his roughest mood.' The snow had fallen in large flakes, and without intermission; and, though the storm had come from the west, it had borne upon its wings the searching colds of the north and east. Mountain, and valley was alike wrapped in one cheerless mantle. The glen, but lately so gay and smiling, was desolate and sad. The deep, but not unpleasing, low of the cattle grazing on the acclivity, no longer echoed among the hills. The shepherd-boy had penned his fleecy charge beneath the shelter of some overhanging rock. The song from the woodlands had ceased; and even the water-fowl, that proverbially love the cry of the tempest, . "And are known to sit secure, had fled to their retreats. The verdure of the meadows was exchanged for one unbroken sheet of white, except where the snow had been drifted away, and left a little patch of green; in earnest, as it were, that 'God had not forgotten to be gracious,' and that Spring would again renew and beautify the scene. The short day of Winter was already beginning to shut in, when Emily, throwing her mountain-cloak hastily about her, left the house to steal a look of nature, in her features wild.' Her steps were still attracted to her summer-bower. It ever had its charms. It was lonely and unseen; and she asked. no more. Thither she directed her way. The path, as we have said, was devious; and the snow had now rendered it difficult, if not dangerous. But a dweller of the hills,' though naturally timid, and endowed with every feminine grace, was not easily to be. deterred by impediments which consisted only in arduousness of access. With a nimble and steady foot, light as a hart on the mountains of Bether,' she bounded up, here retiring a step or two to avoid the precipice, there penetrating into the wood, when her progress was hindered by the drifted wreath, and winding through the leafless trunks with the agility, you might almost believe, of a deer flying from its pursuers, until she stood uninjured on the well-known spot. 6 How different, now, from what she had beheld it, a few short months ago, amidst the mild radiance of a September evening! Then, the bower was shaded with a luxuriant, though fading, foliage. The tendrils of the vine and honeysuckle were gracefully twining themselves among the branches above, loading them with their clusters, or scenting them with the dying fragrance of some stilllingering blossom; while the oak, the elm, and the chesnut, towering beyond, waved whispering in the autumnal breeze. The voices of the linnet and red-breast were still caught, though infrequent, from the copse; nor had the cooing of the turtle-dove yet ceased in the dell. Some tarrying flowers still breathed sweetly around, though they hung down their drooping heads; while the lucid expanse of the waters glowed with vermilion from the calm glory of departing day. But, now, how striking the contrast! Not a bloom was visible, save the pale and solitary snow-drop, that appeared to mourn over the desolation it was left to witness. The red-breast was silent. The song of the linnet met the ear no more. No more the turtle wooed his bride below. The rock that lifted her to the blast rose bleak, and naked, The leafless branches whistled mournfully about it. Tall and whitened by the storm, it seemed gloomily to watch the war of the waves, like some aged weatherbeaten mariner, whose ship has foundered, himself scarcely snatched from the elements; his thin bleached locks streaming on the gale; his eye, fixed and melancholy, gazing on the surging waters that have just reft him of his last hope. The sun was hid in clouds and tempest. The lake, agitated by an impetuous north-west wind, 'Outrageous, dark, wasteful, wild,' heaved mountains high, now breaking on the shore, now conflicting with the rapid and opposing current of the Rhone, and mounting up to heaven, in the struggle, with a loose dashing spray. Absorbed in the terrific grandeur of the scene, Emily remained immoveable. In vain did the blast, driving over her at intervals with fearful violence, threaten to hurl her from her giddy stand! In vain did the cold of a winter-storm assail her! She gazed, and gazed, till her spirit seemed to be blending itself with the chaos she surveyed.-At this moment it was, that her attention was arrested by another object. A small sail was descried in the distance. It appeared to be endeavouring to gain the Savoy shore; but, rendered unmanageable by the united violence of winds and waves, it was now hurrying towards the eastern extremity of the lake. On it the eye of Emily soon became riveted; her heart replying to every roll it made. At one instant, it was seen ascending on the billow, as if it would implore your assistance: the next, compelled again to commit itself to the gloomy and faithless recesses of the deep. Emily viewed it with an interest of that awful kind, with which we contemplate what may vanish, even while we behold it, from our sight for ever. Onward it came with frightful velocity. Her anxiety increased. At the mercy of the elements, you would have thought it borne on the wings of the whirlwind with such dismaying rapidity did it hasten to its fate. Now, her heart seemed as if it would leap from its confines; and yet, perhaps, her agitation was not unmixed |