all—those evenings of entrancement, those
days of boyish pain and jealousy. And ever
the melody comes floating in through my
brain, yet without attracting my thoughts
—a strain of sweetest sounds accompanying
the dissolving views which are dreamily,
perpetually, forming and changing, gathering and
dispersing, before my mind's eye, like the
rose-clouds of sunset. Those shapes are too
ethereal for the mind to grasp them. Is it a
Juno-like form, beneath the skies and amid
the flowers of Summer—with Zephyr playing
among her golden curls, as she lifts from her
neck a hair-chain to yield it to the suit of
love! Or is it a zigzag path on a hill-side—a
steed backing on a precipice—a lovely girl on
the green bank, clinging to her preserver—
sinking, swooning, quivering from that vision
of sudden death! Who shall daguerreotype
those airy shapes? We feel their presence
rather than know their form, and the instant
we try to see what we are seeing, they are
gone!

We are no bad risers in the morning, but
we never saw the sun rise on Midsummer-
day but once. It is many years ago, yet we
remember it as vividly as if it had been this
morning. It was from the summit of the
Calton Hill, the unfinished Acropolis, the
still-born ruin of Modern Athens. The
whole sky in the south and west, opposite
to where the sun was about to appear,
was suffused from the horizon to the zenith
with a deep pink or rose hue; and in the
midst, spanning the heavens, stood a
magnificent Rainbow! A symbol of peace in
a sea of blood! There lay the palatial
edifices of the New Town, white and still in
the hush of early morning, and high above them
and around them rose that strange emblem of
mercy amid judgment. Such an apparition
might fitly have filled the skies of the Cities
of the Plain on that woeful morn, the last the
blessed sun ever rose upon them;—ere amid
mutterings in the earth and thunders in the
clouds, the volcano awoke from its sleep, and
the red lava poured from its sources of fire—
when clouds of stones and ashes, falling,
falling, falling, gathered deeper and deeper
above the Plain, and the descending
lightnings set fire to the thousand founts of
naphtha bubbling up from their subterranean
reservoirs—when a whirlwind of flame shot
up against the face of the sky, like the last
blasphemy of a godless world; and with a
hollow groaning, the sinking, convulsed earth
hid the scene of pollution and wrath beneath
the ever mournful-looking waters of the Dead
Sea. The skies of night and morning are
familiar to me as those of day, but never but
that once did that Heavenly Spectre meet my
eye.

As I reached the northern brow of the hill,
it wanted but a minute or two of sunrise; in
a few seconds a new Day would dawn—a
flake would separate itself from the infinite
Future, and be born into the world. I stood
awaiting the Incarnation of Time. A flapping
wing broke on the solemn stillness. Two
rooks rose slowly from the ground, where
they had been preying upon the tenants of
the turf. Below me, to the east and north,
spread out the waters of the Firth of Forth
—not a billow breaking against its rocky
islets—its broad expanse of the colour of
lead, sombre and waveless, like the lifeless
waters of the Asphaltite Sea; while, toiling
like an imp of darkness, a small steamboat
tore up its leaden-like surface, disappearing
behind the house-tops of Leith. The spirits
of night seemed hurrying to their dens, to
escape the golden arrows of the God of Day.
In the bowery gardens below me, the birds
began an overture as the curtain of the Dawn
was lifting. At length the sun shot up into
the sky; then seemed to pause for some time,
his lower limb resting on the dark sea, his
upper almost touching a bank of over-
hanging cloud. Pale tremulous rays, like
those of the aurora borealis, darted laterally
from the orb, shooting quiveringly along the
sky, and returning: the waves of light were
ebbing and flowing on the sands of Night.
The sea and the slopes of the Calton still lay
in the dull hues of dawn; but a strange
cold sun-gleam which one felt instinctively
would be short-lived, glittered around me
on the crest of the hill, and on the white
stone monuments that crown it as with a
diadem. Foremost and loftiest rose the
noble columns of the National Monument,
even in their imperfection the most Grecian
of British edifices, standing aloft like the
ruins of Minerva's temple on the bluff Cape
of Sunium, visible from afar to mariners
entering the romantic Bay of the Forth.
The glitter which now tinged them with gold
was bright and brief as the national fervour
which gave them birth. In a few minutes
the sun passed up behind the bank of
cloud, and nothing remained of his beams
but a golden streak on the far edge of the
waters.

Fair Summer has come, and the ocean wooes
us. Breaking her ward, she has leapt like a
lovely Bacchante to our arms; while men who
have been "sighing like furnace" for her, and
chiding the dull delay of her coming, now
fly from her embraces into the sea—plunge
into the haunts of the Nereids. In what
"infernal machines" do they go a-wooing!
And yet they appear to have every
confidence in their natural powers of attraction;
the Nereids run no danger of being deceived
as to the physique of their human admirers.
Queer fishes some of them are, certainly!
Only look at yon big fat old fellow, for all
the world like a skinned porpoise, floundering
and blowing in the shallows like a
stranded whale! while another more
modest animal, of like dimensions, floats like
cork or blubber in deep water, thumping
energetically with leg and arm, and hides
obesity in a cataract of foam. Yonder, over