498 Chapter VIII. 



night. Look at them ; drink oblivion and drink hope 

 from them : they are even as the aspiring soul of man. 

 Restless as it, they will wreathe the whole vault of 

 heaven with their glittering, fleeting light, surpassing- 

 all else in their wild loveliness, fairer than even the 

 blush of dawn ; but, whirling idly through empty space, 

 they bear no message of a coming day. The sailor 

 steers his course by a star. Could you but concentrate 

 yourselves, you, too, oh, northern lights, might lend your 

 aid to o-uicle the wildered wanderer. But dance on, and 



o 



let me enjoy you ; stretch a bridge across the gulf 

 between the present and the time to come, and let me 

 dream far, far ahead into the future. 



" Oh, thou mysterious radiance, what art thou, and 

 whence comest thou? Yet why ask ? Is it not enough 

 to admire thy beauty and pause there ? Can we at best 

 get beyond the outward show of things ? What would 

 it profit even if w r e could say that it is an electric dis- 

 charge or currents of electricity through the upper 

 regions of the air, and were able to describe in minutest 

 detail how it all came to be ? It would be mere words. 

 We know no more what an electric current really is, than 



what the aurora borealis is. Happy is the child 



\Ve, with all our views and theories, are not in the 

 last analysis a hair's-breadth nearer the truth than it. 



'Tuesday, November i3th. Thermometer 38 C. 

 (-- 36*4 F.). The ice is packing in several quarters 

 during the day, and the roar is pretty loud, now that the 



