flari HE -Autumn. 



CHAPTER I. 



THE BEAUTIES OF THE AUTUMN. 



Hence from the busy joy-resounding fields 

 In cheerful error, let us tread the maze 

 Of Autumn, unconfin'd ; and taste reviv'd 

 The breath of orchard big with bending fruit. 



SUMMER is past ! One by one its beauties have 

 been displayed ; the pageant is gone by ; and 

 before the last strains of its attendant music have 

 died away, among falling flowers and vanishing 

 life in countless forms, the earliest signs of 

 Autumn's advent steal slowly over the face of 

 Nature. A beautiful calm is settling over all 

 things ; tired Nature, after its spring and summer 

 revels, is sinking gradually into that torpor which 

 precedes decay ; the year has passed the meridian 

 of its splendour, and has now but to decline and 

 die. The birth of the year, and the full time of 

 its splendour, are perhaps no more beautiful in 

 their several aspects than is the season of its 

 decline and death. Autumn is the grand time of 



