They came to the highlands. It was the latter part of a calm, sultry day, that they floated gently with the tide between these stern mountains. There was that perfect quiet which prevails over nature in the languor 5 of summer heat; the turning of a plank, or the accidental falling of an oar on deck, was echoed from the mountain side, and reverberated along the shores; and if by chance the captain gave a shout of command, there were airy tongues that mocked it from every cliff. 10 I gazed about me in mute delight and wonder at these scenes of nature's magnificence. To the left the Dunderberg reared its woody precipices, height over height, forest over forest, away into the deep summer sky. To the right strutted forth the bold promontory of Antony's 15 Nose, with a solitary eagle wheeling about it; while beyond, mountain succeeded to mountain, until they seemed to lock their arms together, and confine this mighty river in their embraces. There was a feeling of quiet luxury in gazing at the broad, green bosoms 20 here and there scooped out among the precipices; or at woodlands high in air, nodding over the edge of some beetling bluff, and their foliage all transparent in the yellow sunshine.

In the midst of my admiration, I remarked a pile of 25 bright snowy clouds peering above the western heights. It was succeeded by another, and another, each seemingly pushing onwards its predecessor, and towering, with dazzling brilliancy, in the deep blue atmosphere: and now muttering peals of thunder were faintly heard 30 rolling behind the mountains. The river, hitherto still and glassy, reflecting pictures of the sky and land, now showed a dark ripple at a distance, as the breeze came creeping up it. The fish hawks wheeled and screamed, and sought their nests on the high dry trees; the crows 35 flew clamorously to the crevices of the rocks, and all nature seemed conscious of the approaching thundergust.

The clouds now rolled in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the low

40 er parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the wind freshened, and curled up the waves; at length it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling down. 45 The lightning leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed quivering against the rocks, splitting and rending the stoutest forest trees. The thunder burst in tremendous explosions; the peals were echoed from mountain to mountain; they crashed upon Dunderberg, and rolled 50 up the long defile of the highlands, each headland making a new echo, until old Bull hill seemed to bellow back the storm.

For a time the scudding rack and mist, and the sheeted rain, almost hid the landscape from the sight. There 55 was a fearful gloom, illumined still more fearfully by the streams of lightning which glittered among the rain drops. Never had I beheld such an absolute warring of the elements; it seemed as if the storm was tearing and rending its way through this mountain defile, and had 60 brought all the artillery of heaven into action.

My soul is sick, with every day's report

Irving.

Of wrong and outrage, with which earth is filled.
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart,

5 It does not feel for man: the natural bond
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax

That falls asunder at the touch of fire.

He finds his fellow guilty of a skin

Not coloured like his own; and having power
10 To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey.
Lands intersected by a narrow frith
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed
Make enemies of nations, who had else
15 Like kindred drops been mingled into one.
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys;
And, worse than all, and most to be deplored

As human nature's broadest, foulest blot,

Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat 20 With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

Then what is man? And what man, seeing this,
And having human feelings, does not blush,
And hang his head, to think himself a man?
25 I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep,

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earn'd.
No: dear as freedom is, and in my heart's
30 Just estimation prized above all price,

I had much rather be myself the slave,

And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.
We have no slaves at home-then why abroad?
And they themselves once ferried o'er the wave
35 That parts us, are emancipate and loosed.

Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs
Receive our air, that moment they are free;
They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
40 And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein

Of all your empire; that, where Britain's power
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

71. Irruption of Hyder Ali.

Cowper.

When at length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty, and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he 5 decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance; and 10 to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom the faith which holds the moral el

ements of the world together was no protection. He became at length so confident of his force, so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatsoever of his 15 dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy, and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common detestation against the creditors of the nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter, whatever a savage ferocity could add to his 20 new rudiments in the arts of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, havoc, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for a while on the declivities of the mountains. Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this men25 acing meteor, which blackened all their horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of wo, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All 30 the horrors of war before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages, in part were slaughtered; others, with35 out regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function; fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity, in an 40 unknown and hostile land. Those, who were able to evade this tempest, fled to the walled cities. But escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.

For eighteen months, without intermission, this de45 struction raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali and his more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed, as they did, the Carnatic for hundreds 50 of miles in all directions, through the whole line of their march, they did not see one man, not one woman, not

one child, not one four-footed beast of any description whatever. One dead uniform silence reigned over the whole region."

Burke.

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,
That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,
And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

5 Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs,
Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee,

And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber :
Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great,
Under the canopies of costly state,

10 And lull'd with sounds of sweetest melody.
O thou dull god, why liest thou with the vile,
In loathsome beds; and leav'st the kingly couch,
A watch-case, or a common 'larum bell?
Wilt thou upon the high and giddy mast
15 Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains
In cradle of the rude imperious surge;
And in the visitation of the winds,

Who take the ruffian billows by the top,

Curling their monstrous heads, and hanging them
20 With deaf'ning clamours in the slippery clouds,
That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?
Canst thou, O partial sleep! give thy repose
To the wet sea-boy, in an hour so rude;
And, in the calmest and most stillest night,
25 With all appliances, and means to boot,
Deny it to a king?

73.

Shakspeare.

Vainty of power and misery of Kings.

No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs:
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
5 Let's choose executors, and talk of wills: