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apparent they were evidently pleased to see Europeans there; and as I was standing with some of these, a principal chief came up with his retinue, and, from a long-necked vessel with a perforated stopper, sprinkled us profusely with rose-water, making a salaam very politely. The occasion was just a festival, and carried forward

with the same feelings that they get up any other spectacle. I longed to be able to enter into conversation with some of the many who sat quietly looking from an adjacent grove, but was obliged to content myself with humble prayer that this great people might be soon turned from idols. O that the day may soon come!

AN Album once went far astray
From house to house, from day to day,

In search of writers able:

At length, its weary journeys done,
It stretched itself at ease upon
Dear Madam's spider table.

And Madam now with beaming look Hastes to explore her favourite book,

And con her new-made treasure; But see the smiles forsake her brow, And every feature darkens now

To sadness and displeasure!

The book was sent to careful hands,
With oft repeated, strict commauds,
To shun all vulgar dealing;
But here are names which no one knows,
And rhymes far worse than sorry prose
Her friend could have no feeling !

Full sure there is among the score A Walter Scott, and Thomas Moore, But nought besides their name.

THE ALBUM.

While blockheads with their scrawl abound, As if they ne'er before had found

An open door to fame!

But chiefly this perplexed her mind-
That good and ill were so combined
Beyond her power to sever;-
Had it been evil altogether
Her heart had lightened to a feather,
Her book destroyed for ever!

Or, had the good surpassed the ill,
The bad might be forgiven still,

Since nought can reach perfection;
But thus it was-Oh wretched fate!-
The book she could not love nor hate,

Though pet of her affection.

Then, lady, whosoe'er you be,
When you shall scan this history,

Just make this memorandum;
That whatsoe'er you love beside,
You ponder well ere you decide
To idolize an Album.

CALAMUS.

REVIEW.

Nature considered as a Revelation. By the REV. ROBERT BAYLEY, F. S. A. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. pp. 250.

ALL theology is revealed, the natural as well as the verbal: hence the propriety of Coleridge's remark, that the phrase "revealed religion" is a pleonasm. There can be no religion but revealed; the only distinction lies in the mode of the revelation. Mind itself is a revelation: "Let us make man," said the Triune God, "in our own image," that is, "to reflect our likeness." Mind, then, is not merely the instrument by which a revelation is received and appreciated, but constitutes, per se, a divine revelation, -the first intimation, to man, of a Primitive and Supreme Mind. The sun, in the very act of causing its own reflection, reveals itself to all intelligent beings; and God, in the very act of reflecting his Divine image in man, discovers himself.

In the same sense "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork." The expanded volume of nature is inscribed and illuminated by the same finger which wrote the law on Sinai; it is instinct with lessons of morality, and full of the rudiments of art and science, an encyclopædia of wisdom. But the fall of man has rendered the addition of another volume indispensable. By sin he brought himself into a new situation, in which all his previous knowledge was only calculated to fill him with alarm. New knowledge must be imparted for how does he know what a holy God may see fit to do with him, a transgressor? A revelation adapted to!

fallen man, while it includes and authenticates the great principles of natural religion, must also provide for the expiation of his guilt, for the renovation of his nature, and his restoration to God.

Now, while Mr. Bayley, in the interesting and original volume before us, is perfectly orthodox on these points, and freely admits that, even within its own circumscribed and peculiar limits, many of the readings of the book of nature are conjectural and obscure, he contends that it is almost universally disparaged, and allowed to become comparatively a sealed book; and proposes to vindicate its lofty claims to occupy and adorn the chair of wisdom.

We have called his work original: we are aware, indeed, that many, especially of our elder writers, have thrown out hints of the idea which pervades it: we remember him who was called "the Priest and Interpreter of Nature;" we remember the intimation of Gale, that "the world is a universal temple, wherein man may contemplate natural images and pictures of Divine wisdom and goodness;" and admire Richardson's expression, that the divine Being, instead of verbally announcing certain truths, "put it into the things;" we are aware of the Hutchinsonian sentiment, that the objects which nature presents to man are "like drawings of such things as were out of the reach of his senses;" and of the remark of Kirby and Spence, that "the entire system of nature is representative as well as operative;" and we rememberfor who can forget?-the immortal "Analogy" of Butler; nor are we unacquainted with "the Sentiment of Flowers," and "Flora's Interpreter," and

