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page 33
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
feelings 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
times is when the equinoxial 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 -
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