30 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



Even in our own climate, where the sun shows his winter 

 face as long and as brightly as in central Italy, the seduction 

 of the chimney-corner is apt to predominate in the mind over 

 the severer satisfactions of muffled fields and penitential 

 woods. The very title of Whittier s delightful Snow-Bound 

 shows what he was thinking of, though he does not vapour a 

 little about digging out paths. The verses of Emerson, per 

 fect as a Greek fragment (despite the archaism of a dissyl 

 labic fire), which he has chosen for his epigraph, tell us too 

 how the 



Housemates sit 



Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 

 In a tumultuous privacy of storm. 



They are all in a tale. It is always the tristis Hiems of 

 Virgil. Catch one of them having a kind word for old Barbe 

 Fleurie, unless he whines through some cranny, like a beggar, 

 to heighten their enjoyment while they toast their slippered 

 toes. I grant there is a keen relish of contrast about the 

 bickering flame as it gives an emphasis beyond Gherardo 

 della Notte to loved faces, or kindles the gloomy gold of 

 volumes scarce less friendly, especially when a tempest is 

 blundering round the house. Wordsworth has a fine touch 

 that brings home to us the comfortable contrast of without 

 and within, during a storm at night, and the passage is 

 highly characteristic of a poet whose inspiration always has 

 an undertone of bourgeois: 



How touching, when, at midnight, sweep 

 Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark, 

 To hear, and sink again to sleep ! 



J. H., one of those choice poets who will not tarnish their 

 bright fancies by publication, always insists on a snow-storm 

 as essential to the true atmosphere of whist. Mrs. Battles, 

 in her famous rule for the game, implies winter, and would 

 doubtless have added tempest, if it could be had for the 

 asking. For a good solid read also, into the small hours, 

 there is nothing like that sense of safety against having your 

 evening laid waste, which Euroclydon brings, as he bellows 

 down the chimney, making your fire gasp, or rustles snow- 

 flakes against the pane with a sound more soothing than 

 silence. Emerson, as he is apt to do, not only hit the nail 

 on the head, but drove it home, in that last phrase of the 

 tumultuous privacy. 



