RECREATIONS

OF

CHRISTOPHER NORTH

_A NEW EDITION IN TWO VOLUMES_

VOL. II. 

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONSEDINBURGH AND LONDONMDCCCLXVIII

CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 

 PAGEMAY-DAY 1

SACRED POETRY:--

 CHAPTER I. , 38

 CHAPTER II. , 53

 CHAPTER III. , 75

 CHAPTER IV. , 88

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY:--

 FIRST CANTICLE, 98

 SECOND CANTICLE, 125

 THIRD CANTICLE, 149

 FOURTH CANTICLE, 165

DR KITCHINER:--

 FIRST COURSE, 182

 SECOND COURSE, 194

 THIRD COURSE, 203

 FOURTH COURSE, 212

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS:--

 FIRST RHAPSODY, 224

 SECOND RHAPSODY, 239

A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON, 253

THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT, 274

CHRISTMAS DREAMS, 285

OUR WINTER QUARTERS, 304

STROLL TO GRASSMERE:--

 FIRST SAUNTER, 327

 SECOND SAUNTER, 355

L'ENVOY 369

 * * * * *

REMARKS ON THE SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS, 385

RECREATIONS

OF

CHRISTOPHER NORTH. 

MAY-DAY. 

Art thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moorland, sylvan, and pastoralParish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the gloriousdawning of life--can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou artindeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries inhalf an hour could fly the flapping dove--though the martens, wheelingto and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in itsown domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescentwings over a vale rejoicing apart in another kirk-spire, yet how rich instreams, and rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur--artThou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrousundulations to the portals of the East! How endless the interchange ofwoods and meadows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without number, amongthy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings--how rises the smoke, ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that thecock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead; while as you wanderonwards, each roof still rises unexpectedly--and as solitary, as if ithad been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thousand parishes--neitherHighland, nor Lowland--but undulating--let us again use the descriptiveword--like the sea in sunset after a day of storms--yes, Heaven'sblessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old!

The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers ofearth--like the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The stillness of thoselofty clouds makes them seem whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! tothy grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded corn, for thybrooding mate can no longer hear thee soaring in the sky. Methinks thereis little or no change on these coppice-woods, with their full buddingbranches all impatient for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-hooklevelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and brieryknolls we sought the grey linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among therustling leaves, the robin-redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winterbenefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that noware gone--tall, far-spreading single trees, in whose shade used to liethe ruminating cattle, with the small herd-girl asleep. Gone are they, and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not moreforgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood heldconverse--whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead--hands so oftengrasped--arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes--have longceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding somuch as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all theholiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery oftime. 

It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although somesad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not atnightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now andthen bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush, took possession of field or forest. We are all alone--a solitarypedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives arechangeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancinglyalong to the merry music of streams--or linger by the silent shores oflochs--or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of apanorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the oldwood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is asnight--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and thesunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month willbe cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck thedead when the vault door is closed and all is silence. 

What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, whereinand among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away, like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taintor pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it isbuilt, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equallyagainst all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to directour footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of hisancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it wasgradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, hasbeen entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, butnever more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within thosewalls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in thesilence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is anappalling trial to approach a place where once we have beenhappier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and aworse evil doth it seem to our imagination to return to Paradise, with achanged and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into theouter world, if still permitted to carry thither something of thatspirit that had glorified our prime. 

But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of thehill--the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; forstony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarledroots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on whichthe sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and almost as early as the alder or the birch--the GLORY OF MOUNTPLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner. You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling--for eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappeared--and then, when you stood beneath, was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself, continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tideof life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!

MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou deserve the name, bestowed onthee perhaps long ago, not by any one of the humble proprietors, but bythe general voice of praise, all eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty. For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields andmeadows, knolls, braes, and hills, uncertain gleamings of a river, thesmoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spireof the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting withhis solemn, his austere Sabbath-face, beneath the pulpit, with hisexpressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged himto be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen himat labour on the working days, you might almost have thought him theserf of some tyrant-lord, for into all the toils of the field he carriedthe force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strengthand skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house, beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindlyesteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverentlybeloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman ofactive habits and a strong mind, but tempering the natural sternness ofher husband's character with that genial and jocund cheerfulness, thatof all the lesser virtues is the most efficient to the happiness of ahousehold. One daughter only had they, and we could charm our heart evennow, by evoking the vanished from oblivion, and imaging her over andover again in the light of words; but although all objects, animate andinanimate, seem always tinged with an air of sadness when they arepast--and as at present we are resolved to be cheerful--obstinately toresist all access of melancholy--an enemy to the pathetic--and a scornerof shedders of tears--therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, andlet us paint a pleasant picture of a May-Day afternoon, and enjoy it asit was enjoyed of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with thegrandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. 

