But that year all had been otherwise. Autumn had borne herself with a
heroism of sunny weather. Where we had been wont to see signals of
distress, and to hear the voluble outpouring of an excitable temperament,
with the extremity of scattered leaves and desperate damp, we beheld an
aspect of golden drought. Nothing mouldered--everything was consumed by
vital fires. The gardens were strewn with smouldering soft ashes of late
roses, late honeysuckle, honey-sweet clematis. The silver seeds of rows
of riverside flowers took sail on their random journey with a light wind.
Leaves set forth, a few at a time, with a little volley of birds--a
buoyant caravel. Or, in the stiller weather, the infrequent fall of
leaves took place quietly, with no proclamation of ruin, in the privacy
within the branches. While nearly all the woods were still fresh as
streams, you might see that here or there was one, with an invincible
summer smile, slowly consuming, in defiance of decay. Life destroyed
that autumn, not death.

The novelist would be at a loss had we a number of such years. He would
lose the easiest landscape--for the autumn has among her facile ways the
way of allowing herself to be described by rote. But there were no
regions of crimson woods and yellow--only the grave, cool, and cheerful
green of the health of summer, and now and then that deep bronzing of the
leaves that the sun brought to pass. Never did apples look better than
in those still vigorous orchards. They shone so that lamps would hardly
be brighter. The apple-gathering, under such a sun, was nearly as warm
and brilliant as a vintage; and indeed it was of the Italian autumn that
you were reminded. There were the same sunburnt tones, the same brown
health. There was the dark smile of chestnut woods as among the
Apennines.

For it was chiefly within the woods that the splendid autumn without