Russet woods of Autumn, here you are once more!  I saw you, golden and brown, in the afternoon sunshine to-day.  Crisp leaves were falling, as I went along the foot-path through the woods:  crisp leaves lie upon the green graves in the churchyard, fallen from the ashes:  and on the shrubbery walks, crisp leaves from the beeches, accumulated where the grass bounds the gravel, make a warm edging, irregular, but pleasant to see.  It is not that one is ’tired of summer:’  but there is something soothing and pleasing about the autumn days.  There is a great clearness of the atmosphere sometimes; sometimes a subdued, gray light is diffused everywhere.  In the country, there is often, on these afternoons, a remarkable stillness in the air, amid which you can hear a withering leaf rustling down.  I will not think that the time of bare branches and brown grass is so very near as yet; Nature is indeed decaying, but now we have decay only in its beautiful stage, wherein it is pensive, but not sad.  It is but early in October; and we, who live in the country all through the winter, please ourselves with the belief that October is one of the finest months of the year, and that we have many warm, bright, still days yet before us.  Of course we know we are practising upon ourselves a cheerful, transparent delusion; even as the man of forty-eight often declares that about forty-eight or fifty is the prime of life.  I like to remember that Mrs. Hemans was describing October, when she began her beautiful poem on The Battle of Morgarlen, by saying that, ’The wine-month shone in its golden prime:’  and I think that in these words the picture presented to the mind of an untravelled Briton, is not the red grapes hanging in blushing profusion, but rather the brown, and crimson, and golden woods, in the warm October sunshine.  So, you russet woods of autumn, you are welcome once more; welcome with all your peculiar beauty, so gently enjoyable by all men and women who have not used up life; and with all your lessons, so unobtrusive, so touching, that have come home to the heart of human generations for many thousands of years.  Yesterday was Sunday; and I was preaching to my simple rustics an autumn sermon from the text We all do fade as a leaf.  As I read out the text, through a half-opened window near me, two large withered oak-leaves silently floated into the little church in the view of all the congregation.  I could not but pause for a minute till they should preach their sermon before I began mine.  How simply, how unaffectedly, with what natural pathos they seemed to tell their story!  It seemed as if they said, Ah you human beings, something besides us is fading; here we are, the things like which you fade!