"Thou crownest the year with Thy goodness; and Thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn: they shout for joy, they also sing."-Psalm lxv. 11-13.

OW fair a sight, that vest of gold,

Those wreaths that August's brow enfold!
Oh, 'tis a goodly sight and fair

To see the fields their produce bear,
Waved by the breeze's lingering wing,
So thick, they seem to laugh and sing;
And call the heart to feel delight,
Rejoicing in the bounteous sight;
And call the reaper's skilful hand,
To cull the riches of the land!
'Tis fair to see the farmer build,
Now here, now there, throughout the field,
With measuring eye correct, that leaves
Fit space between, the numbered sheaves
In shocks progressive! As he piles
The still increasing heaps, with smiles
He counts, and feels his heart run o'er
With gladness at the growing store;
But ill received unless repaid

With thankfulness to Him who made
His sun arise, His rain descend;
And for the good He deigns to lend
Reserves a part Himself, decreed
The stranger and the poor to feed.

AUTUMN THOUGHTS.

HIS is one of those soft, lulling afternoons, when in Thomson's expressive line

"His sweetest beams

The sun sheds equal o'er the meekened day."

I cannot yet say of

Not that the season has really begun to fade. Our Village, "How beautiful the lane is to-day, decorated with a thousand colours! The brown road and the rich verdure that borders it, strewed with the pale yellow leaves of the elm, just beginning to fall; hedge-rows glowing with long wreaths of the bramble in every variety of purplish red. How very beautiful is the lane!" No; several days, or even weeks, must glide away before that picture will be ours. But the gardens and wood begin to look pensive.

While I speak the shadowy gust has shaken a leaf into my hand. Gone at last! It lived through the Summer, and only died this afternoon. Some leaves of the same bough I found withered or broken off in the early Spring, almost before the light foot of the linnet had made it tremble. Gradually unfolding their hidden. verdure under the fostering rain and sun, they looked lovely. But a change soon appeared in their texture. The vivid hue waxed pale, the vigour declined; the delicate tracery of artery and vein, by which the life-blood of the tree is circulated, was wasted and defaced; the leaves shrivelled up, and, after fluttering to and fro upon the branch, were drifted into the path and trodden under foot. Why did these leaves wither and die? An insect, minute, almost imperceptible, had fastened upon them. Day after day, hour after hour, it clung with devouring appetite, slowly but surely extracting all the life and strength; and so, while their leafy kindred waved joyously in

AUTUMN THOUGHTS.

137

the breath of May, and the balmy sun played upon them, the work of death was going on, and the leaves were falling from the bough.

And if many of this sylvan family perish in the Spring, surely some of the family of man die also; not in the outer framework of limb and feature, but in the precious inward life of spiritual, intellectual being. The fireside of English homes and the foliage of the wood give the same warning. Through the slow developments of infancy and childhood the understanding expands into verdure, beneath the ripening influences of affection. The eyes of the household turn with lingering tenderness to the youngest leaf upon the How often, how soon, a change is visible ! The sweet purity and freshness decline; then the circulation of the spiritual blood is impeded. Whence comes the mournful alteration? Still the leaf of our woods is only an image of the leaf of our affections. It was an insect there; and it is an insect here. Some reptile passion, almost hidden from the eyes of love, has fastened upon the budding faculties of youth, and clings to them day by day with a deadly constancy of hunger.

tree.

It is a solemn spectacle to behold a Christian spirit, in the waning lustre of life, becoming lovelier every hour; having a sublimer faith, a brighter hope, a kinder sympathy, a gentler resignation. How could Johnson, with his treasures of wisdom, virtue, and experience, give utterance to the melancholy complaint: "Thus pass my days and nights in morbid weakness, in unseasonable sleepiness, in gloomy solitude, with unwelcome visitors or ungrateful exclusions, in variety of wretchedness!" Not thus ought the philosopher and saint to bid. farewell to the living. Rather, like the Autumn leaf, he glows into decay, and kindles into death. The Sun of Paradise, already risen over his soul, burns through the delicate fibres of thought, feeling, and desire; making every word and deed beautiful beyond utterance, in the radiancy of truth, hope, and peace.

I have been deeply impressed by a late writer's sublime parable of a man shut up in a fortress, under sentence of perpetual imprisonment, and obliged to draw water from a reservoir which he may not

He knows the quantity is not
His imprisonment having been

see, but into which no fresh stream is ever to be poured. How much it contains he cannot tell. great; it may be extremely small. long, he has already drawn out a considerable supply. The diminution increases daily; and how, it is asked, "would he feel each time of drawing and each time of drinking it?" Not as if he had a perennial spring to go to: "I have a reservoir, I may be at ease.” No; "I had water yesterday, I have water to-day; but my having had it yesterday, and my having it to-day, is the very cause that I shall not have it on some day that is approaching."

Surely this is a beautiful image, and true as beautiful. It is no violent metaphor to represent life as a fortress, and man a prisoner within its gate. Time is the dark reservoir from which he drinks; but he cannot descend to examine its depth or its quantity. He draws his supply from a fountain fed by invisible pipes. Nay, we do not often see the fountain. We conceal it with thick trees: we strive to hide Time. Still, if we would linger by it for a moment, we might discover the various flow of the water at different seasons of the human year. In Spring and Summer-our childhood and early youth-the sunshine of hope silvers every drop; and if we look into the stream, the voice of some fair spirit might almost be heard speaking to us from the crystal shrine. In Autumn and Winter days-our mature manhood and old age—the fountain pours a languider and darker current. But the thing to be remembered in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, is, that the reservoir which feeds the fountain is being exhausted. Every drop that fell in our sunniest days lessened the water that remains. We had life yesterday, and we have life to-day: the probability, the certainty, is, that we shall not have it on some day that is approaching.