"God is here." Then life and joy sprang reassured from every crouching hollow; every flower and bud and bird had a fluttering sense of them; and all the flashing of God's gaze merged into soft beneficence. So perhaps shall break upon us that eternal morning, when crag and chasm shall be no more, neither hill and valley, nor great unvintaged ocean; when glory shall not scare happiness, neither happiness envy glory; but all things shall arise and shine in the light of the Father's countenance, because itself is risen. Who maketh his sun to rise upon both the just and the unjust. And surely but for the saving clause, Doone Glen had been in darkness. Now, as I stood with scanty breath for few men could have won that climb at the top of the long defile, and the bottom of the mountain gorge, all of myself, and the pain of it, and the cark of my discontent fell away into wonder and rapture. For I cannot help seeing things now and then, slow-witted as I have a right to be; and because the sight comes so rarely, the sight dwells with me, like a picture. The bar of rock, with the water-cleft breaking steeply through it, stood bold and bare, and dark in shadow, gray with red gullies down K it. But the sun was beginning to glisten over the comb of the eastern highland, and through an archway of the wood hung with old nests and ivy. The lines of many a leaning tree were thrown, from the cliffs of the foreland, down upon the sparkling grass, at the foot of the western crags. And through the dewy meadow's breast, fringed with shade, but touched on one side with the sun-smile, ran the crystal water, curving in its brightness, like diverted hope. On either bank, the blades of grass, making their last autumn growth, pricked their spears and crisped their tuftings with the pearly purity. The tenderness of their green appeared under the glaucus mantle; while the gray suffusion, which is the blush of green life, spread its damask chastity. Even then my soul was lifted, worried though my mind was: who can see such large kind doings, and not be ashamed of selfish grief? R. D. Blackmore. SCENE FROM TEUFELSDROECKH'S TOWER, I look down into all that wasp-nest or beehive and witness their wax-laying and honey making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, where in her doorsill the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all; for, except the Schlosskirche weather-cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing joy and sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather; there, top-laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and his household; here, on timber-leg, the lamed soldier hops painfully along, begging alms : a thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling in with food, with young rusticity, and other raw produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going? From Eternity, onwards to Eternity! These are apparitions: what else? Are they not Souls rendered visible: in Bodies that took shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their solid pavement is a picture of the sense; they walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the red-and-yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is but of to-day, without a yesterday or a tomorrow; and had not rather its ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link in that tissue of history, which inweaves all Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more. Ah, dear friend, it is true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his hunting-dogs over the zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of midnight, when traffic has lain down to rest; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed in, and lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice and Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad; that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what a fer menting vat lies simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there; men are dying there, men are being born; men are praying, — on the other side of a brick partition, men are cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask curtains; Wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure cellars, Rougeet-Noir languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high chess game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders: the Thief, still more silently, sets to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts; but in the condemned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: |