discern any of them; yet there they were shining in lovely
millions. Afraid of defacing so beautiful and so delicate a garnish, he
replaced his hat with the greatest caution, and went on his way light
of heart.

As he approached the swire at the head of the dell--that little
delightful verge from which in one moment the eastern limits and shores
of Lothian arise on the view--as he approached it, I say, and a little
space from the height, he beheld, to his astonishment, a bright halo in
the cloud of haze, that rose in a semicircle over his head like a pale
rainbow. He was struck motionless at the view of the lovely vision; for
it so chanced that he had never seen the same appearance before, though
common at early morn. But he soon perceived the cause of the
phenomenon, and that it proceeded from the rays of the sun from a pure
unclouded morning sky striking upon this dense vapour which refracted
them. But, the better all the works of nature are understood, the more
they will be ever admired. That was a scene that would have entranced
the man of science with delight, but which the uninitiated and sordid
man would have regarded less than the mole rearing up his hill in
silence and in darkness.

George did admire this halo of glory, which still grew wider, and less
defined, as he approached the surface, of the cloud. But, to his utter
amazement and supreme delight, he found, on reaching the top of
Arthur's Seat, that this sublunary rainbow, this terrestrial glory, was
spread in its most vivid hues beneath his feet. Still he could not
perceive the body of the sun, although the light behind him was
dazzling; but the cloud of haze lying dense in that deep dell that
separates the hill from the rocks of Salisbury, and the dull shadow of
the hill mingling with that cloud made the dell a pit of darkness. On
that shadowy cloud was the lovely rainbow formed, spreading itself on a
horizontal plain, and having a slight and brilliant shade of all the
colours of the heavenly bow, but all of them paler and less defined.
But this terrestrial phenomenon of the early morn cannot be better
delineated than by the name given of it by the shepherd boys, "The
little wee ghost of the rainbow."

Such was the description of the morning, and the wild shades of the
hill, that George gave to his father and Mr. Adam Gordon that same day
on which he had witnessed them; and it is necessary that the reader
should comprehend something of their nature t