THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. 255 found and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, helps faith to lay hold on the future life."Channing. 66 Anything would be better than a national society, formed for no higher than physical ends;-to enable men to eat, drink, and live luxuriously;-acknowledging no power greater than its own, and by consequence, no law higher than its own municipal enactments. Let a few generations pass over in such a state, and the missionary, who should preach the worship of Ceres, or set up an oracle of Apollo, or teach the people to kindle the eternal fire of Vesta on the common altar hearth of their country, would be to that degraded society as life from the dead."-Arnold. THE world is too much with us; late and soon, We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! WORDSWORTH. XXVI. THE GLADNESS OF NATURE. "BEAUTY is an all-pervading presence. It unfolds in the numberless flowers of the spring. It waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass. It haunts the depths of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone. And not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun, all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple; and those men, who are alive to it, cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side."- Channing. Is this a time to be cloudy and sad, When our mother Nature laughs around; When even the deep blue heavens look glad, And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground? There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren, The clouds are at play in the azure space, And their shadows at play on the bright green vale, There's a dance of leaves in that aspen bower, There's a titter of winds in that beechen tree, There's a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower, BRYANT. XXVII. SONG-ON MAY MORNING. "It is not more true, however, that we weep with those who weep, than that we rejoice with those who rejoice. There is a charm in general gladness, that steals upon us without our perceiving it; and if we have no cause for sorrow, it is sufficient for our momentary happiness that we be in the company of the happy. Who is there, of such fixed melancholy, as not to have felt innumerable times this delight, that arises, without any cause but the delight which has preceded it; when we are happy for hours, and, on looking back on these hours of happiness, can discover nothing but our own happiness, and the happiness of others, which have been reflected back, and again, from each to each? So strong is this sympathetic tendency, that we not merely share the gaiety of the gay, but rejoice also with inanimate things, to which we have given a cheerfulness that does not and cannot belong to them."-Brown's Philosophy. Now the bright morning star, day's harbinger, MILTON. THE USE OF FLOWERS. XXVIII. A WALK IN SPRING. 257 "THE contemplation of universal nature rather bewilders the mind than affects it. There is always a bright spot in the prospect, upon which the eye rests; a single example, perhaps, by which each man finds himself more convinced than by all others put together. I seem, for my own part, to see the benevolence of the Deity more clearly in the pleasures of very young children, than in anything in the world. The pleasures of grown persons may be reckoned partly of their own procuring; especially if there has been any industry, or contrivance, or pursuit, to come at them: or if they are founded, like music, painting, &c., upon any qualification of their own acquiring. But the pleasures of a healthy infant are so manifestly provided for it by another, and the benevolence of the provision is so unquestionable, that every child I see at its sport affords to my mind a kind of sensible evidence of the finger of God, and of the disposition which directs it."--Paley's Moral and Political Philosophy. I'm very glad the spring is come-the sun shines out so bright, And I can skip and run about as merrily as they. I like to see the daisy and the buttercups once more, The primrose and the cowslip too, and every pretty flower; I like to see the butterfly fluttering her painted wing, And all things seem just like myself, so pleased to see the spring. The fishes in the little brook are jumping up on high, There's not a cloud upon the sky, there's nothing dark or sad; I jump, and scarce know what to do, I feel so very glad. XXIX. THE USE OF FLOWERS. "MAN'S use and function-and let him who will not grant me this follow me no further-is to be the witness of the glory of God, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. Whatever enables us to fulfil this function is, in the pure and first sense of the word, useful to us. And yet people speak, in this working age, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment, were alone useful; and, as if sight, thought, and admiration, were all profitless: so that men insolently call themselves Utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables; men who think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body; who look to the earth as a stable, and to its fruit as fodder; vine-dressers and husbandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes of Eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew, and the water they draw, are better than the pine forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of God, and than the great rivers that move like His eternity."-Ruskin. GOD might have bade the earth bring forth The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, Without a flower at all. We might have had enough, enough For luxury, medicine, and toil, Nor doth it need the lotus flower The clouds might give abundant rain, And the herb that keepeth life in man Then wherefore, wherefore were they made, Our outward life requires them not: To comfort man, to whisper hope For whoso careth for the flowers* MARY HOWITT. 1. What part of speech is enough here? | the lotus, and where does it grow in 2. What does none refer to? 3. Do you know any other name for greatest abundance? 4. Quote a passage from the Gospels in proof of this. THEY COME! THE MERRY SUMMER MONTHS. 259 XXX. SUMMER SONG OF THE STRAWBERRY GIRL. "DANTE places in his lowest hell those who in life were melancholy and repining without a cause, thus profaning and darkening God's blessed sunshine; and in some of the ancient Christian systems of virtues and vices, melancholy is unholy and a vice; cheerfulness is holy and a virtue. Lord Bacon also makes one of the characteristics of moral health and goodness to consist in a constant quick sense of felicity and a noble satisfaction.""- Mrs. Jameson's Common-place Book. It is summer! it is summer! how beautiful it looks! There is sunshine on the old grey hills, and sunshine on the brooks; A singing bird on every bough, soft perfumes on the air, It may be so-and yet, methinks, I do not envy them. I love to see its crimson cheek rest on the bright green leaves : XXXI. THEY COME! THE MERRY SUMMER MONTHS. "To me, the most ordinary walk in the country is, and always has been a luxury. I remember what joy these things gave me when a boy, and now they give me again a boy's heart. I remember the enjoyment I experienced, when an old sportsman used to take his gun on his arm on a Saturday afternoon, when my village school made holiday, and led me up long lanes, between high mossy banks, where the little |