14 November Analogy in Human Affairs. 



met with no interruption. This suggested the reflection 

 that a very close analogy may be found in human affairs. 

 A colony severed from the mother country will often 

 preserve words, and even habits in thought and action, 

 which have dropped off from the parent since the separa- 

 tion took place, and which would also have been lost by 

 the colony if the old closeness of connection had never 

 been interrupted. The French Canadians are an excel- 

 lent instance of this ; they have preserved traditional 

 ways of thinking, and traditional manners, which have 

 dropped off long since from the inhabitants of France 

 itself. 



Although the season of the year was that which is 

 generally reputed to be least interesting, and most com- 

 pletely denuded of the charms of color ; although the 

 sky above us was like lead, and there was not one flower 

 on the earth beneath : still it would have been impossible 

 for a painter, or for any one capable of seeing color in 

 nature, not to be continually interested by the wonderful 

 variety around us. It was not merely those pale, golden 

 leaves of the broken chestnut branches, but the rich 

 green of the holly with its bright red berries, and the 

 abundant beech leaves, and the young oaks that kept 

 their foliage as in summer, changed only in hue and in 

 the form of the shrivelled leaves. Amidst intensities of 

 green, of moss and holly, blood-red berries, and foliage 

 like rusted iron or faded gilding, the grays and purples 

 of a thousand trunks and bewildering intricate branches 

 had a beauty that is lost in the too monotonous verdure 

 of July. The American philosopher, Emerson, says, 



