42 A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 



more masculine qualities and adds the cheer of battle with 

 that dumb artillery which gives pain enough to test pluck 

 without risk of serious hurt. Already, as I write, it is 

 twenty odd years ago. The balls fly thick and fast. The 

 uncle defends the waist-high ramparts against a storm of 

 nephews, his breast plastered with decorations like another 

 Radetzky s. How well I recall the indomitable good- 

 humour under fire of him who fell in the front at Ball s 

 Bluff, the silent pertinacity of the gentle scholar who got 

 his last hurt at Fair Oaks, the ardour in the charge of the 

 gallant gentleman who, with the death-wound in his side, 

 headed his brigade at Oedar Creek ! How it all comes 

 back, and they never come ! I cannot again be the Yauban 

 of fortresses in the innocent snow, but I shall never see 

 children moulding their clumsy giants in it without longing 

 to help. It was a pretty fancy of the young Vermont 

 sculptor to make his first essay in this evanescent material. 

 Was it a figure of Youth, I wonder ? Would it not be well 

 if all artists could begin in stuff as perishable, to melt away 

 when the sun of prosperity began to shine, and leave 

 nothing behind but the gain of practised hands ? It is 

 pleasant to fancy that Shakespeare served his apprentice 

 ship at this trade, and owed to it that most pathetic of 

 despairing wishes, 



11 0, that I were a mockery-king of snow, 

 Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 

 To melt myself away in water-drops ! &quot; 



I have spoken of the exquisite curves of snow surfaces. 

 Not less rare are the tints of which they are capible the 

 faint blue of the hollows, for the shadows in snow are 

 always blue, and the tender rose of higher points, as you 

 stand with your back to the setting sun and look upward 

 across the soft rondure of a hill-side. I have seen within a 

 mile of home effects of colour as lovely as any iridescence 

 of the Silberhorn after sundown. Charles II., who never 

 said a foolish thing, gave the English climate the highest 

 praise when he said that it allowed you more hours out of 



