THIS morning I accompanied the Judge and Miss Sandford in their sleigh on an excursion into the country. The scene, though rather painful to the eyes, was indescribably brilliant and beautiful. There had been during last night and part of yesterday a slight thaw, accompanied by a cold fine rain that froze the moment it fell into ice of the purest crystal. Every deciduous tree was covered with this glittering coating, and looked in the distance like an enormous though graceful bunch of feathers; while on a nearer approach it resembled, with its limbs now bending under the heavy weight of the transparent incrustation, a dazzling chandelier. The open fields, covered with a rough but hardened surface of snow, glistened in the sun as if thickly strewed with the largest diamonds; and every rail of the wooden fences in this general profusion of ornaments was decorated with a delicate fringe of pendent ice, that radiated like burnished silver. The heavy and sombre spruce, loaded with snow, rejoiced in a green old age. Having its massy shape relieved by strong and numerous lights, it gained in grace what it lost in strength, and stood erect among its drooping neighbours, venerable but vigorous, the hoary forefather of the wood.

VOL. XXXIII. NO. CXCVII.

99.66

THE ATTACHÉ," ETC.

The tall and slender poplar and white birch, which here and there had sprung up in the new clearings from the roots of old trees, and outgrown their strength and proportions, bent their heads gracefully to the ground under their unusual burden and formed fanciful arches, which the frost encircled with numerous wreaths of pearls. Every thing in the distance was covered with the purest white, while the colours of nearer objects were as diversified as their forms.

The bark of the different trees and their limbs appeared through the transparent ice; and the rays of the sun, as they fell upon them, invested them with all the hues of the prism. It was a scene as impossible to describe as to forget. To the natives it is not an unusual sight; for it generally occurs once a-year, at least, and its effects are as well appreciated as its beauty. The farmer foresees and laments serious injury to his orchard, the woodman a pitiless pelting of ice as he plies his axe in the forest, the huntsman a barrier to his sport, and the traveller an omen of hard and severe weather; and yet such was the glory of the landscape, that every heart felt its magic and acknowledged the might and the beauty of this sudden transformation,

LL

It

It was the work of a night. The sun set with chilling showers. rose in all its splendour to witness and to heighten by its presence the magnificence and brilliancy of the scene. We constantly recurred to this topic after our return, and again and again went to the window as the day declined to catch the last parting glimpse of the "silver frost" before it dissolved from view under the gaze of the sun and vanished for ever. In the evening, winter and its scenery, its festivals and privations, and its effects on the habits, feelings, and tastes of the people formed the subject of a long conversation, in which the Judge told me the following sad and interesting story:

On one of the shore-roads, as the highways near the Atlantic are called, in a distant part of the province, there is a lone house situated in the midst of one of the wildest and most barren tracts of country in these colonies; on either side of it are enormous bogs, stretching away in the distance for miles. Behind it is an undulating country of granite formation, covered with enormous masses of detached rock. In front is a lake in a deep and sunken hollow, so still, so cheerless and repulsive, that it looks like the pool of death. Beyond this a mountain wave of granite rises and shuts out the sea, which is not far distant. The place where the house stands is a small ridge of land in the form of a wedge, which formerly bore beech and birch trees; and not only had a tolerable soil, but was exempt from the incumbrance of loose stone. Beyond this ridge, however, all is barren. The surface is either naked rock or partially covered with moss, the wild strawberry, and the hardy white clover. Here and there a stunted birch or dwarf larch finds a scanty subsistence in the crevices of the rocks, or in coarse gravel formed by the disintegration that time and the alternations of heat and frost have produced in the granite. In the hollows, which resemble basins or stone reservoirs, a boggy substance has accumulated, that nurtures small groves of ill-conditioned and halffed firs, which seem to have grown prematurely old, and grey before their time, being covered with white moss, which, climbing up their stems,

