countries. This should be made of good flour, well baked, and at least a day old before it is eaten, as warm or new bread generally disorders the stomach. Potatoes are a very wholesome food; tea and coffee when strong cannot fail of being prejudicial to health; good chocolate is both wholesome and nourishing; and milk and all its preparations are among the most excellent articles of food.

Pure water should be drank at meals, as it promotes a keen appetite for food. Wine, in any quantity, is injurious to the health of young persons. Beer, ale, and porter, may be drank occasionally without producing injurious conseSweet cider also agrees with most persons in

quences. health.

The invariable effects resulting from the intemperate use of distilled spirits are the entire destruction of health, reason, and virtue; they therefore should be entirely abstained from.

THE AMERICAN AUTUMN.

THIS season is proverbially beautiful and interesting. Our springs are too humid and chilly; our summers too hot and dusty; and our winters too cold and tempestuous. But autumn, that soft twilight of the waning year, is ever delightfully temperate and agreeable. Nothing can be more rich and splendid, than the variegated mantles which our forests put on, after throwing off the light green drapery of summer. In this country, autumn comes not in "sober guise," or in " russet mantle clad," but, as expressed in the beautiful language of Miss Kemble, like a triumphant emperor, arrayed in "gorgeous robes of Tyrian dyes." This is the only proper season in which one truly enjoys, in all

its maturity of luxurious loveliness, an excursion into the

country:

"There, the loaded fruit trees bending,

Strew with mellow gold the land;

Here, on high, from vines impending,

Purple clusters court the hand."

Autumn now throws her many tinted robe over our landscape, unequalled by the richest drapery which nature's wardrobe can furnish in any part of the world. We read of Italian skies and tropical evergreens, and often long to visit those regions where the birds have "no sorrow in their song, no winter in their year." But where can we find such an assemblage of beauties as is displayed, at this moment, in the groves and forests of our native state? Europe and Asia may be explored in vain. To them has prodigal nature given springs like Eden, summers of plenty, and winters of mildness. To the land of our nativity alone, has she given autumns of unrivalled beauty, magnificence and abundance. Most of our poets have sung the charms of this - all varying from each other, and all beautiful, like the many tinted hues of the foliage of the groves. The pensive, sentimental, moralizing Bryant, says,

season

"The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year;" but his exquisite lines are so well known, that we must resist the temptation to quote them. The blithe, jocund, bright-hearted Halleck sings in a strain of quite a different tune, in describing the country at this period. Who would not know these lines to be his;

"In the autumn time,

Earth has no holier, nor no lovelier clime."

But we must not quote him either, for the same reason. This objection, however does not apply to the delicate morceau of poor Brainard, which has seldom been copied,

is in little repute, but which contains the true inspiration of poetry.

"What is there sadd'ning in these autumn leaves? '

Have they that 'green and yellow melancholy,'

That the sweet poet spake of? Had he seen

Our variegated woods, when first the frost

Turns into beauty all October's charms

When the dread fever quits us - when the storms

Of the wild equinox, with all its wet,

Has left the land, as the first deluge left it,
With a bright bow of many colors hung
Upon the forest tops- - he had not sighed.
The moon stays longest for the hunter now
The trees cast down their fruitage, and the blithe
And busy squirrel hoards his winter store;
While man enjoys the breeze that sweeps along
The bright blue sky above him, and that bends
Magnificently all the forest's pride,

Or whispers through the evergreens, and asks,
'What is there sadd'ning in the autumn leaves?""

"ALL THAT'S BRIGHT MUST FADE."

I've seen in blooming loveliness,

The youthful maiden's angel form;

I've seen in towering stateliness,
The hero, breasting battle's storm;

The cankerworm of hopelessness
Has blighted all her bloom;
War's iron bolt, in ruthlessness,
Has sped him to the tomb;
Thus ever fades earth's loveliest,

Thus dies the brightest and the best.

Then count not maiden's loveliness,

Nor hero's towering stateliness

And silence publicly enjoin'd,

Deliver'd briefly thus his mind;

My friends, be cautious how you treat The subject upon which we meet;

I fear we shall have winter yet."

A Finch, whose tongue knew no control, With golden wing and satin poll;

A last year's bird who ne'er had tried
What marriage meant, thus pert replied:
"Methinks the gentleman," quoth she,
"Opposite, in the apple tree,

By his good will would keep us single,
'Till yonder heaven and earth should mingle;
Or (which is likelier to befal)

"Till death exterminate us all.

I marry without more ado;

My dear Dick Redcap, what say you ?

Dick heard; and tweedling, ogling, bridling,

Turning short round, strutting and sideling,

Attested glad his approbation

Of an immediate conjugation.
Their sentiments so well express'd,
Influenced mightily the rest;

All pair'd, and each pair built a nest.

But though the birds were thus in haste,

The leaves came on not quite so fast;
And destiny, that sometimes bears

An aspect stern in man's affairs,

Not altogether smiled on theirs.

The wind, that late breathed gently forth,

Now shifted east, and east by north;
Bare trees and shrubs but ill, you know,

Could shelter them from rain or snow;
Stepping into their nests, they paddled,
Themselves were chill'd, their eggs were addled;
Soon every bird and mother

Grew quarrelsome and peck'd each other;