It seems a futile task to say anything about the spring; yet poets and romancers make no apologies for treating of love, which is an old and familiar phenomenon enough. And I declare that the wonder of spring, so far from growing familiar, strikes upon the mind with a bewildering strangeness, a rapturous surprise, which is greater every year. Every spring I say to myself that I never realised before what a miraculous, what an astounding thing is the sudden conspiracy of trees and flowers, hatched so insensibly, and carried out so punctually, to leap into life and loveliness together. The velvety softness of the grass, the mist of green that hangs about the copse, the swift weaving of the climbing tapestry that screens the hedgerow-banks, the jewellery of flowers that sparkle out of all sequestered places; they are adorable. But this early day of spring is close and heavy, with a slow rain dropping reluctantly out of the sky, a day when an insidious melancholy lies in wait for human beings, a sense of inadequacy, a meek rebellion against all activity, bodily or mental. I walk slowly and sedately along the sandy roads fast oozing into mire. There is a sense of expectancy in the air; tree and flower are dispirited too, oppressed with heaviness, and yet gratefully conscious, as I am not, of the divine storage of that pure and subtle element that is taking place for their benefit. “Praise God,” said Saint Francis, “for our sister the water, for she is very serviceable to us and humble and clean.” Yes, we give thanks! but, alas! to sit still and be pumped into, as Carlyle said of Coleridge’s conversation, can never be an enlivening process. Yet would that the soul could gratefully recognise her own rainy days; could droop, like Nature, with patient acquiescence, with wise passivity, till the wells of strength and freshness are stored! [Sidenote: SUBTLE SUPERIORITIES]