There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, usedon MAY-DAY to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayedin home-spun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on thedistant mountain-head; and on various seats--stumps, stones, stools, creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed andelbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate andallegorical--took their places, after much formal ceremony of scrapingand bowing, blushing and curtsying, old, young, and middle-aged, of highand low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Ministershutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "wellworthy of a grace as lang's a tether, " was the MAY-DAY meal spreadbeneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Ministeruttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curdsand cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on thosehorn-spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk--to the mouth how apt thebowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate ofdelft, rather more than full of curds, many million times moredeliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled tooverflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness thattenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression ofwhose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to thegrave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT consisted of twenty cows--almost allspring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed--so you may guess what cream!The spoon could not stand in it, --it was not so thick as that--for thatwas too thick, --but the spoon, when placed upright in it, retained itsperpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side tofall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with itsfresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Neverbeneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal cakes, pease-scones, and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away atthem with pleasure, even although not hungry--and yet it was impossibleof them to eat too much--Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butteryellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of MountPleasant--such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture--was coloured likethe crocus, before the young thrushes had left the nest in thehoney-suckled corner of the gavel-end. Not a single hair in the churn. Then what honey and what jam! The first, not heather, for that is tooluscious, especially after such cream, but the pure white virgin honey, like dew shaken from clover, but now _querny_ after winter keep; and oh!over a layer of such butter on such barley bannocks was such honey, onsuch a day, in such company, and to such palates, too divine to bedescribed by such a pen as that now wielded by such a writer! The Jam!It was of gooseberries--the small black hairy ones--gathered to a veryminute from the bush, and boiled to a very moment in the pan! A bannockstudded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than acorresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. Thequestion, with the gaucy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, wasnot--"My dear laddie, which will ye hae--hinny or jam?" but, "Which willye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs, or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half-a-dozen white cans of more moderatedimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper waswithdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruityfragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the hummingSycamore. There the bees were all at work for next May-day, happy asever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold, happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song;for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gaveforth tones almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips ofMary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall thatever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desirein any one of Scotland's ancient melodies. 

Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except duringthe mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field--and rude singers arethey all--whether male or female voices--although sometimes with a touchof natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. But as thenightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it neverwere to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among theshrub-roots, and the lark, though alone on earth, would sing the hymnwell known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the naturewithin her, and inspired by her own delightful genius alone, did MaryMorrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give themall an expression at once simple and profound. People who said they didnot care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonousand insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes ofthe simplest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintlyblushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her littlehands playing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground, or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things, " wouldmost people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl--but her musical turnis really very singular indeed;"--but her happy father and mother knew, that in all common things--that is, in all the duties of an humble andinnocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies andharmonies of song--and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was asangel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearlyinexperienced of sin. 

Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her--and tolisten to her--as their Mary sat beside the young English boy--admiredof all observers--and happier than she had ever been in this worldbefore, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconsciousaffection--sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she hadnone--that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart. 

Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side-by-side in their music, insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admiredand beloved. It was thought that they loved one another too, too well;for Harry Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, and Mary Morrisona peasant's child; but they could not love too well--she in hertenderness--he in his passion--for, with them, life and love was adelightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as bysome secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day--of the samefever--and died at the same hour;--and not from any dim intention ofthose who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-groundof the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in thesame grave--for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them--a curtainbetween the beds on which brother and sister slept. 

In their delirium they both talked about each other--Mary Morrison andHarry Wilton--yet their words were not words of love, only of commonkindness; for although on their death-beds they did not talk aboutdeath, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasantmeetings in neighbours' houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose upin bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute whichto his lips was to breathe no more; and even at the very self-samemoment--so it wonderfully was--did he tell all to be hushed, for thatMary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest. 

Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they maysleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterlyobliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour orother however distant, legible as at the very moment they were firstengraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long-agovanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delightor disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesiredindeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating upinto some inland vale, because, unknown to us who wonder at them, thetide is flowing and the breezes blow from the main. Bright as the livingimage stands now before us the ghost--for what else is it than theghost--of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particularday--in one particular place, innumerable years ago! It was at the closeof one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, ratherthan into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beastasleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was shesinging a hymn, --

 "And must this body die? This mortal frame decay? And must these feeble limbs of mine Lie mouldering in the clay?"

Not that the child had any thought of death, for she was as full of lifeas the star above her was of lustre--tamed though they both were by theholy hour. At our bidding she renewed the strain that had ceased as wemet, and continued to sing it while we parted, her voice dying away inthe distance, like an angel's from a broken dream. Never heard we thatvoice again, for in three little weeks it had gone, to be extinguishedno more, to join the heavenly choirs at the feet of the Redeemer. 

