CLOUDS AND CLOUD FORMS 
83 
They rise, fall, or change before our eyes 
with no effort, no sound, no apparent design. 
Now they are scattered wide over the blue, now 
they are huddled together and driven in flocks 
by the wind; but they never seem to be in a 
hurry. An epitome of idle content, having 
no actual power in themselves, they are, never- 
theless, the visible sign of aérial energy. The 
wind blows them whither it isteth. They drift 
around and about the world and have no abid- 
ing-place, no resting-place on land or sea; yet 
wherever they go they gladden the eye and 
cheer the heart, and in every landscape they 
are the bright spots of beauty. 
And what wonderful luminosity there may 
be in acloud! The upper cirrus just before 
sunset is often dazzling in its light, and when 
struck full by the sun’s rays, there is nothing 
more intense in luminosity than the cap of the 
tall cumulus. The ancients felt the splendor 
of this cloud light, and it is not strange that 
the Old Testament writers should speak of the 
‘pillar of cloud” that guided the wanderings 
in the wilderness, of God descending on a cloud, 
of a cloud as the resting-place of the Mercy 
Seat and the standing-place of angels. The 
purity of these white vapors of the upper air 
Drift of 
clouds, 
Light upon 
the clouds. 
