EFFECTS OF FROST. 161 



your district to be, a time of frost is not un- 

 known to you. What can you say in its com- 

 mendation ? How then is your landscape ? 



PISCATOR. I ought not to have forgotten 

 a well set-in frost with which we are occasionally 

 visited, as indeed you know from what you 

 heard related when we were last year at 

 Wastwater, an event the delight of the skater 

 and fowler, of the young and active, and 

 healthy, with its bright sunshine by day, and 

 bright starlight by night, its clear sky and 

 bracing air, and within doors the glowing fire, 

 illustrating, may I say, the effect of the cold 

 condensed air on the blood. Believe me then, 

 our district is not without its charm of land- 

 scape. How magical, as it were, is the change 

 that then comes over the scene, the babbling 

 brook silent, the liquid lake a glassy plain, the 

 watery rocks brilliant with ice and pendent 

 icicles! Look into the first book of "The 

 Prelude ; " no doubt you know it ; what a 

 charming picture is there given of the aspect 

 of nature at such a time! Moreover, to the 

 inquirer, this is a time specially for his study, 

 the rock rifted by ice, the clod pulverised, 

 the soil opened, the temperate stream favour- 

 M 



