have betaken themselves, and now, at nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth of where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so-and why howls Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the antlers went by! Not dead-nor dead she who is on his bosom! Yet life in both is frozen-and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin-and the frightened sheep know not what is the terrible shape that is howling there. But a man enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them at the doorway-and then lifts up the other; and by the flash of a rifle, they see that it is Hamish and Flora Macdonald, seemingly both frozen to death! Some of those reeds that the shepherds burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not there-and licks the face of Hamish, as if he would restore life to his eyes! Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their plaids how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and wounded, they bore away the shattered body-yet living-of the youthful warrior, who had shown that of such a clan he was worthy to be the chief.

The storm was with them all the way down the glennor could they have heard each other's voices had they spoke-but mutely they shifted the burden from strong hand to hand-thinking of the hut in Glenco, and of what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind people walk through what to them is the night of crowded day-streets-unpausing turn round corners-unhesitatingly plunge down steep stairs-wind their way fearless through whirlwinds of life-and reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. This saving band had no fear-and

therefore there was no danger-on the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the mountains shown momentarily-by ghastly gleamings-through the fitful night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow-at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The dip of the hills-in spite of the drifts-familiar to their feet, did not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves, did Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way-as if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges were-stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the wild-fowls feed. And thus instinct, and reason, and faith conducted the saving band along-and now they are at Glenco-and at the door of the hut!

To life were brought the dead-and there at midnight sat they up like ghosts. Strange seemed they-for a while to each other's eyes-and at each other they looked as if they had forgetten how dearly once they loved! Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each other's faces, thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said Hamish-and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were on their knees and she strove to rise up and kneel down beside them-but powerless was she as a broken reed-and when she thought to join with them in thanksgiving-her voice was gone. Still as death sat all those simple shepherds in the hut― and one or two who were fathers were not ashamed to weep. Who were they-the solitary pair-all alone by themselves save a small image of her on whose breast it hung -whom-seven summers after-we came upon in our wanderings, before their shieling in Correi-Vollach at the foot of Ben Chrulas who sees his shadow in a hun.

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dred lochs? Who but Hamish and Flora! sitting on the greensward.

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Nay, dry up-daughter of our soul! dry up thy tears! and lo! a vision set before thy eyes shall fill them with unmoistened light.

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Start not back, nor let the soul within thee be afraid. Oft before have those woods and waters-those clouds and mountains-that sun and sky, held thy spirit in Elysium, thy spirit, that then was disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glory of the elements. 'Tis WINDERMERE- -WINDERMERE! Never canst thou have forgotten the imperishable beauty of those more than fortunate those thrice-blessed isles! But when last we saw them within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the blushing— the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other druid groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and of shadow forming one undistinguishable creation. But now, lo! Windermere in winter! All leafless now the groves that girdled her, as if shifting rainbows were in love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone are her banks of emerald, that carried our calm gazings with them, sloping away back into the cerulean sky. mountains, shadowy in sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they? And the cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine eye and through it thy soul, to that transcendent substitution, and deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the lake hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the sunshine-no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, or bay-no music of voice, stop, or string wakens the sleeping echoes. How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frost work imagery, yet more stead. fastly hanging there than ever hung the summer banks when all the heavens were still as the breath of a sleeping child! For all one sheet of ice now-clear as the Glass

Her

of Glamoury in which that Lord of old beheld his Geraldine-is Windermere, the heaven-loving and the heavenbeloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her bays, from the silvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into a river, now chained, too, on his silvan course, towards that perilous estuary afar raging on its wreckstrewn sands. The frost came after the last fall of snow —and not a single flake ever touched that surface; and now, that you are contented to miss-or rather no longer miss the green twinkling of the large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, and inspirative in the strangeness of their apparelling wild and dreamy thoughts and feelings about the scenery of foreign climes, far, far away among the regions of the North, where nature works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect the frost, during the absence of the sun employs his long nights in building and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent far beyond the reach of any power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptered kings? All at once a hundred houses, high up among the hills, seem on fire. The setting sun has smitten them, and the snow-tracts are illuminated by harmless conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted up by a lurid and ghastly splendour in its strong suddenness sublime. But looklook, we beseech you, at the sun-the sunset-the sunset region-and all that kindred and corresponding heaven effulgent, where even now lay in its cold glitter the blue bosom of the frozen lake. Who knows the laws of light and the perpetual miracle of their operation? God, not thou. The snow-mountains are white no more, but gorgeous in their colouring as the clouds. Lo! Pavy-Ark— magnificent range of cliffs-seeming to come forward, while you gaze-how it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers decked the precipice in that ineffably delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, methinks, are tinged with faintest, finest purple-and the thought of violets is with us as we gaze on the slight tinted beauty of the bosom of the mountains dearest to the setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps-all but

yon stranger-the summit of some mountain base belonging to another region-ay-the great Gabel-silent now as sleep when last we clomb his cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he stands like a ghost-pallid and colourless;-beyond the reach of the setting sun he lowers in his exclusion from the rejoicing light-and imagination, personifying his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his forehead.

On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old loving eyes so like the " mountain nymph, sweet liberty?" On the sunset in the heavenor the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is—O daughter of our age-that both sunsets are but visions of our own immortal spirits, creative in their immortality. Lo both are gone from the outward world-and nought remains behind but a forbidding frown of the cold bleak snow! But imperishable in thy imagination will be the sunset that owed all its beauty to the beauty of thine own soul—and though it will sometimes fade away into oblivion-say rather retire into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to their depths of blue-yet, mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one single silent thought, to which power has been yielded over that bright portion of the past, will that sunset sometimes reappear to thee in solitude or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few tears will fall for sake of him by whose side thou stoodest, when first that double sunset, confusing Windermere with heaven, enlarged thy sense of beauty, and capacities of joy, and made thee-in thy father's eyes -the sweetest-best-and brightest poetess-whose whole life is musical inspiration-ode, elegy, and hymn, sung not in words but in looks-sigh-breathed, or speechlessly distilled in tears.

So much, though but little, for the beautiful-with perhaps, a tinge of the sublime. Are the two emotions dif