November 1st, {Dark part .....-7.404

Illuminated part=4.596

By comparing this proportion with that for the first of the following month, it will be perceived that Venus will then have passed her greatest brightness, which is when the breadth of her illuminated disk. is 3.1908 (see T. T. for 1819, p. 51), and this will be about the 15th of the month.

Eclipses of Jupiter's Satellites.

Jupiter is yet too near the Sun to allow the eclipses of his satellites to be visible, except such as take place under the most favourable circumstances; and these are the following.

Conjunction of the Moon with the Planets and Stars.

November 5th, with Bin Capricorn at 8 in the evening

26th,

a... Virgo, at 12 at noon

Mars and Georgium Sidus will be in conjunction with each other at 10 in the evening of the 6th; and Mercury will attain his greatest elongation on the 28th.

We shall close the Occurrences of this month with the following beautiful

STANZAS written at SUNSET.

How sweet, my friend, it is to rove,
Now when the gorgeous Sun descending
Pours streams of gold on hill and grove,
To Nature richest beauty lending!

Yon clouds against the west that lie,

How bright their ample skirts are glowing!
While Fancy views their magic dye,
And, still some mimic form bestowing,

In mountains now beholds them tost,
Or palaces, the gaze delighting;
Or golden dells; or rocks embost;
Or fairy groves the most inviting;

Where happiness is ever found;

Where human woes, and tears, and sighing,
Can never come-but joys abound,

And soft the rosy hours are flying-
Meet emblem of that heav'n so bright,

Where saints their choral hymns are swelling :
O may we stretch at last our flight,

And find, my friend, that happy dwelling!

The Naturalist's Diary

For NOVEMBER 1826.

How changed is Nature's aspect, late so gay!
Spring danced along in beauty volatile,

And Summer cheered us with her flow'ry smile,
But transient, like the rest, he passed away;
And Autumn came in harvest's rich array,
And now is hushed the joyous minstrelsy
Of field and grove; save the lone redbreast,-he
Sits on the naked branch, trilling his lay,
Plaintive and querulous, the sear leaf's dirge.
It is a fearful time; the conquering blast
Riots in devastation, and doth urge
Tempestuous and wild his strong career,
In cloudy chariot through the sky o'ercast,
Scatt'ring the faded honours of the year.

ANON.

New Monthly Magazine.

THIS is, usually, a wet, cold, and gloomy month; storms of wind and rain confine us to the house, and admonish us in the morning to seek amusement in the well-furnished library or museum, and to devote our evenings to music and the charms of intellectual society. With these powerful antidotes to melancholy thoughts, naturally inspired by the sombre character of the season, we may listen to the 'pitiless pelting of the storm' without, and be grateful for the security and accommodation we enjoy.

It is a cloudy night,—

No moon, no stars; the wind is low or loud
By gusts, and many a sparkling hearth is bright
With the piled wood, round which the family crowd;
There's something cheerful in that sort of light,
E'en as a summer's sky without a cloud.

Yon tempest-shattered elm, that heavily
Sways to the wind, seems for the dead to sigh.
How many generations since the day

Of its green pride have passed, like leaves, away;
How many children of the hamlet played
Round its hoar trunk, who at its feet were laid,
Withered and grey old men! In life's first bloom,
How many has it seen borne to the tomb!

ELLEN GRAY.

Although November is usually dull and cheerless, yet there are some intervals of clear and pleasant weather: the mornings are occasionally sharp, but the hoar-frost is soon dissipated by the Sun, and a fine open day follows. There is a soothing mildness in these last lingering looks' of Autumn, peculiarly grateful to the feelings, and possessing a melancholy but pleasing influence. The fields and inclosures are cleared of their harvest treasure, and the web of the gossamer extends in unbroken and floating pathway over stubble and lea. Vegetation is every where passing rapidly into decay; and we are led to exclaim with the poet,

O Summer friendship,

Whose flattering leaves that shadowed us in
Our prosperity, with the least gust drop off
In th' Autumn of adversity!

The NOVEMBER GARDEN.

MASSINGER.

[From the Legend of Genevieve, and other Poems.]

In Spring I visited this spot;

A thousand herbs and flow'rs were blooming;

And eglantine o'erhung this grot,

Mild April's balmy breeze perfuming;

The primrose opened to the Sun;
And languidly the daffodillies,

Reclining bashful, had begun

To smile beneath the sprouting lilies.

I came in Summer-shrub and flow'r,

Though changed in hue, were still before me;

'Twas cloudless noon, I sought the flow'r

That threw its welcome shadows o'er me;

And, as I rested on its seat,

Absorbed in silent meditation,
The bee was treasuring liquid sweet
From the bosom of the soft carnation.

Again I come to view the scene,

Whose summer hues I well remember;
"Tis stripped of pride, 'tis shorn of green.
Beneath the rude sway of November!
The melody of song is mute,

Except the robin's lonely singing:

The trees have shed their leaves and fruit,
And weeds in ev'ry walk are springing.

The morn is cold; the sky is pale,

The winds no more are silence keeping;
Like childhood at a mournful tale,

O'er vanished bloom the flow'rs are weeping;
I look upon the sullen sky-

It wanes as when a daughter's duty,
Stayed by a tyrannous father's eye.
Opposes love, and withers beauty.
All, all is changed, as if Simoom
Had passed with with'ring magic over!
No trace of beauty or of bloom

Can sense perceive or eye discover;
But wild, and waste, and desolate,

A wilderness is stretched around me;
And where mid Summer's smiles I sate,
November's wintry breeze hath found me.

The lilac boughs are tinged with red,
The yellow leaves profusely lying:
The flow'rs have bent or bend the head;
The latest of the train are dying.

Hark! 'tis the voice of Nature cries

Shall Pride and Passion vanquish Reason?
Will man be never, never wise!

Heav'n is his home, and life a season.'

The dreadful gales of November 1824 (observes our Gloucestershire correspondent), which desolated so large a portion of Europe, were certainly felt by us on the Severn, though not in a comparatively injurious degree, yet they were rude enough to cause us some apprehension for the consequences; but I think the fury of the storm, and the extent of its power, cannot be better comprehended than by stating, that

6

the strong winged, active little bird, called the stormy petrel (Procellaria pelagica), at that time, perhaps, sporting in the waves of the Atlantic, darting in glee and delight along the deep hollow vallies of that agitated ocean, was suddenly caught by the gale, overpowered, and driven on the wings of the wind' over an immense space of sea and land, and finally dashed upon some elevated ground, and killed, in the parish of Alveston! It must have been more than a zephyr which could control the actions of such a bird, so powerful and fearless on the wing, as the petrel (a creature that seems to ride on the whirlwind and defy the storm'), and bear it away without the power of resistance, like a feather, over such a district, and to such a fate!

But to return to our Diary of the appearances of Nature in this month; it is, like the intervals of fine weather in November, brief indeed, and may be told in a few lines. The Virginia-creeper has now a very rich and beautiful appearance. Mushrooms are collected in abundance this month: see our last volume, p. 201. The congregating of small birds, which was noticed as commencing in October, still continues ; and the long-tailed titmouse is seen in troops in the tall hedge-rows. The stock-dove, one of the latest winter birds of passage, arrives from more northern regions towards the end of this month. Moles now make their nests, where they lodge during the winter, and which are ready for depositing their young in the spring.

DECEMBER.

THIS month was named, like the preceding ones, from the place which it had in the Romulean calendar. Its tutelar divinity was Ceres. On the 16th of this month were held the Saturnalia, of which the