20 TIMES AND SEASONS. 



a golden hue. We sat silently watching the beautifully 

 changing scene for an hour, until hill and valley were 

 lighted up/' * 



Cowper has selected "The Winter Walk at Noon" for 

 one of the books of his charming " Task ; " and as nihil 

 quod tetigit non ornavit, so he has sketched a beautiful 

 picture : 



" Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 

 And where the woods fence off the northern blast, 

 The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 

 And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue, 

 Without a cloud, and white without a speck 

 The dazzling splendour of the scene below. 



No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 

 The redbreast warbles still, but is content 

 With slender notes, and more than half suppress'd : 

 Pleased with his solitude, and flitting light 

 From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 

 From many a twig the pendant drops of ice, 

 That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below." 



But how different from such a scene is a tropical noon 

 a noon in Guiana, or Brazil, for example ! There, too, 

 an almost death-like quietude reigns, but it is a quietude 

 induced by the furnace-like heat of the vertical sun, 

 whose rays pour down with a direct fierceness, from 

 which there is no shadow except actually beneath some 

 thick tree, such as the mango, whose dense and dark 

 foliage affords an absolutely impenetrable umbrella in the 

 brightest glare. Such, too, is the smooth-barked manga- 

 beira, a tree of vast bulk, with a wide-spreading head of 



* Atkinson's Siberia, p. 59. 



