CHAPTER XII.

AUTUMN IN PIEDMONT.

WITH the shortening days and lengthening evenings, the aspect of Piedmont gradually changes. The rich and luxuriant greenness of summer is already largely supplanted by the tawny, mellow tint that speaks of ripeness, decay, and their quick attendant, death. In Italy the dwindling months, the embers of the dying year, are not accompanied by the many-hued drapery of an American fall. Autumn no longer lays her fiery finger on the leaves. The livery of the dying dolphin, the gathering splendors of the setting sun, are not reflected in myriad tones from every tree and grove and thicket. The country wears the complexion of her own peasantry, and the various shades of brown that the sky has stamped upon their cheeks, are already apparent on the whole length and breadth of the landscape. They are now gathering in their abundant harvest, and the vintage is already waning towards its end. The Indian corn, from which they manufacture their eternal polenta, is giving up its last fruits. At this season it does not by any means resemble the same crop in our land. The econom

ical rustics have long since stripped every leaf from its stalk for their cattle, and left only a small forest of white sticks, each bearing three or four ears. Among these goes a woman with a basket strapped upon her back. She is dirty and ragged, barefooted and barelegged, yet the red kerchief on her head gives her a picturesque air, as she moves to and fro. The basket is wide and deep, growing broader at the top. She takes each stalk with her left hand, wrenches off the ears with her right, and throws them over her shoulder. When she can bear no more, she trudges away with the burden to her cottage. There it is emptied upon the floor, and her children gather round to administer upon the results of her labors. Every husk is drawn back from its ear and tied to a long string. When this is full, it is stretched from window to window over the whole front of the house. And there the bright orange and yellow rows remain for weeks drying in the sun. It is thus that the peasantry gather in their corn harvest. Like everything else they do, it is unique and peculiar. Being done in the broad light of day, with an old world simplicity that has nothing to conceal, men look upon it as they pass, and bear with them to remote lands new and stirring impressions that time will not efface.

At this period, when the kindly fruits of the earth are broadly scattered over this favored land, the whole force of the country is in the fields. They teem with the crops around them, and from amidst

former solitudes appear to spring suddenly forth, like the animated life that at one stride peopled the newborn world. This is a peculiarity of these Italian valleys. The cultivated parts are in general far from the houses of those who till them. In the spring and fall these go forth to labor, either sowing or reaping, and return at night to the dark and dirty hovels under the walls of their church, round which they cluster. They still cling to the old traditions and stand fast by their ancient ways. The church is yet their ark of safety, and they draw near it with pious and simple confidence; kneeling with pregnant hope at its altars, they listen to its chimes with a cheerful uplifting of soul, and shudder with a long-inherited horror at the fate of those who are not within its protective walls. In the paleness of early morning they consecrate the laborious hours of the long day to the Madonna; with the blessed water they crucify Christ anew in their memories, upon their foreheads, and their hearts; with deep emotion they listen to the solemn and exalted words which ages have transmitted to them from pope to pope and priest to priest; excited by the music, soothed by the incense, awed by the bodily presence of the incarnate God, hallowed by the benediction of their spiritual guide, they leave the portals within which so large a part of life, both mental and bodily, is spent, and till they return to them again their existence is a dreary and joyless blank. Is it strange that their church is dear to them; that

having nought else, they cling to it with undying and unstinted affection; that having no pleasures in this world, and looking to it as the only means of reaching the happiness of the next, they are willing, aye eager, to sacrifice body and soul for it; that they look upon its white walls and heaven-directed spire as the symbols of the spotless perfections of the maid-mother, who is ever ready to pardon and anxious to embrace; that they regard them from a distance with rejoicing, and ever gladly return to sit under their shadow with great delight? To the Anglo-Saxon peasant the ultimate be-all and end-all of his earthly existence is his home. To the Italian this word has no meaning, and the place it should occupy is wholly absorbed by the church. Hence spring up many serious and many social woes which it were idle here to attempt to enumerate; and hence it happens that this goodly land flowing with milk and honey yields up its life-blood to evils worse than the plagues of Egypt.

I have lately walked through several of these valleys, and nothing can be more attractive or enduring than the impressions they have left upon my mind. Their sounds were fascinating to the ear, their sights charming to the eye. They offered an uncloying exposition, a long panorama, of that joyous, free, untrammeled rural life, whose external features the denizen of the city can never witness unimpressed; which always excite for the moment a feeling of envy and an ucontrollable longing to

share in them. This love of the country is the natural tendency of the sympathies of man. It is an instinct which is ever drawing us on towards a future befitting our ultimate end, when the sordid and clogging corruptions of the social world are all to disappear. It is the dictation of man's better. part which the sin that ruined Eden left untainted; the response, inaudible, perhaps, but still coming from the depths of his heart, to the low whispering voice of Nature, and "mickle is the powerful grace that lies" in its silent but earnest promptings. Kinglake has said with impressive truth, "The more man's affections are pure and holy, the more they seem to blend with the outward and visible world." The Pariah, in the "Indian Cottage," when asked -

"In what part of India is your pagoda?" replies: "Everywhere; my pagoda is Nature; I adore her Author at the rising of the sun, and bless Him at the decline of day. In Nature herself, if we contemplate her with a simple heart, we shall there behold God in his power, his intelligence, his bounty."

Said the soldier, in "Le Lépreux de la Cité d'Aoste,"

"When trouble weighs heavily upon me, and I no longer find in the hearts of men that which my own desires, the aspect of Nature and inanimate things consoles me; I turn with affection to the rocks and trees, and it seems to me that all created beings are friends which God has given me."