274 STUDIES IN THE FIELD AND FOREST. 



bereavements are softened and subdued by the new 

 bounties and blessings of the present season. While 

 we are lamenting the departure of one beautiful month, 

 another, no less delightful, has already arrived ; and the 

 winters of our sorrow are always succeeded by vernal 

 periods of enjoyment. 



Though we are accustomed to regret the lapse of 

 summer, and to dread the coming of winter, there is a 

 providential wisdom in these revolutions of the seasons; 

 and although our enjoyments are greater in the balmy 

 summer-time, than during any other period, yet their 

 average is greater than it would be if this delightful 

 season were to remain with us throughout the year. 

 There is an influence breathing from all nature in the 

 autumn that leads one to reflect on the charms of the 

 seasons that have flown, and prepares us by the regret 

 thus awakened to realize their full worth, and to 

 experience, the greater rapture, when we meet them 

 once more. 



But to the man who contemplates the works of na 

 ture with a philosophic eye, still more to the poet and 

 the moralist, do these changes and vicissitudes yield 

 sources of never-ending pleasure. They afford him 

 that tranquil and untiring amusement, which is derived 

 from watching the growth of the fields, through all its 

 gradations, from the seed to the flower, from the tender 

 bud to the leaf, and from the seedling to the perfect 

 plant. The budding of the trees, the gradual expan 

 sion of their leaves, and all the changes through which 

 they pass, until their final decay, present unfailing 

 topics of curious and pleasing meditation. In every 

 change that happens, he discovers a new fund of reflec 

 tions, on the grandeur and harmony of nature's works. 

 Even the melancholy which the man of feeling experi- 



