which will afford interest and instruc- | tion? Come with me into the fields and lanes, let us stroll through the wood, and by the farm; dare the cold, and see if we shall not be repaid for our exertion. Credit Cowper, no mean authority, when he says, that he "who can derive no gratification from a view of nature, even under the disadvantage of her most ordinary dress, will have no eyes to admire her in any."

It is very cold; yet see how well the animals, destined to endure our winter, are enabled to withstand the severity of the season. The coat of the ox, no longer short and smooth, is deep and rough; the rain can scarcely penetrate it; it is the same with the horse, save when pampered and stall fed; in the more exposed and bleak districts, its increase of clothing is very remarkable. The Shetland pony is now as rough and shaggy as any painter who loves the picturesque can desire. The fur of all the wild tenants of our heaths and woods is increased in depth and thickness. The under fur of the hare is full and thick, whereas, during summer, it is very thin and short. The red grouse of the heathcovered hills, has a warm thick downy feathering to the very end of its toes; and the ermine, which, during the summer, was sleek and of a reddish brown, is now full furred and snowy white, except the tip of the tail. The alpine hare, and the ptarmigan of the Highlands have also changed their brown and mottled livery for one of purest whiteness; thus assimilating with the snow in colour, they better escape observation, when all around is open and exposed. But not only so, white bodies or substances are less rapid conductors of caloric than coloured, and while the atmosphere is so far below the vital temperature of the animal, its heat is thus, as it were, preserved and husbanded, for the maintenance of life.

But we miss the bat, we miss the hedge-hog, we miss the dormouse. They may soon be found; but in what situation? in quiet slumber,-a slumber termed hybernation, during which the blood slowly circulates; the temperature of the body is reduced nearly to that of the atmosphere; and the vital functions are almost suspended. Is not this just one remove from death? No; it is the Creator's plan of preserving from death; it is a state of insensibility which the breath of spring will dissolve, at once restoring

animation and vigour. We shall see the bat wheel again round the steeple, or the trees; the hedgehog will interrupt our woodland walks at eventide, and roll itself up at our approach; and the little dormouse will build its nest in the thicket, when the thicket can afford it concealment.

What a flock of small birds! they must amount to thousands! They are larks, the same species whose song trills in the blue summer sky, the minstrel appearing but a speck in the vault of heaven. The lark is only gregarious during winter. At the close of autumn this bird assembles in flocks, augmented by visitors of the same species from more northern regions, and the assemblage scours the country in search of food, sweeping and wheeling around the turnip fields and fallow lands, as if to reconnoitre ere settling. Larks in winter are generally fat, and esteemed a delicacy for the table, and hence their wholesale destruction: while the flocks are sleeping at night, a wide light net is drawn over them, and thousands are thus taken. From the neighbourhood of Dunstable, vast quantities are sent to the London markets; nevertheless we see no apparent diminution in the numbers of these delightful warblers, when the summer months return.

That is the song of a bird; how clear, how shrill! It is the wren, one of the smallest, but one of the hardiest of our British birds; it may be seen hopping from twig to twig, and flitting down the hedgerow, inquisitively examining the closely-covered buds, and prying into the crevices of the bark in quest of dormant insects and their larvæ, on which it feeds; then suddenly breaking forth into a clear strain, which ceases as suddenly as it began. But the wren is not our only winter songster: we have the robin, whose cheerful note is familiar to all, a favourite every where, with his rust-red breast, and his full black eye: the woodlark also, on a fine day, pours out his melodious strain. The woodlark (Alanda arborea) does not congregate like the skylark during the winter season, in large flocks, but merely associates in small families of five, six, or seven, which separate in the early part of the spring. The hedge-sparrow, or winterfauvette (Accentor modulares) may also now be heard warbling a gentle yet sweet and varied song; the thick hedge conceals the plainly-dressed songster, but it is well known; a pair builds in every