such small craft, all doing their little to turn nature's | poison its shores with the maledictory salt, to forbid the ap

great florilegium into a school-girl's album, full of the amatory, mawkish, and nonsensical; but Mr. Bayley aspires to consider nature as a divine revelation, to restore the holy oracle to its shrine, and to invest the willing reader with the Urim and Thummim. And, in our estimation, his conception of the work is as novel as its execution is vigorous. It consists of two parts: first, proving that nature should be considered as a revelation; second, containing specimens of the manner in which the material revelation may be explained.

The first part, distributed into thirteen chapters, shows that nature must be a revelation of much moral and scientific truth, because for ages man had scarcely any other; that there is an evident adaptation in nature to impart, and in man to receive, such instruction; that this mutual relation could not have been accidental; that the great service which the natural revelation still renders to morals, warrants the general conclusion, that nature is the only revelation, and almost ever has been, to four-sixths of mankind; that the material revelation has many advantages over the verbal; that it illustrates the Divine character and government, and the character and condition of man; and that there are obvious analogies between the verbal and the material revelations.

The reader who looks over the table of contents only to select a chapter, would most likely turn to the sixth, on the advantages which the material revelation has over the verbal. And as the book has put us into a benevolent and happy mood, we will give it entire.

"The material revelation is cognizable to the senses; but the things which are of the highest consequence to man, because eternal, are invisible. This, to a perfect mind, would be no evil, because truth, whether visible or not, present or future, would operate to its proportionate value. But 'the entrance of sin' raised the temporary value of matter above mind; and, in so doing, it made the region of sense more influential than that of spirit. The fields are visible; and, to an undevout mind, the lessons they teach are more impressive than the music of heaven, or than the wails of the damned. The harvest is a present good; but the ultimate consequences of our character and conduct are removed to a distant time, and to an immaterial world. A leaf is an indisputable object; but a word may be confounded by critics. A plant appeals to every sense, and is neither liable to the sophist's art, nor to the sceptic's perversity; but a sentence may be mystified by learning, or injured by transcribers. A hand adapted to its duties is a mixed mass of physical and moral evidence, which none but the fool denies; but a book inay be doubted, a fact may be controverted, an allusion may be mistaken, a testimony may be forged. In nature all the objects may be examined, and all that belongs to it may be submitted to every possible test, it is handled by children, or analyzed by men; but in revelation nothing is visible except words, which are but the shadows of the vast thoughts that are only realized and seen, in their 'full stature,' in eternity.

"And the material revelation is universal. But we have seen that, with all the activity of letters, the zeal of the religious, and the circulatory aids of commerce, the verbal revelation is confined to a very small section of the human family. How few are the students who pore over its page! And even in that partial use of the verbal revelation, what difficulties present themselves from the three thousand and fifteen dialects of this many-tongued earth! How few scholars ever become competent to translate! How few translations merit the entire confidence of the illiterate! How various the customs of countries! How peculiar their superstitions! How idiosyncratic their institutions! How obscure their histories! How different the national passions! Marked is their natural history, and Individualized is their commerce. And yet these must be all known so far as they relate to Judea; or the verbal revelation, which contains at least twenty thousand allusions to such subJects, must be, just so far as ignorance prevails, a 'sealed up fountain.' Now, the material revelation has no such obstacks or defects. Its sense depends on no conjugation of a verb, on no inflections of a noun, neither on idiomatical anomalies, nor rhythmic laws; nor is it modified by accents or prosody. But nature appeals with the same form, and discourses in the same language, to a million different minds; yet she establishes in each the same facts, and might excite in all the same influences. Besides, the sameness and propriety of nature are constant advantages. Lebanon bears not the Iceland moss; nor are those vegetable inns for the desert-pilgrim, the cow and water plants, found in Ireland. The Dead Sea never exhibits an awful choir of water-spouts, dancing to the thunder, and sucking up, with their flood-drinking mouths, its putrid and tideless waves; nor does the Pacific, where such wonders occur,

