the blue face and hollow paunch, whom Winter has gotten by the vitals; the other well lined with New-year’s fare, conscious of the touch of cold on his periphery, but stepping through it by the glow of his internal fires.  Such an one I remember, triply cased in grease, whom no extremity of temperature could vanquish.  ‘Well,’ would be his jovial salutation, ’here’s a sneezer!’ And the look of these warm fellows is tonic, and upholds their drooping fellow-townsmen.  There is yet another class who do not depend on corporal advantages, but support the winter in virtue of a brave and merry heart.  One shivering evening, cold enough for frost but with too high a wind, and a little past sundown, when the lamps were beginning to enlarge their circles in the growing dusk, a brace of barefoot lassies were seen coming eastward in the teeth of the wind.  If the one was as much as nine, the other was certainly not more than seven.  They were miserably clad; and the pavement was so cold, you would have thought no one could lay a naked foot on it unflinching.  Yet they came along waltzing, if you please, while the elder sang a tune to give them music.  The person who saw this, and whose heart was full of bitterness at the moment, pocketed a reproof which has been of use to him ever since, and which he now hands on, with his good wishes, to the reader.

At length, Edinburgh, with her satellite hills and all the sloping country, are sheeted up in white.  If it has happened in the dark hours, nurses pluck their children out of bed and run with them to some commanding window, whence they may see the change that has been worked upon earth’s face.  ‘A’ the hills are covered wi’ snaw,’ they sing, ‘and Winter’s noo come fairly!’ And the children, marvelling at the silence and the white landscape, find a spell appropriate to the season in the words.  The reverberation of the snow increases the pale daylight, and brings all objects nearer the eye.  The Pentlands are smooth and glittering, with here and there the black ribbon of a dry-stone dyke, and here and there, if there be wind, a cloud of blowing snow upon a shoulder.  The Firth seems a leaden creek, that a man might almost jump across, between well-powdered Lothian and well-powdered Fife.  And the effect is not, as in other cities, a thing of half a day; the streets are soon trodden black, but the country keeps its virgin white; and you have only to lift your eyes and look over miles of country snow.  An indescribable cheerfulness breathes about the city; and the well-fed heart sits lightly and beats gaily in the — bosom.  It is New-year’s weather.