comfortable hearth, she it is who suffers from the ignoble and unbecoming
liberties that winter takes with the human countenance. Happier and
wiser is she who studies the always living and popular Dutch roll rather
than the Grecian bend, and who blooms with continual health and good
temper. Our changeful climate affords so few opportunities of learning
to skate, that it is really extraordinary to find so much skill, and to
see feats so difficult and graceful. In Canada, where frost is a
certainty, and where the covered "rinks" make skating an indoor sport, it
is not odd that great perfection should be attained. But as fast as
Canadians bring over a new figure or a new trick it is picked up, and
critics may dispute as to whether the bold and dashing style of the
English school of skaters is not preferable to the careful and smooth,
but somewhat pretty and niggling manner of the colonists. Our skating
stands to the Canadian fashion somewhat as French does to English
etching. We have the dash and the _chic_ with skates which Frenchmen
show with the etching-needle, and the Canadian, on the other hand, is apt
to decline into the mere prettiness which is the fault of English
etchers.

Skating has been, within the last few years, a very progressive art.
There was a time when mere speed, and the grace of speed, satisfied most
amateurs. The ideal spot for skating in those days must have been the
lakes where Wordsworth used to listen to the echoes replying from the
cold and moonlit hills, or such a frozen river as that on which the
American skater was pursued by wolves. No doubt such scenes have still
their rare charm, and few expeditions are more attractive than a
moonlight exploration of a winding river. But it is seldom that our
frosts make such tours practicable, whereas almost every winter it is
possible to skate with safety, at least on shallow ponds, or on places
like the ice-bound floods at Oxford. Thus figure-skating, which needs