The Electric Storm 131 



voice,&quot; after the mountains had been rent and 

 the rocks broken in pieces, and the pause had come. 

 There was the moment of awe, when all the 

 weight of the world fell on the prophet s shoul 

 ders, and the God spake to him, in the unearthly 

 silence that ensued. 



Nothing else that we experience in the yearly 

 course is so wonderful and inexplicable as the 

 thunderstorm, as it is still called, by metonymy, 

 placing the effect for the cause. The splendour 

 of such a storm from the coign of a commanding 

 hill, looking over miles of mountains and valleys, 

 is something inexpressible in language. To view 

 it aright, and know its magnificence, one must 

 see it through, from its long upgathering over 

 roods and square miles of territory, with its brood 

 ing echoes of thunder from flashes that are mere 

 streaks of gentle light ; to the moment when the 

 fringes of the shower descend and the flashes grow 

 brighter, and the response is swifter ; to the cru 

 cial, living instant when crashes all the air, and 

 every hill echoes back, so soon after the flash 

 that no common watch can register the elapsing 

 fragment of a second. Here, when heaven and 

 earth seem to clash in one tremendous utterance 

 of unity, is the splendid thrill of the electric 

 storm. 



Attuned to this infinitely glorious music, what, 



