WINTER IN EXCELSIS 



513 



life and beauty the summer day can show. 

 The beauty of the world, indeed, is ever- 

 lasting, and the succession of the seasons 

 only changes the type ; but what of life 

 and motion ? Molecular changes, no doubt, 

 are taking place within the bodies of plants 

 — a maturing of the coming buds, harden- 

 ing of woody fibre, and so on — but for 

 aught we can see. the trees, the shrubs, 



loudly rustling the dry leaves, foraging 

 at night in the coppices ; the hare that 

 runs from us neither so fast nor so far 

 as is his wont ; squirrels and hedgehogs 

 lying torpid in their hiding-places: 

 such a feeble folk they seem, asking for 

 s<j little, and so hkely to ha\-e that little 

 denied them. 



The owl is abroad almost before the 



Pho:o^rap!l by F: ::. 



'THE WOODS TAKE ON A NEW, STRANGE WILDNESS." 



grass and the flowers, all the sweet 

 delights of the year, are dead, and the 

 once teeming earth on its way back to a 

 state of chaos : 



" Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured ; without herb, 

 Insect or beast, or shape or sound of life." 



Those who study human nature, either 

 in books or amongst their fellow-men. 

 are more attracted by the hves of the poor 

 than of the rich, and so in this time of 

 their poverty the wild beasts and birds 

 have a special and pathetic interest. 

 Tamer, and with less of the lust of U\-ing, 

 they are indeed " poor brothers " to us to- 

 day, as to St. Francis of old. The broken 

 coveys of partridges, the flocks of field- 

 fares taking shelter here from still harsher 

 conditions elsewhere, the silent birds of 

 song feeding far away from home on the 

 hawthorns of the downs ; the rabbits 



sun has gone down, and his call — sudden 

 and loud here in the lane, or faintly 

 echoing from the distant parts of the wood 

 — has. to-night, something of the old un- 

 earthlv quality, the boding note that made 

 our forefathers tremble ; the low, stealthy 

 flight of the home-going rooks seems like 

 those fateful bird-flights whereby the 

 ancients di\-ined things that were to be ; 

 and the \-oice of the wind as it sweeps 

 over the long dark sweUs and hollows of 

 the downs takes up the same prophetic 

 tale, so that the night seems to be charged 

 with more than night's common portion 

 of darkness and peril and mystery. 



The m\'stery of the snow ! For the 

 snow is the last, most \-i\-id expression 

 of winter ; not winter's self, but " The 

 very garment that thou know'st him by " ; 

 and. therefore — for all the trouble that it 

 brings — the most prosaic amongst us are 



