JEAN MIDDLEMASS.
Among the many quiet, shady nooks and corners to be found in the "busy, toiling, but ever pleasure-loving Metropolis," where, if a student desire, she can be in the world, and yet out of its distracting roar, Brompton Square can claim to be one; not that it is really a "square" at all, but merely two long rows of houses, connected at the further end by a semi-circle composed of three or four larger houses. The gardens which separate the two lines of old-fashioned, solidly built dwellings, are thickly planted with shrubs and grand old trees, that in summer time quite shut out any view of the opposite neighbours, and ensure a delightful privacy, whilst the twittering of birds, and the cawing of the rooks, who have built their nests therein, undisturbed for many generations, would almost cheat a stranger into the belief that it is a bit out of a country village. Alas! for the poor little buds which had struggled feebly into life before the devastating blizzard! They were all untimely nipped. Spring has lingered so long in the "lap of winter," that the summer greenery is somewhat backward, yet, at last, the green shoots which have slept “through the long night" are beginniog to burst out into strength, and
