58 WINTER-GNATS. 



as an addition (usually) to the effect or mute expression of 

 old winter's face, when he treats us to its brightest side ; but 

 somehow or another we felt it, on the present occasion, more 

 as a feature wanting. Our spirits were so light, our blood 

 danced so briskly, our heart glowed, like our feet, so warmly, 

 and rose so thankfully to the Great Source of all things calm 

 and bright and beautiful, that we longed for something ani- 

 mate to join us in our homage of enjoyment. The wish was 

 hardly conceived ere it was accomplished, for on passing 

 beneath a canopy of low interlacing branches, we suddenly 

 found ourselves making one with a company of Gnats, dancing 

 (though more mutely) quite as merrily as they could possibly 

 have footed it on the balmy air of a summer's eve. Their 

 appearance was welcome to our eyes, not as flowers in Hay, 

 but as flowers in January, and so we sat down on one of the 

 oaken stumps hard by, to watch their evolutions. Mazy and 

 intricate enough, in sooth, they seemed, yet these light- winged 

 figurantes, little as one might think it, would seem to have 

 " measure in their mirth," aye, and mathematics too ; for it is 

 stated as a fact,* that no three of these dancers can so place 

 themselves that lines joining their point of position shall form 

 either more or less than two right angles. The "set" upon 

 which we had intruded, was an assemblage of those Tipulidan 

 or long-legged Gnats which have been named Tell-tales, we 

 suppose, because by their presence in winter, they seem to tell 



* In Barley's Geometrical Companion. 



