208 Still Water. 



our readers have seen pictures of Lake Coruisk in the 

 Isle of Skye (a subject which, if we remember aright, 

 Mr. John MacWhirter painted a good many years ago). 

 This sheet of water would be very gloomy and un- 

 picturesque indeed, were it not for the peculiar form and 

 the deep purple colour (at all events at certain times) of 

 the flat-faced and almost pyramid-sided hills which 

 throw deep shadows on the darkish waters beneath 

 them, and thus by contrast a kind of inexpressible 

 relief is given to the scene. We know that in the 

 East the shadow of a great rock in a weary land is 

 given as the very ideal of shelter and protection. It 

 is as beneficial actually as it is refreshing and welcome 

 picturesquely. In the poems of the great German 

 poet, Heinrich Heine, there is a constantly recurrent 

 idea (which indeed crops up in his prose as well) of 

 the fir tree longing for the palm, and the palm tree 

 longing for the fir, which in a fanciful or imaginative 

 way admirably expresses this principle the demand 

 for shade, for contrast ; and as shade is only made 

 effective by the presence of sun affecting objects stand- 

 ing more or less in the midst of level spaces, the true 

 medium is the middle medium not the palm alone 

 amid excess of sun, and single intense shadow in 

 centre of a quiveringly hot expanse, nor the fir amid 

 the frost and snow, where the sun, even when it shines, 

 is so weak as scarcely to cast a shadow over the snow 

 or frost-whitened surface. No; but in the something 

 between, which the poet indicates in the longing of 

 each for each, when he sings : 



" A fir tree stands all lonely 



'In the north, on a cold grey height ; 

 He slumbers, as round him ice and snow 

 Weave a mantle of spotless white. 



