There is something in the first approach of spring--in the budding of the young leaves, the freshness increasing warmth and lustre of the sun--as contrasted with the gloomy winter which has just departed, that can not fail to awaken ideas of a gay and lively character in all hearts accessible to the influences of gratitude and love. In compliance, as it were, with this feeling, a custom has more or less generally prevailed among all nations, and in all ages, of celebrating the arrival of this season by merriment, and song, and rural triumph. Like many others, admirable practices of the olden time, the setting apart to joy and innocent festivity of the first of May is now gradually falling into neglect; but at the period of which we are about to treat, not Christmas itself could be observed with more reverential care than its inviting rival. On May-day, the evergreens which had decked the cottage and the church, the castle and the cloister, gave way to garlands of such flowers as the mellowing influences of the season had already called into their existence of beauty and perfume; troops of morris-dancers paraded the public way with their fantastic dresses, glittering blades, and intricate evolutions; feasting and wassail, without which even pleasure itself was then deemed incomplete, prevailed on every side; in the crowded city, or in the secluded valley; in the hut of the serf, or in the turreted keep of his warlike lord; in the gloom of the convent, or in the glitter of the court, the same feelings were excited, the same animation glowed in every countenance, the same triumphant demonstrations of joy hailed the glad harbinger of sunshine and of summer. In England, above all other lands--the merry England of antiquity--was this pleasing festival peculiarly dear to all classes of society; at all times a period eagerly anticipated, and rapturously enjoyed, never perhaps was its arrival celebrated by all men with wilder revelry, with more enthusiastic happiness, than on the year which had accomplished the deliverance of their lion-hearted monarch from the chains of perfidious Austria. It seemed to the whole nation as though, not only the actual winter of the year, with his dark accompaniments of snow and storm, but the yet more oppressive winter of anarchy and misrule, of usurpation and tyranny, were about to pass away from the people, which had so long groaned under the griping sway of the bad John, or been torn by the savage strife of his mercenary barons; while their legitimate and honored sovereign was dragging his dreary hours along in the dungeon, from which he had but now escaped, through the devoted fidelity and unrivalled art of the minstrel Blondel.