winters, and our Saxon forefathers learned to number the weeks also by nights, and to speak of se'nnight and fortnight-there the winter solstice is welcomed with joy and festivity, because it arrests, at least, the increasing length of the nights. But how the mind of man here triumphs over his servant, nature! To the son of the north, tender plants live only in legends and in tradition; a few flowers arise from the dark, frost-bound ground for a moment, and vanish like a dream; but he, creating within himself a world as free and imperishable as the spirit by which it is conceived, calls upon trees to grow in evergreen splendor under his roof, and hangs them with brilliant flow ers. On the day before the solsticeon the holy Yule-evening-the children of the house, free and bond, are gathered around the Yule-tree, and bind the true bond of love under this image of the starry sky without for another year, by kindly presents and heart-felt wishes. The church also hallows the day, and, lending its higher meaning to the memorable occasion, changes the festival of nature into a sacred feast of religion. Festivals, however, mark only here and there, among the nations of the earth, the changing seasons. Their true record is kept, after all, in the heart of man. Only the loving child of nature, who lives in her and with her, sees with watchful eyes how she decks herself, now with a gay carpet of rich flowers, and now with a soft coverlid of virgin snow; how she sends up her firstlings in modest garb, and consoles us in autumn with brilliant colors and luscious fruits. For plants are the letters with which she writes the record of her great changes-plants that live in the course of these seasons only, and mark them to the outward eye in ever familiar types. In wreaths and in garlands, we read her sweet lessons. And when the tongue of man is most eloquent, and his mind's eye looks around for striking images, where does he find colors like those of the meadows-where a mirror, to show the beauty of her he loves, like the fair landscape around him? Did not the royal poet himself, in prophetic vision, draw from the treasures of nature, when he described his holy bride? There she steps forth, in his inspired song, rising high above her sisters, as the black tents of Kedar rise on the yellow sand of the desert; there she appears refreshing, like a flower on the heated fallow-like a lily in the shutup valley. Oh, how fair she is! Her dove's eyes shine forth in moist brilliancy amidst dark locks that are as a flock of goats approaching Mount Gilead. Her teeth are like a herd of sheep that are even shorn, which come up from washing; and her cheeks appear as the purple flesh of the pomegranate. Her lips, threads of scarlet, drop as the honey-comb, and she is all fair-there is no spot in the lovely landscape of her countenance ! Surely in no land upon earth could such a glowing description of human features be written or read, except in a country where, even at the first break of spring, a fullness of beauty and glory pours into the heart of man. Hardly is winter's short reign at an end, and the early rains over, when field and fallow are covered with flowers, the time for planting is at hand, the voice of the turtle is heard, in sweet, loving notes; the fig pushes forth its fertile buds, and gentle perfumes are breathed from every vine. How deeply the seasons thus affect the mind of man, may be judged by the striking difference of the impressions in a temperate zone and in the regions of extremes. Neither in the Tschudic marshes near the poles, nor in the tropical parts of the Indies can the seasons be much observedthese, from a want of vegetation, here form a fatal exuberance of neverceasing, never-resting activity. In the hot zone only two seasons are known— & hot summer, and, instead of a winter, a rainy season. Both appear with the same suddenness with which day and night interchange without the sweet twilight we love so dearly. So it is at the north: a whole long summer day and a single long winter night follow each other without transition. Even in the far-famed bay of Smith's sound, where our brave Dr. Kane spent two fearful winters, a single day of six months contrasted at once with one hundred and twenty winter days, during which no sun appeared above the horizon. Hence the remarkable effect produced on the races that dwell in those regions. Where the fruit is ever ready to fall at the feet of man, or where he can never hope to see the scattered seed mature, there he will never till the soil, and change the early curse into a rich blessing. Hence we find that in the tropics man relaxes into indolence-near the poles he freezes into inactivity. There he cannot tear himself away from the enjoyment of nature; here he never learns to know or to love his harsh stepmother. The son of the Orient looks, therefore, upon the seasons but as upon a series of pleasing pictures that pass before his eyes. Where the death of winter can be compared only to the slight slumber of Dives, after the day's easy duties, there autumn, also, is but a gentle repose after the luxurious feast of summer and spring-but a refreshed reawakening, after a short rest. The calm eye looks upon the gentle changes with undisturbed mind; the heart does not rejoice with the joyful, nor mourn with the mourning. Now and then a poet like Mollah