motion at different points, darting through their massy ranks : these appeared like officers giving the word of command. In the evening, about five o'clock, they began to return to their station, and continued coming in from all quarters till near dark. It was here that you might see them go through their various aërial evolutions in many a sportive ring and airy gambol, strengthening their pinions in these playful feats for their long journey: a thousand pleasing twitters arose from their little throats, as they cut the air and frolicked in the last beams of the setting sun, or lightly skimmed the surface of the glassy pool. The notes of those that had already gained the willows sounded like the murmur of a distant waterfall, or the dying roar of the retreating billow on the sea-beach.

"The verdant enamel of summer had already given place to the warm and mellow tints of autumn, and the leaves were now fast falling from their branches, while the naked tops of many of the trees appeared; the golden sheaves were safely lodged in the barns, and the reapers had for this year shouted their harvesthome; frosty and misty mornings now succeeded, the certain presages of the approach of winter. These omens were understood by the swallows as the route for their march: accordingly, on the morning of the 7th of October, their mighty army broke up their encampment, debouched from their retreat, and, rising, covered the heavens with their legions; thence, directed by an unerring guide, they took their trackless way. On the morning of their going, when they ascended from their temporary abode, they did not, as they had been wont to do, divide into different columns and take each a different route, but went off in one vast body, bearing to the south. It is said that they would have gone sooner, but for a contrary wind which had for some time prevailed; that on the day before they took their departure, the wind got round, and the favourable breeze was immediately embraced by them. On the day of their flight, they left behind them about a hundred of their companions: whether they were slumberers in the camp, and so

had missed the going of their troops, or whether they were left as the rear-guard, it is not easy to ascertain;-they remained, however, till the next morning, when the greater part of them mounted on their pinions, to follow, as it should seem, the route of their departed legions. After these a few stragglers only remained these might be too sick or too young to attempt so great an expedition ;-whether this was the fact or not, they did not remain after the next day. If they did not follow their army, yet the dreary appearance of their depopulated camp and their affection for their kindred might influence them to attempt it, or to explore a warmer and safer retreat.'

"THE SWALLOW.

"Foolish prater, what dost thou
So early at my window do,

With thy tuneless serenade ?

Well 't had been had Tereus made

Thee as dumb as Philomel;

There his knife had done but well.

In thy undiscover'd nest

Thou dost all the winter rest,

And dreamest o'er thy summer joys,
Free from the stormy season's noise,
Free from th' ill thou 'st done to me;
Who disturbs or seeks out thee?
Hadst thou all the charming notes
Of the wood's poetic throats,
All thy art could never pay

What thou hast ta'en from me away.
Cruel bird! thou 'st ta'en away
A dream out of my arms to-day;
A dream, that ne'er must equall'd be
By all that waking eyes may see.
Thou, this damage to repair,

Nothing half so sweet or fair,

Nothing half so good, canst bring

Though men say thou bring'st the spring."

COWLEY.

"Woodcocks have now arrived. In the autumn and setting in of winter they keep dropping in from the Baltic singly, or in pairs, till December. They instinctively land in the night, or in dark misty weather; for they are never seen to arrive, but are frequently discovered the next morning in any ditch which affords them shelter after the extraordinary fatigue occasioned by the adverse gales which they often have to encounter in their aerial voyage. They do not remain near the shores longer than a day, when they are sufficiently recruited to proceed inland, and they visit the very same haunts they left the preceding season. In temperate weather they retire to mossy moors, and high bleak mountainous parts; but as soon as the frost sets in and the snows begin to fall, they seek lower and warmer situations, with boggy grounds and springs, and little oozing mossy rills, which are rarely frozen, where they shelter in close bushes of holly and furze, and the brakes of woody glens, or in dells which are covered with underwood: here they remain concealed during the day, and remove to different haunts, and feed only in the night. From the beginning of March to the end of that month, and sometimes to the middle of April, they all keep drawing towards the coasts, and avail themselves of the first fair wind to return to their native woods. The snipe also comes now, and inhabits similar situations. It is migratory, and met with in all countries: like the woodcock, it shuns the extremes of heat and cold, by keeping upon the bleak moors in summer, and seeking the shelter of the valleys in winter. In unfrozen boggy places, runners from springs, or any open streamlets of water, they are often found in considerable numbers."

Drake, in his "Evenings in Autumn," says:

"It is as combining the decline of the day with that of the year- the period both of beauty and decay—that an evening in autumn becomes so generally the parent of ideas of a solemn and pathetic cast. Not only, as in the first of these instances,

do we blend the sunset of physical with that of moral being, but a further source of similitude is unavoidably suggested in the failure and decrepitude of the dying year,-a picture faithfully, and, in some points of view, mournfully emblematic of the closing hours of human life.

"With the daily retirement of the sun and the gradual approach of twilight, though circumstances, as we have seen, often associated in our minds with the transitory tenure of mortal existence, there are usually connected so many objects of beauty and repose, as to render such a scene in a high degree soothing and consolatory: but with the customary decline of light are now united the sighing of the coming storm, the eddying of the withered foliage;

For autumn comes in solemn gold,

And all the gaudy leaves are strown;
The trees look barren, thin, and cold,
Beneath the darkening tempest's frown:
The hunter wanders by the wold,

By heath and fell, and mountain brown,--
By hill and vale, and river's head,

Where the dead leaves find a bed,

Hectic, and grey, and fever-red.'

"These are occurrences which so strongly appeal to our feelings which so forcibly remind us of the mutability of our species, and bring before us, with such impressive solemnity, the earth as opening to receive us, that they have from the earliest period of society, and in every stage of it, been considered as typical of the brevity and destiny of man. 'Like leaves on trees,' says the first and greatest of all uninspired writers

'Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the following spring supplies;

They fall successive, and successive rise :

So generations in their course decay;

So flourish these, when those are pass'd away ;'

-a simile which, as originating in the sympathies of our common nature, has found an echo in the poetry of the melancholy Ossian. The people are,' exclaims the Bard of Cona, 'like the waves of ocean; like the leaves of woody Morven, they pass away in the rustling blast, and other leaves lift their green heads on high.'”

"Summer is dead and earth'd, and o'er her grave

Dark clouds pass slow and shadowy, shedding tears
That beauty should be born for death, and have
So short a term of days, which should be years.
No voice is heard but murmurs of despair :
The wild winds through her flowerless bowers rave;
Her sister, Autumn, rends her yellow hair,
And weeps the more that tears were vain to save:
The sorrowful robin sings her requiem,

And strews her hearse with all his favourite leaves;
The sprightly lark somewhere in silence grieves,
And will not chaunt his wonted matin-hymn;
And Nature, her proud mother, mourns her child
With that unutter'd grief which is not soon beguiled."

C. W

Sturm thus remarks the decline of Summer :"The last rays of the summer sun now fall feebly on the earth everything is changed; that country which so lately bloomed in verdant beauty and blushing charms is becoming poor, withered, and barren. We no longer see the trees rich in blossom, nor the spring gay with verdure: the magnificence of summer, displayed in a thousand variations of colours, whose richness is relieved by the beautiful green of the meadows and waving groves, is no more; the purple hue of the vine has faded, and the gilded ears no longer ornament the fields. The last leaves of the trees are falling; the pines, the elms, and the oaks, bend beneath the blasts of the fierce north wind; and the fields which have lavished upon us so many gifts are at length exhausted.

"These sad changes must necessarily diminish our pleasures.