lley had found a voice, to welcome the
distinguished guest. But the grandest effect was when the far-off
mountain precipice flung back the music; for then the Great Stone Face
itself seemed to be swelling the triumphant chorus, in acknowledgment
that, at length, the man of prophecy was come.

All this while the people were throwing up their hats and shouting with
enthusiasm so contagious that the heart of Ernest kindled up, and he
likewise threw up his hat, and shouted, as loudly as the loudest,
"Huzza for the great man! Huzza for Old Stony Phiz!" But as yet he had
not seen him.

"Here he is, now!" cried those who stood near Ernest. "There! There!
Look at Old Stony Phiz and then at the Old Man of the Mountain, and see
if they are not as like as two twin-brothers!"

In the midst of all this gallant array came an open barouche, drawn by
four white horses; and in the barouche, with his massive head
uncovered, sat the illustrious statesman, Old Stony Phiz himself.

"Confess it," said one of Ernest's neighbors to him, "the Great Stone
Face has met its match at last!"

Now, it must be owned that, at his first glimpse of the countenance
which was bowing and smiling from the barouche, Ernest did fancy that
there was a resemblance between it and the old familiar face upon the
mountain-side. The brow, with its massive depth and loftiness, and all
the other features, indeed, were boldly and strongly hewn, as if in
emulation of a more than heroic, of a Titanic model. But the sublimity
and stateliness, the grand expression of a divine sympathy, that
illuminated the mountain visage and etherealized its ponderous granite
substance into spirit, might here be sought in vain. Something had been
originally left out, or had departed. And therefore the marvellously
gifted statesman had always a weary gloom in the deep caverns of his
eyes, as of a child that has outgrown its playthings or a man of mighty
faculties and little aims, whose life, with all its high performances,
was vague and empty, because no high purpose had endowed it with
reality.

Still, Ernest's neighbor was thrusting his elbow into his side, and
pressing him for an answer.

"Confess! confess! Is not he the very picture of your Old Man of the
Mountain?"

"No!" said Ernest bluntly, "I see little or no likeness."

"Then so much the worse for the Great Stone Face!" answered his
neighbor; and again he set up a shout for Old Stony Phiz.

But Ernest turned away, mela