something unspeakably sweet and alluring. Those luscious evergreen vallies, those luxuriant hills, those rich slopes, clothed with the most gorgeous fruits and the tenderest and deepest verdure, and more than all, those gentle and transparent skies, seem beneficiently designed for man in his more uncivilized state, or for the poor. It must be delightful for the penniless, the aged, and the houseless, unable to procure clothing or fuel, to find the dawn ever diffusing a genial and balmy warmth over nature. The tenant of the rude and scantily furnished hut, flings open his window and admits the flagrant sweets. Mere day is to them a gift and a blessing; the sun is their cloak and their fire. Those old Italian landscapes with the warm yellow light gleaming deliciously in through an open casement are finely characteristic. But are we not apt to magnify the advantages of this universal and perpetual blandness of heaven? True, the half

clad fisherman flings himself carelessly down and sleeps upon the beach-the beggar lies stretched against a sunny wall, drying the night dews from his tattered garments and partaking in peace the slumbers which he could not enjoy beneath the less benignant influence of the stars; the wrinkled and time striken dames, "the spinsters and the knitters in the sun" bring their work in front of their cottages, and the pilgrim from a northern clime fancies them happy as the children of Eden. But I doubt whether the vigorous and enlivening joys of winter are not more conducive to health and happiness. An Italian vale, breathing its sweetest odours and sparkling under its pleasantest sun-shine, is but a dull picture compared with Broadway on the bright morning after a heavy fall of snow. No scene can be more full of life and action-everything appears in a whirl of delight. A spirit of joy and impulse hangs in

the air, pervades all the city, and pours its fires through the veins of every living creature. The exhilarating atmosphere braces the limbs, quickens the step, flushes the cheek, fills the eye with lustre, and puts aside care, thought and dullness. Those old snow-storms have unfortunately of later years made their visits less frequently. The fleecy mantle now descends in smaller portions, and is doffed in a shorter period. I can fancy the rising generation smiling when we of the old school lament the forms and fashions of the last century. They, peradventure, may be amused by wondering what value we can attach to a powdered queue or a plaited wristband, but, by this hand when the elements themselves alter and remould their usages,-when seasons roll in different shapes,-when honest gusty old winter-instead of striding forward, as was his wont, wrapt in cloak and fur,-his cheek glowing with the cold, and the sparry icicle

glittering around his cap and beard-steals forward with only a fashionable mantle and an umbrella, heaven save the mark! we may well lament. I cannot write calmly of those glorious old snow storms.

One of them had now descended upon New York, and the inhabitants, as the day advanced, seemed conscious of no other earthly object than the enjoyment of sleighing.

Throngs of the wealthiest and most fashionable were gathered into that broad and beautiful street, which extends, three or four miles, in a line straight as an arrow, its long vista of elegant houses, remarkable for their uniform aspect of affluence and comfort, and presenting in their extreme neatness, and particularly in the beauty of their entrances, a striking contrast to the street views of Paris, with only two exceptions, and to those of other continental cities without any. Its world of lovely women were abroad. Such

rosy cheeks, such melting eyes as passed up and down that dazzling day! Hundreds of sleighs, drawn sometimes by one horse, and sometimes by four, darted by each other with the swiftness of a bird's sweep,-the princely horses fired with the air and the scene, neighing, tossing their heads, champing their bits, and leaping on their way, mad as Bucephalus, every mothers' son of them-the bells around their necks ringing out a music as merry and soulstirring as the blast of a trumpet. An amusement so heartily entered into by the wealthy classes, soon assumes an artificial hue of taste. The choice of horses became a matter of the utmost ambition, and the sleighs were wrought into every form devisable by an elegant or a fantastic fancy. Now swept by a painted boat, and now a classic chariot. Here darted a pearly shell fit to bear Venus over the waves, and there an ocean car from which father Neptune might have appropriately guided the dolphins, and