NOVEMBER. 355 



will look up with its mild blue eye, like a star of 

 promise, to remind us of the beauties of the coming 

 spring. There is a melancholy pleasure attending a 

 ramble at this time, while taking note of the changes 

 of the year, and of the care with which Nature pro- 

 vides for the preservation of her charge during the 

 coming season of cold. All sounds that meet the ear 

 are in harmony with our feelings. The breezes murmur 

 with a plaintive moan, while shaking the dropping leaves 

 from the trees, as if they felt a sympathy with the gen- 

 eral decay, and carefully strew them over the beds of the 

 flowers to afford them a warm covering and protection 

 from the ungenial winter. The sear and yellow leaves 

 eddying with the fitful breezes fill up the hollows in the 

 pastures where slumbering lilies and violets repose, and 

 gather around the borders of the woods, where the ver- 

 nal flowers are sleeping and require their warmth and 

 protection. There is an influence breathing from all 

 nature in the autumn that leads us to meditate on the 

 charms of the seasons that have flown, and prepares us 

 by the regrets thus awakened to realize their full worth, 

 and to experience the greater delight when we meet them 

 once more. 



There are rural sounds as well as rural sights which 



o 



are characteristic of this as well as every other month 

 of the year, all associated with the beauties and bounties 

 of their respective seasons. The chirping of insects 

 declines during October and dies away to silence before 

 the middle of the present month ; and then do the voices 

 of the winter birds become more audible. Their harsh 

 unmusical voices harmonize not unpleasantly with the 

 murmuring of wintry winds and with the desolate ap- 

 pearance of nature. The water birds assemble in the 

 harbors and are unusually loquacious ; and occasionally 

 on still evenings we hear the cackling flight of geese as 



