uitful eternity that lies before, seemed to fall back, doomed
forever, into the naked eternity behind. Goethe's "Erl-King," almost
alone in modern literature, touches truly, and on its shadowed side, the
immeasurable secret which haunts and dominates the heart of a child;
while Wordsworth's "Ode on the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood"
is our noblest suggestion of its illuminated obverse side.

At length I issued upon the opposite face of the island, and found
myself on a shelf of rock about three feet wide, with one hundred and
fifty feet, more or less, of vertical cliff beneath, and about the same
height of half-cliff behind and above. It was a pretty perch, and gave
one a feeling of consequence; for what pigmy perched on Alps ever failed
to consider his elevation one of stature strictly, and not at all of
position? The outer edge of the shelf rose, inclosing me as in a box, so
that I was safe as the owner of an annuity based upon United States
securities. Away to my right the perpendicular cliff rose higher still,
and, being there covered with clefts, cavelets, and narrow shelves, was
the peculiar home of the birds, who had taken possession of this island
on a long lease.

Their numbers were inconceivable. Two hundred yards off in the water was
an _island_ of them, an acre of feathery black. To the right I could see
them now and then ascending in literal clouds; and the sober Ph----, who
rowed along here beyond my view, saw the cliffs, as he looked up, white
for a half-mile with their snowy breasts, and could find no words to
express his sense of their multitude.

But so far as I was concerned,--for my comrades did better,--it was the
birds themselves that did the sporting that afternoon. They came
streaming by, never crowding together so that more than one could be
included in the chances of shot, but incessantly trailing along, and
scurrying past with the speed of an arrow. I peppered away, with little
result but that of spicing their afternoon's enjoyment for them; for the
wicked creatures took it all in the jolliest way, flinging themselves
past with a flirt and a wink, just as if I had been no lord of creation
at all. I had disdained to shoot them when at rest; for there seemed to
be some ancient compact between us, by which they were to have their
chance and I mine. But when one came and planted himself on a little jut
thirty yards to my right, and mocked me with a look of patronage,
seeming to regard