creak
like a ship at sea; and how the wind roars and bellows in the chimney,
as if AEolus and all his noisy crew were met on a tipsy revel!
There--that last gust shook the house! It is to be hoped the chimneys
stand with their feather-edge to it, or we shall have a stack or two
about our ears in a trice. We wonder whether the cellars would be the
safest place, or, indeed, whether there is a safe place about the house
at all! We have often heard of the music of the wind, but never felt
less disposed to admire it in our life--for the gale has been howling in
our ears all day; and this last hour or two, there has been, as the
sailors say, a fresh hand at the bellows; so that we are in no humour to
sentimentalize on what is, within a few yards of us, curling the dark
waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed,
have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth,
and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that
ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening
jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on
the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the
sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; or, at all
events, not so very near that dun mass of troubled waters, blending on
the horizon in strange confusion with the lowering, tempestuous sky. Who
could believe, as he views them in their milder mood, as we did
yesterday--lying placid as a clear lake among the mountains, wherein the
bright face of heaven is mirrored, reflecting each light cloud that
floats in the deep azure, or the many-tinted hues of evening--that anon,
lashed into foaming wrath, they should devour "rich fruit of earth, and
human kind," the gold, and the gems, and the priceless treasures wrung
from both hemispheres; and the young, the brave, the loved--the bright
locks, and the manly beauty, and the hoary head; crushing their diverse
hopes into one watery ruin, surging a wild tumultuous dirge over their
one fathomless tomb! And then, sated with destruction, smile and glisten
beneath the morning sunbeams with all the sportiveness of child-like
innocence.

No, no--speak not to us of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our
gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering;
while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is
mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our s