To dwellers in Rome the “honied core” of all the year comes with the first days of spring. Looking back on Roman winters, indeed, from my later experiences of the season in arctic climates, they were, with few exceptions, one carol of brightness and sunshine; we spoke of winter for the sake of putting on our furs and lighting a few fires, but the violets never ceased to bloom in the open, the shady avenues of the many villas were not too cool for dalliance, and it was only when the “tramontana,” blowing over the mountains in the north, turned the air from balm to crystal, that we had a touch of real winter at all. Nevertheless, the spring, its opening day marked by the arrival of the first swallows, was intoxicatingly welcome. The first day of Lent had put a period to most of the social functions and—such is the levity of youth—had given us girls time to think of a spring frock or so. Then, on some March morning, the cry would go through the house, “The swallows have come!” and thenceforward we lived very much in the open air. From the time when I was very small it had always been the same, and even now, at my “far world’s end,” and with five decades between the “now” and the “then,” the memory of those spring days goes to my head a little. In a snow-bound land of pale suns and wintry wastes I can shut my eyes and feel again the bath of sunshine, smell the bitter-sweet of Campagna thyme and daisy, almost hear the larks at their singing, the soft bleating of the Campagna lambs, the baying of the white sheep dogs, the faint piping of the solitary shepherd boy sitting on the low stone fence while his flock nibbled audibly at the newly sprung grass. That last is one of the prettiest of outdoor sounds, I think. The world has to be very still to let one hear it at all, and then the delicate “crsh-crsh” is like the music of a fairy March accentuated by the regular moving of the light little hoofs over the turf.