Much of my recreation, since I retreated to the Hall, has consisted in making little excursions through the neighbourhood, which abounds in the variety of wild, romantic, and luxuriant landscape that generally characterizes the scenery in the vicinity of our rivers. There is not an eminence within a circuit of many miles but commands an extensive range of diversified and enchanting prospect.

Often have I rambled to the summit of some favourite hill, and thence, with feelings sweetly tranquil as the lucid expanse of the heavens that canopied me, have noted the slow and almost imperceptible changes that mark the waning year. There are many features peculiar to our autumn, and which give it an individual character: the 'green and yellow melancholy" that first steals over the landscape-the mild and steady serenity of the weather, and the transparent purity of the atmosphere, speak not merely to the senses, but the heart,-it is the season of liberal emotions. To this succeeds fantastic gaiety, a motley dress, which the woods assume, where green and yellow, orange, purple, crimson, and scarlet, are whimsically blended together. - A sickly splendour this!-like the wild and broken-hearted gaiety that sometimes precedes dissolution, or that childish sportiveness of superannuated age, proceeding, not from a vigorous flow of animal spirits, but from the decay and imbecility of the mind. We might, perhaps, be deceived by this gaudy garb of nature, were it not for the rustling of the falling leaf, which, breaking on the stillness of

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the scene, seems to announce, in prophetic whispers, the dreary winter that is approaching. When I have sometimes seen a thrifty young oak changing its hue of sturdy vigour for a bright but transient glow of red, it has recalled to my mind the treacherous bloom that once mantled the cheek of a friend who is now no more; and which, while it seemed to promise a long life of jocund spirits, was the sure precursor of a premature decay. In a little while, and this ostentatious foliage disappears - the close of autumn leaves but one wide expanse of dusky brown, save where some rivulet steals along, bordered with little stripes of green grass-the woodland echoes no more to the carols of the feathered tribes that sported in the leafy covert, and its solitude and silence are uninterrupted except by the plaintive whistle of the quail, the barking of the squirrel, or the still more melancholy wintry wind, which, rushing and swelling through the hollows of the mountains, sighs through the leafless branches of the grove, and seems to mourn the desolation of the year.

To one who, like myself, is fond of drawing comparisons between the different divisions of life and those of the seasons, there will appear a striking analogy which connects the feelings of the aged with the decline of the year. Often as I contemplate the mild, uniform, and genial lustre with which the sun cheers and invigorates us in the month of October, and the almost imperceptible haze which, without obscuring, tempers all the asperities of the landscape, and gives to

every object a character of stillness and repose, I cannot help comparing it with that portion of existence, when, the spring of youthful hope and the summer of the passions having gone by, reason assumes an undisputed sway, and lights us on, with bright but undazzling lustre, adown the hill of life. There is a full and mature luxuriance in the fields that fills the bosom with generous and disinterested content. It is not the thoughtless extravagance of spring, prodigal only in blossoms, nor the languid voluptuousness of summer, feverish in its enjoyments, and teeming only with immature abundance-it is that certain fruition of the labours of the past -that prospect of comfortable realities, which those will be sure to enjoy who have improved the bounteous smiles of heaven, nor wasted away their spring and summer in empty trifling or criminal indulgence.

Cousin Pindar, who is my constant companion in these expeditions, and who still possesses much of the fire and energy of youthful sentiment, and a buxom hilarity of the spirits, often indeed draws me from these half-melancholy reveries, and makes me feel young again by the enthusiasm with which he contemplates, and the animation with which he eulogises, the beauties of nature displayed before him. His enthusiastic disposition never allows him to enjoy things by halves, and his feelings are continually breaking cut in notes of admiration and ejaculations that sober reason might perhaps deem extravagant. But for my part, when I see a hale, hearty old man, who

has jostled through the rough path of the world, without having worn away the fine edge of his feelings, or blunted his sensibility to natural and moral beauty, I compare him to the evergreen of the forest, whose colours, instead of fading at the approach of winter, seem to assume additional lustre when contrasted with the surrounding desolation. Such a man is my friend Pindar;— yet sometimes, and particularly at the approach of evening, even he will fall in with my humour; but he soon recovers his natural tone of spirits; and, mounting on the elasticity of his mind, like Ganymede on the eagle's wing, he soars to the ethereal regions of sunshine and fancy.

One afternoon we had strolled to the top of a high hill in the neighbourhood of the Hall, which commands an almost boundless prospect; and as the shadows began to lengthen around us, and the distant mountains to fade into mists, my cousin was seized with a moralizing fit. “It seems to me," said he, laying his hand lightly on my shoulder, "that there is just at this season, and this hour, a sympathy between us and the world we are now contemplating. The evening is stealing upon nature as well as upon us ;-the shadows of the opening day have given place to those of its close; and the only difference is, that in the morning they were before us, now they are behind; and that the first vanished in the splendours of noon-day, the latter will be lost in the oblivion of night. Our May of Life,' my dear Launce, has for ever fled: our summer is over and gone :-but," continued he, suddenly recover

ing himself and slapping me gaily on the shoulder, "but why should we repine ?-What though the capricious zephyrs of spring, the heats and hurricanes of summer, have given place to the sober sunshine of autumn and though the woods begin to assume the dappled livery of decay!-yet the prevailing colour is still green— gay, sprightly green.

"Let us, then, comfort ourselves with this reflection; that though the shades of the morning have given place to those of the evening,-though the spring is past, the summer over, and the autumn come, still you and I go on our way rejoicing; and while, like the lofty mountains of our Southern America, our heads are covered with snow, still, like them, we feel the genial warmth of spring and summer playing upon our bosoms."

SALMAGUNDI.

THE FAMILY OF THE LAMBS.

THE family of the Lambs had long been among the most thriving and popular in the neighbourhood: the Miss Lambs were the belles of Little Britain, and everybody was pleased when Old Lamb had made money enough to shut up shop, and put his name on a brass plate on his door. In an evil hour, however, one of the Miss Lambs had the honour of being a lady in attendance on the Lady Mayoress, at her grand annual ball, on which occasion she wore three towering ostrich