So quiet and subtle is the beauty of December that escapes the notice of many people their whole lives through. Colour gives way to form: every branch distinct, in a delicate tracery against the sky. New vistas, obscured all Summer by leafage, now open up.

It is the fashion to talk of our changing climate and bewail the hot summers and hard winters of tradition, but how seldom we pause to marvel at the remarkable constancy of the weather from year to year.

Pale purple as the bloom om a ripe plum, veined with the gold of late flowering gorse, set with small slender birches,just turning yellow,with red-berried rowans and thicket of bracken, the heath lay steeped in sunshine.

Special qualities are required of the essayist. A poem or a novel may spring from the inner consciousness of an author. Reasoning poers must be brought to reinforce imagination.

Words as to the inner emotions do not come readily to me, for I have led an isolated life mentally and spiritually.

Unlike most great talkers, the rooks are good workers, too.

Alas! in nature, as in art, we gain only according to our capacity. You cannot put an ocean in a pint pot.