BULLER.
For what?
NORTH.
By permission of the Marquis, to shoot an Eagle. She is said to be again on egg—and to cliff-climbers her eyrie is within rifle-range. But let us forget the Boys—as they have forgot us.
SEWARD.
The Loch is calmer to-day, sir, than we have yet seen it; but the calm is of a different character from yesterday's—that was serene, this is solemn—I had almost said austere. Yesterday there were few clouds; and such was the prevailing power of all those lovely woods on the islands, and along the mainland shores—that the whole reflexion seemed sylvan. When gazing on such a sight, does not our feeling of the unrealities—the shadows—attach to the realities—the substances? So that the living trees—earth-rooted, and growing upwards—become almost as visionary as their inverted semblances in that commingling clime? Or is it that the life of the trees gives life to the images, and imagination believes that the whole, in its beauty, must belong, by the same law, to the same world?
NORTH.
Let us understand, without seeking to destroy, our delusions—for has not this life of ours been wisely called the dream of a shadow!
SEWARD.
To-day there are many clouds, and aloft they are beautiful; nor is the light of the sun not most gracious; but the repose of all that downward world affects me—I know not why—with sadness—it is beginning to look almost gloomy—and I seem to see the hush not of sleep, but of death. There is not the unboundaried expanse of yesterday—the loch looks narrower—and Cruachan closer to us, with all his heights.