in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined
with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild
gales of the equinox have their varieties,--sounds of wind-
shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and
casement, hurricane puffs, and down-rushing rain-spouts. But
this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very
clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or
take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath
and above, reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of
Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz(4)
administers his hydropathic torment,--

"A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,--
The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in
warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and
rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thomsonian steam-box(5)
on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash of muddy
feet on the pavements; the monotonous, melancholy drip from
trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts,
swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-
colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down
about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or
dark projection; the ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a
chimney-pot,--he who can extract pleasurable emotions from
the alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I
am wholly unacquainted.

(1) From the closing air in *The Jolly Beggars,* a cantata.