exercise is then so delightful that we forget the profit in the pleasure.

Like a river that gathers, that refines as it runs ; like a spring that takes its course through some rich vein of mineral, we improve, and imperceptibly—not in the head only, but in the heart. Our prejudices leave us one by one. Seas and mountains are no longer our boundaries. We learn to love and esteem and admire beyond them. Our benevolence extends itself with our knowledge. And must we not return better citizens than we went? for the more we become acquainted with the institutions of other countries, the more highly must we value our own.

43. SUNRISE AND SUNSET IN THE WOODS.

(By Rev. W. Gilpin.)

The first dawn of day exhibits a beautiful obscurity. When the east begins just to brighten with the reflections only of effulgence, a pleasing progressive light, dubious and amusing, is thrown over the face of things. A single ray is able to assist the picturesque eye, which by such slender aid creates a thousand imaginary forms, if the scene be unknown, and as the light steals gradually on, is amused by correcting its vague ideas by the real objects. What in the confusion of twilight perhaps seemed a stretch of rising ground, broken into various parts, becomes now vast masses of wood and an extent of forest.

As the sun begins to appear above the horizon, another change takes place. What was before only form, being now enlightened, begins to receive effect. This effect depends on two circumstances-the catching lights which touch the summits of every object, and the mistiness in which the rising orb is commonly enveloped.

The effect is often pleasing when the sun rises in unsullied brightness, diffusing its ruddy light over the upper parts of objects, which is contrasted by the deeper shadows below; yet

the effect is then only transcendent when he rises accompanied by a train of vapours in a misty atmosphere. Among lakes and mountains, this happy accompaniment often forms the most astonishing visions, and yet in the forest it is nearly as great. With what delightful effect do we sometimes see the sun's disk just appear above a woody hill, or, in Shakespeare's language,

"Stand tiptoe on the misty mountain top,"

and dart his diverging rays through the rising vapour. The radiance, catching the tops of the trees as they hang midway upon the shaggy steep, and touching here and there a few other prominent objects, imperceptibly mixes its ruddy tint with the surrounding mists, setting on fire, as it were, their upper parts, while their lower skirts are lost in a dark mass of varied confusion, in which trees and ground, and radiance and obscurity, are all blended together. When the eye is fortunate enough to catch the glowing instant-for it is always a vanishing sceneit furnishes an idea worth treasuring among the choicest appearances of nature. Mistiness alone, we have observed, occasions a confusion in objects which is often picturesque; but the glory of the vision depends on the glowing lights which are mingled with it.

Landscape-painters, in general, pay too little attention to the discriminations of morning and evening. We are often at a loss to distinguish in pictures the rising from the setting sun, though their characters are very different both in the lights and shadows. The ruddy lights, indeed, of the evening are more easily distinguished, but it is not perhaps always sufficiently observed that the shadows of the evening are much less opaque than those of the morning. They may be brightened perhaps by the numberless rays floating in the atmosphere, which are incessantly reverberated in every direction, and may continue in action after the sun is set; whereas in the morning the rays of the preceding day having subsided, no object receives any light but from the immediate lustre of the sun. Whatever becomes of the theory, the fact, I believe, is well ascertained.

The incidental beauties which the meridian sun exhibits are much fewer than those of the rising sun. In summer when he rides high at noon, and sheds his perpendicular ray, all is illumination; there is no shadow to balance such a glare of light, no contrast to oppose it. The judicious artist, therefore, rarely represents his objects under a vertical sun. And yet no species of landscape bears it so well as the scenes of the forest. The tuftings of the trees, the recesses among them, and the lighter foliage hanging over the darker, may all have an effect under a meridian sun. I speak chiefly, however, of the internal scenes of the forest, which bear such total brightness better than any other, as in them there is generally a natural gloom to balance it. The light, obstructed by close intervening trees, will rarely predominate; hence the effect is often fine. A strong sunshine striking a wood through some fortunate chasm, and reposing on the tuftings of a clump, just removed from the eye, and strengthened by the deep shadows of the trees behind, appears to great advantage; especially if some noble tree, standing on the foreground in deep shadow, flings athwart the sky its dark branches, here and there illumined with a splendid touch of light.