Washi breaks forth and sings: "Oh, glory of spring! Oh, light of the world!" but it is little more than a mere shout, the outburst of the moment; and he cannot sing the praises of lovely spring, for there is no spring; he cannot exalt the bonny month of May, for there is no May. In like manner we see the children of the north sigh and suffer under the rigor of their eternal winter. With startling rapidity, with spasmodic suddenness sunshine and snow interchange, the heat of the day and the clear frosts of night succeed each other, and do not allow us to enjoy in quiet repose the beauties of nature. What wonder that in such restless haste, such constant confusion, the dwellers of the soil are starved and stunted, or that their songs, like the famous rhymes of Kalewala, but repeat the sad sighing of their low pines, and the mournful whispering of their melancholy birches? Nor is this difference merely to be seen in man's outward life. Far more marked is the effect the seasons have on his inner world. The shivering northerner is driven back to his quiet study-the bitter cold of long winters allows him but little time to sally out from his well-sheltered home. During long, lingering evenings he sees nothing of the outer world, and is busy gathering and improving the rich seeds that spring and summer have sown in his heart. He calls up his wandering thoughts, which no longer are tempted to roam over smiling meadows and through dark forests; he plies the mighty engine of his mind with a single pur pose and well-defined object, undisturbed by the countless changes of the world around him. Hence the great mental activity of all northern nations. Far different is it at the south. Here the surrounding scenery is ever the same-full of life and beauty, abounding now in fruit and now in promise, not resting even during winter. The same green adorns the landscape month after month; days and nights follow each other in unchanging length; there is no pause and no interruption, and thus time passes unnoticed, and man, in the unbroken enjoyment of the present, thinks not of the past, and neither fears nor hopes for the future. The intercourse with such an unchanging nature produces, in the son of the south, the same constant pathos, as ready to become phlegmatic repose as to break forth in sudden and fearful explosions. Happier by far is, therefore, the dweller in temperate zones, who can shake the icy hand of winter, and warm his own, thankfully, in the lap of merry spring; who, after the embrace of summer, receives from autumn the cooling juices of his fruits. Even in our zone, however, the seasons are not so strictly defined as to meet in hostile array. On the contrary, the four sisters hold each other lovingly by the hand; lusty winter glides so gently into spring that it often lingering chills the lap of May;" and summer passes into autumn without our knowing when the one bids us farewell, and the other his warm though subdued welcome. Here again plants are the bright letters which even he who runs may read, and sweet is the knowledge that these darling children of nature convey to us in their simple handwriting; for they are the ever-changing decorations on the grand stage on which the drama "The Year" is unceasingly enacted, whilst animals are but the actors that appear there at their appointed time. Meadows and fallow lands look still as if buried in deep slumber, and the eye passes freely through the leafless forest, when, already, tiny heralds announce the coming of the spring. The air is milder and balmier; in Europe the joyful lark is heard on high praising her Maker; with us the plover pipes plaintively in the low grounds. grounds. Thaw-bringing winds sigh quaintly through the naked branches, and, heavily laden with moisture as they are, they produce that strange music which marks them from all other winds. The ice breaks, and white patches of snow alone remain here and there to tell of past sorrow and suffering. The swelling buds of ancient oaks begin to press hard upon the leaves of last year which will not depart-a painful image of death by the side of the fresh green of youthful life. For, under the dying leaf of autumn, nature had already prepared the bud for the coming spring. Safely and softly embedded in its warm cover, it had slept through its first infancy during the winter; and fall and spring thus reach each other a friendly hand across the silent season between them. Long before the buds of our trees have opened their well-guarded doors, and let leaf and blossom look out into the bright world, a whole host of little impatient plants has pressed forward to leave their cold prison, and to bask in the new freedom of life. It is especially under the safe cover of dead leaves, in the shelter of mighty trees, where the last icy breath of winter can no longer chill and check them, that the first flowers may be discovered. Wherever the loosened waters have begun to form a tiny pool, full of still tinier islands, there golden patches of chrysosplenium are found in abundance. How brightly they contrast with the black, boggy soil on the margins of little rills, or the dark edges of fountain-heads in wet, shady woods, where the ground is less moist, and the warm rays of the sun have tempted the long-hidden germs to come forth. The rough-leaved pulmonaria unfolds its long blossoms, which