Autumn Leaflets.

even a bird , if one poor chance unfortunate should be so far from land , becomes an event , a thing of interest , a wonder for a few brief moments , till , lost to sight , the sameness descends once more with double weight o'er all . 0 ye . who sing the beauties of the sea , say where ye find its joys , unless in some short pleasure cruise with every luxury of art and science at command ? But tell me not that , —in a sailor ' s life—a life of such vicissitudes as none but those who experience them may tell—a life fraught more

than any other with bitter , never-ending exposure to storm and tempest—a whole lifechance of shipwreck ancl disaster , more appalling than any to be found on land , for that escape is oftener than not an almost impossibility , —such a life is chosen by a single human being for the love of the sea that is born of such experience . But my " clottings " have led me far away , at sea . I had intended dwelling on the things of terrdfirmd alone , but with an apology for the weakness of human nature , I will

endeavour to get hack before the last leaf has fallen , leaiang the trees bare and ready to be croAATied with the first snows of winter . To me no days can compare with the later ones of autumn—the Indian summer , as it has been called—still , hazy mornings , when the grass and hedgerows glisten in their many dewdrops , till the sun- —not the scorching luminary of midsummer days , but a mild , softening radiancy that courts us to bask in its rays—absorbs them , one by one , and gently , slowly gathers to itself the mists , leaving the earth so calmly quiet in its loss of summer hues , yet so gloriously bright in the tender light of its autumn clays , that more powerfully now than at any other season it foreshadows that

" Awakening and joyous resurrection Not taught by man , or limited by creed . " But in these clays of high-pressure , bustle , ancl strife , to be in the world ancl not of the world is an heinous crime . What matter , the pure and lofty aspirations of golden youth?—" The Future never renders to tho Past The young beliefs entrusted to its keeping . "

The times are too fast for the slow and sober thought that characterized a generation that passed aivay . We live in the iron age of Progress , and cannot dare to indulge in retrospective visions , lest in the mad race we shall be beaten by the thousands pressing close behind . With depth of satire almost too true has that question , "What is my Life ? " been answered by an American poet , —

" To how before the stringent social rule , And live a lie . To crush my spirit , and to starve my heart , And live a lie . " Leaves have been falling thickly , and lie in heaps at almost every turn , dead and fast decaying . The " Autumn Leaflets " will soon be numbered with the things that

have been ; yet if their lessons have been taken to heart , how much of good have they left behind . " For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight , His can't be wrong , whose life is in the right . " The " clottings " are ended . I have said my sayancl will end in the words of the

, great English word-painter , John Ruskin , — " Out of the suffering , comes the serious mind ; Out of the salvation , the greatful heart ; Out of the deliverance , the faith . " FuRTITA .