Then, assuming the calm air of
an Indian warrior, he suffered his eye to grow cold and vacant, following
with a nimble step the hunters who were already passing without the
palisadoes.
Chapter VIII.
"Well, I am your theme: you have the start of me. I am dejected; I am
not able to answer the Welsh flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet
over me: use me as you will."
Merry Wives of Windsor.
Poets, aided by the general longing of human nature, have given a
reputation to the Spring, that it rarely merits. Though this imaginative
class of writers have said so much of its balmy airs and odoriferous
gales, we find it nearly everywhere the most reluctant, churlish, and
fickle of the four seasons. It is the youth of the year, and, like that
probationary period of life, most fitted to afford the promise of better
things. There is a constant struggle between reality and hope throughout
the whole of this slow-moving and treacherous period, which has an
unavoidable tendency to deceive. All that is said of its grateful
productions is fallacious, for the earth is as little likely to yield a
generous tribute without the quickening influence of the summer heats, as
man is wont to bring forth commendable fruits without the agency of a
higher moral power than any he possesses in virtue of his innate
propensities.
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