----------No enemy,
But winter and rough weather,
the rural walk at this season is equally inviting with any of its
predecessors; whilst he who can "suck melancholy from a song," will find
melody in its storms and music in its wind. What are more beautiful than
the fretwork frostings of rime and hoar spread on the hedges, glistening
in the broad sun-beam, and in brilliancy and variety of colours vying
with the richest display of oriental splendour--with here and there
berries clustering on evergreens, or pendent in solitary beauty, like
the "rich jewel in the Aethiop's ear." The winter stillness of animal
life is a sublime subject for our meditation. Insects which floated on
the gay sunshine of summer and autumn have now retired to their winter
quarters, there to remain dormant till regenerated in the enlivening
warmth of spring; and even the labours of husbandry are in a state of
torpidity.
Within the circuit of gardens and shrubberies Nature, however, reserves
the evergreen pride of firs and pines; and even flowers are left to
gladden the eye of the winter observer; and the rose, that sweet emblem
of our fragile and transitory state, will live and prosper during this
month. In the forest, the oak, beech, and hornbeam in part retain their
leaves; there, too, is the endless variety of mosses, and lichens, and
ivy, spreading and clinging round aged trunks, as if to protect them
with their fond warmth, or mantling over the neglected labours of human
art, and mocking their proud import.
At this season, too, the social economy of man is wont to ripen into
mirth; and in olden time, winter was the summer of hospitality, when the
sunshine of Christmas shed its holy light on the hearts and faces of
young and old. What the present generation have gained in head, they
have lost in heart, and Christmas is almost the only surviving holiday
of the calendar. But now, alas! "we live too late in time."
If knowledge be valuable only in the proportion in which it conduces
to our happiness, then we have cause to deplore the loss of the
wassail-bowl, the sports and wrestlings of the town green, the evening
tales, and the elegant pastimes of masque, song, and dance, of our
ancestors, which the taste of our times has narrowed into a commercial
channel, or pared down to a few formal visits and their insipid returns;
and friends, families, and fortunes are often sacrificed in this
exchange.