, but in his
stomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely has
Spenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of the
attendant lion of

"Heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb!"

But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, has
vulgarised and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion of
terror and pity. Famished wolves _howking_ up the dead is a dreadful
image--but "_inhuman to relate_," is not an expression heavily laden
with meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel,
unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, is
revolting, and miserably mars the terrible _truth_.

"Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl."

Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? And
wherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost?
Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which they had good reason to
be, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wandering
far from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse to
offer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from our
pocket-copy of the "Seasons"--and to draw a few keelavine strokes over
the rest of the passage--beginning with "man's godlike face."

Go read, then, the opening of "Winter," and acknowledge that, of all
climates and all countries, there are none within any of the zones of
the earth that will bear a moment's comparison with those of Scotland.
Forget the people if you can, and think only of the region. The lovely
Lowlands undulating away into the glorious Highlands--the spirit of
sublimity and the spirit of beauty one and the same, as it blends them
in indissoluble union. Bury us alive in the dungeon's
gloom--incommunicable with the light of day as the grave--it could not
seal our eyes to the sight of Scotland. We should see it still by rising
or by setting suns. Whatever blessed scene we chose to call on would
become an instant apparition. Nor in that thick-ribbed vault would our
eyes be deaf to her rivers and her seas. We should say our prayers to
their music, and to the voice of the thunder on a hundred hills. We
stand now in no need of senses. They are waxing dim--but our spirit may
continue to brighten long as the light of love is allowed to dwell
therein, thence proceeding over nature like a victorious morn.

There are many beautiful passages in the poets about RAIN; but who ever