CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



green as emerald. Was it mountainous? Give answer 

 from afar, ye mist-shrouded summits, and ye clouds 

 cloven by the eagle's wing! But whether ye be in- 

 deed mountains, or whether ye be clouds, who can 

 tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that long-lingering 

 sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one indis- 

 tinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the 

 final conflagration were begun! Was it woody? Hush, 

 hush, and you will hear a pine-cone drop in the cen- 

 tral silence of a forest a silent and solitary wilder- 

 ness in which you may wander a whole day long, 

 unaccompanied but by the cushat, the corby, the 

 falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of human feet, 

 and, like thoughts, pass away in a moment; so if you 

 long for less fleeting farewells from the native dwell- 

 ers in the wood, lo! the bright brown queen of the 

 butterflies, gay and gaudy in her glancings through 

 the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over the 

 pools in the glade; and if your ear desire music, the 

 robin and the wren may haply trill you a few notes 

 among the briery rocks, or the bold blackbird open 

 wide his yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the 

 squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing 

 roundelay. Any rivers? one to whom a thousand 

 torrents are tributary as he himself is tributary to 

 the sea. Any lochs? How many we know not for we 

 never counted them twice alike omitting perhaps 

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