crimson, purple and gold. In those stupendous masses of vapor, mine eye, with little aid of fancy, could trace out resemblances of wild and desolate forests, of sombre fir and yew, the lordly oak and the melancholy pine, whispering in the breeze. Anon, a green, happy valley, would smile out from some hollow of the hills, and the white church-spire would peep from the embosoming grove, and the rustic parsonage, the rural farm-house, and the village-inn, with its swinging sign, and the chestnut waiving its twinkling foliage at the door would appear. Anon, the shifting vapor would assume the shape of an old baronial fortress, green with the mosses of centuries, and overspread with the flexile creeper, the gadding vine, and the glossy ivy, and wearing many a dull-weather stain, imprinted by wintry gale and autumnal rain. On its grey towers would seem to float the broad standard, around which the knights and vassals had mustered so often, when the armies thundered beneath the leagured walls, or its brave folds were displayed in distant lands, on the tented fields of war. Onward, onward! I looked forth, and saw that I was again wafted along the lower currents of air, and could easily distinguish the sights and sounds of earth. I passed over green pastures, where the brindled cattle and snowy sheep were feeding, and, under a spreading oak, that towered aloft like a verdant hill, reclined a young girl, watching her father's flocks, attended by a pet lamb, cropping the fair flowers at her feet. As I gazed, I thought of "the fair Una with her milk-white lamb," and of all the happiness of the shepherd's life, who, sitting upon the grassy hill-side beneath the sacred locust, and piping entrancing melodies in praise of his love, on the mellow oaten reed, is all unmindful of the cankering care and the poisonous hatred, that embitter human life. Great was the surprise that agitated that lonesome spot, as mine air-borne pageant fluttered over it, with its silken fold and colored streamer. The cattle cast upward their wondering eyes, and galloped away to the forests, and I could long hear the tinkling bell on the horn of the bull and heifer, sounding in the inner sanctuary of the wood, where, on a twisted root or a moss-covered stone, by the brink of the gushing brook, reclined that grey-beard recluse, Solitude, and his nun-like sister, Silence, revolving their lonely meditations.