moist grass, a cluster of cypresses or whenever your eye lights upon the one wood of the district, the long olive grove of the Cephissus, you are struck with a sudden sense of richness, and feel as if the splendours of the tropics would be nothing to this."

Most travellers have been fascinated by the beauty of night in the tropics. Our evenings no doubt are often delicious also, though the mild climate we enjoy is partly due to the sky being so often overcast. In parts of the tropics, however, the air is calm and cloudless throughout nearly the whole of the year. There is no dew, and the inhabitants sleep on the house-tops, in full view of the brightness of the stars and the beauty of the sky, which is almost indescribable.

"Il faisait," says Bernardin de St. Pierre of such a scene, "une de ces nuits délicieuses, si communes entre les tropiques, et dont le plus abile pinceau ne rendrait pas le beauté. La lune paraissait au milieu du firmament, entourée d'un rideau de nuages, que ses rayons dissipaient par degrés. Sa lumière se répandait insensiblement sur les montagnes de l'île

et sur leurs pitons, qui brillaient d'un vert argenté. Les vents retenaient leurs haleines. On entendait dans les bois, au fond des vallées, au haut des rochers, de petits cris, de doux murmures d'oiseaux, qui se caressaient dans leurs nids, réjouis par la clarté de la nuit et la tranquillité de l'air. Tous, jusqu'aux insectes, bruissaient sous l'herbe. Les étoiles étincelaient au ciel, et se réfléchissaient au sein de la mer, qui répétait leurs images tremblantes."

In the Arctic and Antarctic regions the nights are often made quite gorgeous by the Northern Lights or Aurora borealis, and the corresponding appearance in the Southern hemisphere. The Aurora borealis generally begins towards evening, and first appears as a faint glimmer in the north, like the approach of dawn. Gradually a curve of light spreads like an immense arch of yellowish-white hue, which gains rapidly in brilliancy, flashes and vibrates like a flame in the wind. Often two or even three arches appear one over the other. After a while coloured rays dart upwards in divergent pencils, often green below, yellow in the centre, and crimson

D

above, while it is said that sometimes almost black, or at least very dark violet, rays are interspersed among the rings of light, and heighten their effect by contrast. Sometimes the two ends of the arch seem to rise off the horizon, and the whole sheet of light throbs and undulates like a fringed curtain of light; sometimes the sheaves of rays unite into an immense cupola; while at others the separate rays seem alternately lit and extinguished. Gradually the light flickers and fades away, and has generally disappeared before the first glimpse of dawn.

We seldom see the Aurora in the south of England, but we must not complain; our winters are mild, and every month has its own charm and beauty.

In January we have the lengthening days.

It is well to begin the year in January, for we have then before us all the hope of spring.

Oh wind,

If winter comes, can spring be long behind?1

Spring seems to revive us all. In the Song

of Solomon

My beloved spake, and said unto me,

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past,

The rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth;

The time of the singing of birds is come,

The voice of the turtle is heard in our land,

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,

And the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.

1 Shelley.

"But indeed there are days," says Emerson, "which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection, when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring. These halcyon days may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather, which we distinguish by the name of the Indian summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny hours, seems longevity enough." Yet does not the very name of Indian summer imply the superiority of the summer itself, the real, the true summer, "when the young corn is bursting into ear; the awned heads of rye, wheat, and barley, and the nodding panicles of oats, shoot from their green and glaucous stems, in broad, level, and waving expanses of present beauty and future promise. The very waters are strewn with flowers: the buck-bean, the water-violet, the elegant flowering rush, and the queen of the waters, the pure and splendid