LHA DHU;

OR, THE DARK DAY.



By William Carleton




There is no country in the world whose scenery is more sweetly
diversified, or more delicately shaded away into that exquisite variety
of surface which presents us with those wavy outlines of beauty that
softly melt into each other, than is that of our own green island. Alas!
how many deep valleys, wild glens, green meadows, and pleasant hamlets,
lie scattered over the bosom of a country, peopled by inhabitants who
are equally moved by the impulses of mirth and sorrow; each valley, and
glen, and pleasant hamlet marked by some tearful remembrance of humble
calamity of which the world never hears. How little do its proud
nobility know of the fair and still beauty which marks the unbroken
silence of its most delightful retreats, or of the unassuming records
of love or sorrow, which pass down through a single generation, and
are soon lost in the rapid stream of life. We do not love to
remember sorrow, but its traces, notwithstanding, are always the most
uneffaceable, and, what is strange as true, its mournful imprint remains
ever the longest upon the heart that is most mirthful. We talk not now
of the hollow echo, like mirth, which comes from thousands only because
the soul is wanting. No; but we say that as the diamond is found in the
darkness of the mine, as the lightning shoots with most vivid flashes