The Heart of Mid-Lothian - Penn State University

“That would be a dangerous meeting, Sir George, unless
you mean we are to see him receive his deserts from
the law, and then it were a melancholy one.”
“Use every man according to his deserts, Mr. Butler,
and who shall escape whipping? But I am talking riddles
to you. I will explain them more fully to you when I
have spoken over the subject with Lady Staunton.—
Pull away, my lads,” he added, addressing himself to
the rowers; “the clouds threaten us with a storm.”
In fact, the dead and heavy closeness of the air, the
huge piles of clouds which assembled in the western
horizon, and glowed like a furnace under the influence
of the setting sun—that awful stillness in which nature
seems to expect the thunder-burst, as a condemned soldier
waits for the platoon fire which is to stretch him on
the earth, all betokened a speedy storm. Large broad
drops fell from time to time, and induced the gentlemen
to assume the boat-cloaks; but the rain again ceased,
and the oppressive heat, so unusual in Scotland in the
end of May, inclined them to throw them aside. “There
is something solemn in this delay of the storm,” said Sir
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George; “it seems as if it suspended its peal till it
solemnised some important event in the world below.”
“Alas!” replied Butler, “what are we that the laws of
nature should correspond in their march with our
ephemeral deeds or sufferings! The clouds will burst
when surcharged with the electric fluid, whether a goat
is falling at that instant from the cliffs of Arran, or a
hero expiring on the field of battle he has won.”
“The mind delights to deem it otherwise,” said Sir
George Staunton; “and to dwell on the fate of humanity
as on that which is the prime central movement of
the mighty machine. We love not to think that we shall
mix with the ages that have gone before us, as these
broad black raindrops mingle with the waste of waters,
making a trifling and momentary eddy, and are then
lost for ever.”
“For ever!—we are not—we cannot be lost for ever,”
said Butler, looking upward; “death is to us change, not
consummation; and the commencement of a new existence,
corresponding in character to the deeds which we
have done in the body.”