me as those of day, but never but that once did that Heavenly Spectre meet my eye. As I reached the northern brow of the hill, it wanted but a minute or two of sunrise; in a few seconds a new Day would dawn—a flake would separate itself from the infinite Future, and be born into the world. I stood awaiting the Incarnation of Time. A flapping wing broke on the solemn stillness. Two rooks rose slowly from the ground, where they had been preying upon the tenants of the turf. Below me, to the east and north, spread out the waters of the Firth of Forth—not a billow breaking against its rocky islets—its broad expanse of the colour of lead, sombre and waveless, like the lifeless waters of the Asphaltite Sea; while, toiling like an imp of darkness, a small steam-boat tore up its leaden-like surface, disappearing behind the house-tops of Leith. The spirits of night seemed hurrying to their dens, to escape the golden arrows of the God of Day. In the bowery gardens below me, the birds began an overture as the curtain of the Dawn was lifting. At length the sun shot up into the sky; then seemed to pause for some time, his lower limb resting on the dark sea, his upper almost touching a bank of overhanging cloud. Pale tremulous rays, like those of the aurora borealis, darted laterally from the orb, shooting quiveringly along the sky, and returning: the waves of light were ebbing and flowing on the sands of Night. The sea and the slopes of the Calton still lay in the dull hues of dawn; but a strange cold sun-gleam which one felt instinctively would be short-lived, glittered around me on the crest of the hill, and on the white stone monuments that crown it as with a diadem. Foremost and loftiest rose the noble columns of the National Monument, even in their imperfection the most Grecian of British edifices, standing aloft like the ruins of Minerva’s temple on the bluff Cape of Sunium, visible from afar to mariners entering the romantic Bay of the Forth. The glitter which now tinged them with gold was bright and brief as the national fervour which gave them birth. In a few minutes the sun passed up behind the bank of cloud, and nothing remained of his beams but a golden streak on the far edge of the waters.