s soon as ever there is anything for them to
do? Hardly has nature unfolded her smiling treasures, than the children
are at once upon her track to open out a calling for themselves. None of
them begs any more; they have each a nosegay to offer you; they were out
and gathering it before you had awakened out of your sleep, and the
supplicating face looks as sweetly at you as the present which the hand
is holding out. No person ever looks miserable who feels that he has a
right to make a demand upon you."

"How is it that the year sometimes seems so short, and sometimes is so
long? How is it that it is so short when it is passing, and so long as
we look back over it? When I think of the past (and it never comes so
powerfully over me as in the garden), I feel how the perishing and the
enduring work one upon the other, and there is nothing whose endurance
is so brief as not to leave behind it some trace of itself, something in
its own likeness."

"We are able to tolerate the winter. We fancy that we can extend
ourselves more freely when the trees are so spectral, so transparent.
They are nothing, but they conceal nothing; but when once the germs and
buds begin to show, then we become impatient for the full foliage to
come out, for the landscape to put on its body, and the tree to stand
before us as a form."

"Everything which is perfect in its kind must pass out beyond and
transcend its kind. It must be an inimitable something of another and a
higher nature. In many of its tones the nightingale is only a bird; then
it rises up above its class, and seems as if it would teach every
feathered creature what singing really is."

"A life without love, without the presence of the beloved, is but poor
_comedie a tiroir_. We draw out slide after slide, swiftly tiring of
each, and pushing it back to make haste to the next. Even what we know
to be good and important hangs but wearily together; every step is an
end, and every step is a fresh beginning."

CHAPTER X.

Charlotte meanwhile was well and in good spirits. She was happy in her
beautiful boy, whose fair promising little form every hour was a delight
to both her eyes and heart. In him she found a new link to connect her
with the world and with her property. Her old activity began anew to
stir in her again.

Look which way she would, she saw how much had been done in the year
that was past, and it was a pleasure to her to contemplate it. Enlivened
by the strength