226 THE ARCTIC NIGHT. 



amphitheatre. The mind, finding no rest on their 

 bald summits, wanders into space. The moon, weary 

 with long vigil, sinks to her repose. The Pleiades no 

 longer breathe their sweet influences. Cassiopea and 

 Andromeda and Orion and all the infinite host of 

 unnumbered constellations, fail to infuse one spark of 

 joy into this dead atmosphere. They have lost all 

 their tenderness, and are cold and pulseless. The eye 

 leaves them and returns to earth, and the trembling 

 ear awaits something that will break the oppressive 

 stillness. But no footfall of living thing reaches it ; 

 no wild beast howls through the solitude. There is 

 no cry of bird to enliven the scene ; no tree, among 

 whose branches the winds can sia:h and moan. The 

 pulsations of my own heart are alone heard in the 

 great void ; and as the blood courses through the 

 sensitive organization of the ear, I am oppressed as 

 with discordant sounds. Silence has ceased to be 

 negative. It has become endowed with positive at- 

 tributes. I seem to hear and see and feel it. It 

 stands forth as a frightful spectre, filling the mind 

 with the overpowering consciousness of universal 

 death, — proclaiming the end of all things, and her- 

 alding the everlasting future. Its presence is unen- 

 durable. I spring from the rock upon which I have 

 been seated, I plant my feet heavily in the snow to 

 banish its awful presence, — and the sound rolls 

 through the night and drives away the phantom. 



I have seen no expression on the face of Nature so 

 filled with terror as The Silence of the Arctic Night. 



