trunk. Just at the foot there are one or two roots of the autumn-crocus remaining in flower: every year they come up in the same place. Until quite recently a pair of magpies built in this ash-tree on each succeeding spring. The leaves were generally so thick that we seldom saw the nest until October; but the birds were seen every day. They were very regular in their habits, and might be observed flying together up and down the Glen at a certain hour every morning. It is not often that these birds are to be found so near a large town. Two other trees are noticeable, a chestnut and a willow. The chestnut, being low down, and protected from the wind, has retained its leaves; and as these are touched with the fieriest tints of autumn it presents a splendid sight. They will all have fallen, however, in a day or two. As I look at it I think of those fantastic lines by William Allingham :

Bright yellow, red, and orange,

The leaves come down in hosts;
The trees are Indian princes,

But soon they'll turn to ghosts;

The leathery pears and apples

Hang russet on the bough,

It's Autumn, Autumn, Autumn late,
'Twill soon be Winter now.

The willow has been curiously warped in its youth,

and grows right across the brook like a bridge, from

one side to the other, some of the branches turning towards the sky and others downward towards the water. It is such a willow as that on whose 'pendent boughs' the poor Ophelia hung her 'coronet weeds: '

A willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.

The Glen is, as might be expected, a famous place for birds, though they are, of course, becoming more rare. The cuckoo used to be a regular visitant; the wrens build in the bank near the willow mentioned above; the blackbird is common: but the most frequent of all is the throstle. Indeed, my old friend, the stalwart author of the 'Passages in the Life of a Radical,' once told me, as we were sitting together one summer's day on these very slopes, that in his boyhood the place was always known as 'Throstle Glen.'

The winter seems to be coming upon us early. On the twenty-eighth there was hail; and again last night. This morning there was ice on the walks, the heads of the dahlias were down, and the thermometer showed that we had had six degrees of frost. The robin felt the cold, and knew what it meant, I think; for he began to show a desire for closer acquaintance. As I stood and whistled for him on the lawn he came

within two yards of me, lifting up his face in a pert fashion, and showing his deep yellow breast-it is hardly red yet—and then fluttering back into a neighbouring thorn.

NOVEMBER

November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh ;
The short'ning winter day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;
The blackening trains o' craws to their repose:
The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes,

This night his weekly moil is at an end,

Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,

Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,

And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward bend.
ROBERT BURNS, The Cotter's Saturday Night.

XLIII. THE FIRST WEEK OF WINTER:

RED-LETTER DAYS.

November 6.

THIS week must be set down as the beginning of our winter. We shall, no doubt, have intervals of warmer weather; but none the less we are constrained to admit that the severe season has made good its place and has developed already all its most characteristic forms. Every night there has been frost, the thermometer falling once as low as twenty-three degrees. On the first of the month the pond was entirely covered with ice, and the rime was very thick

on the grass. On the morning of the second there was a little sleety snow lying on the ground. On the third the sun rose with that red and beamless aspect which always suggests the very depth of winter; and on the fourth there came a heavy white fog, which prevented us from seeing more than a yard or two from the window. It is interesting to observe how similar the weather is to that which we had at the beginning of the year, when we were as far past the shortest day as we are now on this side of it. The exhilarating brightness, the depressing gloom, the blind fog, and the sun-illumined mist are the exact counterparts of what we were having in the month of February.

As the cold weather comes upon us the red-letter days seem to increase in the calendar. The week has been quite a succession of festivals. First came Halloween, the Vigil of All Saints; or, in the earlier tongue, of All Hallows. However lukewarm we older people may become with regard to these holidays the young folks, especially in country houses, are not disposed to let them sink into desuetude; and so in the kitchen there was a larger fire than usual, and in the middle of the floor a great pail of

water, filled with some of those apples which a little while ago we had gathered from the trees. The