sterious
misgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysterious
still, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God,
and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these--the earthly, in
its sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:--

"But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn?
Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.

SECOND RHAPSODY.

Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to the
masculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country,
painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in the
pretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns.
Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, very
pertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, in
a style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of that
shamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. She
holds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, or
primrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubt
does look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood of
the Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, _in
puris naturalibus_, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or rather
the Hottentot Venus.

"So stands the statue that enchants the world!"

She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier than
Spring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think you
hear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind in
exchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one
"imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh," there will be a cry in
the woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all his
Satyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidently _enceinte_, and, like
Love and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she has
a brace of bouncing babies at her breast--in her right hand a formidable
sickle, like a Turkish scymitar--in her left an extraordinary utensil,
bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia--on her
back a sheaf of wheat--and on her head a diadem--planted there by John
Barleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely man
would wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On her
feet are bauchles--on her legs huggers--