MOUNTAINS IN SNOW.

    Cold—­oh, deathly cold—­and silent, lie the white hills ’neath
        the sky,
    Like a soul whom fate has covered with thy snows, Adversity! 
    Not a sough of wind comes moaning; the same outline, high and
        bare,
    As in pleasant days of summer, rises in the murky air.

    Very quiet—­very silent—­whether shines the mocking sun
    Through the wintry blue, or lowering drift the feathery
        snow-clouds dun: 
    Always quiet, always silent, be it night or be it day,
    With that pale shroud coldly lying where the heather-blossoms lay.

    Can they be the very mountains that we looked at, you and I? 
    One long wavy line of purple painted on the sunset sky;
    With the new moon’s edge just touching that dark rim, like
        dancer’s foot,
    Or young Dian’s, on the hill-side for Endymion waiting mute.

    O how golden was that even!—­O how balm the summer air! 
    How the bridegroom sky bent loving o’er its earth so virgin fair! 
    How the earth looked up to heaven like a bride with joy oppressed,
    In her thankfulness half-weeping that she was thus overblest!

    Ghostly mountains!  ‘Silence—­silence!’ now is aye your soundless
        voice,
    Lifted in an awful patience o’er the world’s uproarious noise;
    O’er its jarrings and its greetings—­o’er its loving and its
        hate—­
    Silence!  Bare thy brows all dumbly to the snows of heaven,
        and—­wait!’

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Just Published,

Price 2s. 6d. sewed, 3s.  Cloth Boards,

LIFE AND WORKS OF BURNS.—­Volume III.  Edited by ROBERT CHAMBERS.  To be completed in Four Volumes.

* * * * *

Price 6d.  Paper Cover,

CHAMBERS’S POCKET MISCELLANY.—­Volume II.  To be continued in Monthly Volumes.

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ELEMENTARY LATIN GRAMMAR.  Edited by DRS SCHMITZ and ZUMPT.—­Forming one of the Volumes of the LATIN SECTION of CHAMBERS’S EDUCATIONAL COURSE.

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LATIN EXERCISES:  A Companion to the ELEMENTARY LATIN GRAMMAR.  Edited by DRS SCHMITZ and ZUMPT.—­Forming one of the Volumes of the LATIN SECTION of CHAMBERS’S EDUCATIONAL COURSE.

* * * * *

Printed and Published by W. and R. CHAMBERS, High Street, Edinburgh.  Also sold by W.S.  ORR, Amen Corner, London; D.N.  CHAMBERS, 55 West Nile Street, Glasgow; and J. M’GLASHAN, 50 Upper Sackville Street, Dublin.—­Advertisements for Monthly Parts are requested to be sent to MAXWELL & Co., 31 Nicholas Lane, Lombard Street, London, to whom all applications respecting their insertion must be made.