hedgerow, in every garden, in every orchard, before the leaves have yet unfolded; and the nest, and its bright blue eggs are too often borne away in petty triumph by the thoughtless schoolboy. The golden-crested wren, or gold crest, (Regulus auricapillus, Selby,) the most diminutive of our British birds, less even than the common wren, (to which it is not generically related,) braves our severest weather, and may be observed flitting through the coppice, and along the edges, like a little fairy, all life and animation. It is a singular circumstance, that in the winter of 1822, thousands of these birds were seen to arrive upon the sea-shore and sand-banks of the Northumbrian coast; many of them were so fatigued by the length of their flight, or perhaps, by the unfavourable shift of wind, as to be unable to rise again from the ground. The flight must have been in prodigious quantities, as its extent was traced through the whole range of the coasts of Northumberland and Durham. There appears little doubt of this having been a migration from the more northern provinces of Europe, (probably the pine forests of Norway and Sweden,) from the circumstance of its arrival being simultaneous with that of large flights of the woodcock, fieldfare, and redwing. (See Selby's Brit. Ornithol.)

What can be more graceful in its

actions, more pleasing in its colours, than the blue titmouse, (Parus cæru| leus); there it hangs, head downwards, on that slender spray, pecking the buds in search of small caterpillars. In this pursuit its attitudes are amusingly varied; all elegant; all quick and lively. It is gone; another twig is undergoing its scrutiny. There too is its relative, the great titmouse, (Parus major,) remarkable for its well-contrasted colours, and its active, restless, busy habits. Little care these birds for the coldest weather: they are clad in soft deep plumage, and retire at night into barns, pigsties, stables, or the holes and chinks of old walls or trees, for comfort and security.

See the fields, green with the rising blade, are blackened with rooks, all intent upon the destruction of the larvæ of beetles, which they eagerly devour, to the benefit of the farmer, who need not grieve at the trifling mischief they do by the dislodgment of the roots of the corn; a mischief compensated a thousand fold by their services.

The redwing and the fieldfare are winter visitors; flocks of them are wheeling round the fields; they settle under the hedges, and along the borders of coppices, or in turnip fields; gleaning a scanty subsistence from the berries of the hawthorn, the dogrose, the holly, the ivy, and the mountain ash; adding thereto snails and the larvæ of insects.

næus.) Instances of this curious and

interesting bird breeding with us have been met with, though rarely. It is, however, to be regarded as an occasional visitor only. Its habits and manners remind us of the parrot; like the parrot, though its toes are not two before and two behind, it clings in any posture with the greatest ease, and is active in the extreme; its bill consists of two mandibles arched, so as to cross each other, and that not always on the same side; the seeds of the fir constitute its principal food, and to obtain them it inserts the point of its bill between the scales of the fir-cones, and by an adroit lateral movement of the cross mandibles, wrenches open the scale, and disengages the seed, which it seizes at the same moment. Apple and pear trees sometimes suffer to a trifling extent, from the depredations of flocks of this bird; but more so on the continent than in our island. Its visits here are rare, and in inconsiderable numbers, except occasionally; for, as is the case with many of our visitors, it sometimes makes its appearance in large flocks, and then for several winters is to be looked for in vain. It is, however, one of our earliest visitfor it breeds in the pine forests of Germany, Sweden, and Poland, during the first months of the spring; and it is very remarkable, that in the year 1821, as Mr. Selby informs us, this island was visited, even as early as the month of June, by immense flocks of these birds, which spread themselves through the country, and were to be seen whereever fir trees were abundant. The greater part of the flock, as proved by the numbers killed, consisted of old females and young birds of the year; their course was northward, as they were seen in the fir tracts of the north of Scotland in September after they had disappeared from the districts south of the Tweed. The appearance of a crossbill in January gives us reason to suppose that it will stay and breed with us.

ors;

How thronged are the open lands, near the shore, with various species of the feathered race; wild fowl of all colours, driven from the inland parts to the mouth of rivers, and to bogs and estuaries of the sea, where nature provides them an unfailing banquet, when the lakes and marshes are locked up with frost. Curlews and whimbrels are sailing on their long and pointed wings; gulls are wheeling in easy undulations, and settling and rising, at home, on the land, on the

water, or in the air; and flocks of lapwings, distinguished by their pied livery, driven from the moorlands and waste lands of the interior, to the southern shores, cover the fallow lands like rooks searching for worms or larvæ, or approach the marshes along the beach, eager for such food as may be here obtained. But why attempt to number the birds, which at this season haunt our shores, and draw their sustenance from the prolific waters ?

