not
suffer eclipse either from light or shadow--but burns proudly--fiercely--in
its native lustre--storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in
which it swings. See! it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your
hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had
crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it--to do that would
require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the
wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow--all alike dear to its
spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a
beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk
indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast;
in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest
leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener
than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are
green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by moonlight round the
Symbol of old Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the
Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the AWFUL THRISSLE all the
health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars.

The dawn is softly--slowly--stealing upon day; for the uprisen sun,
though here the edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing
abroad "the sweet hour of prime," and all the eastern region is tinged
with crimson, faint and fine as that which sleeps within the wreaths of
the sea-sounding shells. Hark! the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his
eyrie. Another hour, and he and his giant mate will be seen spirally
ascending the skies, in many a glorious gyration, tutoring their
offspring to dally with the sunshine, that, when their plumes are
stronger, they may dally with the storm. O, Forest of Dalness! how sweet
is thy name! Hundreds of red-deer are now lying half-asleep among the
fern and heather, with their antlers, could our eyes now behold them,
motionless as the birch-tree branches with which they are blended in
their lair. At the signal-belling of their king, a hero unconquered in a
hundred fights, the whole herd rises at once like a grove, and with
their stately heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, snuff the sweet
scent of the morning air, far and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet
unmelting on the heather, and eye with the looks of liberty the glad
daylight that mantles the Black Mount with a many-coloured garment. Ha!
the fi