350 OCTOBER. 



as in spring. Fine clear days occasionally come 

 out, affording in the perfect repose of the land- 

 scape, the blueness of the waters, and the 

 strong shadows cast by the trees upon the 

 sunny ground, the highest pictorial beauty, but 

 they are speedily past, and rains and mist wrap 

 the face of the earth in gloom. Yet the glooms 

 and obscurity of Autumnal fogs, however 

 dreary to the common eye, are not unwelcome 

 to the lover of Nature. They give an air of 

 wildness to the most ordinary scenery ; but to 

 mountains, to forests, to solitary sea-coasts they 

 add a sombre sublimity that at once soothes 

 and excites the imagination j and even when 

 not pleasant themselves, they minister to our 

 pleasures by turning the heart to our bright 

 firesides, to the warmth and perpetual summer 

 of home. 



Orchards are now finally cleared of fruit, and 

 gardens have lost the chief of their attractions ; 

 farmers are busy ploughing, and getting in 

 their wheat. Swallows generally disappear this 

 month. 



WOODS. The glory of this month, however, is 

 the gorgeous splendour of wood-scenery. Woods 

 have in all ages vividly impressed the human 



