'At such times, we think of the marvellous and exact analogy which there is between the moral and the physical, and that both without and within there is a succession of the like changes, contrasts, relations, movements. In sky, earth, sea, air, we follow these remarkable resemblances.

'In either province, lights and shadows make up all the pictures which we know. For there is a dark and lonesome winter of the soul, but soon we come again upon a belted space of more than vernal loveliness, when pleasant influences, graces of life, and all-abounding charities lie in our path, just like the sweet procession of the flowers; spring-times of youth and beauty, when all goes merry as a marriage-bell; and if at times we glide into the eclipse of sorrow, or struggle in the choking flood, once more the sun-shine breaks upon the scene and paints the sign of heavenly promise. Oh! when we think of what the rain-bow is the pledge, does it not seem appropriate that it should be the ideal of beauty?

"THE airy child of vapor and the sun,

Brought forth in purple, cradled in vermilion;
Baptized in molten gold, and swathed in dun.'

'It is because the Word of GOD can never fail, that those colors are never faded; and still they glow, and burn, and flicker from our sight, only to return again when the sky looks dark, with brighter promise. Thus, CHAMPOLLIONlike, we sit down to interpret the most beautiful hieroglyphics, because we must look upon every outward phenomenon as a transfer into symbol of some deep and spiritual truth. For the whole world is a myth, and every thing which it contains is an emblem. Oh! that picture-language of the sky, the air, the sea, the earth, the flowers! Oh! that matter-full page, so inscribed with eloquence and with inspired poem! From the high mountaintop I read onward to the horizon's edge, and the rocks stand like antiquated characters; and every water-fall is a silver dash; and every stream is like the transcription of a flowing pencil. In the enamelled mead I walk along as one who holds a volume in his hand, all thickly pencilled with mysterious characters, passing from leaf to leaf, from flower to painted flower, transferring each to some celestial grace, meeting at every step a benediction. It is the one language which all may read, and the dumb with astonishment, hold up his fingers. The soul of the rose flits in fragrance from its falling petals. All that is bright must fade; but, as the poet has it, the very 'ashes of the just

Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'

'The vine clambers to the highest point, but its supplicating tendrils still stretch upward. So the affections wind themselves about the strongest objects of the earth, while their tenderest fibres seek support from heaven. As in the unruffled stream I see the skies mirrored, tint for tint, and shadow for shadow, so there is no transcript of a better world, save in a tranquil bosom. Walk in the quiet woods at noon-tide, guided in your path by the faint hint of former footsteps, brushing from before you the briers which almost at every step encrown your head with thorns, as well as the silver thread of spider swaying in the breeze; and there too, you will find

'Books in the running brooks, sermons in stones,
And good in every thing.'

'If we view it in this light, the volume before us has multitudinous pages, and there is no end of our studies; but when I look upon a rain-bow in the sky, it appears the most speaking and exquisite of all emblems: the gempoem of the mythology of nature. Walking beneath that superb bridge, you may pick up pebbles, dip your feet in the running water-brook, and muse to your heart's content. Above you are all the several beams which, blent together, make up limpid light, all being severally the correspondences of something which is divine. I have often thought, when the waters of the flood had well subsided, and the rivers rolled in their own channels, and the command had been given to the ocean waves, 'Hither shalt thou come, and no farther,' what must have been the feelings of the sons of men when, for the first time, they contemplated that 'bow in the cloud;' and, as it appeared time after time, how fathers took their children by the hand to gaze at it. Yet it could not have been because the spectacle was new, but because it was now known to be an emblem. ADAM looked upon it before NOAH, for the principle of its formation existed already. Great facts, which are intended for the soul of man, are all represented in nature by signs of the utmost tenderness. Thus we have the resurrection of all Nature from its icy tumulus, the superabundant bloom and beauty of the spring. If there were not any refined state, then none of these outer forms could exist, as every type must have its antitype. The sun, the clouds, the dews, the vapor, are but the ministers of truth, and the rainbow is an arch-angel:

'To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.'

