and jarred the echoing thunder. Next came the
rushing and roaring wind, bending the giant-limbed oaks as if they
were but wands of willow, and tearing up lesser trees as a child
tears up from its roots a weed or flower.

In this war of elements I stood, with my head bared, and clinging to
a rock, mad with a strange and wild delight.

"Brilliant! Sublime! Grand beyond the power of descriptions," I said,
as the storm deepened in intensity.

"An hour like this is worth all the commonplace, dull events of a
lifetime."

There came a stunning crash in the midst of a dazzling glare. For
some moments I was blinded. When sight was restored, I saw, below
me, the flames curling upward from a dwelling upon which the fierce
lightning had fallen.

"What majesty! what awful sublimity!" said I, aloud. I thought not
of the pain, and terror, and death that reigned in the human
habitation upon which the bolt of destruction had fallen, but of the
sublime power displayed in the strife of the elements.

There was another change. I no longer stood on the mountain, with
the lightning and tempest around me; but was in the valley below,
down upon which the storm had swept with devastating fury. Fields of
grain were level with the earth; houses destroyed; and the trophies
of industry marred in a hundred ways.

"How sublime are the works of the tempest!" said a voice near me. I
turned, and the old man was again at my side.

But I did not respond to his words.

"What majesty! What awful sublimity and power!" continued the old
man. "But," he added, in a changed voice, "there is a higher power
in the gentle rain than lies in the rushing tempest. The power to
destroy is an evil power, and has bounds beyond which it cannot go.
But the gentle rain that falls noiselessly to the earth, is the
power of restoration and recreation. See!"

I looked, and a mall lay upon the ground apparently lifeless. He had
been struck down by the lightning. His pale face was upturned to the
sky, and the rain shaken free from the cloudy skirts of the retiring
storm, was falling upon it. I continued to gaze upon the force of
the prostrate man, until there came into it a flush of life. Then
his limbs quivered; he threw his arms about. A groan issued from his
constricted chest. In a little while, he arose.

"Which is best? Which is most to be loved and admired?" said the old
Man. "The wild, fierce, brilliant tempest, or the quiet rain that
restores the image of li