proach of animal or vegetable life. England has not the volcanoes of Owhyhee; nor France the boiling fountains of Hecla. Scotland boasts its mountains and its lakes; while Switzerland possesses avalanches of eternal snow, which sometimes fall in mountain masses, with a silent dreadfulness, at the mere vibrations of the human voice, the fairy tread of the curling mist, or from the impulse of the passing eagle's wing. All the pages of the material revelation, like those of the verbal, are various; but they are filled with fact, are simple and sublime. Where is the land undecked with Divine goodness? Where the hill which is not crowned with a wood, if not inlaid with ores, or beautified by dancing streams? Whose eye roams far for an interesting natural page? Who makes the complaint that nature's lessons are few, that her colours are faint? Ah! none: 'Her lines are gone out into all the earth, and her words unto the end of the world; and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.' Nature is all instruction, all authority, all impression; whether you climb to the ragged horns of the Cordilleras, grope into their caverns, where no other beams of light have struck since the deluge than those from the jaguar's eyes, or from the awful pupils of the guacharoe; or whether, from the centre of the earth, you stray to its poles, where animal and vegetable life mainly exist in extremes.-monsters of power and ferocity, with moss and shrubs that stoop beneath the snow.

"The material revelation is also unaffected by any of the changes which, by continually altering society, are modifying its literature. No Vandal hordes can blot out its inscriptions or burn its library; the middle ages stifle not its tuitions nor confound its tones. No loss is here sustained by the change of languages; nor have we to study the opinions of men half a life before we are supposed competent to explain its facts, or elucidate its examples. Not the critic's spleen nor the satirist's pun affect it. After Europe has changed its language ten times, the terms of the material revelation are unaltered. Does Africa jabber in a thousand ruleless languages? Does Asia forsake her venerable tongues? Is America, the modern Babel, forming a new race of languages from the refuse of the old families? Nature changes not hers; she owns no authority, she suffers no provincialism in her universal speech. The larks now carol the same song, and in the same key, as when Adam first turned his enraptured ear to catch the moral. The owl first hooted in B flat, and it still loves the key, and screams through no other octaves. In the same key has ever ticked the death-watch; while all the three-noted chirps of the cricket have ever been in B since Tubalcain first heard them in his smithy, or the Israelites in their ash-ovens. Never has the buz of the gnat risen above the second A; nor that of the house-fly's wing sunk below the first F. Sound had at first the same connexion with colour as it has now; and the right angle of light's incidence might as much produce a sound on the first turrets of Cain's city, as it is now said to do on one of the pyramids. The tulip, in its first bloom in Noah's garden, emitted heat four and a half degrees above the atmosphere, as it does at the present day. The stormy petrel as much delighted to sport among the first billows which the Indian ocean ever raised as it does now. In the first migration of birds they passed from north to south, and fled over the narrowest parts of the seas, as they will this autumn. The cuckoo and the nightingale first began their song together, analogous to the beginning of our April, in the days of Nimrod. Birds that lived on flies laid blueish eggs in the days of Joseph, as they will two thousand years hence, if the sun should not fall from his throne, or the earth not break her harness from the planetary car. The first bird that was caged oftener sung in adagio than in its natural spirit, as it does in the parlour of my fair friend, who was a zealot for the liberation of the slaves, and yet keeps two of these charming creatures in a square of one foot, though freedom and space are to them more essential than to man. Corals have ever grown edgeways to the ocean-stream. Eight millions two hundred and eighty thousand animalcule could as well live in a drop of water in the days of Seth as in ours. All flying insects had on their coats of mail in the days of Japhet, over which have ever waved plumes of more gaudy feathers than the peacock ever dropped. The bees that afforded Eve her first honey made their combs hexagonal; and the first house-fly produced twenty million eighty thousand three hundred and twenty eggs in one year, as she does at present. The first jump of the first flea was two hundred times its own length, as it was the last summer. That concubinal sinner, the ursine sloth, who scorns at all the anathemas against polygamy, kept ten or twelve wives before Moses was born, as he will when we are forgotten. There was iron enough in the blood of the first forty two men to make a ploughshare, as there is to-day, from whatever country or men you select. The lungs of Abel contained a coil of vital matter one hundred and fifty feet square, as mine; and the first inspiration of Adam consumed seventeen cubic inches of air, as do those of every adult reader. The rat and the robin followed the footsteps of Noah, as they do ours. But why enlarge? Has nature's pendulum ever altered its strokes? Does some seraph come occasionally to earth to lower its screw, and diminish its motion? Or does the almighty Wisdom ever shorten its fall, to increase the activity! Are not these features of eternal regularity commendatory of the material revelation ?"-Pp. 54-58.