'We may perceive the coloration of rays in the small dew-drop which fills up the cup of a lily; nay, in the very tears which have fallen from the eyes of some poor creature, as if a smile lit them before they were dashed away by kindness.

in

'I once saw Niagara. Once!I ever see it; for the image of its greatness and majesty cannot ever pass away or cheat the memory for ever. If pastoral scenes are shifted from the view, and Alps may be forgotten, that picture, once impressed, remains indelible. Gazing upon the awful brink, where the late agitated waters become as placid as the unruffled lake, before they take the plunge, and where the very spirit of the cataract appears to dwell, I was impressed with the destructive force and fury of the element; for, except at that one momentous pause, it has no phase of gentleness, but is enveloped vapor, and accompanied by the unresembled noise of the fall. The waves of the sea may be appeased and calm, but the thunder of Niagara is unintermitted; and ever above the gulf, where the mists rise like incense, while the earth shakes, and the face of nature speaks only of great convulsion, we gaze upon the perpetual halo of the bow; and lest the setting sun should take the spectacle away, by the moon's quiet beams it is seen arching an enchanted island. And tell me, have you never walked upon the margin of the sea itself when the storm lowered, and fled away from the breakers as they rolled shoreward, and afterward, when the dazzling sun came out, beheld the same arc in its ever complete formation, with one of its abutments on the solid land, and

one upon the deep waters? I have sometimes seen a fragment of it, and the same luminous colors, on the hot breath of the engines as they rolled onward like a driven thunder-bolt: and as if to banish unbelief, wherever the power of the element is most manifest, and wherever Nature is enthroned in majesty, though clouds and darkness may hover near her, 'there is a rainbow round about her throne.'

'JUNE 10.-No blight, no drought, no sweltering heats, no potato-bugs, no grasshopper to be a burden. This is the gem-season of the century, the pearl of years. It runneth faster in its delightful progression, and wins the crown of flowers. How its car is decked! The twice-blooming roses are in its path. Every garden is a reservoir, every secret path-way a conduit of sweets. They gush into the open casement; they come upon the general air. All the waves clap their hands, and the little hills rejoice on every side. The other day we wandered up, up, up, where could be obtained an extensive 'eye-possession,' and encircled by the blue Kaätskills and kindred mountains, whose outlines were discerned at the distance of fifty miles, took in at a glance the whole gorgeous picture which lay between. We stood, for better observation, upon the top of a stone fence overrun with three-fingered ivy, while the pony, whose halter was tied to a branch of the oak above, pulled the leaves into his mouth, and champed the herbage with a relish. What vast estates lay between the sloping bases of those mountains! and yet on a space no larger than would be included by the circumference of a signet-ring, even upon the eye itself, was transcribed a most perfect representation of all the boasted acres which made a multitude of men rich. How the properties of the earth do dwindle when you look at them from a high point! for the boundaries of a nabob appeared to us like a railed-in space for the pasturage of a few cattle, and the cloud-shadows trooped over the area of a kingdom in the twinkling of an eye. And how variegated the subdivisions of the landscape! the meadow, and the mellow soil; the woods, the waving grain, the silver-stream and distant river.

'Sometimes the 'moneth' of May is chill and cheerless, and June opens, without monition, with wilting heat. The buds open and are full-blown, and fall to pieces; the herbage loses its vivid freshness, and the admirer of nature relapses into languor while the year is at its prime. Not so with this choice season, this most unexceptionable festive season. The pet month did not disappoint its promise, dearly associated as it is with youth and beauty, with memories of the May-pole, and the tender loves of 'BARBARA ALLEN.' The apple-orchards came out in due time, and the spectacle is most charming when the trees are in full bloom. Arranged at equal distances on the sloping, undulating ground, and in the hollows, with their low and spreading crowns all covered with pink and snow-white blossoms, they appear to me like big bushes in a garden, or like the nosegays of a giant. For I like to snuff their fragrance while sauntering by the road-side, or from an upper window to look down upon a long and gradual slope, on which an old orchard is freshly blooming, while the sweet leaves are wafted by the puff of every breeze, and the green germs of the fruit are forming underneath no larger

than pins' heads. Also, the welcome lilac is the ornament of every court-yard, and you may snap off a branch without compunction, and stick it in a pitcher, if the fragrance be not too powerful for feeble nerves.

'It is now the tenth of June, and up to this date we have had neither untimely frost nor memorable days of heat; but it has been, without exception, the most balmy season within my recollection. There has not been a single drawback. Copious showers have fallen on the earth; the air is choice and healthful; even in the heart of the city you have been able to find a refreshing coolness, and every where the vegetation is so rich, the crops are so far advanced, and the prospect is so promising, that we might with justice call this a mirabilis annus.

'It is almost intoxicating to walk 'in the cool of the day' over the pleasant roads which intersect the country in all directions, and especially where they wind over the high ground in full view of the river; or to recline in an easy carriage, not your own, and to be borne along by a pair of well-groomed horses, whose coats are sleek and well-protected by the clean netting, and who are as gentle as doves in harness; and so, without a word spoken, with your head bare, and with a soul composed and tranquil, to travel through avenues and green lanes where the giant elms lift their arms above you. Nature is so suggestive, and so many pleasant influences steal upon you, that it is most perplexing to transfer your impressions of beauty, and you feel only fitted for silent enjoyment.

