It was not so of old. The climate, perhaps, was more severe than
now; the transition from winter to spring more sudden, like that of
Scandinavia now. Clearage of forests and drainage of land have
equalized our seasons, or rather made them more uncertain. More
broken winters are followed by more broken springs; and May-day is no
longer a marked point to be kept as a festival by all childlike
hearts. The merry month of May is merry only in stage songs. The
May garlands and dances are all but gone: the borrowed plate, and
the milkmaids who borrowed it, gone utterly. No more does Mrs. Pepys
go to 'lie at Woolwich, in order to a little ayre and to gather May-
dew' for her complexion, by Mrs. Turner's advice. The Maypole is
gone likewise; and never more shall the puritan soul of a Stubbs be
aroused in indignation at seeing 'against Maie, every parish, towne,
and village assemble themselves together, both men, women, and
children, olde and young, all indifferently, and goe into the woodes
and groves, hilles and mountaines, where they spend the night in
pastyme, and in the morning they returne, bringing with them birch
bowes and braunches of trees to deck their assembly withal.
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