“APRIL,” says the author of the “Fairie Queene,” “is Spring—the juvenile of the months, and the most feminine—never knowing her own mind for a day together. Fickle as a fond maiden with her first lover; toying it with the young sun till he withdraws his beams from her, and then weeping till she gets them back again.” April is frequently a very sweet and genial month, partly because it ushers in the May, and partly for its own sake. It is to May and June what “sweet fifteen,” in the age of woman, is to the passion-stricken eighteen, and perfect two-and-twenty. It is to the confirmed Summer, what the previous hope of joy is to the full fruition—what the boyish dream of love is to love itself. It is, indeed, the month of promises—and what are twenty performances compared with one promise? April, then, is worth two Mays, because it tells tales of May in every sigh that it breathes, and every tear that it lets fall. It is the harbinger, the herald, the promise, the prophecy, the foretaste of all the beauties that are to follow it—of all and more—of all the delights of Summer, and all the “pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious Autumn.” It is fraught with beauties itself, which no other month can bring before us. “When proud, pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing.” It is one sweet alternation of smiles, and sighs, and tears—and tears, and sighs, and smiles—till all is consummated at last in the open laughter of May. April weather is proverbial for a mixture of the bright and gloomy. The pleasantness of the sunshiny days, with the delightful view of fresh greens and newly opened flowers, is unequaled; but they are frequently overcast with clouds, and chilled by rough, wintry blasts. This month, the most perfect image of Spring— “Looks beautiful as when an infant is waking From its slumbers;” and the vicissitudes of warm gleams of sunshine and gentle showers, have the most powerful effects in hastening the universal _springing_ of vegetation, whence the season derives its appellation. The influence of the equinoctial storms frequently prevailing, causes much unpleasant weather; its opening is— “Mindful of disaster past, And shrinking at the northern blast, The sleety storm returning still, The morning hoar, the evening chill: Reluctant comes the timid Spring, Scarce a bee, with airy ring, Murmurs the blossomed boughs around That clothe the garden’s southern bound; Scarce a sickly, straggling flower Decks the rough castle’s rifted tower; Scarce the hardy ivy peeps From the dark dell’s entangled steeps, Fringing the forests devious edge, Half-robed, appears the privet hedge, Or to the distant eye displays, Weakly green, its budding sprays.”