' Such was the picture of our life a fortnight ago, since when a still more striking change, if possible, has come over the face of things. The earth, which so lately emerged from her winter garb, is now clad in the liveliest livery; while every tree and shrub have hastily changed their dresses in Nature's vast green-room, and stand all ready for the summer's short act. Nowhere is Nature's hocus-pocus carried on so wonderfully — nowhere her scene-shifting so inconceivably rapid. You may literally see her movements. I have watched the birdcherry at my window. Two days ago, and it was still the same dried up spectre, whose every form, during the long winter, the vacant eye had studiously examined while the thoughts were far distant — yesterday, like the painter's Daphne, it it was sprouting out at every finger, and to-day it has shaken out its whole complement of leaves, and is throwing a verdant twilight over my darkened room. The whole air is full of the soft stirring sounds of the swollen buds snapping and cracking into life, and impregnated with the perfume of the fresh, oily leaves. The waters are full and clear — the skies blue and serene — night and day are fast blending into one continuous stream of soft light, and this our new existence is one perpetual feast. Oh, winter! where is thy victory? The resurrection of spring speaks volumes.',
The same pencil has painted the passing away of summer: — ' The beauties of autumn, and the moral of its yellow leaves, are seen and felt in all countries. Nowhere, however, I am inclined to think, can the former be so resplendent, or the latter so touching, as in the land where I am still a sojourn er. In our temperate isle autumn may be contemplated as the glorious passing away of the well-matured — the radiant death-bed of the ripe in years — while here the brilliant colours on earth and sky are like the hectic cheek and kindling eye of some beautiful being whose too hasty development has been but the presage of a premature decay. Thus it is that the vast plains and woods of Estonia are now displaying the most gorgeous colours of their palette, ere the white brush of winter sweep their beauties from sight, while the golden and crimson wreaths of deciduous trees, peeping from amongst the forests of sober pines, may be compared to gay lichens sprinkling their hues over a cold grey rock, or to a transient smile passing over the habitual brow of care.
' But all too hasty is the progress of this splendid funeral march— even now its pomp is hidden by gloomy slanting rains, its last tones lost in the bowl of angry blasts, which, as if impatient to assume their empire, are rudely stripping off and trampling down every vestige of summer's short-lived festival, while Nature, shorn of her wealth, holds out here and there a streamer of bright colours, like a bankrupt still eager to flaunt in the finery of better days.'
FINLS.
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