Nay—nay—things are not altogether so bad with us as this strain—sincere though it be as a stream from the sacred mountains—might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a broken Summer. It would do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along the Highland hills, sans great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonny blooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while the thermometer keeps ranging between 60° and 70°, three times a-day. What refreshment in the very sound—Soaking! Old bones wax dry—nerves numb—sinews stiff—flesh frail—and there is a sad drawback on the Whole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on our craziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at the approach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizens of heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee are streaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever as they descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louder and louder a choral song. Look now at the heather—and smile whenever henceforth you hear people talk of purple. You have been wont to call a gold guinea or a sovereign yellow—but if you have got one in your pocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it not a dirty brown? You have an emerald ring on your finger—but how grey it looks beside the green of those brackens, that pasture, that wood! Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time in your life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you have been gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, and the woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision of the sacred Blue. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn that mercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, and let the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and a saintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven to bless thee in her prayers! Set slowly—slowly—slowly—O Sun of Suns! as may be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunk behind those mountains into the sea, will that celestial ROSY-RED be tabernacled in the heavens!
Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our old crazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth, that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croaking in pure gaieté du cœur on the cliff. Threescore and ten years! Poo—'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers—for twenty years more keep to the Highland fling—and at the close of other twenty, jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel of Tullochgorum!
Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to go down on our wrath towards the Autumn, whose back we yet see on the horizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! I meet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season, and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we two smoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greener and greener—reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, and cities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill, with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, and with unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dream of a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvest treading on the heels of Christmas,
"And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"
when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and false prophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over the rain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groaned the grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knew that again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts of the husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandished their sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered with Christian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on the rig—kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsome hizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods—among the heather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and with hook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. The scene lies in Scotland—but now, too, is England "Merry England" indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks rising like stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoice in the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the rest of two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the last ripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall over in their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fields now—but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, or stony soil—are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, but some stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, as the huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates they hide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls,
"Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings,"
no—not rings—for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cart going out empty in the morning—but with a cheerful dull sound, ploughing along the black soil, the clean dirt almost up to the axletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think with silver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, how glides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growing Stack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up from Dobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go, tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before your eyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, but shaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct of the nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves, amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hour ago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that he was dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes.
Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let us compare Autumn with Spring. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath $1 of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle—and true it is that the groundwork of his garb is green—even like that of the proud peacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of his own splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, has yet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Argus with his hundred, his thousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat of many colours. Call it patch-work if you choose,
"And be yourself the great sublime you draw."
Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker's eye—arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes and ours, and from beneath The Sycamore let us two, sitting together in amity, look lovingly on the Spring. Felt ever your heart before, with such an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicate distinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That is Belle Isle. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of green gentle as its own, is the lake-loving Alder, whose home, too, is by the flowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue—or shall we rather say brighter—for we feel the difference without knowing in what it lies—stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiral Larch, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admire them, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, and smooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and there airily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy might picture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on that Fortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadness to unsorrowing things—to belong to a Tree that weeps,—though a weight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses the Birch's pendent beauty, till it droops—as we think—like that of a being overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, with something of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcome or obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to the touch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth now to be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darker grove of columnar Lombardy Poplars. How comes it that some Sycamores so much sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding, as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs. There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved, with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly from afar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, a few are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will the bees be swarming among their flowers. A Horse Chestnut has a grand oriental air, and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light—that shows he belongs to the line of the Prophet. Elms are then most magnificent—witness Christ-Church walk—when they hang over head in heaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are the august—and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault of branches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tinged with a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those old Oaks seem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power, like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxing from their wonted sternness—soon will that faint green be a glorious yellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms with which they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to the music of his national anthem,