dress first in soft pink, but no sooner have opened their little chalices than they assume a still fairer blue color. On the edges of forests, and in the safe shelter of hedges, there rises, soon after, the graceful star of the gazea, the humble precursor of a long succession of lilies. Much more widely spread than these three characteristic plants of spring is the wood anemone. Wherever the soil is rich, "it woos the fairy solitudes, embosomed in the leafy woods," and covers rock and ruin with its bright, starry flowers, that droop languidly upon the still slumbering turf. We must not forget, however, among the earliest heralds of spring, the fragrant violet, though it hides itself modestly under banks covered with brushwood and old herbage. It rejoices our heart by the strange contrast of its sweet odor with the rough winds that still sweep through field and forest. Then, indeed, we ask: "Whence is it that the flow'ret of the field doth fade, And lyeth buried long in winter's vale, Yet, soone as spring his mantle hath displayde, It flowreth fresh as it should never fayle?" The trees, also, follow the example set them by the humbler plants, and unfold, one after another, their youthful beauty. The woods, it is true, do not renew their trees every year, but still they represent, as faithfully as the lesser children of Flora, every change of the seasons. In early spring the lowly shrubs deck themselves with flowers; honey-suckles cover their neighbors with green garlands; fragrant creepers grasp the rocks and stones, as if to make them also aware of the new reign of love that has just commenced, and the wild cherry-trees change into white, airy clouds. The ash is almost the last tree that comes into leaf, and, when all others around it smile in the freshness of their spring foliage, it attracts us by its nakedness and by its black knobs of unblown flowers. Thus it forms, as it were, the last link in the chain that binds spring and summer to each other, and waits only at times for the late oak, whose leaves last deep into winter. Now is the time for rejoicing, and no nation on earth, that can sing, is without a rich treasure of songs in praise of spring. Its heralds are welcomed with festive dance-here the swallow that comes from distant lands, and there the snow-drop that rises from the dark grave in unspeakable beautyevery heart opens again like the long silent bosom of nature, every mind is cheered and brightened. For what can knock with more welcome sound at the gates of our selfish heart, than this never-failing resurrection of naturethis mighty change from death to life? Great is the power of spring, and few can escape the wondrous spell; young and old rejoice in his joy, and wherever his footsteps are seen, and his perfume breathed there cares are forgotten, and age sits lightly on the hoary head. When spring has made "All the field look glorious, green, and gay, And freely scattered, with a bounteous hand, His sweetest, fairest flowers o'er the land," then comes, in gorgeous beauty, his royal successor, summer. But which of his thousand children is the first comer-the true herald of the new reign? Out in the fields it is the milkwhite hawthorn-bush, and in early summer there is radiating from every road, and lane, and footpath, a stream of incense and beauty, which neither old nor young can resist--a balm than which that of Gilead is not more virtuous. In the thickest and wildest dell, on a cairn or a rough stony spot by the way-side, in the depth of noble forests, everywhere the modest tree unfolds its glossy leaves and pure white blossoms, until "In the music-breathing hedge, the thorn And pearly white May-blossom are entwined With dripping honeysuckles, whose sweet breath Sinks to the heart, recalling, with a sigh, Nearer home it is the queen of flowers that claims to be the very emblem of summer. Abounding in hedges, and glens, and dells, where "The rose in all her pride, Paints the hollow dingleside," it scatters white flowers and red, "Half enwrapt, and half to view revealed," on all sides. The sovereign rose of the stately garden rules there in unrivaled majesty, whilst the wild rose fills thickets and bushes with perfume, here climbing up to the topmost branches of trees, and there mingling with the fading blooms of May. Then summer is in its prime, with flowers richly blooming, all the trees dressed in their most gorgeous garments, and the wild mountain thyme perfuming all the moorland. And when the red rose has scattered her leaves all around her, there arises from her grave the white lily in spotless robes the pure emblem of the purer joys of summer. Later in the season, the reddish bluebells of the gentian begin to ring out the gay, glorious season. When everywhere red-cheeked apples laugh at us through the thinned foliage, when the grape assumes the soft transparency that makes it so strangely like the moist eye of a friend, when, here and there, chilling breezes begin already their cruel sport with the leaves, then we, also, are led to think of the evening of the year, and the evening of life, In the very midst of the far-spread wealth of nature, surrounded by the richest colors and the silent exuberance of the landscape, a soft, still feeling of melancholy creeps over us, as if such splendor could not last long upon earth. Then we remember that the rose also “has