before us.  Mark the color of the sand!  White at high-water mark, and thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has evaporated less, a slab of Egyptian granite in the obelisk of St. Peter’s not more polished and unimpressible.  Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is none; and, mar or deface its bright surface as you will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of the dust of the foot of man by the returning sea.  You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow-quill—­you may course over its dazzling expanse with a troop of chariots.

Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty yards of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left the sand, it holds the water without losing its firmness, and is like a gay mirror, bright as the bosom of the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba!) And now lean over the dasher and see those small fetlocks striking up from beneath—­the flying mane, the thoroughbred action, the small and expressive head, as perfect in the reflection as in the reality; like Wordsworth’s swan, he

  “Trots double, horse and shadow.”

You would swear you were skimming the surface of the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the white foam of the “tenth wave” skims in beneath wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous element gliding away visibly beneath you.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU.

THE WINTER WOODS.

[From Excursions.]

There is a slumbering subterranean fire in nature which never goes out, and which no cold can chill.  It finally melts the great snow, and in January or July is only buried under a thicker or thinner covering.  In the coldest day it flows somewhere, and the snow melts around every tree.  This field of winter rye which sprouted late in the fall and now speedily dissolves the snow is where the fire is very thinly covered.  We feel warmed by it.  In the winter warmth stands for all virtue, and we resort in thought to a trickling rill, with its bare stones shining in the sun, and to warm springs in the woods, with as much eagerness as rabbits and robins.  The steam which rises from swamps and pools is as dear and domestic as that of our own kettle.  What fire could ever equal the sunshine of a winter’s day, when the meadow-mice come out by the wall-sides, and the chickadee lisps in the defiles of the wood?  The warmth comes directly from the sun, and is not radiated from the earth as in summer; and when we feel his beams on our backs as we are treading some snowy dell we are grateful as for a special kindness, and bless the sun which has followed us into that by-place.

This subterranean fire has its altar in each man’s breast, for in the coldest day, and on the bleakest hill, the traveler cherishes a warmer fire within the folds of his cloak than is kindled on any hearth.  A healthy man, indeed, is the complement of the seasons, and in winter summer is in his heart.  There is the South.  Thither have all birds and insects migrated, and around the warm springs in his breast are gathered the robin and the lark.