as ever they
were in their lives to encounter a new week of serfdom.

An annual process analogous to this takes place in our own country. In
spring, we begin to look wistfully at the garden, to watch the opening
of the lettuces, and count the colours of the pansies. As the season
advances, we wander into the fields, examine curiously the thin grass,
and turn an admiring eye towards the green hills in the distance. As
May breaks upon us in sunlight, though the east wind is still chill,
we half persuade ourselves that this really _is_ the season of love
and sentiment; and when the month ripens into June, when the grass
beneath our feet actually deserves the name of a carpet, when the
trees are rich and umbrageous, when the birds are in full song, and
the roses in full blow--then the hitherto indefinite longing of our
heart acquires strength and purpose. The dry streets look unnatural;
the formal lines of houses offend the taste; the air is close and hot;
the younger children look pale, and their elder sisters languish. The
month is at length out, and we wonder how we have survived it. The
thing can no longer be borne: the town looks and breathes like a
pest-house; while hill-sides glimmer in our waking dreams, broad seas
stretch away till they are lost in the golden light--

'And dying winds and waters near
Make music to the lonely ear:'

still worse--everybody that is anybody is off to the country and the
sea, and we rush madly after.

But the country? Where is the country? That is the puzzle. In our
youth, we knew many a quiet village, many a fine beach, many a
sheltered bay, where one might wander, or swim, or muse, or rusticate
in any way he chose. The village has grown into a town; the beach is
lined with villas; the bay swarms with vessels, and its shores with
population. Every eligible spot on the coast becomes the resort of
country-goers, till it is no longer the country. All local advantages
are taken advantage of, till they disappear. The citizen, charmed with
the countryness of the spot, builds his box by the water-side; the
speculator runs up lines of houses; a handsome inn rises in the midst;
and benevolent individuals hasten to the new centre of attraction,
loaded with every kind of commodity men stand in need of, and are
likely to buy. Here, in Scotland, on the Clyde, which is the grand
sanatorium of the east as well as the west country, this process of
change is remarkable. The once wildly be