A Winter such as when birds die
In the deep forests, and the fishes lie
Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick; and when
Among their children, comfortable men
Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold;
Alas! then, for the homeless beggar old!

SHELLEY.

JANUARY.

THE solar year commences in the very depth of winter; and I open my record of its various aspects under that of its unmitigated austerity. I speak now as I intend to speak, generally. I describe the season not as it may be in this, or another year, but as it is in the average. December may be, I think, very justly styled the gloomiest, January the severest, and February the most cheerless month of the year. In December the days become shorter and shorter ; a dense mass of vapour floats above us, wrapping the world in a constant and depressing gloom; and

Murky night soon follows hazy noon.

BLOOMFIELD.

In January this mantle of brumal sadness somewhat dissipates, as if a new year had infused new hope and vigour into the earth; light is not only more plentifully diffused, but we soon

perceive its longer daily abode with us; yet, in the words of the common adage,

As the day lengthens,

The cold strengthens.

This is the month of abundant snows and all the intensity of frost. Yet winter, even in its severest forms, brings so, many scenes and circumstances with it to interest the heart of the lover of Nature and of his fellow-creatures, that it never ceases to be a subject of delightful observation; and monotonous as it is frequently called, the very variety of the weather itself presents an almost endless source of novelty and beauty. There is first what is called

A GREAT STORM. Frost,-keen, biting frost, is in the ground; and in the air, a bitter, scythe-edged, perforating wind from the north; or what is worse, the north-east, sweeps the descending snow along, whirling it from the open fields, and driving it against whatever opposes its course. People who are obliged to be passing to and fro muffle up their faces, and bow their heads to the blast. There is no loitering, no street-gossiping, no stopping to make recognition of each other; they shuffle

along the most winterly objects of the scene, bearing on their fronts the tokens of the storm. Against every house, rock, or bank the snowdrift accumulates. It curls over the tops of walls and hedges in fantastic wildness, forming often the most perfect curves, resembling the scrolls of Ionic capitals, and showing beneath romantic caves and canopies. Hollow lanes, pits, and bogs now become traps for unwary travellers; the snow filling them up, and levelling all to one deceitful plain. It is a dismal time for the traversers of wide and open heaths; and one of toil and danger to the shepherd in mountainous tracts. There the snows fall in amazing quantities in the course of a few hours, and, driven by the powerful winds of those lofty regions, soon fill up the dells and glens to a vast depth, burying the flocks, and houses too in a brief space. In some winters the sheep of extensive ranges of country, much cattle, and many of the inhabitants have perished beneath the snow-drifts. At the moment in which I am writing, accounts from Scotland appear in the newspapers of a most tremendous snow-torm, which, leaving the country southward of Alnwick and Gretna