ter may be frequently seen several hours after the sun has risen. Among the Alps the sky is of an intense azure; a circumstance which we may attribute to the colour of the air not being dimmed by vapours, which cause the rays of light to separate and disperse. In the tropics, the sky, seen through the green boughs of the forests, appears like indigo, and the sea is of a pure dark azure.

At the Lake Manasanawara, among the Himalaya Mountains, the moon in a total eclipse is much more clear and transparent than in the regions below, owing to the rarity of the atmosphere extenuating the shadow of the earth.

In Italy, in Spain, and in the south of France, circles round the moon are frequently seen: in those climates, too, the twinkling of the stars is generally accompanied by sudden changes of colour, and between the equator and the 15th degree of latitude small haloes are often observed round the planet Venus. In these aureolas, the orange, violet, and purple are particularly to be distinguished, and yet Bonpland remarks that he never once saw any similar prismatic appearances about Canopus or the Dog-star. These haloes are most frequent in the finest weather.

In the Island of Madeira, and along the coast of Africa, Humboldt was never weary of admiring the serenity and transparency of the sky at night, when he beheld innumerable falling stars, shooting almost every instant. These phenomena became more frequent after he passed the Canaries, and still more so in that part of the Pacific which bathes the volcanic shores of Guatimala. Some of these meteors left tails which continued luminous from twelve to fifteen seconds. While he was climbing the broken lavas of the Malpays, he saw several optical phenomena, which appeared like small rockets shot into the air. These he found afterward to be the ima ges of stars magnified by vapours.

What poet beholds the blush of morning without feeling that vernal delight which recalls to his fancy the mother of Memnon and Guido's mother of roses? On the ceiling of the palace of Rospigliosi this picture still remains. There Aurora is represented glowing with beauty and attended by the Hours, while Love, bearing a flambeau, waves it over the universe. Immediately the ocean, which had previously been enveloped in darkness, catches the flame, and the waves become illumined by its splendour.

Newton believed the blueness of the sky to be owing to vapours, of sufficient consistence to reflect the violet rays, but not the others. Leonardo da Vinci, on the other hand, attributed it to the immense depth of the heavens, which, devoid of light, are black, but which, when illumined by the sun, became blue; all black bodies appearing blue when observed through a white medium. This opinion seems to be the more philosophical of the two; for, were Newton's hypothesis correct, stars could never be seen during the day, whereas they are frequently observed, even at noon, from the bottom of deep wells and mines.

The shapes and movements of the clouds sometimes depend on aërial currents, at others on their electricity, clouds frequently discharging opposite electricities into each other. Their colours are produced by the power which they possess, when condensed at certain heights, of dividing the rays of light, and by reflection rendering them visible. Such is the cause of yellow, orange, red, and purple in clouds. Green clouds are seldom seen.

Though blueness is the natural colour of the sky, the clouds reflect every colour in nature, but not in every climate. Sometimes they wear the modest blush of the ardonia tinctura; at others, streaks of blood-like red, resembling riband jasper; now they appear in large brilliant volumes, like native cinna

bar; now of a vivid red, with white spots, like the marble of Languedoc; now with the red bordering on orange, like carnelian; and now they reflect the rich and glowing colour of the carbuncle.

In some climates they assume the hue of the onyx alabaster; in others they are brownish red, interspersed with white spots, like porphyry. Now they are yellow as native gold, and now as white as magnesian limestone. Sometimes, mingling with the azure of the deep serene, veins and spots of white and yellow remind us of the lapis-lazuli, while at other times they are of a blue more deep and beautiful than marine.

To the beauty of the aërial tintings Mons. Necker was peculiarly sensible. A few hours after the death of Madame Necker, Madame de Staël found him standing at one of the windows of his chateau, overlooking a magnificent prospect of the Alps, when a cloud passed over the horizon in the distance, and, being coloured with the rays of the morning sun, seemed a fitting vehicle to convey a departed spirit to the regions of bliss. 'Perhaps her soul hovers there!" ejaculated Necker, and then relapsed into meditation.

