1832-37. AURORA BOREALIS. 73 



" ROTHESAY, Saturday, September 1836. 



" MY DEARLY BELOVED BROTHER, As the weather up to the 

 Thursday of the week has been delightful, I have seen the 

 country under its most beautiful aspect, and the rain and clouds 

 which now overspread the sky give rise to scenes which could 

 never have been presented to the eye in sunlight. Before I say 

 anything of my own views or actions, allow me to tell you one 

 thing which I gathered from my companion on the coach to 

 Glasgow. He had resided for a winter in Banffshire, and often 

 saw the Aurora Borealis, in beauty far excelling its appearance 

 in our more southerly locality. One appearance which occa- 

 sionally presented itself was that of a great sheet of light waving 

 back and forwards in the sky. You know to what delightful 

 ideas such a description gives rise. In pleasing meditation I 

 laid myself back, in imagination beholding this great curtain 

 of green and silver light waved to and fro in the heavens by the 

 hands of archangels, the drop-scene as it were of heaven, which, 

 rolled back as a scroll, would show the cherubim and seraphim 

 hymning to their lyres ; and often last winter when walking out 

 late in the evening, when the aurora was nickering in the sky, 

 I have watched with delight a dark mass of cloud seemingly 

 rent asunder to show a scene of dazzling unearthly brilliancy, 

 from which I have hoped with a fond credulity to see an angel's 

 face look down ; but why need I have recounted the ideas given 

 rise to by the stories of other men and other days ? have I not with 

 mine own eyes seen enough to delight and amuse without at all 

 referring to extrinsic things ? I was exceedingly delighted with 

 the view from Dunoon, as I saw it on a day the most beautiful ; 

 the still, calm, mirror sea, now calm and tranquil, bearing on its 

 bosom tiny barks and great vessels, slowly sailing with every 

 sail unfurled to the low breeze, and again its depths foaming 

 behind the gallant steam-vessel. On the later class of vessels 

 I am disposed to look with feelings of greater admiration than 

 men will generally concede to them ; and a Liverpool steamer, 

 as I saw it yesterday alone, in a wide expanse of the deep, 

 moving close to the land, so as to have both the shadow of the 

 mountains and the black clouds thrown over its pathway 

 appeared so solemnly without a single sail, stalking as it were 



