ONE of the favorite authors of English literature has described the pleasures of country life somewhat after this charming fashion: "Let the house be a cottage, embowered with flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the windows through all the months of spring, summer, and autumn - beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending with jasmine. Let it, however, not be spring, nor summer, nor autumn, but winter, in its sternest shape. This is a most important point in the science of happiness; and I am surprised to see people overlook it, as if it were actually matter of congratulation that winter is going, or, if coming, is not likely to be a severe one. On the contrary, I put up a petition, annually, for as much snow, hail, frost, or storm of one kind or another, as the skies can possibly afford. Surely, everybody is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a winter fireside: candles, warm hearth-rugs, tea, a fair tea maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies on the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without, "And at the doors and windows seem to call, As heaven and earth they would together mell; Yet the least entrance And they none at all - Whence sweeter grows our rest secure in massy hall".