4 
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192 LETTERS FROM HIGH LATITUDES. 
“ The king is dead—the king is dead—the king is 
dead! Long live the king! ” And np from the sea that 
had just entombed his sire rose the young monarch of a 
new day; while the courtier clouds, in their ruby robes, 
turned faces still aglow with the favours of their dead 
lord, to borrow brighter blazonry from the smile of 
a new master. 
A fairer or a stranger spectacle than the last Arctic 
sunset cannot well be conceived. Evening and morn¬ 
ing—like kinsmen whose hearts some baseless feud 
has kept asunder—clasping hands across the shadow 
of the vanished night. 
You must forgive me if sometimes I become a 
little magniloquent;—for really, amid the grandeur of 
that fresh primaeval world, it was almost impossible to 
prevent one’s imagination from absorbing a dash of the 
local colouring. We seemed to have suddenly waked 
up among the colossal scenery of Keats’ Hyperion. 
The pulses of young Titans beat within our veins. 
Time itself,—no longer frittered down into paltry 
divisions,—had assumed a more majestic aspect. We 
had the appetite of giants—was it unnatural we should 
also adopt “the large utterance of the early gods?” 
