allegiance or your admiration. His manner was as unaffected as infancy. It was nature's self. He talked like an old patriarch; and his plainness and simplicity put you, at once, at your ease, and gave you the full and free possession and use of all your faculties.

His thoughts were of a character to shine by their own light, without any adventitious aid. They required only a medium of vision, like his pure and simple style, to exhibit, to the highest advantage, their native radiance and beauty. His cheerfulness was unremitting. It seemed to be as much the effect of the systematic and salutary exercise of the mind, as of its superior organization.

His wit was of the first order. It did not show itself merely in occasional coruscations; but, without any effort or force on his part, it shed a constant stream of the purest light over the whole of his discourse. Whether in the company of commons or nobles, he was always the same plain man; always most perfectly at his ease, his faculties in full play, and the full orbit of his genius for ever clear and unclouded.

And, then, the stores of his mind were inexhaustible. He had commenced life with an attention so vigilant, that nothing had escaped his observation, and a judgment so solid, that every incident was turned to advantage. His youth had not been wasted in idleness, nor overcast by intemperance. He had been all his life a close and deep reader, as well as thinker; and, by the force of his own powers, had wrought up the raw materials, which he had gathered from books, with such exquisite skill and felicity, that he had added a hundred fold to their original value, and justly made them his WIRT.

own.

CLIMATE AND SCENERY OF NEW-ENGLAND.

THE position of our continent, and the course of the winds, will always give us an unequal climate, and one abounding in contrasts. In the latitude of 50 deg., on the north-west coast of America, the weather is milder even than in the same parallel in Europe; the wind, three-quarters of the year, comes off the Pacific: in the same latitude on the eastern side, the country is hardly worth inhabiting, under the dreary length of cold, produced by the succession of winds across a frozen continent. The wind, and the sun, too, often carry on the contest here, which they exerted on the poor traveller in the fable; and we are in doubt to which we shall yield.

The changes that cultivation and planetary influence, if there be such a thing, can create, are very gradual. It seems to be a general opinion, that the cold is more broken now. The totals of heat and cold may be nearly the same as they were fifty years ago. The winters, particularly, have commenced later. The autumn is warmer, and the spring colder. We are still subject to the same caprices: a flight of snow in May, a frost in June, and sometimes in every month in the year; and Æolus indulges his servants in stranger freaks and extravagances here than elsewhere; yet the severe cold seldom sets in before January; the snow is less and later, and, on the sea-coast, does not, on an average, afford more than a month's sleighing,

These contrasts in our climate occasion some very picturesque effects,-some that would be considered phenomena by persons unaccustomed to them. It blends together the circumstances of

very distant regions in Europe. Thus, when the earth lies buried in a deep covering of snow, in Europe, the clime is so far to the north, that the sun rises but little above the horizon, and his daily visit is a very short one;-his feeble rays hardly illumine a chilly sky, that harmonizes with the dreary waste it covers: but here, the same surface reflects a dazzling brilliancy from rays that strike at the same angle at which they do the dome of St. Peter's.

The plains of Siberia and the Campagna di Roma are here combined;-we have the snow of the one and the sun of the other at the same period. While his rays, in the month of March, are expanding the flowers and blossoms at Albano and Tivoli, they are here falling on a wide, uninterrupted covering of snow,-producing a dazzling brilliancy that is almost insupportable. A moonlight at this season is equally remarkable, and its effects can be more easily endured.

Our moon is nearly the same with that moon of Naples, which Carracioli told the king of England was 66 superior to his majesty's sun." When this surface of spotless snow is shone upon by this moon at its full, and reflects back its beams, the light, indeed, is not that of day, but it takes away all appearance of night;-the witch and the spectre would shrink from its exposure:

"It is not night;-'t is but the daylight sick;

It looks a little paler."

On the sea-coast, the winters are milder; but the obnoxious east winds are more severely felt, in the spring, than they are in the interior. The whole coast of Massachusetts Bay is remarkably exposed to their influence. Some compensation,

however, is derived, for their harshness and virulence in the spring, by their refreshing and salutary breezes in the summer, when they frequently allay the sultry heat, and prevent it from becoming oppressive.

Although a district favourably situated will enjoy an average of climate two or three degrees better than those in its neighbourhood, yet, generally, the progress of the climate is pretty regular as you follow the coast of the United States from northeast to south-west. I am induced to think, that our great rivers have some connexion with the gradations of climate; that every large river you pass makes a difference of two or three degrees in the averages of the thermometer. The position of mountains will affect the climate essentially; but the rivers, whose course upwards is northerly, will still, in general, be lines of demarkation.

One of the most agreeable peculiarities in our climate is a period in the autumn called the Indian Summer. It happens in October, commencing a few days earlier or later, as the season may be. The temperature is delightful, and the weather differing in its character from that of any other season. The air is filled with a slight haze, like smoke, which some suppose it to be; the wind is south-west, and there is a vernal softness in the atmosphere; yet the different altitude of the sun from what it has in the summer, makes it, in other respects, very unlike that season.

This singular occurrence in our climate seems to be to summer what a vivid recollection of past joys is to the reality. The Indians have some pleasing superstitions respecting it. They be lieve it is caused by a wind, which comes immediately from the court of their great and benevolent

god Cautantowwit, or the south-western god, the god that is superior to all other beings, who sends them every blessing which they enjoy, and to whom the souls of their fathers go after their decease."

In connexion with our climate, the appearance of our atmosphere may be considered. The lover of picturesque beauty will find this a fruitful source of it. The same inequalities will be found here, that take place in the measure of heat and cold, and an equal number of contrasts and varieties. We have many of those days, when a murky vapourishness is diffused through the air, dimming the lustre of the sun, and producing just such tones of light and colour as would be marked, in the calendar of Newfoundland or the Hebrides, for a bright, fair day. We have, again, others, in which even the transparency and purity of the tropics, and all the glowing, mellow hues of Greece and Naples, are blended together, to shed a hue of paradise on every object.

I have already spoken of the intense brilliancy of a winter moonlight, when the air has a polar temperature; the same brilliancy and a greater clearness are often found in the month of June, and sometimes in July, with the warmth of the equator. There, are, occasionally, in the summer and autumn, such magical effects of light, such a universal tone of colouring, that the very air seems tinged; and an aspect of such harmonious splendour is thrown over every object, that the attention of the most indifferent is awakened, and the lovers of the beautiful in nature enjoy the most lively delight.

These are the kinds of tints which even the matchless pencil of Claude vainly endeavoured to