THE CHANGE OF A DAY. 
43 
with rose hues the sandstone; all nature seemed to 
smile, and to harmonize with the innocent studies of 
a devout and poetic soul. When we returned there 
in the evening, the capricious fairy had changed 
everything. Those pines, which had welcomed us 
under their airy canopy, had suddenly grown wild and 
fierce, and resounded with strange noises, with lamen¬ 
tations of sinister augury. Those shrubs, which in the 
morning had graciously invited the white robe to pause 
beside them and gather their berries or flowers, now 
seemed to conceal in their copses an undefinable some¬ 
thing of ill omen—robbers, it might be, or sorcerers ! 
But greater still the transformation in those rocks, 
which had courteously received us, and bidden us be 
seated. Is it the evening, or is it a coming storm, 
which has changed them ? I know not; but there 
they are, metamorphosed into gloomy sphinxes, into 
elephants prostrate on the earth, into mammoths, and 
other monsters of the old worlds which have ceased 
to exist. They are now at rest, it is true; but are 
they not about to rise ? However this may be, the 
evening comes on apace; let us advance. My wife 
presses close to my arm. 
Does not our forest deserve the name of the Shake¬ 
spearian comedy, “ As You Like It ” ? 
No; to deal justly with it, we must own that its 
entertaining metamorphosis, and all its changes to the 
eye, are absolutely external. Movable in its leaves 
and mists, fugitive in its shifting sands, it has a firmer foundation than 
perhaps any other forest, and a power of fixity which communicates 
