herto
does not, by any means, appear to have been satisfactorily
resolved.--_New Monthly Magazine_.

* * * * *

THE MONTHS.

[Illustration: THE MONTHS. DECEMBER.]

The characteristics of November, for the most part, extend through the
present month. Wind, rain, and gloom are its attributes; the sun

Scarce spreads through ether the dejected day,
Faint are his gleams, and ineffectual shoot
His struggling rays, in horizontal lines,
Through the thick air; as clothed in cloudy storm,
Weak, wan, and broad, he skirts the southern sky;
And soon descending, to the long dark night.
Wide-shading all, the prostrate world resigns.

Such is the gloomy picture of December, as drawn by the _poet of the
year_.

To the contemplatist, and the man who has

----------No enemy,
But winter and rough weather,

the rural walk at this season is equally inviting with any of its
predecessors; whilst he who can "suck melancholy from a song," will find
melody in its storms and music in its wind. What are more beautiful than
the fretwork frostings of rime and hoar spread on the hedges, glistening
in the broad sun-beam, and in brilliancy and variety of colours vying
with the richest display of oriental splendour--with here and there
berries clustering on evergreens, or pendent in solitary beauty, like
the "rich jewel in the Aethiop's ear." The winter stillness of animal
life is a sublime subject for our meditation. Insects which floated on
the gay sunshine of summer and autumn have now retired to their winter
quarters, there to remain dormant till regenerated in the enlivening
warmth of spring; and even the labours of husbandry are in a state of
torpidity.

Within the circuit of gardens and shrubberies Nature, however, reserves
the evergreen pride of firs and pines; and even flowers are left to
gladden the eye of the winter observer; and the rose, that sweet emblem
of our fragile and transitory state, will live and prosper during this
month. In the forest, the oak, beech, and hornbeam in part retain their
leaves; there, too, is the endless variety of mosses, and lichens, and
ivy, spreading and clinging round aged trunks, as if to protect them
with their fond warmth, or mantling over the neglected labours of human
art, and mocking their proud import.

At this season, too, the social economy of man is wont to ripen into
mirth; and in olden time, winter was the summer of hospita