62 FEBRUARY. 



mad for their escape. Many a beautiful, many a 

 wild, many an animating spectacle is to be wit- 

 nessed on the shores of our happy isle in such 

 moments. What anxious groups are collected on 

 the quays of populous ports ! What lonely peril is 

 encountered on distant strands, where the solitary 

 fisherman picks up a troubled and precarious liveli- 

 hood ! 



Then too for the most animated scene which the 

 inland country can exhibit in all the twelve months, 

 a scene mixed with no slight touches of the gro- 

 tesque. Wherever you go, the people, perhaps sud- 

 denly aroused from the tranquil fireside of a Sunday 

 afternoon, are swarming upon the roofs of their 

 houses, like bees startled from their cells by the un- 

 expected appearance of some formidable intruder, 

 toiling to resist the outrageous attack of the storm 

 upon the thatch; which is, here and there, torn 

 clean from the rafters, and in other places heaves 

 and pants as if impatient to try a flight into the next 

 fields, or garden. There is an universal erection of 

 ladders, a bustling, anxious laying-on of logs, rails, 

 harrows, or whatsoever may come to hand to keep 

 down the mutinous roof. Old wives, with spectacled 

 noses, and kerchiefs incontinently tied over their 

 mob-caps, are seen reconnoitring pig-sties, hen- 

 roosts, etc. lest they be blown down, or something 

 be blown down upon them. What a solemn and 

 sublime roar too there is in the woods a sound as 

 of tempestuous seas ! What poetical spirit can hear 



