ST. ANDREW'S UNDER-SHAFT,

LEADEN-HALL STREET.

"Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come,
And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud,
While music wakes around, veil'd in a show'r
Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend."

THOMPSON.

THE approach of the joyous and gladsome Spring, when nature first awakes from the long and dreary sleep into which she may be said to fall annually,-when the trees put forth their foliage to drink in the healthful rays of the sun, and the happy birds sing praises of the season all the day, has ever been hailed with delight by the denizens of the world; and, in an earlier and less sophisticated state of society than the present, our forefathers were wont to set apart the first day of May, (which may be regarded as its commencement,) as a great rural festival: when they might give loose to the exuberance of spirit excited by the aspect of nature, and, by the due enjoyment of the means of happiness afforded them, testify their gratitude to the allwise Regulator of the universe. At this period of the year in by-gone times, the careful citizen, the gay and spendthrift 'prentice, the learned priest, the swaggering man-at

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