follow too rapidly to serve such a purpose; and the endings of months and seasons are insufficiently distinct, except as regards Autumn, which in its maturity and fruits, fulfils the very cycle in question. Only as the result of these mutations does the year exist. Were there no primroses to die with the spring, no lilies to vanish with the summer; were there not sequences of leaf and flower, sunshine and starlight, there would even be no Time. For Time, like Space, pertains but to the material circumference of creation, that is, to the visible half of the universe, and is only appreciable through its medium. It is by objective nature alone that the ideas of both Time and Space are furnished, and they are sustained in us only so long as we are in contact with it. The movements of the heavenly bodies contribute the most exact and obvious data, because expressly given for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.' But the heavens are not our only time-piece. Another is spread over the surface of the earth in its living products. The phenomena connected with plants and the habits of the lower animals, constitute in themselves a complete system of chronometry; indicating not merely seasons, but even days and hours. In the times of the leafing of trees, the blooming of flowers, the ripening of fruits, the appearance of insects, the singing and nest-building of birds, the departure and return of the migratory kinds, and in every other such incident of unmolested nature, there is nothing chanceful or uncertain. Each event transpires at a fixed point in the series of changes it belongs to. So precise, in particular, are the hours at which different kinds of flowers open, that it is not only possible, but easy, to form a • dial of Flora,' by planting them in the order of their expansion. A very little botany will enable any one to notice, during the earlier part of the day, especially before the dew is off the grass, how one flower anticipates another. And not only as to opening in the morning, but as to closing in the afternoon and evening. Nothing is more pleasant to the lover of nature, than to watch their gradual retirement to rest, and the wonderful diversities of mode in which they shut their petals. The curious coincidences between many of these phenomena, (as of certain birds returning from their winter quarters at the identical times when certain flowers come into bloom) have an especial interest, seeing that they not only indicate times, but supply striking illustrations of the lovely

* The fine poetic fancy of the ancients deified the various divisions of time, and placed them as attendants on the Sun, himself a god of the highest rank. See the beautiful description in Ovid's Metamorphoses, ii. 25-30, where they are represented as standing round his throne, and wearing the insignia proper to their offices in the economy of nature. Hence come the innumerable allusions in poetry to 'the Hours,* as goddesses;

The Graces, and the rosy-bosomed Hours.'-Milton. N. S. No. 145.-VOL. XIII.

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sympathies of nature, for in nature there is nothing without a friend.* Celestial and atmospheric phenomena, if they have fewer of the charms of variety, in their splendours compensate it tenfold. How beautiful to note the phases of the moon, the chameleon tintings of the sky, the travelling of the planets, and the circling round the pole of the seven bright stars of the sleepless Bear! With what gladness and enthusiasm too, in the cold, inanimate winter, we view the rising of Orion, and his brilliant quarter of the heavens. The cheerlessness of the earth is forgotten in the magnificence overhead, and we thank God for unfolding so much glory. Each event, moreover, having its own poetical relations, at once refreshes the heart, and places before the mind some elegant item in the innumerable harmonies of the universe. In the perpetual sparkle of the Bear is presented, for instance, an image of the ever-wakeful eyes of Providence; and in the alternate waxing and waning of the moon, a beautiful picture of the oscillations in men's fortunes. Hence we find Plutarch using it to describe the chequered life of Demetrius; and Dante, to pourtray the varying fortunes of Florence:

E come 'l volger del ciel della luna
Cuopre ed iscuopre i liti senza posa,
Cosi fa di Fiorenza la Fortuna.

(Paradiso, 16, 82-84.)

(As the revolution of the moon's heavenly sphere hides and reveals the strand unceasingly, so Fortune deals with Florence.)+

Time, years, seasons, accordingly, are not to be esteemed a part of creation, but simply as an accident or result of it. Our personal experiences concur with nature in testifying to this, for to no two men has time the same duration, nor does any individual reckon it always by the same dial. To the slothful, time has the feet of a snail; to the diligent, the wings of an eagle. Impatience lengthens, enjoyment shortens it. The unhappy and desolate see nothing but weary tedium; with the cheerful it glides like a stream. Let us go amid new and delightful sceneries, such as vividly excite and animate us, and when over, the hours seem to have been days, the days to have been weeks. Let us retire into the quiet, secluded sanctuaries of thought, losing ourselves in memory or hope, and how complete again is the departure

* See for particulars concerning these different phenomena, Howitt's "Book of the Seasons, or Calendar of Nature." Also the Magazine of Natural History for 1828-35. A treatise on the sleep of plants is a desideratum in botanical literature. Lists for the neighbourhood of Upsal, (the first of the kind which appear to have been compiled) are given by Linnæus in the Philosophia Botanica, p. 272-285. (1760.)

It may be of interest to some to know that the sleeplessness of the Bear (of course only so far as northern latitudes are concerned) is referred to in the Odyssey (v. 275.) and the Faery Queene. (1, 2-1.)

of all conception of either time or space. As in Dreamland, distance collapses, and years and lifetimes contract into a few shining moments. So, too, when pursuing occupations under the influence of deep feeling; 'Jacob served seven years for Rachel, yet they seemed to him but a few days, for the love he had to her.' (Gen. 29, 20.) In Milton, Eve beautifully says to Adam,

With thee conversing, I forget all time,

All seasons, and their change, all please alike.

Time, therefore, as in reference to material existence, it simply denotes change, in reference to the spiritual or inner life, is but another name for emotional states or attitudes. The man who not only feels to, but actually does live longest, in other words, sees most time, is he who taking God for a sweet, guiding, and enveloping thought, and quick to read Nature, receives from it the greatest number of impressions.

Admirably expressed in Festus':

Life's more than breath, and the quick round of blood;

'Tis a great spirit and a busy heart.

