Thou art with me, oh, my idol! Thou art trembling by my side— And with rustling pinions crossing, Through the lambent air we glide. Through the glowing arch before us Let us seek the Eden-land— We are pilgrims of the Beautiful, The Happy, and the Grand. * * * * * JANUARY. In the illuminated calendars prefixed to old Romish Missals, January is frequently represented as a man carrying faggots for burning, or a woodman’s axe, shivering and blowing his fingers. Modern artists and poets represent Winter as a feeble old man—a type of the pale “descending year.” Against this idea a celebrated writer thus warmly protests:— Talk not of Winter as a dotard old! Gray-haired and feeble, palsied every limb, ‘A withered branch his sceptre:’ ’tis a whim He well may laugh to scorn; a warrior bold, Girded with strength is he! Asleep—awake— He is all energy to ear and sight; He bids the winds go forth, and forests quake, Like flowers before gay Summer’s fresh’ning gale; He doth unchain the floods, and, in their might, Adown the hills they rush, and through the vale, With deafening clamor, till they reach the main. The Romans dedicated this portion of the year to the heathen god Janus, from whom it derives its name. Our Saxon ancestors gave it the name of _wolf-monath_, or wolf-month, because the wolves, which anciently infested the British forests, impelled by hunger, at this season descended from their accustomed haunts and attacked the domestic animals, and even man himself, when the inclemency of the weather had destroyed or put to flight their usual prey. Such scenes are now unknown in Great Britain. Thomson describes the dire descent of a troop of such monsters from The shining Alps, And wavy Apennines and Pyrenees, ——By wintry famine roused: Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave, Burning for blood!—bony, and gaunt, and grim! Assembling wolves in raging troops descend; And, pouring o’er the country, bear along, Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow. All is their prize. Rapacious at the mother’s throat they fly, And tear the screaming infant from her breast, E’en beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance The generous lion stands in softened gaze, Here bleeds, a hapless, undistinguished prey. In this inclement month, the feeble rays of the sun are rarely felt, the smaller rivers and ponds are frozen over, and sometimes a strong and sudden frost converts the gliding streams into blocks of solid ice.