Now, the trees, denuded of their gay attire, spread forth their thousand branches against the gray sky, and present as endless a variety of form and feature for study and observation, as they did when dressed in all the flaunting fashions of midsummer. Now, too, their voices are silent, and their forms are motionless, even when the wind is among them; so that the low plaintive piping of the robin-redbreast can be heard, and his hiding-place detected by the sound of his slim feet alighting on the fallen leaves. Or now, grown bolder as the skies become more inclement, he flits before you from twig to twig silently, like a winged thought; or like the brown and crimson leaf of a cherry-tree, blown about by the wind; or perches himself by your side, and looks sidelong in your face, pertly, and yet imploringly,—as much as to say, “though I do need your aid just now, and would condescend to accept a crum from your hand, yet I’m still your betters, for I’m still a bird.”
Now, one of the most beautiful sights on which the eye can open occasionally presents itself: we saw the shades of evening fall upon a waste expanse of brown earth, shorn hedge-rows, bare branches, and miry roads, interspersed here and there with a patch of dull melancholy green. But when we are awakened by the late dawning of the morning, and think to look forth upon the same, what a bright pomp greets us! What a white pageantry! It is as if the fleecy clouds that float about the sun at midsummer had descended upon the earth, and clothed it in their beauty! Every object we look upon is strange and yet familiar to us—“another, yet the same!” And the whole affects us like a vision of the night, which we are half conscious is a vision: we know that it is there, and yet we know not how long it may remain there, since a motion may change it, or a breath melt it away. And what a mysterious stillness reigns over all! A white silence! Even the “clouted shoon” of the early peasant is not heard; and the robin, as he hops from twig to twig with undecided wing, and shakes down a feathery shower as he goes, hushes his low whistle in wonder at the unaccustomed scene!
Now, the labour of the husbandman is, for once in the year, at a stand; and he haunts the alehouse fire, or lolls listlessly over the half-door of the village smithy, and watches the progress of the labour which he unconsciously envies; tasting for once in his life (without knowing it) the bitterness of that ennui which he begrudges to his betters.
Now, melancholy-looking men wander “by twos and threes” through market-towns, with their faces as blue as the aprons that are twisted round their waists; their ineffectual rakes resting on their shoulders, and a withered cabbage hoisted upon a pole; and sing out their doleful petition of “Pray remember the poor gardeners, who can get no work!”
Now, the passengers outside the Cheltenham night-coach look wistfully at the Witney blanket-mills as they pass, and meditate on the merits of a warm bed.
Now, people of fashion, who cannot think of coming to their homes in town so early in the season, and will not think of remaining at their homes in the country so late, seek out spots on the seashore which have the merit of being neither town nor country, and practise patience there (as Timon of Athens did), en attendant the London winter, which is ordered to commence about the first week in spring, and end at midsummer!
But we are forgetting the garden all this while; which must not be; for Nature does not. Though the gardener can find little to do in it, she is ever at work there, and ever with a wise hand, and graceful as wise. The wintry winds of December having shaken down the last lingering leaves from the trees, the final labour of the gardener was employed in making all trim and clean; in turning up the dark earth, to give it air; pruning off the superfluous produce of summer; and gathering away the worn-out attire that the perennial flowers leave behind them, when they sink into the earth to seek their winter home, as Harlequin and Columbine, in the pantomimes, sometimes slip down through a trapdoor, and cheat their silly pursuers by leaving their vacant dresses standing erect behind them.
All being left trim and orderly for the coming on of the new year. Now (to resume our friendly monosyllable) all the processes of nature for the renewal of her favoured race, the flowers, may be more aptly observed than at any other period. Still, therefore, however desolate a scene the garden may present to the general gaze, a particular examination of it is full of interest, and interest that is not the less valuable for its depending chiefly on the imagination.
Now, the bloom-buds of the fruit trees, which the late leaves of autumn had concealed from the view, stand confessed, upon the otherwise bare branches, and, dressed in their patent wind-and-water-proof coats, brave the utmost severity of the season,—their hard unpromising outsides, compared with the forms of beauty which they contain, reminding us of their friends the butterflies when in the chrysalis state.
Now, the perennials, having slipped off their summer robes, and retired to their subterranean sleeping-rooms, just permit the tops of their naked heads to peep above the ground, to warn the labourer from disturbing their annual repose.
Now, the smooth-leaved and tender-stemmed Rose of China hangs its pale, scentless, artificial-looking flowers upon the cheek of Winter; reminding us of the last faint bloom upon the face of a fading beauty, or the hectic of disease on that of a dying one; and a few chrysanthemums still linger, the wreck of the past year,—their various coloured stars looking like faded imitations of the gay, glaring China-aster.
Now, too,—first evidences of the revivifying principle of the new-born year—for all that we have hitherto noticed are but lingering remnants of the old—Now, the golden and blue crocuses peep up their pointed coronals from amidst their guarding palisades of green and gray leaves, that they may be ready to come forth at the call of the first February sun that looks warmly upon them; and perchance one here and there, bolder than the rest, has started fairly out of the earth already, and half opened her trim form, pretending to have mistaken the true time; as a forward school-miss will occasionally be seen coquetting with a smart cornet, before she has been regularly produced,—as if she did not know that there was “any harm in it.”
We are now to consider the pretensions of January in general.
When the palm of merit is to be awarded among the Months, it is usual to assign it to May by acclamation. But if the claim depends on the sum of delight which each witnesses or brings with her, I doubt if January should not bear the bell from her more blooming sister, if it were only in virtue of her share in the aforenamed festivities of the Christmas Holidays. And then, what a happy influence does she not exercise on all the rest of the Year, by the family meetings she brings about, and by the kindling and renewing of the social affections that grow out of, and are chiefly dependent on these. And what sweet remembrances and associations does she not scatter before her, through all the time to come, by her gifts—the “new year’s gifts!” Christmas-boxes (as they are called) are but sordid boons in comparison of these; they are mere money paid for mere services rendered or expected; wages for work done and performed; barterings of value for value; offerings of the pocket to the pocket. But new year’s gifts are offerings of the affections to the affections—of the heart to the heart. The value of the first depends purely on themselves; and the gratitude (such as it is) which they call forth, is measured by the gross amount of that value. But the others owe their value to the wishes and intentions of the giver; and the gratitude they call forth springs from the affections of the receiver.
And then, who can see a New Year open upon him, without being better for the prospect—without making sundry wise reflections (for any reflections on this subject must be comparatively wise ones) on the step he is about to take towards the goal of his being? Every first of January that we arrive at, is an imaginary mile-stone on the turnpike track of human life; at once a resting-place for thought and meditation, and a starting point for fresh exertion in the performance of our journey. The man who does not at least propose to himself to be better