Where are the reptile tribes of our island at this season ? Not one is to be seen. No, the beautiful snake is torpid in its retreat; the viper is quiet in its hole; the frog lies buried in the mud of the marsh or pool; and so does the water newt, (triton,) and the toad; and the lizard in his burrow, in the brake, or coppice. The food on which these reptiles live is not now within their reach, were they even active and vigorous; and their cold blood, never much exceeding that of the atmospheric temperature, loses the requisite stimulus of warmth with the decline of summer; when, as if aware of the torpidity to be undergone, as the means of their preservation, they each retire to their appointed dormitory. How wonderful, how mysterious is that instinct, which the great Creator has imparted! Every creature, according to its organization and concomitant mode of life, habits, and food, according to its animal necessities, is guided and impelled by an irresistible influence. It reasons not, it dreams not of the why and wherefore; it refers not effects to causes; it is not made wiser by experience; it acts as all its species do and ever did, and unconscious of the part it plays in the economy of nature, fulfils its destiny, and contributes its quota to maintain the balance of creation. To man is appointed another line of duties, for him are reserved other springs of motives and actions: his is a reasoning soul; and hence between him and the most sagacious, or apparently sagacious brute, is a wide gulf, not to be filled up.

But where are the insects? many in a larva state lie buried in the ground; many, unhatched in the egg, wait for spring to emerge devouring caterpillars; many in the chrysalis state sleep torpid till the returning warmth shall bid them break forth from their mummy-like envelope, and expand their wings upon the breeze. But some are now alert; the

transient sunshine has roused whole hosts of gnats, (cuculices, and tipulidæ ;) they are dancing as if in the exuberance of pleasure; in a few hours they will all be gone, each hastening to its concealment; but to-morrow's sun will call them forth again, should to-morrow be a genial winter's day.

The naked twigs and branches enable us now to look for the eggs of such insects as deposit them in order upon the smooth bark, to which they are attached by a sort of glue or gummy excretion, which unites them to it securely. Here are the eggs of the lackey moth, and others may soon be found; but here again observe the beautiful operations of instinct; no insect deposits her eggs on any tree but that, the leaves or bark of which is ordained to form the proper food of the caterpillar progeny, when hatched. She makes no mistake, for a mistake would be fatal to the continuance of her race, and she is not left to choice in such a matter; but is instinct-directed in all she does, and acts, as far as she is concerned, without the slightest idea of the future.

What shall we say of the vegetable world; does it lie dead? Not so; the sap is already beginning to circulate in the roots, secured from the cold in the bosom of the genial earth; stilly, indeed, is the work of restoration, the commencement of the functions of vitality, but it is sure; nay, it has already made great progress, and some of our hardier plants look cheerfully. The catkins of the hazel are beginning to unfold; and the daisy "glints forth, scarce reared above its parent earth;" the red dead nettle, the white dead nettle, the primrose, the grounsel, and chickweed adorn each sunny bank; the mezereon and hepatica are about to flower, and the snowdrop is already through the ground. The mosses are green and vigorous, and the lichen tints, with its many hues, the old gnarled trunks of trees, and the timeworn stones of ruined towers, over which the ivy, ever verdant, throws a wreath as if to hide the progress of decay, or show that for nature man himself labours, even when he ministers to his own power or glory.

