Nature is here exposed on a gigantic scale. Out of the glassy sea the cliffs rear their dark fronts and frown grimly over the desolate waste of ice-clad waters. The mountain peaks, glittering in the clear cold atmosphere, pierce the very heavens, their heads hoary with unnumbered ages. The glaciers pour their crystal torrents into the sea in floods of immeasurable magnitude. The very air, disdaining the gentle softness of other climes, bodies forth a loftier majesty, and seems to fill the universe with a boundless transparency; and the stars pierce it sharply, and the moon fills it with a cold refulgence. There is neither warmth nor coloring underneath this etherial robe of night. No broad window opens in the east, no gold and crimson curtain falls in the west, upon a world clothed in blue and green and purple, melting into one harmonious whole, a tinted cloak of graceful loveliness. Under the shadow of the eternal night, Nature needs no drapery and requires no adornment. The glassy sea, the tall cliff, the lofty mountain, the majestic glacier, do not blend one with the other. Each stands forth alone, clothed only with Solitude. Sable priestess of the Arctic winter, she has wrapped the world in a winding-sheet, and thrown her web and woof over the very face of Nature. And I have gone out often into the Arctic night, and viewed Nature under varied aspects. I have rejoiced with her in her strength, and communed with her in repose. I have seen the wild burst of her anger, have watched her sportive play, and have beheld her robed in silence. I have walked abroad in the darkness when the winds were roaring through the hills and crashing over the plain. I have strolled along the beach when the only sound that broke the stillness was the dull creaking of the ice-tables, as they rose and fell lazily with the tide. I have wandered far out upon the frozen sea, and listened to the voice of the icebergs bewailing their imprisonment; along the glacier, where forms and falls the avalanche; upon the hill-top, where the drifting snow, coursing over the rocks, sang its plaintive song; and again I have wandered away to some distant valley where all these sounds were hushed, and the air was still and solemn as the tomb.