Winter.

To a contemplative spirit, this dreary, unproductive season, as it is regarded, is full of interesting suggestions. The gay spring, the luxuriant summer, and the myriad-tinted autumn, present attractions to the eye and heart, which are elevating in their influence on the mind; but he must be a strange thinking man who can see no attractiveness in the cold, the clouds, the snows of winter. The change which all nature undergoes in the variety of the seasons, is, of itself, sufficient to fix the thoughts of a wise man, and to lead him to the employment of an active and inspiring contemplation, in view of the natural and striking phenomena presented in abundant development, by the coming and going of months in the round of the year.

The contrasts which winter presents to the other seasons is highly interesting. There are no blossoms o'er all the hills and dales when winter reigns upon his throne; no glad and flowing streams; no abundant and waving harvests. The bushes are all stripped of their clustering leaves and flowers; the forest trees spread their huge bare branches to the snows and the winds; the fields are covered with frost and hardness; and the streams all sleep in the icy bands of

winter, unmoved by the sunshine, and unstirred by the tempest.

Spring, and summer and autumn, are alive with the music of birds; and the voice of gladness comes over every mount, and adown every valley: and myriad life is sporting in the warm sun, and being wafted by the morning and evening breezes; but in the cold winter no song of birds is heard, and no form of bird is seen, save that of the little snow bird, that comes pecking at your window to tell you that the snows are coming, and to ask the offering of your crumbs. The only voices that are heard are those of winter winds, sighing through leafless branches, or perchance, the echoes of the woodman's axe, reverberating from the forest depths.

And yet winter, with all its ruggedness, with all its cheerlessness and sterility, presents abundant sources of refreshing, elevating and purifying thought.

Winter is the crown and age of the year. The time must rest, that its vigour may be renewed. The earth must repose, that it may replenish its partially exhausted resources, so as to meet and supply the expectation of other and abundant harvests. All life is reproductive; it may be exhausted by being overtasked. All life needs rest. Not a rest of indolence and inactivity, but a rest which supplies and refreshes. Nature must have her slumber as well as man. The purpose of sleep to man, is to revive, replenish, and refresh him. After the toil of the day, his mind and his physical functions are all wearied, and call for rest. Repose supplies that which was employed in the toil of the

day, and expended in industrial pursuits, and the man is again prepared to toil, being renewed in his strength.

So the earth requires rest. During the slumbers of winter the ground is guarded from the encroachments of avarice and covetousness, by the snows and the frosts. Some men would plough and sow the whole year, not that they might subserve the true ends of toil, but to secure personal and selfish advantage; but selfishness cannot disturb the sleep of nature, because the strong sentinels,--whose power none can withstand,--of ice and snows, guard the ground, while it dreams of the abundance and rapture of the awaking spring. Winter is, therefore, not destructive, but benevolent, inasmuch as it refreshes nature, and qualifies it to reassume its beauties, and offer its abundance to the toil of the husbandman.

Man has his seasons; his spring, his summer, his autumn, and his winter. His life has its season of activity, and its season of decline and rest. Now, he is disporting amid all the gaieties of spring; and anon, he is wrapping about him the garments of age, with the snows of life's winter settling around him. To impose on old age the toils of strong manhood, would be as if the winter was challenged for the offerings of summer. When the winter clouds hang over the fields, and the snows descend upon the ground, then the toil of man must be withdrawn from the sod, that it may be refreshed to glow again in the radiance, and be blest again in the abundance of the spring. And when old age comes on, the activities of life are failing, and the resources of strength are exhausted, and the old man declines to the grave to slumber till the new life,--the spring of immortal