never grow again out of the turf to be danced about, and hung with coronals, and made love round by grown-up children, yet those ever-growing-up children will make love to the last in spite of there being no may poles nevertheless. And, knowing this, may we not without another momentary qualm of regret, resign the latest vestige of the neglected rites of May Morning to our friends the London Sweeps, as they were formerly resigned, in what Beau Nash would have deemed a politer age, to those cherry-lipped damsels, the pretty London milk-maids ? There are yet happily even now amongst those last preservers of the May Day frolic a few ready, as the year comes round, to foot it about their goblin Jack-in-the-green till the time may come when they too may grow tired out in turn. Reverting, however, for an instant —as a last souvenir of the scattered glory of these vanished May games-reverting thus to the recorded fact that, upon one famous May Day, Robin Hood was Lord of the May in London, and Maid Marian his Lady Queen, I turn now with a zest to the fresh love and the fresh flowers underlying all the dust stirred up by the footsteps of the antiquary.

Wandering along some brown country highroad, turning down a green lane budding thickly with leaf and blossom, clambering over a stile, and so on by another, from meadow to meadow, have I not the spring-time of the Mayers of the middle ages still before me, as verdurous as ever, as full as ever of their old floral luxuriance ? There on this Tom Tiddler's ground of childhood— silver and gold scattered as abundantly as of yore about the greensward, that true largess of Nature

"The daisy and the butter-cup

For which the laughing children stoop!"

Blossoms golden and silvern, homeliest of all homely blooms sprinkled about the grass, as old Clare sings of them so charmingly in his "Shepherd's Calendar ”.

"As if the drops of April showers

Had wooed the sun and changed to flowers."

Strolling over the field-turf, the sweet month is still for me in truth precisely what it was for the bard of Paradise

"The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose."

And here, if for a moment I pause in my wanderings to pluck one of those greasy, slimy stalks of the blue-bells, I glance round

me over that flowering landscape, do I not note well through all the variegated colours of May the wondrous truth of that verse of the boy-poet Chatterton, where, depicting Nature in the springtime, he writes

"The meads are sprinkled with a yellow hue."

For, in spite of the pale lilac of the cuckoo-buds and the damsonbrown of the bee-orchis, in spite even of the scarlet of the wayside poppy, and the delicate blue of the little germander, or wild speedwell (that country cousin of the forget-me-not!)—one prevailing golden sheen overlays the whole vernal landscape: broom and gorse upon the wild, breezy uplands; marigold in the cottage gardens; kingcup or crowfoot on the rich pasture-lands. Hung in tassels above the hedgerows the pendant spikes or catkin of the hazel-blooming from the very weeds below them the honeyed blossoms of the hemp-nettle. And, away in secret places, fragile tufts of what one poet calls "the rathe primrose," or, more delicate still, fairy-like-bells, tremulous among their broad leaves, what another national poet sings of lovingly as

"Our England's lily of the May,
Our lily of the vale!"

Overhead, as I loiter back towards the more habitable regions, the glorious cones of blossom making one giant nosegay of the horse-chestnut-the milk-white and bluish-pink plumes of the lilac -creaming over hedge and hawthorn, the abounding May-flower, oppressive almost at times from its delicious wealth of fragrance —and yonder, it may be, in the centre of a smooth-shaven lawn, that floral cascade of the season, the gold-dripping laburnum! Fluttering hither and thither all the birds and insects familiar to orchard and garden-croft in the spring-time! Here the large white cabbage butterfly, dancing from shrub to shrub in frequent vacillations. Here the little dun house sparrow, lured by the increasing warmth from its temporary home under the eaves to nest for greater coolness in the plum-tree or the apple-tree. Is my rural saunter dashed for a brief interval by a sudden rain-gust, am I not solaced as the sun comes out again over the sparkling branches, by the song of that missel-thrush, who loves best to warble thus in the blowing, showery weather? But, better than song of bird or gleam of sunshine, what seems somehow made out of their blending, when I find myself, at a sudden turn in the pathway, in the midst of the romp and laughter of the village urchins, startled for a moment into silence at my coming-so that they hear for the first time in the pause the mystical rebeck

of the cuckoo, sounding to them from the green distance!-but returning with redoubled zest the next instant, when I have passed onwards, to their interrupted game with the golden cowslipball, which is for them in May what the silvery snow-ball is in December.

