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As the sun goes down and night comes on, the sand-hills, from shining white, look as dark and drear as earth-hills. But how smooth is all! If they were hills of blown glass they could not be more smooth. In the sketch of Mislah will be seen a date-tree with part of its branches depending, forming with the up-rising a curious shape.
We live every moment in the darkest midnight as well as at the brightest noon in the full blaze of Omniscience. "O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me: thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thoughts afar off." Incapable of enduring this exposure, the criminal now rushes from her concealment, and boldly calls out, "I laughed not."
He had promised to go back for a week at Christmas, and he worked and hoarded all the months between with a thought which he did not formulate, but which ruled his down-sitting and his up-rising, the thought that if he did well and his bank account grew enough to justify it he might, when he saw her at Christmas, tell her what he hoped; ask her he finished the thought with a jump of his heart.
"Of old," he exclaims, "hast Thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of Thy hands. I know not what theologians may think of this passage, but from a scientific point of view it is unassailable. So again, "O Lord," he exclaims, "Thou hast searched me out, and known me: Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts long before.
I have known your down-sitting, and your up-rising; and have understood your thoughts afar off. You gave way to the suggestions of fallen angels, and so your foolish hearts were darkened and alienated, and estranged from God. Touching the book of my remembrance, who can contradict it? Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.
Thus was the unhappy maid left by her own unfortunate conduct, encompassed in on every side with distraction; and she was pointed out by fate to be made the most wretched of all her sex; nor had she left one faithful friend to advise or stay her youth in its hasty advance to ruin; she hears the persuading eloquence of the flattering maid, and finds now nothing so prevalent on her soul as revenge, and nothing soothes it more; and among all her lovers, or those at least that she knew adored her, none was found so proper an instrument as the noble Octavio, his youth, his wit, his gallantry, but above all his fortune pleads most powerfully with her; so that she resolves upon the revenge, and fixes him the man; whom she now knew by so many obligations was obliged to serve her turn on Philander: thus Sylvia found a little tranquillity, such as it was, in hope of revenge, while the passionate Octavio was wrecked with a thousand pains and torments, such as none but jilted lovers can imagine; and having a thousand times resolved to hate her, and as often to love on, in spite of all after a thousand arguments against her, and as many in favour of her, he arrived only to this knowledge, that his love was extreme, and that he had no power over his heart; that honour, fame, interest, and whatever else might oppose his violent flame, were all too weak to extinguish the least spark of it, and all the conquest he could get of himself was, that he suffered all his torment, all the hell of raging jealousy grown to confirmation, and all the pangs of absence for that whole day, and had the courage to live on the rack without easing one moment of his agony by a letter or billet, which in such cases discharges the burden and pressures of the love-sick heart; and Sylvia, who dressed, and suffered herself wholly to be carried away by her vengeance, expected him with as much impatience as ever she did the coming of the once adorable Philander, though with a different passion; but all the live-long day passed in expectation of him, and no lover appeared; no not so much as a billet, nor page at her up-rising to ask her health; so that believing he had been very ill indeed, from what Antonet told her of his being so all night, and fearing now that it was no discovery of the cheat put upon him by the exchange of the maid for the mistress, but real sickness, she resolved to send to him, and the rather because Antonet assured her he was really sick, and in a cold damp sweat all over his face and hands which she touched, and that from his infinite concern at the defeat, the extreme respect he shewed her in midst of all the rage at his own disappointment, and every circumstance, she knew it was no feigned thing for any discovery he had made: on this confirmation, from a maid cunning enough to distinguish truth from flattery, she writ Octavio this letter at night.
The Ineffable Presence rejoices their souls, and as we keep company with them rejoices our souls also: Lord, Thou hast been our home From one generation to another. Whoso dwelleth in the secret-place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. O Lord, Thou hast searched me out and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine up-rising; Thou understandest my thoughts afar off.
I do not like to think of the possible brutality that might have lighted on many hospitable households in blood-shedding or rapine. So much for the city. I have mentioned above some of the reasons that make an up-rising throughout the State so exceedingly difficult and dangerous to organize.
But most of the country are prelatists, whilk is awfu' to think; and I saw twa men that were ministers following hunds, as bauld as Roslin or Driden, the young Laird of Loup-the-dike, or ony wild gallant in Lothian. A sorrowfa' sight to behold! Oh, dear father, may a blessing be with your down-lying and up-rising, and remember in your prayers your affectionate daughter to command, "Jean Deans."
You remember his hard, weather-beaten countenance, where every line seemed drawn with "a pen of iron and the point of a diamond;" his considerate gray eyes, that moved over objects as if it were not best to be in a hurry about seeing; the circumspect opening and shutting of the mouth; his down-sitting and up-rising, all performed with conviction aforethought in short, the whole ordering of his life and conversation, which was, according to the tenor of the military order, "to the right about face forward, march!"
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