374 NETHER LOCHABER. 



crimson ; frieze and architrave and cornice with the glow of molten 

 mettle at " white heat " as it issues from a blast furnace. There 

 was, truth to say, something terrible about the scene, a wild and 

 weird combination of the sublime and beautiful such as Edmund 

 Burke never beheld even in his dreams. It was impossible, in the 

 presence of the " terrible majesty " of that glory, to avoid thinking 

 of the awfulness that must appertain to a scene of which all of us 

 shall one day be spectators, when the " elements shall melt with 

 fervent heat," and the " earth also, and the works that are therein," 

 shall be consumed with fire. The succeeding afterglow of that 

 same evening was singularly beautiful. The mountains of Appin 

 and Glencoe were for a time bathed from their summits to their 

 shoulders in the richest purple and gold, making them look so soft 

 and warm, that for the moment their actual ruggedness was utterly 

 forgotten, and one felt towards them a far stronger and tenderer 

 sentiment than mere admiration. And very curiously, as we gazed, 

 did the night immediately succeed the afterglow, for of twilight 

 there was none there rarely is indeed in autumn, as the old 

 Highlanders were too observant not to notice, for what saith the 

 old and well-known rhyme 1 



" Mar chlorich a ruith le gleann, 

 Tha feasgar farm, f ogharaidh. " 



The meaning of which is, that no longer lasts the autumnal twilight 

 than it takes a stone to roll adown the mountain steep into the 

 glen below. We generally speak of the night's descending ; we 

 say the fatting night, the darkness fell, &c., as if the darkness came 

 down from above, and sometimes, doubtless, it does seem so to fall 

 to descend like a curtain. On this occasion, however, and 

 frequently, we have noticed, in the autumnal season, the night did 

 not seem so much to descend as to ascend, like an exhalation from 

 out the entrails of the earth ; the blackness of gorge and corrie 

 and glen slowly creeping upwards, banishing the gold and purple 



