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The forms of clouds are not less beautiful or expressive than their colors. While their outlines are sufficiently definite for picturesque effects, they often assume a great uniformity in their aggregations. The frostwork on our window panes on cold winter mornings exhibits no greater 5 variety of figures than that assumed by the clouds in their distribution over the heavens.

Beginning in the form of vapor that rolls its fleecy masses slowly over the plain, resembling at a distance sometimes a smooth sheet of water, and at other times a 10 drifted snow bank, the cloud divides itself as it ascends, into globular heaps that reflect the sunlight from a thousand silvery domes.

These, after gradually dissolving, reappear in a host of finely mottled images, resembling the scales of a fish, then 15 marshal themselves into undulating rows like the waves of the sea, and are lastly metamorphosed into a thin, gauzy fabric, like crumpled muslin, or in a long drapery of hairlike fringe, overspreading the higher regions of the atmosphere.

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As the most delightful views of ocean are attained when a small part of it is seen through a green recess in a wood, for the same cause the blue sky is never so beautiful as when seen through the openings in the clouds. The emotion produced by any scene is the more intense when the 25 greater part of the object that causes it is hidden, leaving room for the entrance of pleasant images into the mind.

Clouds are peculiarly suggestive on account of the ambiguity of their shapes and their constant changes. Nothing, indeed, in nature so closely resembles the mysterious operations of thought, ever ceaseless in their motions 5 and ever varying in their combinations, - now passing from a shapeless heap into a finely marshaled band; then dissolving into the pellucid atmosphere as a series of thoughts will pass away from our memory; then slowly forming themselves again and recombining in a still more 10 beautiful and dazzling congeries in another part of the sky; now gloomy, changeable, and formless, then assuming a definite shape and glowing with light and beauty; lastly fading into darkness when the sun departs, as the mind for a short period is obliterated in sleep.

15 It is remarkable that in the evening, after the hues of sunset have faded to a certain point, the clouds are sometimes reilluminated before darkness comes on. Before the sun declines, the clouds are grayish tipped with silver. As he recedes, the gray portion becomes brown or auburn, 20 and the silvery edges of a yellow or golden hue. While the auburn is resolved into purple, the yellows deepen into vermilion and orange. Every tint is constantly changing into a deeper one, until the sky is decorated with every imaginable tint except green and blue. When 25 these colors have attained their greatest splendor, they gradually fade until the mass of each cloud has turned to a dull iron-gray, and every beautiful tint has vanished.

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We might then suppose that all this glory had faded. After a few minutes, however, the clouds begin once more to brighten; the whole scene is gradually reilluminated, and passes through another equally regular gradation of more somber tints, consisting of olive, lilac, and bronze, 5 and their intermediate shades. The second illumination is neither so bright nor so beautiful as the first. But I have known the light that was shed upon the earth to be sensibly increased for a few moments by this second gradation of hues, without any diminution of the mass of cloud.

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Men of the world may praise the effects of certain medical excitants that serve, by benumbing the outward senses, to exalt the soul into reveries of bliss and untried exercises of thought. But the only divine exhilaration proceeds from contemplating the beautiful and sublime 15 scenes of nature as beheld on the face of the earth and the sky. It is under this vast canopy of celestial splendors, more than in any other situation, that the faculties may become inspired without madness and exalted without subsequent depression.

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The blue heavens are the page whereon nature has revealed some pleasant intimations of the mysteries of a more spiritual existence; and no vision of heaven and immortality ever entered the human soul but the Deity responded to it upon the firmament in letters of gold, 25 ruby, and sapphire.

ambigu ́ity: uncertainty.—pellucid: clear.— congeriēs (con-jeri-ēz): a heap.

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NOTE.

CASSIUS TO BRUTUS

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

This selection is from the play "Julius Cæsar." Cassius is trying to stir the vanity and envy of Brutus so that he may persuade him to join the conspiracy to kill Cæsar. See note on page 358.

Well, honor is the subject of my story.

I cannot tell what you and other men

Think of this life; but, for my single self,

I had as lief not be as live to be

In awe of such a thing as I myself.

I was born free as Cæsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well, and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he:
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,

The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cæsar said to me, "Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,

And swim to yonder point?" Upon the word,
Accoutered as I was, I plungèd in

And bade him follow; so indeed he did.

The torrent roared, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside,

And stemming it with hearts of controversy;
But ere we could arrive the point proposed,
Cæsar cried, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!"

I, as Æneas, our great ancestor,

Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder

The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cæsar. And this man

Is now become a god, and Cassius is

A wretched creature and must bend his body,

If Cæsar carelessly but nod on him.
He had a fever when he was in Spain,

And when the fit was on him, I did mark

How he did shake: 'tis true, this god did shake:
His coward lips did from their color fly,
And that same eye whose bend doth awe the world

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