st closed, in its clear, shining
sunlight, or more attractive for its bland and healthful temperature.
Not leisure--for that I have little to boast of, or to _fear_. Let my
young readers mark that word, _fear_. I am not about to write a
homily upon the uses of time and talents, but let me parenthetically
note that the gift of enjoying leisure is so rare in the young, that a
lack of constant occupation should be rather feared than courted. I do
not speak of the danger of flagrant vice, but of a growing propensity
to disregard portions of time, because only _portions_ may be
necessary to the discharge of admitted duties--the danger is
imminent--but not to the young alone. In youth, love of action _may_
employ the leisure to the promotion of vice in age, a tendency to
inertness may induce the abuse of the leisure to total inaction. I can
hardly imagine any object more unsightly than an idle old man--the
dead trunk of a decayed tree, marring the landscape and injuring
culture. But I must return. Not leisure, for I have little of that to
boast of or fear; not leisure, but a love, a growing love for the
partial solitude of the field, and something of an enjoyment of the
elevating communion which it leaves, sent me more than once in
November last strolling beyond the dusty roads and noisy turnpike in
the vicinity of our city. It was, as I have reason to recollect, on
the eighteenth of November, that I was wandering observantly, but in
deep contemplation, across some of the fields that lie near the road
leading from the city to Frankford. It was a lovely day, and every
feeling of my heart was consonant to the scene. Ascending a little
eminence, I obtained an extensive view. The forest trees had lost
their rich garb of mottled beauties, and their denuded limbs stretched
out with attenuated delicacy, seemed to streak the distant horizon
with darkened lines. On my right the winding Delaware lay stretched
out in glassy beauty, and near me, glittering in the sunlight beyond,
were a thousand gossamer webs that had survived a recent storm. The
fields were unusually green, for the season, as if the year were
clothing itself, like an expiring prelate, with its richest
habiliments, that its departure might leave the impress of that beauty
which comes from its usefulness. I had yielded to the influences of
the scene, had allowed my feeling to predominate, and was in the midst
of an unwonted abstraction from all ordinary cares and relations