ged again. There suddenly uprose
weird shapes of giants and leviathans, huge mammoths and whole regiments
of fantastic monsters that looked like clouds and yet were mountains;
and there were fortresses and towers of silence, with vultures hovering
over them, and cliffs and crags and jutting promontories that looked
like mountains, but were really clouds: for the black clouds and the
frowning hills were so much alike that, save when the lightning shone,
you could not say where the sky ended and the land began. But there was
one gleam of hope in this weird and dismal scene, for on the farthest
verge of the horizon there appeared, as it were, a lake--such a lake as
saw the passing of Arthur, vanishing in mystery and silently floating
away upon a barge towards the east. It was a lake of beryl, whose
far-off golden shores were set with rubies and sardonyx, and beyond
these, again, were the more distant waters of the silver sea; and as
when Sir Bedivere

"... saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the King,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light.
And the new sun rose bringing the new year,--"

so over the plains of Africa rose the mighty Alchemist and great
revealer of truth, the scatterer of dreary darkness and secret night,
turning those shadowy hills to purple and those mystic waters in the
eastern sky to gold.

How different are our feelings when we traverse, either in reality or in
fancy, such parts of the earth as are deeply blended in our hearts and
minds with old familiar associations! Whilst wandering through the Lake
District of England, how are we reminded of Wordsworth and the
"Excursion"! How can we visit Devonshire and the West Country without
summoning up pleasant thoughts of Charles Kingsley and Amyas Leigh; of
the men of Bideford, Sir Richard Grenville, Kt., and "The little
Revenge"? How vividly do the Trossachs recall "The Lady of the Lake" and
Walter Scott! How with Edinburgh do we connect the sad story of Mary,
the ill-fated queen! At Killarney, or standing amid the Gothic tracery
of Tintern, how do we think on Alfred Tennyson and "the days that are no
more"! These are only a few of the places in the British Isles that by
universal consent are hallowed by tender associations. Of those spots in
England which are dear to our hea