Elizabeth’s Reviews > Personal Pleasures > Status Update

Walking in the fields on the last of those brief, chill and gentle afternoons that run the old year out, I felt the cool damp air, sweet with fir and heather, stir about me like cold wings…in the still, dreaming heart of the Hampshire winter, the year turned, and would be made new. So wild and deep a mystery as this stirred the naked woods, whispered in the cold brook, whistled flutily from the holly copse. 158

Predictably, I love the hot bath essay. Macaulay does master the ironic last-line twist in this essay too.

The essay Heresies is clever and made me laugh, both because the essay is funny and because I could never keep track of the heresies in my History of Christianity class in college. My friend Kari always had to remind me.