278 IValks in New England 



Nothing in Nature for perfectness of peace 

 compares with the winter landscape beneath the 

 moon. This moon, just completing its second 

 quarter, rarely so luminous in this phase, bestows 

 its beams on the snowy expanse with a soft and 

 tender grace that makes the whole earth half 

 ethereal, and the tree-tops that define themselves 

 upon the steely sky are sublimed by their far, 

 mysterious background. The moon lies like a 

 boat in the mystic sea, and far beyond it in in 

 finite darkening depths the incredible myriads of 

 stars are dimly visible. Light clouds sweep low 

 behind the trees and disappear. Rarely a mass 

 of snowy fleece sails upward, gleans a tinge of 

 amber from the moon-beams, dissolves and van 

 ishes. Then up the vault drives swiftly a hurry 

 ing vail of mists, that pass, like lace-work end 

 lessly purveyed, over the face of Phoebe, reflect 

 ing her glance in amber and amethyst tints, and 

 they, too, disappear into the distant heavens. 

 Then, southward, drops with strange deliberation 

 a brilliant meteor, glowing with heat and splendid 

 in colour, that seems to fall in the next field, 

 but there are few really to see a meteor fall to 

 earth. 



Such are the charms of a winter night, while 

 beneath all the business and pleasure and passion 

 and sleep of the actual human world go on ; the 



