to blow, and down upon us came both the fog and a partial thaw.

Is anything worse than fog in winter? Dante, with a proper insight, makes the Inferno foggy

To no great distance could our sight
Through the thick fog and darken'd air discern.

and again

Now let thy visual nerve direction take

Along that ancient foam, and where abide
The densest fogs.

Of course, there is a fog in the Ancient Mariner. Coleridge could not have missed such an opportunity; and, mark, it is a white fog, the most ghastly kind, and that from which we have been suffering:

In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine;

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white Moon-shine.

Tennyson, too, has made good use of this same white fog. In the sad opening of Guinevere we have it :

The white mist, like a face-cloth to the face,

Clung to the dead earth, and the land was still;

and in the Passing of Arthur, when that last battle of the west was going on, and when friend and foe were all as shadows, we are told that—

A deathwhite mist slept over land and sea :
Whereof the chill, to him who breathed it, drew
Down with his blood, till all his heart was cold
With formless fear.

This is bad enough; but there are always compensations. In the cheerless twilight I was walking in our little wood, when all at once a robin started from a bough in front of me, and, as he will do even in the dead of winter, piped forth his flute solo. had not been drawn down into his blood.

The chill

But it was

soon over the short song and the last flicker of daylight both died away together.

V.-A FROSTY MORNING.

February 13.

There are few appearances of winter more pleasant than the typical 'frosty morning.' I have not seen Turner's picture of that name; but the spectacle of which I am thinking could not have been painted even by him; nor by any could it be adequately described. We had such a morning yesterday. The sky was not clouded, but it was covered with a haze which was itself so full of light that it might be said to have had the quality of brightness. The sun rose only two or three fields away: he was a near neighbour; his light streamed through the hedges; he seemed to be set in the middle of the landscape, and to be turning everything to his own substance and colour. A hardy whiterose bush, conspicuous for its forward leafage, glittered

all over with pearl-like drops of frozen moisture, which were mingled curiously with the little green buds. Very beautiful also were the long shadows of the trees stretching across the hoar-frosted lawn. My own shadow

Spindling into longitude immense,

In spite of gravity, and sage remark
That I myself was but a fleeting shade,
Provoked me to a smile. With eye askance
I saw the muscular proportioned limb
Transformed to a lean shank.
As they design'd to mock me,
Took step for step.

The shapeless pair,

at my

side

The weather notes of the week would furnish, a record of the most various and diverse character; frost and thaw, rain and fog, sunshine and gloom, alternating and contrasting sharply with each other. The seasons have seemed out of joint, and the characteristics of November have prevailed rather than those of February. And yet there are abundant signs that spring progresses. It is curious to note, indeed, to what an extent the resuscitation of life goes on, independently of exterior conditions. The mere lapse of time, 'the process of the suns,' apart from the accidents of heat and cold, seems to advance the march of existence, as it is said to 'widen the thoughts of men.'

Walking at noon in the lanes when the frost had melted a little on the hedge-banks, although the ice

was still thick in the ditch below, I could detect the opening leaves of a ranunculus and of two or three bright little trefoils. In the open garden the only new flower is the hardy polyanthus, some tufts of which are just ready to break into bloom. In the greenhouse there is a new pleasure: the manycoloured hyacinths are open, and load the air with their delicious odour; there is also the delicate blossom of the Scilla-amona, a dainty bit of aerial blue, more exquisite even than that of our English forget-me-not. In the hot-house the most striking things are the begonias, with their pale-pink and eccentrically-shaped flowers; and in the fernery we have a myriad-twinkling of green, an unfolding of woclly crook-shaped and caterpillar-like buds; and, best of all, a row of hart's-tongue, the new leaves of which look like six or seven white eggs laid in a green nest. Some of the old fronds of these are over two feet in length. I think those were not much larger which one used to see growing so luxuriantly on the sides of the draw-well in the courtyard of Conway Castle.

That the birds have not had a hard winter is obvious from the clusters of red berries which I still find hanging on the hawthorn bushes. Every day now they become more noisy, more demonstratively

busy and officious; but one must admit that even their elementary twittering brings a joy to the heart such as the most elaborate music would not give.

In the dove-cote I see that nest-building is going on with energy; but I do not find that there are any eggs yet. The statutory time for these, I am told, is the feast of St. Valentine.

I am much interested in an ancient-looking sparrow which comes and sits in a large thorn over my head while I am feeding the doves and peacocks. After the larger creatures have gone to a respectful distance he drops down, and in a very self-satisfied manner picks up the morsels that remain. He is a philosopher. If he cannot have first and best, he takes what he can get with dignity and composure.

VI.-SNOWDROPS.

February 20.

These first flowers of spring-what a gracious charm they have, a charm which is all their own! The meanest and poorest little blossom is more to us to-day than a whole parterre of gaily-coloured, summer favourites will be a few months hence. I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again ;' one can under