Page:Three Years in Europe.djvu/69

Rh with skeletons of trees casting long shadows over the field of white, or with groups of children with skates on their shoulders, and bounded far off by the hazy range of leafless trees and shrubs. The scene reminded me of the beautiful lines of Cowper in his "Winter Walk at Noon."

There is no season in England which I enjoy half as well as winter, and nothing is so healthy and so bracing as a brisk walk on a frosty morning with snow under your feet and a cold, bitterly cold, wind blowing on your face and ears. But it is really painful to reflect on the amount of suffering of the poor in this country in this inclement weather. Thousands of poor people live here in ill-constructed houses, with broken windows which hardly keep off the cold blast, with no coals to warm their rooms, no sufficient clothing to keep themselves warm, and in many cases with hardly sufficient food to give them due nourishment. Many people in this country die in winter either of hunger and cold or through diseases generated through insufficient nourishment and exposure to cold. Were we to sympathize with every sufferer in this world, our life would be one long tissue of woe. It is only by forgetting, nay, closing our eyes to what is going on around us, by smothering the ready sympathy of childhood, and steeling our heart against emotions of pity, that we live and work on unconcerned as we do. It is