How delightful, even to elders like us, to feel Spring breathing once more over air and earth! We have been quite happy and contented with Winter, however severe; nor have we ever felt the slightest inclination to be satirical on that hoary personage. On the contrary, there is not a Season of them all whom we love better than hale, honest, old Winter. But when he has migrated from the lengthening days, we think cheerfully on the last time we shook hands with him; and knowing that he is as regular as clockwork, have no doubts of his return as soon as he hears that we have again laid in our November stock of coals and corned-beef. Indeed, his son, Spring, has so strong a family resemblance to his father, that were it not for the difference of their complexion, and a totally dissimilar style of dress, we should frequently mistake the one for the other. The likeness, however, wears off as we become better acquainted with the young heir-apparent, and find that with most of his father's virtues, he possesses many peculiar to himself; while in every point of manners or lesser morals, he bears away both the bell and the palm from his sire. Like the old gentleman, he is occasionally cold to strangers-biting in his remarks or wrapt up within himself; but his icyness soon thaws -his face becomes animated in the extreme-his language is even flowery -and putting his arm kindly within VOL. XIX. yours, there is nothing he likes so well as to propose a walk among the pleasant banks and braes, now alive with the new-born lambs, through whose bleating you can but faintly hear the lark returning from heaven. We seldom are exposed to any very strong temptation to leave town till about the second week in April. Up to that time the dinners have complete power over us, and we could not tear ourselves away without acute anguish. Lamb (see last paragraph) has been exquisite for weeks; and when enjoyed at the table of a friend, not expensive. Garden stuffs, too, have purified our blood, and, if that be possible, increased our appetite. Spring has agrecably affected our animal being, without having as yet made any very forcible appeal to our intellectual or moral system. leave town during such a crisis of private affairs, would obviously be inconsistent with our judicious character. Take them on the whole, and the best dinners of a cycle of seven years will be found to fall in the months of March and April. We have verified this fact by tables of observation kept for eight-and-twenty years, now in the temporary possession of Dr Kitchener, who has been anxiously collating them with his own private Gastronomical Journal. Το Yet in spite of such tender ties, by which we are bound to the urbane board well on into April, our poetical 3 B imagination is frequently tempting us away into the country. All such temptations we manfully resist; and to strengthen us in the struggle, we never refuse a dinner invitation, except when we have reason to know that we shall be asked to eat patés. Mr Coleridge, meaning to be very severe on Mr Jeffrey for having laughed at some verses of Mr Wordsworth's, about "the child being father of the man,' declares somewhere or other, that not willingly would he gaze on a setting sun with a man capable of the enormity of such a criticism. On the same principles precisely, not willingly would we gaze on the setting sun with any nan who, in his own house, had ever asked us to begin dinner with a paté. Such a request shows a littleness of soul and stomach, that could comprehend the glory neither of a setting sun nor a round of beef-two of the very best things, in their own way, in heaven or on earth. But about the "very middle and waist" of April, we order a search through our wardrobe for trowsers, striped and spotted waistcoats, jackets, foraging-caps, and thick-soled shoes. called by our housekeeper, Clampers. Then we venture to open our eyes and look a little abroad over the suburban gardens and nurseries. We had doggedly determined, indeed, not to take any notice of Spring symptoms before that time, for fear of pining away for the green fields. Accordingly, we wore our great-coat as faithfully as if it were part of ourselves, even during the soft days that now and then came balmy over the city gardens during the somewhat surly month of March. We rather kept our eyes on the ground in passing by rows of poplars, which we knew from the sweet scent were more than budding in the sunshine. When a bee hummed past us about the suburbs, we pretended not to hear her; and as to the sparrows, why, they twitter all the year through, almost as heartily as if they were inditing valentines, and their chatter never disturbs us. In short, we wish to enjoy the first gentle embrace of Spring in some solitary spot, where nothing will impede the mutual flow of our spirits, but where, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot," we may wander away together into the ideal lands of the Imagination, nor care if we ever more return to this weary and distracted Life. Perhaps you may be a little surprised at first, when we tell you that we do not like, on our first vernal visit to the country, to go to Buchanan Lodge. We hate having anything to do with a Flitting. These lazy, lubberly porters, pretending that their backs bend under half a load for any ordinary Girzie, try all patience; and there is no standing a whole forenoon's sight of a great blue-railed waggon, with a horse seventeen hands high in the shafts, sound asleep. A Flitting "is a thing to dream of, not to see." The servants engaged in one have a strange, wild, hurried, flustered, raised look, very alarming to a Sexagenarian. More especially, the cook, armed with spit and gridiron, as with spear and shield, like Britomart. The natural impetuosity of the culinary character is exaspe rated into effervescence; and if she meet us hobbling down or up the front steps, she thinks no more than 'Jenny dang the weaver" of upsetting, or at least sorely jostling, her unoffending master. The chambermaids have on Flitting-day an incomprehensible giggle, through which they seem to be communicating to one another thick-coming secrets-heaven only knows about what-and "my butler" assumes a more portly and pompous air, in the consciousness of being about to act round about the Lodge as a summer land-agent. Then all within what a dusty desolation! Only one chair, and that in the lobby, for so many wearied bottoms-"Cupboards vast, and presses idle !" Tomorrow will be a fast-day to the mice 66 and before the week-end, dozens will have paid the forfeit of their lives to the offended laws of their country; for, next door, there is a maiden lady curious in traps, and inexorably cruel in the executive. You ring the bell by way of a dreary experiment, and a ghostlike echo answers from cellar and garret. For six months, and that is a long time for such an organ, that tongue will be mute. One dead plant is left behind in the lobby-window, close to the front door, for all the other windows in the house are closed up with shutters. No fear of the poor unhappy embers on the kitchenhearth setting fire to the tenement. Bang goes the street-door, like one of those melancholy peals of thunder followed by no other on some unsettled day that wants sphit for a stormclunk plays the bolt to the strong wrenched key in the hand of the porter -there is motion visible in the waggon, and the perceptive faculty finally admits that there is a Flitting. All the miseries above has it been frequently our lot to witness and partake; but of late years it has been too much for us, and we have left the Flitting in the hands of Providence. Besides, how pleasant, on a stated day and hour, to walk into Buchanan Lodge, an expectel Head of a House! All the domestics delighted to behold their beloved master hobbling towards the porch. Every window so clear, that you know not there is glassthe oil-skin on the lobby-floor glancing undimmed-nestlings in a twitter over all the clustering virandas; but all this is subject for a future leading article, whereas the title of the present is-Streams. Well, then, Streams! The unpardonable thing about Edinburgh is, that she wants a river. Two great straddling bridges without one drop of water! The stranger looks over the battlements of the one, aud in the abyss sees our metropolitan markets -through the iron railing of the other, and lo! carts laden with old furniture, and a blind fiddler and his wife roaring ballads to a group of tatterdemallions. What a glory would it be, were a great red river to come suddenly down in flood, and sweep away Mound and Bridge to the sea! Alas! for old Holyrood! What new life would be poured into the Gude auld Town, thus freshened at its foundations! And how beautiful to see the dwindled ship gliding under cloud of sail by the base of our castled cliff! Oh! for the sweet sea-murmur, when torrent retreats before tide, and the birds of ocean come floating into the inland woods! Oh! that, "like Horeb's rock beneath the Prophet's hand," youder step would let escape into light the living waters! But this wish is a mere whim of the moment; and therefore it is our delight to escape for a week to the brooks of Peebles, or Innerleithen, or Clovenford, or Kelso. Wherever we go to escape the Flitting, a stream or river there must be our ears are useless without its murmurs-eyes we might as well have none, without its wimpling glitter. Early in life we fell in love with a Naiad, whom we beheld in a dream, sitting, with her long dis hevelled hair veiling her pearly person, by a water-fall; and her every Spring have we in vain been seeking, and still hope to find, although she hide from our embrace in a pool far away