hat it withholds from Summer it gives to Winter, and makes it wear
the face of Spring through its shortest and coldest days. But then
Spring loses a little from this equalising dispensation. It is not
the resurrection from death and the grave as it is in America.
Children are not waiting here at the sepulchre of the season, as
with us, watching and listening for its little Bluebird angel to
warble from the first budding tree top, "_It is risen_!" They do
not come running home with happy eyes, dancing for joy, and shouting
through the half open door, "O, mother, Spring has come! We've
heard the Bluebird! Hurrah! Spring has come. We saw the Phebee on
the top of the saw-mill!" Here Spring makes no sensation; takes no
sudden leap into the seat of Winter, but comes in gently, like the
law of primogeniture or the British Constitution. It is slow and
decorous in its movements. It is conservative, treats its
predecessor with much deference, and makes no sudden and radical
changes in the face of things. It comes in with no Lord Mayor's
Day, and blows no trumpets, and bends no triumphal arches to grace
its entree. Few new voices in the tree-tops hail its advent. No
choirs of tree-toads fiddle in the fens. No congregation of frogs
at twilight gather to the green edges of the unfettered pond to sing
their Old Hundred, led by venerable Signor Cronker, in his bright,
buskin doublet, mounted on a floating stump, and beating time with a
bulrush. No Shad-spirits with invisible wings, perform their
undulating vespers in the heavens, to let the fishermen know that it
is time to look to their nets. Even the hens of the farm-yard
cackle with no new tone of hope and animation at the birth of the
English Spring. The fact is, it is a baby three months old when it
is baptised. It is really born at Christmas instead of Easter, and
makes no more stir in the family circle of the seasons than any
familiar face would at a farmer's table.

In a utilitarian point of view, it is certainly an immense advantage
to all classes in this country, that Nature has tempered her
climates to it in this kindly way. I will not run off upon that
line of reflection here, but will make it the subject of a few
thoughts somewhere this side of John O'Groat's. But what England
gains over us in the practical, she loses in the poetical, in this
economy of the seasons. Her Spring does not thrill like a sudden
revelation, as with us. It does not come ou