There is still that peculiar strut in his walk, and he still wears his hat knowingly adjusted on one side of his head; but he drinks like a fish, talks politics incessantly, and his shirt-frill is much bedaubed with snuff. What will be his final fate depends upon ulterior circumstances; at present it is enveloped in the mists and darkness of futurity.

SPRING.

Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.-Song of Solomon, chap. II.

EVERY year, all the periodicals, in every city, in every country of the earth, have something to say upon the subject of spring, and have had something to say since time was, or at least, since periodicals were born, and will continue to have something to say until time shall cease to be. It is, in all respects, a most prolific theme, and there is no more chance of exhausting it, than of exhausting our kind mother earth of grass, leaves, and flowers, and the never-dying vegetative principle. The reason is obvious enough: last year's grass, and leaves, and flowers are dead and past away-their freshness and fragrance are forgotten, and their beauty is remembered no more; so it is with the essays, reflections, songs, and sonnets that sprang into life in the spring of eighteen hundred and

twenty-nine-they also have passed away, and their sweet thoughts and pretty sayings are likewise remembered no more; but as last year's vegetation fell to the earth and became incorporated with it only to be reproduced again in forms of fresh brilliancy and beauty, so do the thoughts and images of former writers assume a new shape, and bear the impress of the present time by appearing in all magazines and newspapers, daily, weekly, and monthly, for the year eighteen hundred and thirty. And there is no plagiarism in all this; it is merely, as Puff says, "two people happening to think of the same idea, only one hit upon it before the other-that's all." Indeed, who would think of plagiarism on such an exhaustless subject as spring? Why a thousand thoughts and images that have lain dormant in the mind start into life at the mere mention of the word. As the fresh April breeze, laden with healthful fragrance, blows upon you, it becomes a sort of natural impulse to vent your feelings either by pen or speech. You look back upon the snow, and fog, and sharp unfeeling winds of winter as upon a desolate waste over which you have trodden, and fancy, as you see nature putting on her youthful gay attire, that you are entering into another and better state of existence; forgetful that though her spring may be

eternal, your own is flitting fast away, never to be renewed. But no reflections! let them come with winter, their fitting season. Spring was made for enjoyment, or rather, anticipation of enjoymentpromises of good-pleasant visions, and gorgeous castles in the air. Experience convinces not the young. They think not of their last year's visions that have faded away, nor the aerial castles that have tumbled about their ears; or if they do, it is only to contrast their frailty with the firm texture and sure foundation of those in the perspective. But though spring be delightful to all classes, it is so to each in a different way, and for a different reason. In the country, your true agriculturist, though he wander amid a wilderness of sweets, marks not the tiny buds that are expanding and blooming into beauty all around-to be sure, he hopes that no killing frost will come and spoil his prospects of cider, but that is all. These are too small concerns for his capacious head. He ponders on acres of corn and fields of buck-wheat, and plans where barley should be sown and where oats. He looks into futurity and calculates how much the yet unengendered grain will bring; he schemes how his barren land may be artificially fertilized in the best and cheapest manner, and it is his business, not his pleasure, to take note of the wonderful operations

of nature. His wife considereth the dairy, and looketh out with motherly care that her sleek and velvet-coated cows be not turned from their winter quarters into damp and swampy meadows, lest they contract colds, coughs, catarrhs, and other disorders incident to cattle; while the rosy-cheeked daughter attends to the poultry, (always the daughter's perquisite) and literally "reckons her chickens before they are hatched." Anxiously does she watch that the young turkeys (the most tender of domestic fowls) do not get wet feet; for on the proceeds arising from their sale depend the splendor of the gown and the quantity and quality of the ribbon that have in summer to adorn the village church, and excite the wonder and admiration of its simple congregation. So passes spring with them and others of their class. They talk and think less of its beauties than those who merely get glimpses of them in crowded cities, and have to draw upon their imagination for the rest.

In the city spring brings with it a still more multifarious collection of hopeful schemes and projects. Business that has been in a state of stagnation dur ing the winter now flows briskly through a thousand different channels; and the ladies, whose business is pleasure, are busier than any one else, for the spring fashions have come; milliners are now