The father goes out to the barn, and with careful hand and watchful eye, that he may not soil his best coat in the operation, harnesses Charley to the old wagon, that has for years carried him and his father before him to their place of worship.

The wife and the little ones are carefully seated, and at the good man's cluck, as he draws up the reins, old Charley, with dignified and Sabbathsuiting trot, sets forth. As they proceed they are joined by others who fall in on all sides. Sober farmers like themselves, with staid brown wagon and discreetly-minded horse. Gay young rustics, with yellowwheeled vehicles and peculiarly shaped hats, leaving a cloud of dust behind them as they hurry past with less decorous speed. Pedestrians too are on the way. Mothers and fathers with their babes in their arms, and youngsters toddling at their heels, or clinging to the maternal skirt. Blooming lasses in best bonnet and clean gown, looking askance and smilingly at the yellow-wheeled gallants aforesaid, or mentally comparing apparel with some friend or may-be rival.

The old church stands in the middle of the village on a little hill, from which it looks down on the less consequential buildings beneath and around it. It is tall, it is large. The color is a dead white, unrelieved even at the windows, which are ignorant of shutters. The door opens to the east, and there is no outer porch. The south side has a beautiful prospect of some twenty wooden horse sheds painted red, and filled on Sundays with steeds of most wonderful appearance, and all sorts of nondescript vehicular contrivances.

In the rear lies the grave-yard, where the "rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." The stones are almost all mossy-yet here and there we see a black-veiled figure bending where the stone seems newer, and the turf looks fresher.

But the male part of the congregation are on the church steps watching carefully every arrival, while the females pass quietly in and stop for a moment's gossip together, before they take their seats. The bell which has been ringing for the last time, some ten minutes, begins to toll, though you can hardly hear it from the inside. With the tolling of the bell comes the old white-haired minister, with grave look, heeding not the fearful, reverential glances of old and young, as he moves slowly up the echoing carpetless aisle. After him come hurrying in the men, and their heavy boots sound loudly. While the minister is waiting for them to be seated, we will take a glance at the inside of the church.

The walls are high, oh! so high! and painted or washed a dull yellow. The galleries, running round three sides of the room, are white. Some

daub of a village-painter has labored to embellish the ceiling to represent

"The spacious firmament on high,
And all the blue ethereal sky;"

for most remarkable clouds appear all over it, while in the western corner, a huge thunder-cloud frowns fate for all careless sleepers. The pulpit is about half-way up the west wall, of white pine, and reached by long flights of stairs, so narrow and steep that we fancy it an easy task for the good pastor to defend his desk from the intrusion of heretical or unsound preachers. The red cushion has been worn thread-bare by frequent thumpings, and the Bible it supports is a curiosity for an Antiquarian Society. The pews are square, and so arranged that when well filled, some of the occupants shall sit with their backs to the preacher.

But the low voice of supplication, simple, yet earnest, recalls our roving eyes, and we find that service has commenced. But what strange noise salutes us at the close of the prayer? It is nothing, good stranger, but the clatter of the seats, which move on hinges, and are raised while the people stand at prayers, producing by their fall an uproar little conducive to the solemnity of the long drawn nasal, Amen. And we see, too, in the corner of every pew, long narrow boards designed to stretch across the front of the seats, furnishing a convenient depository for hymnbook, arm, not unfrequently, head.

The sermon is long, doctrinal. Heavy breathings in various directions, and drooping heads, attest its interest. The psalm is quavered out to some old tune, and the choir is assisted by the whole congregation, even to the silver-headed old deacon who totters with age as he stands in his appropriate place, beneath the pulpit.

The service is over-the men all throng out first, the women come slowly behind. Then follows the Sabbath-school and its distribution of books, while the old folks chat beneath the eaves. Then the wife produces her basket, and the frugal luncheon is eaten. The rest of the "nooning" is consumed in gossip, or in reading for the thousandth time the inscriptions on the tomb-stones. One of them was written by him whom it commemorates, and tells its own story

"In youth he was a scholar bright;

In learning he took great delight:
He was a major's only son,

It was for love he was undone."

But the bell tolls again, and the few who went home to luncheon come

pacing back. The old minister goes in as before, and the service commences afresh. How slowly sped that summer afternoon in our child

hood! How lullingly buzzed the flies on the shutterless window pane, and how noddingly we assented to the propositions of the sermon, as intelligible to us then as the propositions of Euclid! How, as the pastor elucidated, "fourteenthly," would we peep through the bars at the top of the pew, to catch a glimpse of those bright eyes we thought so much brighter than any other! But those eyes looked as demure as the parson's own, though we knew all the while they were brimming with mischief. And so alternately loving and sleeping, the afternoon passes. The dull voice is finally hushed, and the dull sermon finished. The last hymn is sung, the last foot creaks on the bare floor, and the old church is left to its solitude.

Such was the old country church on the Sabbath. It had too its singing meetings, its spelling schools, and its town meetings. This was in our childhood. But innovation has laid its destroying finger on the hallowed old building. When I last saw it, it had been turned round, remodeled, repainted, refitted, and carpeted-it retained no vestige of its former grandeur. The old church had gone; and as I looked on the change, I sighed to think of the old joys, old hopes, old friends, gone with it.

P.

Ad Sodalem nuper e Vita Discessum.

