234 THE MOUNTAIN. 



they are perfected for the execution of their work, the 

 nourishment and re-creation of the tree. This darkened 

 tint is gradually increased as the leaf hardens and ap- 

 proaches its death-hour the arrival of the frost. Some 

 time before this, however, the woods present, for an 

 interval, a sameness of feature, as if the leaves were 

 silently at work, and had no time to give to the phases 

 of beauty, but were hurrying up the execution of their func- 

 tion to pass away into the sleep of death. At this time the 

 full-grown, hard, and stiffened leaves give to the woods the 

 sounds or characteristic summer- voices, that seething and 

 singing which is the result of infinite friction and vibra- 

 tion of the hard, turgid, and perfectly developed foliage of 

 all the trees. The roar of the woods, that great respi- 

 ratory murmur, has now assumed a tone that cannot be mis- 

 taken, and the storm-winds can "howl with the voices of all 

 the gods." The hour of dissolution arrives as the autumn 

 approaches. At this season a change occurs, the most ex- 

 traordinary of all in the life of the leaf, and gives to the 

 forests of the mountain a richness of expression, an end- 

 lessness of variety unrivaled upon the earth. This first 

 touch of the destroyer is, perhaps, the most extraordinary 

 phenomenon of the whole vegetable-world, and, indeed, the 

 most wonderful aspect which Nature reveals. 



" So fair, so calm, so softly seal'd, 

 The first, last look by death reveal'd, 

 Before Decay's effacing fingers 

 Have swept the lines where beauty lingers." 

 The pageantry of the American forest in autumn has ever 

 been the theme of the poet's song and subject of the pain- 

 ter's pencil. It is exhaustless, as beauty is ever that fresh- 

 water jet, that divine halitus, that ever-living sap of ex- 

 istence, circulating up "from the far-away centre of all 

 things," and which each moment of time creates for the 

 soul a rapture, brightly renewed forever. As this element 

 of Nature is intangible, ethereal, and cannot be appro- 

 priated, it is consequently, to the spirit of man, unattain- 

 able, inexhaustible, divine. 



