What a splendid object! and yet but a few moments ago it was nothing but a wreath of cold gray vapor—a fragment doubtless of that dim blanket which kept the stars from shining the past night. What a splendid object, and yet the tints will soon fade, and it will once more turn to a dim curl of cloud insignificant and hueless. Solomon’s mantle will change to a garment that a beggar would scorn, particularly if the morning should be cold. Garments of cloud may be very romantic, but they would prove deucedly uncomfortable, particularly in winter I fancy, although the sun does turn them into golden, crimson, and jeweled glories. But the east is kindling brighter and brighter, and at last a spot, directly beneath the cloud, is burning almost like “white heat.” That is the bath of splendor into which the sun will rush when it spurns the mountain top and launches into the heavens. And see the lower edge now burns with a fire that sears the very eyeball, and ha! yes, there comes the sun. Up, up, with slow and stately, and solemn motion as yet, up, up, with seeming accelerated speed; now it launches into its bath of splendor, and in plain Saxon, it is sunrise. Two broad streams of light roll toward me. One comes flashing directly in front, tipping the summit of “Tonner’s hill,” and placing, quick as thought, bright caps of gold upon the pines and hemlocks of the next ridge this way, thence lighting upon “Brownson’s Hill,” and helmeting the pines and hemlocks of that locality, and thence hitting here and touching there, it bathes with rosy splendor the chimneys of the village, and they straightway, like altars just touched by flame, begin, every mother’s son of them, to smoke. And not your blue, common smoke either, but smoke of _lapis lazuli_, or whatever other hue is radiant and rich. The other beam shoots off to the left, and leaving the valley-meadows below Tonner’s, still steeped in their silver down of mist, it glorifies the summits of the next wood, and spreads in a huge ring of golden glow upon the tops of the forests that form the framework of “Pleasant Pond.” One towering pine that plumes a green turban of a hill near the liquid silver of the pond, has caught the splendor upon its apex, and how the glad light there laughs and sparkles and dances. Like the brain of a poet when the pure fire descends upon it, it seems to break out into a glow of inspiration, and hark! borne to the fine and subtle ear of fancy, through the intervening space thus sounds the song of this Memnon of the forest—its sunrise hymn—