The style and manner of the author often remind us of Sir T. Browne. But on these and certain other particulars we shall reserve ourselves for another "Miscellany;" for as the book is by no means an ordinary production, we cannot dismiss it in an ordinary manner. By way of whetting the appetite of the reader for the next repast, let him take the following specimens of the manner in which the material revelation might be explained. Class I., quadrupeds:

"The Zebra teaches that the quality of the skin too often settles the fortune, if not the value, of a person. A zebra is an ass, with a more beautiful skin, but not half so useful.

"Illustration. How commonly the female part of the world depend entirely for their fortune on this quality! Many a playgirl has been raised to the peerage, and some women have become queens, merely because they had those great virtues, a fine skin, form, and voice!

"The Bull teaches that one bad quality often renders many good ones useless. The uncertainty of the bull's temper makes his strength and surefootedness of little use in husbandry.

Illustr. A servant may be quick, clever, polite, industrious, and careful; but if a liar, all the other virtues are nearly useless.

"The Ouran Outang teaches that the form of man, without his mind, is of little worth. This animal is the wild man of the woods.

"Illustr. What a proof of a disordered world, that the mere animal form of man, instead of his qualities, should often rule his destiny! In the camp, in the affairs of love, and in the service of the rich, the man who bears the same relation to others as the ouran-outang does to the monkey, mostly fares the best.

"Swine teach that no mere cultivation will refine some natures; clean the swine, and feed it how you will, it prefers the puddle and the mire to the finest room!

"Illustr.-I knew a gentleman who loved a poor girl, educated her expensively with great care, and then married her; and when he had done so she vowed that she loved his servant-boy more than the master, who was not an ugly but a well-bred gentleman.

"The Bear teaches that many do little good till they are dead as the bear is chiefly valuable for its skin, hams, and grease.

"Illustr. Of this class are misers, the vicious, tyrants, &c. William Law died worth £70,000, but while he lived he gave nothing away, left his poor relations to pine for bread, and by his will devoted his property to a public institution.

"The Rhinoceros teaches that nothing is so well defended but it may be somewhere injured; even this animal may be wounded in the joints.

"Illustr. There is no mind, however fortified, which has not its sore part. A philosopher will bear you to gibe him with his poverty or dress; but-sneer at his judgment!

"The Ferret teaches that one evil is often employed to overcome another. We use the ferret, itself a vicious animal, to destroy the rat.

"Illustr. We employ medicine, itself disagreeable, to remove pain; labour to prevent want; or the army to check the operation of abused physical force.

"The Ichneumon teaches that little persons may prevent great evils by crushing them in time. The ichneumon destroys alligator-eggs!

"Illustr. The boor who mends the sea-dikes in Holland, saves it from an inundation; or the schoolmaster who checks the ambition of his pupil, saves the world from a tyrant.

"The Camelopard teaches that superiority has always some disadvantage equal to it. The camelopard has the beauty of the deer, the camel's neck, and is the tallest quadruped; but it is timid, defenceless, and slow.

"Illustr. The great have more wealth, but less freedom than the poor. They live in palaces, but they always move with the ceremonial chain.

"The Sloth teaches that the peculiarities of our nature are often mistaken for vices or virtues, though both must be voluntary. The sloth is so called from its supposed indolence, though its motion is to it happiness, and necessary to its being.

"Illustr.-When I was a boy, I saw many abused for their dulness and want of spirit; and my friend is lauded for his intellect, which is no more a virtue than that dulness was a vice.

We must quote a few paragraphs relative to birds.

"The Swan teaches that every thing is beautiful in its proper element. On land the swan is the most awkward, in water the most graceful of all birds.

"Illustr. A ploughman would not be more awkward at court than a peer at plough, or in the smithy. What would a countess do in the kitchen or the mill?

