while Nature is busied in refreshing her works, and breathing new life and youth into the creation, we are in this metropolis only occupied about the progress of slaughter, and have no ears but for topics of calamity. Nobody talks now of the rose, or the lily, or the blossom, or the verdure: a new interest has succeeded, by which they are totally supplanted; and the odours of Spring are exchanged for smoke and powder. Her ethereal mildness, her balmy fragrance, and her rosy chaplets, will no longer be her favourite attributes; and it will be unclassical to represent her under any less formidable figure, than that of a frowning goddess, reposing on a cannon. She must adopt a crown of laurel, instead of her garlands of flowers; and instead of opening her buds, she must be occupied in opening her campaigns. Poetry too must give up many of the fine things which she has borrowed from the Spring, as well as many of the handsome things which she has said of her in return; and considering the threatening form under which she is viewed at present, the "EYEλXTE δε γαια πελώρη" of Hesiod will no longer apply to this season of the year.

In another view also this novel character in which the Spring appears, threatens very much to circumscribe the range of compliment, and to impoverish the fund of allusion and comparison, which supply us with eulogies on the female sex. Thus, when we ascribe to a lady the breath of Spring, unless her perfections be such as not to leave it in doubt, it may not be immediately understood whether we mean that breath of Spring which comes from her carnations or from her cannons, from her howitzers or from her hyacinths. As to myself, however, who have received such true delight from contemplating the Spring under her ancient form, I am determined

not to acknowledge her in her new character: I shall not follow her when she is transporting her artillery and baggage over dusty plains, where "fields, all iron, cast a gleaming brown;" but shall seek her through fields of cowslip and clover, and study to surprise her in those moments when she is sporting it with Zephyr and Flora " on a soft downy bank damask'd with flowers." I shall still persist in borrowing my allusions from her in my eulogies on the fair sex, and shall still come to her for patterns of sweetness and grace. I shall hope that the ladies will consider me with more than usual favour, on account of these my disinterested exertions in their cause; for their cause it certainly is, who have hitherto held all the seasons of the year under contribution to their praise; and who, when one province of compliment is invaded, may reasonably be apprehensive for them all.

"Galla, tibi totus sua munera dedicat annus:
Ver roseas malas et labra rubedine pingit;
Mille oculis ignes radiantibus imprimit æstas;
Autumnus matura sinu duo poma recondit;
Quod reliquum est aspergit hyems candore nivali."

Galla, to thee, the lavish year has given
All that its genial lap receives from Heaven:
The Spring thy rosy cheek with damask dyes,
And Summer suns shoot kindling from thy eyes;
Two apples Autumn hides within thy breast,

And Winter's purest snow has bleach'd the rest.

I consider too, that if the Spring should lose its ancient honours and attractions, I may possibly lose a part of the credit attached to one of my principal receipts for the moral cures I undertake to perform; I mean the cultivation of rural pleasures. Now this is a circumstance of great national weight, and only next in importance to that defalcation of compliment sustained in the female empire. A course of quiet

contemplation at this season of the year is my chief dependance in those chronic cases of the mind, where the mass of our reasoning is vitiated, and where the sources of enjoyment are corrupt. A little Spring physic is as wholesome for mental diseases, as for those of the body; and I know of no moral medicines of a more alterative efficacy, than those which operate by the gradual introduction of new sentiments and tastes. I generally recommend a Spring in preference to a Summer course, because the novelty and vivacity of its productions engage us to persevere in it with greater cheerfulness and constancy; and make it the properest to be balanced against the common amusements of a dissipated career.

But though, in this view of it, my prescription must be acknowledged to be excellent, in as much as, by giving us a sublimer relish of life, it discredits those pleasures which are at best unimproving and barren, yet, as a specific against the melancholy passions, I consider it as deserving still greater praise. Pride, envy, and those choleric and gloomy feelings, which for the most part accompany poverty and disappointment, are softened and subdued in our minds, as soon as our ambition is directed to more obvions gratifications, and to more attainable objects. The inquiry to which nature invites us is so boundless, so various, and so inexhaustible a theme, that no man, who has ever engaged in it with spirit, has ever complained of weariness or satiety, looked back with regret on the objects which he has abandoned for it, or repined at the triumphs of the great and the fortunate, in the more envied situations of life.

It is a certain truth, that few things contribute more to calm the passions, and expand the heart, than this direction of our inquiries; it calms the passions, by disposing them to milder and more innocent

enjoyments; it expands the heart, by the infinity of new relations it unfolds, and the vaster views it affords of creative wisdom. By thus acquiring the habit of regarding things more in their relative places, and in their real colours, we learn to make a juster estimate of life, to set the proper price upon unsubstantial greatness, and to look around us (oculo irretorto) with resolute complacency, and with dignified composure.

"I care not, Fortune, what you me deny :
You cannot rob me of fair nature's grace;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Through which Aurora shows her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns by living stream at eve.”

But that which, perhaps more than all, recommends the silent lessons which the mind may receive through the eye, by a proper use of this season of the year, is the happy and wholesome mixture of gay and grave admonitions with which they are checkered. I could never look upon the progress of vegetation, and so complete a renewal of nature's graces, without a secret pensiveness, inspired by the reflection that the return of the daisy, and the regeneration of the rose, has brought me, with a sensible approach, one step nearer to old-age and the grave; that they meet me again, indeed, but not where they met me before;-not renovated as they are, not gathering fresh youth and vivacity; endued, perhaps, with less ability to enjoy them; perhaps deprived of some of those sharers in the satisfactions they conveyed, who were wont to endear them by a partnership of feeling.

It is true, that right over yonder hill the sun is rising again with his usual splendour; I recognise

the returning fragrance of this grove and this field; I see the little lambs in sprightly groups again covering the green slopes, and the furze again hanging out their golden baskets. But where is that bosom friend that stood with me upon this spot last Spring, and remarked with me the then returning glory of the sun, as he broke out from behind that same hill; that recognised with me the returning fragrance of this grove and this field, and contemplated with a corresponding gaiety of heart the little fleecy progeny sporting on the declivity of yonder hill, amidst the yellow bloom of the furze? Alas! the winter in the mean time has laid him in his grave, where his wormeaten body lies, without sense or motion, although the same objects which used to raise in him such high delight are come again with their former charms, though the fields smell as fresh as ever, and the same merry tribe are again skipping on the sides

of the mountains.

Hélas! hélas! ce beau Printemps,
Qui quelques jours à-peine dure,
Ne revient point pour les amans,
Comme il revient pour la nature.

At this season of the year, and cherishing, as I do, these ideas of the Spring and its advantages, I must needs be a little out of humour with the metropolis, where she is only regarded for her cabbages or her campaigns. Indeed I have cautiously abstained from introducing her as a subject at any houses where I visit, since the other day, when upon my observing, at a friend's table in the city, how great a feast was afforded to the curious and contemplative at this time of the year, a little gentleman with spectacles, at my right hand, agreed that now we might begin to expect news from the Continent; while at the same in