The thought of Winter days seems to lead us at once, by analogy, to the Winter of Death drawing near any one of us, old men and maidens, young men and children. And indeed this time, seen from the misty avenues of November, is apt to seem chill and cold to the mind and heart. Still, I am sure that death, since the Saviour died, is not a time of real unlovely or uncomforted gloom to the obedient and faithful child of God. Oh no! when that Winter has indeed come, such a one then perceives and realises its Christmas heart of warm comfort, and its unearthly frost work of strange sweet thoughts and teachings. To such a one, if gloomy, it is only gloomy by anticipation, and while the traces of earth’s Summers yet linger, and the tears and regrets of earth are yet glittering on the empty trees, bare lands, and faded flowers; only gloomy until God has quite weaned us, first by His chastenings and then by His consolations. How sad it is that, in our common ideas, and representations, and modes of speech, Death, even the good man’s death--should be overshadowed with such dismal gloom! I remember a curious proof of this, if proof were needed. In a small illustrated edition of Longfellow’s poems, the artist has chosen for illustration those sweet verses, “The Reaper and the Flowers.” You know them, of course, my reader, by heart. You remember these graceful lines:-- “He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes, He kissed their drooping leaves; It was for the Lord of Paradise He bound them in his sheaves. “‘My Lord hath need of these flow’rets gay,’ The Reaper said, and smiled; ‘Dear tokens of the earth are they, Where He was once a Child.’” And how do you think the artist has represented that gentle Angel-Reaper? Actually as a hideous Skeleton with a lank scythe! So ingrained is that ghastly and loathsome idea of death in the common thought of men. Then think of all the impenetrable gloom with which we surround death in this Christian England in this nineteenth century; of the utter absence of hope or beauty (save for the glorious pæan of the service) in our obsequies. Listen, as soon as the happy, hopeful Christian has “fallen asleep,” to the manner in which we tell the news to the family of our village or town. Drop, drop, like melted lead falling, for a whole hour sometimes comes that dull monotony of gloom, TOLL, TOLL, TOLL, till the heart dies down into depression for the day. [Illustration] Save that we know that that recurring note comes from the belfry of the peaceful little church that presides hopefully and holily over its gathering of sleepers--save for this, would there, I ask, be any thought but of dreariness in that dull ceaseless repetition of one desolate tone? Death is, indeed