"The stork teaches that many virtuous people are taciturn. The stork neither sings, talks, nor hoots; but it carries its wornout parents on its wings!

"Illustr.-Persons who say the least are often both wise and devout. Two of our most popular authors, one male and the other female, who recently died, were taciturn.

"The Ostrich teaches that the least important points about

us are often the most valued; as, the tail feathers of the ostrich, the skin of woman, the titles of men, &c.

"Illustr. One of my acquaintance boasts, unceasingly, that he is descended from one of the freebooting esquires of William the Conqueror, and would rather be praised for that than for kindness!

"The Swallow teaches that there is a very great art in knowing one's time, and a great virtue in being punctual to it. The swallow never omits to come at the approach of summer. "Illustr.

There is a tide in the affairs of men,

Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.'

We may be very diligent and clever, but if at the wrong time, it

will be of little use.

"The Linnet teaches that we are not to judge of abilities from mere external appearance. Who would think that such a plain bird as the linnet could sing so well?

"Illustr.-If judgment had gone by appearance, nearly the whole race of genius would have been proscribed.

"The Goose teaches that there is a great difference between our real and our imaginary height. The goose stoops in passing under an archway six feet high, lest its head should strike against the top.

"Illustr. Our imaginary height is fixed by ourselves. Our real stature is the average between the opinions of our friends and enemies.

"The Cuckoo teaches that many persons will work for the public, and leave their family to starve; as while the cuckoo sings, it abandons its young.

"Illustr. How many of our crispin politicians and beershop statesmen do this daily!

"The Woodpecker teaches that as much as possible we should economize our labour. The woodpecker never bores through the bark till it knows that insects are beneath it.

"Illustr. We should always look at the probable results of our labour before we perform it.

"The Ruff teaches that, in the animal world, the feinales are the least showy; in the human world they are the most so. "Illustr. This is, however, only true in civilized society, and chiefly in those countries indebted to Christianity.

"The Spoonbill teaches that the mouth is made to suit the meat. What would the sparrow and the spoonbill do with exchanged beaks?

"Illustr. This is one of the many arguments in favour of the existence and goodness of God, which the material Revelation furnishes.

"The Duck teaches with what powers God can endow the meanest creatures; that, out of the garbage which the duck eats, its stomach should extract such fine flesh.

"Illustr. The capabilities of matter, therefore, depend on what God determines that matter should be. He could make a porous stone as musical as the harp.

"The Cock teaches that nature made clocks before man. Formerly, the divisions of the night were only known by the cock crowing.

"Illustr. In the poor and rural districts the labouring men will acquire great accuracy in finding out the hour of the day from the length of the shadows, or from the habits of animals. "The Lark teaches that the nearer we rise to heaven, the more sweetly we should sing; as the lark sings the best when it ascends towards the skies.

"Illustr. An advance in religious character should be marked by an increased sweetness and harmony of dispositions, which are the music of the mind.

"The Redbreast teaches that we should be cheerful in the worst times, as there is no winter, however severe, in which the redbreast does not sing.

"Illustr.-Cheerfulness in adversity breaks the fall of sorrow's wave.' Mons. Ducrow escaped unhurt from the Bastille, after a confinement of fourteen years, because he endured it cheerfully.

"The Nightingale teaches that remarkable persons must expect that many fictions will be told about them; as it was long said, the nightingale sang the best when pierced by a thorn! "Illustr. This is one of the fees which fame ever exacts from the distinguished.

"The Eagle teaches that great minds are not much formed for companionship. It is a rare thing to see a pair of eagles; and no one ever saw the eagle and the blackbird together!

Illustr.--Who ever saw a flock of eagles? But who has not seen a flock of geese? I do not know that either Milton or Locke had an intimate friend.'

"The Jackdaw teaches that some minds see no interest in many objects until they have ceased to possess it in the estimation of others. The jackdaw is fond of old towers, steeples, and buildings.

"Illustr. Of this class are the antiquaries, who see little charm in a building until it is old; and some poets, who are sooner inspired by desolation and ruins, than by life and its wondrous arts.

"The Crow teaches that a bad taste is often very acute. Crows smell carrion at a great distance.

"Illustr.-Neither acuteness nor taste is always the property of good men. Paine was a powerful writer, but a drunkard; and Shelley was remarkable for his taste and his infidelity."

