It is winter, the vegetable world appears chilled to its centre. The trees, except a few of the hardy evergreens, are bare of leaves, and stretching forth their branches into the cold air, they realise the condition of vegetable skeletons. The lowly plants of the hedge-row, and the grasses of the field, show that their vital power is subdued to that minimum degree of action which is but a few slight removes from death. The life of the running stream is suspended, it is cased in the “thick-ribbed ice,” and the waters beneath no longer send forth their joyous music to the genial breeze. Even within the temperate limits of our own land, the aspect of winter convinces the ordinary observer, that the loss of heat has been followed by diminished activity in the powers of life; and the philosopher discovers that the lessened energies of solar light, and the weaker action of the radiant heat, have aided in producing that repose which is a little more than sleep--a little less than death. It is night, and winter: the earth is parting with its heat,--with the absence of light, there is a still greater loss of vigour, a yet further diminution of the powers of life. Even the animal races, sustained by vital influences of a more exalted kind, sink under the temporary deprivation of the solar rays to a monotonous, a melancholy repose. All animals undergo different degrees of hybernation, and each in his winter retreat supports vitality by preying upon himself. The world is hung in mourning black; there is no play of colours to harmonize the human spirit by sending their ethereal pulsations to the human eye, and it is only the consciousness that when the night is at the darkest, the day is nearest, that even man’s soul is sustained against the depressing influences of the absence of the sun. The conditions which we must observe at our own doors cannot fail to convey as a conviction to the least imaginative mind, that a slightly prolonged continuance of darkness, with its consequent increase of coldness, would be fatal to the existence of the organic world. The sun has entered Aries: it is spring. The length of the day and night are equal, the powers of light and darkness are now exactly balanced against each other, and light, like the Archangel, triumphs over the sombre spirit. The organic world awakes. Chemical action commences in the seed, the vital spark is kindled in the embryo, and under the impulsive force of some solar radiations the plant struggles into light and life. The same invigorating force impels the circulation of the sap through the capillary tubes of the forest tree, until the topmost branch trembles with the new flow of life. The buds burst forth into leaf, and a fresh and lively covering spreads over those branches which, in their nakedness, could scarcely be distinguished from the dead.