It was a still and beautiful night, the sky was unobscured by any cloud, and scarce a leaf of the woods beneath trembled in the air. As she listened, the midnight hymn of the monks rose softly from a chapel, that stood on one of the lower cliffs, a holy strain, that seemed to ascend through the silence of night to heaven, and her thoughts ascended with it. From the consideration of His works, her mind arose to the adoration of the Deity, in His goodness and power; wherever she turned her view, whether on the sleeping earth, or to the vast regions of space, glowing with worlds beyond the reach of human thought, the sublimity of God, and the majesty of His presence appeared. Her eyes were filled with tears of awful love and admiration; and she felt that pure devotion, superior to all the distinctions of human system, which lifts the soul above this world, and seems to expand it into a nobler nature; such devotion as can, perhaps, only be experienced, when the mind, rescued, for a moment, from the humbleness of earthly considerations, aspires to contemplate His power in the sublimity of His works, and His goodness in the infinity of His blessings. 

 Is it not now the hour, The holy hour, when to the cloudless height Of yon starred concave climbs the full-orbed moon, And to this nether world in solemn stillness, Gives sign, that, to the list’ning ear of Heaven Religion’s voice should plead? The very babe Knows this, and, chance awak’d, his little hands Lifts to the gods, and on his innocent couch Calls down a blessing. CARACTACUS 

 The midnight chant of the monks soon after dropped into silence; but Emily remained at the casement, watching the setting moon, and the valley sinking into deep shade, and willing to prolong her present state of mind. At length she retired to her mattress, and sunk into tranquil slumber. 

 

 CHAPTER V 

 While in the rosy vale Love breath’d his infant sighs, from anguish free. THOMSON 

 St. Aubert, sufficiently restored by a night’s repose to pursue his journey, set out in the morning, with his family and Valancourt, for Rousillon, which he hoped to reach before night-fall. The scenes, through which they now passed, were as wild and romantic, as any they had yet observed, with this difference, that beauty, every now and then, softened the landscape into smiles. Little woody recesses appeared among the mountains, covered with bright verdure and flowers; or a pastoral valley opened its grassy bosom in the shade of the cliffs, with flocks and 

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