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THE

ANNIVERSARY CALENDAR,

AND

UNIVERSAL MIRROR.

THE SEASONS.

Dat Clemens hyemem, dat Petrus ver cathedratus ;
Estuat Urbanus, autumnat Bartholomæus.-Lydiat.

THE Continual succession of SEASONS in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and, like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the Spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants, at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing, perhaps, afterwards can equal: the heat and vigour of the succeeding Summer of youth ripens for us new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly revel, and the jovial chase: the serene Autumn of complete manhood feasts us with the golden harvest of our worldly pursuits; nor is the hoary Winter of old age destitute of its peculiar comforts and enjoyments, of which the recollection and relation of those past, are, perhaps, none of the least: and, at last, Death opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall, probably, look back upon the diversions and occupations of this world, with the same contempt we do now upon our tops and hobbyhorses, and with the same surprise, that they could ever so much entertain or engage us.-Jenyns.

BEHIND the glowing wheels

Six jocund Seasons dance,

A radiant month in each quick-shifting hand;

Alternate they advance,

While buxom Nature feels

The grateful changes of the frolick band:
Each Month a constellation fair,

Knit in youthful wedlock, holds;

And o'er each bed a varied sun unfolds,
Lest one vast blaze our visual force impair,

A canopy of woven air.-Sir Wm. Jones.

WINTER.

High on an Alp of ice he sits enthron'd!-Savage.

O WINTER, ruler of th' inverted year,
Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd,
Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring'd with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne

A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urg'd by storms along it's slipp'ry way,
I crown thee king of intimate delights,
Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted ev'ning, know.--Cowper,

CAULD blew the bitter-biting north
Upon thy early humble birth;

Yet cheerfully thou glinted forth

Amid the storm,

Scarce rear'd above the parent earth
Thy tender form.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad,

Thy snawie bosom sunward spread,

Thou lifts' thy unassuming head.-The Daisy.-Burns.

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