“The sun had set in rich magnificence:
The west was a region of golden light,
Inscrutable in lustre, involving
The imagination in its ocean
Of effulgence: while from its distant shores
Of miraculous brightness, came floating,
On mid air, light fleeces of gold. Slowly
The silent moments stole a chill o’er this
Enchantment, the bright wand’rers disappeared;
The western paradise closed her gates;
And gray twilight, sat on the mountain side.”
The morning after the festival given for the birth-day, Mrs. Montgomery,
partly from having taken cold, and partly from fatigue, felt far from
well, and consequently remained in bed the entire of the day. Julia sat
with her grandmother all the morning. After dinner, Frances relieved
guard, and begged of her sister, as the evening was fine, to take a
little walk.
Lord L. was dining with Lord Borrowdale. Henry had quitted Lodore-House
that morning, saying, that he was setting out to join the Euphrasia,
which, it appeared by the papers, was shortly expected in the Sound.
Julia, therefore, walked out quite alone, she directed her steps towards
the desolate vale, where her mother had first found poor Edmund. She
seated herself. Her eyes rested on the western hill. It was topped by a
few scattered trees, the grouping and even the ramifications of which,
were accurately traced out by the bright glow of the heavens behind them.
The eastern side of the slope was in shadow, and the woods that clothed
it hung to the very waters’ edge, while the lake at its foot, reflecting
the crimson clouds above, appeared a sheet of fire. The dazzle of the
sun’s immediate presence being removed, (for he had just dropped behind
the hill,) the relieved eye could now view with delighted leisure, all
the beauty, magnificence, and infinite variety of the scene, wherein,
each moment, changes were wrought, imperceptible in their approaches,
but in their effects, picturesque and splendid, as the most vivid
descriptions of enchantment.
Amid the clouds, cloud-formed castles turreted with gold, and temples,
sustained by pillars which seemed of fire, arose, spread, united,
brightened, divided, and sunk again. Imagination could fancy them
dissolving in the intensity of their own lustre. Where these had been,
mimic vessels now appeared, of fleecy whiteness, sailing on the liquid
gold. These melted next, and waves of clouds, rolling themselves together
heap on heap, rose to mountains ranged across the west, and shutting out
almost all its glories. Yet on their purple summits, there seemed to
linger floating forms, still of vivid hues, though each moment losing
something of their brightness, till, gradually, they became of a sombre
grey, as, one by one, they clothed themselves in mist, and, blending
with the deepening shadows, disappeared. The upper sky, however, was
still streaked with alternate grey and gold, which the face of the water,
faithfully as a mirror, reflected. The real mountains which surrounded
the lake, and the little islands which lay slumbering on its surface,
had become masses of an almost jetty black, and there was little light
remaining any where, when a solitary row-boat put off from the opposite
shore. As it crossed one of the illumined paths, which reflected from the
sky still appeared on the water, the working of its oars was, for the
moment, visible, together with the strongly defined form of one who, with
folded arms, stood erect at its bow. Julia certainly saw, for the moment
described, as we see with the mind’s eye what crosses us in thought, the
boat, and the figure, for the appearance they made at the time afterwards
floated on her memory. Yet she remained motionless.