made beautiful by the many thoughts it gave. I came every morning to stay by the star-lit bank."
"A cluster of Cypresses."
Most travellers have been fascinated by the beauty of night in the tropics. Our evenings no doubt are often delicious also, though the mild climate we enjoy is partly due to the sky being so often overcast. In parts of the tropics, however, the air is calm and cloudless throughout nearly the whole of the year. There is no dew, and the inhabitants sleep on the house-tops, in full view of the brightness of the stars, and the beauty of the sky, which is almost indescribable.
"Il faisait," says Bernardin de St. Pierre of such a scene, "une de ces nuits délicieuses, si communes entre les tropiques, et dont le plus habile pinceau ne rendrait pas la beauté. La lune paraissait au milieu du firmament, entourée d'un rideau de nuages, que ses rayons dissipaient par degrès. Sa lumière se répandait insensiblement sur les montagnes de l'île et sur leurs pitons, qui brillait d'un vert argenté. Les vents retenaient leurs haleines. On entendait dans les bois, au fond des vallées, au haut des rochers, de petits cris, de doux murmures d'oiseaux, qui se caressaient dans leur nids, rejouis par la clarté de la nuit et la tranquillité de l'air. Tous, jusqu'aux insectes, bruissaient sous l'herbe. Les étoiles étincelaient au ciel, et se réfléchissaient au sein de la mer, qui répétait leurs images tremblantes."
In the Arctic and Antarctic regions the nights are often made quite gorgeous by the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, and the corresponding appearance in the Southern Hemisphere. The Aurora Borealis generally begins towards evening, and first appears as a faint glimmer in the north, like the approach of dawn. Gradually a curve of light spreads like an immense arch of yellowish white hue, which gains rapidly in brilliancy, flashes and vibrates like a flame in the wind. Often two or even three arches appear one over the other. After a while coloured rays flash upwards in divergent pencils, green below, yellow in the centre, and crimson above; while it is said that sometimes black or dark violet rays are interspersed among the rings of light, and heighten their effect by contrast. Sometimes the two ends of the arch seem to rise off the horizon, and the whole sheet of light throbs and undulates like an immense fringed curtain of light; sometimes the sheaves of rays unite into a gigantic cupola; while at others the separate rays seem alternately lit and extinguished. Gradually the light flickers and fades away, and has generally disappeared before the first glimpse of dawn.
The Southern Aurora is very similar, though said to be somewhat bluer and paler than that of the North.
We seldom see the Aurora in the south of England, but we must not complain; our winters are mild, and every month has its own charm and beauty.
