JANUARY. 267 



is divested of all those accompaniments of scenery 

 which are not in unison with grandeur. At this period, 

 therefore, the mind is affected with nobler thoughts ; it 

 is less bewildered by a multitude of fascinating objects, 

 and is more free to indulge itself in a serious train of 

 meditations. 



The exhilaration of mind attending a winter walk in 

 the fields and woods, when the earth is covered with 

 snow, surpasses any emotion of the kind which is pro- 

 duced by the appearance of Nature at other seasons. We 

 often hear in conversation of the invigorating effects of 

 cold weather ; yet those few only who are engaged in 

 rural occupations, and who spend the greater part of the 

 day in the open air, can fully realize the amount of phys- 

 ical enjoyment that springs from it. I can appreciate the 

 languid recreations of a warm summer's day. When one 

 is at leisure in the country he cannot fail to enjoy it, if 

 he can take shelter under the canopy of trees or in the 

 deeper shade of the forest. But these languid enjoyments 

 would soon become oppressive and monotonous ; and the 

 constant participation of them must cause one gradually 

 to degenerate into a mere animal. The human mind is 

 constituted to feel positive pleasure only in action. 

 Sleep and rest are mere negative conditions, to which 

 we submit with a grateful sense of their power to fit us 

 for the renewed exercise of the mind and the body. 



In our latitude, at the present era January is usually 

 the month of the greatest cold ; and in severe weather 

 there is a general stillness that is favorable to musing. 

 The little streamlets are frozen and silent, and there is 

 hardly any motion except of the winds, and of the trees 

 that bend to their force. But the works of Nature are 

 still carried on beneath the frost and snow. Though the 

 flowers are buried in their hyemal sleep, thousands of 

 unseen elements are present, all waiting to prepare their 