'If there is any pleasant feature in the country, it is a winding narrow lane carpeted with a green sod, skirted on either hand with mulberry-trees and the wild cherry, over which the brier bushes, the wild grape, and the ivy and honey-suckle are interlocked in many an impenetrable thicket; places which the cat-bird loves to frequent, and from which he pours forth his mellow and melting cavatina. Here is the spot where the young man, with the furze just blackening upon the lip of manhood, passing his arm about the waist of the pretty maid, whispers into her ear the most tender sentiments; for the very birds on the branches teach them how to woo and coo most lovingly. Almost every village has its Love-lane as well as its Gallows-hill and Buttermilk-hollow.

'In the course of your wanderings, you will observe that the tulip-tree is now covered all over with yellow flowers, and the locusts are in full bloom, emitting from their 'high old' crowns a delicious fragrance. In the fields the clover is knee-deep, and the cattle dispose themselves in easy attitudes, and, as they remain dreamy and almost motionless on the top of some shady knoll, in relief against the blue sky, afford a picture of grace to the eye of the CLAUDE-like painter. But the anniversary of the blooming roses is also at this time, and you must by all means shut up your workshops and hurry out to this feast. For the time is short. In a few days the brief and beautiful existence of the rose is terminated, and FLORA gives the field to CERES! The one is intended to administer to the sense of Beauty, and to be twined in a triumphant chaplet around the brows of Innocence; the other comes upon a sterner and a grander mission, to fill the granaries with bread and nerve the arm with vigor.

'In the winter-time a few rose-buds cut from a green-house where they have been fostered under glass, and given to you by a generous friend, stand perhaps in a wine-glass on your table, and represent the summer. You tend them from day to day, and furnish them with clean water, until the opening bud feeds no longer on the juice of the stem, and you throw them out of your window. But they may have sufficed while on their brief errand to have soothed your soul; and, oh! to a man of guilt, if he has any particle of human feeling, a rose in his lonely cell would preach to him more eloquently than words, and he could wash its crest with his tears like a shower:

'BRING flowers to the captive's lonely cell:
They have tales of the joyous woods to tell;
Of the free blue streams, and the sunny sky,
And the bright world shut from his languid eye.'

'But when, in the gradual advancement of the year, the time draws nigh which is monopolized by this choicest and most exquisite specimen of floral beauty; when the wild, untutored, modest May-rose, with its multiplicity of pink leaves, has given place to the vaunted varieties whose names are at the tongue's end of every gardener; when the uncared-for one which grows like a brier by the way-side, soon drops its scanty leaves, and on comes precipitately the glorious, universal bloom of the rich and double flowers which have received culture, and they crown the well-trimmed stalk, and burst out in a dissipation of beauty over the porch, the net-work trellis, and the garden bower, casting forth their very souls on all the currents of the summer air, and floating into your olfactories, climbling up and insinuating themselves into the windows where you converse, sweetly intruding themselves in every covert path, wherever you wander through the delicious garden; seen at the tops of the trees, as ye are, O Kentucky roses! budding and bursting out under the eaves of the mansion, where the little downy bosoms of the justhatched chirping birds heave in the nests, and the parents drop the worm into their red mouths, unfrightened by the play of romping children; and the bumble-bee, and the honey-bee, and the humming-bird drink together out of the same cup of intermingling eglantine; then I say that you must let your soul expand with a calm enjoyment, and be convinced that God in His benevolence fashions in every phase of existence a heaven for us, and that free moral agents fit up a hell for themselves.

'There is now a very prevalent smell of mint from the meadows, as its tender stalks are bruised by the feet of cattle, or its odors are dislodged by the somewhat rough handling of the freebooting winds. Thirsty people like to bruise it against little icebergs, in a tumbler with wine of a choice quality, and, if I remember rightly, a slight paring of lemon and a straw-berry or two, to produce a curious, composite flavor, and so imbibe it slowly through a wheaten-straw, or sometimes a glass tube. What the advantage of this mode is, does not appear clearly; but perhaps the volatile aroma of the herb following in the wake of the drops which clamber up the tube, more gradually and pleasantly insinuates itself into the brain than when it sweeps over the sense in a powerful puff. To have it poured from a silver pitcher, on whose