happy. Nothing for the present hour is worthy of man's infinite
capacity save to imbibe the warm smile of heaven and sympathize with
the reviving earth.

The present Spring comes onward with fleeter footsteps, because
Winter lingered so unconscionably long that with her best diligence
she can hardly retrieve half the allotted period of her reign. It
is but a fortnight since I stood on the brink of our swollen river
and beheld the accumulated ice of four frozen months go down the
stream. Except in streaks here and there upon the hillsides, the
whole visible universe was then covered with deep snow, the
nethermost layer of which had been deposited by an early December
storm. It was a sight to make the beholder torpid, in the
impossibility of imagining how this vast white napkin was to be
removed from the face of the corpse-like world in less time than had
been required to spread it there. But who can estimate the power of
gentle influences, whether amid material desolation or the moral
winter of man's heart? There have been no tempestuous rains, even
no sultry days, but a constant breath of southern winds, with now a
day of kindly sunshine, and now a no less kindly mist or a soft
descent of showers, in which a smile and a blessing seemed to have
been steeped. The snow has vanished as if by magic; whatever heaps
may be hidden in the woods and deep gorges of the hills, only two
solitary specks remain in the landscape; and those I shall almost
regret to miss when to-morrow I look for them in vain. Never
before, methinks, has spring pressed so closely on the footsteps of
retreating winter. Along the roadside the green blades of grass
have sprouted on the very edge of the snow-drifts. The pastures and
mowing-fields have not vet assumed a general aspect of verdure; but
neither have they the cheerless-brown tint which they wear in latter