The coward and the small in soul scarce do live.

One generous feeling- one great thought-one deed

Of good, ere night, will make life longer seem

Than if each year might number a thousand days.
We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Natural mutations are emblems both of the external or corporeal life, and of the inner or spiritual life. And this is equally the case whether the history of a year or of a day be taken. For nature, though she seems endlessly diversified, proceeds on but few methods, of which her diversities are varied expressions. Whatever department we may select, whether organization, music, or language, the phenomena of life or of insensible matter, one or two leading ideas are all that can be discriminated. Not that the talent of nature, though great for species, is poor for genera, because nature, as a manifestation of the Infinite, is competent, necessarily, to express his infinite attributes. It is that with a view to presenting a sublime and intelligible unity, such as man's mind shall apprehend with profit and delight, she better loves to repeat, over and over again, a few fixed and elegant designs, than to amaze and confound with an endless multiplicity. When, therefore, from the outward expression, we penetrate towards the interior idea, it is always to find some old, familiar fashion; and to learn that shapes and complexions are but liveries or costumes appropriate to their several occasions. The history and lapse of a day, agree accordingly, with the history of a year,

of which the day is a miniature. Winter corresponds with night, summer with noon, spring with morning, whence the beautiful phrase in 1 Sam. ix. 26, the spring of the day,' and in Lucretius the equivalent facies verna diei (i. 10). The history of a lifetime conforms in turn with both the year and the day, as shewn in our speaking of life's morning, noon, and evening; of its spring, summer, autumn, and winter; its April, its May, and its December. For all organized beings are but successions of phenomena, commencing, like the year, in darkness and apparent passivity, and ending in surrender to the effacing fingers of decay. Nothing has more pleased the poets than to descant on the similitudes so strikingly displayed, especially on behalf of the four seasons. Ovid, for instance, in that extraordinary catalogue of mutations, the fifteenth book of the Metamorphoses; Young, in the sixth book of the Night Thoughts; and Thomson, at the conclusion of his Winter';

Behold, fond man !
See here thy pictured life! Pass some few years,
Thy flowering Spring, thy Summer's ardent strength,
Thy sober Autumn, fading into age,

And pale concluding Winter comes at last,

And shuts the scene.

Prose literature likewise affords numerous allusions to these analogies. They are a constant subject also with sculptors and painters, whose highest function is faithfully to reproduce in objective forms what the poetic faculty seeks elsewhere to delineate in words. See, for example, Alison's Principles of Taste, Essay 1; Alciati's Emblemata, Embl. 101; Bucke's Beauties, Harmonies, and Sublimities of Nature, 3, 94-107. The famous riddle of the Sphynx, the solution of which by Edipus, cost her her life, will occur to the recollection of every one— "What animal is that which in the morning goes upon four legs, at mid-day upon two, in the evening upon three ?" On the identification of youth with Spring was no doubt founded the ancient belief that it was in the Spring that the world was created. This curious notion is supported among the moderns by Stukeley, the antiquary, in his chapter called 'Cosmogonia, or the World's Birthday.' (Palæographia Sacra, p. 44.) Homer frequently calls death vig épeßevvý, ‘dark night.'

Dwelling as we do, in the heart of the material and fugitive, it is perfectly natural that winter and night should be regarded as representative of the last stage of our existence. Yet their truest agreement is not with decay. It is rather with the darkness and passivity which preliminate life, and out of which life springs- Everywhere in creation the dim and shapeless is prior in point of time. The universal law is that the passive shall precede the active, ignorance knowledge, indiffer

ence love. This is why the narrative of the creation opens with saying that the earth was without form and void, and darkness upon the face of the deep; and why among the ancients, Night was finely styled. 'mother of all things.'

With him enthroned,

Sat sable-vested Night, eldest of things.-Milton. The cosmogony of the Greeks, as given by Hesiod, and of every ancient nation of whom any records survive, opens with darkness, out of whose womb presently proceeds light. Such is the order acknowledged, indeed, by all the greatest poets who have ornamented the world. What a fine line, for instance, is that in Mephistopheles' address to Faust, when he first introduces himself,

Ein Theil der Finsterniss die sich das Licht gebar.
(Part of the darkness which brought forth Light !)

If we would observe a philosophic order, winter, therefore, should stand first, not last, in the scheme of the seasons, as among the ancient Egyptians, with whom harmonies were an exact science, and who drew the sun at the winter solstice as an infant, at the vernal equinox as a youth, at the summer solstice as a man of middle age, and at the autumnal equinox as one in his maturity. (Macrobius, Saturnalia, Lib. 1, cap. 21.) The other seasons would then fall into their rightful places, Autumn, or the period of ripeness, crowning the noble annals. For Autumn, in turn, it is far less just to regard as emblematic of bodily decrepitude, than of consummation, maturity, and riches. Job gives a beautiful example of its legitimate symbolic use when recalling the days of his prosperity, he denominates them his (choreph), literally, his time of gathering in fruits. (29, 4.) The authorised version neutralises this eloquent figure by translating it in the days of my youth.' But that here certainly signifies Autumn, is plain from the remainder of the chapter, even without consulting its etymology. Pindar uses Autumn for the perfection of physical beauty. (Isth. 2, 5. Nem. 5, 6) The dating of the year from a day in the depth of winter is itself a testimony to the true position of the seasons in question.

By virtue of the primitive relations which so wonderfully link the spiritual and the material, the growth of the year has precisely the same analogies with the development of the intellect and affections, as with the history of the body. Winter answers to their germ-stage, summer to their flowers, autumn to their maturity. Hence the elegant and familiar metaphors by which the first buddings of the intellect and affections are called their Spring. The Greek poets not infrequently put Autumn, in like manner, for ripened intelligence and wisdom, as