, not to be found in the other. It was to be seen
in its greatest perfection at sunrise, or shortly after; for the
slightest warmth impaired the minute beauty of the frost-feathers, and
the general effect. But in the first sunshine, and while there was still
a partial mist hovering around the hill and along the river, while some
of the trees were lit up with an illumination that did not
_shine_,--that is to say, glitter,--but was not less bright than if it
had glittered, while other portions of the scene were partly obscured,
but not gloomy,--on the contrary, very cheerful,--it was a picture that
never can be painted nor described, nor, I fear, remembered with any
accuracy, so magical was its light and shade, while at the same time the
earth and everything upon it were white; for the ground is entirely
covered by yesterday's snow-storm.

Already, before eleven o'clock, these feathery crystals have vanished,
partly through the warmth of the sun, and partly by gentle breaths of
wind; for so slight was their hold upon the twigs that the least motion,
or thought almost, sufficed to bring them floating down, like a little
snow-storm, to the ground. In fact, the fog, I suppose, was a cloud of
snow, and would have scattered down upon us, had it been at the usual
height above the earth.

All the above description is most unsatisfactory.

ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

FOURTH SONNET.

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!
This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves
Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves
Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers,
And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers!
But fiends and dragons from the gargoyled eaves
Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,
And underneath the traitor Judas lowers!
Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong,
What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediaeval miracle of song!

FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AGO.

We who enjoy the fruits of civil and religious liberty as our daily
food, reaping the harvest we did not sow, seldom give a thought to those
who in the dim past prepared the ground and scattered the seed that has
yielded such plenteous return. If occasionally we peer into the gloom