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AUTUMN.

Attemper'd suns arise,

Sweet-beam'd and shedding oft through lucid clouds
A pleasing calm; while, broad and brown below,
Extensive harvests hang the heavy head.
Rich, silent, deep, they stand; for not a gale
Rolls its light billows o'er the bending plain:
A calm of plenty!

THOMSON.

Who loves not Autumn's joyous round,
When corn, and wine, and oil abound?
Yet who would choose, however gay,
A year of unrenewed decay?

MONTGOMERY.

No spring or summer's beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face.

Autumn tinges every fertile branch

DONNE.

With blooming gold, and blushes like the morn.

AKENSIDE.

Go to the silent Autumn woods!

There has goue forth a spirit stern;
Its wing has waved in triumph here,
The spring's green tender leaf is sere,
And withering hangs the summer fern.
MARY HOWITT.

In our favoured country, Spring is clothed in a green robe enamelled with flowers, which owes all its ornaments to Nature. Summer, crowned with blue-bottles and wild poppies, proud of her golden harvests, receives from the hand of man part of her decorations; whilst Autumn appears laden with fruit brought to perfection by his industry. Here the juicy peach is tinged with the colours of the rose; the fineflavoured apricot borrows the gold that glows in the bosom of the ranunculus; the grape decks itself with the purple of the violet; and the apple with the varied hues of the gaudy tulip. All these fruits are so like flowers, that one would suppose them to have been made only to delight the eye: but yet they come to increase the abundance of our stores, and Autumn, which pours them upon our tables, seems to proclaim that they are the last gifts which Nature means to lavish upon us.

But a new Flora suddenly makes her appearance, the offspring of commerce and industry. She was unknown to Greece in her best days, and to our simple forefathers. Roving about incessantly over the earth, she enriches us with the productions of every country. She comes, and our dull and forsaken gardens acquire fresh splendour. The China aster is intermingled with the beauteous pink of India; the mignonette from the banks of the Nile grows at the foot of the eastern tuberose; the heliotrope, the nasturtium, and the nightshade of Peru, blossom beneath the beautiful acacia of Constantinople; the Persian jasmine unites with that of Carolina to cover our arbours and to embellish our bowers; the hollyhock and the Passion flower, also denominated the Jerusalem cross, which reminds us of the Crusades, raise their splendid heads beside the persicaria of the East; and Autumn, which could formerly find nothing but ears of corn and vine-leaves to compose a garland for her brows, is now astonished to find herself crowned with such rich adornments, and to be enabled to mingle with them the everflowering rose of the plains of Bengal.

Dearly do I love to observe these beautiful strangers, which have retained amongst us their native instincts and habits. The sensitive plant shrinks from my hand, as it does from that of the American savage; the African marigold predicts to me, as to the black inhabitants of the desert, dry or rainy weather; the day-lily of Portugal tells me that in an hour it will be noon; and the Peruvian nightshade informs the timid lover that the trysting-hour is at hand.

FORGET-ME-NOT.

It is related that

THE name of this beautiful little flower, which enamels the banks of our rivers with its corollas of celestial blue, corresponds with the signification that is now universally attached to it. That name is derived from a German tradition full of melancholy romance. a young couple, on the eve of being united, whilst walking along the delightful banks of the Danube, saw a cluster of these lovely flowers floating on the stream, which was bearing it away. The affianced bride admired the beauty of the flower, and lamented its fatal destiny. The lover plunged into the water to secure it; no sooner had he caught it than he found himself sinking, but, making a last effort, he threw it on the bank at the feet of his betrothed, and, at the moment of disappearing for ever, exclaimed Vergiss mein nicht! Since that event, this flower has been made emblematical of the sentiment, and been distinguished by the name of Forget-me-not. Its Linnean appellation is

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