SUMMER WOOD-SCENERY. 



I HAVE alluded to a beneficent law of Nature, that 

 causes her to waste no displays of sublimity or beauty 

 by making them either lasting or common. Before the 

 light of morn is sufficient to make any objects distinctly 

 visible, it displays a beauty of its own, beginning with 

 a faint violet, and melting through a succession of hues 

 into the splendor of meridian day. It remains through the 

 day mere white transparent light, disclosing the infinite 

 forms and colors of the landscape, being itself only the 

 cause that renders everything visible. When at the 

 decline of day it fades, just in the same ratio as substan- 

 tial objects grow dim and undiscernible, this unsubstantial 

 light once more becomes beautiful, painting itself in soft, 

 tender, and glowing tints upon the clouds and the atmos- 

 phere. Similar phenomena attend both the opening and 

 the decline of the year. Morning is the spring, with its 

 pale and delicate tints that gradually change into the 

 universal green that marks the landscape in summer, 

 when the characterless brilliancy of noonday is repre- 

 sented on the face of the land. Autumn is emblemized 

 by the departing tints of sunset ; and thus the day and 

 the year equally display the beneficence of Nature in the 

 gradual approach and decline of the beauty and the 

 splendor that distinguish them. 



The flowering of the forest is the conclusion of the 

 beautiful phenomena of spring, and summer cannot be 

 said to begin until we witness the full expansion of its 

 foliage. In the early part of the season each tree dis- 



