This is the 1st of May [1877], sacred in the ecclesiastical calendar to St. Philip and St. James the Apostles. In ordinary speech we may now call it summer, we suppose, and it is to be hoped that it may prove summer indeed, not in name merely, or astronomically, but veritably, that is, meteorologically as well; such a summer as delighted our boyhood with its bright sun and cloudless skies, or with such clouds only as served to modify and temper a brilliancy and heat that might otherwise have been excessive; the earth verdant and flower-bespangled under foot and around, the very floods and trees of the forest, in the grand hyperbole of Scripture, "clapping their hands for joy:" the singing of birds the while, jubilant and joyous, in copse and wild-wood, its fitting bass, the murmur of innumerable bees; while the fluttering of splendidly coloured butterflies, as they danced along in many a lawless zig-zag and merry-go-round, constantly verified and bore witness to the beauty of the Roman poet's famous line, which may be rendered-- "Lo! fluttering past, flowers swimming in liquid air!" However the summer may turn out, of the spring at least but little good--speaking of course meteorologically--can be said. It was, quoad hoc, an imposture, and nothing else, and always reminding us of Hood's wicked parody on the opening lines of Thomson's big and bow-wow invocation to the season:-- "'Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come!' O, Thomson, void of sense as well as reason; Why in our ears such arrant nonsense drum? There's no such season!"