gathering even the brutal natures into its fold, recalls accordingly
the Mahometan legend (which the reader may remember is one of those
incorporated into Southey's _Thalaba_) of a great hour revolving
once in every year, during which the gates of Paradise were thrown open
to their utmost extent, and gales of happiness issued forth upon the
total family of man.] The Glastonbury Thorn is a more local
superstition; but at one time the legend was as widely diffused as that
of Loretto, with the angelic translation of its sanctities: on
Christmas morning, it was devoutly believed by all Christendom, that
this holy thorn put forth its annual blossoms. And with respect to the
aspen tree, which Mrs. Hemans very naturally mistook for a Welsh
legend, having first heard it in Denbighshire, the popular faith is
universal--that it shivers mystically in sympathy with the horror of
that mother tree in Palestine which was compelled to furnish materials
for the cross. Neither would it in this case be any objection, if a
passage were produced from Solinus or Theophrastus, implying that the
aspen tree had always shivered--for the tree might presumably be
penetrated by remote presentiments, as well as by remote remembrances.
In so vast a case the obscure sympathy should stretch, Janus-like, each
way. And an objection of the same kind to the rainbow, considered as
the sign or seal by which God attested his covenant in bar of all
future deluges, may be parried in something of the same way. It was not
then first created--true: but it was then first selected by preference,
amongst a multitude of natural signs as yet unappropriated, and then
first charged with the new function of a message and a ratification to
man. Pretty much the same theory, that is, the same way of accounting
for the natural existence without disturbing the supernatural
functions, may be applied to the great constellation of the other
hemisphere, called the Southern Cross. It is viewed popularly in South
America, and the southern parts of our northern hemisphere, as the