t our feet, the city shone, its dense
blackness mapped out in stars as brilliant and myriad-seeming as those
overhead,--a Night above, a Night below! Once before had I looked from
that crag upon Montreal, in a memorable sunset hour, and remembered my
impression of its beauty. Below, the scarped rock fell: the tops of
trees which grew up the steep face lost themselves, lower, in a mass of
grove that flourished far out, and besieged the town in swollen
battalions and columns of foliage. Half overwhelmed by this friendly
assault, the City sat in her robes of grey and red, proud mistress of
half-a continent, noble in situation as in destiny. A hundred spires
and domes pointed up, from streets full of quaint names of saints and
deeds of heroes. The pinnacled towers of Notre Dame rose impressively in
the distance. Past ran the glorious St. Lawrence, with its lovely
islands of St. Helen's and the Nuns'.

Now, however, it seemed no longer a place upon earth at all. It was a
living spirit. Quiet as the sky itself, its bright eyes looked far
upward, and it was communing, in the lowliness of Nature, with the
constellations.

"This is Life!" cried Quinet, who had hitherto been excited with
suppressed feeling. "The vast winds come in to us from Ether. Night
hides all that is common, and sprinkles the dark-blue vault with
gold-dust; the planets gleam far and pure amidst it, and Space sings his
awful solo."

"All is one mighty Being. There he moves, the Great Creature, his
crystal boundlessness encompassing his countless shapes. He faces us
from every point. His God-soul looks through to us. He rises at our
feet. He surrounds us in ourselves; speaks and lives in us. Is he not
resplendent, wondrous?"

"We are out of the world of vain phantoms, Chamilly! We are above the
chatter of a wretched spot, a narrow life. Down there, nothing is not
ridiculed that is not some phase of a provinciality. The dances in
certain houses, the faces of some conceited club, long-spun names,
business or gossip, or to drive a double carriage, are the gaslight
boundaries of existence! Pah! it is a courtyard, bounded by four square
walls, a path or two to walk in, and the eyes of busybodies to order our
doings and sneer us out of our souls. How they deny us that the centre
of the systems is immeasurably off there in Pleiades! What fools we are.
We follow trifles we value at the valuation of idiots; we cherish mean
ideas; we believe contracted doctrines; w