JANUARY.

In the illuminated calendars prefixed to old Romish Missals, January is frequently represented as a man carrying faggots for burning, or a woodman’s axe, shivering and blowing his fingers. Modern artists and poets represent Winter as a feeble old man—a type of the pale “descending year.” Against this idea a celebrated writer thus warmly protests: —

Talk not of Winter as a dotard old!

Gray-haired and feeble, palsied every limb,

‘A withered branch his sceptre:’ ’tis a whim

He well may laugh to scorn; a warrior bold,

Girded with strength is he! Asleep—awake —

He is all energy to ear and sight;

He bids the winds go forth, and forests quake,

Like flowers before gay Summer’s fresh’ning gale;

He doth unchain the floods, and, in their might,

Adown the hills they rush, and through the vale,

With deafening clamor, till they reach the main.

The Romans dedicated this portion of the year to the heathen god Janus, from whom it derives its name. Our Saxon ancestors gave it the name of wolf-monath, or wolf-month, because the wolves, which anciently infested the British forests, impelled by hunger, at this season descended from their accustomed haunts and attacked the domestic animals, and even man himself, when the inclemency of the weather had destroyed or put to flight their usual prey. Such scenes are now unknown in Great Britain. Thomson describes the dire descent of a troop of such monsters from

The shining Alps,

And wavy Apennines and Pyrenees,

——By wintry famine roused:

Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave,

Burning for blood!—bony, and gaunt, and grim!

Assembling wolves in raging troops descend;

And, pouring o’er the country, bear along,

Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow.

All is their prize.

Rapacious at the mother’s throat they fly,

And tear the screaming infant from her breast,

E’en beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance

The generous lion stands in softened gaze,

Here bleeds, a hapless, undistinguished prey.

In this inclement month, the feeble rays of the sun are rarely felt, the smaller rivers and ponds are frozen over, and sometimes a strong and sudden frost converts the gliding streams into blocks of solid ice.

An icy gale, oft shifting o’er the pool,

Breathes a blue film, and in its mid career

Arrests the bickering storm.

Loud rings the frozen earth, and hard reflects

A double noise; while, at his evening watch,

The village dog deters the nightly thief;

The heifer lows; the distant waterfall

Swells in the breeze; and with the hasty tread

Of traveler, the hollow-sounding plain

Shakes from afar.

It freezes on

Till Morn, late rising o’er the drooping world,

Lifts her pale eye, unjoyous. Then appears

The various labor of the silent Night:

Prone from the dripping eave and dumb cascade,

Whose idle torrents only seem to roar;

The pendent icicle, the frost-work fair,

Where transient hues and fancied figures rise;

Wide-spouted o’er the hill, the frozen brook,

A livid tract, cold gleaming o’er the morn.

How strikingly beautiful is the appearance of the hoar frost, which clothes the trees in crystals, which sparkle like the most brilliant gems. Well might Howitt exclaim, as he gazed on the gorgeous effects of its incomparable loveliness,

What dream of beauty ever equalled this!

What visions of my boyhood do I miss,

That are not here restored! All splendors pure;

All loveliness, all graces that allure;

Shapes that amaze; a Paradise that is —

Yet was not—will not in few moments be;

Glory from nakedness, that playfully

Mimics with passing life each summer boon,

Clothing the ground, replenishing the tree,

Weaving arch, bower, and delicate festoon,

Still as a dream—and, like a dream, to flee!

The inclemency of the season is shown by its effects on animals, particularly on the numerous tribes of birds. As the cold advances, they become bold by want, and fearlessly approach the habitations of man. The little snow-birds, as they are commonly called, crowd into the farm-yards, and at the barn-doors pick their scanty fare from the chaff and straw. Robins and thrushes in flocks descend from the tops of trees, and frequent the warm manured fields in the neighborhood of towns. Snipes, woodcocks, wild ducks, and other water-fowl, are forced from the frozen marshes, and obliged to seek their food about the rapid streams which are yet unfrozen.

As the cold grows more intense, various kinds of sea-fowl quit the bleak open shores, and ascend the rivers, where they offer a prey to the fowler. Cowper thus beautifully paints the sufferings of the feathered tribes: —

How find the myriads that in summer cheer

The hills and valleys with their ceaseless songs,

Due sustenance, or where subsist they now?

Earth yields them naught; the imprisoned worm is safe

Beneath the frozen clod; all seeds of herbs

Lie covered close; and berry-bearing thorns

That feed the thrush, (whatever some suppose,)

Afford the smaller minstrels no supply.

