Timing you--my dear sir! Look--'tis only my snuff-box--your own gift--with your own haunted Head on the lid--inspired work of Laurence Macdonald. NORTH. Give it me--why there--there--by your own unhappy awkwardness--it has gone--gone--to the bottom of the deepest part of the Loch! BULLER. I don't care. It _was_ my chronometer! The Box is safe. NORTH. And so is the Chronometer. Here it is--I was laughing at you--in my sleeve. BULLER. Another Herman Boaz!--Bless my eyes, there is Kilchurn! It must be--there is no other such huge Castle, surely, at the head of the Loch--and no other such mountains-- NORTH. You promised solemnly, sir, not to say a single word about Loch Awe or its appurtenance, this Evening--so did every mother's son of us at your order--and t'was well--for we have seen them and felt them all--at times not the less profoundly--as the visionary pomp keeps all the while gliding slowly by--perpetual accompaniment of our discourse, not uninspired, perhaps, by the beauty or the grandeur, as our imagination was among the ideal creations of genius--with the far-off in place and in time--with generations and empires "When dark oblivion swallows cities up, And mighty States, characterless, are grated To dusty nothing!" SEWARD. In the declining light I wonder your eyes can see to read print. NORTH. My eyes are at a loss with Small Pica--but veritable Pica I can master, yet, after sunset. Indeed, I am sharpest-sighted by twilight, like a cat or an owl. BULLER. Have you any more annotations on Alison? NORTH. Many. The flaws are few. I verily believe these are all. To elucidate his Truths--in Taste and in Morals--would require from us Four a far longer Dialogue. Alison's Essays should be reprinted in one Pocket Volume--wisdom and Goodness are in that family hereditary--the editing would be a Work of Love--and in Bohn's Standard Library they would confer benefit on thousands who now know but their name. SEWARD. My dear sir, last time we voyaged the Loch, you said a few words--perhaps you may remember it--about those philosophers--Alison--the "Man of Taste," as Thomas Campbell loved to call him--assuredly is not of the number--who have insisted on the natural Beauty of Virtue, and natural Deformity of Vice, and have appeared to place our capacity of distinguishing Right from Wrong chiefly, if not solely, on the sense of this Beauty and of this Deformity-- NORTH. I remember saying, my dear Seward, that they have drawn their views too much from the consideration of the state of these feelings in men who had been long exercised in the pure speculative contemplation of moral Goodness and Truth, as well as in the calmness and purity of a tranquil, virtuous life. Was it so? SEWARD. It was. NORTH.