306 DECEMBER. 



are heard daily from morn till eve. It amazes 

 us, as we walk abroad, to conceive where can 

 have concealed themselves the infinite variety 

 of creatures that sported through the air, earth, 

 and waters of summer. Birds, insects, reptiles, 

 whither are they all gone? The birds that 

 filled the air with their music, the rich black- 

 bird, the loud and cheerful thrush, the linnet, 

 lark, and goldfinch, whither have they crept? 

 The squirrel that played his antics on the forest 

 tree; and all the showy and varied tribes of 

 butterflies, moths, dragonflies, beetles, wasps 

 and warrior-hornets, bees, and cockchafers, whi- 

 ther have they fled? Some, no doubt, have 

 lived out their little term of being, and their 

 bodies, lately so splendid, active, and alive to a 

 thousand instincts, feelings, and propensities, 

 are become part and parcel of the dull and win- 

 try soil ; but the greater portion have shrunk 

 into the hollows of trees and rocks, and into the 

 bosom of their mother earth itself, where, with 

 millions of seeds and roots, and buds, they live 

 in the great treasury of Nature, ready at the 

 call of a more auspicious season, to people the 

 world once more with beauty and delight. 



As in the inferior world of creatures, so is 

 it with man. The wealthy have vacated their 

 country houses, and congregated in the great 

 Babylon of pleasure and dissipation ; families 



