175 
FORGE VALLEY IN WINTER. 
Rev. W. C, HEY, M.A., M.CS., 
Vice-President of the York Philosophical Society, West Ayton, near Scarborough. 
As I enter the portals of this deep cafion this December afternoon, 
I feel like one who steps at midnight into the silent aisles of some 
cathedral, which hitherto he had only visited when the sunshine was 
bringing out the rich colours of its stained windows, and the voices 
of the choristers, and the pealing of the organ, flooding its long vistas 
with harmony, For the silence of the winter woods is their most 
ee feature. Summer is full of sound,—chirpings of birds, 
ings of insects, swish-swish of the leafy boughs, while an 
lea a delicious murmur, like the sound of fairy kisses, fills the 
warm quick air. 
Now all is so still that I can plainly hear each single drip of a half- 
frozen rill, as it falls upon the surface of the river, and the faint 
creaking of a breaking larch-bough a hundred yards away, appears 
loud. The snow covers the sides of the ravine, steep though they be, 
and every tree-trunk, every branch, every twig, is brought out into 
dark relief. |The woods are seen to be not half so unfathomable as 
they appeared in summer, when layer upon layer of broad foliage 
extended between the top surface and the floor of the great green 
sea. I feel surprised at their shallowness, as one who, sailing upon 
a still sea, is startled to perceive through the pellucid water, the rocks 
and seaweed at the bottom. Here and there, under the trees, are 
seen little patches of dark green, plants of the spurge-laurel, tall 
enough to rise above the snow. ‘These, and a few withered oak 
leaves, alone vary the great study in black and white, which the dull, 
Silent, winter’s day presents. A week or two ago, many a wild-rose 
bush was tipped with coral ; spindle trees glowed with such pink and 
Orange tints (their splendid ‘puillodes), that one might fancy the dyes 
of an autumn sunset had been spilt among them, But, either the 
wild weather, or the fieldfares, have stripped the woods of all their 
jewellery, and they stand forlorn and desolate as a church which 
puritanical zeal has dismantled and white-washed. 
Yet this deep silence, this weird monotony, by its very vacancy 
tempts the imagination to people these solitary glades with their 
ancient inhabitants, and create sounds for the vacant ear. And 
thought can often prove herself richer than reality, for all the past of 
both fact and fancy is at her disposal. On yonder snowy ridge 
I 4 seem to behold a herd of reindeer standing, their forked antlers 
June 1853, 1893, 
