Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/105

 that is perfectly translucent. In Palestine, as now it is, Nature exhibits herself as a marble statue—colourless and motionless:—whereas at home we are used to see her less fixed in her attire, and making her toilette anew from hour to hour. Has it always been so in Palestine as now it is? No certain answer can be given to this question; yet it may be believed that, in the times of David and of Isaiah, not only was the land itself everywhere richly clad, but the atmosphere had a changeful aspect, almost as much so as with ourselves.

And yet if the transparent atmosphere of Syria, under a fervent sun, gives too much of naked reality to the landscape, vast is the advantage which is its compensation, when the sparkling magnificence of the starry heavens takes its turn, instead of the things of earth, to engage the meditative eye. Grant it that the day there (now at least it is so) offers a spectacle less rich than in our latitude of mists:—but then the Night, upon the mountains of Israel, opens a scene incomparably more sublime than we are used to witness. There—it seems so—bearing down upon our heads with power are the steadfast splendours of that midnight sky! Those only who have gazed upon the starry heavens through a perfectly transparent atmosphere can understand the greatness of the disadvantage that is thrown over the celestial field by an atmosphere that is never well purged of the exhalations of earth. In a latitude so high as ours, and which yet has a