I SING the spring :

THE COMING SPRING.

"The spring, the spring, the beautiful spring."

Whose heart does not leap up at the sound? It renews one's youth like the eagle's. It makes one feel all over wings; requiring weights and policemen, like the monster balloon, to keep one down. But the allusion reminds me of the murky town. I live in the country: what will the poor townites say to that? I know what they ought to say and to do; let them acknowledge my superiority, and take off their hats, and stand while I address them. Talk of classification! what division of the human race so simple, natural, and comprehensive, as that which distributes it into city-dwellers and country-dwellers? Do you require proof? "God made the country, and man made the town:"-there the point is settled. Even you poor town-dwellers have your anticipations of the coming spring-anticipations bright as a farthing rush-light in a fog; you expect your two or three stinted and imprisoned trees will find out, somehow or other, that the season of spring is at hand, and will try to look green. Hope is the evergreen, the perpetual spring of the heart-and you hope to hear your cockney sparrows give two chirps instead of one, and to see them fly by your windows with bits of string, in default of hay and straw; and you hope your poor coffined mignonette will smell as sweet "as can be expected;" and that your two or three sickly shrubs-which, though not dead, are decently buried-will still hold up their heads. And even the poor Esquimaux, at Wapping and thereabouts with their arctic winter and polar fogs are no doubt beginning to hope; not that they expect to see more summer for the present, but a little less fog.

Oh! who does not love the country? It is a passion born with all; an element of our common nature, infused at the creation of the kind; a flame that lives on unextinguished even amidst the brick-and-mortar influence of town

"Where nothing feeds it; neither business, crowds,
Nor habits of luxurious city-life,
Whatever else they smother of true worth
lu human bosoms, quench it, nor abate.
The villas with which London stands begirt,
Like a swarth Indian, with his belt of beads,
Prove it. A breath. of unadulterated air,
The glimpse of a green pasture, how they cheer
The citizen, and brace his languid frame!
Even in the stifling bosom of the town,
A garden, in which nothing thrives, has charms
That soothe the rich possessor; much consoled
That here and there some sprigs of mournful mint,
Of nightshade, or valerian, grace the well
He cultivates. These serve him with a hint
That nature lives."

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passionless poetry, "we are here among the vast and noble scenes of nature; we are there among the pitiful shifts of policy: we work here in the light and open ways of the Divine bounty; we grope there in the dark and confused labyrinths of human malice: our senses are here feasted with the clear and genuine taste of their objects, which are all sophisticated there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries: here is harmless and cheap plenty; there guilty and expensive luxury."

With

But what has this to do with the coming spring? What? why, is it not very introductory? and would you rush into the presence of such a subject without a formal introduction? this preparation, then, we proceed. And, first, has it never struck you as a thing to be wondered at, that of the five hundred and one essays, odes, sonnets, and verses written last year on the four seasons, just five hundred were devoted to them while current, or else celebrated their glories when they had passed away; and that only the odd one (and that a very odd one indeed, of which the least said the better,) looked forwards, and antedated the object of its regard? I propose to add another.

I have just been strolling abroad to refresh my vernal associations. It is true the landscape still wears a bald and wintery aspect; and a month, at least, must yet elapse before it will assume a much lovelier hue. But I need not wait till then, thought I, in order to enjoy a foretaste. The spring is even now invisibly at work in ten thousand times ten thousand ways. Nature, at this moment, is a vast laboratory, in which all her vital elements and divine essences are in process. The omnific word has gone forth," Let the face of the earth be renewed," and all the agents of the material universe (and many of the spiritual too, for aught we know) are busily obeying the fiat. Below the brown surface of that ploughed land there lives, and wakes, and works a sleepless principle, which is silently but irresistibly converting these clods into food, and life, and beauty. That bank is covered, at present, with nothing but grass, but he who has an ear to hear will hear, if he bends and listens, a sweet whispering below, between a violet, a daisy, and a wild primrose, about an annual visit which they have lately received, and which has put them all in the highest spirits. That old hawthorn looks dead, but not he! spring has touched his remotest and minutest fibres; his juices are already ascending, and every thing within him is saying-" only wait a little, and you shall see me one white impurpled shower of fragrant blossoms." In all her myriad ways Nature is abroad, reviving her works, shedding her perfumes, mingling her colours, breathing on her seeds, and calling her beautiful children to

