trees, which are not evergreens, are, by the first severe frost, changed from their verdure towards the perfection of that colour which they are capable of ultimately assuming, through yellow, orange and red, to a pretty deep brown. As the frost affects different trees, and different leaves of the same tree, in very different degrees, a vast multitude of tinctures are commonly found on those of a single tree, and always on those of a grove or forest. These colours also, in all their varieties, are generally full; and, in many instances, are among the most exquisite, which are found in the regions of nature. Different sorts of trees are susceptible of different degrees of this beauty. Among them the maple is pre-eminently distinguished by the prodigious varieties, the finished beauty, and the intense lustre of its hues; varying through all the dyes between a rich green and the most perfect crimson, or, more definitely, the red of the prismatic image.

There is, however, a sensible difference in the beauty of this appearance of nature in different parts of the country, even when the forest trees are the same. I have seen no tract where its splendour was so highly finished, as in the region which surrounds Lancaster for a distance of thirty miles. The colours are more varied and more intense; and the numerous evergreens furnish, in their deep hues, the best groundwork of the picture.

I have remarked, that the annual foliage on the semountains had been already changed by the frost. Of course, the darkness of the evergreens was finely illumined by the brilliant yellow of the birch, the beech and the cherry, and the more brilliant orange and crimson of the maple. The effect of this universal diffusion of gay and splendid light was, to render the preponderating deep green more solemn. The mind, encircled by this scenery, irresistibly remembered that the light was the light of decay, autumnal and melancholy. The dark was the gloom of evening, approximating to night. Over the whole, the azure of the sky cast a deep, misty blue; blending, towards the summit, every other hue, and predominating over all.

As the eye ascended these steeps, the light decayed, and gradually ceased. On the inferior summits rose crowns of conical firs and spruces. On the superior eminences, the

bees, growing less and less, yielded to the chilling atmosphere, and marked the limit of forest vegetation. Above, ne surface was covered with a mass of shrubs, terminating, at a still higher elevation, in a shroud of dark-coloured

mass.

As we passed onward through this singular valley, occa sional torrents, formed by the rains and dissolving snows at the close of winter, had left behind them, in many places, perpetual monuments of their progress, in perpendicular, narrow and irregular paths of immense length, where they had washed the precipices naked and white, from the summit of the mountain to the base. Wide and deep chasms also met the eye, both on the summits and the sides; and strongly impressed the imagination with the thought, that a hand of immeasurable power had rent asunder the solid rocks, and tumbled them into the subjacent valley. Over ail, hoary cliffs, rising with proud supremacy, frowned aw fully on the world below, and finished the landscape.

By our side, the Saco was alternately visible and lost, and increased, almost at every step, by the junction of tributary streams. Its course was a perpetual cascade; and with its sprightly murmurs furnished the only contrast to the scenery around us.

Exalted Character of Poetry.-CHANNING.

By those who are accustomed to speak of poetry as light reading, Milton's eminence in this sphere may be consider. cd only as giving him a high rank among the contributors

public amusement. Not so thought Milton. Of all God's gifts of intellect, he esteemed poetical intellect the Lost transcendent. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estirate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment, which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean, of that thirst or aspiration, to which no mind is wholly a stranger for something purer and lovelier, something

more powerful, lofty and thrilling, than ordinary and rea life affords. No doctrine is more common among Chris tians than that of man's immortal; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principle of his whole future being are now wrapped up in las sou'. as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes farther towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carrles us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He, who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we now have said, wants the true key to works of Genius. He has not penetrated those secret recesses of the soul, where Poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigour, and wings herself for her heavenward flight.—In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, power of original and ever-growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art, that it" makes all things new" for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms, and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendours of the outward creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colours which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and joyful existence. To a man of a literal and prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in i3 workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses,→ the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and, in the objects which it describes

or the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendour, beauty and happiness, for which it was created.

We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts, it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualize our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrumeri of vice, the pander of bad passions; but when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and even when Poetry is enslaved to licentiousness and misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with what is good in our nature, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good.-Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of outward nature and of the soul. It indeed portrays with terrible energy the excesses of the passions, but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderes and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and, through the brightness of its prophetic visions, belps faith to lay hold on the future life.

We are aware that it is objected to poetry, that it gives wrong views, and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom, against which poetry wars,-the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life,-we do not deny; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry renders to nankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earthborn prudence. But, passing over this topic, we would observe, that the complaint against poetry as abounding in illusion and deception is, in the main, groundless. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry the letter is falsehood, but the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. And if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his delineations of life; for the present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the highest office of the bard to detect this divine element among the grosser pleasures and labours of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic. The affections which spread beyond ourselves, and stretch far into futurity; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy; the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling hopes of youth; the throbbings of the heart when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affection, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire ;-these are all poetical. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs