might pause, in some business perplexity, in the midst of
the city traffic, and perhaps catch the eye of a shepherd
as he sat down to breathe upon a heathery shoulder of the
Pentlands; or perhaps some urchin, clambering in a country
elm, would put aside the leaves and show you his flushed
and rustic visage; or as a fisher racing seaward, with
the tiller under his elbow, and the sail sounding in
the wind, would fling you a salutation from between
Anst'er and the May.

*

So you sit, like Jupiter on Olympus, and look down from
afar upon men's life. The city is as silent as a city of
the dead: from all its humming thoroughfares, not a voice,
not a footfall, reaches you upon the hill. The sea-surf,
the cries of plough-men, the streams and the mill-wheels,
the birds and the wind, keep up an animated concert through
the plain; from farm to farm, dogs and crowing cocks
contend together in defiance; and yet from this Olympian
station, except for the whispering rumour of a train, the
world has fallen into a dead silence, and the business of
town and country grown voiceless in your ears. A crying
hill-bird, the bleat of a sheep, a wind singing in the dry
grass, seem not so much to interrupt, as to accompany, the
stillness; but to the spiritual ear, the whole scene makes
a music at once human and rural, and discourses pleasant
reflections on the destiny of man. The spiry habitable
city, ships, the divided fields, and browsing herds, and
the straight highways, tell visibly of man's active and