10. THE MUSIC OF NATURE.

There is a melancholy music in autumn. The leaves float sadly about with a look of peculiar desolation, waving capriciously in the wind, and falling with a just audible sound, that is a very sigh for its sadness. And then, when the breeze is fresher, though the early autumn months are mostly still, they are swept on with a cheerful rustle over the naked harvest fields, and about in the eddies of the blast; and though I have, sometimes, in the glow of exercise, felt my life securer in the triumph of the brave contest, yet, in the chill of the evening, or when any sickness of the mind or body was on me, the moaning of those withered leaves has pressed down my heart like a sorrow, and the cheerful fire, and the voices of my many sisters, might scarce remove it,

I love to listen

Then for the music of winter. to the falling of snow. It is an unobtrusive and sweet music. You may temper your heart to the serenest mood by its low murmur. It is that kind of music that only obtrudes upon your ear when your thoughts come languidly. You need not hear it, if your mind is not idle. It realizes my dream of another world, where music is intuitive like a thought, and comes only when it is remembered.

And the frost, too, has a melodious "ministry." You will hear its crystals shoot in the dead of a clear night, as if the moon beams were splintering like arrows on the ground; and you will listen to it the more earnestly, that it is the going on of one of the most cunning and beautiful of nature's deep mysteries. I know nothing so wonderful as the shooting of a crystal. God has hidden its principle as yet from the inquisitive eye of the philosopher, and we must be content to gaze on its exquisite beauty, and listen, in mute wonder, to the noise of its invisible workmanship. It is too fine a knowledge for us. We shall comprehend it when we know how the morning stars sang together.

You would hardly look for music in the dreariness of early winter. But before the keener frosts set in, and while the warm winds are yet stealing back occasionally, like regrets of the departed summer, there will come a soft rain or a heavy mist, and when the north wind returns, there will be drops suspended like ear-ring jewels between the filaments of the cedar tassels, and in the feathery edges of the dark green hemlocks, and, if the clearing up is not followed by the heavy wind, they will be all frozen in their places like well-set gems. The next morning the warm sun comes out, and by the middle of the warm, dazzling forenoon they are all loosened from the close

touch which sustained them, and they will drop at the lightest motion.

If you go upon the south side of the wood at that hour, you will hear music. The dry foliage of the summer's shedding is scattered over the ground, and the round, hard drops ring out clearly and distinctly as they are shaken down with the stirring of the breeze. It is something like the running of deep and rapid water, only more fitful and merrier; but to one who goes out in nature with his heart open it is a pleasant music, and, in contrast with the stern character of the season, delightful.

Winter has many other sounds that give pleasure to the seeker for hidden sweetness, but they are too rare and accidental to be described distinctly. The brooks have a sullen and muffled murmur under their frozen surface; the ice in the distant river heaves up with the swell of the current, and falls again to the bank with a prolonged echo; and the woodman's axe rings cheerfully out from the bosom of the unrobed forest. These are at best, however, but melancholy sounds, and, like all that meets the eye in that cheerless season, they but drive in the heart upon itself. I believe it is ordered in God's wisdom. We forget ourselves in the enticement of the sweet summer. Its music and its loveliness win away the senses that link up the affections, and we need a hand to turn us back

tenderly, and hide from us the outward idols, in whose worship we are forgetting the high and more spiritual altars.

11. RAIN UPON THE ROOF.

When the humid showers gather
Over all the starry spheres,
And the melancholy darkness
Gently weeps in rainy tears,
'Tis a joy to press the pillow
Of a cottage-chamber bed,
And to listen to the patter

Of the soft rain overhead.

Every tinkle on the shingles
Has an echo in the heart,
And a thousand lively fancies
Into busy being start;
And a thousand recollections

Weave their bright hues into woof,

As I listen to the patter

Of the rain upon the roof.

There, in fancy, comes my mother,
As she used to, years agone,
To survey the infant sleepers,
Ere she left them till the dawn.

I can see her bending o'er me,
As I listen to the strain
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.

Then my little seraph sister,

With her wings and waving hair,
And her bright-eyed cherub brother,
A serene, angelic pair,
Glide around my wakeful pillow,
With their praise or mild reproof,
As I listen to the murmur

Of the soft rain on the roof.

There is naught in art's bravuras
That can work with such a spell,
In the spirit's pure, deep fountains,
Whence the holy passions swell,
As that melody of nature,

That subdued, subduing strain,
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.

- COATES KINNEY.

I stood to hear I love it well

The rain's continuous sound;

Small drops, but thick and fast they fell,
Down straight into the ground.

- CAROLINE SOUTHEY.