We re

ing of the year, a different voice approaches us. gard, even in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of time.

A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of Heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He is now en feebled in his power; the desert no more « blossoms like the rose;" the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer. Whatever may be the passions which society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent desolation of nature. the lodge "of the way-faring man in the wilderness," and we feel that all we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such also, in a few years, will be our own condition. blossoms of our spring, the pride of our summer will also fade into decay; and the pulse that now beats high with virtuous or with vicious desire, will gradually sink, and then must stop for ever.

We sit down in

The

We rise from our meditations with hearts softened and subdued, and we return into life as into a shadowy scene, where we have "disquieted ourselves in vain." Such is the first impression which the present scene of nature is fitted to make upon us. It is this first impression which intimidates the thoughtless and the gay; and, indeed, it there were no other reflections that followed, I know not that it would be the business of wisdom to recommend such meditations. It is the consequences, however, of such previous thoughts, which are chiefly valuable; and among these there are two which may well deserve our consideration.

2. It is the peculiar character of the melancholy which such seasons excite, that it is general. It is not an individual remonstrance ;-it is not the harsh language of human wisdom, which too often insults, while it instructs us. When the winds of autumn sigh around us, their voice speaks not to us only, but to our kind; and the lesson they teach us is not that we alone decay, but that such also is the fate of all the generations of man." They are the green leaves of the tree of the desert, which perish and are renewed."

In such a sentiment there is a kind of sublimity mingled with its melancholy;-our tears fall, but they fall not for ourselves; and, although the train of our thoughts may have begun with the selfishness of our own concerns, we feel that, by the ministry of some mysterious power, they

end in awakening our concern for every being that lives.Yet a few years, we think, and all that now bless, or al that now convulse humanity will also have perished. The mightiest pageantry of life will pass,-the loudest notes of triumph or of conquest will be silent in the grave;-the wicked, wherever active, "will cease from troubling," and the weary, wherever suffering, "will be at rest.”

Under an impression so profound, we feel our own hearts better. The cares, the animosities, the hatreds which society may have engendered, sink unperceived from our bosoms. In the general desolation of nature, we feel the littleness of our own passions; we look forward to that kindred evening which time must bring to all;—we anticipate the graves of those we hate, as of those we love. Every unkind passion falls, with the leaves that fall around us; and we return slowly to our homes, and to the society which surrounds us, with the wish only to enlighten or to bless them.

3. If there were no other effects of such appearances of nature upon our minds, they would still be valuable, they would teach us humility, and with it they would teach us charity. In the same hour in which they taught us our own fragility, they would teach us commiseration for the whole family of man.-But there is a farther sentiment which such scenes inspire, more valuable than all; and we know little the designs of Providence, when we do not yield ourselves in such hours to the beneficent instincts of our imagination.

It is the unvarying character of nature, amid all its scenes, to lead us at last to its Author; and it is for this final end that all its varieties have such dominion upon our minds. We are led by the appearances of spring to see his bounty;

are led by the splendours of summer to see his greatIn the present hours, we are led to a higher sentiment; and, what is most remarkable, the very circumstances of melancholy are these which guide us most securely to put our trust in him.

We are witnessing the decay of the year;-we go back in imagination, and find that such, in every generation, has been the fate of man;-we look forward, and we see that to such ends all must come at last ;--we lift our desponding eyes in search of comfort, and we see above us, One, " who is ever the same, and to whose years there is no end." Amid the vicissitudes of nature, we discover that central

majesty "in whom there is no variableness nor shadow of turning." We feel that there is a God; and from the tem pestuous sea of life, we hail that polar star of nature, to which a sacred instinct had directed our eyes, and which burns with undecaying ray to lighten us among all the darkness of the deep.

From this great conviction, there is another sentiment which succeeds. Nature, indeed, yearly perishes; but it is yearly renewed. Amid all its changes, the immortal spirit of Him that made it remains; and the same sun which now marks with his receding ray the autumn of the year, will again arise in his brightness, and bring along with him the promise of the spring and all the magnificence of summer.

Under such convictions, hope dawns upon the sadness of the heart. The melancholy of decay becomes the very herald of renewal ;-the magnificent circle of nature opens upon our view;-we anticipate the analogous resurrection of our being; we see beyond the grave a greater spring, and we people it with those who have given joy to that which is passed. With such final impressions, we submit ourselves gladly to the destiny of our being. While the sun of mortality sinks, we trail the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, and, in hours when all the honours of nature are perishing around us, we prostrate ourselves in deeper ado ration before Him who "sitteth upon its throne."

