Darker and darker, till with one accord
The clouds pour forth their hoard of twice an hour,
A sunbeam rends their bowels like a sword
And frees the costly shower!

Fluttering around me and before me,
Stretched like a mantle o'er me,
The rushing shadows blind the earth and skies,
Dazzling a darkness on my gazing eyes
With troublous gleams of radiance, like the bright
Figments of gold that flutter in our sight,
When with shut eyes we strain
Our aching vision back upon the brain.

Across the skies and o'er the plain
Fast fly the swollen shadows of the Rain;
Blown duskly on from hill to hill they fly,
O'er solitary streams and windy downs,
O'er little villages and darkened towns—
Blinding the sky
With pinions black as night;
Slow-squadroned by a wind of rushing light,
That rends them down to music as they roll,
Sobbing, sobbing with a voice that seems
Like something lovely lost among my dreams,—
Sobbing like a human Soul!

I crouch beneath the crag and watch the mist
More on the skirts of yonder mountains grey,
Until it bubbles into amethyst
And softly melts away.
The thyme-bells catch their drops of silver dew,
And quake like fairies 'neath the sparkling load,
The squadron'd pines that shade the splashing road,
Are glimmering with a thousand jewels too.
And hark! the Angel of the Rain
Sings to the Summer sleeping,
Pressing a dark damp face against the plain,
And pausing, pausing, not for pain,
Pausing, pausing ere the low refrain,
Because she cannot sing for weeping.
She flings her cold dim arms about the earth
That soon shall wear the blessing she has given,
Then brightens upward in a sunny mirth
And warbles back to heaven.

A fallen sunbeam trembles at my feet,
And as I sally forth the linnets frame
Their throats to answer yonder laverock sweet.
The jewelled trees flash out in emerald flame;
The bright drops fall fulfilling peaceful sound,
And melt in circles on the shallow pools
That simmer on the red and sodden ground.
The Rainbow issues from her cloudy shrine,
Trembling alone in heaven where she rules,
And arching down to kiss with kisses sweet
The little world that brightens at her feet,
Runs liquid through her many hues divine.

FALLACIES OF FAITH.

THE extent to which human belief will go, and
the little pains which people will take to sift
evidence, are simply marvellous. Formerly, it was
enough if a malicious person swore that he had
seen an old woman wriggle out of her chimney
on a broomstick;—no further evidence was wanting;
the old woman was an undoubted witch;
rationalistic explanations were thrust aside as
impious; and the luckless old soul was put to death.
If a husband, tired of his wife, cut off her hand,
or gashed her with his knife, then swore that he
had done this to a creature in wolf's form, and
that therefore his wife was a wehr-wolf and
accursed; no one thought of disputing his
justification. The severed hand, the bleeding
breast, were quite enough for the judge and jury
of the time. The woman was not an unloved
wife, but an impossible monster under compact
with the devil, and must be burned or beheaded
without delay. The unlimited power of the
supernatural showed itself in other ways, and
altered the whole laws of life. That a cat should
fall in love with a hen occupied in her maternal
duties, and should insist on sharing the packet of
duck's eggs laid under her—that these eggs should
then bring forth little monsters, half cat, half
duck—seemed by no means an impossibility to
the good Dr. Vimond, who attests this fact as
having actually taken place in Normandy, in the
year of grace 1778. But does any one believe
his assertion now? Would Agassiz, or Professor
Owen believe it? What should we think, now-
a-days, if a paragraph went the round of the
newspapers, stating that a fox or hare in a recent
hunt, had suddenly changed into an old woman,
well known in the district, and that Mr. Blank,
the master of the hounds, was ready to swear
to the fact? Or, that a certain person, lately
deceased, had returned to upper earth as a
vampire, and had caused the death of sundry
children, by sucking their blood while asleep?
Or, that a certain farmer dispensed with flesh
and blood labourers, and employed only a huge
hairy Brownie, who did the work of ten men, on
condition of an evening supper of cream, and
not being looked after in his hours of retirement?
Or, that ordinary women, the wives of
ordinary men, had given birth to a parcel of
frogs; to a litter of rabbits; to a lion cub,
and a baby elephant; to a man's head, a snake
with two feet, and a small pig, in rapid succession;
to a black cat; to seventy children; to a
hundred and fifty children, all perfectly well-
formed, but no bigger than one's thumb; to a
boy with a fine flowing goat's beard; to a creature
with an elephant's trunk where his nose
should be, with web feet instead of hands,
with cat's eyes in the middle of his stomach,
with a dog's head on each knee, with two
ape's faces on his body, and a tail as long as
a Brabant yard: which creature lived four
hours, and when in the throes of death
howled piteously through the dog's heads on
its knees? Should we accept these several
paragraphs as true and undoubted, or should
we suspect a hoax, and be sure of a lie? I
think the latter, supposing we had any judgment
or critical faculty in us. Yet all these
things were once reported and believed in,
religiously. All these things were once put forth
as facts, and were supported by the testimony
of unimpeachable witnesses.

Dr. Vimond affirmed that a cat hatched some
duck's eggs, and brought forth a brood of
kitten ducklings as the result; a Court
Physician affirmed that a woman brought forth
rabbits; all the witnesses of all the witch
prosecutions swore to things which we know
now to have been impossible; to old women