In an open country, the most fortunate circumstance that attends a meridian sun is cloudy weather, which occasions partial lights. Then it is that the distant forest scene is spread with lengthened gleams, while the other parts of the landscape are in shadow; the tuftings of trees are particularly adapted to catch this effect with advantage; there is a richness in them from the strong opposition of light and shade, which is wonderfully fine. A distant forest thus illumined wants only a foreground to make it highly picturesque.

As the sun descends, the effect of its illumination becomes stronger. It is a doubt whether the rising or the setting sun is more picturesque. The great beauty of both depends on the contrast between splendour and obscurity. But this contrast is produced by these different incidents in different ways. The grandest effects of the rising sun are produced by the vapours

which envelop it-the setting sun rests its glory on the gloom which often accompanies its parting rays. A depth of shadow hanging over the eastern hemisphere gives the beams of the setting sun such powerful effect, that although in fact they are by no means equal to the splendour of a meridian sun, yet through force of contrast they appear superior. A distant forest scene under this brightened gloom is particularly rich, and glows with double splendour. The verdure of the summer leaf, and the varied tints of the autumnal one, are all lighted up with the most resplendent colours.

The internal parts of the forest are not so happily disposed to catch the effects of a setting sun. The meridian ray, we have seen, may dart through the openings at the top, and produce a picture, but the flanks of the forest are generally too well guarded against its horizontal beams. Sometimes a recess fronting the west may receive a beautiful light, spreading in a lengthened gleam amidst the gloom of the woods which surround it; but this can only be had in the outskirts of the forest. Sometimes also we find in its internal parts, though hardly in its deep recesses, splendid lights here and there catching the foliage which though in nature generally too scattered to produce an effect, yet, if judiciously collected, may be beautiful on canvas.

We sometimes also see in a woody scene, coruscations like a bright star, occasioned by a sunbeam darting through an eyelet-hole among the leaves. Many painters, and especially Rubens, have been fond of introducing this radiant spot in their landscapes. But in painting, it is one of those trifles which produce no effect, nor can this radiance be given. In poetry, indeed, it may produce a pleasing image. Shakespeare hath introduced it beautifully, where, speaking of the force of truth entering a guilty conscience, he compares it to the sun, which "Fires the proud tops of the eastern pines,

And darts his light through every guilty hole."

It is one of those circumstances which poetry may offer to the imagination, but the pencil cannot well produce to the eye.

44. THE MUSIC OF INANIMATE NATURE.

(By N. P. Willis.)

There is a melancholy music in autumn. The leaves float sadly about with a look of peculiar desolation, waving capriciously in the wind, and falling with a just audible sound, that is a very sigh for its sadness. And then, when the breeze is fresher, though the early autumn months are mostly still, they are swept on with a cheerful rustle over the naked harvest fields, and about in the eddies of the blast; and though I have sometimes in the glow of exercise felt my life securer in the triumph of the brave contest, yet, in the chill of the evening, or when any sickness of the mind or body was on me, the moaning of those withered leaves has pressed down my heart like a sorrow, and the cheerful fire, and the voices of my many sisters, might scarce remove it.

Then for the music of winter. I love to listen to the falling of snow. It is an unobtrusive and sweet music. You may temper your heart to the serenest mood by its low murmur. It is that kind of music that only obtrudes upon your ear when your thoughts come languidly. You need not hear it if your mind is not idle. It realizes my dream of another world, where music is intuitive like a thought, and comes only when it is remembered.

And the frost, too, has a melodious "ministry." You will hear its crystals shoot in the dead of a clear night, as if the moonbeams were splintering like arrows on the ground; and you will listen to it the more earnestly, that it is the going on of one of the most cunning and beautiful of nature's deep mysteries. I know nothing so wonderful as the shooting of a crystal. God has hidden its principle as yet from the inquisitive eye of the philosopher, and we must be content to gaze on its exquisite beauty, and listen, in mute wonder, to the noise of its invisible workmanship. It is too fine a knowledge for us. We shall comprehend it, when we know how the morning stars sang together.