Surely a winter's walk in January is not destitute of interest. Reader, try it for yourself, using your eyes, (availing yourself of a pocket miscroscope,) and using your ears to catch every sound; and when you return with the glow of

health, and the animation which exercise produces, you will not repent that you have left the fireside for a season to look at nature in "her least attractive dress." But what is the severity of this season, in our climate, to that of the ice-bound regions of the north, where

"Winter holds his unrejoicing court;

And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is for ever heard!
There the grim tyrant meditates his wrath,
Arms his fierce winds with all-subduing frost;
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his

snows,

With which he now oppresses half the world.
There, undissolving from the first of time,
Snows swell on snows amazing to the sky;
And icy mountains, high on mountains piled,
Seem, to the shivering sailor, from afar
Shapeless and white, an atmosphere of clouds.
Projected huge and horrid, o'er the surge
Alps frown on Alps; or hideous rushing down,
As if old chaos was again returned,
Wide rend the deep, and shake the solid pole.
Ocean itself no longer can resist
The binding fury; but in all its rage
Of tempest, taken by the boundless frost,
Is many a fathom to the bottom chained,
And bid to roar no more-a bleak expanse
Shagg'd o'er with wavy rocks, cheerless, and void
Of every life, that from the dreary months
Fiies conscious southward.'-THOMSON.

THE SCRIPTURES.

THE inspired Scriptures derive their singular unity, not only from all the doctrines forming one vast and everduring system of truth, but from all the rays of heavenly light converging upon one glorious and Divine Person who is the sum and the centre of the whole dispensation: "To Him give all the prophets witness." Whatever may be their theme in the first instance, it terminates and rests at last upon the advent of the promised Deliverer. Whether they sing of judgment or of mercy, they are carried forward to the great King, who shall break in pieces his enemies with a rod of iron, but who shall rule over his subjects with the sceptre of righteousness and peace. To Him give all the apostles witness. Their lives were spent in proclaiming His salvation; their blood was shed in confirmation of his faithfulness and truth. To Him give all his disciples witness in all ages of the world. To Him the true Church gives witness, acknowledging his omniscience, to foreshow the trials that were to befall believers, and his almightiness to rescue them from all dangers, confessing that he is the First and the Last, and that in his hand are the keys of life and of death.-Douglas.

ENGLISH HISTORY.

ELIZABETH.

QUEEN MARY died between six and seven o'clock in the morning of November 17, 1558. The council assembled the parliament then sitting, and at noon Elizabeth was proclaimed queen. This change was received with more than common rejoicing; such was the state of affairs at that time, and such the apprehensions entertained of still severer persecutions, and deeper national disgrace from the policy lately pursued. The most bigoted of the Papists expected that their cruel proceedings would be stopped; but though it was believed that Elizabeth was favourably disposed to the Reformation, yet she had conformed to the church of Rome, and they still hoped that Popery would predominate. Her early measures were such as to keep both parties in suspense as to the course she would pursue. Elizabeth was at Hatfield when her sister died. She was then in her twentyfifth year, highly gifted with natural abilities, which had been cultivated by study. But the course of instruction most beneficial, both to her subjects and herself, was the severe sufferings she experienced during her sister's reign. The poet has well said, "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and the same sentiment has been expressed by a writer of Divine authority, who has declared that "it is good

for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth." Elizabeth, though a female of the highest rank, had been bowed down as heavily as the meanest of her subjects; she learned wisdom and caution from her sufferings. The efforts made for her destruction in the late reign are well described by bishop Aylmer: "What assemblies and councils, what examinations and wrackings of poor men were there, to find out the knife that should cut her throat! What gaping among many lords of the clergy, to see the day wherein they might wash their goodly white rochets in her innocent blood!" But though man may plot, he cannot execute his designs, unless the Lord permit. The time was come when Popery was to be humbled; Elizabeth was the main instrument chosen to effect this.

On receiving intelligence of her sister's death, Elizabeth immediately appointed as her counsellors, thirteen who had been thus employed by the late Queen; but she joined eight Protestants to them: among these was Sir William Cecil, who was her principal adviser from the first. He communicated to her the intelligence of her sister's decease, he was employed to prepare the address she delivered to the council, and the first minute of business requiring immediate attention, still in existence, is in Cecil's hand-writing.

On November 23, the queen removed

C