insipidity, we turn to the sky as a
last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says, it has
been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been
warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell one of the forms
and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded
the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came
out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and
mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead
clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew
them before it like withered leaves? All has passed unregretted as
unseen; or, if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it
is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not
in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not
in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the
highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the
earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still, small voice. They are
but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be
addressed through lamp-black and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued
passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the
perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it
is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet
vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated; which are
to be found always, yet each found but once;--it is through these that
the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty
given.

[14] At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At
five-and-fifty, I fancy that it is just possible there may be other
creatures in the universe to be pleased, or,--it may be,--displeased, by
the weather.

22. We habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and grey; not
knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most
dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the
rain-clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt
imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into
apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all
these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-colour,
and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the
barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of
cloud, like f