Sweet would be the hush of lake, woods, and skies, were it not so solemn! The silence is that of a temple, and, as we face the west, irresistibly are we led to adore. The mighty sun occupies with his flaming retinue all the region. Mighty yet mild--for from his disc, awhile insufferably bright, is effused now a gentle crimson light, that dyes all the west in one uniform glory, save where yet round the cloud edges lingers the purple, the green, and the yellow lustre, unwilling to forsake the violet beds of the sky, changing, while we gaze, into heavenly roses; till that prevailing crimson colour at last gains entire possession of the heavens, and all the previous splendour gives way to one, whose paramount purity, lustrous as fire, is in its steadfast beauty sublime. And, lo! the lake has received that sunset into its bosom. It, too, softly burns with a crimson glow--and, as sinks the sun below the mountains, Windermere, gorgeous in her array as the western sky, keeps fading away as it fades, till at last all the ineffable splendour expires, and the spirit that has been lost to this world in the transcendent vision, or has been seeing all things appertaining to this world in visionary symbols, returns from that celestial sojourn, and knows that its lot is, henceforth as heretofore, to walk weariedly perhaps, and woe-begone, over the no longer divine but disenchanted earth! It is very kind in the moon and stars--just like them--to rise so soon after sunset. The heart sinks at the sight of the sky, when a characterless night succeeds such a blaze of light--like dull reality dashing the last vestiges of the brightest of dreams. When the moon is "hid in her vacant interlunar cave," and not a star can "burst its cerements," imagination in the dim blank droops her wings--our thoughts become of the earth earthly--and poetry seems a pastime fit but for fools and children. But how different our mood, when "Glows the firmament with living sapphires,"