 | AUTUMNAL REFLECTIONS. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. |  |
AUTUMNAL REFLECTIONS.
When a man is quietly journeying downwards into the
valley of the shadow of departed youth, and begins to contemplate
in a shortened perspective the end of his pilgrimage,
he becomes more solicitous than ever that the remainder
of his wayfaring should be smooth and pleasant,
and the evening of his life, like the evening of a summer's
day, fade away in mild uninterrupted serenity. If haply
his heart has escaped uninjured, through the dangers of
a seductive world, it may then administer to the purest of
his felicities, and its chords vibrate more musically for the
trials they have sustained—like the viol which yields a
melody sweet in proportion to its age.
To a mind thus temperately harmonized, thus matured
and mellowed by a long lapse of years, there is
something truly congenial in the quiet enjoyment of
our early autumn, amid the tranquillities of the country.
There is a sober and chastened air of gaiety diffused over
and when he views the surrounding landscape withering
under his eye, it seems as if he and nature were taking a
last farewell of each other, and parting with a melancholy
smile—like a couple of old friends, who, having sported
away the spring and summer of life together, part at the
approach of winter with a kind of prophetic fear that they
are never to meet again.
It is either my good fortune or mishap to be keenly
susceptible to the influence of the atmosphere; and I can
feel in the morning, before I open my window, whether
the wind is easterly. It will not, therefore, I presume
be considered an extravagant instance of vainglory when
I assert, that there are few men who can discriminate
more accurately in the different varieties of damps, fogs,
Scotch-mists, and north-east storms, than myself. To
the great discredit of my philosophy I confess, I seldom
fail to anathematize and excommunicate the weather,
when it sports too rudely with my sensitive system; but
then I always endeavour to atone therefore, by eulogizing
it when deserving of approbation. And as most of my
readers, simple folk! make but one distinction, to wit, rain
and sunshine—living in most honest ignorance of the various
nice shades which distinguish one fine day from another—I
take the trouble from time to time, of letting them
into some of the secrets of nature,—so will they be the
better enabled to enjoy her beauties, with the zest of connoisseurs,
and derive at least as much information from
my pages as from the weather-wise lore of the almanack.
Much of my recreation, since I retreated to the Hall,
has consisted in making little excursions through the
neighbourhood; which abounds in the variety of wild, romantic,
and luxuriant landscape that generally characterizes
the scenery in the vicinity of our rivers. There is
not an eminence within a circuit of many miles but commands
an extensive range of diversified and enchanting
prospect.
Often have I rambled to the summit of some favourite
hill, and thence, with feelings sweetly tranquil as the
lucid expanse of the heavens that canopied me, have noted
the slow and almost imperceptible changes that mark the
waning year. There are many features peculiar to our
autumn, and which give it an individual character: the
“green and yellow melancholy” that first steals over the
landscape—the mild and steady serenity of the weather,
merely to the senses but the heart,—it is the season of
liberal emotions. To this succeeds fantastic gaiety, a
motley dress, which the woods assume, where green and
yellow, orange, purple, crimson and scarlet, are whimsically
blended together.—A sickly splendour this!—like
the wild and broken-hearted gaiety that sometimes precedes
dissolution, or that childish sportiveness of superannuated
age, proceeding, not from a vigorous flow of
animal spirits, but from the decay and imbecility of the
mind. We might, perhaps, be deceived by this gaudy
garb of nature, were it not for the rustling of the falling
leaf, which, breaking on the stillness of the scene, seems
to announce, in prophetic whispers, the dreary winter
that is approaching. When I have sometimes seen a thrifty
young oak changing its hue of sturdy vigour for a
bright but transient glow of red, it has recalled to my mind
the treacherous bloom that once mantled the cheek of a
friend who is now no more; and which, while it seemed
to promise a long life of jocund spirits was the sure precursor
of premature decay. In a little while, and this
ostentatious foliage disappears—the close of autumn
leaves but one wide expanse of dusky brown, save where
some rivulet steals along, bordered with little stripes of
green grass—the woodland echoes no more to the carols of
the feathered tribes that sported in the leafy covert, and
its solitude and silence are uninterrupted except by the
plaintive whistle of the quail, the barking of the squirrel,
or the still more melancholy wintry wind, which, rushing
and swelling through the hollows of the mountains, sighs
through the leafless branches of the grove, and seems to
mourn the desolation of the year.
