But, of course, this is all the seedsman’s cunning, and no credit to Nature; and I repeat, that were it not for railways and the parcel post—­goodness knows whether we should ever get any spring at all in the country!  Think of the days when it had to travel down by stage-coach.  For, left to herself, what is the best Nature can do for you with March well on the way?  Personally, I find the face of the country practically unchanged.  It is, to all intents and purposes, the same as it has been for the last three or four months—­as grim, as unadorned, as bleak, as draughty, and generally as comfortless as ever.  There isn’t a flower to be seen, hardly a bird worth listening to, not a tree that is not winter-naked, and not a chair to sit down upon.  If you want flowers on your walks you must bring them with you; songs, you must take a poet under your arm; and if you want to rest, lean laboriously on your stick—­or take your chance of rheumatism.

Of course your specialists, your botanists, your nature-detectives, will tell you otherwise.  They have surprised a violet in the act of blossoming; after long and excited chase have discovered a clump of primroses in their wild state; seen one butterfly, heard one cuckoo.  But as one swallow does not make a summer, it takes more than one cuckoo to make a spring.  I confess that only yesterday I saw three sulphur butterflies, with my own eyes; I admit the catkins, and the silver-notched palm; and I am told on good colour-authority that there is a lovely purplish bloom, almost like plum-bloom, over certain copses in the valley; by taking thought, I have observed the long horizontal arms of the beech growing spurred with little forked branches of spear-shaped buds, and I see little green nipples pushing out through the wolf-coloured rind of the dwarf fir-trees.  Spring is arming in secret to attack the winter—­that is sure enough, but spring in secret is no spring for me.  I want to see her marching gaily with green pennons, and flashing sun-blades, and a good band.

I want butterflies as they have them at the Lyceum—­’butterflies all white,’ ‘butterflies all blue,’ ‘butterflies of gold,’ and I should particularly fancy ‘butterflies all black.’  But there, again, you see,—­you must go to town, within hearing of Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s voix d’or.  I want the meadows thickly inlaid with buttercups and daisies; I want the trees thick with green leaves, the sky all larks and sunshine; I want hawthorn and wild roses—­both at once; I want some go, some colour, some warmth in the world.  Oh, where are the pipes of Pan?

The pipes of Pan are in town, playing at street corners and in the centres of crowded circuses, piled high with flower-baskets blazing with refulgent flowery masses of white and gold.  Here are the flowers you can only buy in town; simple flowers enough, but only to be had in town.  Here are fragrant banks of violets every few yards, conflagrations of daffodils at every crossing, and narcissus in scented starry garlands for your hair.