DECEMBER. 333 



gon-flies, beetles, wasps, and warrior-hornets, bees, 

 and cockchafers, whither have they fled ? Some, no 

 doubt, have lived out their little term of being, and 

 their bodies, lately so splendid, active, and alive to 

 a thousand instincts, feelings, and propensities, are 

 become part and parcel of the dull and wintry soil; 

 but the greater portion have shrunk into the hollows 

 of trees and rocks, and into the bosom of their 

 mother earth itself, where, with millions of seeds 

 and roots, and buds, they live in the great treasury 

 of Nature, ready at the call of a more auspicious 

 season to people the world once more with beauty 

 and delight. 



As in the inferior world of creatures, so is it with 

 man. The wealthy have vacated their country 

 houses, and congregated in the great Babylon of 

 pleasure and dissipation ; families are collected round 

 the social hearth, where Christmas brings his annual 

 store of frolic and festivities ; and the author, like the 

 bee, withdrawn to his hive, revels amid the sweets 

 of his summer gathering. It is amusing to imagine 

 what a host of pens are at this moment in motion, 

 in sundry places in this little island ! In splendid 

 libraries, furnished with every bodily comfort, and 

 every literary and scientific resource, where the 

 noble or popular author fills the sheet which the 

 smile of the bibliopole and reader awaits, and 

 almost anticipates; in naked and ghastly garrets, 

 where the " poor-devil-author" scrawls, with num- 

 bed fingers and a shivering frame, what will be 

 coldly received, and as quickly forgotten as himself; 



