opening of the cave.

"Was there ever a lovelier evening!" he exclaimed; "the waters above the
firmament seem all of a piece with the waters below. And never surely
was there a scene of wilder beauty. Only look inwards, and see how the
stream of red light seems bounded by the extreme darkness, like a river
by its banks, and how the reflection of the ripple goes waving in golden
curls along the roof!"

"I have been admiring the scene for the last half hour," I said;
"Shakspeare speaks of a music that cannot be heard, and I have not yet
seen a place where one might better learn to comment on the passage."

Both the thought and the phrase seemed new to him.

"A music that cannot be heard!" he repeated; and then, after a momentary
pause, "you allude to the fact," he continued, "that sweet music, and
forms such as these, of silent beauty and grandeur, awaken in the mind
emotions of nearly the same class. There is something truly exquisite in
the concert of to-night."

I muttered a simple assent.

"See," he continued, "how finely these insulated piles of rock,
that rise in so many combinations of form along the beach, break and
diversify the red light, and how the glossy leaves of the ivy glisten
in the hollows of the precipices above! And then, how the sea spreads
away to the far horizon, a glorious pavement of crimson and gold!--and
how the dark Ailsa rises in the midst, like the little cloud seen by
the prophet! The mind seems to enlarge, the heart to expand, in the
contemplation of so much of beauty and grandeur. The soul asserts its
due supremacy. And, oh! 'tis surely well that we can escape from those
little cares of life which fetter down our thoughts, our hopes, our
wishes, to the wants and the enjoyments of our animal existence; and
that, amid the grand and the sublime of nature, we may learn from the
spirit within us that we are better than the beasts that perish!"

I looked up to the animated countenance and flashing eyes of my
companion, and wondered what sort of a peasant it was I had met with.
"Wild and beautiful as the scene is," I said, "you will find, even among
those who arrogate to themselves the praise of wisdom and learning, men
who regard such scenes as mere errors of nature. Burnet would have told
you that a Dutch landscape, without hill, rock, or valley, must be the
perfection of beauty, seeing that Paradise itself could have furnished
nothing better."

"I hold Milton as higher authority on t