ch flowers ne'er bloomed before;
And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."

Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose
venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm,
the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy
silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white
adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up
foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn.
The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had
fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid
picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a
natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside
stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz-
colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming,
with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple
beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty. The solemn shadows of the
pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with
the pale yellow of the birch.

"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness,"
said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the
settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble
dwelling. "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill.
The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when,
in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a
circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully
hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."

"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is,
indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more
goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very
sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you
and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very
bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of
Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles,
O Israel!' But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not
the God of our fathers."

"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed,
the spirit of the Lord may turn