compel in charm. And of these, I think June The 

 is not least. In midwinter the mountains Mountain 

 have their most ideal beauty. It is an austere 

 charm, the charm of whiteness and stillness. 

 It is akin to the ineffable charm of a white 

 flood of moonshine on a stilled ocean ; but it 

 has that which the waters do not have, the 

 immobility of trance. There is nothing more 

 wonderful in dream -beauty than vast and 

 snow-bound mountain -solitudes in the dead 

 of winter. That beauty becomes poignant 

 when sea-fjords or inland waters lie at the 

 sheer bases of the white hills, and in the 

 luminous green or shadowy blue the heights 

 are mirrored, so that one indeed stands be- 

 tween two worlds, unknowing the phantom 

 from the real. There is a dream-beauty also 

 in that lovely suspense between the last wild 

 winds of the equinox and ' the snow-bringer,' 

 that period of hushed farewell which we call 

 St. Martin's Summer. The glory of the 

 heather is gone, but the gold and bronze of 

 the bracken take on an equal beauty. The 

 birch hangs her still tresses of pale gold, * that 

 beautiful wild woman of the hills,' as a Gaelic 

 poet says. The red and russet of rowan and 

 bramble, the rich hues of the haw, the sloe, 

 the briony, all the golds and browns and 

 delicate ambers of entranced autumn are 



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