The season of the year was one that has served poets and romance-writers a great deal, and which with very becoming, but somewhat dishonest gratitude, they have praised ten times more than it deserves. It was, in short, spring--that season when we are often enticed to wander forth by a bright sky, as if for the express purpose of being wet to the skin by a drenching shower, or cut to the heart by the piercing east wind--that coquettish season that is never for ten minutes in the same mind, which delights in disappointing expectations, and in frowning as soon as she has smiled. Let those who love coquettes sing of spring, for my part, I abhor the whole race of them. Nevertheless, there is something very engaging in that first youth of the year. We may be cross with its wild tricks and sportive mischief, we may be vexed at its whims and caprices as with those of an untamed boy or girl, but yet there is a grace in its waywardness, a softness in its blue violet eyes, a brightness in its uncontaminated smile, a lustre even in the penitential tears, dried up as soon as shed, that has a charm we cannot, if we would, shake off. Oh yes, youth and spring speak to every heart of hope, and hope is the magic of life! Do you not see the glorious promise of great things to be done in that wild and wayward boy? Do you not see the bright assurance of warmer and mellower days to come in that chequered April sky? Youth, and spring, and hope, they are a glad triad, inseparable in essence, and all aspiring towards the everlasting goal of thought--the Future. It was the month of May--now if poets and romance-writers, as we have before said, have done injustice, or more than justice to spring, as a whole, never were two poor months so scandalously overpraised as April and May. The good old Scotch poet declares that in April, Primroses paint the sweet plain, And summer returning rejoices the swain, but rarely, oh, how rarely, do we ever see primroses busy at such artistical work; and as for summer, if he is returning at all, it is like a boy going back to school, and lingering sadly by the way. Such, at least, is the case now-a-days, and if the advice of another old poet, who tells us, Stir not a clout, Till May be out,