EFFECT OF AN EARLY FROST, 409 



attention. We see the fruits of the earth stored 

 up for our use in that dull season " in which there 

 will be neither earing nor harvest," the termination 

 and reward of the labours of man. But this day, 

 November 10, presented such a scene of life and 

 mortality, that it could not be passed by without 

 viewing it as an admonition, a display of what had 

 been, and is. There had occurred during the night 

 a severe white frost ; and, standing by a greenhouse 

 filled with verdure, fragrance, and blossom, I was 

 surrounded in every direction by the parents of all 

 this gaiety, in blackness, dissolution, and decay. 

 But the very day before, they had attracted the 

 most merited admiration and delight by the splen- 

 dour of their bloom and the vigour of their growth ; 

 but now just touched by the icy finger of the night, 

 they had become a mass of unsightly ruins and 

 confusion. Once the gay belles of the parterre, 

 they fluttered their hour, a generation of existent 

 loveliness; their youthful successors, unpermitted 

 to mingle with them, peeped from their retreats 

 above, seeming almost to repine at their confine- 

 ment ; they have bloomed their day, another race 

 succeeds, and their hour will be accomplished too. 

 This was so perfectly in unison with the shifting 

 scenes of life, the many changes of the hour, that 

 it seemed inseparably connected with a train of re- 

 flection, with the precepts which all nature points 



