Doubtless, as much light and heat brighten and warm one country as the other in the aggregate of a year. But there is a great difference in the economy of distribution. In England, the sun spreads its warmth more evenly over the four seasons of the year. What it withholds from Summer it gives to Winter, and makes it wear the face of Spring through its shortest and coldest days. But then Spring loses a little from this equalising dispensation. It is not the resurrection from death and the grave as it is in America. Children are not waiting here at the sepulchre of the season, as with us, watching and listening for its little Bluebird angel to warble from the first budding tree top, "_It is risen_!" They do not come running home with happy eyes, dancing for joy, and shouting through the half open door, "O, mother, Spring has come! We've heard the Bluebird! Hurrah! Spring has come. We saw the Phebee on the top of the saw-mill!" Here Spring makes no sensation; takes no sudden leap into the seat of Winter, but comes in gently, like the law of primogeniture or the British Constitution. It is slow and decorous in its movements. It is conservative, treats its predecessor with much deference, and makes no sudden and radical changes in the face of things. It comes in with no Lord Mayor's Day, and blows no trumpets, and bends no triumphal arches to grace its entree. Few new voices in the tree-tops hail its advent. No choirs of tree-toads fiddle in the fens. No congregation of frogs at twilight gather to the green edges of the unfettered pond to sing their Old Hundred, led by venerable Signor Cronker, in his bright, buskin doublet, mounted on a floating stump, and beating time with a bulrush. No Shad-spirits with invisible wings, perform their undulating vespers in the heavens, to let the fishermen know that it is time to look to their nets. Even the hens of the farm-yard cackle with no new tone of hope and animation at the birth of the English Spring. The fact is, it is a baby three months old when it is baptised. It is really born at Christmas instead of Easter, and makes no more stir in the family circle of the seasons than any familiar face would at a farmer's table.