Notes On Literture, Science And Art.

year dies ; the perfect loveliness of the form death takes , ere it is covered with the „ nre white shroud of the glistening snow 1 " And she adds : — " The silence of the woods in winter is most impressive : to the unaccustomed ear it has something almost

awful about it . The migration of the summer birds has taken place , and with the first frost of October the last warbler has disappeared . The cross-bill , the pine-finch , and the faithful robin remain , but in those vast woods what are a few feathered

inhabitants such as they ? Perhaps a little squirrel stirs in the crystallised branches , or a ruffed-grouse rustles into his burrow in the snow ; but , as a rule , the silence is such as makes the sense of hearing ache . Now and then a sharp report is heardlike

, a pistol shot in the . distance . It is the trees splitting from the intensity of the cold , and from this cause the stems of the black spruce and the birch may often be seen furrowed almost the entire length of the trunk . "

At Oswaldkirk—that is , the kirk or church dedicated to St . Oswald—in Rydale , a hen recently laid so many eggs in a nest that had done duty for a brood of young blackbirds , that they betrayed the secret hy dropping on to the ground when over fullfor the nest was in an old ivy-Covered

, tree . It was at Newton Grange , in this parish , that Roger Dodsworth , the industrious Yorkshire antiquary , was born , wellni gh three centuries ago . A quintuple rainbow has been witnessed by two professors of the missionary college

of Santa Quiterra , in Portugal . Nos . 1 , 2 , aud 3 were close together , and Nos . 4 and 5 were also together , but separated from No . 1 ) the principal . Mr . C . Roach Smith , Hon . M . R . S . L . lias just published a second edition of his

Remarks on Shakespecvre , [ I am following ' ns spelling ] liisbiHltplace , etc ., which was first written for private distribution in 1868 , an d the portion of which relating to the great bard ' s country experience has been superseded by our author ' s Rural Life of

Shakespeare , as Illustrated by his Works , which I fiope to notice in a future Note . " would be a poor book , pamphlet , poem , 0 , 1 anything relating to the greatest intellect we know of , that had no charms for me ; and Mr . Roach Smith writes too sensibly llot to please any true Shaksperean . I like

our author's spelling of the poets name much better than my own , seeing that the derivation most undoubtedly is from the shaking of a spear . No doubt Spenser had this in mind when he sung , —

• " Whose muse , full of high thought ' s invention , Doth like himselj'heroically sound . " Ben Jonson , when he writ , — " He seems to shake a lance , As brandish'd at the eyes of Ignorance . " And the Heralds' Collegewhen they

, ^ ranted the family arms—Or , on a bend sable a spear of the first ; and for crest—A falcon displayed m-gent , holding a spear in p % le or . Even poor Robert Greene ' s cantankerous allusion to the greater dramatist who was eclipsing him , as " an absolute

Johannes Factotum , " who was " in his own conceit , the only Shake-scene iu the country , " was an evident pun upon the martial name of the gentle Willy . I have , in my Shakspere , his Times and Contemporaries , given reasons for adopting the shorter spelling

my used by the poet himself , but will not quarrel with those who follow the general manner of his contemporaries , and never reply to the nasty attacks I have sometimes had to endure for supposing that the author of Hamlet , Macbeth and Lear might possibly

know how to spell his own name . Spell the name as you like , say I , only let his unrivalled writings live within the chambers of your brains ! " From the obscurity in which his life is shrouded , " says our author , " the coeval remains of Stratford-upon-Avon

have far greater importance than they would have possessed had Shakespeare received from his contemporaries notice such as has so frequently been lavished on inferior men . We cannot look upon him through biographers , through

correspondence , or through any of the influences which , at the present day , secure immortality to thousands ; but we may in the streets of Stratford , and in the highways and bye-ways of the neighbourhood , in the fields , meadows , and villages , see objects

which must constantly have been before his eyes : the impress of many of these objects is reflected most vividly throughout all his works . " And he very truly remarks : — " The whole vegetable kingdom seems also to have been searched by him with attentive eye and reflective thought ; so that although