pale yellow, contrasted by the sycamore's glowing crimson; the elm showed a rich brown, mixed with dusky orange; the hawthorns were covered with red berries, relieved by the long wreaths of the drooping ivy. Thickets of hazel-nuts clattered as the squirrels sprang from spray to spray in search of their winter store; and the sloe was thickly hung with its dim purple fruit. The furze was dry and reddening, and only in one or two sheltered nooks did a late blossom hang from the withering heath.
There is something peculiarly mournful in the sound of the autumn wind. It has none of the fierce mirth which belongs to that of March, calling aloud, as with the voice of a trumpet, on all earth to rejoice; neither has it the mild rainy melody of summer, when the lily has given its softness and the rose its sweetness to the gentle tones. Still less has it the dreary moan, the cry as of one in pain, which is borne on a November blast; but it has a music of its own—sad, low, and plaintive, like the last echoes of a forsaken lute—a voice of weeping, but tender and subdued, like the pleasant tears shed over some woful romance of the olden time, telling some mournful chance of the young knight falling in his first battle, or of a maiden pale and perishing with ill-requited love.
