the third season of the year, when the harvest and fruits are gathered in. Autumn is represented in painting by a man at perfect age, clothed like the spring, and likewise girded with a starry girdle, holding in one hand a pair of scales equally poised, with a globe in each, and in the other a bunch of divers fruits and grapes. His age denotes the perfection of this season; and the balance that sign of the zodiac which the sun enters when our autumn begins.

Autumn begins on the day when the sun's meridian distance from the zenith, being on the decrease, is a mean between the greatest and the least, which in our hemisphere is supposed to happen when the sun enters Libra. Its end coincides with the beginning of winter. Several nations computed the years by autumns; the Anglo-Saxons, by winters. Tacitus tells us that the ancient Germans were acquainted with all the other seasons of the year, but had no notion of autumn. Lidyal observes of the beginning of the several seasons of the year, that

Dat Climent hyemem, dat Petrus ver cathedralis, Datut Uroanum, autumnat Bartholomaeus.

Autumn has been reputed an unhealthy season. Tertullian calls it tentator valetudinum; and the satirist speaks of it in the same light: Autumnus Libitinse questus acerbe.