was determined; but where to go, and what to do, were points not so easily arranged; and ever and anon the image of Ellen Frazer rose in all the radiance of her beauty, like the angel to Balaam, and stood between him and his purpose. The doubts, the fears, and the fondness, which alternately predominated in his bosom, received a secret and sympathetic energy from the appearance and state of external nature. The weather was cloudy but not lowering--a strong tempest seemed, however, to be raging at a distance; and several times he paused and looked back at the enormous masses of dark and troubled vapour, which were drifting along the whole sweep of the northern horizon, from Ben Lomond to the Ochils, as if some awful burning was laying waste the world beyond them; while a long and splendid stream of hazy sunshine, from behind the Cowal mountains, brightened the rugged summits of Dumbuck, and, spreading its golden fires over Dumbarton moor, gilded the brow of Dumgoin, and lighted up the magnificent vista which opens between them of the dark and distant Grampians. The appearance of the city was also in harmony with the general sublimity of the evening. Her smoky canopy was lowered almost to a covering--a mist from the river hovered along her skirts and scattered buildings, but here and there some lofty edifice stood proudly eminent, and the pinnacles of the steeples glittering like spear-points through the cloud, suggested to the fancy strange and solemn images of heavenly guardians, stationed to oppose the adversaries of man. A scene so wild, so calm, and yet so troubled and darkened, would, at any time, have heightened the enthusiasm of young Walkinshaw, but the state of his feelings made him more than ordinarily susceptible to the eloquence of its various lights and shadows. The uncertainty which wavered in the prospects of his future life, found a mystical reflex in the swift and stormy wrack of the carry, that some unfelt wind was silently urging along the distant horizon. The still and stationary objects around--the protected city and the everlasting hills, seemed to bear an assurance, that, however obscured the complexion of his fortunes might at that moment be, there was still something within himself that ought not to suffer any change, from the evanescent circumstances of another’s frown or favour. This confidence in himself, felt perhaps for the first time that evening, gave a degree of vigour and decision to the determination which he had formed; and by the time he had reached the porch of his uncle’s mansion, his step was firm, his emotions regulated, and a full and manly self-possession had succeeded to the fluctuating feelings with which he left Glasgow, in so much that even his countenance seemed to have received some new impress, and to have lost the softness of youth, and taken more decidedly the cast and characteristics of manhood. CHAPTER LXVII