up into the otherwise clear sky a drift of snowy clouds

I saw how white they were by contrast with the black trees and there, in the south-west, was the moon sitting among them, soft yet brilliant, the very image of placid beauty. It needed only a little stretch of fancy to see in her face a touch of disdain as she looked down upon the extinction of our transient show!

XLIV. A SNOW-STORM.

November 13.

NOVEMBER is maintaining all the characteristics of a severe winter. On All Saints and All Souls the season may be said to have been fairly ushered in, the first snow falling on the night of the former day; and this week, on Martinmas Day, we are visited by a snow-storm of no ordinary kind.

It was not without warning that this heavy fall came upon us. For two or three days there had been cold rain, mixed with sleet; and at night sharp frost. The wind, too, was bitter—

A wind out of the north,

A sharp wind and a snell

as the old ballad has it. On the tenth the weather was changeful and stormy. A high wind accom

panied the rain, and in the afternoon there was a rainbow in the north-east, which, on such a day, seemed a portent rather than an augury of calm. At night we had a sinister-looking moon glimmering faintly through rifted clouds.

In the garden we were made to feel that desolation had fallen upon all our pleasant places. The rain-drops hung half-frozen on the hedges, and hardly any foliage was left. Even the elder had at last succumbed. The leaves became flaccid with the first sharp frost; but now, though still green, they were nearly all lying on the ground, and the light-coloured and straggling twigs, with only a stray leaf here and there twirling in the wind, looked even more wretched than those surrounding trees which had been earlier unclothed,

As we wander down the alleys the bare trees show us how many happy nests there were in the summer --how many that we, with all our care, had never found, in unexpected corners, no less than in places. so patent that the wonder is how we had missed them. An empty bird's nest is not a pleasant thing to look upon in the chill winter-and here is one not empty, but more melancholy still, for it contains the unhatched eggs of spring. Why forsaken, who can tell? At such a time that exquisite but mournful

sonnet of the great master is found to be the fittest expression of one's feeling :

That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire

Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by,
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

It was a relief when, on the eleventh, the snow came. So early as three o'clock in the afternoon an ominous darkness, as of night, fell on the landscape and was not lifted again. The snow fell fast and in heavy flakes, and the gloom was strange and bewildering. At a neighbouring farm the fowls were unable to find their usual roosting-place, and were discovered the next morning out of doors, half-buried in the snow. At one time there was thunder and wind, but later the night became still, and the moon, though unseen, covered all with a soft light. By this time the snow was from three to four inches deep, and there was a considerable drift in the lanes. The landscape

was transformed; all was beautiful; there were no blots. In the garden we had the loveliest and most fairy-like scene of all the year. The larger trees were each of them marked by a strip of white along the north side of the bole; but the branches were entirely covered. Every tree, however, retained its own. characteristics; some-the evergreens especially— being heavily laden, while others were only lightly covered and showed the tracing of each twig and spine distinct and clear. The vistas were especially beautiful, and could only be likened to the corridors in some great palace of frost. In the early morning, the snow having ceased, and the clouds cleared away, the moon broke forth with great brilliancy, and then the landscape, as seen from the windows, was of a delicate blue colour, rather than white.

For all this exhilaration of spirit and exaltation of fancy we had to suffer the next morning. The sun rose in a yellow haze and the sad change had already come. On the flat lawn close by the house the snow was still white and unbroken, as it will be for some days; but the undulating fields beyond were already ridged with black, and were seen fading into a dreary distance where the grey earth and the grey sky, like Old Age and Death, meet together and are made one in an uncomplaining sadness.

At breakfast our feathered pensioners, the robins and the sparrows, were more numerous than usual; and, although the crumbs sank into the snow, they were deft enough to pick them out. It is interesting to observe what fantastic things the birds will do. A day or two ago I saw a sparrow clinging by its claws to the perpendicular wall of the barn, apparently in order that it might conceal itself from another bird which was sitting just above on the projecting eaves, and who ultimately, by bending over, found where its mate was hiding. The two then flew away together. But still more singular was a sight in the garden on the same morning. A small green linnet was sitting on a ledge underneath the roof of a low building, level with the eye, and either regaling himself or amusing himself by catching in his mouth, as they fell one by one, the drops of melted snow.

To-night the frost has returned with great sharpness; the sky, swept by the wind, is preternaturally clear; the stars beat as if they would leap from their places; and the snow, which has been re-frozen, glitters like diamonds on the roofs and on the ground.