Sunday was brilliant with one of those wonderful sunset skies,—Sunday's
was golden, with a gold such as Cuyp himself never painted,—which have been the glory of the late autumn ; but since Sunday, the neighbourhood of London at least has been wrapped in a cold and deathlike mist. A danker and a -darker Christmas has seldom been known, almost more op- pressively dank than dark. But the gloom has been all the more felt for the magnificent dawns and sunsets which had preceded this grim season of festivity. During most of the week the shops have been shut, and London looking as ghastly as a mighty city with nothing to do, and a murky wet-blanket wrapped round it, can manage to look; its streets, on the whole, empty; its cheerfullest lights—those of the shop-windows—ex- tinguished ; its bustle silenced, and its dreary passengers hesitating whether to put up umbrellas, or to absorb patiently the passive moisture which hardly amounted to a drip.
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