The long protracted rigor of the year

Thins all their numerous flocks. In chinks and holes

Ten thousand seek an unmolested end,

As instinct prompts; self-buried there they die.

And Burns, with true poetic sympathy for the sufferings of all created things, while listening to the stormy terrors of a winter’s night, thus apostrophizes the feathered songsters of the grove: —

Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing,

That in the merry months o’ spring

Delighted me to hear thee sing —

What comes o’ thee?

Whare wilt thou cow’r thy chittering wing,

An’ close thy e’e?

Yet amid all these indications of the severity of the season, there are pleasing circumstances which sometimes occur. In the prairies of our western world, the song of the prairie-thrush is heard occasionally ushering in the new year. This is the most early songster in that part of the world, which, sitting on the top of some high bending shrub, in showery weather, as he rides to and fro with the breezes, exerts his throat in loud, uninterrupted strains, which has gained for him the appellation of the storm-bird.

In this month the small wren of the prairie sings melodiously as it hops from reed to reed in search of food. If we examine the plants at this season of the year, we perceive the hand of the Creator, in his wise protection of what he intends for the happiness of his children. Those plants called herbaceous, which die down to the root every autumn, are safely concealed under ground, preparing their new shoots to burst forth when the earth is softened by spring. Shrubs and trees, which are exposed to the open air, he has closely wrapped in a covering sufficient to protect them from the most severe weather. The buds are protected in their hard-coated calyx to secure their forthcoming beauty from decay; if one of those buds be carefully opened, it is found to consist of young leaves rolled together, within which are even all the blossoms in miniature, which are afterward intended to delight our eyes, or probably to refresh by their fragrance our senses. As that great and celebrated naturalist, Cuvier, would often say to his pupils, “Show me a botanist who is a skeptic, and I will show you an idiot. An infidel naturalist is a rara avis I have never yet met with.”

This gloomy month is, however, not altogether without flowers, for now the Heleborus fœtidus, and various mosses blossom in our woods, and fructification goes on below a depth of snow. One of the most remarkable products of the season are the white berries of the mistletoe. This plant, which was almost worshiped by the Druids as a sacred emblem and decoration of their domestic hearths, during the festival of Christmas, is chiefly remarkable for the peculiarity of its growth—being always found adhering to and deriving its nourishment from the juice of some tree, and never attached to the earth. It flowers early in the year, but its berries do not make their appearance till December. They are the food of non-migrating birds of the most hardy kinds; the plant is principally found attached to the apple-tree, but sometimes, though rarely, on some others; it is least frequently found on the oak, on which its occurrence is considered a curiosity by botanists.

We have, however, in the month of January, occasionally, days which we, for the moment, regard as of exceeding beauty, because, perhaps, of the contrast between them and seasonable weather amidst which they occur. The sun shines bright and warm, the gnat is tempted forth from its secret dormitory, and we are apt to forget that the winter is not yet “past and gone.” The morrow recalls us to a full sense of our position in the scale of the seasons—the sky is black and threatening, or a pelting storm of snow and sleet so alters the fair face of nature, that we are glad once more to take refuge from her frowns amid the delights of the social hearth.

The amusements of sliding, skating, and other pastimes on the ice, give life to this dreary season; and during the continuance of our long frosts, armies of skaters of all ages may be seen almost equal to the skaters of Wilna, where the peasant girl frequently skates sixteen miles to market to dispose of her basket of eggs, which she carries on her head.

The opening and the close of the year each afford topics and occasion for mournful meditation. Who is he, on taking a view of the past, but would gladly recall many words and actions which at the moment of utterance were thought to be correct, or actions for which he would gladly make restitution? The following reflections are very appropriate:

“I stood between the meeting years,

The coming and the past;

And I asked of the future one—

Wilt thou be like the last?

For sorrow, like a phantom, sits

Upon the last year’s close;

How much of grief, how much of ill,

In its dark breast repose!

I think on many a wasted hour,

And sicken o’er the void;

And many darker are behind,

On worse than naught employed.

Oh vanity! alas, my heart!

How widely hast thou strayed;

And misused every golden gift,

For better purpose made!

I think on many a once loved friend,

As nothing to me now;

And what can mark the lapse of time

As does an altered brow?

Thus thinking of the meeting years,

The coming and the past;

I needs must ask the future one—

Wilt thou be like the last?“