And shrubs of fairyland. The crystal drops,
That trickle down the branches, fast congealed,
Shoot into pillars of pellucid length,
And prop the pile they but adorned before.
Here grotto within grotto safe defies
The sunbeam; there, embossed and fretted wild,
The growing wonder takes a thousand shapes
Capricious, in which fancy seeks in vain
The likeness of some object seen before.'

From the beautiful beacon cliff--to which we eagerly toil through the
snow, and up and down the slippery hill-sides--we behold the sea as
still and smiling as in summer, and as clearly reflecting the exquisite
blue of the vault above; but each of the many little rills which the
long rains preceding the frost had caused to flow over the face of the
red cliffs, is now a stationary thread of silver, spell-bound by the
enchaining frost; and icicles, or, as old-fashioned people call them,
_aglets_, of three or four feet long, ornament the overhanging ledges,
prone to fall to the beach--far, far below--when a thaw releases them
from their present stations. But the air is so very keen that nothing
but the briskness of our walk, and the enlivenment of an occasional
spell of snow-balling, in which the seniors are tempted to join the
juniors, prevent our stagnating into 'pellucid pillars' ourselves. So
much, then, for our January ramble. The season of which I have now to
speak was most different. After unusual cold, especially after snow, it
is not uncommon to see an early spring appear, and so it was now, as
Spenser says--

'The fields did laugh, the flowers did freshly spring,
The trees did bud, and early blossoms bore;'