THE revival of nature in Spring is itself, it presents the beautiful object of his affections, in the most charming. period of her existence, arrayed in all the freshness and the purity of youth; while, to the practical naturalist, it unfolds the minuter phenomena of her existence, which, hived up in such delightful books as that of White's "Selborne," shed such a delicious savour of the country around the winter's fire. Need we speak of the prospect of freedom and vigour which it holds out to the feeble and the invalid, and the hope of exchanging the monotony of the sick room for the infinite variety of the hill-side, the valley, or the shore? It is the longed-for studio of the artistthe silent academe of the student-the trysting-time of the lover-the chosen school for meditation-and the most abundant source of inspiration to the poet, and of instruction, as well as of illustration, to the moralist. It is thus that the sacred books of the Old Testament, written by men who, in an immeasurably high degree, united in their own persons the grave vocation of the teacher, and the melodious organisation of the minstrel, abound with such exquisite and touching allusions to the outward beauty of this season, and the inward lessons which it inculcates. Take, for instance, the celebrated mystical and allegorical invitation in the second chapter of the Song of Solomon, which, as it were, contains within itself the essence of all that has ever been said or sung upon the same subject, and which, by the transcendant beauty of its language and allunem sions, shares in the perpetual welcome egions which the season it so exquisitely denature scribes receives, and makes the descrip 2 E tion be read with the same delight upon its last repetition as at its first: "Behold, my beloved speaketh to me: arise, make haste, my love, my dove, my beautiful one, and come, for winter is now past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers have appeared in our land, the time of pruning is come; the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig-tree hath put forth her green figs; the vines in flower yield their sweet smell. Arise, my love, my beautiful one, and come." But it is the Christian religion that, in an especial manner, has availed itself of the wonderful working of Nature at this season, for the illustration of one of its most peculiar doctrines and consolatory truths-namely, the resurrection of the dead. Analogies seldom square at every side with the thing compared; but few copies so nearly resemble their prototypes as the one under consideration. We have here, life out of death; we have order out of confusion; we have animation out of corruption; and organisation out of apparent annihilation. The seed rots before it revives, and the flower passes from before our eyes, and lies buried for a while beneath the ground, before it re-appears at the call of Spring "Another, yet the same." Before we proceed to describe to the best of our humble ability, the revival of Nature, under this consoling aspect, let us devote a few simple lines to one of the most ordinary sorrows of our lives a sorrow that instinctively clings to the doctrine of the resurrection as its especial recompense, and which is its best protection against the mutterings of rebellion, and the temptation of despair. DOLORES. BY DENIS FLORENCE M'CARTHY. The moon of my soul is dark, Dolores, The pulse of my heart is still, Dolores- But the moon shall revisit my soul, Dolores, The revival of the plant has been frequently used to typify the resurrection of the body, but the greater analogy has never been applied, as far as we can recollect, as an illustration of the lesser. It is this inversion of the idea that has suggested to us the following lines, which might easily be expressed with more felicity, and expanded to a much greater length, at the risk, however, of changing a congenial and apt comparison into a frigid conceit: II. The frozen tear-drops of despair, III. Oh! what a wave of gladsome sound, IV. Up from their graves the dead arise, V. And, lo! even like that mightiest one, So comes God's greatest work, the Sun, VI. The virgin snowdrop bends its head, VII. The parent stem reclasps once more, Great Nature's heart no longer grieves. VIII. And now the judgment hour arrives, And now their final doom they know ; No dreadful doom is theirs, whose birth Was not more stainless than their lives; 'Tis goodness calls them from the earth, And mercy tells them where to go. IX. Some of them fly with glad accord, To worship with their fragrant breath, X. Oh let the simple fancy be, Grant us, O Lord! when from the sod, But the Angel of the Spring, whom we have here made the Angel of the Resurrection, is not the only celestial bearer of good tidings that it pleases the Almighty ruler of the world to send to it during its annual course. He is but one of four-three of whom ever stand before the throne of God, ready to replace in turn their absent brother as he ascends and gives in his report of his stewardship for the three months that the earth has been confided to his charge. These are, of course, the Seasons. The ancients, with their beautiful and plastic imaginations, idealised and moulded them into divinities, as indeed they did most things that contributed to the harmony and beauty of the world, and even human nature itself, notwithstanding its weakness and its deformities, because of the inherent heroism and loveliness that lay within it. Thus, there were spirits of the winds and of the waters-the sun and the planets had their protecting gods, or were deified themselves, and the vintage and the harvest-time were ushered in by their tutelary divinities. Even abstract ideas took a substantial shape before their eyes, and STRENGTH struggled bodily with the Nemean lion, while BEAUTY rose with the Venus of the ocean, from that foam that merely hardened and became durable in the marble of Phidias. This imaginative mythology has long since disappeared, and been replaced by truer and no less beautiful notions of the extent of invi sible spiritual influences affecting our selves at least. The pious belief entertained by so vast a portion of the Christian world, that each human soul at its entrance into this life is specially entrusted to the care of a Guardian Angel, presents such a touching picture of solicitude on the part of our common Father, and connects the visible and invisible worlds together by such an affecting link, that, leaving aside altogether the grounds on which it is built, and looking at it merely in its abstract beauty, surpasses anything that poetry has ever conceived, or Paganism adored. The old spiritual machinery of the universe, as we see it in the Greek poets, and in the kindred English pages of the Greek-souled Shelley (in his "Prometheus") was, however, extremely beautiful, and, notwithstanding all its errors, was orthodoxy itself compared with the unspiritual tendencies of modern materialism, which gives intelligence and prescience to the very sod under our feet, which is either courageously denied or niggardly allowed to the great First Cause himself. Returning then to our notions of the four angels, we beg to present to our readers a little song or hymn in honour of the first. As he is the youngest and fairest of his brethren, and, as according to our present idea, he is the actual dispenser of life and joy, without any reference to bygone suffering and death, we shall adopt a lighter and more lyrical measure than would be appropriate for the solemn considerations of the preceding poem : THE FIRST OF THE ANGELS. BY DENIS FLORENCE M'CARTHY. I. Hush! hush! through the azure expanse of the sky, II. Oh! how to describe what my rapt eyes descry!— For the blue of the sky is the blue of his eye; And the white clouds, whose whiteness the snow-flakes outvie, Are the luminous pinions on which he doth fly! III. And his garments of gold gleam at times like the pyre IV. And his voice, on whose accents the angels have hung- It comes on the balm-bearing breath of the breeze, VI. Like a swan to its young o'er the glass of a pond, VII. They waken-they start into life at a bound- VIII. There is life on the earth-there is calm on the sea, IX. There is love for the young-there is life for the old, X. God!-whose goodness and greatness we bless and adore- For a subject so frequently described as the Spring has been, it is singular in what a variety of new forms it can still present itself to the imagination of the poet, and thus lure his footsteps into hitherto unoccupied regions, which, by right of discovery, he may fairly claim as his own. Few of these ideal lands, "Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold," are utterly valueless; but their pro ductiveness and beauty vary, of course, in proportion to the skill and capacity with which they are cultivated. Some voyagers over the enchanted sea, indeed, merely enter the new idea on their charts, and content, perhaps, with but giving it a name which may typify its beauty and attract more energetic followers, they resign to them the harvest of glory and of gain that it may yield. Thus, in many instances, a more fortunate poetical Vespucio connects |