SAEPE Noti cupidus nauta evitare periclum

Litore prospecto grato inopine perit.
Saepe nives eluctatus tenebrasque viator

Prae foribus riguit, marmoreumque gelu

Incaluit neque complexu, neque conjugis arte.
Te quoque, proh! maturum, eripere aeque Deus
Instituit: rapuit: nobis concedere fas est.

Consilium perculsum, interiitque labor
Enixus nimiam molem, traxitque ruinam
Stant tibi cupressi jure corona patri,
Et citius nummum extorsit Libitina proterva.

Suffuso lacrymis vox mihi grata subit-
"Dilexit tollitque Deus queis perbreve tempus."

Arescunt lacrymae; conticuere preces.

J. M. W.

Leaf-Falls.

"The melancholy days are come; the saddest of the year."-BRYANT.
THESE Autumn-leaves! My hopeful breast no soft emotion heaves,
For these sole, sad memorials, departing Summer-leaves;
One bard may pipe his eyes and wail these "melancholy days;"
My pipe I tune to cheerful strains; I sing fair Autumn's praise.

I own the dog-days charm me not; I ought, I know, to feel
No ardor but poetic fire, while broiled like any eel;

But I, at such times, only dare to roam in meadows gay,
When gathering blue-black clouds o'erhead put out the eye of day.

True, I have tried my very best to taste solstitial joys-
For instance, that big melon-patch we knew so well when boys;
But too short seem those blissful hours, when flits across my mind,
Bryant-like, a melon-cholic thought of the pangs they left behind.

No, leaflets, no! I deem your fall no monitor to be

Of blighted hopes, of withering blasts, of chilling frosts for me;
Youth, hope are mine; where palsied age sees emblems of despair,
I read the presage of new joys-new antidotes to care.

From maple-grove yon leafy shower comes thickly fluttering down,
Purpled and golden Autumn-flowers-bright red and russet brown:
But through their wreathed prospective vague more distant things I view,
Whose gold and purple dyes conceal their own more sombre hue-

So through these balmy, golden hours of forest leaf falls sere,
A long, bright vista opens wide of Winter's joyous cheer:
E'en thus may Hope forever gild futurity to me-
Such vista through death's chilling blasts wide-opening may

I see.

Now to my mental vision, reaching through those wavering leaves,
Bright webs of subtle broidery my hopeful fancy weaves;
And first a huge, square, lowroofed room in dusky light appears,
Whose heavy, naked rafters wear the smoke of scores of years.

The plastered walls no painter's art nor tapestries adorn,
Though those rude rafters overheard all hangings do not scorn;
From every beam a festoon or a garland pendent sways
Of onions or dried-apples which the good-wife's care purveys.

The dark brown walls, on three sides round, a well-scrubbed wainscot lines,
But yawning wide across the fourth the huge red fireplace shines.
That dear old fireplace! whose deep caves so many a Christmas fire
Has vainly striven to reach and fill, though heaped breast-high the pyre;

VOL. XVIII.

5

Whose chimney-corner snug has held so many a little chair

Whose childish owner lies full cold in yonder graveyard there;

On whose broad sheets of crimson flame so many an eye has traced
Bright pictures of delight-dread forms of once glad hearts laid waste!

High in the wall, on either side, three windows small are set,
Through which of anything without, slight notion one would get ;
Their squares of smoky sea-green glass so tangle up the rays
That through them pass, no common panes could explicate the maze,

The matron proudly has arrayed, on quaintly fashioned shelf,
Six pewter platters, silvery bright, with humbler ones of delf;
In that corner rests the Bible, high above, against the wall;
In this, the quiet, tall, Dutch clock stands sentry over all.

But no deserted hall is this; though wintry tempests drear
Howl loud without, the piercing blasts they neither feel nor hear,
Those groups within, for the chimney's throat of stone still louder roars,
Though little snow-drifts whistle through the crannies of the doors.

Upon the broad brick hearth in front a heap of embers glows,
Where scores of pippins stand arrayed in tempting, sputtering rows;
From scores of shovels heating there popped-corns in volleys flash,
While hammers and flat-irons here the sturdy shag-barks crash.

Behind, where highest mounts the blaze, from a black old-fashioned crane In the big iron kettle seethes the juice of Southern cane,

Whose thickened mass, till it shines snow-white, is pulled by whiter hands;
On the table near the oldest cask of sparkling cider stands.

But see! the rustic feast is done. Now quickly wheel away
Tables and tall rush-bottomed chairs-room for the rustic play!
Now round the great apartment rush, in swift commingling whirls,
The throngs of sturdy, boisterous lads and merry red-cheeked girls.

On every side with agile limbs they shun their blinded foe,
On chairs they leap, or, stooping, creep beneath the table low;
From their seats beside the hearth the old folks gaze with placid smile,
The spinning-wheel in the corner hums busily the while.

Such view of wintry joys gleams through the falling Autumn-leaves,
But joys beyond these rural ones the eye of hope perceives.
Now fades this picture on my sight-now shifts the second scene
In rosy light from those Autumn-leaves that thickly fall between.

A second smaller room I see, whose neatly-papered wall
Is covered o'er from roof to floor with pictures great and small.
On this side shines "The Earam's Light" and puffs her brown cigar;
Here, painted Nymphs disport as gay at least as most Nymphs are;