The New Year's Light 



IN January the sun and the heavens in which he 

 runs are already preparing for spring. The earth 

 may still be lapped in hard frost and chilling rains, 

 but no foulness of the weather can destroy January's 

 great gain, the longer light. The sun mounts 

 higher above the mists of the horizon ; his shadows 

 grow daily shorter and steeper, recovering from 

 their lank prostration behind every grass -tuft in 

 the December fields. With longer daylight come 

 more active evaporation and swifter dispersal of 

 the damps. There is a freer movement of the air, 

 owing to the changes of temperature produced by 

 the sun in his course. The dead stillness of mid- 

 winter recurs more seldom ; and in overcast but 

 rainless weather the roads and walls seem to dry 

 more freely of themselves, and lose that peculiar 

 sliminess which is the deposit of damp and stagnant 

 winter air. 



Even when earth is cold and backward, spring 

 still gains ground in the sky. The light has a firmer 

 quality of whiteness, and reveals a hundred quiet 

 tones and contrasts of colour which were hidden or 

 lacking under darker skies. The white rind of the 

 wet ash-twigs shows clearly above the brown and 

 purple copses on days of rain ; the colour of the 

 dead grass on the hills grows paler under the arch 

 1 



