to what it was just between the end of the spring and the beginning of summer, the wonderful structure and articulation of the branches are revealed; and so we reach that period of the year when for the second time the trees are seen to the greatest advantage.

September therefore is not without its own peculiar charm, and as we feel its beauty gradually growing upon us we acknowledge that our modern poet's address to the month is fully justified :

O come at last, to whom the spring-tide's hope
Looked for through blossoms, what hast thou for me?
Green grows the grass upon the dewy slope
Beneath the gold-hung, grey-leaved apple-tree
Moveless, e'en as the autumn fain would be
That shades its sad eyes from the rising sun
And weeps at eve because the day is done.

We have no complaint this year against the sun; he has done his summer's work well, and the fruit harvest is beyond the average. The orchard-house has yielded a few peaches, only a very few, for although the blossom was plentiful something later on touched it with blight; but the vinery is giving us just now its finest clusters in fair quantity. The pears were all gathered a month ago; the 'Keswick' apples have been got in and are stored away in the apple-room on layers of straw, but the 'Suffields' and some other

sorts are left to ripen on the trees a little longer, as are also the Siberian crabs. These last are thicker than ever, and make as gay an appearance with their bright scarlet as the cherries did earlier in the

season.

The month so far has been singularly fine, and promises continuance. With the exception of a few drops on the morning of the fifth, there was no rain until yesterday the ninth. The middle of the day has generally been clouded, with the wind south or southeast; but with the rain there came a change, and the skies since have been clear and blue. The beauty of morning and evening has been very striking. Last night the temperature, though it had been high in the day, fell to within a few degrees of freezing; and this morning, which is usually set down as the beginning of autumn, the characteristics of that season were complete. The air was crisp, the sun rose in a grey haze, but the pale blue was felt to be behind it; the lawn was covered with a heavy dew, pearly and almost as white as hoar frost; and as one or two blackbirds, long absent, had returned, and were pecking about under the ring of trees, we said to ourselves that we had got back again our—

Wet bird-haunted English lawn.

In the garden the low sun was painting the shadows

of the leaves, not only on the moist ground, but also on the trunks of the trees themselves; and there was a bee buzzing about among the nasturtiums.

In the evening, looking west, there came a dull crimson light behind the ragged thistles, now covered with white down; then the broad harvest moon, almost at full, rose slowly through a radiant and yellow mist. And now in the stillness of midnight the garden is filled with the scent of the after-grass, which has just been cut in some adjoining fields; and the moon, by this time riding clear and high in the heavens, brings to mind that magnificent passage in the Eighth Book of the 'Iliad':

The stars about the moon

Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the Shepherd gladdens in his heart.

There is nothing in these lines which has special reference to autumn; and yet somehow they seem to be informed with the spirit of that feeling which is the true note of the season- -a solemn and elevated joy, accompanying the fulfilment of hope, and not incompatible with the prospect of inevitable decay.

XXXVI.-THE WILD WEST WIND.

September 18. THE halcyon weather of last week has quite departed: the stillness and the warmth having given place to days of raw and gusty rain. On the twelfth there were heavy showers in the morning, and many leaves were beaten down; but during the day the air cleared, and, the wind rising, the sky became an arena through which huge clouds, grandly coloured, chased each other until sunset. The next day was quiet again, and, the dawn being misty, we saw once more that fine autumnal aspect to which I have already alluded. Looking from the window the sky is indistinguishable, the trees appear unusually high, and their foliage is only a vague mass of grey; then the sun begins to creep in, the mist is slowly dispelled, and gradually we make out the details of the scene. We see that the sycamore and the lime are both of them yellow and bare; the chestnut is yellow but not bare; the beech is brown in patches, but the leaves have not fallen; the oak is comparatively verdant, and the smooth green acorns may be seen resting in their embossed cups; the elder, the thorn, the willow, and the ash are also green. The last-mentioned tree has lost many of its leaves: they fall even before they

fade, and come down not singly but still clinging to the twigs. The elm is the thinnest of all; the leaves of the mountain-ash are turning to a deep purple ; and the laburnum is thickly covered with brown seedpods, hanging with something of that grace which marked the summer flower. While we have been carefully looking at these trees in detail, the golden light of sunrise has slowly invaded them, and at last the blue sky appears behind.

On the next day the rain and wind began and increased until the evening of the fifteenth, by which time there was a wrecking storm abroad. The leaves were whirled into the air higher than the birds fly, and more of them fell in an hour than in all the previous days of the month. An enormous mass of vapour came sweeping up from the west, and got lower and lower until it seemed to be dragging itself through the tree-tops, and we could see the fringes of it spinning and twisting with strange velocity like—

Hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Mænad . . .

The locks of the approaching storm.

Then the rain came, not in drops but in broad sheets slanting one over the other; and in a few minutes the lanes were brooks, and the brooks were swollen to rivers. The ducks on the pond were like boats in