that it meets. A blessing is flung abroad, and scattered far and wide over the earth, to be gathered up by all who choose. I recline upon the still unwithered grass, and whisper to myself, "O, perfect day! O, beautiful world!-0, beneficent God!" And it is the promise of a blessed eternity; for our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal. This sunshine is the golden pledge thereof. It beams through the gates of Paradise, and shows us glimpses far inward.

By and by-in a little time- - the outward world puts on a drear austerity. On some October morning, there is a heavy hoar frost on the grass, and along the tops of the fences; and at sunrise the leaves fall from the trees of our avenue without a breath of wind, quietly descending by their own weight. All summer long, they have murmured like the noise of waters; they have roared loudly, while the branches were wrestling with the thunder-gust; they have made music, both glad and solemn; they have attuned my thoughts by their quiet sound, as I paced to and fro beneath the arch of intermingling boughs. Now, they can only rustle under my feet.

CI.-A SNOW STORM.

THOMSON.

[James Thomson was born in the county of Roxburgh, Scotland, September 7, 1700, and died August 27, 1748. He was the author of the Seasons, an admirable descriptive poem, of the Castle of Indolence, Liberty, and several plays. This lesson is from Winter, one of the four books of the Seasons.]

THROUGH the hushed air the whitening shower descends
At first thin, wavering, till at last the flakes

Fall broad, and wide, and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields

Put on their winter robe of purest white.

'Tis brightness all, save where the new snow melts
Along the mazy current. Low the woods
Bow their hoar heads; and ere the languid sun
Faint from the west emits his evening ray,
Earth's universal face, deep-hid and chill,
Is one wild dazzling waste, that buries wide
The works of man. Drooping, the laborer ox
Stands covered o'er with snow, and then demands
The fruit of all his toil. The fowls of heaven,
Tamed by the cruel season, crowd around
The winnowing store, and claim the little boon
Which Providence assigns them. One alone,
The red-breast, sacred to the household gods,
Wisely regardful of th' embroiling sky,
In joyless fields and thorny thickets leaves
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first

*

Against the window beats; then, brisk, alights
On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor,
Eyes all the smiling family askance,

And pecks, and starts, and wonders where he is;
Till more familiar grown, the table crumbs
Attract his slender feet. The foodless wilds
Pour forth their brown inhabitants. The hare,
Though timorous of heart, and hard beset
By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs,
And more unpitying men, the garden seeks,
Urged on by fearless want. The bleating kind
Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth,
With looks of dumb despair; then sad, dispersed,
Dig for the withered herb through heaps of snow.

*Embroiling, disturbing, or perplexing.

[From a volume entitled Agricultural and Literary Essays, by John Chipman Gray, a gentleman now, (1856,) and for many years past, a resident of Boston.]

trees.

Ir this country has been highly distinguished in any respect by the bounty of Nature, it is in the number and variety of its If we were compelled to describe the territory of the United States in a few words, we could not do it more truly than by saying that it is one vast forest, diversified occasionally by cultivated intervals.

With the exception of some of the prairies of the Mississippi, I am not aware that there is any considerable section within our present states which was originally destitute of wood. Beyond the immediate vicinity of our large towns, we find every stream thickly shaded by overhanging branches, and every mountain, with the exception of a few of the highest, covered with a leafy screen of all varieties of shade, from its base to its summit.

The extent of our woods is not more remarkable than the various kinds of trees which compose them. It is stated by Michaux, that in the United States there are one hundred and forty species of forest trees which attain a greater height than thirty feet, while in France there are only eighteen of the same description. Of the solid advantages which we derive from this abundant variety I shall say nothing at present. It needs only a cursory glance to perceive how much it enhances the beauty of our natural scenery. "I was never tired," says an intelligent English traveller, "of the forest scenery of America, although I passed through it from day to day. The endless diversity of foliage always prevents it from being monotonous."

The variety of shape and tints in their green foliage is not, however, the chief distinction of our woods over those of the old world; they surpass them far more in the rich and various

hues of their autumnal leaves. This, if not the most striking, is certainly the most unique feature of an American landscape. What natural scenery can surpass in beauty that presented by our forests in the brilliant and serene afternoons of our Indian summer, when the trees are clothed with a tapestry of the richest gold, and purple, and scarlet, resembling, and almost rivalling, the most gorgeous hues of our autumnal sunsets!

It is not the mere variety of coloring which is the peculiar characteristic of our fading leaves; this variety exists also in European woods, though to a less extent; for, as has been already stated, their catalogue of forest trees is far more scanty than ours. But their leaves, in divesting themselves of their summer green, lay aside also all their brilliancy, and assume a complexion proverbially dull and faded. It is a peculiarity, on the contrary, of many of our forest trees, that their leaves, in changing their hue, lose little or nothing of their brightness, and that their autumnal dress is not only far richer, but scarcely less lively, than their freshest June liveries.

This circumstance is generally ascribed to some peculiarity in our climate, and especially to the manner in which the cold weather makes its first approaches. But this manner varies almost every year, and yet our trees exhibit annually the same splendid changes. For this, as well as for other reasons, we are inclined to think that the peculiarity is not in the climate, but in the trees themselves; and that it is one of those shades of difference which distinguish, in almost every instance, the plants of America from their kindred species in the old world. A transplanted American maple, for instance, would probably undergo the same splendid changes in an English park as in its native forest.

I have observed that scarcely any considerable portion of this country is entirely devoid of magnificent forest trees. But whatever striking instances of the truth of this remark we may find in New England, and more especially in Vermont and Maine, it must be admitted that he who would behold sylvan scenery on its most magnificent scale should cross the Allegha

nies, and visit the great valley of the Mississippi. Here he will find great tracts into which the axe of the woodman has never penetrated. These are covered with a coat of vegetable mould, exceeding in many places the depths of our richest soils. We find, accordingly, a luxuriance of vegetation to which nothing in New England affords a parallel.

It is true that with us there is here and there a gigantic elm or buttonwood which might take rank with the noblest specimens of western growth; but in travelling in Kentucky or Indiana, we find trees, at every step, of six or seven feet in diameter; so that most of our woods, compared as a whole with theirs, seem to be but the product of yesterday. Every plant appears to partake of this gigantic character. Thus the wild grape vine, which with us rarely grows larger than a stout walking stick, in our Western States sometimes surpasses in diameter the body of a full-grown man.

The majesty of our western forests is not a little increased by the circumstance that they are generally free from undergrowth. The banks of the Upper Mississippi, especially, are covered with trees of the largest size, shooting up to a lofty height, from the smooth levels or gentle swells of the green prairies beneath, like the oaks in the finest parks of England. So tastefully are these trees grouped by the hand of Nature, and so entirely clear is the green prairie grass from undergrowth, that the spectator can hardly avoid imagining that he is looking, not at a new country, but at one which was once peopled by a highly cultivated community, who have been long since swept away with every vestige of their wealth and refinement, except their stately groves and verdant lawns.