iver lies like a dead serpent in the strath. Not
dead--for, lo! yonder one of his folds glitters--and in the glitter you
see him moving--while all the rest of his sullen length is palsied by
frost, and looks livid and more livid at every distant and more distant
winding. What blackens on that tower of snow? Crows roosting innumerous
on a huge tree--but they caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor
cattle are to be seen or heard--but they are cared for;--the folds and
the farmyards are all full of life--and the ungathered stragglers are
safe in their instincts. There has been a deep fall--but no storm--and
the silence, though partly that of suffering, is not that of death.
Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by the heart, the repose is
beautiful. The almost unbroken uniformity of the scene--its simple and
grand monotony--lulls all the thoughts and feelings into a calm, over
which is breathed the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspiring many
fancies, all of a quiet character. Their range, perhaps, is not very
extensive, but they all regard the home-felt and domestic charities of
life. And the heart burns as here and there some human dwelling
discovers itself by a wreath of smoke up the air, or as the
robin-redbreast, a creature that is ever at hand, comes flitting before
your path with an almost pert flutter of his feathers, bold from the
acquaintanceship he has formed with you in severer weather at the
threshold or window of the tenement, which for years may have been the
winter sanctuary of the "bird whom man loves best," and who bears a
Christian name in every clime he inhabits. Meanwhile the sun waxes
brighter and warmer in heaven--some insects are in the air, as if that
moment called to life--and the mosses that may yet be visible here and
there along the ridge of a wall or on the stem of a tree, in variegated
lustre frost-brightened, seem to delight in the snow, and in no other
season of the year to be so happy as in winter. Such gentle touches of
pleasure animate one's whole being, and connect, by many a fine
association, the emotions inspired by the objects of animate and of
inanimate nature.

Ponder on the idea--the emotion of purity--and how finely soul-blent is
the delight imagination feels in a bright hush of new-fallen snow! Some
speck or stain--however slight--there always seems to be on the most
perfect whiteness of any other substance--or "dim suffusion veils" it
with some faint discolour--wit