call of a stranger ?-Ay, or you will not go at all; for to many of ye Nature is a greater stranger still, and yet she wafts you a perfumed billet, which she dispatches by the breeze; she has decorated her festive halls with boughs and garlands, painted the floor where we are to dance with living buttercups and daisies; and hark! her feathered orchestra has already struck up its music, for I can distinguish the notes. of the blackbird and the thrush. Into such oblivion has the celebration of May fallen of late years, that you know not, perchance, the glories and eulogies with which it has been hailed. Old Izaak Walton re

cords a saying of his friend Sir Henry Wootton, that he would rather live ten May months than forty Decembers-a sentiment to which you shall gladly subscribe before we part. Listen to the song of Milton :"Hail, bounteous May! that 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 thy early song,

And welcome thee, and wish thee long !"

And mark into what exclamations an Italian poet 'bursts in his passionate worship of the Spring:

"O dolce primavera-o fior' novelli,

O aure, o arboscelli-o fresche erbette,
O piagge benedette-o colli, o monti,
O valli, o fiumi, o fonti-o verde rivi,
Palme, lauri, e olivi-edere e mirti;
O gloriosi spirti de gli boschi ;
O Eco, o antri foschi-o chiare limfe,
O faretrate Ninfeo agresti Pani,
O Satiri e Silvani-o Fauni e Driadi,

Naiadi ed Amadriadi-o Semidee,
Oreadi e Napee,-or siete sole.

SANNAZZARO.

Which Leigh Hunt has thus happily translated, preserving the same recurrence of rhime in the middle of the line :

"O thou delicious Spring-O ye new flowers,

O airs, O youngling bowers-fresh thickening grass,
And plains beneath Heaven's face-O hills and mountains,
Valleys, and streams, and fountains-banks of green,
Myrtles and palms serene, ivies and bays;
And ye who warm'd old lays, spirits o' the woods,
Echoes, and solitudes, and lakes of light:
O quiver'd Virgins bright, Pans rustical,
Satyrs and Sylvans all, Dryads, and ye
That up the mountains be; and ye beneath
In meadow or flowery heath,-ye are alone!"*

Shame on us, sluggards of the South! Although the Scottish breezes have hardly yet been warmed by the sun, and the panting buds and blossoms have scarcely burst their cerements, the country-folks have been out by moon-light waiting the arrival of Maymorning, and singing, in the silent woods, Cunningham's May-eve, or Kate of Aberdeen.

"The silver moon's enamour'd beam
Steals softly through the night,
To wanton with the winding stream,
And kiss reflected light.

"To beds of state go, balmy Sleep!

('Tis where you've seldom been,) May's vigil while the shepherds keep

With Kate of Aberdeen." &c. &c.

*See an admirable paper in the Indicator, No. 29.

Nay, if ye will not obey my summons, I shall class ye with the superannuated, to whom a contemporary writer refers in his description of Spring:

"O how delightful is the bursting spring,

When the warm blood leaps nimbly through the veins,
And with the budding forth and blossoming

Of fields and groves, methinks the soul attains
Fresh life and greenness, wantons in the breeze,
Sings with the birds, and with the waving trees
Dances in unison. The spring-time gushes
In us as in the lusty grass and bushes;

And the same hand that o'er the meadow showers
King-cups and daisies, daffodils and pansies,
Garlands the human heart with all the flowers
Of love, hope, rapture, and poetic fancies.
If, when all nature feels this pregnant thrilling,
To its delicious promptings thou art mute,
Be sure that age begins, with touches chilling,

To freeze thy sap and wither up thy root."

Let those who are willing to enrol themselves in this class keep their May-day in London; for even in its murkiest precincts the penetrating voice of nature is heard and answered on that auspicious morn, with ghastly smiles and a lugubrious hilarity. To what do its festivities amount? This is the solitary jubilee of those wretched boys who climb up our dark suffocating chimneys at the risk of limb and life; whose ribbons and tinsel, and forced unnatural gambols, do but impress upon our minds, with a more painful intensity, their ordinary state of privation, suffering, and squalor. Reader! compare these rejoicings, and their heart-rending associations, with the extracts you have been perusing, and the genial, exhilarating, and

ennobling impressions with which they spontaneously connect themselves; and if (having the power to escape) you are still found within the bills of mortality, I can only say you have no right to be there, for you must be more or less than a mortal.

But what will Dr. Killjoy say? What will the world think, if a man of my religious character is seen? O, Sir, I cry your mercy. You are, perhaps, one of the saints,—one of those who make religion a matter of public form and observance between man and man, rather than a governing principle, or silent communion between your own heart and its Creator. You have no idea of devotion, except in the House of God; and give me leave to add, that even there you have very little notion, except of the House itself. You have converted the accessory into the principal; the stimulant of inspiration into the inspirer. Your spiritual conceptions are essentially material; your imagination is of brick and mortar, and has built up the type into the archetype; you know nothing of the Deity but by symbols. Has not your own poet Cowper declared that "God made the country, man the town?" and think you he is more likely to be found in a temple built by hands, than in the midst of his own glorious and imperishable works? Was this most beautiful earth and its magnificent canopy made for brutes to gaze at? Was the sun set in a blaze, that it might light oxen and sheep to the pond; or the moon hung on high for dogs to howl at? Is no celestial aspiration, no pious enthusiasm to be awakened when we "look

through Nature up to Nature's God?" You may, for once, believe Shakspeare, when he assures you that there are

"Sermons in stones, books in the running brooks

And good in every thing."

Well, then, since you are inexorable, let me appeal to the grave-looking gentleman by your side, with a bill of lading in one hand, Lloyd's List in the other, and moving his lips in some deep calculation to himself.

Do you mean me, Sir? I would attend you with pleasure if I thought it would give me a good appetite for my dinner; but you must know that I cannot possibly be absent from 'Change.—I am quite aware of that;-but how do you mean to manage after your death? or do you imagine that the grim king will put up his scythe in its scabbard, and walk down stairs again, if you assure him that you are positively engaged to meet your broker at four o'clock? How you must envy the statue of Charles the Second, which keeps its happy station night and day, holidays and Sundays! Why, the pauper who scrapes the mud off the high road is less of a drudge than you, who are incessantly scraping up gold. His body is not half so much exposed to annoyance as your mind; and, when his day's labour is done, and his appetites satisfied, he falls asleep without thinking of the morrow ;-whereas your head is perpetually at work; you can hardly sleep from the fear of losing what you have got; and so far from your cravings being appeased by plenty, you are everlastingly hungering and thirsting for more.