but strengthen ourselves the more to make strong and sweet music with the changeful but harmonious move- 
ments of nature.” 
<c No period,” says Dr. Drake, “of the year is better entitled to the appellation of The Season of Philo- 
sophic Enthusiasm, than the close of Autumn. There is in the aspect of every thing which surrounds 
us, as the sun is sinking below the horizon, on a fine evening of October (or November,) all that can hush 
the troubled passions to repose, yet all which at the same time, is calculated to elevate the mind, and awaken 
the imagination. The gently agitated and refreshing state of the atmosphere, though, at intervals broken in 
upon the fitful and protracted moaning of the voiceful wind ; the deep brown shadows which are gradually 
enveloping the many-coloured woods, and diffusing over the extended landscape a solemn and not unpleasing 
obscurity ; the faint and farewell music of the latest warblers, and the waning splendor of the western sky, 
almost insensibly dispose the intellectual man to serious and sublime associations. It is then we people the 
retiring scene with more than earthly forms; it is then we love 
To listen to the hollow sighs 
Through the half-leafless wood that breathes the gale. 
For at such hours the shadowy phantom pale 
Oft seems to fleet before the Poet’s eyes ; 
Strange sounds are heard, and mournful melodies 
As of night- wanderers who their woes bewail. 
Charlotte Smith. 
It is scarcely possible not to prostrate ourselves with deep humility before the throne of that Almighty 
being, who wields, directs, and limits the career of an element which, if let loose on this firm globe, would 
winnow it to dust. 
When we behold the birds that wing their way through this immeasurable void, through what vast 
tracts and undiscovered paths they seek their distant food ; with what love and gratitude should we not 
reflect, that if he in mercy has become their pilot and their guide, how much more will he prove to us a 
sure and never failing protector. 
And when we turn our eyes from earth, its falling leaves and fading aspect, its gathering gloom and 
treacherous meteors, to that great and glorious vault where burn the steady lamps of heaven, or where, shoot- 
ing into interminable space, flow streams of inextinguishable lustre, we are almost instinctively reminded, 
that here our days are numbered, that on this low planet brief is the time the oldest being lives, and that, 
passing from this transitory state, we are destined to pursue our course in regions of ever-during light, in 
worlds of never-changing beauty. 
It is owing to these, and similar reflections, which it has been the business of this paper to accumulate, 
that autumn has been ever felt as more peculiarly the Season of Religious Hope. Amid vicissitude and 
decay, amid apparent ruin and destruction, we behold the seeds of life and renovation ; for he who pervades 
and dwells with all things, the unchangeable and immortal Spirit, has so ordained the course of organized 
nature, that not only is life the precursor of death, but the latter is essential to the renewal of existence, a 
chain and catenation, a cycle, as it were, of vitality, which tells us, in the strongest language of analogy, 
that if such seem the destiny of irrational nature, if thus she die to live again, how assured should be the 
hope of intellectual being. 
To him who views the temporary desolation of the year with no consolatory thought — who sees hot, 
in the seeming ruin which surrounds him, any hope of emblem of a better world, who hears not the accents 
of dying nature responding to the voice of revelation, and telling of a Spring beyond the grave — to him 
who is insensible to reliances such as these, to hopes which can whisper peace, and soothe the evils of mor- 
tality, how stale, flat, and unprofitable must appear all the uses of this feverish existence. He may be told, 
in the language of the poet, in the language of faith and heart-felt consolation. 
To you the beauties of the autumnal year 
Make mournful emblems, and you think of man 
Doom’d to the grave’s long winter, spirit-broke, 
Bending beneath the burden of his years, 
Sense-dull’d and fretful, full of aches and pains, 
Yet clinging still to life. To me they show 
The calm decay of nature, when the mind, 
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye 
Religion’s holy hopes kindle a joy 
That makes old age look lovely. All to you 
Is dark and eheerless ; you in this fair world 
See some destroying principle abroad, 
Air, earth, and water full of living things 
Each on the other preying ; and the ways 
Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth, 
Where crimes and miseries, each producing each, 
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope 
That should in death bring comfort. Oh, my friend, 
That thy faith were as mine ! that thou could’st see 
Death still producing life, and evil still 
Working its own destruction ; could’st behold 
The strifes and tumults of this troubled world 
With the strong eye that sees the promised day 
Dawn thro’ this night of tempest ! all things then 
Would minister to joy ; then should thine heart 
Be healed and harmonised, and thou should’st feel 
God, always, every where, and all in all. 
Southey. 
