THE WINTER. 27 



\vhen the safety of the tender bloom forbids that enough 

 of rain should fall for the nourishment of the roots ; 

 the hybernation of some animals, the diminished 

 action and circulation of all ; the singular fact that 

 the greater part of the wild ones wax fat and vigorous 

 at the very time when food for them appears to be 

 most scanty ; the winter enjoyments of man ; the 

 frame, hardened to brass, and sinewed with steel, by 

 the bracing astringency of the keen air, the absence 

 of lassitude, the increased powers of thought and 

 action, the cheerful fire, the gleesome companion, 

 the assemblage for wisdom or for wassail, the glorious 

 canopy of the winter's night, wheeling round with its 

 myriad of luminous orbs, each of them the wonder of 

 man, the centre and life of a system of worlds, the de- 

 monstration of a God, the revelation of an infinitude 

 and an eternity a field for our contemplation which 

 is all centre without circumference, where there is no 

 feebleness of infancy, no age, no decay, and no death, 

 but where the beginning and the end are alike 

 wrapped up in Him who is ' All in All.' Nor will he 

 who brings to the contemplation of nature, a feeling of 

 that better faith which, while, more than any thing 

 else, it has led on the career of science and improve- 

 ment, has sown all the glories of this world with seeds 

 of hope in a better, forget that at this season, when 

 the wonders of the heavens tune the mind to celestial 

 meditations, ' The Babe of Bethlehem' was born, He 

 by whom the errors of the moral world were corrected, 

 and the sins blotted out, and who left as the proper 

 badge of man, the sentiment of universal benevolence. 