Happiest glimpse of all the seasonable influences, however, yet caught in this May-day ramble, the shy pair I have passed but now, by sympathy so shyly, sauntering by the filbert coppice. Is it not a melodious re-echoing still of the charming song of that delightful rascal Touchstone ?—

As I cannot resist presently one momentary glance after them, while I note the whispering air of both (the little skirt of russet fluttering from me the while into perspective), I think to myself, think I, if, as it happens, those younger children yet within earshot at their gambols, are unconscious illustrations of Gray's joyous line-dainty motto for a vignette!

these two elder children are no less instinctive disciples of the philosophy sung thus quaintly by an earlier lyrist, Edwards, one of the true Shakspearian song-writers:

"Use May while that you may,

For May hath but his time:
When all the fruit is gone, it is
Too late the tree to climb."

Ending my May stroll in that flood of melody, first audible in the month of the May-flowers, I cannot marvel in the least that this, among all the twelve, has ever had the peculiar love of those congenial melodists the poets. I cannot wonder that Milton followed delightedly—with blind eyes that saw clearer and further almost than all others gifted with keenest vision—

"Zephyr with Aurora playing

As he met her once a-maying:"

any more than I can possibly marvel that even the gloomy Darwin

-that very Ghoul in Fairyland-should break for once into a sprightly measure-where he sings:

"Sweet May, thy radiant form unfold,
Unclose thy blue voluptuous eye,

And wave thy shadowy locks of gold!"—

or that (happiest tribute of all!) Spenser, enraptured by the lovely apparition, should have broken forth into that boisterous outburst of admiration, when chaunting:

"Deck'd all with dainties of her season's pride,

Lord! how all creatures laugh'd when her they spied,
And leapt, and danced, as they had ravish'd been,
And Cupid's self about her flutter'd all in green.'

As I am still musing thus upon the calendar-month of love and flowers, there comes gaily floating down to me from beyond two hundred years ago, May ditty after May ditty-a very choir of nightingales!

Obsolete though all these seasonable songs have come to be long since yea! obsolete as the antique and all but forgotten sports they celebrate-yet, for all that, the May season comes to us still freshly as ever-if none amongst us may yet go forth a-Maying. In the midst of all my arcadian reveries over the vanished pastimes, however, what is that remembered snatch of verse, like a sigh breathed years ago, by the English poet of the Italian Rimini ?—

"Ah, friends, methinks it were a pleasant sphere
If, like the trees, we blossom'd every year;
If locks grew thick again, and rosy dyes
Return'd in cheeks, and raciness in eyes,

And all around us vital to the tips,

The human orchard laugh'd with cherry lips!

Lord, what a burst of merriment and play,

Fair dames, were that! and what a first of May!"

A far pleasanter time of it, however, the Mayers of yore had than could by any possibility be attainable by ourselves: a kindlier spirit, as one might say, then actuating that shrewd despot the Clerk of the Weather. Is it asked, How? Turn we simply for answer to the ancient Calendar of our Forefathers! That Calendar which shows, full plainly, how-upon May-Morningthey could troop into far more flowery meadows-over a certain Old Style, bringing them, as by a short cut, just one clear fortnight nearer to Midsummer!

THOMAS MOORE-THE POET-WIT.

REGARDING Thomas Moore though we must always doessentially and above all things-as Poet and as Wit, we cannot of course but have consideration also occasionally for his other intellectual characteristics. We cannot but think of him sometimes as the historian of Ireland, as the humorist of the "Fudge Family," as the scholarly adventurer within the labyrinths of religious controversy, as the biographer of Sheridan, of Byron, and of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Now and then he returns to our recollection as the facetious Pasquin of those delightful "sooterkins of wit," the once famous odes upon "Cash, Corn, and Catholics," or as the classic fabulist of the mysteries of "The Epicurean," or as the sparkling fribble of the "Twopenny Post Bag" and the "Blue Stocking." It is peculiarly, however, nay, it is almost exclusively as the Wit and as the Poet, as the Humorist and as the Melodist, that Moore lives in our own and in the general remembrance. We have heard him spoken of by one of the most gifted men of our time, as the most brilliant companion in the whole range of his recollection. We all know what the fastidious Byron called him-"the beloved of all circles, the idol of his own!" We remember, too, how even the cynical Rogers exclaimed in a letter to him (August 5, 1820), "What a lucky fellow you are! Surely you must have been born with a rose in your lips and a nightingale singing on the top of your bed!" We remember still more delightedly that glorious asseveration of Sydney Smith's-" By the beard of the prelate of Canterbury, by the cassock of the prelate of York, by the breakfasts of Rogers, by Luttrell's love of side dishes, I swear that I had rather hear you sing than any other person I ever heard in my life, male or female. For what is your singing but beautiful poetry, floating in fine music, and guided by exquisite feeling?" It is as the songster, as the ballad-writer, and as the balladsinger, it is as the animated talker, the conversational wit, the