Let, then, the young go out, in these hours, under the descending sun of the year, into the fields of nature. Their hearts are now ardent with hope, with the hopes of fame, of honour, or of happiness; and in the long perspective which is before them, their imagination creates a world where all may be enjoyed. Let the scenes which they now may witness, moderate, but not extinguish their ambition: while they see the yearly desolation of nature, let them see it as the emblem of mortal hope ;-while they feel the disproportion between the powers they possess, and the time they are to be employed, let them carry their ambitious eye beyond the world; and while, in these sacred solitudes, a voice in their own bosom corresponds to the voice of decaying nature, let them take that high decision which becomes those who feel themselves the inhabitants of a greater world, and who look to a being incapable of decay.

15

LESSON LXXII.

Moss Side.-WILSON.*

GILBERT AINSLIE was a poor man; and he had been a poor man all the days of his life, which were not few, for his thin hair was now waxing gray. He had been born and bred on the small moorland farm which he now occupied; and he hoped to die there, as his father and grandfather had done before him, leaving a family just above the more bitter wants of this world. Labour, hard and unremitting, had been his lot in life; but although sometimes severely tried, he had never repined; and through all the mist, and gloom, and even the storms that had assailed him, he had lived on, from year to year, in that calm and resigned contentment, which unconsciously cheers the hearth-stone of the blameless poor.

With his own hands he had ploughed, sowed, and reaped his often scanty harvest, assisted, as they grew up, by three sons, who, even in boyhood, were happy to work along with their father in the fields. Out of doors or in, Gilbert Ainslie was never idle. The spade, the shears, the plough-shaft, the sickle, and the flail, all came readily to hands that grasped them well; and not a morsel of food was eaten under his roof, or a garment worn there, that was not honestly, severely, nobly earned. Gilbert Ainslie was a slave, but it was for them he loved with a sober and deep affection. The thraldom under which he lived God had imposed, and it only served to give his character a shade of silent gravity, but not austere; to make his smiles fewer, but more heartfelt; to calm his soul at grace before and after meals; and to kindle it in morning and evening prayer.

There is no need to tell the character of the wife of such a man. Meek and thoughtful, yet gladsome and gay withal, her heaven was in her house; and her gentler and weaker hands helped to bar the door against want. Of ten children that had been born to them, they had lost three; and as they had fed, clothed, and educated them respectably, so did they give them who died a respectable funeral. The living did not grudge to give up, for a while, some of their

*The volume of beautiful and affecting tales, entitled "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life," from which this piece and some others in this Selection are taken, is attributed to John Wilson, Esq. upon the authority of M'Diarmid, Editor of The Scrap Book.

daily comforts, for the sake of the dead; and bought, with the little sums which their industry had saved, decent mournings, worn on Sabbath, and then carefully laid by. Of the seven that survived, two sons were farm-servants in the neighbourhood, while three daughters and two sons remained at home, growing, or grown up, a small, happy, hard-working household.

Many cottages are there in Scotland like Moss-side, and many such humble and virtuous cottagers as were now beneath its roof of straw. The eye of the passing traveller may mark them, or mark them not, but they stand peacefully in thousands over all the land; and most beautiful do they make it, through all its wide valleys and narrow glens, -its low holms encircled by the rocky walls of some bonny burn,-its green mounts elated with their little crowning groves of plane-trees,-its yellow cornfields,—its bare, pastoral hill-sides, and all its heathy moors, on whose black bosom lie shining or concealed glades of excessive verdure, inhabited by flowers, and visited only by the far-flying bees.

Moss-side was not beautiful to a careless or hasty eye; but when looked on and surveyed, it seemed a pleasant dwelling. Its roof, overgrown with grass and moss, was almost as green as the ground out of which its weatherstained walls appeared to grow. The moss behind it was separated from a little garden, by a narrow slip of arable land, the dark colour of which showed that it had been won from the wild by patient industry, and by patient industry retained. It required a bright sunny day to make Moss-side fair; but then it was fair indeed; and when the little brown moorland birds were singing their short songs among the rushes and the heather, or a lark, perhaps lured thither by some green barley field for its undisturbed nest, rose ringing all over the enlivened solitude, the little bleak farm smiled like the paradise of poverty, sad and affecting in its lone and extreme simplicity.

The boys and girls had made some plots of flowers among the vegetables that the little garden supplied for their homely meals; pinks and carnations, brought from walled gardens of rich men farther down in the cultivated strath, grew here with somewhat diminished lustre; a bright show of tulips had a strange beauty in the midst of that moor-land; and the smell of roses mixed well with that of the clover, the beautiful fair clover that loves the soil and the air of Scotland, and gives the rich and balmy milk to the poor man's lips.