x THE STARRY HEAVENS 405 
never to threaten or to destroy.’* We are 
free, therefore, to admire them in peace, and 
beautiful, indeed, they are. | 
“The most wonderful sight I remember,” 
says Hamerton, “as an effect of calm, was 
the inversion of Donati’s Comet, in the year 
1858, durmg the nights when it was suffi- 
ciently near the horizon to approach the rugged 
outline of Graiganunie, and be reflected 
beneath it in Loch Awe. In the sky was an 
enormous aigrette of diamond fire, in the 
water a second aigrette, scarcely less splendid, 
with its brilliant point directed upwards, and 
its broad, shadowy extremity ending indefi- 
nitely in the deep. ‘To be out on the lake 
alone, in a tiny boat, and let it rest motionless 
on the glassy water, with that mcomparable 
spectacle before one, was an experience to be 
remembered through a lifetime. I have seen 
many a glorious sight since that now distant 
year, but nothing to equal it in the association 
of solemnity with splendour.” ? 
1 Ball. 2Hamerton, Landscape. 
