There is in the grey and sober tinting of an Evening in Autumn, in the many-coloured hues of the 
trembling foliage, in the fitful sighing of the breeze, in the mournful call of the partridge, in the soft low 
piping of the red-breast, and above all, in the sweetly-plaintive warbling of the thrush, the blackbird, and 
the woodlark, a union of sight and sound which can scarcely fail to touch the breast with a corresponding j 
sense of pensive pleasure. More especially is this felt to be the case, if, while we are contemplating such a ! 
scene, the setting-sun, hitherto shrouded in the gathering gloom, should gleam a farewell lustre on the 
fields ; it is then, perhaps, that our emotions harmonize most completely with external nature ; it is then i 
that, in the touching language of a contemporary poet, and in the same exquisite spirit of tender enthusiasm, J 
we must wish to take our leave of the departing luminary : — 
How soft, how tender a repose 
O’er Nature sheds its balm, 
Like sorrow, mellowing at the close, 
To resignation calm ! 
While man’s last murmur, hush’d to rest, 
Steals gradual from the ear. 
As the world’s tumult from a breast 
Where heav’n alone is dear. 
O’er all my soul seems gently shed 
A kindred soften’d light; 
I think of hopes that long have fled, 
And scarcely mourn their flight. 
Farewell, farewell! to others give 
The light thou tak’st from me : 
Farewell, farewell ! bid others live 
To joy, or misery. 
Say, breathes there one who at this hour 
Beholds thy glories shine, 
And owns thy strangely-thrilling power, 
With feelings such as mine ? 
For I have view’d thee as a friend, 
And lov’d, at morn or eve, 
Thy golden progress to attend, 
Thy first, last look receive. 
Thou witness of my lonely dreams, 
Inspirer of my shell, 
Like Memnon’s, answering to thy beams, 
Not yet — not yet farewell? 
Once more farewell ! Another day, 
To all, or dark or glad, 
Fleets with thy vanish’d orb away, 
And am I pleas’d or sad ? 
I know not. All my soul to speak, 
Vain words their aid deny ; 
But, oh, the smile is on my cheek, 
The tear is in my eye ! 
It is this tender melancholy, an emotion originating from some of the finest feelings which do honor 
to the human heart, that has rendered the evening of the day and year so peculiarly a favourite with the 
lovers of nature and of nature’s God. It is then we cease to commune with the world of man; we turn 
disgusted from its cares, its follies, and its crimes, to seek in solitude and contemplation, in the fields, and 
woods, and by the fall of waters, that peace and consolation, that wisdom, and that hope, without which 
our being here would be as the mockery of an idle dream, and our waking, from it but one scene of inex- 
tinguishable regret. It is, in fact, through the vicissitude and decay of all around us, through the solemn ! 
and the dying aspect of this monitory season, that the voice of our Creator speaks in tones that cannot be 
misunderstood. They admonish us that we too are hastening to a temporary dissolution; that the spring 
and summer of our days have past, or are fleeting fast away ; that the hour is come, or shall approach, \ 
when the blanched head, the enfeebled eye, and tottering step shall assimilate our state to that of the faded 
and the fallen leaf ; when the pride and vigor of this earthly frame shall wither and be extinct, and the 
heart that throbbed with joy or grief, with anger or with love, shall cease to beat for ever! — These are re- 
flections which give birth to the noblest emotions that can animate the breast of man. We are dying mid a 
dying world, an idea which can scarcely be entertained without extinguishing in our minds every harsh and 
hurtful passion — without our feeling, indeed, for all that live around us, that holy sympathy, that kindling 
charity, from which the strifes and bickerings, the envy and the hatred, of a selfish world, must sink appalled 
away. They are reflections too, which, while they incline us to humility and philanthropy, to that kindness 
and commiseration which a mutual and a general fate have awakened in our bosoms, lead us, at the same time, 
and by the most delightful of channels, a love for all that lives, to put our trust in Him with whom “ there 
is no variableness nor shadow of turning.”* 
Dr. Drake’s Evenings in Autumn. 
