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WINTER, like every other season, has its appropriate sentiments, but suited to the mood of the poet's mind. It suggests pictures of home comfort:

Let Winter come! let polar spirits sweep

The darkening world, and tempest-troubled deep!
Though boundless snows the wither'd heath deform,
And the dim sun scarce wanders through the storm,
Yet shall the smile of social love repay,

With mental light, the melancholy day!

And, when its short and sullen noon is o'er,

The ice-chain'd waters slumbering on the shore,

How bright the faggots in his little hall

Blaze on the hearth, and warm the pictur'd wall!

CAMPBELL.

Even its gloom has its inspiration of solemn musings, such as Burns has beautifully described:-"As I am what the men of the world, if they knew such a man, would call a whimsical mortal, I have various sources of pleasure and enjoyment, which are, in a manner, peculiar to myself, or some here and there such other out-of-the-way person. Such is the peculiar pleasure I take in the season of winter, more than the rest of the year. This, I believe, may be partly owing to my misfortunes giving my mind a melancholy cast: but there is something even in the

Mighty tempest, and the hoary waste,

Abrupt, and deep stretch'd o'er the buried earth,

which raises the mind to a serious solemnity, favourable to every thing great and noble. There is scarcely any earthly object gives me more-I do not know if I should call it plea sure-but something which exalts me, something which enraptures me-than to walk in the sheltered side of a wood, or high plantation, in a cloudy winter day, and hear the stormy wind howling among the trees, and raving over the plain. It is my best season for devotion: my mind is wrapt up in a kind of enthusiasm to Him who, in the pompous language of the Hebrew bard, walks on the wings of the wind." In one of these seasons, just after a train of misfortunes, I composed the following:

4TH QUARTER

The wintry west extends his blast

And hail and rain does blaw:

Or the stormy north sends driving forth

The blinding sleet and snaw:

While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,

And roars frae bank to brae;

And bird and beast in covert rest,

And pass the heartless day.

The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast,
The joyless winter day,

Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:

The tempest's howl, it soothes my soul,

My griefs it seems to join;

The leafless trees my fancy please,

Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Pow'r Supreme, whose mighty scheme

These woes of mine fulfil;

Here firm I rest, they must be best,

Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (oh? do thou grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign."

Winter calls up the personifications of the painter-poets:-
Lastly, came Winter clothed all in frieze,

Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freeze,
And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill
As from a limbeck did adown distill:
In his right hand a tipped staff he held,
With which his feeble steps he stayed still;
For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld;
That scarce his loosed limbs he able was to weld.

Winter sets the poetical observer to his natural descriptions:

It was frosty winter season,

And fair Flora's wealth was geason*.
Meads that erst with green were spread,
With choice flowers diap'red,

Had tawny veils; cold and scanted
What the spring and nature planted.
Leafless boughs there might you see,
All, except fair Daphne's tree:
On their twigs no birds perch'd,
Warmer coverts now they search'd ;
And, by nature's surest reason,
Framed their voices to the season;
With their feeble tunes bewraying
How they grieved the spring's decaying
Frosty winter thus had gloom'd

Each fair thing that summer bloom'd ;
Fields were bare, and trees unclad,

Flow'rs wither'd, birds were sad:

When I saw a shepherd fold

Sheep in cote to shun the cold;
Himself sitting on the grass,
That with frost wither'd was

Sighing deeply, thus 'gan say,

SPENSER.

"Love is folly, when astray."

GREENE.

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SACKVILLE.

With chilling cold had pierced the tender green;
The mantle's rent, wherein enwrapped been

The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every tree down blown.
The soil that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoiled of her beauties' hue;

And soot fresh flowers (wherewith the summer's Queen
Had clad the earth) now Boreas' blasts down blew.
And small fowls flocking, in their song did rue

The winter's wrath, wherewith each thing defaced,
In woeful wise bewail'd the summer past.

Hawthorn had lost his motley livery:

The naked twigs were shivering all for cold;
And dropping down the tears abundantly,

Each thing (methought) with weeping eye me told
The cruel season: bidding me withhold

Myself within, for I was gotten out

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Into the fields, whereas I walk'd about.
The modern bard moralizes on Winter in unrhymed lyrics :-
Though now no more the musing ear
Delights to listen to the breeze,
That lingers o'er the green-wood shade,
I love thee, Winter! well.

Sweet are the harmonies of Spring,

Sweet is the Summer's evening gale,

And sweet the autumnal winds that shake

The many colour'd grove.

And pleasant to the sober'd soul

The silence of the wintry scene,

When Nature shrouds herself, entranced

In deep tranquillity.

Not undelightful now to roam

The wild heath sparkling on the sight;
Not undelightful now to pace

The forest's ample rounds.

