[Illustration: text decoration] CHRISTIAN MELVILLE. EPOCH II. Behold the tempter!--to the expectant air The hoarse-voiced wind whispers its coming dread, And ancient Ocean from his mighty head Shakes back the foaming tangles of his hair, Gathering his strength that giant power to dare, That chafes to fury all his thousand waves, And digs in his deep sand unlooked for graves, Whelming the hapless barks that voyage there. Fierce is the rage of elemental strife; Yet who may tell how far exceeds that war That rends the inner seat of mental life, Veils the soul’s sky--shuts out each guiding star. The fiercest tempest raging o’er the sea, But pictures what the might of mental storms may be. [Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER I. That there is not a God, the fool Doth in his heart conclude: They are corrupt, their works are vile; Not one of them doth good. * * * * * There feared they much; for God is with The whole race of the just.--PSALM xiv. Another December has begun to lower in the dim skies with wintry wildness, to bind the earth with iron fetters, and to cover its surface with its snowy mantle, as we enter for the first time another town, far from that English borough in which we lingered a year ago. An ancient city is this, within whose time-honoured walls the flower and pride of whatever was greatest and noblest in Scotland, has ever been found through long descending ages. Elevated rank, mighty mental ability, eminent piety, the soundest of all theology, the most thorough of all philosophy, and the truest patriotism, have ever been concentrated within its gates. Here men are common, who elsewhere would be great, and the few who do stand out from amid that mass of intellect stand out as towers, and above that vast aggregate of genius and goodness are seen from every mountain in Christendom, from every Pisgah of intellectual vision, whereon thoughtful men do take their stations, as suns amid the stars. And alas that we should have to say it, where vice also erects its head and stalks abroad with an unblushing front, and a fierce hardihood, lamentable to behold. We cannot, to-night, tread its far-famed halls of learning, we may not thread our way through the busy, seething multitudes of its old traditionary streets; but there is one chamber, from whose high windows a solitary light streams out into the murky air, into which we must pass.