Yes, the approach of Winter days seems gloomy. We have more in our thought the chill drear outside of Winter, than his warm comfortable core, glowing as the heart of a burst pomegranate. But November has now ended, and December has come. The early days of this month seem stragglers from that which has just gone out, and the same chill warm gloom prevails. There is a muggy closeness in the air; everything feels damp to the touch, and an oppressive scent of decay dwells in the gardens and the fields. You seem to see low fevers brooding over the lanes and alleys of the city, and you apprehend that “green Yule,” which “makes a fat kirkyard.” Your spirits, if your health be such as that they are a little dependent on the weather, seem drooping and languid and foggy too. And in this mood it is that you determine after lunch to call for a friend, and take a walk for a mile or two, with thick boots and trousers turned up, because of the drenched roads and the sticky fields. And you warm into a better mood with the walk and the talk, and make the mile or two five or six miles; indeed the sun is setting, and a deepening dusk in the sky shows a pale star here and there, while you are yet a mile from home. A sort of clearness and freshness seems to have come into the air since you started homewards; and you notice as you walk on, the frosty glitter in the stars, and you perceive that the road is actually growing rough and hard under your feet, and the road-side puddles are gathering a lace-work at their edge. “By the breath of God frost is given: And the breadth of the waters is straitened.” And so either “the hoary frost of heaven” falls upon the earth, making a white feather of every straw, and a crisp fairy forest of the lawn, and a fernery of the windows, and hanging gardens of the spider’s webs, and a wondrous dreamland of the asparagus bed, a mist of white feather-foliage, with a lovely scattering of red fruit glowing among it here and there; or a black frost descends on the lands and waters, holding them with a gripe that grows closer, closer, and stiffens with more iron rigidity every day, until “The waters are hid as with a stone, And the face of the deep is frozen.” And the blood tingles in the veins, and life and health come back with sudden rush, and you leave who will to stay by the fire, while you start forth with swinging skates to do the next best thing to flying; having dined hastily at midday, so as to have a long evening. [Illustration]