and the breadth of her soles,
and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Her
fine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice--and her huge hips are
set off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to have
picked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from a
long voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting rid
of certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with less
resemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered old
beldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeble
fire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in the
melted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is indurated
with frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, and
an old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, cowering
crone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's hand
in his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in the
picture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a big
blockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warming
his loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox.

Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere critics
on art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always no
inconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, or
prose-works, that--pardon our tautology--are popular with the people.
The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations of
persons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the old
masters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, in
general, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in a
Wayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little round
deal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese and
butter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"--have we after a
long day's journey--perhaps the longest day--

"Through moors and mosses many, O,"

regarded with no imaginative spirit--when Joseph and his brethren were
wanting--even such symbols of the Seasons as these--while arose to
gladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods and
wildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimage
to her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoop
his head below the lowest lintel, a