last forests fail from
among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their
peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron,
sets, death-like, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight.
And, having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris
of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it,
and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the multitudes
of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the air and sea, or
tread the sands of the southern zone; striped zebras and spotted
leopards, glistening serpents, and birds arrayed in purple and scarlet.
Let us contrast their delicacy and brilliancy of colour, and swiftness
of motion, with the frost-cramped strength, and shaggy covering, and
dusky plumage of the northern tribes; contrast the Arabian horse with
the Shetland, the tiger and leopard with the wolf and bear, the
antelope with the elk, the bird of Paradise with the osprey; and then,
submissively acknowledging the great laws by which the earth and all
that it bears are ruled throughout their being, let us not condemn, but
rejoice in the expression by man of his own rest in the statues of the
lands that gave him birth. Let us watch him with reverence as he sets
side by side the burning gems, and smooths with soft sculpture the
jasper pillars that are to reflect a ceaseless sunshine, and rise into
a cloudless sky; but not with less reverence let us stand by him, when,
with rough strength and hurried stroke, he smites an uncouth animation
out of the rocks which he has torn from among the moss of the moor-land,
and heaves into the darkened air the pile of iron buttress and rugged
wall, instinct with work of an imagination as wild and wayward as the
northern sea; creations of ungainly shape and rigid limb, but full of
wolfish life; fierce as the winds that beat, and changeful as the clouds
that shade them.

JOHN RUSKIN.

* * * * *

THE TROSACHS.

The western waves of ebbing day
Rolled o'er the glen their level way;
Each purple peak, each flinty spire,
Was bathed in floods of living fire.
But not a setting beam could glow
Within the dark ravines below,
Where twined the path, in shadow hid,
Bound many a rocky pyramid,
Shooting abruptly from the dell
Its thund