he long and perilous flight--and then compare it with that of
numberless respectable persons who even now are projecting their winter
in the South!



XXV.


Yesterday I passed by an elm avenue, leading to a beautiful old house.
The road between the trees was covered in all its length and breadth with
fallen leaves--a carpet of pale gold. Further on, I came to a
plantation, mostly of larches; it shone in the richest aureate hue, with
here and there a splash of blood-red, which was a young beech in its
moment of autumnal glory.

I looked at an alder, laden with brown catkins, its blunt foliage stained
with innumerable shades of lovely colour. Near it was a horse-chestnut,
with but a few leaves hanging on its branches, and those a deep orange.
The limes, I see, are already bare.

To-night the wind is loud, and rain dashes against my casement; to-morrow
I shall awake to a sky of winter.




WINTER


I.


Blasts from the Channel, with raining scud, and spume of mist breaking
upon the hills, have kept me indoors all day. Yet not for a moment have
I been dull or idle, and now, by the latter end of a sea-coal fire, I
feel such enjoyment of my ease and tranquillity that I must needs word it
before going up to bed.

Of course one ought to be able to breast weather such as this of to-day,
and to find one's pleasure in the strife with it. For the man sound in
body and serene of mind there is no such thing as bad weather; every sky
has its beauty, and storms which whip the blood do but make it pulse more
vigorously. I remember the time when I would have set out with gusto for
a tramp along the wind-swept and rain-beaten roads; nowadays, I should
perhaps pay for the experiment with my life. All the more do I prize the
shelter of these good walls, the honest workmanship which makes my doors
and windows proof against the assailing blast. In all England, the land
of comfort, there is no room more comfortable than this in which I sit.
Comfortable in the good old sense of the