Providence Patriot, Columbian Phenix

From the National (New-Haven) Republican.
THE SEASON.

"Oh Autumn! why so soon
Depart the hues that make thy forests glad ;
Thy gentle wind and thy fair evening moon,
And leave thee wild and sad.

Ah 'twere a lot too blest.
For ever in thy coloured shades to stray
Amidst the kisses of the sweet Southwest,
To roam and dream for aye."

Thus hath sung one of our sweetest bards : and surely, at this most delightful season of the American year, every heart must respond to his sentiments.

The brief summer is ended, and autumn in its russet robe, is with us.

Before "The melancholy days arrive, the saddest of the year,
the days of chill and pitiless November,
when the harvest is over and the last
flower has bloomed and died;-when the
cool wind has become cold, and the whisper
of the zephyr is changed to the sough
of the northwester; and Nature, stripped
of her beautiful robes, stands sad and
desolate, awaiting with shivering anticipation
the wrath of the wintry elements
ere he enters this section of his
ancient
solitary reign."

Time, seems to pause.
and to throw over the New England
hills his blandest smile.

September and October! tis the carnival
of our seasons; and such a September
-such an October! who after sweltering
and almost evaporating through dog days,
and such dog days ! does not give these
avant-couriers of Jack Frost a hearty
greeting?

Who, after inhaling a villainous
compound element, of which earth,
ground to powder and whirled aloft by
the wheels of an hundred carriages,
was
a chief ingredient, does not now feel that
breath is a luxury?

For ourself, had the atmosphere,
by
some chemical legerdemain of Nature,
been turned to exhilarating gas, it could
scarcely have made our blood leap more
joyously than it has done during the last
four weeks. True-on the sere leaf there
is a lesson; but, sad or soothing as we are
pleased to interpret it. For ourself, there
are so many images held up to us, of one
uniform aspect, and that dark enough,. let
the light strike them as it will, that whenever
there are two sides to a picture, we always
look at the bright one. We never
gather melancholy from Nature's fields.
She is our physician. Let her face be arrayed
in smiles or frowns, it is the same familiar
face that we learned to love in childhood,
and we cannot do without it now.
Her voice is melody itself : whether heard
in the murmur of springs first zephyr, fresh
from the "sweet south," or hoarse through
the tree tops in the lengthened howl of the
autumnal equinox, as it is this moment.

And there rustles through the many coloured
wood, an invisible presence, with a
mysterious whisper, telling of death, it may
be ; for as it hurries by to warn other groves,
the green leaf withers and falls' But what
of that? Shall the grave ever be a bugbear ;
there is another Spring-there is another
life!

Winter must come.
They who live then,
shall feel its frosts and bitter winds ; but-
the burning heats are over,-the katy-did
sings in the tree-the cricket in the hearth :
—there is comfort by the evening fire; comfort
in the additional blanket;-there's beauty
in the noon-tide's azure-in the 'sunset's
heaven of gold,'-and rapture, like a sky.
lark's springing heaven-ward, in the morning
rapid ride.

To those who hold no communion with
nature, the above will be so much nonsense
They are welcome to the nonsense, so they
leave us the enjoyment, It is enjoyment
that palls not, impoverishes no one, and-
costs nothing.

In spring, we bless God for seed time ; in
autumn, for the harvest. But to our view,
there is another attendant of the present
season, that entitles heaven to our gratitude
not less than bending fields, and pleasant
skies.

"There's a drop,' said the Peri, 'that down from the moon
Falls through the withering airs of June
Upon Egypt's land, of so healing a power,
So balmy a virtue, that e'en the hour
That drop descends, contagion dies,
And health reanimates earth and skies."

This is poetry ; and as applied to Egypt's
land, is perhaps nothing more ; but in reference
to our climate it is a beautiful. and
blessed truth. There are times when the
plague fiend, leaving his own infected South,
wanders northward 'to gather laurels on unusual
fields ;' when mounting the city walls.
he blows 'from between his shrivelled lips
a blast more deadly than the Arabian Simoom.
In that dread hour when the universal
air has become but the breath of his
nostrils, and thousands are gasping and dying,
there gathers in our northern heavens a
miraculous drop, which, falling through the
infected air,

In that same hour contagion dies.
And health reanimates earth and skies.

The living man sees it on his threshold
and thanks God; for he views it, like the
blood sprinkled on the door posts, of the Israelites
in Egypt's last plague: the sign that
the destroyer will pass him by. We thank
God for the fruits and flowers; let us also
thank him for-the Frost.