66

THE SEASONS.

How many are the enjoyments which the progress of the SEASONS affords us! What can be more delightful than that season of the year, when Nature, invigorated by repose, clothes every object in renovated gladness; when the snows are melted away, and the trees are unfolding their newborn leaves; when the flowers are painting themselves with every variety of hue, the unchained rivers rolling joyfully along, and when every hill and thicket are vocal with the songs of birds.

If SPRING be the most delightful season to the

poet, as affording him a greater multiplicity of images, SUMMER is no less captivating to the contemplatist, and AUTUMN to the enthusiast. What can be more transporting than the splendour of the rising sun at this latter season, with all the scene of rural happiness and industry it displays?

An evening and a morning sun, when skirted with bold masses, is said to have fired Barry with ungovernable rapture. Virgil, in his picture of Elysium, says that the sun has a purple light at all times; and it is from this magnificent appearance of the sky before and after sunset that we associate the idea of beauty and grandeur with purple: hence purple has in most ages been esteemed a royal and imperial colour.

Sensible of these glories of early day, the disciples of Pythagoras, after the manner of their master, prostrated themselves as soon as the disk of the sun presented itself above the horizon. Whenever they saw it they recognised a present Deity. Actuated by the same awful admiration, Aristippus, when at the point of death, directed his friends to carry him to the city gates, and to place his couch immediately opposite the lattice, that he might, to the last moment of life, enjoy the verdure of the fields and the splendour of the setting sun; while Caniz, one of the German pcets, when about to expire, requested to be raised from his couch in order to take a last look of that glorious luminary: "Oh," said he, with the sublimity of enthusiasm, "if a small part of the Eternal's creation can be so exquisitely beautiful as this, how much more beautiful must be the Eternal himself!"

This reminds us of the closing scene of PORTEUS, BISHOP OF LONDON. "As he sat in his library," says one of his biographers, "near the window, the brightness of a fine spring day called up a transient glow into his countenance, and he several times exclaimed, 'Oh, that glorious sun! Afterward, while sitting at dinner, he was seized with some slight

convulsions, which were happily, however, of short duration; and he fell, as it seemed, into a gentle sleep -it was the sleep of death. From that time he never spoke, and scarcely could be said to move. Without a pang or a sigh-by a transition so easy as only to be known by a pressure of his hand upon the knee of his servant, who was sitting near him -the spirit of this good man fled from its earthly mansion to the realms of peace!"

So enthusiastic an admiration had Eudoxus for this luminary, says Plutarch, that he would willingly have suffered the fate of Phaeton for the delight of approaching it. He prayed, therefore, to the gods, that he might once be permitted to see it so closely as to be able to comprehend its form, magnitude, and beauty, and then die by its beams.*

It is curious, yet melancholy, to observe with what atheistical horror some theologians have listened to arguments derived from the appearances and wonders of Nature. An instance of this kind occurred not long since in Spain, where a prisoner was gagged at an auto de fe merely because, after having been confined many years in prison without seeing the light of the sun, he was seized with such rapture at again beholding it, that he exclaimed, in

* Bernardo Tasso was so captivated with the sun, that he began all the cantos of his Amadigi with a description of its rising, and finished them with a description of its setting.

"I had been apprized not to visit Monsieur le Sage," says the Count de Tressan, "till near the approach of noon; and the feelings of that old man made me observe, for a second time, the effect which the state of the atmosphere produces in the melancholy days of bodily decline. Monsieur le Sage, awaking every morning so soon as the sun appeared some degrees above the horizon, became animated, acquired feeling and force in proportion as it approached the meridian; but, as the sun began to decline, the sensibility of the old man, the light of his intellect, and the activity of his bodily organs began to diminish in proportion; and no sooner had it descended some degrees beneath the horizon, than he sunk into a lethargy from which it was difficult to rouse him."