44 A garden where we can distract ourselves a moment 

 with our flowers from the conversation of our books ; 

 nothing of all this is useless for that health of the 

 soul necessary to the works of the mind/* 



ERNEST RENAN. 



DECEMBER 



T3LEAK and bare stretches the December landscape till 

 lost in the thick, overhanging mist. Nowhere is the 

 dreariness of the Winter more noticeable than where 



" Through a leafless landscape flows a river." 



We, many of us, remember this beautiful line of Longfellow's, 

 and the poem in which it occurs, where our friendships are 

 so exquisitely likened to a river the river of memory 

 flowing unchanged through our lives like the river flowing 

 through the Winter land, even though 



" Life grows bare and tarnished with decay." 



To walk in Nature's ruined temple is not an unpleasant 

 recreation when the day happens to be bright and frosty. 

 How truly delightful is the first real frost of the Winter, 

 which often does not take place until early in the year's last 

 month, with the white rime flung everywhere, sparkling in the 

 sunlight. Yet 



" How brief the frost the first ! how fairy-like 



Its touch on leaf and flower jewels lost 

 When morn-mists clear gleams sun on pale and spike ; 

 How brief the frost ! 



Yet for its frail, brief beauty this the cost 



The trees are robbed to fill the waiting dyke, 

 The last rose doomed, the Summer's lovely host. 



309 



