“Yes,” said Mrs. Lance; “on that dreary rocky isle bitterly must the mighty conqueror have recalled the past. There, unchanged in their calm brightness, the quiet stars shone over him still, and they may have reminded the exile—”
NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA.
“Ha! what’s that?” interrupted Harry, suddenly starting from his seat and rushing to the window, as, with a rushing, whizzing noise, a rocket shot up into the deep blue sky.
“Oh! don’t you remember that we heard that there were to be fireworks to-night in the Earl’s grounds?” said Arthur. “I am so glad that we shall be able to see the rockets over the trees. Look—oh! look—there’s another! it rises higher than the first!”
“How beautiful—how grand—how glorious it is!” exclaimed Harry, clapping his hands with delight. “It darts aloft like a conqueror rising upwards and upwards; and there—see how it bursts into a shower of stars—much brighter than stars—filling the sky with its spangles of light! There is nothing so glorious to look upon as a rocket!”
For nearly an hour the mother and her sons watched the beautiful fireworks over the trees, the rockets bursting on high into showers of many-coloured sparks which entirely hid the stars from view. Then, after the grandest display of all, the sight concluded; all was over, the beauty and the glory. Quiet night reigned around, and the stars which had gemmed the sky since the days of Adam, glimmered again in their silent beauty on high.
“The rockets were very fine, but their glory was soon over,” observed Harry, as he turned from the window. “They have gone, and have left nothing behind.”
“They are types of worldly glory,” said his mother.
“And the stars are like—oh, mother,” exclaimed Arthur, interrupting himself in the midst of his sentence, “I have just remembered the text which you wished that the stars had preached to the heart of Napoleon—it makes me think of the young missionary who died amongst the Africans whom he had led to the Lord: They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever!” (Dan. xii 3.)