Spring brings with it Easter--the first holiday that brightens on the departing gloom of winter. Then we hear mingled with the cry of "All a-blowing! all a-growing!" the reedy notes of penny trumpets, and the beat of tiny drums, and the shrill pipings of yellow wooden whistles: and tired children walk home from Greenwich with little dolls on their arms; and mothers carry their sleeping babies without murmuring; and little feet, that "scarcely stir the dust," come plodding on, just as their young fathers and mothers had done some three or four-and-twenty years ago. Here, one on each side clung to her gown, there he carried another pick-a-back, who kept grinding his organ as he rode; while the fourth slept, covered over with the shawl, regardless of the busy crowds that were hurrying to and fro. Surely there was no selfishness in the enjoyment of the day on the part of the parents, shared as it was by those dear dusty children, the eldest not five years old, the youngest not so many months; and two of them carried every inch of the five miles back. For days after will those children talk about what they saw in the park at Greenwich, in the fair, and on the road; and their dreams will be of gilt gingerbread horses, and swings high as the tall trees, and booths, and music, the distant river, old pensioners with wooden legs and spyglasses, donkeys on Blackheath, swarthy gipsies, drinks of beer, and the heads and tails of shrimps. They will mimic the sights, and try to imitate the sounds, and go sounding and drumming through the house until the trumpet refuses to speak, and the drum is burst, and not a wire is left inside the threepenny organ. Then their grandfathers and grandmothers (if they were not with them) will come and ask a hundred questions as to what they saw, and what they did, and whither they went; and, from the answers they receive, go away convinced that there are no other children in this huge overgrown London to be compared with their grandchildren. May heaven shower its blessings on the conceit, and they never have cause to think otherwise!