old seat at the porch? Here the rustic pilgrim, before he enters the house of God, rests his toil-strung limbs. Here the villagers congregate in a knot, and discuss the politics of the village; the last wedding, or the freshest grave, are main themes of discourse. Here the ancient dames, with their prayer books neatly folded in their glazed handkerchief, and attired in their scarfs, refreshed by a week's repose, canvass the merits of the parson's wife, or reprobate the vanity which induces some Cicely or Phoebe to deck her perishable body in such an unprofitable gaudiness. Alas! did not they, in their spring-time, love to bask in the sun, and to heighten their charms by a gay riband, or an envy-exciting lace? Observation will find an ample field to roam over in the church porch; and the benevolent Christian will rejoice in contemplating the unpolished throng, approaching the house of God, with their countenances clad in the smiles of Sabbath peace. of that everlasting Sabbath when we shall rest from our labours in the presence of our heavenly Father.

He will reflect on the sweet repose

CHAPTER XVI.

Autumn Musings.

'HERE is in the grey and sober tinting of an autumn evening, in the many colored tints of the trembling foliage, in the fitful sighing of the breeze, in the mournful call of the partridge, in the soft low piping of the robin, and, above all, in the sweetly plaintive warbling of the thrush, the blackbird, and the woodlark, an union of sight and sound which can scarcely fail to touch the breast with a corresponding sense of pensive pleasure. More especially is this felt to be the case if, while we are contemplating such a scene, the setting sun, hitherto shrouded in the gathering gloom, should cast a farewell lustre over the fields. It is then, perhaps, that our emotions harmonize most completely with external Nature. Milton was so partial to this season of the year, and so impressed with a conviction of its friendliness to poetic inspiration, as to leave it on record that he felt the promptings of his genius most effectual and satisfactory to himself about the time of the autumnal equinox. To Thomson we are indebted for an express tribute to autumn, as the season best suited to philosophic thoughts and poetic composition

"When autumn's yellow lustre gilds the world,
And tempts the sickled swain into the field,
Seized by the general joy his heart distends
With gentle throes, and through the tepid gleams
Deep musing, then he best exerts his song."

How much of soft and gentle feeling do we owe to the inspirations of autumn, to its symbols of decay and its suggestions of our own mortality. If all things around us were like the granite mountain peaks, which from immemorial ages have caught the first beams of morning suns, our wonder and awe might be greater, but our gentler and softer emotions would be less. It is the very frailty of Nature's passing forms of beauty that excites in our hearts a tender interest; and when to this is joined an almost endless variety as to their duration-their stay with us they become storehouses of suggestive thought. Hence the various seasons are used constantly in our every-day speech as types of human life. We speak of the spring-time of life when referring to youth, and of its summer when we would represent its maturity, of autumn as the symbol of its decay, and of winter as representing old age as it wends its way to the grave. And so also with the day itself. "Evening," says Aristotle, "has the same relationship to the day as old age has to life;" therefore evening may be called the old age of the day; and old age the evening of life, or, as it is styled by Empedocles, "the setting of life." How beautiful are those lines in Festus

"We women have four seasons, like the year :
Our spring is in our lightsome, girlish days,
When the heart laughs within us for sheer joy;

Summer is when we love, and are beloved;

Autumn, when some young thing with tiny hands,
And rosy cheeks, and flossy tendrilled locks,

Is wantoning about us day and night;

And winter is when those we loved have perished;
For the heart ices then."

Gifted with an accomplished mind, the poet walks at large, amid the fair creations of the material world; and imbibing images, at every step, to form his subjects and illustrate his positions, he turns every object into an intelligible hieroglyphic. For there is an analogy between external appearances and particular affections of the soul, strikingly exemplificative of that general harmony, which subsists in all the universe. For infinite are the relations and analogies, which objects bear to each other. Harmonies, which would give ample scope for the satisfaction and rapidity of the liveliest imagination! It is from these analogies, that the heavenly bodies have been considered as symbols of majesty; and the oak as an emblem of strength; the olive of peace; and the willow of sorrow. One of the Psalms of David, pursuing this analogy, represents the Jews, hanging their harps upon the willows of Babylon, bewailing their exile from their native country.

The yellow-green, which is the color Nature assumes at the falling of the leaf, was worn in chivalry, as an emblem of despair. Red was considered as indicative of anger, sometimes of guilt; green of tranquillity; and brown of melancholy.

By analogy, we associate good fortune with a fine morning; ignorance with darkness; youth with spring; manhood with summer; and autumn with that season of

life, when, as Shakespeare observes in a fine vein of melancholy, we are fallen into "the sere and yellow leaf.". Winter we associate with age.

It is this striking analogy, which enables Thomson and Young so intimately to connect the seasons with each other.

66 Behold, fond man!

See here thy pictured life: pass some few years,
Thy flowery spring, thy summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober autumn fading into age;

And pale concluding winter comes at last,

And shuts the scene!"

Dante metaphorically compares the dispensations of Fortune to the progress of the seasons.

"Here in this mirror,

Let man behold the circuit of his fortunes.
The season of the spring dawns like the morning,
Bedewing childhood with unrelished beauties
Of gaudy sights. The summer, as the noon,
Shines in delight of youth, and ripens strength.
To autumn's manhood; here the evening grows
And knits up all felicity in folly;

Winter at last draws on the night of age."

The seasons were represented in Egypt by a rose, an ear of corn, and an apple: spring, summer, and winter. The Egyptians, like the ancient Germans, divided their year into three seasons only: autumn was unknown. Macrobius, however, states the contrary; since he says, that the Egyptians drew the sun at the winter solstice as an infant; at the vernal equinox as a youth; at the summer solstice as a man in the highest state of vigour;