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