FEBRUARY. 45 



What picturesque ruin is there scattered around 

 you ! Trees overwhelmed, immense branches 

 torn down, small boughs broken, and dry 

 leaves whirled along, or quivering in the air 

 like birds. What a harvest of decayed sticks 

 for the Goody Blakes, who, with their checked- 

 aprons held up, will not fail to discover it! 

 What a harvest too for the newspapers, which 

 will be filled for a season with calamitous ac- 

 counts of accidents and deaths by falling of 

 chimneys, shipwrecks, and so forth ! 



Towards the end of the month, we are glad- 

 dened with symptoms of approaching spring. 

 On warm banks the commencement of vegeta- 

 tion is perceptible, the sap is stirring in the 

 trees, swelling and feeding the buds ; in gardens 

 a variety of green things are peeping from the 

 earth, and snow-drops, hepaticas, etc. are ac- 

 tually in bloom. 



In towns it is a cheering sight, even while 

 all without is frosty and wintry, to see, as we 

 pass, in cottage windows, tufts of crocuses and 

 snow-drops flowering in pots ; and in those of 

 wealthier dwellings hyacinths, narcissi, etc. in 

 glasses, displaying their bulbs and long fibrous 

 roots in the clear water below, and the verdure 

 and flowery freshness of summer above. It is 



