Went pouring forward with impetuous speed, And swiftly forming in the ranks of war; And the deep thunder, peal on peal afar; And near, the beat of the alarming drum Roused up the soldier ere the morning star; While thronged the citizens with terror dumb, Or whispering with white lips "The foe! They come ! they come !" And wild and high the "Camerons' gathering" rose! 10 The war note of Lochiel, which Albyn's hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes 15 With the fierce native daring which instills 20 25 The stirring memory of a thousand years: And Evan's, Donald's fame, rings in each clansman's ears! And Ardennes waves above them her green leaves, Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they pass, Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, Over the unreturning brave—alas ! Ere evening to be trodden like the grass Which now beneath them, but above shall grow In its next verdure, when this fiery mass. Of living valor, rolling on the foe, And burning with high hope, shall molder cold and low. Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, The midnight brought the signal sound of strife - The thunder-clouds close o'er it; which when rent, Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd and pent, 5 Belgium's capital: on June 15, 1815, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball in Brussels. During the evening news arrived that Napoleon was marching on the town, so that the officers present had hurriedly to leave the ballroom to get their men under arms. Next day an engagement was fought at Quatre Bras. The great battle of Waterloo did not take place till Sunday, the 18th. Brunswick's fated chieftain: the Duke of Brunswick, an officer under Wellington. He was killed in the battle of Quatre Bras. His father, who is referred to, was killed in the battle of Jena, 1806. Cameron's gathering: the " war note" of the bagpipes of the Cameron Highlanders (79th Regiment). Lō chiel': the chief of the Cameron clan. Albyn: Scotland. Saxon foes: the English. Pi broch: the wild martial music of the Scotch bagpipe. Evan's, Donald's fame: Sir Evan Cameron and his grandson Donald were wellknown Highland chiefs. Är den'nes (here pronounced Ar'den), a forest between Brussels and Waterloo. Thunder-clouds: on the morning of the battle a thunder-storm broke over both armies. Our grand business is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. The Sky BY JOHN RUSKIN John Ruskin (1819-1900). An English author best known as an art critic, though he wrote much on political economy and other subjects. Among his works are "Modern Painters," "The Stones of Venice," "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," "Sesame and Lilies," "The Crown of Wild Olive," and "Queen of the Air." "Modern Painters," from which this selection is taken, is a treatise on landscape painting, which contains many eloquent passages on art, nature, and other subjects. It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching 5 him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organiza10 tion; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning 15 and evening mist for dew. And instead of this, there is not a moment of any day in our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be 5 seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them, but the sky is for all, bright as it is, it is not “too bright, nor good for human nature's daily food;"10 it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost 15 spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. And yet we never attend to it, we never make it a sub- 20 ject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which 25 we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we 30 turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? One says it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white moun5 tains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and moldered away in a dust of blue rain? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and 10 the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? All has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, 15 not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake nor in the fire; but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed 20 through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual, — that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood, — things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, 25 which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to be found always, yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught and the blessing of beauty given. These are what the artist of highest aim must study; 30 it is these, by the combination of which his ideal is to be created; these, of which so little notice is ordinarily taken |