370 REFLECTIONS ON AUTUMNAL APPEARANCES. The sentiment of melancholy which the closing weeks of autumn thus forcibly impress on the mind, is not, however, of a painful or oppressive nature. It is, on the contrary, productive of a chastened pleasure, which tends to elevate our moral nature, and which thus affords us a new proof of the never failing beneficence of the God of the Seasons. This effect is finely expressed by St Pierre, with whose reflections on such a state of mind, I shall close these extracts. “ Beneficent nature converts all her phenomena into so many sources of pleasure to man; and, if we attend to her procedure, it will be found that her most common appearances are the most 'agreeable. I enjoy pleasure, for example, when I see old mossy walls dripping, and hear the whistling of the wind, mingled with the battering of rain. These melancholy sounds, in the night time, throw me into a soft and profound repose. “I cannot tell to what physical law philosophers may refer the sensations of melancholy, but I consider them as the most voluptuous affections of the soul. Melancholy is dainty. This proceeds from its gratifying at once the body and the soul; the sentiment of our misery and of our excellence. “In bad weather, the sentiment of my human misery is tranquillized by seeing it rain, while I am under cover; by hearing the wind blow violently, while I lie comfortably in bed. I in this case enjoy a negative felicity. With this are afterwards blended some of those sentiments of the divinity, the perception of which communicates such exquisite pleasure to the soul. It looks as if nature were then conforming to my situation, like a sympathizing friend. She is, besides, at all times so interesting, under whatever aspect she exhibits herself, that, when it rains, I think I see a beautiful woman in tears. She seems to me more beautiful, the more that she wears the appearance of affliction. "In order to be impressed with these sentiments, which I venture to call voluptuous, I must have no pro ject in hand of a pleasant walk, of visiting, of hunting, which perhaps would put me into a bad humour. To enjoy bad weather, our soul must be travelling abroad and the body at rest. From the harmony of those two powers of our constitution, the most terrible revolutions of nature frequently interest us more than her gayest scenery."* TWELFTH WEEK-SATURDAY. THE LANDSCAPE AT THE CLOSE OF AUTUMN. THE weather of each season not only differs from that of another in its main features and characteristics, but in many minute circumstances, which are not so frequently the subject of remark. In spring and autumn, for example, though the length of the days, and the amount of sunshine are nearly equal, yet the state of the atmosphere, and the composition of the whole landscape, are, in most respects, entirely dissimilar. The fields, relieved of their various produce, at present wear a brown and withered aspect. Occasionally an aftergrowth of tender grass sprinkles the decaying stubble with its verdure; but the farmer soon disperses his cattle over the field, and they immediately browse it bare. The hawthorn-hedges have lost nearly all their foliage, though many of their ripe and ruddy haws, still survive, to be mellowed by the earlier winter frosts. They now discover the bird-nests which, the summer long, they concealed from the school-boy's curious The woods are almost stripped of their robes, and the long, rank, but now withering grass beneath the trees, is matted with the multitude of putrefying leaves. The brooks, of all sizes, are now much less lim eye. *Studies of Nature, 12th Study. pid and gentle in their flow, than during the dry days of summer. They are sensibly swollen with rains; and, as the soil is now bare and miry, their hitherto stainless waters have become turbid and discoloured. The morning, at this period, of the year, is in general moist and raw. The full-formed and pearly dew, so common in summer, is seldom seen; but the ground is wetted by the chilling and uncomfortable fog. As the day advances, however, the sky brightens, the sun shines forth, and the ground gets drier. Yet a soft, white haze broods over the scene, and covers, as with a thin veil, the brows of the loftier hills. There is a calmness in the air, and in the woods, a melancholy and even mourn ful tranquillity, that is, perhaps, the distinguishing characteristic of the season. The wild winds of winter have not yet begun to blow; but the land seems to lie in silent expectation of their desolating blasts, and we feel as during the ominous pause before the full outbreak of the tempest. The earth has matured and yielded