*
So you sit, like Jupiter on Olympus, and look down from
afar upon men's life. The city is as silent as a city of
the dead: from all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice,
not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill. The sea-surf,
the cries of plough-men, the streams and the mill-wheels,
the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert through
the plain; from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks
contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian
station, except for the whispering rumour of a train, the
world has fallen into a dead silence, and the business of
town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying
hill-bird, the bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry
grass, seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the
stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes
a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant
reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable
city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and
the straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and
comfortable ways; and you may be never so laggard and never
so unimpressionable, but there is something in the view
that spirits up your blood and puts you in the vein for
cheerful labour.
*
The night, though we were so little past midsummer, was as
dark as January. Intervals of a groping twilight
alternated with spells of utter blackness; and it was
impossible to trace the reason of these changes in the
flying horror of the sky.
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