performer! They admiring, he admired, with an ardour and sincerity
never excited by all the quadrilles and the spread-eagles of the
Seine and the Serpentine. He really skates well though, and I am
glad I came this way; for, with all the father's feelings sitting
gaily at his heart, it must still gratify the pride of skill to have
one spectator at that solitary pond who has seen skating before.

Now we have reached the trees,--the beautiful trees! never so
beautiful as to-day. Imagine the effect of a straight and regular
double avenue of oaks, nearly a mile long, arching overhead, and
closing into perspective like the roof and columns of a cathedral,
every tree and branch incrusted with the bright and delicate
congelation of hoar-frost, white and pure as snow, delicate and
defined as carved ivory. How beautiful it is, how uniform, how
various, how filling, how satiating to the eye and to the mind--
above all, how melancholy! There is a thrilling awfulness, an
intense feeling of simple power in that naked and colourless beauty,
which falls on the earth like the thoughts of death--death pure, and
glorious, and smiling,--but still death. Sculpture has always the
same effect on my imagination, and painting never. Colour is life.-
-We are now at the end of this magnificent avenue, and at the top of
a steep eminence commanding a wide view over four counties--a
landscape of snow. A deep lane leads abruptly down the hill; a mere
narrow cart-track, sinking between high banks clothed with fern and
furze and low broom, crowned with luxuriant hedgerows, and famous
for their summer smell of thyme. How lovely these banks are now--
the tall weeds and the gorse fixed and stiffened in the hoar-frost,
which fringes round the bright prickly holly, the pendent foliage of
the bramble, and the deep orange leaves of the pollard oaks! Oh,
this is rime in its loveliest form! And there is still a berry here