376 A Walk from 



the shoulders of the lower hills, like grand giants 

 standing in steel helmets and green doublets and 

 gilded corslets, to see the soft and quiet beauty of 

 the valley sleeping under their watch and ward. As 

 the sun-bursts from the strath-skies above darted out 

 of their shifting cloud-walls and flashed a flush of 

 light upon the solemn brows of these majestic apostles 

 of nature one by one, they stood haloed, like the 

 favored saints in Scripture in the overflow of the 

 Transfiguration. It was just the kind of day to make 

 the scene glorious indescribably. The clouds and sky 

 were in the happiest disposition for the brilliant plays 

 and pictures of light and shade, and dissolving views 

 of fascinating splendor succeeded and surpassed each 

 other at a minute's interval. Now the great land- 

 lake, on whose bosom floated in the sunlight a thousand 

 islands oat-and-barley-gilded, and rimmed with the 

 green and purple verdure of the turnip and ruta-baga, 

 was all set a-glow by a luminous flood from the opening 

 clouds above. The next moment they closed this dis- 

 parted seam in their drapery, and opened a side one 

 upon the still, grave faces of the surrounding moun- 

 tains ; and, for a few minutes, the smile went round 

 from one to the other, and the great centurions of 

 the hills looked happy and almost human in the gleam. 

 Then shade's turn came in the play, and it played 



