had let us, with great freshness, into
these reflections.

Does any fair lady shiver at the idea of a drive to the woods on the
first of February? Let me assure her that in the coldest season Nature
never wants her ornaments full worth looking at.

See here, for instance--let us stop the old chaise, and get out a minute
to look at this brook--one of our last summer's pets. What is he doing
this winter? Let us at least say, "How do you do?" to him. Ah, here he
is! and he and Jack Frost together have been turning the little gap in
the old stone wall, through which he leaped down to the road, into a
little grotto of Antiparos. Some old rough rails and boards that dropped
over it are sheathed in plates of transparent silver. The trunks of the
black alders are mailed with crystal; and the witch-hazel, and yellow
osiers fringing its sedgy borders, are likewise shining through their
glossy covering. Around every stem that rises from the water is a
glittering ring of ice. The tags of the alder and the red berries of
last summer's wild roses glitter now like a lady's pendant. As for the
brook, he is wide awake and joyful; and where the roof of sheet ice
breaks away, you can see his yellow-brown waters rattling and gurgling
among the stones as briskly as they did last July. Down he springs! over
the glossy-coated stone wall, throwing new sparkles into the fairy
grotto around him; and widening daily from melting snows, and such other
godsends, he goes chattering off under yonder mossy stone bridge, and we
lose sight of him. It might be fancy, but it seemed that our watery
friend tipped us a cheery wink as he passed, saying, "Fine weather, sir
and madam; nice times these; and in April you'll find us all right; the
flowers are making up their finery for the next season; there's to be a
splendid display in a month or two."

Then the cloud lights of a wintry sky have a clear purity and brilliancy
that no other months can rival. The rose tints, and the shading of rose
tint into gold, the flossy, filmy accumulation of illuminated vapor that
drifts across the sky in a January afternoon, are beauties far exceeding
those of summer.

Neither are trees, as seen in winter, destitute of their own peculiar
beauty. If it be a gorgeous study in summer time to watch the play of
their abundant leafage, we still may thank winter for laying bare before
us the grand and beautiful anatomy of the tree, with all its interlacing
network of boughs, kn