fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister
himself--with his mother and sister--was with us in our fantastic
festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering
praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin
scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle
jig or strathspey--and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a
confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and
maddened by many a whoop and yell--so like savages were we in our glee,
dancing at the marriage of some island king!

Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away--and of all
who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably as
then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever--let us
then live well and wisely; and when death comes--from that sleep how
blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost--no snow--but the sun of
eternal life.

Mercy on us! what a hubbub!--Can the harriers be hunting in such a
snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous
pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why--Imagination, thou art an
ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a
country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as
in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his
helter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many
of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poet
pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the
Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce--all come alike to him; and
of all the bards we have ever known--and the sum total cannot be under a
thousand--he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye,
labours under the blessing or the curse--we wot not whilk it be--of
perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a
springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil
in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers
up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements,
to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The
corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood;
and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will
bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels,
by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and s