all dwellers in and about london are, alas, too well acquainted with that never-to-be-enough-hated change which we have to undergo once, at least, in every spring. as each succeeding winter wears away, the same thing happens to us.

for some time we do not trust the fair lengthening days, and cannot believe that the dirty pair of sparrows[207] who live opposite our window are really making love and going to build, notwithstanding all their twittering. but morning after morning rises fresh and gentle; there is no longer any vice in the air; we drop our overcoats; we rejoice in the green shoots which the privet-hedge is making in the square garden, and hail the returning tender-pointed leaves of the plane-trees as friends; we go out of our way to walk through covent garden market to see the ever-brightening show of flowers from the happy country.

this state of things goes on sometimes for a few days only, sometimes for weeks, till we make sure that we are safe for this spring at any rate. don’t we wish we may get it! sooner or later, but sure—sure as christmas bills, or the income-tax, or anything, if there be anything surer than these—comes the morning when we are suddenly conscious as soon as we rise that there is something the matter. we do not feel comfortable in our clothes; nothing tastes quite as it should at breakfast; though the day looks bright enough, there is a fierce dusty taint about it as we look out through windows, which no instinct now prompts us to throw open, as it has done every day for the last month.

but it is only when we open our doors and issue into the street, that the hateful reality comes right home to us. all moisture, and softness, and pleasantness has gone clean out of the air since last night; we seem to inhale yards of horsehair instead of satin; our skins dry[208] up; our eyes, and hair, and whiskers, and clothes are soon filled with loathsome dust, and our nostrils with the reek of the great city. we glance at the weathercock on the nearest steeple, and see that it points n.e. and so long as the change lasts, we carry about with us a feeling of anger and impatience as though we personally were being ill-treated. we could have borne with it well enough in november; it would have been natural, and all in the day’s work in march; but now, when rotten-row is beginning to be crowded, when long lines of pleasure-vans are leaving town on monday mornings for hampton court or the poor remains of dear epping forrest, when the exhibitions are open or about to open, when the religious public is up, or on its way up, for may meetings, when the thames is already sending up faint warnings of what we may expect as soon as his dirty old life’s blood shall have been thoroughly warmed up, and the ship, and trafalgar, and star and garter are in full swing at the antagonist poles of the cockney system, we do feel that this blight which has come over us and everything is an insult, and that while it lasts, as there is nobody who can be made particularly responsible for it, we are justified in going about in general disgust, and ready to quarrel with anybody we may meet on the smallest pretext.

this sort of east-windy state is perhaps the best physical analogy for certain mental ones through which most of us pass. the real crisis over, we drift into the[209] skirts of the storm, and lay rolling under bare poles, comparatively safe, but without any power as yet to get the ship well in hand, and make her obey her helm. the storm may break over us again at any minute, and find us almost as helpless as ever.