ke young lives pushing shyly out into the bustling world; when
the fruit-tree blossoms, pink and white, like village maidens in their
Sunday frocks, hide each whitewashed cottage in a cloud of fragile
splendor; and the cuckoo's note upon the breeze is wafted through the
woods! And summer, with its deep dark green and drowsy hum--when the
rain-drops whisper solemn secrets to the listening leaves and the
twilight lingers in the lanes! And autumn! ah, how sadly fair, with its
golden glow and the dying grandeur of its tinted woods--its blood-red
sunsets and its ghostly evening mists, with its busy murmur of reapers,
and its laden orchards, and the calling of the gleaners, and the
festivals of praise!

The very rain, and sleet, and hail seem only Nature's useful servants
when found doing their simple duties in the country; and the East Wind
himself is nothing worse than a boisterous friend when we meet him
between the hedge-rows.

But in the city where the painted stucco blisters under the smoky sun,
and the sooty rain brings slush and mud, and the snow lies piled in
dirty heaps, and the chill blasts whistle down dingy streets and shriek
round flaring gas lit corners, no face of Nature charms us. Weather in
towns is like a skylark in a counting-house--out of place and in the
way. Towns ought to be covered in, warmed by hot-water pipes, and
lighted by electricity. The weather is a country lass and does not
appear to advantage in town. We liked well enough to flirt with her in
the hay-field, but she does not seem so fascinating when we meet her
in Pall Mall. There is too much of her there. The frank, free laugh
and hearty voice that sounded so pleasant in the dairy jars against the
artificiality of town-bred life, and her ways become exceedingly trying.

Just lately she has been favoring us with almost incessant rain for
about three weeks; and I am a demned damp, moist, unpleasant body, as
Mr. Mantalini puts it.

Our next-door neighbor comes out in the back garden every now and then
and says it's doing the country a world of good--not his coming out into
the back garden, but the weather. He doesn't understand anything about
it, but ever since he started a cucumber-frame last summer he has
regarded himself in the light of an agriculturist, and talks in this
absurd way with the idea of impressing the rest of the terrace with the
notion that he is a retired farmer. I can only hope that for this once
he is correct, and that th