THE MONTHS.-NO. III. March. Ir there be a month the aspect of which is less amiable, and the manners and habits of which are less prepossessing than those of all the rest, which I am loth to admit, that month is March. The burning heats of Midsummer, (when they shall come to us at the prophetic call of the Quarterly Reviewers-which they never will,) I shall be able to bear. And the frosts and snows of December and January are as welcome to me in their turn as the flowers in May. Nay, the so much vituperated fogs of November I by no means set my face against; on the contrary, I have a kind of appetite for them-both corporeal and mental. As an affair of mere breath there is something tangible in them. In the evanescent air of Italy a man might as well not breathe at all, for any thing he knows of the matter. But in a November fog there is something satisfying. You can feel what you breathe, and see it too. It is like breathing water-as I suppose the fishes do. And then the taste of them, when dashed with a due seasoning of sea-coal smoke, is far from insipid. Not that I would recommend them medicinally; especially to persons of queasy stomachs, delicate nerves, and afflicted with bile. But for one of a good robust habit of body, and not dainty withal, which such, by the bye, never are, there is nothing better in its way than a well-mixed Metropolitan fog. There is something substantial in it. You may "cut and come again." It is at once meat and drink, too;-something between eggflip and omelette soufflée; but much more digestible than either. And it wraps you round like a cloak, into the bargain. No--I maintain that a London fog is a thing not to be sneezed at-if you can help it.— Mem. As many spurious imitations of the above are abroad-such as Scotch mists, and the like-which are no less deleterious than disagreeable-please to ask for the "true London Particular". -as manufactured by Thames, Coal-gas, Smoke, Steam, & Co.-No others are genuine. In fact, and sub rosa,-November is a month that has not been fairly done by; and for my part I think it should by no means have been fixed upon as that which is, par excellence the month best adapted to hang and drown oneself in ;-seeing that, to a wise man, that should never be an affair of atmosphere. But if a month must be set apart for such a process-(on the principle of luck-which determines that we are bound to begin our worldly concerns on a particular day, viz. Saturday-and would, therefore, by parity of reasoning, call upon us to end them with a similar view to times and seasons) let that month be henceforth March;--for it has, at this present writing, no one characteristic by which to designate it-being neither Spring, Summer, Autumn, nor Winter, but only March. But what I particularly object to in March is its winds. They say "March winds and April showers Bring forth May flowers." But I doubt the fact. They may call them forth, perhaps,-whistling over the roofs of their subterraneous dwellings, to let them know that Winter is past and gone. Or, in our disposition to "turn diseases to commodities," let us regard them as the expectant damsel does the sound of the mail-coach horn as it whisks through the village as she lies in bed at midnight, and tells her that to-morrow she may look for a letter from her absent swain. The only other reason why I object to March is that she drives hares mad; which is a great fault.-But be all this as it may, she is still fraught with merits; and let us proceed, without more ado, to point out a few of them. And first of the country;-to which, by the way, I have not hitherto allowed its due supremacy-for · "God made the country, but man made the town.” Now, then, even the winds of March,-notwithstanding all that we have insinuated in their disfavour-are far from being virtueless; for they come careering over our fields, and roads, and pathways, and while they dry up the damps that the thaws had let loose, and the previous frosts had prevented from sinking into the earth, "pipe to the spirit ditties" the words of which tell tales of the forthcoming flowers. And not only so, but occasionally they are caught bearing away upon their rough wings the mingled odours of violet and daffodil-both of which have already ventured to Come before the swallow dares, and take Can it ever be too late in the day to go on with the quotation, and say that now, too, we have Violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses, We have made our way into the garden at once, without intending it. But perhaps we could not do better; for the general face of Nature is not much changed in appearance since we left it in February; though its internal economy has made an important step in advance. The sap is alive in the seemingly sleeping trunks that every where surround us, and is beginning to mount slowly to its destination; and the embryo blooms are almost visibly struggling towards light and life, beneath their rough, unpromising outer coats-unpromising to the idle, the unthinking, and the inobservant; but to the eye that "can see Othello's visage in his mind," bright and beautiful, in virtue of the brightness and the beauty that they cover, but not conceal.-Now, too, the dark earth becomes soft and tractable, and yields to the kindly constraint that calls upon it to teem with new life-crumbling to the touch, that it may the better clasp in its fragrant bosom the rudiments of that gay but ephemeral creation which are born with the Spring, only "to run their race rejoicing" into the lap of Summer, and there yield up their sweet breath, a willing incense, at the shrine of that nature, the spirit of which is endless constancy growing out of endless change. Must I tell the reader this in plainer prose? Now, then, is the time to sow the seeds of most of the annual flowering plants; particularly of those which we all know and love—such as sweet-pea, the most feminine of flowers— that must have a kind hand to tend its youth, and a supporting arm to cling to in its maturity, or it grovels in the dust, and straggles away into an unsightly weed; and mignonette, with a name as sweet as its breath-that loves "within a gentle bosom to be laid," and makes haste to die there, lest its white lodging should be changed; and larkspur, trim, gay, and bold-the gallant of the garden; and lupines, blue and yellow and rose-coloured, with their winged flowers hovering above their starry leaves: and a host of others, that we must try to characterise as they come in turn before us.-Now, too, we have all the bulbous-rooted flowers at their best, and may take a final leave of them; for we shall see them no more :--of the tulip, beautiful as the panther, and as proud-standing aloof from its own leaves; and the rich hyacinth, clustering like the locks of Adam; and the myriad-leaved anemone; and narcissus, pale and passion-stricken at the sense of its own sweetness. Now, too, the tender green of Spring first begins to peep forth from the straggling branches of the hedge-row elder, the trim lilac, and the thin threads of the stream-enamoured willow-the first to put on its spring-clothing, and the last to leave it off. And if we look into the kitchen-garden, there too we shall find those forest-trees in miniature, the gooseberries and currants, letting their leaves and blossoms, both of a colour, look forth together, hand-in-hand, in search of the April sun before it arrives-as the lark mounts upward to seek for it before it has risen in the morning. It will be well if these early adventurers-forth do not encounter a cutting easterly blast; or, still worse, a deceitful breeze that tempts them to its embraces by its milder breath, only to shower diseases upon them. But if they will be out on the watch for Spring before she calls them, they must be content to take their chance. --- Now, too, the birds are for once in their lives as busy as the bees are always. They are getting their houses built, and seeing to their household affairs, and concluding their family arrangements that when the summer and the sunshine are fairly come, they may have nothing to do but teach their children the last new modes of flying and singing, and be as happy as-birds, for the rest of the year. Now, therefore,— as in the last month-they have but little time to sing to each other; and the lark has the morning sky all to himself. Lastly, now we meet with one of the prettiest, yet most pathetic sights that the animal world presents: the early lambs, dropped in their tottering and bleating helplessness, upon the cold skirts of winIter, and hiding their frail forms from the March winds, by crouching down on the sheltered side of their dams. Now, quitting the country till next month, we find London all alive --Lent and Lady-day notwithstanding; for the latter is but a day, after all; and he must have a very countryfied conscience who cannot satisfy it as to the former, by doing penance once or twice at an oratorio, and hearing comic songs sung in a foreign tongue; or if this does not do, he may fast if he pleases, every Friday, by eating salt-fish in addition to the rest of his fare! Now, the citizens have pretty well left off their annual visitings, and given the great ones leave to begin; so that there is no sleep to be had in the neighbourhood of May-fair, for love or money, after one in the morning. Now, the dress-boxes of the winter-houses can occasionally boast a baronet's lady: this, however, being the extent of their attainments in that way for how can the great be expected to listen to Shakspeare under the same roof with their shopkeepers? There is, in fact, no denying that the said great are marvellously at the mercy of the said little, in the matter of amusement; and there is no saying whether the latter will not, some day or other, make an inroad upon Almack's itself. Now, however, in spite of the said inroads, the best boxes at the Opera do