Green nearly free, has buried all northward of that line, in a vast fall of snow, sweeping across the country even to the shores of the Irish Channel. The mails are stopped, the snowdrifts in many places are stated to be twentyfive feet deep, and great numbers of sheep have perished beneath them,-one farmer having dug out one hundred and fifty in one place, all dead. Hogg, the highly-gifted Ettrick Shepherd, one of the most splendid specimens of the peasantpoet, has given in his "Shepherd's Calendar" some exceedingly interesting details of such events. The delights of the social hearth on such evenings as these, when the wild winds are howling around our dwellings, dashing the snow, or hail, or splashing rain against our windows, are a favourite theme with poets, essayists, and writers on the Seasons. And truly it is an inspiring topic. All our ideas of comfort, of domestic affection, of social and literary enjoyment, are combined in the picture they draw of the winter fire-side. How often have those lines of Cowper been quoted, commencing, Now stir the fire and close the shutters fast, Let fall the curtain, wheel the sofa round, And while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn Such is the BRITISH FIRE-SIDE! and we love to hear our writers speaking of its pleasures in strains of enthusiasm. But we may expand the picture. We may add to the zest of its personal, and almost too selfish enjoyments, touches of generous and philanthropic sentiment which will signally heighten its pleasures, and enlarge its power of improving the heart. How delightful, while sitting in the midst of our family, or friendly group, in actual possession of the pleasures just enumerated, not only to contemplate our own happiness, but to send our thoughts abroad over the whole land! To think what thousands of families in this noble country, are at the same moment thus blessedly collected round the social flame. What hearths are lit up with all the charms of kindred affection, of mature wisdom and parental pride; of youthful gladness, gaiety and beauty! How many rural halls and city homes are shining, like stars in their own places, in unabated warmth and splendour, though hid beneath the broad veil of wintry darkness,—the lover's evening visit,-song, wine, the wild tale told to the listening circle, or the unfolded stores of polite literature, making each a little paradise! Then to turn from the bright side of the picture to the dark one. Το The huts were poor men lie, where the elegancies and amenities of life cast not their glow, But frosty winds blaw in the drift upon shivering groups who have but little de- Ill satisfied keen nature's clamorous call, Stretched on his straw himself lays down to sleep, BURNS. When the mother sees not her rosy and laughing children snugly consigned to their warm, soft beds, but contemplates with a heart deadened with the miseries of to-day, and the fears of to-morrow, a sad little squalid crew around her, who, instead of pleasures and pastimes, know only wants and evils which dwarf both body and soul. Where, perhaps, illness has superadded its aggravations, its pains and languors to a poverty which renders the comforts and indulgences of a sick room the most hopeless of all things. These are the speculations to enhance our fireside pleasures, and to make those pleasures fruitful; linking our sympathies to the joys and sorrows of our kind, and arousing us to a course of active benevolence. To proceed, however, to the varieties of wintry weather, this month more than all others shows us THE CONTINUED FROST-A frost that, day after day, and week after week, makes a steady abode with us, till the beaten roads become dusty as in summer. It every day penetrates deeper into the earth, and farther into our houses; almost verifying the common saying, 66 January will freeze the pot upon the fire." Our windows in the morning are covered with a fine opaque frost-work, resembling the leaves and branches of forest-trees, and the water is frozen in the ewer. The small birds are hop ping, with half-erected feathers, upon our doorsills, driven to seek relief from creation's tyrants by the still more pressing tyranny of cold and famine. The destruction of birds, and of all the smaller animals, in a continued frost, is immense, particularly if it be accompanied by snow. Snow is a general informer, betraying the footsteps of every creature, great and small. The poacher and the gamekeeper are equally on the alert, while it lies freshly upon the ground; the one to track game, the other vermin; and thousands of polecats, weasels, stoats, rats, otters, badgers, and similar little nightly depredators, are traced to their hiding-places in old buildings, banks, and hollow trees, and marked for certain destruction. The poacher, particularly on moonlight nights, makes havoc with game. Partridges, nestled down in a heap on the stubble, are conspicuous objects; and hares, driven for food to gardens and turnip-fields, are destroyed by hundreds. Woodpigeons are killed in great numbers on cabbage and turnip-fields by day, and by moonlight are shot in the trees where they roost. Larks frequent stubbles in vast flocks, and are destroyed by gun or net. There is an account, illustrated |