199 



THE REPOSE OF NATURE. 



Six months have passed since my readers took with me 

 a c Summer's Walk through a Country Lane.' The 

 earth has since then accomplished nearly one half of its 

 aerial course ; and reader, author, and lane have tra- 

 versed a space of some two hundred and seventy million 

 miles, passed through the seasons of genial Summer, 

 fruitful Autumn, and have commenced the cold Winter 

 time, the season of the earth's repose. Our beautiful 

 trees, with their heavy masses of varied green, have 

 changed gradually from bright emerald to dark olive, 

 and passed through successive phases of redundant 

 colouring that defy the artist's brush to imitate, until 

 they have finally settled down, into ruddy brown and 

 sombre grey. The leaves have fluttered one by one to 

 the earth, which lies below waiting to receive their 

 withered forms into her bosom. She waits to transmute 

 these effete particles into new forms of life and beauty, 

 and to cause a future progeny of young and vigorous 

 leafage to spring Phoenix-like from the funeral pyre of 

 their ancestors, spontaneously raised under the shadow 

 of their parental tree, fired by the hot beams of the 

 summer sun, fanned by the breezes of spring, and 