And see the spangled branches shine
And mark the moss of many a hue
That varies the old tree's brown bark,
As o'er the gray stone spreads.
And mark the cluster'd berries bright
Amid the holly's gay green leaves;
The ivy round the leafless oak

That clasps its foliage close.
So Virtue, diffident of strength,
Clings to Religion's firmer aid,
And, by Religion's aid upheld,

Endures calamity.

Nor void of beauties now the spring,
Whose waters hid from summer sun

Have soothed the thirsty pilgrim's ear
With more than melody.

The green moss shines with icy glare ;
The long grass bends its spear-like form;
And lovely is the silvery scene

When faint the sun-beams smile.

Reflection too may love the hour
When Nature, hid in Winter's grave,
No more expands the bursting bud,
Or bids the flowret bloom;

For Nature soon in Spring's best charms
Shall rise revived from Winter's grave,

Expand the bursting bud again,

And bid the flower rebloom.

SOUTHEY.

The contrasts of Summer and Winter were never more harmoniously put than by the great master of metrical harmony:—

It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,

Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
When the north wind congregates in crowds
The floating mountains of the silver clouds
From the horizon-and the stainless sky
Opens beyond them like eternity.

All things rejoiced beneath the sun, the weeds,
The river and the corn-fields, and the reeds;

The willow leaves that glanced in the light breeze,

And the firm foliage of the larger trees.

It was a winter such as when birds die

In the deep forests; and the fishes lie

Stiffened in the translucent ice, which makes
Even the mud and slime of the warm lakes
A wrinkled clod, as hard as brick; and when
Among their children, comfortable men

Gather about great fires, and yet feel cold :
Alas! then for the homeless beggar old!

SHELLEY.

Even the homely song of the Ayrshire ploughman, engrafted upon an old melody, is beautiful and true :

Up in the morning 's no for me,

Up in the morning early;

When a' the hills are cover'd wi' snaw,

I'm sure it's winter fairly.

Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,

The drift is driving sairly;

Sae loud and shrill's I hear the blast,
I'm sure it's winter fairly.

The birds sit chittering in the thorn,
A' day they fare but sparely;

And lang's the night frae e'en to morn,
I'm sure it's winter fairly.

Up in the morning, &c.

BURNS

275.-REFLECTIONS UPON EXILE.

BOLINGBROKE. WHO now reads Bolingbroke?' said Burke. Few, indeed. Some are deterred by his character for infidelity; some because many of the subjects on which he treats are of temporary interest. A great orator of our own day has written his panegyric. Of his abilities no one can doubt: of his honesty we are inclined to believe that it was neither much below nor much above the standard by which most orators and party leaders are tried by those who come after them. But as an author he has remarkable merit. Pope called him "the best writer of his age." The following extract is from his 'Reflections upon Exile.' It would be interesting if only viewed in connection with his own circumstances. It is professedly an imitation of Seneca. Noble as are some of the sentiments, pure as is the style, we cannot avoid seeing how insufficient is mere philosophy to take the sting out of adverse fortune; and we know moreover that his own exile had none of the calm he describes, but that he lived and died an intriguer. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was born at Battersea in 1678. His political life belongs to history. He was an exile from 1715 to 1728, being attainted of High Treason; but was permitted to return to England, and was restored to his property, though always excluded from the House of Lords. He died in 1751.]

Dissipation of mind and length of time are the remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions. But the first of these work a temporary, the second a slow effect; and such are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and fondly to imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some moments of respite from pain? Or shall we expect from time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of their strength? Far otherwise. Let us set all our past and present afflictions at once before our eyes. Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incision knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.

The recalling of former misfortunes serves to fortify the mind against later. He must blush to sink under the anguish of one wound, who surveys a body seamed over with the scars of many, and who has come victorious out of all the conflicts wherein he received them. Let sighs and tears, and fainting under the lightest stroke of adverse fortune be the portion of those unhappy people whose tender minds a long course of felicity has enervated; while such as have passed through years of calamity, bear up, with a noble and immoveable constancy, against the heaviest. Uninterrupted misery has this good effect, as it continually torments, it finally hardens.

Such is the language of philosophy; and happy is the man who acquires the right of holding it. But this right is not to be acquired by pathetic discourse. Our conduct can alone give it us; and, therefore, instead of presuming on our strength, the surest method is to confess our weakness, and, without loss of time, to apply ourselves to the study of wisdom. This was the advice which the oracle gave to Zeno, and there is no other way of securing our tranquillity amidst all the accidents to which human life is exposed.

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In order to which great end, it is necessary that we stand watchful, as sentinels, to discover the secret wiles and open attacks of the capricious goddess, Fortune, before they reach us. Where she falls upon us unexpectedly, it is hard to resist ; but those who wait for her, will repel her with ease. The sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee the war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, stand, without difficulty, the first

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