SECOND PROSE VERSION. 35 



moment scarce visible in the gloom, the next radiant in 

 the light, all acquired a new interest, from the pecu- 

 liarity of the setting in which we saw them. They 

 formed a series of sungilt vignettes, framed in jet ; and 

 it was long ere we tired of seeing and admirifig in them 

 much of the strange and the beautiful/ 



The scenery of the heavens is hardly referred to 

 in the first sketch. The fact of a rain-storm having 

 aggravated the horrors of the situation is mentioned, 

 but the boy thinks of nothing except the additional 

 pain it occasioned. When Hugh Miller had watched 

 the sunsets of forty other summers, he ' put in the 

 sky ' of his picture thus : ' The sun had sunk behind 

 the precipices, and all was gloom along their bases, and 

 double gloom in their caves ; but their rugged brows 

 still caught the red glare of evening. The flush rose 

 higher and higher, chased by the shadows ; and then, 

 after lingering for a moment on their crests of honey- 

 suckle and juniper, passed away, and the whole became 

 sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upward from 

 where he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly 

 away to his lodge in his deep-sea stack ; the dusky cor- 

 morant flitted past, with heavier and more frequent 

 stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice ; the 

 pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and 

 the opposite land, and disappeared amid the gloom of 

 their caves ; every creature that had wings made use of 

 them in speeding homewards ; but neither my companion 

 nor myself had any ; and there was no possibility of 

 getting home without them. . . . For the last few hours 

 mountainous piles of clouds had been rising dark and 

 stormy in the sea-mouth : they had flared portentously 

 in the setting sun, and had worn, with the decline of 



