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THE 



ROMANCE or NATURAL HISTORY. 



I. 



TIMES AND SEASONS. 



" To everything there is a season ; " and, in its season, 

 everything is comely. Winter is not without its charm, 

 the charm of a grand and desolate majesty. The Arctic 

 voyagers have seen King Winter on his throne, and a full 

 royal despot he is. When the mercury is solid in the 

 bulb, to look abroad on the boundless waste of snow, all 

 silent and motionless, in the very midst of the six-months' 

 night, must be something awful. And yet there is a glory 

 and a beauty visible in perfection only then. There is 

 the moon, of dazzling brightness, circling around the 

 horizon ; there are ten thousand crystals of crisp and 

 crackling snow reflecting her beams ; there are the stars 

 flashing and sparkling with unwonted sharpness ; and 

 there is the glorious aurora spanning the purple sky with 

 its arch of coruscating beams, now advancing, now re- 

 ceding, like angelic watchers engaged in mystic dance, 

 now shooting forth spears and darts of white light with 

 rustling whisper, and now unfurling a broad flag of crim- 



