9 6 MARCH 



usually one of the best cloud-months of the year. Its 

 features have been rare. Snow is always predicable from 

 a queer yellow effulgence. Now and again we are given 

 a strange admixture of thunder and snow, which mean 

 that the cumulus clouds proper to thunder must take on 

 the wildly prophetic colours of snow, in addition to their 

 own conjunction of high light and deep shadow. 



And these marvellous clouds, especially when they 

 are dyed by a setting sun, colour to our credulous eyes 

 the spaces of sky between them. The long slips of sky, 

 contained by evening clouds of violet and saffron, 

 stretched low in the West, grow green or take on &quot; that 

 peculiar tint of yellow-green/ which Coleridge found and 

 Byron scornfully denied. One may watch such clouds, 

 such skies for the mere pleasure of shifting shape and 

 tone, as in a narrow room one may watch the red and 

 yellow kaleidoscope of a log fire. One frosty day the sky 

 and cloud seemed wholly responsible for the ground 

 colours. At times the snow was dazzling white, and the 

 slight shadows in the footprints of a moorhen that had 

 run across the lawn looked like black strokes. When a 

 little gust made a sham snowstorm of the snow that had 

 lodged on the boughs, the crystals flashed into diamonds ; 

 this in a sunny interval at midday. Towards evening, 

 as we watched the royal pageant of the clouds, the snow 

 surface became an unquestionable blue, and even the 

 boughs of the trees appeared to have a blue lining. The 

 snow had consented to the convention of the artists, 

 How green, we said, the world below it will look before 

 England is much older ! 



5- 



The number of young things that greet the First of 

 Spring depends a good deal on the weather ; but pre- 