up to man her yearly produce; and the energies of that" all-bearing mother,” as if exhausted, seem to demand the repose of winter. Vegetation almost ceases, and universal death (which, however, is but the predecessor of another life), is fast spreading over all the families of flowers, shrubs, and trees. The brilliant tints lately assumed by the woods, and which at first might appear to indicate a new and brighter foliage, are rapidly fading into a sombre hue, where the boughs are not yet bleak and leafless. Here and there only, some hardier or later tree still flares, amidst a mass of naked branches, in its brightest autumnal robes. There is a sad beauty in the scene, which cannot well be hid even from the common eye. Traces of summer loveliness are still every where to be seen, and the few flowers that yet bloom in the hedges, or on the sheltered woodland bank, have a singular sweetness, a forlorn and surviving beauty of their own. The transition from autumnal richness to the desolation of winter, is gradual, gentle, and even beautiful. The nature-loving eye can even be pleased with the last signs of vegetation still hanging upon the branches, or silently dropping to the ground. "The beauty of decay Charms the slow-fading year, And sweetly fall away The flowers and foliage sere ; And lingering summer still we see But little singing of birds disturbs the still life of a day in the close of autumn. What birds still remain with us are almost dumb, and seem to feel and mourn the approaching rigours of the season. A few feeble and plaintive notes alone express their sadness. But for the rousing echoes of the sportsman's gun by day, and the cawing of the "blackening train" of crows, flying in the twilight to their roost in the distant woods, scarcely a sound would break the death-like and all-pervading stillness. The farmer, with his crop now gathered in, and his winter wheat sown, enjoys his consciousness of security, and, like the sailor who foresees the impending storm, is prepared for the severity of the coming season. His wellfilled and neatly trimmed barn-yard is a striking sign of rustic plenty, the object and precious reward of all his toils. Yet, though rejoicing over the riches of the year, he, not unmindful of another, is ploughing his stubble fields, that the soil may be exposed to the pulverizing effects of the winter's frost. Behind them, settling upon the newly turned up furrow, flock the hungry crows, in quest of worms, and other food. If we look from the farm to the garden, here too we see nothing but symptoms of past fertility, and preparations for the coming ungenial frost and snow. The delving of the cleared soil, the planting of a few hardy greens for winter use, and the pruning of fruit-trees, form the chief occupations of the gardener, professional or domestic. The calm and settled weather invites him to his work, and gives ample scope to his habits of precaution. Thus gracefully and gently wanes the dying year. There is something in the gradual coming on, the calmness, and the beauty of the transition, which powerfully suggests to us the goodness and wisdom of the Author and Controller of the seasons. Were the air suddenly to assume a winter temperature, and the forests and fields all at once, in a single night, we shall say, to lose their beautiful foliage, how, even with the greatest precaution, would this rapid change invade our comforts, endanger our health, and derange our agricultural operations. But, under the present constitution of things, our frames are insensibly prepared for the winter's cold. There is a seasonable pause for the farmer and the gardener to set about their preparatory processes, and a gradual removal from our sight of the splendid decorations of autumn. The beauty of the woods lingers ere it finally departs, and each much-loved autumnal flower seems frequently to bid us farewell, in gradually sinking to the earth. In all this, every heart, not steeled to natural emotion, must feel a designed goodness, and gratefully acknowledge the unremitting care of a kind and bountiful Father. It were easy to point out, in this gentle decay of the year, many analogies to what we daily witness in human life, as, for example, that which obtains between the said decay, and the quiet ebbing of life in the aged and almost ripened Christian, whose grey hairs fall peacefully like the undisturbed leaves, and whose time-worn frame is imperceptibly, and by slow degrees, fitted for the undreaded winter of the grave. But I enter not upon this pleasing and solemn subject: the reader requires no instruction to make of it a profitable theme of meditation. J. D. |