ar, shines on the scarlet
ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and
there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies
of the purple rock. Beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket,
the carcase of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to
the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and
the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first
stayed it as the stream swept it down. A little lower, the current
plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on
three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which
the foam slips in detached snow-flakes. Round the edges of the pool
beneath, the water circles slowly like black oil; a little butterfly
lies on its back, the wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs
feebly quivering; a fish arises, and it is gone. Lower down the
stream, I can see over a knoll the green and damp turf roofs of four
or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the
cattle into a black Slough of Despond at their doors, and traversed by
a few ill-set stepping stones, with here and there a flat slab on the
tops, where they have sunk out of sight;--and at the turn of the brook
I see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog--a picturesque and pretty
group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. I
know them, and I know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as
the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old
tartan jacket through, so sharp are they.

[34] Passage written to be opposed to an exuberant description, by an
amiable Scottish pastor, of everything flattering to Scotchmen in the
Highlands. I have put next to it, a little study of the sadness of
Italy.

88. Perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the
solitary extent of the Campagna of Rome under evening light. Let the
reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and
motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and
wasted plain. The earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he
never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious,
like the dusty wreck of the bones of men. The long knotted grass waves
and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion
shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the
sunlight. Hillocks of mouldering earth heave aro