Except a few acres of arable land at its foot, a bare hill formed almost the whole of my father’s possessions. The sheep ate over it, and found it good for food; I raced and bounded over it, and thought it a kingdom. In the still autumn morning, the wide moor lay outstretched in its stillness, high uplifted towards the heaven. The dew hung on every stalk in tiny drops, which, as the sun arose, sparkled and burned with all the hues shared by the whole family of gems. Here and there a bird gave a cry: all else was silence. It is strange, but I never see the statue of the Roman youth, praying with outstretched arms, and open, empty, level palms, as if waiting to receive and hold the blessing of the gods, but that outstretched barren heath rises before me, as if it meant the same thing as the statue,—or were, at least, the fit room in the middle space of which to set the praying and expectant youth. There was one spot upon the hill, half-way between the valley and the moorland above, which was my favourite haunt. This part of the hill was covered with great blocks of stone, of all shapes and sizes—here crowded together, like the slain where the battle was fiercest; there parting asunder from a space covered with the delicate green of the sweetest, softest grass. In the centre of one of these green spots, on a steep part of the hill, were three huge rocks—two projecting out of the hill, rather than standing up from it, and one, likewise projecting from the hill, but lying across the tops of the two others, so as to form a little cave, the back of which was the side of the hill. This was my refuge, my home within a home, my study, and, in the hot noons, often my sleeping chamber, and my house of dreams. If the wind blew cold on the hill-side, a hollow of lulling warmth was there, scooped as it were out of the body of the blast, which swept around, and whistled keen and thin through the cracks and crannies of the great rocky chaos that lay all about, and in which the wind plunged, and flowed, and eddied and withdrew, as the sea-waves on the cliffy shores or the unknown rugged bottoms. When I lifted my eyes, before me lay, but at some miles’ distance, behind another hill, which on the opposite side of the valley ran parallel to mine, a great mountain; not like that on which I was seated, but a mighty thing, a chieftain of the race, seamed and scarred, featured with chasms, and precipices, and overleaning rocks, themselves huge as hills; here blackened with shade, there overspread with glory; interlaced with the silvery lines of many falling streams, which, hurrying from heaven to earth, cared not how they went, so it were downwards. Fearful stories were told of many an awful gulf, many a sullen pool, and many a dread and dizzy height upon that terror-haunted mountain. But, except in storms, when the wind roared like thunder in its caverns and along the jagged sides of its cliffs, no sound from that