But who ever heard of choosing a warm April morning to moralize in? Let us wait till winter for that; and in the mean time pass out of this pleasant little copse, and make our way windingly towards the village.
In the little green lane that leads to it we meet with nothing very different from what we have already noticed; unless it be an early Bee booming past us, or hovering for a moment over the snowy flower of the Lady-smock; or a village boy looking upward with hand-shaded brow after the mounting Lark, while he holds in his other hand the tether of a young heifer, that he has led forth to take her first taste of the fresh-sprouting herbage.
On reaching the Village Green, we cannot choose but pause before this stately Chestnut-tree, the smooth stem of which rises from the earth like a dark coloured marble column, seemingly placed there by art to support the pyramidal fabric of beauty that surmounts it. It has just put forth its first series of rich fan-like leaves, each family of which is crowned by its splendid spiral flower; the whole, at this period of the year, forming the grandest vegetable object that our kingdom presents, and vying in rich beauty with any that Eastern woods can boast. And if we could reach one of those flowers, to pluck it, we should find that the most delicate fair ones of the Garden or the Greenhouse do not surpass it in elaborate pencilling and richly varied tints. It can be likened to nothing but its own portrait painted on velvet.
Farther on, across the Green, with this little raised footpath leading to it, stands a row of young Lindens, separating in the middle to admit a view of the Parsonage-house; for it can be no other. What a lovely green is theirs! and what an exact shape in their bright circular leaves, all alike, clustering and flapping over each other! And their smooth pillar-like stems shoot out from the hard gravel pathway like artificial shafts, without a ridge, a knot, or an inequality, till they spread forth suddenly just above the reach of branch-plucking schoolboys.
The Honeysuckles, that wreathe the trellised door of the neat dwelling, have already put forth their dull purple-tinged leaves, at distant intervals, on the slim shoots; but the Jasmin, that spreads itself over the circular-topped windows, is not yet sufficiently clothed to hide the formality of its training.