8 THE DAWN-SUNRISE. the presence of the sun for a few moments earlier, but because, in giving us a twilight, it prolongs the duration of day. Nature has thus established gradations whereby we may be prepared for pleasures, and experience a diminution of regrets. Day dawns upon us like a feeble hope it passes away from us unconsciously; and the light vanishes, as does our strength, our health, our pleasure, nay, life itself-imperceptibly. BAILLY: Modern Astronomy. SUNRISE. If we walk forth on a beautiful evening, in a locality where the horizon is sufficiently defined to allow of our seeing the sun set in perfection, we may note the objects which render his resting-place the more easily recognisable. The next day, in order to enjoy the freshness of the morning air, we return to the same spot to behold the sun rise. Looking in the opposite direction, we observe his approach heralded by the fiery arrows which he sends before him. The blaze increases: the eastern sky appears to be in flames. It is some time before the glorious orb itself appears. At length it bursts upon us in all its refulgence; at first resembling a spark, then, like a lightning-flash, filling all space, and utterly dispersing the remnants of nocturnal darkness. Man recognises his abode, and finds it embellished. The verdure of the meadows has acquired fresh vigour during the night: the breaking day, which illu minates it, the earliest rays by which it is gilded, show that it is covered with a network of dew, which sparkles and reveals a variety of colours. The feathered creation unite their voices and salute the Parent of life with a chorus; at that moment not a bird is silent. But their warbling is still faint-slower and softer than at a later period of the day. The languor of their tones denotes that they are only half awake. The concourse of objects at this moment-the soft brilliancy of the scene, united with the freshness of the atmosphere-penetrates the soul. It is a half-hour of enchantment which no man can resist. The most phlegmatic must yield before a spectacle so grand, so fair, so entirely delicious. JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU: Emile. NIGHT. ONE evening I lost myself in a forest, at a short distance from the cataract of Niagara. I soon beheld daylight decline around me, and I was left to the enjoyment, in solitude, of a night in the wildernesses of the New World. An hour after sunset, the moon showed herself above the trees of the opposite horizon. A balmy breeze, which the queen of night brought from the east with her, appeared to precede her in the forest, like her own fresh breath. The solitary star gradually rose in the heavens sometimes it peaceably followed its azured course; anon it seemed to repose on groups of clouds, which resembled the peaks of lofty snow-clad mountains. These clouds, as they furled and unfurled themselves, rolled away in diaphanous zones of white satin; or dispersed themselves in light bubbles of froth or foam ; or formed in the sky flecks of gossamer wadding, so soft to the eye that one might almost fancy their delicacy and elasticity palpable to the touch. The scene immediately around me was not less enchanting. The blue, velvety light of the moon penetrated the intervals of the trees, and even thrust gleams of light through the thickest darkness. The river which flowed at my feet now lost itself in the woods, now reappeared, as brilliant as the constellations of the night which were reflected on its own surface. In a savannah on the opposite side of the river the moonlight slept upon the grass; a few beech-trees, agitated by the breeze and dispersed here and there, looked like so many shadowy isles floating upon a motionless sea of light. All around was silence, only broken by the occasional fall of a leaf, a puff of wind, the plaint of an owlet, and the distant rumblings of the Niagara Falls, which, in the dead calm of the night, appeared to plunge into desert after desert, finally losing themselves in solitary forests. The grandeur—the astonishing melancholy engendered by the entire picture-is not to be expressed in human language. No idea can be formed of it from the most beautiful night in Europe. In our cultivated fields the imagination vainly seeks for scope,-it is every where confronted by the matter-of-fact dwellings of men; but in these wild regions the soul loves to plunge, as it were, into an ocean of forests, to hover over the gulf of cataracts, to meditate on the borders of lakes and broad rivers, and-so to speak-to find itself almost in the presence of Almighty God. CHATEAUBRIAND: On the Genius of Christianity. THE CLOUDS. WHEN I was on the open sea, and had no other object before me than the waters and the sky, I occasionally amused myself in sketching the beautiful white and gray clouds, resembling groups of mountains, which seemed to sail after each other on the azure vault. It was especially at the close of day that they developed all their beauty, clustering together at sunset, clothing themselves in the richest colours, and combining under the most magnificent forms. One evening, about half an hour before sunset, the south-eastern trade-wind slackened, as it often does about that time. The clouds which it drove through the sky, and separated by its gentle zephyrs until they were equidistant, became fewer; and those at the western extremity appeared to stop and group themselves into the shape of a landscape. They represented a tract of country formed of lofty mountains, separated by deep valleys, and surmounted by pyramidal rocks. Upon these summits and 12 : THE MIRAGE. their flanks there appeared to be sundry detached fogs, resembling those which arise on the earth itself. A long river seemed to wind through the valleys, and to fall hither and thither in cascades: it was crossed by a great bridge, supported on half-ruined arcades. Groves of cocoa-trees, in the midst of which habitations might be discerned, arose upon the groups and profiles of this aerial island. None of these objects were clothed in those tints of rich purple, gilded yellow, light red, and emerald green which distinguish the setting sun in these latitudes the landscape was not a coloured picture,—it was a simple print, distinguished by the ordinary reliefs of light and shade. It represented a country which did not derive its light from the direct rays of the sun in front, but from the reflections thereof cast, as it were, from behind. In fact, as soon as the orb of day was concealed by the landscape, some of its decomposed rays lighted up the demi-transparent arcades with a bright scarlet, which reflected themselves in the valleys and on the summits of the rocks, while torrents of light covered its contour with the purest gold, and diverged towards the skies like the rays of a glory; but the entire mass continued in its obscure demi-tint, and around the clouds which skirted its flanks might be beheld the lightning of the thunder whose rumblings were audible afar off. One could have sworn that it was a veritable fragment of land, situated about a league and a half away. Perhaps it was one of those celestial reverberations of a remote island, the clouds above which are re |