remain silent."

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It
contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking
care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into
the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like
a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I
was shrined in double retirement.

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the
left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating
me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over
the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.
Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of
wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away
wildly before a long and lamentable blast.

I returned to my book -- Bewick's History of British Birds: the
letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and
yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I
could not pass quite as a blank. They were those which treat of
the haunts of sea-fowl; of "the solitary rocks and promontories"
by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles
from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape -


"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls,
Boils round the naked, melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."