Autumnal Notes.

I.

The day becomes more solemn and serene
When noon is past; there is a harmony
In autumn, and a luster in its sky,

Which through the summer is not heard or seen,
As if it could not be, as if it had not been."

-Shelley.

"Leaf by golden leaf Crumbles the gorgeous year."

-William Watson.

I AWOKE this morning, and autumn's most delicate wraith was already abroad. She is revealing herself by momentary, uncertain glimpses, and, here and there, she is beginning to lay

"A fiery finger on the leaves."

I think how soon she will be apparent in all her dominion of splendor. In these woods of Maine the silver birch will soon be shaking out all her light golden tresses, and the blush

ful gleam of the blood-red maple will be seen from the midst of her piney compeers. Everywhere in this northern hemisphere nature will soon show her autumnal suit; Katahdin will stand in his September glory, with all the arms of the Penobscot wound around him, and all the sheeny lakes and the abounding forests known to the camper and sportsman. Over Winipisiogee and St. George, and on the margin of Champlain, it will be autumn; and about Sunnyside and Mount Vernon. Over that

great blue expanse,—

"Mother and lover of men, the sea,-"

the autumnal sprite will be felt and visible. Yes, and far beyond! That land from which our fathers came will soon share the lustrous

jewel of ripeness with us. Soon by Rydal Mount, where Wordsworth walked, muttering eternal verse, the yellow leaves will be falling, golden patines from his favorite groves. The ghost of Scott may see them, what time the sun

"Flames o'er the hill from Ettrick shore,"

when it wanders through Dryburgh, where he lies entombed. They will quiver in the morning light, all dewy, about the homes and

haunts of Burns, and all along the "banks and braes of Bonnie Doon." But England, with all her wealth of form and color, and with all her classic memories, will not show, though you travel from Hawthornden to Westminster, anything like the varied beauties of our declining year. The season has a ripe, subdued, and mellow close, but not a majestic brilliancy, as on these shores. See! I will paint you a picture, a fertile Midland scene, like those George Eliot delighted in, and drew so finely. Color it shall not lack, but the deeper tints are mostly brown and russet. Yet the scene is homelike and dear, and, through the eyes that saw and the hand that drew "Middlemarch," you seem to have lived there. Look at the fields, with their golden spikes of stubble! There run the somber-hued hedges in line between these sunny squares. Survey the fat fields, the upturned umber earth, rich with centuries of dressing, where late the plow has been run;-how they differ from our New England fields and the prairies of the West! And the meadows that stretch away, fading to an olive-green,-look at them! There rise the red-tiled roofs of cottages, with their white walls, and the bluish smoke, that so please the

eye, rising amid the trees. Now the oaks are changing; the beeches and poplars are smitten with gold, but a gold tawnier than ours. This is England-reserved, subdued, substantial; this is the rural splendor Thomson painted:

"The fading many-colored woods,

Shade deepening over shade, the country round,
Imbrown; a crowded umbrage dark and dun,
Of every hue from wan declining green
To sooty dark."

This certainly is no proper description of an autumnal forest in America, where over every hill and vale the tints glow like sunset clouds. Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, and their kin, can show us in words this "livery of the sky." Burns gives us the lighter tints on Scottish hills of autumnal foliage, in some of his incidental passages. Often, with enchanted vision, would he mark "the sun's departing beam look on the fading yellow woods."

II.

There is pure pleasure for him who will now walk in the woods when this hectic flush is on the cheek of nature. Nay, I almost repudiate that epithet! In a certain sense it may be used

poetically, but it is not strictly true. The ripening of the pear and peach is hardly hectic, nor is that of the leaf, even in appearance, till the frost has taken it. But we will allow that figment of description, if you choose, to the leaf of the maple. This is the time for picnics in the grove, and this is the season for sunny strolls in mid-September. It is good to go alone; it is sometimes good to have a companion; we often find it comfortable to have a pocket volume,—the right one.

But carry no gun with you, and be chary of hook and rod. Shame on him whose only familiarity with the wild creatures of the forest is when he pursues and slays them. We do not object to the hunt in poetry and romance, when Scott or Cooper will consent to sound the horn; but otherwise we have no heart to follow it. The light liver of Felix knows little about the matter, in fact. He never met the eyes of a doe, brim full of appealing innocence, with the tube of maliciousness pointed from his shoulder. Would he might take aim, instead of another; the creature must infallibly escape. He would not even go fishing to-day when invited; not but he would be willing to share his neighbor's