200 BRAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 



But though the Saxon poets of the fields have typified Autumn as 

 the sturdy masculine hero of the fruitage, we claim for the ruddy 

 season of mellow fruitfulness the gentle graces of a sex more fair. 

 We have seen the lovely spirit of the time : we have seen the gentle 

 Autumn and her rosy train of ministers. It was at moonlight this 

 very morn, when a voice from one of the spirits of the flowers, in 

 hushed whispers, bade me rise. I wandered to the quiet stream to 

 bathe before the day should break, and, lo ! as I sat on a soft bank, 

 beside the cool green rushes, I saw a sweet vision glide from out the 

 shadowy mists. There were tall clouds resting on the earth, like the 

 pillars of a mighty temple, and as my eyes pierced through the misty 

 curtains which hung before them into the arches of the unsunned 

 sky, I saw the twin-sister spirits of Summer and Autumn sitting 

 hand-in~hand upon a throne of flowers. Summer was sorrowful, and 

 her round laughing eyes were now dimmed with tears. The chaplet 

 of poppies which she wore had lost the lustre of their early bloom ; 

 the garlands which robed her were withering, the sweet birds which 

 had hovered around her, and made her heart glad with their joyous 

 songs, were fled, all fled ; the hand whose soft touch was like the 

 benediction of moonlight, and the heart whose pulses were the throes 

 of love, were now growing cold ; and the cheek, so lately flushed 

 with the rosy hue of joy was becoming wan in the atmosphere of 

 death. Autumn, arrayed in robes of yellow leaves and flowers, and 

 with her nut-brown hair enwreathed with green ferns and red berries, 

 was bending over her dying sister, to catch her last breath as a 

 token of the love which lived between them ; and as the first light of 

 morning flickered through the misty columns of the fane, the green 

 ear of corn she bore in her hand took on a golden hue, and the soul 

 of Summer was wafted to its home of flowers. . 



Autumn is the season of a sweet melancholy, soothing, plaintive, 

 and soft, like the quiet cadences of a hushed heart. As the leaves 

 thin out and the net-work of interlaced branches begins to appear, 

 little sweet patches of landscape come peeping out across the green 

 fields and winding-roads, and old crazy barns and grim gables and 

 ghost-like chimney-stacks, which have been hiding snugly behind the 

 bowering leaves, are again exposed to the broad glare of the sun- 

 light, blushing and abashed for their own crazy aspect, and with no 

 means of concealment. We can now get glimpses in between the 

 boughs at the little brown nests which the birds have deserted ; and 