hangs pendent from their limbs, like hoary locks. The larger bogs on the right and left are in part covered with a long coarse aquatic grass (which the moose and carraboo feed upon in winter, when the frost enables them to travel over these treacherous and dangerous places), and in part by the yellow water-lilies, the wild iris, and clusters of cranberry-bushes. It is impossible to conceive any thing more lonely and desolate than this place. Even in summer, when the grassy road is well defined, and vegetation has done its best to clothe the huge proportions of the landscape and conceal its poverty and deformity, when the glittering insects flutter by to withdraw your attention from their dank, stagnant, and unwholesome cradles, to their own beauty, and the wild bee as he journeys on whispers of his winter's store of honey, and the birds sing merrily that contentment is bliss; even then, excited by the novelty of the scene, and interested as you are in the little lone household of the desert, its total seclusion from the world and the whole human family overpowers and appals you. A crowd of ideas rushes into your mind faster than you can arrange and dispose of them. Surely you say, Here, at least, is innocence; and where there is innocence, there must be happiness. Where there is no tempter, there can be no victim. It is the "still water" of life. Here all is calm and quiet, while on either side is the rapid or the cataract. The passions can have no scope, the affections must occupy the whole ground. How can envy, hatred, malice, or uncharitableness find an entrance? There can be nothing to envy where the condition of all is alike, and where all that is garnered is a common stock. There can be no hatred where there is no injury or no superiority; but they can love one another, for they are all in all to each other, and they can trim their fire for the poor wayfaring man, feed him, and send him on his journey rejoicing. They can hear from him of the houseless stranger, and bless God with thankful hearts that he has given them a home to dwell in. He may tell them tales of war, but they feel they are beyond its reach; and, what is far better, learn that if poverty has its priva

tions, it has also its own peculiar privileges and immunities. Thoughts like these naturally force themselves upon you in such a scene. Your feelings are subdued and softened. You behold the family with interest and affection, but still you shrink at a full view of their situation and involuntarily regard it with pity as a hopeless exile. You are a creature of habit; you cannot understand it; you feel you have social duties to perform; that grief is lessened when the burden is divided, and happiness increased when it is imparted. That man was not made to live alone; and that mutual wants, individual weakness, and common protection require that, though we live in families, our families must dwell in communities.

If such be the feelings that a traveller entertains even in summer, how must he shudder when he regards this lone house in winter? I have seen many solitary habitations as well as this, and some of them much farther removed from any neighbourhood, but never one SO dreary and so desolate. Follow any new road into the wilderness, and you will find a family settled there miles and miles from any house. But imagination soon fills up the intervening space with a dense population, and you see them in the midst of a well-cultivated country, and enjoying all the blessings of a civilised community. They are merely pioneers. They have taken up their station: the tide of emigration will speedily reach them and pass on. Go into that house, and you are at once struck with the difference of the two families. The former is still life and contentment; the latter is all hope, bustle, and noisy happiness. The axe is at work on the forest that is ringing with its regular blows. Merry voices are heard there, and the loud laugh echoes through the woods, for friends have come from the settlements, and ten acres of wood are to be cut down in one day. Sleighs are arriving with neighbours and relations, from whom they have lately parted; and at night there will be a festive assembly at a place which, until the year before, when the road was made and the house built, was in the heart of a howling wilderness. There is nothing about

such a dwelling to make you think it desolate, although loneliness is its characteristic. Converse with the forester, a fine, manly, native settler, and you find he has visions of a mill on his brook: he talks of keeping fifty head of horned cattle in a few years. As soon as his mill is finished, this log-hut is to be superseded by a large framed house; and that miserable shed, as he calls his stable, is to give place to a spacious barn, seventy feet long and fifty feet wide. He is full of merriment, confidence, and hope. In the former place, a pious resignation, a placid contentment, hearts chastened and subdued into a patient endurance of toil, and a meek but firm reliance on the superintendence of a Divine Providence, form a strong contrast to the more animated and self-relying forest family.

The wintry blast howls round their dwelling, like a remorseless and savage foe. Its hollow, mournful voice appals the heart with painful recollections of its overpowering strength; and the poor besieged family, as they encircle their little fire at night (drawn still closer together now by their mutual fears and affections), offer up a silent prayer to the throne of grace, and implore the continued and merciful protection of Him who is always a father to the fatherless. At this season the road is covered, in common with the dreary desert, with deep snow. In the clear light of an unclouded sun, its direction may be ascertained by an experienced traveller, and by him alone; but at night, or in stormy weather, it is a vast and trackless field, where the fatigued and bewildered stranger is doomed to inevitable death.

To afford shelter and assistance to the traveller, to furnish him with a guide, and speed him on his way, was the object which John Lent had in view in settling on the " Ridge." He was aided by the subscriptions and encouraged by the personal assistance of those on either side of the desert who were interested in the road, or in the benevolence of the undertaking. A house and barn were erected with much labour and difficulty (for all the materials were brought from a great distance), the Court of Sessions granted him a free