thousand splendid hues. The trees have not yet lost their fulness and grace of contour, but now reign in glory beyond that of any oriental king. The yellow tint of the tremulous birch; the ruddy brown of the oak; the deep carmine and purple of the woodbine; the dark scarlet of the ash; the orange of the elm, and the crimson of the maple that blushes at the first kiss of the frost, all mingle their gorgeous dyes, as if a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on the wood and set it all ablaze! This changeful though lovely scenery lends a touching spell to Autumn, which is in unison with the mournful melodies of the dying year. A Sabbath stillness reigns throughout Nature, broken only by the wind's low sigh; or if perchance other sounds are heard, they are but the dashing of the sere and withered leaf into the silver stream, the chirp of the squirrel gathering in his harvest of nuts, or the wail of the solitary crow croaking psalm-tunes from the old oak in the cornfield. Now is the season for excursions far away into the country, the very month for long walks. You see gardens, with jolly sunflowers lolling their good-humored faces over the walls; orchards, with trees full of apples, whose great round cheeks are blushing with crimson, or beaming with gold; goodly plantations of honest pumpkins, sunning themselves, or turning up their fat yellow bellies on the cornhill to prepare for the festivities of Thanksgiving. You see patient anglers, bending hour after hour over the stream or placid lake, in quest of the speckled trout or gleaming white perch, doomed to gratify the dire appetite of patrons of Young's or Parker's. Now and then the sharp report of a fowling-piece rings through the neighboring wood, and the puff of smoke curls up gracefully into the sunny air. We love October. It is a chaste and gentle month; it has not the frigid aspect of December; it has not the coquetry of April, or the fire and passion of July; it kisses our cheek with zephyrs sweet and soft, "sweet as the smile when fond lovers meet, and soft as their parting tear." Day pours down its profusion of light now with a moderate intensity of heat, and the intellectual and physical systems begin to resume the vigorous tone which had languished and been paralyzed under the fires of a vertical sun. Never strayed from Paradise a more beautiful and bewitching day than the one whose silent splendors we are now enjoying. Even the dim and dust-stained panes in our window wear a glow of cheerfulness; and the yellow sunshine, as it streams through the discolored glass, athwart a long mountain of newspapers piled up in front of us, and rests on the page whereon we breathe our "charmed thoughts," sends a warm and delightful thrill like that of generous wine along every eager nerve, until it mounts into the brain and expands into living pictures of beauty and happiness. Look away into yonder vault of heaven, at this sunset hour; how the resplendent hues of topaz and amethyst and gold beautifully blend with each other, and stream in living light across the ether sky! Whose soul does not thrill with ecstasy, while gazing on scenes like these? What, it has well been asked, are all the canopies and balconies and galleries of human state, hung with the richest drapery that ever the wizard Art drew forth from his matchless loom in gorgeous folds, in comparison with the radiant palaces of Autumn, framed in the sky by the Spirit of the season for his own last residence, ere he move in yearly migration, with all his court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas? In what a blaze of glory the sun goes down at last, and how delicately beautiful the quiet radiance of the moon! -- and the brooks, how soothing is their voice even in the still night: "A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night But sounds and sights like these are not for literary scribes. They disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured. They beget desperate and rebellious thoughts, resolutions of dashing out of our den, and hurrying away from books, paper, ink, and pens to some leafy retreat, to enjoy what Horace happily calls "a sweet oblivion of the cares of anxious life." Oaths. THE opinion is steadily gaining ground in England, it is said, that all public oaths should be abolished. The imposition of an oath, it is urged, is degrading to a good man, since it implies that his simple word is not to be trusted; while, on the other hand, the bad man who is bold enough to violate God's moral law will not hesitate to brave his anger against perjury. The experience of the courts of justice shows that oaths afford an almost inappreciable guaranty against false testimony. A distinguished English advocate states that as the result of forty years of practice he has known but two instances where the parties, in the case of an oath offered after evidence, have been prevented by a sense of religion from persisting in their testimonies. Every one knows that perjuries which do not violently offend public opinion, and which are not legally punishable, are occurring continually. When sheep-stealing and petty larceny were capital offences in England, juries did not hesitate to violate their oaths by refusing to convict, in defiance of overwhelming evidence. They had sworn to decide according to the law and the testimony; but they knew that public opinion, which was outraged by these Draconian laws, would justify them in a verdict of acquittal. It is said that while these laws were in force, an eminent judge certified that on one circuit alone more than five hundred "perjured verdicts" were given. The oaths of allegiance did not prevent Parliament from changing the dynasty in 1688; nor did their oaths to support the Constitution and laws of the United States prevent the Southern members of the Cabinet and of Congress from raising the flag of rebellion in 1861. If oaths are needed to secure truthful testimony, why are they ever dispensed with? Why are men allowed to affirm in the law courts? Testimony given before Parliament is not under oath; yet who doubts that it is just as credible as that given in courts of justice? Antediluvian READER, did you ever think of what deLife. lightful lives men must have lived in the days before the flood? Fancy a note payable in ten-year instalments seventy years from date, or a draft payable at three months' sight! Imagine a thief or a burglar sentenced to jail for sixty winters! Think of a larder with two or three dried whales hanging on its hooks, or a huge barrel with a dozen ichthyosauri in pickle! How delightful to call on a friend and be treated to cold mammoth ("Cut and come again") on the sideboard, and to wine of a vintage a hundred and fifty years past! Think of a man with a hearttrouble of only ten or twelve decades, or dying of quick consumption after a "lingering illness" of a century! Jack-o'-Lan IN our childhood, one of the chief objects terns. of our wonder and delight was Jack-o'-Lantern. Can we ever forget the throbbing of heart, the thrill of ecstasy, with which we hailed "the metaphysical stranger," how we chuckled and crowed and clapped our hands with glee as our dazzled eyes followed him in a dark night through all the changeful figures of his fantastical harlequinade? Has any meteor since danced over our head that was half so resplendent? Since our attainment to manhood we have found that every man has his Jack-o'-Lantern, which, though the cheat takes an infinity of shapes, he pursues from the cradle to the grave. To one man Jack comes in the shape of an old, musty, black-letter volume, an Elzevir, a "tall copy," an editio princeps, for which he pays a fabulous price, and of which he never reads more than the titlepage. To another man Jack comes in the shape of a Douw, a Cuyp, or a Claude; the mysterious gloom of Rembrandt, the savageness of Salvator, or the "corregiosity of Correggio." He becomes learned in oils and varnishes, dreams of old masters, and hangs about Leonard's auction room, where he bows his head at a cost of $50 a nod. To a third man, Jack-o'-Lantern appears in the form of an autograph, an old letter, a fly-leaf torn from a book, or franked envelope, - which he dotes upon more than a miser on his gold. Jack tempts one person in the shape of a bottle of Clos-Vougeot or Johannisberg which never crossed the Atlantic, or “fine, crusty old port" whose thick crust and "bee's wing" are proofs only of its decomposition and the loss of some of its best qualities, and which renders him the victim of gout, diabetes, or liver disease; another, he dazzles as a cigar, enveloping him in a cloud of smoke, shattering his |