A HeRO^RY /5\C 



HO MS 



DEEP over the dreary landscape grows the silence of 

 December days. A wintry wind is stirring in the lanes, 

 and in the brief hours of daylight voiceless birds wander 

 disconsolate over whitened fields. Even when the sun is 

 sinking low, and far hills darken on the fiery sky ; when 

 the brown flood of the great river changes in the charm 

 of sunset to soft tones of green and crimson, there is still 

 no answer from the tenants of the coppice. No longer 

 sounds the blackbird's vesper hymn. By his clamorous 

 call-notes he is heard alone ere he settles to his rest among 

 the ivy The thrushes too are silent, save a bold-hearted 

 minstrel here and there, who, undaunted by the cold, is 

 singing still. 



' And when the colour has faded from the west, when 

 the moon is bright along a silver sea, and the dark sky 

 trembles with the glitter of the stars, hardly less striking 

 is the silence of the night. There is no sound but of the 

 night wind as it stirs the withered reeds, the shiver of 



