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How lovely is spring! As we looked from Windsor Terrace on the sixteen
fertile counties spread beneath, speckled by happy cottages and wealthier
towns, all looked as in former years, heart-cheering and fair. The land was
ploughed, the slender blades of wheat broke through the dark soil, the
fruit trees were covered with buds, the husbandman was abroad in the
fields, the milk-maid tripped home with well-filled pails, the swallows and
martins struck the sunny pools with their long, pointed wings, the new
dropped lambs reposed on the young grass, the tender growth of leaves--
Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
A silent space with ever sprouting green.[3]
Man himself seemed to regenerate, and feel the frost of winter yield to
an elastic and warm renewal of life--reason told us that care and sorrow
would grow with the opening year--but how to believe the ominous voice
breathed up with pestiferous vapours from fear's dim cavern, while nature,
laughing and scattering from her green lap flowers, and fruits, and
sparkling waters, invited us to join the gay masque of young life she
led upon the scene?
Where was the plague? "Here--every where!" one voice of horror and dismay
exclaimed, when in the pleasant days of a sunny May the Destroyer of man
brooded again over the earth, forcing the spirit to leave its organic
chrysalis, and to enter upon an untried life. With one mighty sweep of its
potent weapon, all caution, all care, all prudence were levelled low: death
sat at the tables of the great, stretched itself on the cottager's pallet,
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