"The owl, with all her feathers, is a-cold," * seen or you think her so. The whole country feels like a petrifaction of slate and stillness, cut across by the wind; and nobody in the mail-coach is warm but the horses, who steam pitifully when they stop. The "oldest man" makes a point of never having such weather." People have a painful doubt whether they have any chins or not; ears ache with the wind; and the wagoner, setting his teeth together, goes puckering up his cheeks, and thinking the time will never arrive when he shall get to the Five Bells. . At night, people become sleepy with the fireside, and long to go to bed, yet fear it on account of the different temperature of the bedroom; which is, furthermore, apt to wake them up. Warming-pans and hot-water bottles are in request; and naughty boys eschew their night-shirts, and go to bed in their socks. "Yes," quoth a little boy to whom we read this passage, "and make their younger brother go to bed first." 66 * Keats, in the "Eve of St. Agnes." Mr. Keats gave us some touches in our account of the "Hot Day" (first published in the "Indicator"), as we sat writing it in his company, alas! how many years back! We have here made him contribute to our "Cold Day." This it is to have immortal friends, whose company never forsakes us. ICE, WITH POETS UPON IT. T is related of an emperor of Morocco, that some unfortunate traveller having thought to get into his good graces by telling him of the wonders of other countries, and exciting, as he proceeded, more and more incredulity in the imperial mind, finished, as he imagined, his delightful climax of novelties, by telling him, that in his native land, at certain seasons of the year, people could walk and run upon the water; upon which such indignation seized his majesty, that, exclaiming, "Such a liar as this is not fit to live!" he whipped off the poor man's head with his cimeter. It is a pity that some half-dozen captives had not been present, from other northern regions, to give the monarch's perplexity a more salutary turn, by testifying to similar phenomena: as, how you drove your chariot over the water; how lumps of water came rolling down hill like rocks; and how you chopped, not only your stone-hard meat, but your stone-hard drink ; holding a pound of water between pincers, and pelting a fellow with a gill of brandy instead of a stone. For such things are in Russia and Tartary; where, furthermore, a man shall have half a yard of water for his beard; throw a liquid up in the air, and catch it a solid; and be employed in building houses made of water, for empresses to sit in and take supper. Catherine the Second had one: "It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome, with caves of ice;" thus realizing Mr. Coleridge's poetical description of the palace of Kubla Khan. Many a natural phenomenon is as poetical as this, and adjusts itself into as imaginative shapes and lights. Fancy the meeting an island-mountain of green or blue ice, in a sunny sea, moving southwards, and shedding fountains from its sparkling sides! The poet has described the icicle, "Quietly shining to the quiet moon ;" but the icicle (so to speak) described itself first to the poet. Water, when it begins to freeze, makes crystals of itself; the snow is all stars or feathers, or takes the shape of flowers upon your window; and the extreme of solemn grandeur, as well as of fairy elegance, is to be found in the operations of frost. In Switzerland, gulfs of petrified billows are formed in whole valleys by the descent of ice from the mountains, its alternate thawing and freezing, and the ministry of the wind. You stand upon a crag, and see before you wastes of icy solitude, looking like an ocean heaven-struck in the midst of its fury, and fixed for ever. Not another sight is to be seen but the ghastly white mountains that surround it; not a sound to be heard but of under-currents of water breaking away, or the thunders of falling ice-crags, or perhaps the scream of an eagle. 'Tis as if you saw the world before heat the rough materials of the masonry of moved it, creation. 'Far, far above, piercing the infinite sky, SHELLEY. On the other hand, what is more prettily beautiful than the snow above mentioned, or the hoar-frost upon the boughs of a tree, like the locks of Spenser's old man, "As hoary frost with spangles doth attire The mossy branches of an oak half dead;" or the spectacle (in the verses quoted below) of a Northern garden, "Where through the ice the crimson berries glow"? Our winters of late have been very mild; and most desirable is it, for the poor's sake, that they should continue so, if the physical good of the creation will allow it. But, when frost and ice come, we must make the best of them; and Nature, in her apparently severest operations, never works without some visible mixture of good, as well as a great deal of. beauty (itself a good). Cold weather counteracts worse evils: the very petrifaction of the water furnishes a new ground for sport and pastime. Then, in every street, the little boys find a gliding pleasure; and the sheet of ice in the pond or river spreads a joyous floor for skaters. We touched upon this the other day in a "Now;" but now we have the satisfaction of being able to quote some fine verses of Mr. Wordsworth's on the subject, which we happened not to have by us at the moment. They are taken from a new edition of Mr. Hine's judicious and valuable "Selections" from that fine poet, just published by Mr. Moxon. They are the more interesting, inasmuch as they show Mr. Wordsworth to be a skater himself, — no mean reason for his being able to write so vigorously. SKATING. "In the frosty season, when the sun It was indeed for all of us: for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud Proud and exulting like an untired horse, That cares not for his home. All shod with steel, And woodland pleasures, the resounding horn, |