A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 47 



For my own part I prefer a winter walk that takes in the 

 nightfall and the intense silence that erelong follows it. 

 The evening lamps look yellower by contrast with the snow, 

 and give the windows that hearty look of which our 

 secretive fires have almost robbed them. The stars seem 



&quot; To hang, like twinkling winter lamps, 

 Among the branches of the leafless trees,&quot; 



or, if you are on a hill-top (whence it is sweet to watch the 

 home-lights gleam out one by one), they look nearer than in 

 summer, and appear to take a conscious part in the cold. 

 Especially in one of those stand-stills of the air that forebode 

 a change of weather, the sky is dusted with motes of fire of 

 which the summer-watcher never dreamed. Winter, too, is, 

 on the whole, the triumphant season of the moon, a moon 

 devoid of sentiment, if you choose, but with the refreshment 

 of a purer intellectual light the cooler orb of middle life. 

 Who ever saw anything to match that gleam, rather 

 divined than seen, which runs before her over the snow, a 

 breath of light, as she rises on the infinite silence of winter 

 night ? High in the heavens also she seems to bring out 

 some intenser property of cold with her chilly polish. The 

 poets have instinctively noted this. When Goody Blake 

 imprecates a curse of perpetual chill upon Harry Gill, she 

 has 



&quot; The cold, cold moon above her head ; &quot; 

 and Coleridge speaks of 



&quot; The silent icicles, 

 Quietly gleaming to the quiet moon.&quot; 



As you walk homeward, for it is time that we should 

 end our ramble, you may perchance hear the most 

 impressive sound in nature, unless it be the fall of a 

 tree in the forest during the hush of summer noon. It 

 is the stifled shriek of the lake yonder as the frost 

 throttles it. Wordsworth has described it (too much, I 

 fear, in the style of Dr. Armstrong) : 



&quot; And, interrupting oft that eager game, 

 From under Esthwaite s splitting fields of ice, 



