When birds die In the deep forests; and the fishes lie Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold. The snow was grand while it lasted-a dry, dusty, frozen snow. The children were hilarious. Hardly anything produces such keen enjoyment, such 'tipsy jollity' in a healthy and unspoiled child—or, for that matter, in a child-like man—as the sight of new-fallen snow. Our little sledge was got out, and ran bravely along the paths, making the powdered snow fly before it in clouds there was even rough skating to be had on the beaten track in the lane, and before evening there was a snow-man on the lawn-at least the thing, by courtesy, was called a 'man,' but the sculpture was certainly pre-artistic. I could find his head, and perhaps his nose, but his legs were no more discoverable than those of bold Widdrington at the battle of Chevy Chase. The week has been notable for its fine sunrisings and its clear nights. This is the time of year to watch the sun come up in summer we are too late abed to enjoy his appearing. It was very delightful to see the first rosy colour flush the snow-furrows while the moon was fading away in the south-west the sky being entirely clear under the influence of a whistling north wind. No other wind gives the shrill whistle that the north does. The south sighs, the south-west sobs, the north-west blusters, but the true north seems to blow a thin, keen note through a highpitched reed. Under the influence of frost, the birds, as usual, become bolder and more persistive. They flutter about the windows, and perch on the rhododendrons, waiting for their accustomed crumb-breakfast. The robin takes his seat on a pear-tree branch which has become loosened from the wall: this coign of vantage enables him to look into the room. We are more glad, I think, of the chance of seeing him even than he is of seeing us. It is at night, however, that the feeling of winter is most strong; and the dumbness of it is the first thing that strikes you: there is much to see, but nothing to hear. The watercourses are frozen; the birds are all hidden-who knows where? —and the winds are still; but how beautiful are the white leaning roofs of our old homestead, and the red glimmer in the windows of the neighbouring farm, seen across a long stretch of snow; and how marvellously the stars seem to dance among the black branches of the trees! Last night, I imagine, the cold was more intense than at any time this season, if one may judge from the frost-tracery on the windows. Would it not be possible to get a ‘nature-printed' photograph of this mimic representation of tropical fern and palmjungle? As all hope of flowers, out of doors, is gone for the present, we naturally turn to the greenhouse for the beauty of colour. There we get, just now, bright pots of the Chinese primrose; camellias, white, damask, and pink; the deutzia, covered thickly with blossoms; and the delicate, crimson-tipped cyclamen. FEBRUARY. When the shining sunne laugheth once, You deemen the Spring is come attonce; But eft, when you count you freed from feare, Drerily shooting his stormy darte, Which cruddles the blood and pricks the harte SPENSER, The Shepheards Calender, Februarie. IV. THE WHITE FOG. February 6. THE thermometer just too high for freezing, and yet low enough to starve the blood; the spectral trees glimmering through a white fog; your horizon only some twenty yards distant;-under such conditions the Earth is not a cheerful place to live in. And, to make it worse, this state of things came after a clear and beautiful day. In the morning the sky was barred with luminous clouds, the ice was over an inch thick on the pond, and at night we had a whole hemisphere of stars—a rare thing with us-not a rag of cloud or suspicion of smoke to be detected by any scrutiny. At eight o'clock Venus had just gone down in the west, brilliant enough, I should think, to cast a shadow, certainly irradiating perceptibly a considerable arc of sky, and making all the stars in her vicinage look pale; the jewelled belt of Orion was sparkling in the south; the Seven Sisters lambent overhead; and the tail of the Bear pointing downward to north-east. At such a time a curious feeling comes up in the mind which it is difficult to express -a feeling that we are not merely isolated dwellers upon the Earth; but interested spectators of, and, indeed, participators in, the larger and grander system by which we are surrounded. It seemed as if at last we were really going to have that long, long frost which somebody had prophesied. The antiquarian member of our circle went over the well-worn story of the frozen Thames, the fair, and the roasted ox, and the rest of it; and our boys were planning a fire in the winter-house, and a grand bout of torch-light skating on the pond. But 'the best-laid schemes gang aft a-gley,' a milder counsel prevailed among the winds, the south chose |