born of the Year, till nations
adored the picture.--To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to the
Mount of the Vision, and,

"Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,"

Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes a
storm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in a
winding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for a
pocket-pistol of Glenlivet.--The day after to-morrow, you behold
him--Spring--walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen--mournful,
but not miserable--disturbed, but not despairing--now coming out towards
you in a burst of light--and now fading away from you in a gathering of
gloom--even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. On
Thursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of his
Springship. There he is, stripped to the buff--playing at hide-and-seek,
hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-down
waistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whites
of your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two,
by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like a
couple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffet
you off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitable
reflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head--Spring.--On
Friday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for you
are confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleepless
sanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since the
flood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed around
Ararat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various and
vanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and all
creation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without being
crowded--plains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and clouds, beneath the
pathway of Spring, once more an Angel--an unfallen Angel! While the
tinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading and
fluctuating--deepening and dying--now gone, as if for ever--and now back
again in an instant, as if breathing and alive--is felt, during all that
wavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yet
inspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung the
image on the cloud--profound as the gloom it illumines--that it shone
and is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabitet