The winds of March with beauty; violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,
Or Cytherea's breath,—pale primroses
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phœbus in his strength"—
form inexhaustible themes on which to exercise our faculties of admiration, and which serve admirably to minister to those wants which, without doubt, were given to us that we might derive pleasure from their being thus beautifully gratified—themes for the pencil of the artist, who "holds, as it were, the mirror up to nature," and the architect, when he designed his vistas of slender columns spreading out into and supporting roofs of tracery, might well be supposed to have had in his "mind's eye" some beautiful recollection of the arcades of Nature's palaces in the sombre forests, where the twisted trunks of the trees, the fretwork of their branches, and the leafy covering formed by their leaves, supply all the requisites of a grand and lofty temple, fit for the worship of that great First Cause who formed them.
FOREST SCENE.