by aged firs and roofed with strong-ribbed arches like those of a
cathedral. Looking back from that vantage-ground, the whole extent of
the fiord could be seen at a glance, with the open sea sparkling on
the horizon beyond it like a burnished blade.

At this moment the mist, rolling away, left the sky blue and clear.
Among the valleys and around the trees flitted the shining fragments,
--a diamond dust swept by the freshening breeze. The torrent rolled on
toward them; along its length a vapor rose, tinted by the sun with
every color of his light; the decomposing rays flashing prismatic
fires along the many-tinted scarf of waters. The rugged ledge on which
they stood was carpeted by several kinds of lichen, forming a noble
mat variegated by moisture and lustrous like the sheen of a silken
fabric. Shrubs, already in bloom, crowned the rocks with garlands.
Their waving foliage, eager for the freshness of the water, drooped
its tresses above the stream; the larches shook their light fringes
and played with the pines, stiff and motionless as aged men. This
luxuriant beauty was foiled by the solemn colonnades of the
forest-trees, rising in terraces upon the mountains, and by the calm
sheet of the fiord, lying below, where the torrent buried its fury and
was still. Beyond, the sea hemmed in this page of Nature, written by
the greatest of poets, Chance; to whom the wild luxuriance of creation
when apparently abandoned to itself is owing.

The village of Jarvis was a lost point in the landscape, in this
immensity of Nature, sublime at this moment like all things else of
ephemeral life which present a fleeting image of perfection; for, by a
law fatal to no eyes but our own, creations which appear complete--the
love of our heart and the desire of our eyes--have but one spring-tide
here below. Standing on this breast-work of rock these three persons