towards the darkness, dusky browns and broad reaches of blue-black massiveness, till the silent starlight wraps the scene with blessing, and the earth sitteth still and at rest. On such an evening, never to be forgotten, we stood alone with the night. Day had gone softly, evening came slowly. There was no speech nor language, only hope and passion and purpose died gently out. Individualities were not, and we stood at one with the universe, hand in hand with the immortals, silent, listening. It was as if the heavens should give up their secret, and smite us with the music of the spheres. Suddenly, unheralded, up over the summit of Mount Moriah came the full moan, a silver disc, a lucent, steady orb, globular and grand, filling the valleys with light, touching all things into a hushed and darkling splendor. To us, standing alone, far from sight of human face or sound of human voice, it seemed the censer of God, swung out to receive the incense of the world. Multifold mists join hands with the light to play fantastic tricks upon these mighty monarchs. The closing day is tender, bringing sacrifice and oblation; but the day of flitting clouds and frequent showers riots in changing joys. Every subordinate eminence that has arrogated to itself the sublimity of the distant mountain, against whose rocky sides it lay lost, is unmasked by the vapors that gather behind it and reveal its low-lying outlines. Every little dimple of the hills has its chalice of mountain wine. The mist stretches above the ridge, a long, low, level causeway, solid as the mountains themselves, which buttress its farther side, a via triumpha, meet highway for the returning chariot of an emperor. It rears itself from the valleys, a dragon rampant and with horrid jaws. It flings itself with smothering caresses about the burly mountains, and stifles them in its close embrace. It trails along the hills, floating in filmy, parting gauze, scattering little flecks of pearl, fringing itself over the hollows, and hustling against a rocky breastwork that bars its onward going. It wreathes upward, curling around the peaks and veiling summits, whose slopes shine white in the unclouded sun. It shuts down gray, dense, sombre, with moody monotone. It opens roguishly one little loop-hole, through which--cloud above, cloud below, cloud on this side and on that--you see a sweet, violet-hued mountain-dome, lying against a background of brilliant blue sky,--just for one heart-beat, and it closes again, gray, sheeted, monotonous.