London to John O Groat's. 67 



light of the stars, and, as it were, the contracted pupil 

 of the sun's eye at mid-day. The sunset glories of our 

 western heavens play upon a ground of rigid blue. 

 " The Northern Lights," which, at their winter even- 

 ing illuminations, seem to have shredded into wavy 

 filaments all the rainbows that have spanned the cham- 

 bers of the east since the Flood, and to upspring, in 

 mirthful fantasy, to hang their infinitely-tinted tresses 

 to the zenith's golden diadem of stars even they sport 

 upon the same lofty concave of dewless blue, which 

 looks through and through the lacework and ever- 

 changing drapery of their mingled hues in the most 

 witching mazes of their nightly waltz, giving to each 

 a definiteness that our homely Saxon tongue might fit 

 with a name. 



But here, on the lower grounds of instructive medi- 

 tation, is a humbler individuality of the country to 

 notice. Here is the most sadly abused and melancholy 

 living creature in all England's animal realm that meets 

 me in the midst of these reflections on things supernal 

 and glorious. I will let the Northern Lights go, with 

 their gorgeous pantomimes and midnight revelries, and 

 have a moment's communing with this unfortunate 

 quadruped. It is called in derision here a "donkey" 

 but an ass, in a more generous time, when one of his 

 race and size bore upon his back into the Holy City 



F2 



