Their own weight and lingering warmth take them through air
or water, snow or ice, to the level of the earth, and there with spring
comes an army of burying-insects, _Necrophagi_, in a livery of red and
black, to dig a grave beneath every one, and not a sparrow falleth to
the ground without knowledge. The tiny remains thus disappear from the
surface, and the dry leaves are soon spread above these Children in the
Wood.

Thus varied and benignant are the aspects of winter on these sunny days.
But it is impossible to claim this weather as the only type of our
winter climate. There occasionally come days which, though perfectly
still and serene, suggest more terror than any tempest,--terrible,
clear, glaring days of pitiless cold,--when the sun seems powerless
or only a brighter moon, when the windows remain ground-glass at high
noontide, and when, on going out of doors, one is dazzled by the
brightness and fancies for a moment that it cannot be so cold as has
been reported, but presently discovers that the severity is only more
deadly for being so still. Exercise on such days seems to produce no
warmth; one's limbs appear ready to break on any sudden motion, like
icy boughs. Stage-drivers and dray-men are transformed to mere human
buffaloes by their fur coats; the patient oxen are frost-covered; the
horse that goes racing by waves a wreath of steam from his tossing head.
On such days life becomes a battle to all householders, the ordinary
apparatus for defence is insufficient, and the price of caloric is
continual vigilance. In innumerable armies the frost besieges the
portal, creeps in beneath it and above it, and on every latch and
key-handle lodges an advanced guard of white rime. Leave the door ajar
never so slightly and a chill creeps in cat-like; we are conscious by
the warmest fireside of the near vicinity of cold, its fingers are
feeling after us, and even if they do not clutch us, we know that they
are there. The sensations of such days almost make us associate their
clearness and whiteness with something malignant and evil. Charles Lamb
asserts of snow, "It glares too much for an innocent color, methinks."
Why does popular mythology associate the infernal regions with a high
temperature instead of a low one? El Aishi, the Arab writer, says of the
bleak wind of the Desert, (so writes Richardson, the African traveller,)
"The north wind blows with an intensity equalling _the cold of hell_;
language fails me to desc