54 February — Beauty of Hoar-Frost 



the foam of the sea, so did our forest darken in the twi- 

 light and whiten in next day's dawn. 



It is certainly not my intention to trouble the reader 

 much with mere changes of the weather, but I mention 

 this because it produced one of those enchantments 

 which belong to sylvan scenery, and to sylvan scenery 

 alone. The beauty of hoar-frost is nothing by itself, 

 nothing on naked rock or mountain, nothing in the 

 streets of the city, and out at sea it is visible only on 

 the ship's cordage, if by accident it may whiten it for 

 awhile. But on sylvan landscape it settles like a fairy 

 decoration. No human work is delicate enough to be 

 compared with such delicacy as this, no human artificer 

 in silver or in ivory ever wrought such visible magic as 

 these millions of tiny spears that thrust out points of 

 unimaginable fineness from the lightest spray's utmost 

 extremity. The perfect beauty of this adornment is 

 visible only on tree-branches, and most visible on the 

 thinnest and lightest ; on the dark thin twigs of the 

 birch, that bend under the weight of a robin, or on 

 the slender long sprays of the bird-cherry tree, that the 

 little birds love so well. And it is not every lover of 

 Nature, however keen his perception, however inveterate 

 his habit of observation, who has had the good fortune, 

 even once in his whole existence, to see th i hoar-frost 

 in perfection. It needs a calm so perfect that a ship 

 with all her sails would sleep motionless upon the sea ; 

 it needs also a low cloud upon the earth, whose watery 

 particles, or hollow spheres, or whatever in their infinite 

 littleness they may be, may fall and settle slowly in the 



