"But any man that walks the mead,
In bud or blade, or bloom, may find,
According as his humours lead,
A meaning suited to his mind."
TENNYSON.

It was a fine May morning. Not one of those with an east wind and a
bright sun, which keep people in a puzzle all as day to whether it is
hot or cold, and cause endless nursery disputes about the keeping on
of comforters and warm coats, whenever a hoop-race, or some such
active exertion, has brought a universal puggyness over the juvenile
frame--but it was a really mild, sweet-scented day, when it is quite
a treat to be out of doors, whether in the gardens, the lanes, or the
fields, and when nothing but a holland jacket is thought necessary by
even the most tiresomely careful of mammas.

It was not a day which anybody would have chosen to be poorly upon;
but people have no choice in such matters, and poor little No. 7, of
our old friends "the little ones," was in bed ill of the measles.

The wise old Bishop, Jeremy Taylor, told us long ago, how well
children generally bear sickness. "They bear it," he says, "by a
direct sufferance;" that is to say, they submit to just what
discomfort exists at the moment, without fidgetting about either a
cause or a consequence," and decidedly without fretting about what is
to come.

For a grown-up person to attain to the same state of unanxious
resignation, is one of the high triumphs of Christian faith. It is