12 A TOUR ROUND MY GARDEN. 



become more ugly every day, and with its badly-mended 

 rents. — How rich then I am ! 



Will you write to me as you promised? On my part, I 

 will write you an account of my journey; I do not well know 

 whither to direct my letters, but yours will tell me when and 

 where. But what do you expect to see yonder which you 

 could not see here? I will endeavour to describe, as if it 

 were done by yourself, some distant country. Let us see: 

 " The sky is grey, like a heavy leaden cupola ; the earth is 

 covered with a sheet of snow; the trees bend their black 

 skeleton forms to the sharp winds; at their feet venomous 

 toad-stools spring and flourish, the flowers are dead; the 

 irozen water is motionless between its herbless banks. Those 

 who persist in calling fountains mirrors, in which shepherd- 

 esses contemplate their simple, pretty features, and arrange 

 their modest dress ; those who only see in nature what they 

 have first read in books, are obliged to admit that their 

 poetical mirrors are turned silver side uppermost. Some firs, 

 in their melancholy, sombre foliage, afford asylum to only 

 a few mute birds, with their feathers standing on end with 

 cold, and which, pressed with hunger, fight for the scanty 

 fruit left upon the leafless trees; the purple berries of the 

 whitethorn, the scarlet berries of the service-tree; the orange 

 berries of the cranberry, the black berries of the privet, or 

 the blue ones of the-Jam-ustinus. 



" There is in the air neither the song of birds nor the 

 buzzing of insects, nor the perfume of flowers. The sun only 

 remains every day fcr a few hours above the horizon; he 

 rises and sets in pale and duU splendour." 



What country is this? If it were you, my dear friend, 

 who were writing these lines, you would call this dismal 

 climate Norway, with its gnows and ice. For myself, this 

 country is my winter garden; in six months it will be so. I 

 have only to wait. I need not go and seek, midst a thousand 

 dangers — and, what is still worse, midst a thousand cares — 

 the rich countries where the sun is the object of adoration. 

 I will wait a few days, and the sun will make me seek a 

 friendly shade of balmy coolness. 



There are times when the flowers languish with heat: there 

 are times when one only hears among the parched herbs,, the 



