yet patches in the forest where the warm coloring of October has darkened into a reddish brown; and here and there a tree still throws a fuller shadow than belongs to winter. The waters of the river were gleaming through the bare thickets on its banks, and the pretty pool, on the next farm, looked like a clear, dark agate, dropped amid the gray fields. A column of smoke, rising slowly from the opposite hill, told of a wood which had fallen, of trees which had seen their last summer. The dun stubble of the old grain-fields, and the darker soil of the newly-ploughed lands, varied the grave November tints, while here and there in their midst lay a lawn of young wheat, sending up its green blades, soft and fresh as though there were no winter in the year, growing more clear and life-like as all else becomes more dreary—a ray of hope on the pale brow of resignation.
So calm and full of repose was the scene, that we turned from it unwillingly, and with as much regret as though it were still gay with the beauty of summer.
Just beyond the brow of the hill the road enters a wood; here the path was thickly strewn with fallen leaves, still crisp and fresh, rustling at every step as we moved among them, while on either side the trees threw out their branches in bare lines of gray. Old chestnuts, with blunt and rough notches elms; with graceful waving spray; vigorous maples, with the healthful, upright growth of their tribe; the glossy beech, with friendly arms stretched out, as if to greet its neighbors, and among them all, conspicuous as ever, stood the delicate birch, with its alabaster-like bark, and branches of a porphyry color, so strangely different from the parent stem. Every year, as the foliage falls, and the trees reappear in their wintry form, the eye wonders a while at the change,
