one in the glory
of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths
about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the
columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm,
each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen
streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven
snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent
domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with
purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new
glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven--one
scarlet canopy,--is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing,
vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of
angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you
are bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me
who has best delivered this His message unto men!

FOOTNOTES

[34] I am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may
extend; perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above
storm. I have never been in a violent storm at a greater height than
between 8000 and 9000 feet above the level of the sea. There the
rain-cloud is exceedingly light, compared to the ponderous darkness
of the lower air.

[35] I ought here, however, to have noted another effect of the
rain-cloud, which, so far as I know, has been rendered only by
Copley Fielding. It is seen chiefly in clouds gathering for rain,
when the sky is entirely covered with a gray veil rippled or waved
with pendent swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny
in their edges. I am not sure that this is an agreeable or
impressive form of the rain-cloud, but it is a frequent one, and it
is often most faithfully given by Fielding; only in some cases the
edges becoming a little doubled and harsh have given a look of
failure or misadventure to some even of the best studied passages;
and something of the same hardness of line is occasionally visible
in his drawing of clouds by whose nature it is not warranted.

[36] Compare Sect. I. Chap. IV. Sec. 5.

[37] It does not do so until the volumes lose their density by
inequality of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which
conveys them. They are then, of course, broken into forms resembling
those o