among the hills that overshadow the louely source of the Ettrick, or embowered in the beautiful Beauly, delight in the solitude of the Dreme. Once, and once only, have we been a few miles above Ettrick Manse, and memory plays us false whenever we strive to retrace the solitude. It was a misty day, and we heard without seeing the bleating labs. Each new reach of the Ettrick, there little more than a burn, murmured in the vapours, almost like a new stream to our eyes, whenever we chanced to lose sight of it, by having gone round knoll or brae. Just as we caine down upon the Kirk and Manse, the rain was over and gone, and while mistwreaths rolled up, seemingly without any wind, to the hill-top, a strong sun brightened the vale, and bathed a grove of tall trees in a rich steady lustre. Happy residence! thought our heart, as the modest Manse partook of the sudden sunshine, and smiled upon another pleasant dwelling across the vale, yet a little gloomy in the shadow. And a happy residence it had been for upwards of half a century to the pastor, who, about a year before, had dropped the body, and gone to his reward. No record--no annals of his peaceful, inoffensive, and useful life! Death had never once visited the manse during all those quiet years, neither sin nor sorrow had sat by the fireside--and there had been no whisperings of conscience to disturb the midnight sleep. The widow had to leave the long-hallowed hearth at her husband's death; but there is to right-thinking minds little hardship in such necessity, long calmly contemplated in foresight as a thing that might one day be, and now submitted to with an alacrity to leave the vale for ever, that showed how dear it had been, and still was, to the old woman's heart! A new minister came to the parish, and he and his young wife were in a few months respected and beloved. Here they had let go the anchor of their earthly hopes, never to be weighed again in that calm ha ven. Their friends prophesied that they would live for ever-but long within the year the young minister died and was lying a corpse at the very hour of that glorious sunshine! Many eyes wept for him, who, over his grey-headed predecessor, would have thought it foolish to shed any tears; for the grave is the fitting bed for old age, and why mourn when the curtains are drawn for ever? But when youth on the sudden dies-the voice seems stifled in the mould-and hope and affection are with difficulty reconciled to the decree. The old widow had left the manse, with quiet steps and composed eyes, and all her friends felt and knew that she would be cheerful and happy in the small town where she was going to live, near some of her own blood relations. But she who had but one year ago become a wife, and had now a fatherless baby at her bosom, left the manse during the dark hours, and was heard more than sobbing as she took an everlasting farewell of her husband's grave. But we are in chase of the Naiad, the Musidora, whom we beheld bathing in the lucid pool, and who, more beautiful far than she of the Seasons, had no need to disrobe, veiled in the lights and shadows of her own pearlenwoven tresses, that gave glimpses of loveliness from forehead to feet. Lo! she rises up from the green velvet couch beneath the atmosphere of St Mary's Loch, and leaning on the water as if it were a car, is wafted along the edge of the water-lilies of the Naiads' own gorgeous garden, that Crescent Bay! What a thing it is to have soul-deluded eye in one's head! Why, it is merely a wild swan, perhaps the identical one that Mr Wordsworth saw, when he said, in his own delightful way, let "The swan on still St Mary's Lake Float double, swan and shadow!" Heaven preserve us from ridicule, it is a wild-goose! Lame of a leg too, evidently, as, with a discordant gabble, it stretches out its neck, and with much exertion contrives to lift up its heavy hinder-end into flight. There's a Naiad for you-off, "slick away,' to Norway at the nearest. Should the Loch Skene eagle get sight, or scent, or sound of the quack, her feathers are not worth an hour's purchase. There he comes in full sail before the wind! for although it is breathless down below here, there is a strong current flowing three thousand feet high, and the cagle has set every inch of canvass. Hie nears upon the chase; but suddenly, as if scorning the gabbler, puts down the helm of his tail, and bearing up in the wind's eye, beats back, in a style that would astonish a Bermuda schooner, to his eyrie. Let us leave the loch, then, (for Lochs will be well treated in another leading article) and go Naiad-angling down the Yarrow. Do you think she would be tempted to rise to this bright and beautiful butterfly, the azure fields of whose winglets are all bedropt with golden stars? What cruelty, to immerge into another element the child of air! Perhaps it