and oft, 
Up for to give many an wholesome air; 
And every plain was y-clothed faire 
