enjoy them. And here, indeed, we find the precise extent of the difference between the relative beauty of autumn in Europe and in America: with us it is quite impossible to overlook these peculiar charms of the autumnal months; while in Europe, though not wholly wanting, they remained unnoticed, unobserved, for ages. Had the same soft atmosphere of the “Indian summer” warmed the woods of Windsor, year after year, while Geoffrey Chaucer roamed among their glades, the English would have had a word or a phrase to express the charm of such days, before they borrowed one from another continent. Had the maples, and oaks, and ashes, on the banks of the Avon, colored the waters of that stream, year after year, with their own scarlet, and crimson, and purple, while Will. Shakspeare, the bailiff's son, was shooting his arrows on its banks, we should have found many a rich and exquisite image connected with autumnal hours hovering about the footsteps of Lear and Hamlet, Miranda and Imogen, and Rosalind. Had the woods of England been as rich as our own, their branches would have been interwoven among the masques of Ben Jonson and Milton; they would have had a place in more than one of Spenser's beautiful pictures. All these are wanting now. Perhaps the void may be in a measure filled up for us by great poets of our own; but even then one charm will fail—the mellow light of eld, which illumines the page of the old poet, will be missed; for that, like the rich flavor of old wine, is the gift of Time alone.
In the meanwhile, however, the march of Autumn through the land is not a silent one—it is already accompanied by song. Scarce a poet of any fame among us who has not at least some graceful verse, some glowing image connected with the season;
