JANUARY. 



beneath the snow-drifts. At the moment in 

 which I am writing, accounts from Scotland ap- 

 pear in the newspapers of a most tremendous 

 snow-storm, which, leaving the country south- 

 ward of Alnwick and Gretna-Green nearly free, 

 has buried all northward of that line, in a vast 

 fall of snow, sweeping across the country even 

 to the shores of the Irish Channel. The mails 

 are stopped, the snow-drifts in many places are 

 stated to be twenty-five feet deep, and great 

 numbers of sheep have perished beneath them, 



one farmer having dug out one hundred and 



fifty in one place, all dead. Hogg, the highly- 

 gifted Ettrick Shepherd, one of the most splen- 

 did specimens of the peasant-poet, has given 

 in his " Shepherd's Calendar" some exceed- 

 ingly interesting details of such events. 



The delights of the social hearth on such 

 evenings as these, when the wild winds are 

 howling around our dwellings, dashing the snow, 

 or hail, or splashing rain against our windows, 

 are a favourite theme with poets, essayists, and 

 writers on the Seasons. And truly it is an 

 inspiring topic. All our ideas of comfort, of 

 domestic affection, of social and literary enjoy- 

 ment, are combined in the picture they draw 

 of the winter fire-side. How often have those 

 lines of Cowper been quoted, commencing, 



