he odd feeling that I have never
really seen my house before, the snow lights it all up so strangely,
tinting the ceilings a glowing white, touching up high lights on the
top of picture-frames, and throwing the lower part of the rooms into a
sort of pleasant dusk.

Maud and the children went off this afternoon to an entertainment. I
accompanied them to the door; what a pretty effect the snow background
gives to young faces; it lends a pretty morbidezza to the colouring, a
sort of very delicate green tinge to the paler shades. That does not
sound as if it would be beautiful in a human face, but it is; the faces
look like the child-angels of Botticelli, and the pink and rose flush
of the cheeks is softly enriched and subdued; and then the soft warmth
of fair and curly hair is delicious. I was happy enough with them, in a
sort of surface happiness. The little waves at the top of the mind
broke in sunlight; but down below, the cold dark water sleeps still
enough. I left them, and took a long trudge among the valleys. Oh me!
how beautiful it all was; the snowy fields, with the dark copses and
leafless trees among them; the rich clean light everywhere, the world
seen as through a dusky crystal. Then the sun went down in state, and
the orange sky through the dark tree-stems brought me a thrill of that
strange yearning desire for something--I cannot tell what--that seems
so near and yet so far away. Yet I was sad enough too; my mind works
like a mill with no corn to grind. I can devise nothing, think of
nothing. There beats in my head a verse of a little old Latin poem, by
an unhappy man enough, in whose sorrowful soul the delight of the
beautiful moment was for ever poisoned by the thought that it was
passing, passing; and that the spirit, whatever joy might be in store
for it, could never again be at the same sweet point of its course. The
poem is about a woodcock, a belated bird that haunted the hanging
thickets of his Devonshire home. "Ah, hapless bird," he says, "for you
to-day King December is stripping these oaks; nor any hope of food do
the hazel-thickets afford." That is my case. I have lingered too late,
trusting to the ease and prodigal wealth of the summer, and now the
woods stand bare about me, while my comrades have taken wing for the
South. The beady eye, the puffed feathers grow sick and dulled with
hunger. Why cannot I rest a little in the beauty all about me? Take it
home to my shivering soul? Nay, I will not