MARCH.

"The stormy March is come at last,

With wind and cloud and changing skies,
I hear the rushing of the blast,

That through the snowy valley flies.

"Ah, passing few are they who speak,

Wild, stormy month! in praise of thee;
Yet, though thy winds are loud and bleak,
Thou art a welcome month to me.

"For thou to northern lands again,

The glad and glorious sun dost bring;
And thou hast join'd the gentle train,
And wear'st the gentle name of Spring.

"And in thy reign of blast and storm,

Smiles many a long, bright, sunny day:
When the changing winds are soft and warm,
And heaven puts on the blue of May.

"Thou bring'st the hope of those calm skies,
And that soft time of sunny showers;
When the wide bloom, on earth that lies,

Seems of a brighter world than ours."

BRYANT.

FICKLENESS is said to be the chief feature of the month of March. It often storms, smiles, snows, hails, shines, and rains, all in one day. But it may certainly

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be known from its north-east winds, which always prevail, sooner or later, in some part or other.

Often are

they felt more severely than the cold of mid-winter, yet they are of great utility. As Thomson says

"These cruel-seeming winds

Blow not in vain. For hence they keep repress'd

These deepening clouds on clouds, surcharg'd with rain,

That o'er the vast Atlantic hither borne,

In endless train, would quench the summer blaze,
And, cheerless, drown the crude unripen'd year."

At length, however, the whistling of the air, its rushing, and those gusts which are by no means unusual, pause for a time. The winds seem to have done their work; and if rains come, they do not so saturate the ground as to prevent the sun drying it quickly. The change in this respect is often surprising. Were the heavy rains of the preceding month continued throughout the present, the seeds committed to the earth, and already germinating, would perish, and the industry of man be frustrated. March is sometimes called a trying month in our climate, but on it greatly depends the fulness of summer, and the riches of autumn. How wisely and benevolently are all things ordered! He who "tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," controls the power of the elements, for the welfare of his creatures.

Thus it often happens, that the paths which yesterday were so miry that we thought more of the trouble than the pleasure of a walk, are quite firm. The air alone, without the sun, has dried the ground, and “a bushel of March dust," says an old proverb, "is worth a monarch's ransom." Now the young and the healthy bound gaily along; and well they may, for the first tokens of spring now cheer them, and are increasing in beauty from day to day.

When the sky is clear, and the sun enlivening, when the fields are beginning to be green, and the warblers of the woods pour forth their songs, when the buds are swelling in the hedges, and all nature appears fresh and gay, it is truly delightful to walk forth in the open air. In such a season may the eye see and the heart feel that God is everywhere scattering around most plenteously his blessings. Let us then leave our dwellings, and mark some of the various objects that demand attention.

Early in the year the buds on the trees are worthy of notice. The little conical projections from the stem, which are at first of an uniform substance, but which are eventually covered by minute scales, very regularly and closely arranged one over the other, produce the branches of a plant. Without these, no