te *: _In Harmony with Nature_.]

A funeral under the sapphire sky and blazing sun of June loses
nothing of its sadness--perhaps is made more sad--by the unsympathetic
aspect of the visible world. December does not suspend its habitual
gloom because all men of goodwill are trying to rejoice in the
Birthday of the Prince of Peace. We all can recall disasters and
disappointments which have overcast the spring, and tidings of
achievement or deliverance which have been happily out of keeping
with the melancholy beauty of autumn.

In short, Nature cares nothing for the acts and sufferings of human
kind; yet, with a strange sort of affectionate obstinacy, men insist
on trying to sympathize with Nature, who declines to sympathize
with them; and now, when she spreads before our enchanted eyes all
the sweetness and promise of the land in spring, we try to bring
our thoughts into harmony with the things we see, and to forget,
though it be only for a moment, alike regrets and forebodings.

And surely the effort is salutary. With Tom Hughes, jovial yet
thoughtful patriot, for our guide, we make our way to the summit
of some well-remembered hill, which has perhaps already won a name
in history, and find it "a place to open a man's soul and make
him prophesy, as he looks down on the great vale spread out, as
the Garden of the Lord, before him": wide tracts of woodland, and
fat meadows and winding streams, and snug homesteads embowered in
trees, and miles on miles of what will soon be cornfields. Far away
in the distance, a thin cloud of smoke floats over some laborious
town, and whichever way we look, church after church is dotted over
the whole surface of the country, like knots in network.

Such, or something like it, is the traditional aspect of our fair
English land; but to-day she wears her beauty with a difference.
The saw is at work in the woodlands; and individual trees, which
were not only the landmarks, but also the friends and companions
of one's childhood, have disappeared for ever. The rich meadows by
the tranquil streams, and the grazing cattle, which used to remind
us only of Cuyp's peaceful landscapes, now suggest the sterner thought
of rations and queues. The corn-fields, not yet "white to harvest,"
acquire new dignity from the thought of all that is involved in
"the staff of life." The smoke-cloud over the manufacturing town
is no longer a mere blur on the horizon, but tells of a prodigality
of human effort, di