The second of this present month of May was a busy and a noisy day in my garden. All the world knows what a spring this has been. The famous black spring commemorated by Gilbert White can hardly have been more thoroughly ungenial, more fatal to man or beast, to leaf and flower, than this most miserable season, this winter of long days, when the sun shines as if in mockery, giving little more heat than his cold sister the moon, and the bitter north-east produces at one and the same moment the incongruous annoyances of biting cold and suffocating dust. Never was such a season. The swallows, nightingales, and cuckoos were a fortnight after their usual time. I wonder what they thought of it, pretty creatures, and how they made up their minds to come at all!--and the sloe blossom, the black thorn winter as the common people call it, which generally makes its appearance early in March along with the first violets, did not whiten the hedges this year until full two months later,* In short, everybody knows that this has been a most villanous season, and deserves all the ill that can possibly be said of it. But the second of May held forth a promise which, according to a very usual trick of English weather, it has not kept; and was so mild and smiling and gracious, that, without being quite so foolish as to indulge in any romantic and visionary expectation of ever seeing summer again, we were yet silly enough to be cheered by the thought that spring was coming at last in good earnest. * It is extraordinary how some flowers seem to obey the season, whilst others are influenced by the weather. The hawthorn, certainly nearly akin to the sloe blossom, is this year rather forwarder, if anything, than in common years; and the fritillary, always a May flower, is painting the water meadows at this moment in company with "the blackthorn winter;" or rather is nearly over, whilst its cousin german, the tulip, is scarcely showing for bloom in the warmest exposures and most sheltered borders of the garden. In a word, it was that pleasant rarity a fine day; and it was also a day of considerable stir, as I shall attempt to describe hereafter, in my small territories. In the street too, and in the house, there was as much noise and bustle as one would well desire to hear in our village. The first of May is Belford Great Fair, where horses and cows are sold, and men meet gravely to transact grave business; and the second of May is Belford Little Fair, where boys and girls of all ages, women and children of all ranks, flock into the town, to buy ribbons and dolls and balls and gingerbread, to eat cakes and suck oranges, to stare at the shows, and gaze at the wild beasts, and to follow merrily the merry business called pleasure.