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servation which he had assigned. In the yard, through which I entered the gardens, the merryhearted child of the family, a young lady who boasts of being a true-born Lapp, was commissioned to make observations on the behaviour of calves, pigs, turkeys, and poultry in general. On the open gravel walk ascending from that yard, an English astronomer had planted his glass, just beneath the level of the neighbouring observatory, and directed it to the object of anxious expectation, which flitting clouds threatened to obscure. In the flower-garden below, a very pretty girl was walking, musing doubtless on pleasant things, while her task was to watch the influence of a solar eclipse upon the flowers. On my favourite point of view, a fine young man was stretched along, with pencil and paper, fancying himself intent on taking observations.

I too, they said, tion and a charge. forget what it was vegetation, and the

must have a post of observaThey gave me the latter-I

perhaps the colouring of conduct of the birds. I

chose my own post on the grassy mound, but I fear that, under the impression of the entire of that strange scene, I forgot to observe the particularity of its details.

Having selected my post, I went into the house and passed a short time with a most interesting invalid. I was hurriedly called back to it, from a conversation which filled my mind with serious thoughts; and, throwing a large white shawl over her head and shoulders, she came out with me, and sat on a chair on the garden walk. She was a young wife and mother, full of tender care, not for what she soon might be called to enter upon, but for what she soon might have to leave in the world behind her. She trembled then for her babe, the daughter to be left motherless in infancy; and that babe, that plump and rosy babe, has since been very speedily housed, sheltered before herself, in the Good Shepherd's fold. The mother who had trembled for it to be left motherless, was herself left childless. She was left behind it.

She sat now, wan and wasted, on a chair just facing the sun, which had already begun to assume an ominous aspect. She gazed on it solemnly, as if it were about to disappear for ever from her earthly eyes.

Already the dark body that was to eclipse it was seen visibly contracting its orb. The clouds we had dreaded passed away, our view was clear

and unimpeded, but that remarkable expression of holy writ came strongly to my mind, "the sun shall be ashamed." Just so it appeared to be, -blushing, shrinking, discountenanced. Over its bright surface the dark spot, which had for some time appeared at its rim, became "as the shadow of a man's hand." Its progress was distinct to the naked eye, for such was mine. A gloom was gathering over the sky, a gloom stealing over the earth; slowly, slowly it came on; it was not the least like the shadowing of a cloud, nor the gloom of a gathering storm. We looked up and around; we doubted, as if taken by surprise, and asked ourselves, "Does it not grow dark?" The darker body advanced, and the gloom seemed to move on faster, the more palpable it became. The predicted hour was drawing on, and with it came the darkness-faster, faster, faster-visibly sweeping on, unlike anything I ever saw, I ever could have imagined. It was a moving, almost tangible darkness, rushing on at the last as if borne on the wings of the wind.

Our very hearts stood still; nature itself grew suddenly silent; the songs of birds ceased; the animals huddled together, and cowered in silence. The darkness swept on, swept over us, wrapped

its wings around us; a strange greenish-yellow hue mingled with it, and gave it the most supernatural aspect. The horizon wore a belt of that greenly-yellow hue, the vegetation around us assumed it, the human faces on which I looked reflected it.

The Fiord, with its waters and rocky islets, was covered in that strange pall; and through the mysterious and impressive gloom up, rose the tall pines from these islets, looking like gigantic spectres rising from out of chaos-a paler, yellower shade than the darkness around them. All was unearthly seeming, but unspeakably grand, full of awe and solemnity. In that moment, my knees involuntarily bent to the ground. The mighty power and presence of God constrained the movement.

The young, fresh bloom on other cheeks had paled, that greenish-yellow had chased away the colouring of the eloquent blood from pretty cheeks. I looked to the invalid; she sat there with the white shawl shrouding her livid face; her form inclined forward, the hands clasped on her bosom; the large, tearful blue eyes fixed in trembling awe on the darkening orb. It was a painter's image for the scene of the Last Day; the form of

one who had burst the cerements of the tomb before the consummation of our world's doom,trembling, fearing, yet still loving.

How long that darkness lasted I know not, mine were not scientific observations; but quickly as it had travelled, it moved not quicker than the thoughts and impressions of the human mind; all was as distinct as if it had lasted an hour; the vision of the mind is a wonderful thing. I was only conscious of feeling; not of seeing, observing, reasoning; but the mental retina easily reproduces what the bodily eyes have scantily rested upon. I thought not of causes, reasoned not of effects; the moving hand of the Almighty power was all my soul acknowledged. The tension of heart and mind passed away; the east reddened as with new-born day; the sky was streaked with crimson and silver, then gold shone over both. The wings of darkness were upraised; we might think we saw and heard their rising, as we had palpably seen them sweeping on around us. But the darkness had not gathered around us, as does; it had swept on from one quarter of the heavens to the other, and we saw it coming from one side while the other was still light; now it seemed to rise up at once from us, as if it lifted

other darkness

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