G

life. The very air owns it, and is balmy; the soil feels it, and inhales the incense of gratitude; that cloud, so different from the clouds of winter, so soft and wreathy, and like the dew-filled fleece of Gideon, comes spring-loaded from the great Giver-one of the wishes of nature fulfilled. Only stand still, and listen; all is silence, the silence of hope, of assured expectation. The very birds, for the moment, are hushed; but it is only the hush of pleasing suspense; let the signal be given, and out they will burst into a glorious chorus. Did you note that slight rustle among the branches? was it not soft as the folding of angel-wings? It was nature breathing over her beauties.

But I need not tax imagination in order to see the spring. Already its outward and visible signs are every where around me. Yesterday morning, on visiting my garden, I descried that welcome messenger of spring, the galanthus nivalis, or snowdrop. There it lay "beneath its white coverlid, so pure and pale, so true an emblem of hope, and trust, and confidence, that it might teach a lesson to the desponding, and show the useless and inactive how invaluable are

che stirrings of that energy that can work out its purpose in secret, and under oppression, and be ready in the fulness of time to make that purpose manifest and complete." A little further on, a group of hepaticas smiled to receive me; the fringed star of Bethlehem and the spring bulbocodium were trembling with delight-a crocus was looking like a whole spring in itself-a primrose spoke to the imagination of thatched cottages, and sloping banks, and woody dells, and happy children and a violet, without holding up its head, spoke to the heart of modest retiring beauty, and the fragrance of virtue. Going forth again, in the open weather of the evening, I was greeted with other harbingers of spring-less lovely to the eye, indeed, than those which I have named, but far from unacceptable to the lover of nature-the grey slug, and the homely earthworm, and the bat, just awoke from its winter's sleep.

Before I left home this morning for my walk, a redbreast, which I have fed through the cold weather, came to my window, sang as merrily as a robin can-thanked me for all past favours

But

and said, as plainly as he could, that he was about to look out for a "better half." A tomtit and chaffinch were by and heard him, and signified that so good an example deserved to be followed. As to the sparrows, they have all paired, and are furnishing their houses. what large bird is that winging its way on high, as if from the sea-coast? surely it is the curlew; then he is retiring from his winter haunt to his inland breeding-place. And, hark! the lyric sky-lark is aloft at heaven's gates, raining down a shower of music to the earth; and there bursts forth, the song-thrush, singing "as if he would never grow old," and as if the six pure scarlet drops in his body were elixir vitæ; and there darts by a bee, humming as merrily as if all the world were a hive, or every thing in it flowers and honey.

Man of the city! dost thou not almost wish for a country calenture, that thou mightest taste the spring, if only by the force of a diseased imagination? Wilt thou not treat thy poor wheezing lungs with a little country air? Dost thou not long for "the key of the fields?" Wouldst thou not give thy freedom of the city to be made free of the green paths,

"The haunts of deer, And sheep-walks populous with bleating lambs; And lanes, in which the primrose ere her time Peeps through the moss that clothes the hawthorn root?"

Will thy street-music compare with that music of the flock? or thy dancing dogs with the joyous gambols of those new-yeaned lambs? Hear what Milton saith on the subject: "In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth." Dost thou not feel inclined to go forth at once? Is not the spring strong upon thee, and the sun shining in upon thy heart? Lift up thy voice, then, and sing of "the coming spring :"

"Hail, bounteous spring, thou dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with one early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long."

SITTINGS FOR MY PORTRAIT.

FIRST SITTING.

AFTER the usual number of friendly contests between the powers of persuasion on the one side, and the less vigorous and persevering efforts of doubt, hesitation, and objection on the other, I sat down quietly to suffer or to enjoy, as it may be variously interpreted, the painful pleasure of having my portrait taken. Aware (for it was

not the first time of my being introduced to a similar Elysium) that it was important to the artist to feel myself unconstrained and at ease, that I might not be exhibited on the mimic canvass in a stiff and formal attitude; convinced, also, that as he was to paint the exterior, not the mind, which might therefore range wherever it

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