154 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 
Morning and evening subjects come under this head. You all, 
no doubt, have observed the solemn, silent, transitions that at this 
hour take place. How weird the distance becomes in the twilight 
hour. How gloomy forms, that but an hour ago looked like figures 
of gold, now stand like dark sentinels, bidding welcome to the 
darkerx night. With the coming dawn and its accompanying shafts 
of splendor, we rejoice to see the gloom disperse, the shadows melt 
away, and rosy morn shine forth in all her glistening resplendent 
beauty. 
Some wonderful effects are seen among our morning mists in 
the summer season. No doubt many of you have passed your 
vacation in Muskoka. Here we get these misty phantoms in all 
their illusive revels, as if a filmy gauze were lifted, and revealed the un- 
certain form of some fairy isle. But soon ’tis lost again. ‘Tall pines 
seem to stretch their blighted arms from out the misty air. Voices 
can be heard but their forms seem to be enveloped in another world, 
but as the sun pours forth its stronger rays the mists are rolled away. 
Here let me pause and quote a few lines from Scott’s ‘‘ Lady of 
the Lake.” No poet better describes nature in her manifold changes : 
‘* And now to issue from the glen, 
No pathway meets the wanderer’s ken, 
Unless he climb with footing nice, 
A far projecting precipice. 
The broom’s tough roots his ladder made, 
The hazel saplings lent their aid ; 
And thus an airy point he won, 
Where, gleaming with the setting sun, 
One burnished sheet of luring gold 
Loch-Katrine lay beneath him rolled 
In all her length far winding lay, 
With promontory, creek and bay, 
And island that empurpled bright 
Floated amid the livelier light, 
And mountains that like giants stand, 
To sentinel enchanted land. 
High on the south huge Ben-venue 
Down to the lake in masses threw 
Crags, knolls and mounds confusedly hurled, 
The fragments of an earlier world. 
A wildering forest feathered o’er 
His ruined sides and summit hoar, 
While on the north in middle air, 
Ben-au heaved high his forehead bare.” 
