g when compared with the
still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the
scarlet arch of dawn over the dark and troublous edged sea? Almost all
poets and painters have depicted sunrises and sunsets; every heart
responds--there must then be something in them of a peculiar character,
which must be one of the primal and most earnest motives of beauty to
human sensation. Do they show us finer characters of form than can be
developed by the broader daylight? Not so--for their power is almost
independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little
whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain
line be subdued or majestic; the fairer forms of earthly things are by
them subdued and disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest
trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of
the hillside are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and
whirling wave of the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly,
interrupted gleaming. Have they more perfection or fulness of color? Not
so--for their effect is often deeper when their hues are dim than when
they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly in the blue
of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight
on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensuous
color-pleasure than in the single streak of the wan and dying light of
sunset. It is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue,
it is not by intensity of light, that this strange distant apace
possesses its attractive power. But there is one thing which it has or
suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in an equal degree,
and that is--infinity. It is of all visible things the least material,
the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house,
the most typical of the nature of God, the most suggestive of the glory
of His dwelling place. For the sky of the night, though we may know it
is boundless, is dark; it is a studded vault, a roof that shuts us in
and down; but the transparent distance of sunrise and sunset has no
limit; we feel its infinity as we rejoice in its purity of light. That
this has been deeply felt by artists, is evident in their works.

'And can the sun so rise,
So bright, so rolling back the clouds into
Vapors more lovely than the unclouded sky,
With golden pinnacles and snowy mountains,
And billows purpler th