A GOOD WORD FOR WINTER. 39 



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. Emer 

 son, 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." 



But I would exchange this, and give something to 

 boot, for the privilege of walking out into the vast blur 

 of a north-northeast snow-storm, and getting a strong 

 draught on the furnace within, by drawing the first fur 

 rows through its sandy drifts. I love those 



" Noontide twilights which snow makes 

 With tempest of the blinding flakes." 



If the wind veer too much toward the east, you get the 

 heavy snow that gives a true Alpine slope to the boughs 

 of your evergreens, and traces a skeleton of your elms in 

 white ; but you must have plenty of north in your gale 

 if you want those driving nettles of frost that sting the 

 cheeks to a crimson manlier than that of fire. During 



