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    there was only to He watching how the goats sprang from one point to an * other of the grey rocks , or to maik the signs of husy life below , or to listen for human voice or footstep , possibly with a pang of jealousy lest his sanctity had not preserved him from being forgotten , or with an aching envy of those whose lot he strove to despise . Thus wore the long day , idly but not

    peacefully ; for I doubt not there were struggles for devotion , for penitence ; a perpetual endeavour after meditation , ( which cannot be forced upon a troubled spirit , ) an incessant missing of the aim for which all was sacrificed . Then there must have been a haunting consciousness that shadows were creeping over the understanding , and apathy benumbing the heart ; that the messengers of God with whom in the days of his enthusiasm he had

    claimed brotherhood , were fading away from their substantial existence into mere images of the memory ; that Christ himself was falling baek into the ghost-like procession of historical pageantry , and that the Presence was being gradually withdrawn , leaving Nature , which had promised to be immortal , cold , silent , and corpse-like . If it were so amidst the living and moving beauty of a summer ' s morn , what must it have been in a day like

    this , when the tufts of snow which a breath might dislodge lie glittering on the sprays of the larch , and the fleecy rock shifts not its place in the heaven ! How desolate the going down of the mute day ! How hateful the approach of the chill , stealthy night , when repose was neither earned nor wished for ! If ever a gleam of joy passed over his soul , it must have been when the storm came striding over yonder peaks with his train of echoes in full cry :

    then might the recluse join in the din , and not fear the hollow tones of his own voice . It is said that he once descended to the village in the nighttime , to hallow every threshold with his blessing . If it were so , he must have learned there how he was accurst . What a pilgrimage of woe !—to traverse the silent street and see every where the tokens of labours to be resumed , and enjoyments to be fulfilled ; to linger beneath the chamber

    window where the taper was burning , and sigh to share the solicitudes of the watcher ; to hasten away from the hayings of the mastiff with the feeling that he was indeed an intruder where he had no part nor lot ; to wander round the star-lit churchyard , envying those that were laid side by side , and shuddering that he had doomed himself to be an outcast even from among

    the dead ! Yet if the fountain of his tears was unsealed by this descent into the warm region of humanity , his must have been a kindly grief . If it were not so , he would scarcely have remained till dawn $ he would scarcely have been seen by the early labourer to loiter on his rocky path , to turn and look from every resting-place , and to send down a long , lingering gaze before he

    disappeared within his cave . It was after this that he employed himself in carving the epitaph which was to consecrate his lonely cell , —the sepulchre of the living man ere it was that of the dead . Before the inscription was complete , the epitaph was wanted . There , standing as now at the head of his couch , it was seen by those who , coming for the holy man ' s blessing ,

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    768 Sabbath Musings .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1831, page 768, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2603/page/44/