and altered. But there are one or two other beneficial operations of frost in our climate, which must not be passed without notice. The expansive power of water, when passing into ice, has already been stated. This power operates with great force, as has been ascertained by experiment. A familiar instance occurs in the bursting of bottles filled with water or other liquids, when corked up and exposed to its influence. The same power affects the soil, when saturated with moisture, heaving up and separating the particles of earth and gravel. This sometimes acts disadvantageously, by throwing out the plants of young wheat, and by loosening the materials of which our roads are composed; but it amply repays these partial inconveniences, by its pulverizing effects on tenacious soils. Stiff loams, as they are called, that is, lands chiefly composed of an unctuous clay, though abounding in the vegetative principle, are yet naturally in an unfit state for successful cultivation. Their tenacity prevents the absorption and removal of the superfluous moisture during rainy seasons, and in drought renders the soil so indurated, as to obstruct the free growth of the roots of plants, and the secretion of sap. Now the agriculturist knows how to obviate these disadvantages, by the exposure of this kind of soil to the influence of frost. He ploughs up his land into furrows; and, by thus presenting it to the freezing process, finds that the water mingled with the soil, as it expands in being converted into ice, separates, with irresistible force, the adhesive particles of the clay; and, when again contracted, and rendered liquid by thawing, leaves the earth finely pulverized, and brought into a state well fitted for giving forth its prolific qualities in the ensuing year. Another beneficial property of frost, in the form of ice as well as of snow, is the power it possesses of confining the cold to the surface of the earth. The ice binds up the soil, and, being a slow conductor, prevents the severity of the season from injuriously affecting the fibres and roots of the plants which Nature has, in general, buried to a sufficient depth for their preservation, with the aid of this wise provision. Even when the ice reaches and envelopes the roots, it seldom materially injures them, because it does not easily descend below the freezing point, which is much higher than the usual temperature of the air in northern winters. We Here, again, we find cause of pious admiration. do not expect a world of perfection; but the contrary. All climates have their inconveniences and evils: such is the condition of our world; but then these disadvantages are always, in a wonderful manner, guarded, limited, and mitigated. They proceed to a certain point; but there a Paternal Hand interposes; and the sentence is pronounced as distinctly as if it were proclaimed with an audible voice, "Hitherto shalt thou come, and no further." The obvious intention is discipline, and not destruction. In tropical climates, for example, the heat of a vertical sun, as we have seen, is not permitted to accumulate, by perpetual action on one point, as it would thus become intolerable. That great source of light and warmth is made continually to traverse from tropic to tropic; and when his direct rays would strike too fiercely in his passage there, the clouds collect with their shade, the rising winds fan the air, the cooling and fertilizing rains descend, and thus he moves along, in his tempered glory, showering blessings from his wings at the moment when he threatened to scorch and destroy. And a similar arrangement is observable with reference to the opposite extreme of intense cold. The wintry blast seems calculated utterly to exterminate both the vegetable and animal creation; but by a series of deeply excogitated contrivances, the calamity is averted, and life and vigor are preserved in the vegetable world, while comfort and enjoyment are communicated to every thing that lives. How curious and edifying is the analogy between the works of creation and the operations of Divine grace, between the revelations of the book of Nature and of the book of Inspiration. When the curse fell on man, it was mitigated by the promise, that "The seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent;" when the earth was forbidden to yield him food, except as the fruit of painful toil, that very toil was converted into a source of pleasure and improvement. Here is compensation; but grace goes far beyond the analogy of nature, for it promises heaven for earth,—the absolute and unalloyed blessedness of immortality, for the turmoils and stinted enjoyments of this mortal life. When the terrestrial paradise was closed against man for ever, his eye was directed, across a rugged and gloomy wilderness, and through a swelling flood, to that bright spot in the distant horizon, where "the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest;" where a Father's hand wipes the tear from every eye; and where "joy unspeakable and full of glory" eternally reigns. ELEVENTH WEEK-SATURDAY. III. FROST.-AMUSEMENTS CONNECTED WITH IT. A GROUP of schoolboys on the surface of a frozen pond or lake, is a most animated and interesting spectacle. There is so much evidence of real enjoyment in the motions, the accents, and the countenances of the various individuals who compose it, whether they glide along the ice on skates, or by means of the more humble instrumentality of wooden shoes, fenced with iron, or of a staff, armed with a pike, that a spectator, accustomed to reflection, cannot fail to recognise, in the happiness which prevails around him, an evidence of a benevolent Creator. It might, perhaps, appear ludicrous, were I to assert that ice is formed smooth and hard, for the purpose of affording means of healthy and exhilarating sport to the young; and I might be reminded, that this is just the form which the crystallizing process takes in other instances, and the natural result of its laws. Be it so but still it is impossible to deny, that the youthful mind is so framed as to take pleasure in the exercises which the smooth and level surface of the ice affords; and surely we do not go beyond the bounds of legitimate inference, when we assert, that this is one of the benevolent contrivances by which the rigors of winter are softened, whether the adaptation lie in the polished surface of the frozen plain, or in the buoyancy of the youthful mind, or in both. This observation may be greatly extended; for there is scarcely any object with which we are surrounded, that is not, to the well-constituted mind, a source of enjoyment. In the young this is more conspicuous, because the pleasurable feeling lies nearer the surface, and is more easily excited, and expressed more emphatically, by outward signs. But it would be a great mistake to measure the relative enjoyments of childhood and manhood by their external expression, or to suppose that Nature, even in its most familiar aspects, does not present as many objects of interest, and of agreeable sensation, to those who are in the meridian of life, or even verging towards the shades of evening, as to those who flutter in the morning sunshine. If the ice afford the schoolboy the joy of gliding swiftly on its smooth expanse, it is not niggardly of its amusements to the more sedate minds of the mature in age. To every northern country, some amusement on the ice is familiar; and, among these, that of curling may be mentioned as the game peculiarly prized in many districts of Scotland; and also, if I mistake not, in the Netherlands; from which latter country it seems to have been originally derived. The amiable Grahame, in his British Georgics, gives a graphic description of this amusement, an extract from which will not be unacceptable. "Now rival parishes and shrievedoms, keep, While love of conquest lights their beamless eyes, New nerves their arms, and makes them young once more." "Keen, keener still, as life itself were staked, Kindles the friendly strife: one points the line To him who, poising, aims and aims again; Begins; near and more near the sounding stones, Maintains its course, and takes the victor's place.” These are but single instances of the means of enjoyment, which brighten the gloom of winter. The benevolent Parent of Nature enables the human mind to find a source of pleasure, as I have said, almost in every thing. Who has not felt his heart expand with an undefinable delight, when he has beheld the fantastic forms into which, during severe weather, the frozen spray or drippings of a cascade throw themselves, and when he has given loose reins to his fancy, in tracing crystal grottos, and temples, and spires, in the endless, but always elegant varieties of the architecture which the wizard Frost had reared? The very icicles dependent from the eaves of the houses, as they glance in the morning sun, are not beheld without a pleasing emotion; and a higher gratification to the taste is afforded in contemplating the white expanse of the snow as it spreads its bright and colorless carpet over the fields, and lies thick on the bending hedges and trees, while, at the horizon, the cold marble outline of the distant hills, swelling in the softened light, is finely contrasted with the dark blue of the serene and cloudless sky. Mr. Abbott, a pleasing and amiable American writer, has touched, very beautifully, on the "thousand ingenious contrivances," as he calls them, which "God has planned and executed to make men happy," and he alludes, among other things, to the enjoyments of winter, in a few sentences, which will form an appropriate conclusion to this paper. |