begin to be worth exploring; since a beautiful Englishwoman of high fashion is "a sight to set before a king." Now the actors, all but the singing ones, in their secret hearts put up periodical prayers for the annual agitation of the Catholic Question; for without some stimulus of this kind, to correct the laxity of our religious morals, there is no knowing how soon they may cease to give thanks for three Sundays in the week during Lent. But Mr. Irving will look to this on their behalf; so they need not fear just at present. Now, occasionally during the said pious period, an inadvertent apprentice gets leave to go to "the play" on a Wednesday; and, having taken his seat in the one shilling-gallery, wonders during six long hours what can have come to the players, that they do nothing but sit in a row with their hands before them, in front of a pyramid of fiddlers, and break silence now and then by singing a psalm-for a psalm he is sure it must be, though he never heard it at church.-Now, every other day, the four sides of the newspapers offer to the wearied eye one unbroken ocean of small type; to the infinite abridgement of the labour of Chapter Coffee-house quidnuncs-who find that they have only one sheet to get through instead of ten; and to the entire discomfiture of the conscientious reader, who makes it a point of duty to spell through all that he pays for-avowed advertisements included ;-for in these latter there is some variety, of which no one can accuse the parliamentary speeches. By the bye, it would be but consistent in The Times to bestow their ingenuous prefix of "(advertisement)" on a few of the last-named effusions; and if they were placed under the head of "want places," nobody but the advertiser would see cause to complain of the mistake.-Now Fashion is on the point of awaking from her periodical sleep, attended by Mesdames Bean, Bell, and Pierrepoint on one side of her couch, and Messieurs Myers, Stultz, and Davison on the other: each individual of each party watching with apparent anxiety to catch the first glance of her opening eye, in order to direct their several movements accordingly; but each having previously determined on those movements as definitively as if their legitimate monarch and directress had nothing to do with the matter: for, to say truth, notwithstanding her boasted legitimacy, Fashion has but a very limited control even in her own court-the real government being an oligarchy, the members of which are each lord paramount in his own particular department. Who, in fact, shall dispute an epaulet of Miss Pierrepoint's? and when Mr. Myers has atchieved a collar, who shall call it in question?-Now Hyde-park is worth walking in at four o'clock of a fine week-day, though the trees are still bare for there, as sure as the sunshine comes, shall be seen sauntering beneath it three distinct classes of fashionables;—namely— first, the fair immaculates from the mansions about May-fair, who loll listlessly in their elegant equipages, and occasionally eye, with an air of infinite disdain, the second class, who are peregrinating on the other side the bar the fair frailties from the neighbourhood of the Newroad; which latter, more magnanimous than their betters, and less envious, are content, for their parts, to appropriate the greater portion of the attentions of the third class the Ineffables and Exquisites from Long's and Stevens's. Among these last-named class something particular indeed must have happened if you do not recognise that arbiter elegantiarum of actresses, the Marquis of W; that delighter in Dennets and decaying beauties, the honourable L- S; and that prince-pretty-man of rake-hells and roués, little George W. Finally, March, among its other merits, is richer than any other month in illustrious birth-days: a qualification which I had inadvertently neglected to notice in regard to January, though it includes those of our own Newton, of Robert Burns, and of that musical miracle, Mozart. On the 2d of March 1564 was given to a world which was unworthy of him, Galileo Galilei-" The starry Galileo, with his woes." On the 8th of March 1684 was breathed into a human form that majestic spirit which afterwards was to alternately sigh and shout forth its high and holy aspirations, in the music of the Messiah. On the 15th of March, 1605, was born the gentle lover of the divine Saccharissa. On the 18th of March 1474, first saw the light that Atlas of modern art, Michel Angelo Buonarotti.-And lastly, on the 23d, 1554, Nature, in a melancholy mood, sighed the breath of life into the form of Tasso; and which breath, retaining the character that was thus impressed upon it, was but one long sigh for ever after. CONSTANCY. IF Kitty's rolling full blue eyes Yet Phillis fans an equal flame, From endless change all order springs, Our being, thoughts, and breath, Then blame not if affection roves, And rival flames perplex, But think the youth who oft'nest loves M. |