the very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from which
alone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious far than
was ever empire of dreams.

It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions of
the sky,--and are they all in slow motion together, or are they all at
rest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there are changes
going on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems hanging there in
the same repose; and with the same soft illumination the sun to continue
shining, a concentration rather than an orb of light. All above is
beautiful, and the clouds themselves are like celestial mountains; but
the eye forsakes them, though it sees them still, and more quietly now
it moves along the pageantry below that endures for ever--till chained
on a sudden by that range of cliffs. 'Tis along them that the giant
shadows are stalking--but now they have passed by--and the long line of
precipice seems to come forward in the light. To look down from the
brink might be terrible--to look up from the base would be sublime--but
fronting the eye thus, horrid though it be, the sight is most beautiful;
for weather-stains, and mosses, and lichens, and flowering
plants--conspicuous most the broom and the heather--and shrubs that,
among their leaves of light, have no need of flowers--and hollies, and
birks, and hazels, and many a slender tree beside with pensile tresses,
besprinkle all the cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose their
lustre; but now the day though not bright is fair, and brings out the
whole beauty of the precipice--call it the hanging garden of the
wilderness.

The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom than
theirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined with such
sights as these; but that is not the character of the mountains, though
the purple light in which, for usual, they are so richly steeped, is
often for a season tamed, or for a short while extinguished, while a
strange night-like day lets fall over them all a something like a
shroud. Such days we have seen--but now in fancy we are with the
pilgrim, and see preparation making for a sun-set. It is drawing towards
evening, and the clouds that have all this time been moving, though we
knew it not, have assuredly settled now, and taken up their rest. The
sun has gone down, and all that unspeakable glory has left the sky.
Evening has come and gone without our knowing that