ly inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But we
cannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. SUMMER is a
season come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himself
like a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing,
his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a way
to make his best friends ashamed of him--in a way absolutely disgraceful
to a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with the
Sun--his benefactor, nay, his father--what else could he expect but that
that enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenance
from so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel along
the mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky--and
sullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, like
a great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper--and when he found
that would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Still
the Sun would not look on him--or if he did, 'twas with a sudden and
short half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last the
Summer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into a
flood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, the
Summer wept and the Sun smiled--and for one broken month there was a
perpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence!
How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to his
pristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like the
rose.

Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he was
dead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneath
the yellow forest leaves! O thou first, faint, fair, finest tinge of
dawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face of
the morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze is
felt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence or
Beauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once more
duly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day to
mortal life--before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward in
some forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and the
happy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among the
boughs--before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper and
deeper--as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright,
till range after r