blessings of their country, and the applause of all good men.

Public spirit should be early implanted, as a principle of duty and benevolence: but beyond this, there is a love of our native land, which nature, or, to speak more properly, early associations have engrafted in all bosoms that are not actually depraved; and in many it is carried to excess : this excusable, not to say laudable sensibility, does not increase with civilization, but, on the contrary, prevails most in wild and mountainous regions, that seem to defy the approach of strangers, and reserve all their rude charms for the children of the soil.

Such is Switzerland, whose natives are proverbially attached to their rocks and glens; and such, though on a less magnificent scale, is Scotland. Her highland scenery seems as it were to scorn the inroads of civilization; and her lowland sons, though they admit, and cultivate in an eminent degree, all the social embellishments of life, still retain a degree of national fondness, not unfrequently, perhaps not always unjustly, termed prejudice; since it sometimes disposes them to fix the limits of all worth and praise, between the Orkney Isles and the border. But much more

frequently is it displayed in the assistance they render to one another in every exigence: family claims are observed by them to the most distant branches; but these are not necessary to ensure to a Scot the services of his countrymen whenever they are needful: this peculiarity is truly worthy of our imitation; and no liberal mind will depreciate so excellent a national feature because, like other human virtues, it sometimes borders on its kindred failing.

ESSAY XXI.

ON THE SPRING.

“Come, gentle Spring, etherial mildness come;
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veiled in a shower
Of shadowy roses, on our plains descend."

THOMSON.

OUR poets are indebted to the spring for much of their rural imagery; and the spring is, in return, scarcely less obliged to the poets. For their imagination has had much to do in adorning its picture, and, if we could divest our minds of their pastoral visions (belonging more properly to an Arcadian summer than to an English spring) this uncertain season would be, perhaps, less highly estimated. Happily for mankind, each season has its own delights, and all are enhanced by variety, and heightened by our consciousness of their short endurance; but the pleasures belonging to summer, to autumn, and to winter, are positive in their nature, and enjoyable independ

ently of contrast; whereas the delights of spring appear to have their source in a relative sort of enjoyment, produced by the change from winter, and the anticipation of summer. We hail with joy the earliest bud, because we know that buds will, in time, become leaves, and be followed by flowers and fruits. The snow-drop is welcomed as the forerunner of the rose; the transient sunbeam as the omen of short nights and genial days: and the frequent shower, by its promise of future verdure, atones for the interruption of actual and present enjoyment. This is particularly the case in our British climate, where the variable springs preclude regular amusement in the open air, and we are glad to prolong the social meetings of the winter evening until the ripening year renders the cloud less treacherous and the sunbeam less equivocal. The love of spring may be compared to the interest excited by an infant, in whose little features we read the promise of future beauty, and in whose first accents we endeavour to trace the progress of intellect. Occasional frowardness is but the characteristic of its early age, and the ready smile already atones for the frequent tear; it is the hope of maturity that renders the child, as well as the spring, interesting and delightful.

There is a bright hue over all we anticipate, which never dwells upon the object of our hopes when actually possessed. No pleasures are so lively as those brightened by the imagination, none so pure as those which flow from the heart.

Hence it is that the first mild breeze of spring conveys more lively gratification to the senses, and more grateful emotions to the soul, than will be found amid all the approaching pleasures, to the prospect of which it owes its power of conferring delight.