ns of eternity and death, which one cannot for
the soul of one put into words, is somewhat too much for the comfort of a
sensitive human mortal. The day dies, and makes no apology for being
such an unconscionable time in dying; and all the while it colours our
thoughts with its own solemnity. There is no relief from this kind of
thing at midsummer. You cannot close your shutters and light your
candles; that in the tone of mind which circumstances superinduce would
be brutality. You cannot take Pickwick to the window and read it by the
dying light; that is profanation. If you have a friend with you, you
can't talk; the hour makes you silent. You are driven in on your
self-consciousness. The long light wearies the eye, a sense of time
disturbs and saddens the spirit; and that is the reason, I think, that
one half of the year seems so much longer than the other half; that on
the dial-plate whose hours are months, the restless finger _seems_ to
move more slowly when travelling upward from autumn leaves and snow to
light, than when it is travelling downward from light to snow and
withered leaves.

Of all the seasons of the year, I like winter best. That peculiar burden
of time I have been speaking of, does not affect me now. The day is
short, and I can fill it with work; when evening comes, I have my lighted
room and my books. Should black care haunt me, I throw it off the scent
in Spenser's forests, or seek refuge from it among Shakspeare's men and
women, who are by far the best company I have met with, or am like to
meet with, on earth. I am sitting at this present moment with my
curtains drawn; the cheerful fire is winking at all the furniture in the
room, and from every leg and arm the furniture is winking to the fire in
return. I put off the outer world with my great-coat and boots, and put
on contentment and idleness with my slippers. On the hearth-rug, Pepper,
coiled in a shaggy ball, is asleep in the ruddy light and heat. An
imaginative sense of the cold outside increases my present comfort--just
as one never hugs one's own good luck so affectionately as when listening
to the relation of some horrible misfortune which has overtaken others.
Winter has fallen on Dreamthorp, and it looks as pretty when covered with
snow as when covered with apple blossom. Outside, the ground is hard as
iron; and over the low dark hill, lo! the tender radiance that precedes
the morn. Every window in the little village has