126 THE HEARTS-EASE". 



Yet it is when we are somewhat remored, and 

 able to take a general view of the landscape, that 

 such loveliness is rightly appreciated. Walking 

 under the shade of our own withering bowers, 

 where the damp, fallen leaves impede our path r 

 and mar the lingering beauty of our borders, it is- 

 by no means so pleasant. The visitation touches 

 us too nearly, our individual comforts are too 

 closely trenched upon ; and gladly would we bar- 

 gain that, after going forth to look upon the beauty 

 of neighbouring plantations in their progress to- 

 wards utter decay, we might return to our especial 

 garden, finding it exempt from the universal doom ,. 

 as thickly clustering with green leaves- as when 

 summer first put on her finished livery. 



I have thought of this, as illustrating in some 

 degree my feeling, when I meet with narratives of 

 interesting characters, whose passage from mortal 

 to immortal life is arrayed in new glories, like the 

 fading woods of autumn. I gaze, and admire, and 

 rejoice, on behalf of the privileged saints, whose 

 hour of approaching departure is the loveliest pe- 

 riod of their visible sojourn here : but when it is 

 upon mine own familiar friend that the visitation 

 comes — when the tree that shelters me is to be 

 stripped, when the verdure that gladdens my re- 

 treat is to fade away, — how different are the 

 feelings excited ! To the eye of a more remote 

 spectator, the withering of my bowers may form, 