is Psyche herself, so let the captive free. Ha! did she not waver away into the sunshine, like a very spirit? Here is a pool worthy of any Naiad, had she even come to visit Scotland all the way from some Grecian fountain. Look into it, and the water disappearing, you see but the skies! A faint lochborn breeze comes rustling through the one birch tree that hangs leaning over from the sloping bank, and for a moment the vision hath evanished! Oh! what a slight breath of earth can dispel a dream of heaven! The breeze has gone by, and there is the same still, steadfast glory as before, the boundless ether pictured in a pool ten fathom round! The Naiad, the Naiad! Bless thy sweet face, smiling up from the pool, as if in one of those mirrors of deception sometimes exhibited by scientific and slight-of-hand men travelling with a dwarf. What is this? Let us look a little more narrowly into this business. There our nose is within six inches of the surface of the water; and, reader, will you believe it, the Naiad, by some potent necromancy held over her even in her own watery world, slowly changeth into-Christopher North, editor of Blackwood's Magazine, and other celebrated works! Fain would we now, fancy-led, float down with the foam-bells, till We passed where Newark's stately towers But lo! Altrive, the abode of our own Yarrow the Beloved of Bards of Old, well mayest thou be proud of the author of the Queen's Wake! and many a little pathetic lilt beside-hymn, elegy, and song, hast thou heard breathed by him, along with thy own murmurs, during the pensive gloaming. Nor will thy pastoral sister, the Ettrick, be jealous of your loves. For in spirit all the streams are one that flow through the Forest. And you too, Ettrick and Yarrow, gathering them all together, come rushing into each other's arms, aboon the haughs o' Selkirk, and then flow, Tweed-blent, to the sea. Our Shepherd is dear to all the rills that issue, in thousands, from their own recesses among the braes; for when a poet walks through regions his genius has sung, all nature does him homage, from cloud to clod-from blue sky to green earthall living creatures therein included, from the eagle to the mole. James knows this, and is happy among the hills. But the hospitality of Altrive shall not be dismissed thus in a passing paragraph, but shall have a leading article to itself, as surely as we know how to honour worth and genius. We called thee, Yarrow, The Beloved of Bards of Old! Ay! flowing in the brightness of thy own peace along the vale, yet wert thou often invoked by minstrels with a voice of weeping. Blood tinged thy banks, nor could the stain be washed away even by the tears of the Sons of Song. Thine became a traditionary character, if not of sorrow, yet of sadness, and all that is pensive or pastoral has ever seemed to breathe over thy braes. The wanderer carries thither with him a spirit of imaginative grief-an ear open to the mournful echoes of the ancient elegies of war and death. Thus, let the holms of Yarrow glitter to the sunshine as they will, yet, in the words of the old strain, they are "dowie" holms still; just as we always see something sad even in the smiles of a friend, whom we know to have been a man of sorrows, although to happiness he has been long restored. Cheerful chaunts there are about thy braw lads and bonny lasses; but sit down beside any shepherd on the hillside, anywhere in the whole Forest, and wherever Yarrow, as he flows along, Bears burden to the minstrel's song, depend you upon it, the tale shall be one of tenderness and tears! Such was the determination of the poets of the days that are gone, and such, too, is the spirit, Wordsworth, of that divine But thou, that didst appear so fair Dost rival in the light of day And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glenorchy, that cheerest the long-withdrawing vale from Inverouren to Dalmally, and from Dalmally church-tower to the old castle of Kilchurn, round whose mouldering towers thou sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name and existence is lost in that noble lochWhy hast thou never had thy bard? "A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," is thy reply; "but the Sassenach understands not the traditionary strains, and the music of the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his ear." Songs of war and of love are yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when the moon rises over Ben-Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and bracken, and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the thick-falling dews almost perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier tinkle to every waterfall. There it was, on a little riverisland, that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night-winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from |