"The Northern Lights," which, at their winter evening illuminations, seem to have shredded into wavy filaments all the rainbows that have spanned the chambers of the East since the Flood, and to upspring, in mirthful fantasy, to hang their infinitely-tinted tresses to the zenith's golden diadem of stars-- even they sport upon the same lofty concave of dewless blue, which looks through and through the lacework and everchanging drapery of their mingled hues in the most witching mazes of their nightly waltz, giving to each a definiteness that our homely Saxon tongue might fit with a name.
But here, on the lower grounds of instructive meditation, is a humbler individuality of the country to notice.

Here is the most sadly abused and melancholy living creature in all England's animal realm that meets me in the midst of these reflections on things supernal and glorious.

I will let the Northern Lights go, with their gorgeous pantomimes and midnight revelries, and have a moment's communing with this unfortunate quadruped.

It is called in derision here a "_donkey_," but an ass, in a more generous time, when one of his race and size bore upon his back into the Holy City the world's Saviour and Re-Creator.

Poor, libelled, hopeless beast! I pity you from my heart's heart.