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MORNINGS IN SPRING.

No. I.

Sweet Spring, in vest of emerald hue,
With daisy buds embroider'd fair,
Calls the gray sky-lark to renew

Her morning carols, high in air.

Soul of the world! thy cheering rays

Bid my full heart with transport burn!

Again on Nature's charms I gaze,

And youth's delightful days return.

LEYDEN.

THE sensations with which, during every stage of our existence, we contemplate the Return of Spring, are amongst the most delightful which can animate the human breast. Nearly the whole vegetable, and a great part of the minute animal world, have for weeks and months lain buried beneath the darkness and desolation of winter; we have from day to day looked abroad, and beheld nothing but torpor and sterility on the face of the earth: scarcely a vestige

VOL. I.

B

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of what had once clothed the hill and the valley with beauty is to be discovered; and it would appear almost as if the pulse of life stood still.

Yet a little while and a miracle the most stupendous bursts upon our view: Nature seems again, as in the primal hour of her existence, to start into life and splendor; for the word of her Creator has gone forth, and light, and heat, and animation are once more diffusing their blessings through air, and earth, and water. The sun, that secondary fountain of being, has awakened like a giant refreshed from his slumber; and "the desert and the solitary place is glad, and the wilderness springs and blossoms as the rose." There seems to be, as it were, a resurrection from all the chambers of the dead, and not a breeze is wafted to us but brings on its renovating wings millions of new awakened creatures, to people and enjoy every element around us.

But it is more especially to the heart of man that this annual revivescence of the world around him opens a source of inexhaustible gratitude and praise; for not only, in common with the inferior tribes of being, does he feel the vital spirit of renewal breathing fresh life and vigour through his frame, but he acknowledges it also to be the season when most power

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