A small breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room; I
slipped in there. It contained a book-case: I soon possessed
myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored
with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering
up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn
the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double
retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand;
to the left were the clear panes of glass protecting, but not
separating me from the drear November day. At intervals,
while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the as-
pect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of
mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat
shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a
long and lamentable blast.

I returned to my book -- Bewick's History of British Birds:
the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking;
and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as
I was, I could not pass quite as a blank. They were those
which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks
and promontories" by them only inhabited; of the coast of
Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the
Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape --

"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores
of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland,
Greenland, with "the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those
forlorn regions of dreary space -- that reservoir of frost and
snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries
of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround
the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme
cold." Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my
own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that
float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive.
The words in these introductory pages connected themselves

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