28 FROM A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 



trellised with the silver of the lingering frost, as the morning 

 opens, with an equal mingling of Winter and Spring. The 

 blackbird searching for food is visible from a distance there 

 in the meadow, its plumage glistening, its yellow beak 

 sparkling. Above, the sky is that of earliest Spring, and 

 one of an ever-changeable blue, although not that which 

 April delights in. That the time of Spring is almost here 

 we may know at a glance : the furze is growing yellow with 

 unblown buds, and the stream, clear -grown and strained 

 of all its dead leaves, winds through the meadows like a 

 slender silver vein, encircling the copse, where primroses 

 and anemones grow impatient to blossom with a narrow 

 band of reflected light. 



The snow has melted away, which lately fell to a great 

 depth. The snow permits of a silence unlike any other 

 quietude, and also shows many a beauty of outline which 

 one discovers suddenly. Above the silver silence of the 

 snow the golden stars of the winter jasmine take the eye 

 with its mass of colour ; and how green, too, shows the 

 grass where first the land bares its breast to melting snows 

 and the February sunlight ! February snow shows many a 

 graceful curve in old buildings ; with our late snows a cluster 

 of old houses are made beautiful beyond words, that all the 

 summer, with their ill-shaped roofs and chimneys, appear so 

 hopeless and comfortless, yet with the magic touch of the 

 snow, looking so happily contented almost grand ! For a 

 melodious note sounded in praise of winter one should go 

 to Thoreau's " Walden," colour and sound therein are so 

 faithfully recorded. " After a still winter night," he writes, 

 " I woke with the impression that some question had been 

 put to me, which I had been endeavouring in vain to answer 



