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M THI

INTER

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56, PATERNOSTER ROW; 65, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD;
AND 164, PICCADILLY.

280. i 363.

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TERN Winter," says Wordsworth, "loves a dirge-like sound." Yet the varied strains collected in this volume are not wholly or chiefly of melancholy cadence. To most of their writers Winter is beautiful, though stern and solemn; to many the season has associations and suggestions of rich instructiveness. In the endeavour to live a noble life, the opportunities afforded by Winter are most helpful to the wise.

John Foster characteristically remarks-"The Winter is generally felt an unpleasing and gloomy season of the year; the more desirable is it to make it yield us some special good by way of compensation. The practicability of doing this displays the excellence of mind above matter, and the advantage of religion. The sky is gloomy, the light brief and faint; the earth torpid, sterile, and deprived of beauty-the whole system of the elements ungenial, like a general refusal of nature to please us, or afford us anything. Well, but MIND, with the aid of wisdom and religion, may not only flourish within itself, but may compel the very Winter to afford assistance to its doing so. It may raise a richer produce than the agriculturist can in spring and autumn."

That the harvest of which the great Essayist speaks may be reaped even in an English Winter the following poems will show.

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