favoured days sometimes occurs in springtime, when that soft air is
breathing over the blossoms and new-born verdure which inspired
Buchanan with his beautiful Ode to the First of May; the air which,
in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the golden age,--
to that which gives motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of
Lethe; to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when
expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth with all her
habitations. But it is in autumn that days of such affecting
influence most frequently intervene. The atmosphere seems refined,
and the sky rendered more crystalline, as the vivifying heat of the
year abates; the lights and shadows are more delicate; the colouring
is richer and more finely harmonized; and, in this season of
stillness, the ear being unoccupied, or only gently excited, the
sense of vision becomes more susceptible of its appropriate
enjoyments. A resident in a country like this which we are treating
of will agree with me that the presence of a lake is indispensable to
exhibit in perfection the beauty of one of these days; and he must
have experienced, while looking on the unruffled waters, that the
imagination by their aid is carried into recesses of feeling
otherwise impenetrable. The reason of this is, that the heavens are
not only brought down into the bosom of the earth, but that the
earth is mainly looked at, and thought of, through the medium of a
purer element. The happiest time is when the equinoctial gales are
departed; but their fury may probably be called to mind by the sight
of a few shattered boughs, whose leaves do not differ in colour from
the faded foliage of the stately oaks from which these relics of the
storm depend: all else speaks of tranquillity; not a breath of air,
no restlessness of insects, and not a moving object perceptible--
except the clouds gliding in the depths of the lake, or the
traveller passing along, an inverted image, whose motion seems