of fiery berries on its dark green thorny sprays, solicit our attention-while numerous tribes of mosses will afford sufficient amusement and occupation for the inquiring botanist,-and the poet's lyre, vibrating with melancholy but soothing harmony, will record the fall of

The LAST LEAF.

Thou last pale relic from yon widowed tree,
Hovering awhile in air, as if to leave
Thy native sprig reluctant, how I grieve,
And heave the sigh of kindred sympathy,
That thou art fall'n! for I too whilom played

Upon the topmast bough of youth's gay spring;
Have sported blithe on summer's golden wing,
And now I see my fleeting autumn fade.

Yet, 'sere and yellow leaf,' though thou and I
Thus far resemble, and this frame, like thee,
In the cold silent ground be doomed to lie,
Thou never more will climb thy parent tree;
But I, through faith in my Redeemer, trust
That I shall rise again, e'en from the dust.

In our volume for 1821 (p. 241), we have said that the embryo of a future tree is discoverable in the seed of the ash. The seed of the sycamore (acer pseudo-platanus) affords a pleasing instance of the care that Nature takes for the preservation of her infant germs: in the seed of this plant taken in the months of December or January (after exposure to the rains of autumn and frost of our earlier winter months), and soaked in warm water that it may be divested of its coating, we shall find the radicle and long radicle leaves of the future plant folded up in a most extraordinary manner, with the minute leaves that are to succeed them folded in their bosom: these radicle leaves are beautifully green, a circumstance not to be expected, as all light (the parent of colour in plants) is perfectly excluded by the three coatings and a woolly wrapper that invest them. The bounty and wisdom of Providence, for the well-being and subsistence of creation through

all the stages of existence, wonderful as they are, in nothing is so remarkably manifested as in the intelligence displayed, and the provision appointed, for the young of organized and inanimate nature. The egg of a bird or insect, or the seed of a plant, should alone humble to the dust the arrogance of man.

What prodigies can power divine perform
More grand than it produces year by year,
And all in sight of inattentive man?
Familiar with the effect we slight the cause ;
And in the constancy of Nature's course,
The regular return of genial months,
And renovation of a faded world,

See nought to wonder at. Should God again,
As once in Gibeon, interrupt the race
Of the undeviating and punctual Sun,

How would the world admire! but speaks it less
An agency divine, to make him know

His moment when to sink and when to rise,

Age after age, than to arrest his course?
All we behold is miracle; but seen

So duly, all is miracle in vain.

Where now the vital energy that moved,

While summer was, the pure and subtle lymph
Through the imperceptible meandering veins

Of leaf and flow'r? It sleeps; and th' icy touch
Of unprolific winter has impressed

A cold stagnation on the intestine tide.

But let the months go round, a few short months,
And all shall be restored.

COWPER,

Arrived at the close of our Annual Tour through Creation,' we cannot take leave of our friends for a time, particularly our youthful readers, without attempting to impress upon their minds, that this solemn period of the year is peculiarly the Season of Religious Hope. Amid vicissitude and decay, amid apparent ruin and destruction, we behold the seeds of life and renovation; for He who pervades and dwells with all things, the unchangeable and immortal Spirit has so ordained the course of organized nature, that not only is life the precursor of death, but the latter is essential to the renewal of existence, a chain and

catenation, a cycle, as it were, of vitality, which tells us, in the strongest language of analogy, that if such seem the destiny of irrational nature, if thus she die to live again, how assured should be the hope of intellectual being.

To him who views the temporary desolation of the year with no consolatory thought; who sees not, in the seeming ruin which surrounds him, any hope or emblem of a better world; who hears not the accents of dying nature responding to the voice of revelation, and telling of a Spring beyond the grave; to him who is insensible to reliances such as these, to hopes which can whisper peace, and soothe the evils of *mortality, how stale, flat, and unprofitable, must appear all the uses of this feverish existence! He may be told in the language of the poet, in the language of faith and heartfelt consolation,

To you the beauties of the autumnal year

Make mournful emblems, and you think of man
Doomed to the grave's long winter, spirit-broke,
Bending beneath the burthen of his years,
Sense-dulled and fretful, full of aches and pains,
Yet clinging still to life. To me they show
The calm decay of nature, when the mind
Retains its strength, and in the languid eye
Religion's holy hopes kindle a joy

That makes old age look lovely. All to you
Is dark and cheerless; you in this fair world
See some destroying principle abroad,
Air, earth, and water full of living things
Each on the other preying; and the ways
Of man, a strange perplexing labyrinth,
Where crimes and miseries, each producing each,
Render life loathsome, and destroy the hope
That should in death bring comfort. Oh, my friend,
That thy faith were as mine! that thou could'st see
Death still producing life, and evil still
Working its own destruction; could'st behold
The strifes and tumults of this troubled world

With the strong eye that sees the promised day
Dawn through this night of tempest! all things then
Would minister to joy; then should thine heart
Be healed and harmonized, and thou should'st feel
GOD, always, every where, and all in all.

SOUTHEY.

324

Addenda.

Page 107. April 19.-SAINT ALPHEGE.-A native of England, Alphege was first Abbot of Bath, then Bishop of Winchester in the year 984, and twelve years afterwards, Archbishop of Canterbury. After seven months' miserable imprisonment by the Danes, the good Archbishop was stoned to death at Greenwich.

April 23.-SAINT GEORGE.-Saint George is the patron Saint of England; for which the following reason is assigned: When Robert Duke of Normandy, the son of William the Conqueror, was fighting against the Turks, and laying siege to the famous city of Antioch, which was expected to be relieved by the Saracens, St. George appeared with an innumerable army coming down from the hills clad all in white, with a red cross on his banner, to reinforce the Christians; which so terrified the infidels, that they fled, and left the Christians in possession of the town.-See T. T. for 1821, p. 107. The King's birth-day is kept on this day, being his nameday, in imitation of the custom in catholic countries,

Page 108. April 25.-SAINT MARK.-St. Mark's Gospel was written in the year 63. The order of knights of St. Mark at Venice, under the protection of this evangelist, was instituted in the year 737, the reigning doge being always grand master: their motto was, 'Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista Meus.'

The custom of sitting and watching in the church porch on St. Mark's eve, still exists in some parts of the north of England. The 'witching time of night' is from eleven till one; and the third year the watcher supposes that he sees the ghosts of those who are to die the next year pass by into the church. For some remarks on the belief in apparitions, see our last volume, pp. 1-93.

Index to Time's Telescope

FOR 1824.

Andalusia, Christmas ceremonies Beaton, Cardinal, 140

Animals, influence of climate on, Bingley, Rev. W. 66

Ee