horeau
tells me that these noisy assemblages consist of three different species
of blackbirds; but I forget the other two. Robins have been long among
us, and swallows have more recently arrived.

* * * * *

_April 26._--Here is another misty day, muffling the sun. The lilac
shrubs under my study-window are almost in leaf. In two or three days
more, I may put forth my hand and pluck a green bough. These lilacs
appear to be very aged, and have lost the luxuriant foliage of their
prime. Old age has a singular aspect in lilacs, rose-bushes, and other
ornamental shrubs. It seems as if such things, as they grow only for
beauty, ought to flourish in immortal youth, or at least to die before
their decrepitude. They are trees of Paradise, and therefore not
naturally subject to decay; but have lost their birthright by being
transplanted hither. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea
of a venerable rose-bush; and there is something analogous to this in
human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental--who can
give the world nothing but flowers--should die young, and never be seen
with gray hairs and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy
bark and scanty foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that
beauty is not worthy of immortality. Nothing else, indeed, is worthy of
it; and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it
triumphed over by time. Apple-trees, on the other hand, grow old without
reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves in
whatever fashion they please, they are still respectable, even if they
afford us only an apple or two in a season, or none at all. Human
flower-shrubs, if they will grow old on earth, should, beside their
lovely blossoms, bear some kind of fruit that will satisfy earthly
appetites; else men will not be satisfied that the moss should gather on
them.

Winter and Spring are now struggling for the mastery in my study; and I
yield somewhat to each, and wholly to neither. The window is open, and
there is a fire in the stove. The day when the window is first thrown
open should be an epoch in the year; but I have forgotten to record it.
Seventy or eighty springs have visited this old house; and sixty of them
found old Dr. Ripley here,--not always old, it is true, but gradually
getting wrinkles and gray hairs, and looking more and more the picture
of winter. But he was no flower-shrub, but one