as the bursting of the buds or the fall of the leaf. Many are not
so stealthy and gradual as we may be apt to imagine in considering
the general torpidity of a moor or waste. Winter, in coming to the
country hereabout, advanced in well-marked stages, wherein might
have been successively observed the retreat of the snakes, the
transformation of the ferns, the filling of the pools, a rising of
fogs, the embrowning by frost, the collapse of the fungi, and an
obliteration by snow.

This climax of the series had been reached to-night on the aforesaid
moor, and for the first time in the season its irregularities were
forms without features; suggestive of anything, proclaiming nothing,
and without more character than that of being the limit of something
else--the lowest layer of a firmament of snow. From this chaotic
skyful of crowding flakes the mead and moor momentarily received
additional clothing, only to appear momentarily more naked thereby.
The vast arch of cloud above was strangely low, and formed as it were
the roof of a large dark cavern, gradually sinking in upon its floor;
for the instinctive thought was that the snow lining the heavens and
that encrusting the earth would soon unite into one mass without any
intervening stratum of air at all.

We turn our attention to the left-hand characteristics; which were
flatness in respect of the river, verticality in respect of the wall
behind it, and darkness as to both. These features made up the mass.
If anything could be darker than the sky, it was the wall, and if any
thing could be gloomier than the wall it was the river beneath. The
indistinct summit of the facade was notched and pronged by chimneys
here and there, and upon its face were faintly signified the oblong
shapes of windows, though only in the upper part. Below, down to the