but a summer's reign," and that soon bleak autumn will come and claim the sceptre. His time begins when the leaves as, sume his livery-now a sad-colored dress full of mourning, and now a gorgeous and glaring red, as if they would fair defy death itself, and flame out once more in unsurpassed splendor. Spring seems to have returned a second time to his kingdom; for the autumnal foliage often assumes, as in poplars the very same hues it displayed when it first broke forth from the tender burs. Yellow and red, scarlet and gold, are the special colors of fall, and these glorious ornaments of the temperate zone appear here, among us, in a perfection which no art of man has as yet been able to reproduce. Life, however, struggles long among plants against death, if death can be called what is to plants -and, thanks to God, to man, alsobut a brief period of rest. For many a week, and far into November, new blossoms begin. to show and replace the withering children of summer. Our own native asters, especially, unfold their starry beauty, one by one, and, in low meadows, the pale pink flower of the late daffodil shrinks not even from frost and ice. Almost the last of flowers "it marks the time when autumn has tinged every fertile branch with blooming gold and blushing like the morn." There is a peculiar sadness in the parting of the year. We love autumn, as the dying man loves life. It has a delicacy in its strange brightness, an almost magic transparency in its clearer lights, a poetry in all its features, which together never fail to make a deep and sweet impression. A farewell is at all times but tender sorrow, but such a loving farewell as autumn tells us, is the true blending of humble grief with undoubting hope. "The year is gone"-this is the only word the half-broken heart still reads in the last letters of the season, and, as long as the silky threads shine like silver in the bright sun, and the leaves sink gently through the still air, we are bound, as if with magic ties, to the departing beauty. Long before the crowns of trees grow lighter, and sun and wind pass unhindered through their bared limbs, the ground is already covered with the dead, and weird winds play a wild game with the homeless exiles on their way downward. Thanks to our climate, the Indian summer comes for a time to break the season of gloom, and makes us say with the poet : "I will have my careless season, Hours of such perfect gladsomeness." At last even the bright colors have faded. Cold winds rustle in the branches; gray clouds hang heavily over the landscape; silky gossamers, woven by lonely spiders, float mournfully over the fields, and thistle-downs are "borne abroad upon the winds of heaven, and scattered into air." The last days of fall are there in all their sadness and grave earnest; below us, a soft, swelling carpet of leaves; high up in the crowns of trees, a painful sighing and soughing, which bears our eye to the leafless tops. How strange a monitor of that time when the crown of man also turns paler and paler, and, at last, is bereft of its treasure! Only the oak retains its withered foliage, as if reluctant to part with its beauty-an image of departed greatness, it stands stiff and stern in the winter air. But, resting from the labors and enjoyments of long, merry summer days, the trees are still busy again, weaving new burrs for the coming spring. Nature dies not; only the loud, sounding life grows silent upon the great stage of the year. Impatient winter, unable to battle as yet with the sun that still watches over her children and warms them during the day, comes at night and does sad havoc among flowers and bushes. But the tender children of Flora wage a manful war against the tyrant; aided by many a warm breeze and a soft air, they creep cozily under shelter, and there unfold, in spite of storm and frost, their humbler flowers. Even chilling hoarfrost lies long on the large rosettes of green leaves of our biennial thistles; the golden-rod, the horse-gowan and ragweed linger in sheltered spots, and some will tarry there until Christmas has told its tale. Finally, even the last of the tiny army seems to have fallen, to be buried forever. But, even then, the Christmasflower, the hellebore, opens, at holy time, its white, blooming eyes. The leafless hazel-bushes adorn themselves with silky catkins, and, under the rigid frozen cover of brooks, when the fish are still slumbering on their winter couch, thousands of microscopic plants are busily doing their duty. Heavy masses of snow fall in avalanches from branch to branch, and fir-trees and spruces groan as if in agony; and yet, within there, life is still at work, and the green glossy leaves pale not in the coldest of north winds. On rocks and rugged roots there still survive the graceful folk of dwarfish lichens and mosses, some of whom disdain to unfold their passing beauty before the very depth of winter. Thus a green thread is seen to pass unbroken through all the four seasons; and, even in mid-winter, the hopeful eye can perceive, in the far distance, spring and summer hastening onward to clothe once more the skeletons, apparently lost to every sweet influence, with green leaves and smiling flowers, and autumn to give promise of abundant fruits. Thus the last of the seasons teaches us also the last of lessons, that, like the plants, man, also, |