e mine begirt with weedy and shrub-hung rock, a dripping
semi-circle. Farther up they came on the flat juniper and crossed a wet
ground-thicket of whortleberry: their feet were in the moist moss among
sprigs of heath; and a great fir-tree stretched his length, a peeled
multitude of his dead fellows leaned and stood upright in the midst of
scattered fire-stained members, and through their skeleton limbs the
sheer precipice of slate-rock of the bulk across the chasm, nursery of
hawk and eagle; wore a thin blue tinge, the sign of warmer light abroad.

'This way, my brother!' cried Carinthia, shuddering at a path he was
about to follow.

Dawn in the mountain-land is a meeting of many friends. The pinnacle,
the forest-head, the latschen-tufted mound, rock-bastion and defiant
cliff and giant of the triple peak, were in view, clearly lined for a
common recognition, but all were figures of solid gloom, unfeatured and
bloomless. Another minute and they had flung off their mail, and changed
to various, indented, intricate, succinct in ridge, scar and channel;
and they had all a look of watchfulness that made them one company. The
smell of rock-waters and roots of herb and moss grew keen; air became
a wine that raised the breast high to breathe it; an uplifting coolness
pervaded the heights. What wonder that the mountain-bred girl should let
fly her voice. The natural carol woke an echo. She did not repeat it.

'And we will not forget our home, Chillon,' she said, touching him
gently to comfort some saddened feeling.

The plumes of cloud now slowly entered into the lofty arch of dawn and
melted from brown to purpleblack. The upper sky swam with violet; and
in a moment each stray cloud-feather was edged with rose, and
then suffused. It seemed that the heights fronted East to eye the
interflooding of colours, and it was imaginable that all turned to the
giant whose forehead first kindled to the sun: a greeting of god and
king.

On the morning of a farewell we fluctuate sharply between the very
distant and the close and homely: and even in memory the fluctuation
occurs, the grander scene casting us back on the modestly nestling, and
that, when it has refreshed us, conjuring imagination to embrace the
splendour and wonder. But the wrench of an immediate division from what
we love makes the things within us reach the dearest, we put out our
hands for them, as violently-parted lovers do, though the soul in days
to come would know a