40 A Night on Dartmoor. [[JAN. 



meadows which repose at her feet, that deck the hedges with the varied 

 embroidery of the seasons, and bid a thousand hill-born streamlets roll 

 in liquid silver along their channels, tend only to enhance her gloom. 

 In the serenest hour of the serenest day in summer, she wears ever a 

 frown on her brow, and, like Satan in Eden, seems to envy the happiness 

 she cannot share. Though she be the fruitful mother of half the rivers 

 that roll laughing through the vales of Devon, she yet feels no joy in her 

 maternity, but hurries them, one after another, from her presence. 

 Silence and Solitude stand sentinel on her borders, and within sits Ruin, 

 throned on some mighty Tor, coeval with the birth of time. Vast 

 morasses, over which, unseen of man, the shy raven sweeps like an 

 ill-boding fiend ; rough sombre crags, within which the wild fox nestles ; 

 stunted heath-broom, glooming in long and apparently endless succes- 

 sion on the sight ; patches of scanty verdure whereon the lizard glides, 

 and the red snake trails its length ; streams, sluggish or active, either 

 creeping along the plains, or rushing headlong from the heights, here 

 lonely and unsheltered, there fringed with dense forests of rushes, which 

 give out a sullen tone, as the fierce hurricane passes over them ; these 

 varied objects complete a scene of desolation, barrenness, and sublimity, 

 such as no other spot in England can parallel. 



It was over this appalling wilderness that I happened to be passing 

 some few years since in June, just as the sun was going down in a sky that 

 seemed to promise a fine night. I had left London a month previously, in 

 order to pay a visit to my cousin Harriette at Bishopsteignton, who for 

 weeks had been a serious invalid ; but having luckily found her so far 

 renovated as to be able to leave her room, and even ramble with me as 

 usual about the neighbourhood, I left her sooner than I had intended ; 

 and after making a hasty tour through the south of Devon, took up my 

 quarters at South .Zeal, with the intention of exploring Dartmoor, which, 

 I was assured, abounded in objects of interest. On the day on which 

 the following adventure occurred, I had been rambling the whole morn- 

 ing, wherever a secure footing presented itself, about the moor ; and 

 having satisfied my relish for the picturesque, was desirous to ensure a 

 safe and speedy return to my snug little village auberge. Putting, 

 accordingly, my best leg forward., and timing my progress by the sunset, 

 I calculated that I should have just sufficient glimmer to enable 

 me to reach South Zeal. I was in high spirits, full of health, with an 

 octogenarian pulse, and nerves in the finest possible condition. My 

 fancy, too, had been excited by the contemplation of the wild scenes over 

 which I had passed, and the genial influence of the twilight that dropped 

 like a transparent veil around me, softening the rugged features of the 

 moor, till they wore almost a smile, kept up the delightful stimulus. 



Of all the myriad sources of enjoyment which nature unfolds to man, 

 I know few equal to those elicited by a balmy summer sunset. The idea is 

 old, but the reflections it excites are perpetually varying. There is a some- 

 thing, in this hour, so tender, so holy, so fraught with simple, yet 

 sublime associations, that it belongs rather to heaven than earth. The 

 curtain that drops down on the physical, descends also on the moral 

 world. The day, with its selfish interests, its common-place distractions., 

 has gone by, and the season of intelligence of imagination of spiritual- 

 ity, is dawning. Yes, twilight unlocks the Blandusian fountain of 

 fancy : there, as in a mirror, reflecting all things in added loveliness, the 

 heart surveys the past ; the dead, the absent, the estranged, come throng- 



