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

stant I was supported in my remark by a very consequential voice from the top of the table, which pronounced that salmon was in all its glory.

These are affronts passed upon Nature's prime, which I cannot with any patience endure; and as the Spring is always personified, in my fancy, under the form of a beautiful female, breathing perfumes, and adorned with garlands, I feel all that gallantry and zeal in her behalf, which it is natural to be inspired with in the cause of the sex. Accordingly I am sure to be filled with indignation, when I see her the object of gross and indelicate regards, and viewed only as the source of sensual gratifications. I am impatient to go where I shall behold her treated with her due honours, and where she speaks not to sense and appetite, but to the understanding and to the heart.

In the mean time I cannot help regretting that our English gentry, by the present modes of living, are cut off from all connection with the country at this delightful time, and really see little more of it than what languishes in their flower-pots, or travels on the backs of chimney-sweepers. Any thing attracts more than rural objects and rural contemplations : and the barren sea receives them as soon as the town is too hot to hold them, or pronounced so by the laws of fashionable feeling. I tremble for the fate of the English garden, that pride of our nation, in such inauspicious times, unless, while their owners are salting themselves at Weymouth and Brighthelmstone, they could put their country-seats in a pickle that could preserve them. The sea could never with more propriety be said to be gaining upon the land, than at the present moment; nor does she in this instance restore what she takes, with the same punctuality with which she is said on the coast to make

good in one place, what she has wrested from us in another; indeed it would not be easy to make us compensation for these robberies which she commits in the very heart of our country. That she pillages our forests, I can see with patience; she is even welcome now and then to a morsel of barren land on the coast; but I never can bear that she should rob our gardens of their due care and cultivation, till I am satisfied that in this particular also she makes us a complete public reparation.

I shall finish this day's entertainment with a translation of some remarks which I find in Baron Von Lowhen's Analysis of Nobility, and which I think assist the objects of this paper. 66 It will not be disparaging the nobility, to recommend agriculture to them in all its branches. The English philosopher, whose thoughts on education I have quoted, among other objects of a young person's study, lays considerable stress on the advantage of learning some manual trade; which also made a part of the plan of Charles the Great in the education of his children, The benefits flowing from agriculture are so great, that an attention to this art will supply the want of more splendid talents to the community. There is certainly no part of natural philosophy of equal importance with agriculture and a nobleman merits as much the esteem of his country for benefiting it through this channel, as through that of war or negotiation: the use of such talents results from the depravity of mankind; but both the origin and objects of agriculture are innocent and virtuous. fection of a nobleman's character consists in the union of these qualities; so that, while by his civil and military talents he is promoting the honour, by his agricultural skill he may be improving the estate of his family. Among the Romans, Cato the Censor

The per

wrote treatises upon agriculture, and the Emperor Dioclesian resigned for it the charms of sovereignty. Cyrus the Great made it a mark of his particular favour to admit a subject into his little orchard which he had cultivated with his own hands. We read in the historical relations of China, that there is a public ceremony of opening the grounds, at which the emperor and other Indian monarchs assist every year; and the kings of the ancient Persians mixed with the husbandmen at an annual feast. We are also told, that every year the farmer who has turned his lands to the best account, is made by the emperor of China a mandarin of the eighth order. The heroic prince of Condé frequently made agriculture the amusement of his leisure; and I myself, when in England, saw the earl of Peterborough, who had commanded the British forces, stripped to his waistcoat, with his spade in his hand, and hard at work with his gardeners.'