tranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh--almost a
sob--is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's self
seems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine--

"Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"

Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at the
pathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier in
her captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!

How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charity
to all who have roofs overhead--towards the houseless and them who
huddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blankets
must have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan is
preferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too--nor do we find fault
with them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that give
relief to misery--and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of the
poor.

Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows,
and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?
and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He has
driven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle--and to-morrow we
must be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go to
bed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryish
acknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power of
King Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not--though Ultra-Trimmers try
to impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so we
shall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil,
and the Chartists.

STROLL TO GRASSMERE.

FIRST SAUNTER.

Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weather
of our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth been
in the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regular
intervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation on
the barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all the
fluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which we
live, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticed
that meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing the
head of the god above the mark "fair," or "settled," out they march in
thins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump falls
down in a deluge, that, returning home by water