ves
motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of Lethe;--to the air
which is to salute beatified spirits when expiatory fires shall have
consumed the earth with all her habitations. But it is in autumn that
days of such affecting influence most frequently intervene;--the
atmosphere seems refined, and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the
vivifying heat of the year abates; the lights and shadows are more
delicate; the colouring is richer and more finely harmonised; and, in
this season of stillness, the ear being unoccupied, or only gently
excited, the sense of vision becomes more susceptible of its appropriate
enjoyments. A resident in a country like this which we are treating of,
will agree with me, that the presence of a lake is indispensable to
exhibit in perfection the beauty of one of these days; and he must have
experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the
imagination, by their aid, is carried into recesses of feeling otherwise
impenetrable. The reason of this is, that the heavens are not only
brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the earth is mainly
looked at, and thought of, through the medium of a purer element. The
happiest time is when the equinoxial gales are departed; but their fury
may probably be called to mind by the sight of a few shattered boughs,
whose leaves do not differ in colour from the faded foliage of the
stately oaks from which these relics of the storm depend: all else
speaks of tranquillity;--not a breath of air, no restlessness of
insects, and not a moving object perceptible--except the clouds
gliding in the depths of the lake, or the traveller passing along, an
inverted image, whose motion seems governed by the quiet of a time, to
which its archetype, the living person, is, perhaps, insensible:--or
it may happen, that the figure of one of the larger birds, a raven or a
heron, is crossing silently among the reflected clouds, while the voice
of the real bird, from the element aloft, gently awakens in the
spectator the recollection of appetites and instincts, pursuits and
occupations, that deform and agitate the world,--yet have no power to
prevent Nature from putting on an aspect capable of satisfying the most
intense cravings for the tranquil, the lovely, and the perfect, to which
man, the noblest of her creatures, is subject.

Thus far, of climate, as influencing the feelings through its effect on
the objects of sense. We may add, that whatever has been