e menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawer
appears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify your
dinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by the
rumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at your
departure, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise.

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS.

FIRST RHAPSODY.

No weather more pleasant than that of a mild WINTER day. So gracious the
season, that Hyems is like Ver--Januarius like Christopher North. Art
thou the Sun of whom Milton said,--

"Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams,"

an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian on
a June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by the
sleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, and
murmurs--the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake,
her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods be
leafless--they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who can
tell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? The
fields laugh not now--but here and there they smile. If we see no
flowers we think of them--and less of the perished than of the unborn;
for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise of
joy--and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty how
restorative to man's troubled heart!

The Shortest Day in all the year--yet is it lovelier than the Longest.
Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancy
filled the sky--with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In the
air life is audible--circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited by
happiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar--the self-same Robin
Redbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from the
gable of the school-house his sweet winter song!

In company we are silent--in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do we
love our own voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed with that of
others--perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in the
hush expectant of our "golden opinions," when all eyes are turned to the
speechless "old man eloquent," and you might hear a tangle dishevelling
itself in Neaera's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country,
among trees standing still among untrodden leaves--as now--how we do
speak! All thoughts--all feelings--desire utterance