quoth Jonathan Swift, the honest Dean of St. Patrick's, being evidently no curler, and more given to satire than to snow-balling; but really for the six weeks above specified nothing less than the direst necessity could tempt one to any other pastime than the prudential and prosaic one recommended in the couplet. Grant him but license to grumble, however, and man can endure, and that scathlessly, much more than he wots of. And how easily is he after all restored to equanimity and even cheerfulness! Here we are already, placid and pleased, enjoying the fine weather; the cold and the wet and the boisterous gales of January and December altogether forgotten, or, if remembered, remembered only to give zest to the bright and sunshiny present. And never, we believe, were song-birds in such free and full song on St. Valentine's day. Morning and evening (the interval, you must know, dear reader, is as yet passed in tender dalliance and nest-building), from copse and woodland, ring out the richest strains of our native warblers, thrush, redbreast, blackbird, throstle, white-throat, wren (whom the Germans, on account of his indomitable pluck and pre-eminence as a songster, term the kingbird), and a score of other "musical celebrities," vie with each other in the richness and the melody of their incomparable song. Within a month, should the weather continue favourable as at present, most of our wild-birds will have finished their nests, and commenced the labours of incubation. We trust that our readers will do all they can this season to prevent children and others from what is called "birds'-nesting," one of the most cruel pastimes to which any one could turn himself. All good men, and most great ones, have been remarkable for their attachment to animals, both domesticated and wild, and particularly to song-birds. Listen to Virgil's passing allusion to the subject in his Georgics, a magnificent poem, of itself sufficient to immortalise the name of any one man:-- "Qualis populea moerens Philomela, sub umbra," &c., thus rendered into English:-- "Lo, Philomela from the umbrageous wood, In strains melodious mourns her tender brood, Snatch'd from the nest by some rude ploughman's hand, On some lone bough the warbler takes her stand; The live-long night she mourns the cruel wrong, And hill and dale resound the plaintive song." And hear our own matchless "ploughman bard," in one of his sweetest lyrics, The Posie:-- "The hawthorn I will pu', wi' its locks o' siller grey, Where, like an aged man, it stands at break o' day, But the songster's nest within the bush I winna tak away-- And a' to be a posie to my ain dear May."