Did both her parents lose all love to life, when their sole daughter wastaken away? And did they die finally of broken hearts? No--such is notthe natural working of the human spirit, if kept in repair by pure andpious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had oncebeen--nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far inresignation that often wept when it did not repine--in faith that nowheld a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long ofbeing again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's--they hadbeen as sisters--took her place, and filled it too, as far as the livingcan ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a whileto occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom theirsubstance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not havediscerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but otherssaw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been adelight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retiredto a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Lethim be strong as a giant, infirmities often come on the hard-working manbefore you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He brokedown fast, we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after thatpartook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those whohave long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other'sarms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there isone on which this inscription may be read--"HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAMMORRISON AND OF HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY17--. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIEDJUNE 2, 17--. " The headstone is a granite slab--as they almost all arein that kirkyard--and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material. But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the verysnow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with thearmorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born. 

Sworn Brother of our soul! during the bright ardours of boyhood, whenthe present was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soonforgotten, and the future unfeared, what might have been thy lot, beloved Harry Wilton, had thy span of life been prolonged to this veryday? Better--oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst soearly die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; andthat, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonourcomes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house. Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed theeloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed downthat young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed eachsuccessive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood. But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergonea rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of asorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice, worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a brokenheart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelledhair--But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hourwhen we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace andthe burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem ororgan-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all thosefloods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we wholoved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy imagenow survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away fromeyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is notbedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou, Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thybliss--we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of ournever-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together, with the wind-swept shadows hovering about our path--Ye streams, whosemurmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together inday-dreams, among the broomy braes--Ye woods, where we started at thestartled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature'ssolitary moans and murmurs deepening the far-off hush, already soprofound--Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with yourpeat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented thewilderness afar--where the little maiden, sent from the shieling onerrands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met herin the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy fromthe desert bloom--Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and withnought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoralhills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven--nocreature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in thebreezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of oldballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth--one and all bearwitness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And, oh! what overflowing thoughts did that shout of ours now awaken from thehanging tower of the Old Castle--"Wilton, Wilton!" The name of thelong-ago buried faintly and afar-off repeated by an echo!

A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY; and while the sun is behindthose castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into thesaddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales oftears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humblehuts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wildflowersthat, in endless succession, disappearing and reappearing in theirbeauty, Spring drops down upon every brae. And as ofttimes some oneparticular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part ofan old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to thefinest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comesupon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an oldTradition. They were called the BLESSED FAMILY! Far up at the head ofyonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden sparkled thetranslucent well that is the source of the stream that animates theparish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter--it washard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were notnative here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the softand silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners mostgracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of actsof charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever disturbed--thestillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet notunwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days thevery heart of Scotland was distracted--persecution scattered herprayers--and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fearwithin their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up andburied their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung overall the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up toheaven--when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared!Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked ontheir missions of mercy, exclaimed--How beautiful are their feet! Fewwords was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer;but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, andall the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by herspiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and eveningorisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face ofgrief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgivingwas in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to thegrave--for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death--andoften, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes, for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burstin agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they allseem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full ofmercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword thatwould fain have smitten the Saints. The dewdrops on the greenswardbefore the cottage door, they suffered not to be polluted with blood. Guardian Angels were they thought to be, and such indeed they were, forwhat else are the holy powers of innocence?--Guardian Angels sent tosave some of God's servants on earth from the choking tide and thescorching fire. Often, in the clear and starry nights, did the dwellersamong all these little dells, and up along all these low hill-sides, hear music flowing down from heaven, responsive to the hymns of theBlessed Family. Music without the syllabling of words--yet breathingworship, and with the spirit of piety filling all the Night-Heavens. Onewhole day and night passed by, and not a hut had been enlightened bytheir presence. Perhaps they had gone away without warning as they hadcome--having been sent on another mission. With soft steps one maiden, and then another, entered the door, and then was heard the voice ofweeping and of loud lament. The three lay, side by side, with their palefaces up to heaven. Dora, for that is the name tradition has handeddown--Dorothea, the gift of God, lay between her Father and her Mother, and all their hands were lovingly and peacefully entwined. No agonieshad been there--unknown what hand, human or divine, had closed theireyelids and composed their limbs; but there they lay as if asleep, notto be awakened by the burst of sunshine that dazzled upon their smilingcountenances, cheek to cheek, in the awful beauty of united death. 

