"
The consciousness of a preceding turmoil brings home to us best the
sense of perfect peace; and a climate accustomed to storm-cloud and
tempest can melt sometimes into "a day as still as heaven" with a
benignant tranquillity which calmer regions can scarcely know. Such
a day Wordsworth has described in language of such delicate truth
and beauty as only a long and intimate love can inspire:
"It has been said that in human life there are moments worth ages.
In a more subdued tone of sympathy may we affirm, that in the
climate of England there are, for the lover of Nature, days which
are worth whole months, I might say, even years. One of these
favoured days sometimes occurs in springtime, when that soft air is
breathing over the blossoms and new-born verdure which inspired
Buchanan with his beautiful Ode to the First of May; the air which,
in the luxuriance of his fancy, he likens to that of the golden age,--
to that which gives motion to the funereal cypresses on the banks of
Lethe; to the air which is to salute beatified spirits when
expiatory fires shall have consumed the earth with all her
habitations. But it is in autumn that days of such affecting
influence most frequently intervene.
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