THE LOST JAGER. 191 



whose splendour they were eclipsed, were wrapped as in a pall ; and 

 there came through the stillness and darkness a dim and mingled sound, 

 the whisper of the coming hurricane. On it came, nearer and nearer, 

 and louder and louder, and the pines swayed, and creaked, and crashed, 

 as it took them by the tops, and now and then there passed a flash over 

 the whole sky, until the very air seemed on flame, and laid open for one 

 twinkling the rugged scene, so fitting for the theatre of the tempest's 

 desolation ; and then the darkness was so thick and palpable, that to 

 him who sat there, thus alone with the storm, it seemed as if there were 

 no world, and as if the universe were given up to the whirlwind and to 

 him. And then the snow came down, small and sharp, and it became 

 denser and denser, and the flakes seemed larger and larger, until the 

 wings of the tempest were heavy with them ; and as the broken cur- 

 rents met and jostled, they whirled, and eddied, and shot up into the 

 dark heavens, in thick and stifling masses. Scarce able to breathe, 

 numbed with cold, exhausted with fatigue, and weak from the mental 

 agony he had undergone, Fritz was hardly able to keep his hold of a 

 projecting edge of rock to which he had clung, when, waiting to gather 

 strength, the gust came down with a violence which even the Alpine 

 eagle could not resist, for one which had been carried from its perch 

 swept by in the darkness, blindly struggling and screaming in the storm. 



Oh, Night ! Night ! there is something so intensely beautiful in thee ! 

 Whether in the stillness of thy starry twilight, or in the clear, and 

 placid, and pearly effulgence of thy moon j or when thou wrappest thy 

 brow in its black and midnight mantle, and goest with thy tempests 

 forth to their work of desolation Oh, thou art beautiful ! The spirit 

 of poetry mingles its voice with the thrillings of thy wind-harp, and 

 even in thy deep and holy silence there is a voice to which the soul 

 listens, though the ear hears it not. On the wide sea, and on the wide 

 moor, by the ocean strand, and on mountain lake, and dell and dingle, 

 and corn-field and cottage, O thou art beautiful ! But amid the lavange, 

 and the icefall, and the mighty masses of everlasting snow rising up into 

 the heavens where the clouds scarce dare, amid their solitude and their 

 majesty, there is an awe in thy beauty, which bows down the soul to 

 the dust in dumb adoration. The lofty choir the dim and massy aisle 

 the deep roll of the organ these, even these, often strike like a spell 

 on the sealed spirit, and the well-springs of devotion gush forth fresh 

 and free. Yet, O what are these ? The deep music moaning from vault 

 to vault to the roar of the fierce thunder ; or the lofty temple, to the 

 mighty hills, atoms though they be in the universe of God; or the 

 studied darkness of the shrine, to the blank dullness of the tempest night, 

 seeming, with its grim indefinite, to shadow forth immensity. 



What a small portion of the poetry which the heart has felt has ever 

 been recorded. How many wordless thoughts how many unuttered 

 emotions, such as shine like stars over the pages of the happy few whose 

 lips have been unsealed, rise in the soul of the peasant hind, and are 

 known, and enjoyed, and pass away into the nothingness of forgotten 

 feelings ! Full, deep, and strong, flows onward, silently and perpe- 

 tually, the stream of sympathy ; and here and there by the river side 

 one dips in his little pitcher, and preserves a tiny portion ; while all the 

 rest, undistinguished, passes on to the sea of wide eternity. Through 

 the mind of the Alpine peasant, in such a night, with a hopeless sentence 

 passed upon him, what a world of feelings must have strayed, to which 



