elf can penetrate--are only seen tinged with the early radiance
of the sun, the whole so combined as to appear a limitless plain of
variegated marble, peaceful as heaven, and solemnly serene as eternity.
What Winter writes with his frozen finger I need not state. When the
venerable old man, Gladstanes, perished among the stormy blasts of these
wilds, I was one of about threescore of men who for three days traversed
them in search of the dead. Then was the scenery of the mountains
impressive, much beyond what can well be spoken. The bridal that loses
the bride through some wayward freak of the fair may be sad enough; so
also the train, in its dark array, that conveys the familiar friend to
the chamber where the light of nature cannot come. But in this latter
case, the hearts that still beat, necessarily know that their part is
resignation, and suspense and anxiety mingle not in the mood of the
living, as it relates to the dead; but otherwise is it with those who
seem already constituting the funeral train of one who should have
been--yet who is not there to be buried.

"'The feeling is nameless that makes us unglad,
And a strange, wild dismayment it brings;
Which yet hath no match in the solemn and sad
Desolation of men and of things.

* * * * *

"'The hill-foxes howl'd round the wanderer's way,
When his aim and his pathway were lost;
And effort has then oft too much of dismay
To pay well the toil it may cost.
If fate has its privilege, death has its power,
And is fearful where'er it may fall,
But worse it may seem 'mong the blasts of the moor,
Where all that approaches portends to devour,
Nor fixes till first it appal.

"'No mercy obtains in the tempests that rave,
By the sky-frozen elements fed,
And there comes no hand that is willing to save,
And soothe, till the spirit be fled;
But the storms round the thrones of the wilderness break
O'er the frail in the solitude cast,
And howl in their strength and impatience to take
Their course to commix with the roar of the lake
Where it flings forth its foam on the blast.

"'Lo! 'neath where the heath hangs so dark o'er yon peak,
Another of Adam lay lone,
Where the bield could not shelter the weary and weak,
By the strife of the tempest o'erthrown.
No raven had fed, and the hill-fox had fled,
If ther