Sabbath day's journey, we perceive now that we must have achieved a Highland league-five miles of rough uphill work, and are standing tiptoe on the Mountaintop. True that his altitude is not very great-somewhere, we should suppose, between two and three thousand feet-much higher than the Pentlands-somewhat higher than the Ochils-a middle-sized Grampian. Great painters and poets know that power lies not in mere measurable bulk. Atlas, it is true, is a giant, and he has need to be so, supporting the globe. So is Andes ; but his strength has never been put to proof, as he carries but clouds. The Cordilleras-but we must not be personal-so suffice it to say, that soul, not size, equally in mountains and in men, is and inspires the true sublime. Mont Blanc might be as big again; but what then, if without his glaciers?

These mountains are neither immense nor enormous nor are there any such in the British Isles. Look for a few of the highest on Riddell's ingenious Scale-in Scotland Ben-nevis, Helvellyn in England, in Ireland the Reeks; and you see that they are mere molehills to Chimborazo. Nevertheless, they are the hills of the Eagle. And think ye not that an Eagle glorifies the sky more than a Condor? That Vulture-for Vulture he is flies league-high-the Golden Eagle is satisfied to poise himself half a mile above the loch, which, judged by the rapidity of its long river's flow, may be based a thousand feet or more above the level of the sea. From that height methinks the Bird-Royal, with the golden eye, can see the rising and the setting sun, and his

march on the meridian, without a telescope. If ever he fly by night—and we think we have seen a shadow passing the stars that was on the wing of life—he must be

a rare astronomer.

"High from the summit of a craggy cliff

Hung o'er the deep, such as amazing frown
On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,
The Royal Eagle rears his vigorous young,
Strong-pounced and burning with paternal fire.
Now fit to raise a kingdom of their own
He drives them from his fort, the towering seat
For ages of his empire; which in peace
Unstain'd he holds, while many a league to sea
He wings his course, and preys in distant isles.”

Do you long for wings, and envy the Eagle? Not if you be wise. Alas! such is human nature, that in one year's time the novelty of pinions would be over, and you would skim undelighted the edges of the clouds. Why do we think it a glorious thing to fly from the summit of some inland mountain away to distant isles? Because our feet are bound to the dust. We enjoy the eagle's flight far more than the eagle himself driving headlong before the storm; for imagination dallies with the unknown power, and the wings that are denied to our bodies are expanded in our souls. Sublime are the circles the sun-staring creature traces in the heavens, to us who lie stretched among the heather bloom. Could we do the same, we should still be longing to pierce through the atmosphere to some other planet; and an elevation of leagues above the snows of the Himalyas would not satisfy our aspirations. But we can calcu

late the distances of the stars, and are happy as Galileo in his dungeon.

Yet an Eagle we are, and therefore proud of You our Scottish mountains, as you are of Us. Stretch yourself up to your full height as we now do to oursand let "Andes, giant of the Western Star" but dare to look at us, and we will tear the "meteor standard to the winds unfurled" from his cloudy hands. There you stand-and were you to rear your summits much higher into heaven you would alarm the hidden stars.

Yet we have seen you higher-but it was in storm. In calm like this, you do well to look beautiful-your solemn altitude suits the sunny season, and the peaceful sky. But when the thunder at mid-day would hide your heads in a night of cloud, you thrust them through the blackness, and show them to the glens, crowned with fire.

No-they are mounWaves of water, when

Are they a sea of mountains! tains in a sea. And what a sea! at the prodigious, are never higher than the foretop of a man-of-war. Waves of vapour-they alone are seen flying mountains high-dashing, but howling not and in their silent ascension, all held together by the same spirit, but perpetually changing its beautiful array, where order seems ever aud anon to come in among disorder, there is a grandeur that settles down in the soul of youthful poet roaming in delirium among the mountain glooms, and "pacifies the fever of his heart.”

Call not now these vapours waves; for movement there is none among the ledges, and ridges, and roads,

and avenues, and galleries, and groves, and houses, and churches, and castles, and fairy palaces-all framed of mist. Far up among and above that wondrous region, through which you hear voices of waterfalls deepening the silence, behold hundreds of mountain-tops-blue, purple, violet-for the sun is shining straight on some and aslant on others-and on those not at all; nor can the shepherd at your side, though he has lived among them all his life, till after long pondering tell you the names of those most familiar to him; for they seem to have all interchanged sites and altitudes, and Black Benhun himself, the Eagle-Breeder, looks so serenely in his rainbow, that you might almost mistake him for Ben Louey or the Hill of Hinds.

Have you not seen sunsets in which the mountains were embedded in masses of clouds all burning and blazing-yes, blazing-with unimaginable mixtures of all the colours that ever were born-intensifying into a glory that absolutely became insupportable to the soul as insufferable to the eyes-and that left the eyes for hours after you had retreated from the supernatural scene, even when shut, all filled with floating films of cross-lights, cutting the sky-imagery into gorgeous fragments? And were not the mountains of such sunsets, whether they were of land or of cloud, sufficiently vast for your utmost capacities and powers of delight and joy longing to commune with the Region then felt to be in very truth Heaven? Nor could the spirit, entranced in admiration, conceive at that moment any Heaven beyond-while the senses themselves seemed to have

had given them a revelation, that as it was created could be felt but by an immortal spirit.

It elevates our being to be in the body near the sky-at once on earth and in Heaven. In the body? Yeswe feel at once fettered and free. In Time we wear our fetters, and heavy though they be, and painfully riveted on, seldom do we welcome Death coming to strike them off-but groan at sight of the executioner. In eternity we believe that all is spiritual-and in that belief, which doubt sometimes shakes but to prove that its foundation lies rooted far down below all earthquakes, endurable is the sound of dust to dust. Poets speak of the spirit, while yet in the flesh, blending, mingling, being absorbed in the great forms of the outward universe, and they speak as if such absorption were celestial and divine. But is not this a material creed? Let Imagination beware how she seeks to glorify the objects of the senses, and having glorified them, to elevate them into a kindred being with our own, exalting them that we may claim with them that kindred being, as if we belonged to them and not they to us, forgetting that they are made to perish, we to live for ever!

But let us descend the mountain by the side of this torrent. What a splendid series of translucent pools! We carry the Excursion in our pocket, for the use of our friends; but our own presentation copy is here-we have gotten it by heart. And it does our heart good to hear ourselves recite. Listen ye Naiads to the famous picture of the Ram :