ur such as this earth and these
heavens never saw, products of her own immortal and immaterial energies,
and BEING once, to BE for ever, when the universe, with all its suns and
systems, is no more!

But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the
cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest,
ever hungry except when asleep. Left to themselves, when the old birds
are hunting, an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear
the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be,
fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down
tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects,
who likewise all live upon prey; for example. Ants of Carrion. Get you
behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide
scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost
a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against
the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from the frost-riven breast
of the precipice. Wait there, though it should be for hours--but it will
not be for hours; for both the old hawks are circling the sky, one over
the marsh and one over the wood. She comes--she comes--the female
Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her mate; and while he is plain in his
dress, as a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and gaudy as a Demirep
dressed for the pit of the Opera--deep and broad her bosom, with an air
of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a serpent's. But now she is a
mother, and plays a mother's part--greedier, even than for herself, for
her greedy young. The lightning flashes from the cave-mouth, and she
comes tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through the dwarf bushes on
the cliff-face, perpendicular and plum-down, within three yards of her
murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest this day--no--nor all
night long: for a father's is not as a mother's love. Your only chance
of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed circuit round about all the
moors within half a league; and possibly you may see him sitting on some
cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid to fly either hither or thither,
perplexed by the sudden death he saw appearing among the unaccountable
smoke, scenting it yet with his fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of
your approach. Hazard a long shot--for you are right behind him--and a
slug may hit him on the head, and, following the feathers, split