410 INFLUENCE OF VERDURE 



drawing from the oven. This is but an isolated 

 instance, amidst thousands of others more compli- 

 cated still. How utterly inconceivable, then, are 

 the labours, the contrivances, the combinations, that 

 are going forward and accomplishing in this, our 

 dull season of the year, in that host of nature's pro- 

 ductions with which, shortly, we shall everywhere 

 be surrounded ! 



It is in a period like this, where one comfortless 

 hue predominates over all things 



Where all is sky and a white wilderness ; 



And, here and there, a solitary pine, 



Its branches bending with a weight of snow, 



that we fully perceive the beauty, the cheerfulness, 

 of the colours of nature, which, like so many other 

 things in life, we do not duly appreciate, until we 

 are deprived of them. 



The splendour, the variety, of the autumnal glow 

 is certainly magnificent ; and, by reason of the 

 diversity of tints, gives a breadth and depth to 

 woods and glades exceeding that which an uni- 

 formity of colour would effect : but this gaiety, this 

 lustre of the grove, however pleasing as a temporary 

 exhibition, would probably not be agreeable as a 

 lasting vestiture, independent of that cast of melan- 

 choly the decay of natural beings commonly con- 

 veys ; but it is green, reviving green, that appears 

 most to gratify the senses. A bank, an eminence, 

 swept by the wind, and verdurous the grassy 

 streamlet, the ivy- vested trunk in the hedgerow, 



