Page:The Seasons - Thomson (1791).djvu/53

Rh, will not be greatly amazed at the richer and more luxuriant, but still resembling, growths of the tropics. But one who has always been accustomed to view water in a liquid and colourless state, cannot form the lead: conception of the same element as hardened into an extensive plain of solid chrystal, or covering the ground with a robe of the purest white. The lightest possible degree of astonishment must therefore attend the first view of these phenomena; and as in our temperate climate but a small portion of the year affords these spectacles, we find that, even here, they have novelty enough to excite emotions of agreeable surprize. But it is not to novelty alone that they owe their charms. Their intrinsic beauty is, perhaps, individually superior to that of the gayest objects presented by the other seasons. Where is the elegance and brilliancy that can compare with that which decorates every tree or bush on the clear morning succeeding a night of hoar frost? or what is the lustre that would not appear dull and tarnished in competition with a field of snow just glazed over with frost? By the vivid description of such objects as these, contrasted with the savage sublimity of storms and tempests, our Poet has been able to produce a set of winter landskips, as engaging to the fancy at the apparently happier scenes of genial warmth and verdure.

he has not trusted entirely to these resources for combating the natural sterility of Winter. Repeating the pleasing artifice of his Summer, he has called in foreign aid, and has heightened the scenery with grandeur and horror not our own. The famished troops of wolves pouring from the Alps; the mountains of snow rolling down the precipices of the same regions; the dreary plains over which the Laplander urges his rein deer; the wonders of the icy sea, and volcanoes "flaming thro' a waste of snow;" are objects judiciously selected from all that Nature presents most singular and Rh