made them?--up to the topmost
spray that feathers in the breeze, and pour upon the grateful air the
voice of free thanksgiving. But an if the blade behind the heart is
still unplumed for flying, and only gentle flax or fur blows out on the
wind, instead of beating it, does the owner of four legs sit and sulk,
like a man defrauded of his merits? He answers the question with a skip
and jump; ere a man can look twice at him he has cut a caper, frolicked
an intricate dance upon the grass, and brightened his eyes for another
round of joy.

At any time of year almost, the time of day commands these deeds, unless
the weather is outrageous; but never more undeniably than in the month
of April. The growth of the year is well established, and its manner
beginning to be schooled by then; childish petulance may still survive,
and the tears of penitence be frequent; yet upon the whole there is--or
used to be--a sense of responsibility forming, and an elemental inkling
of true duty towards the earth. Even man (the least observant of the
powers that walk the ground, going for the signs of weather to the cows,
or crows, or pigs, swallows, spiders, gnats, and leeches, or the final
assertion of his own corns) sometimes is moved a little, and enlarged
by influence of life beyond his own, and tickled by a pen above his
thoughts, and touched for one second by the hand that made him. Then he
sees a brother man who owes him a shilling, and his soul is swallowed up
in the resolve to get it.

But well in the sky-like period of youth, when the wind sits lightly,
and the clouds go by in puffs, these little jumps of inspiration take
the most respectable young man sometimes off his legs, and the young
maid likewise--if she continues in these fine days to possess such
continuation. Blyth Scudamore had been appointed now, partly through
his own good deserts, and wholly through good influence--for Lord St.
Vincent was an ancient friend of the excellent Admiral Darling--to the
command of the Blonde, refitted, thoroughly overhauled at Portsmouth,
and pronounced by the dock-yard people to be the fastest and soundest
corvette afloat, and in every way a credit to the British navy. "The man
that floated her shall float in her," said the Earl, when somebody, who
wanted the appointment, suggested that the young man was too young. "He
has seen sharp service, and done sharp work. It is waste of time to talk
of it; the job is done." "Job is the word for it," th