To one who, like myself, is fond of drawing comparisons
between the different divisions of life and those of
the seasons, there will appear a striking analogy which
connects the feelings of the aged with the decline of the
year. Often as I contemplate the mild, uniform, and
genial lustre with which the sun cheers and invigorates
us in the month of October, and the almost imperceptible
haze which, without obscuring, tempers all the asperities
of the landscape, and gives to every object a character
of stillness and repose, I cannot help comparing it
with that portion of existence, when the spring of youthful
hope and the summer of the passions having gone by,
reason assumes an undisputed sway, and lights us on
There is a full and mature luxuriance in the fields that
fills the bosom with generous and disinterested content.
It is not the thoughtless extravagance of spring, prodigal
only in blossoms, nor the languid voluptuousness of summer,
feverish in its enjoyments, and teeming only with
immature abundance—it is that certain fruition of the
labours of the past—that prospect of comfortable realities,
which those will be sure to enjoy who have improved the
bounteous smiles of Heaven, nor wasted away their
spring and summer in empty trifling or criminal indulgence.
Cousin Pindar, who is my constant companion in
these expeditions, and who still possesses much of the
fire and energy of youthful sentiment, and a buxom hilarity
of the spirits, often indeed draws me from these half-melancholy
reveries, and makes me feel young again by
the enthusiasm with which he contemplates, and the animation
with which he eulogizes the beauties of nature
displayed before him. His enthusiastic disposition never
allows him to enjoy things by halves, and his feelings are
continally breaking out in notes of admiration and ejaculations
that sober reason might perhaps deem extravagant.
But for my part, when I see a hale hearty old man, who
has jostled through the rough path of the world, without
having worn away the fine edge of his feelings, or blunted
his sensibility to natural and moral beauty, I compare
him to the evergreen of the forest, whose colours, instead
of fading at the approach of winter, seem to assume additional
lustre when contrasted with the surrounding desolation.
Such a man is my friend Pindar;—yet sometimes,
and particularly at the approach of evening, even he
will fall in with my humour; but he soon recovers his
natural tone of spirits; and, mounting on the elasticity of
his mind, like Ganymede on the eagle's wing, he soars to
the etherial regions of sunshine and fancy.
One afternoon we had strolled to the top of a high hill
in the neighbourhood of the Hall, which commands an
almost boundless prospect; and as the shadows began to
lengthen around us, and the distant mountains to fade
into mists, my cousin was seized with a moralizing fit.
“It seems to me,” said he, laying his hand lightly on
my shoulder, “that there is just at this season, and this
hour, a sympathy between us and the world we are now
contemplating. The evening is stealing upon nature as
given place to those of its close; and the only difference
is, that in the morning they were before us, now they are
behind; and that the first vanished in the splendours of
noon-day, the latter will be lost in the oblivion of night.—
Our `May of life,' my dear Launce, has for ever fled: our
summer is over and gone:—but,” continued he, suddenly
recovering himself and slapping me gaily on the shoulder,
—“but why should we repine?—What though the capricious
zephyrs of spring, the heats and hurricanes of
summer, have given place to the sober sunshine of autumn
—and though the woods begin to assume the dappled livery
of decay! yet the prevailing colour is still green—gay,
sprightly green.
“Let us then comfort ourselves with this reflection;
that though the shades of the morning have given place
to those of the evening,—though the spring is past, the
summer over, and the autumn come,—still you and I
go on our way rejoicing;—and while, like the lofty
mountans of our Southern America, our heads are covered
with snow, still, like them, we feel the genial warmth
of spring and summer playing upon our bosoms.”
| AUTUMNAL REFLECTIONS. The beauties of Washington Irving, author of "The sketch-book," "Knickerbocker," "Crayon miscellany," &c. | |