The deep religion of that troubled time had sanctified the Strangersalmost into an angelic character; and when the little kirk-bells wereagain heard tinkling through the air of peace (the number of the martyrsbeing complete), the beauty with which their living foreheads had beeninvested, reappeared to the eyes of imagination, as the Poets whomNature kept to herself walked along the moonlight hills. "The BlessedFamily, " which had been as a household word, appertaining to them whilethey lived, now when centuries have gone by, is still full of a dim butdivine meaning; the spirit of the tradition having remained, while itsframework has almost fallen into decay. 

How beautifully emerges that sun-stricken Cottage from the rocks, thatall around it are floating in a blue vapoury light! Were we so disposed, methinks we could easily write a little book entirely about the obscurepeople that have lived and died about that farm, by name LOGAN BRAES. Neither is it without its old traditions. One May-day long ago--some twocenturies since--that rural festival was there interrupted by athunderstorm, and the party of youths and maidens, driven from thebudding arbours, were all assembled in the ample kitchen. The houseseemed to be in the very heart of the thunder; and the master began toread, without declaring it to be a religious service, a chapter of theBible; but the frequent flashes of lightning so blinded him, that he wasforced to lay down the Book, and all then sat still without speaking aword; many with pale faces, and none without a mingled sense of awe andfear. The maiden forgot her bashfulness as the rattling peals shook theroof-tree, and hid her face in her lover's bosom; the children creptcloser and closer, each to some protecting knee, and the dogs came allinto the house, and lay down in dark places. Now and then there was aconvulsive, irrepressible, but half-stifled shriek--some sobbed--and aloud hysterical laugh from one overcome with terror sounded ghastlybetween the deepest of all dread repose--that which separates one pealfrom another, when the flash and the roar are as one, and the thick airsmells of sulphur. The body feels its mortal nature, and shrinks as ifabout to be withered into nothing. Now the muttering thunder seems tohave changed its place to some distant cloud--now, as if returning toblast those whom it had spared, waxes louder and fiercer thanbefore--till the Great Tree that shelters the house is shivered with anoise like the masts of a ship carried away by the board. "Look, father, look--see yonder is an Angel all in white, descending from heaven!" saidlittle Alice, who had already been almost in the attitude of prayer, andnow clasped her hands together, and steadfastly, and without fear of thelightning, eyed the sky. "One of God's Holy Angels--one of those whosing before the Lamb!" And with an inspired rapture the fair childsprung to her feet. "See ye her not--see ye her not--father--mother! Lo!she beckons to me with a palm in her hand, like one of the palms in thatpicture in our Bible, when our Saviour is entering into Jerusalem! Thereshe comes, nearer and nearer the earth--Oh! pity, forgive, and havemercy on me, thou most beautiful of all the Angels--even for His name'ssake. " All eyes were turned towards the black heavens, and then to theraving child. Her mother clasped her to her bosom, afraid that terrorhad turned her brain--and her father going to the door, surveyed anampler space of the sky. She flew to his side, and clinging to himagain, exclaimed in a wild outcry, "On her forehead a star! on herforehead a star! And oh! on what lovely wings she is floating away, awayinto eternity! The Angel, father, is calling me by my Christian name, and I must no more abide on earth; but, touching the hem of her garment, be wafted away to heaven!" Sudden as a bird let loose from the hand, darted the maiden from her father's bosom, and with her face upward tothe skies, pursued her flight. Young and old left the house, and at thatmoment the forked lightning came from the crashing cloud, and struck thewhole tenement into ruins. Not a hair on any head was singed; and withone accord the people fell down upon their knees. From the eyes of thechild, the Angel, or Vision of the Angel, had disappeared; but on herreturn to heaven, the Celestial heard the hymn that rose from those thatwere saved, and above all the voices, the small sweet silvery voice ofher whose eyes alone were worthy of beholding a Saint Transfigured. 

For several hundred years has that farm belonged to the family of theLogans, nor has son or daughter ever stained the name--while some haveimparted to it, in its humble annals, what well may be called lustre. Many a time have we stood when a boy, all alone, beginning to bedisturbed by the record of heroic or holy lives, in the kirkyard, besidethe GRAVE OF THE MARTYRS--the grave in which Christian and Hannah Logan, mother and daughter, were interred. Many a time have we listened to thestory of their deaths, from the lips of one who well knew how to stirthe hearts of the young, till "from their eyes they wiped the tears thatsacred pity had engendered. " Nearly a hundred years old was she thateloquent narrator--the Minister's mother--yet she could hear a whisper, and read the Bible without spectacles--although we sometimes used tosuspect her of pretending to be reading off the Book, when, in fact, shewas reciting from memory. The old lady often took a walk in thekirkyard--and being of a pleasant and cheerful nature, though inreligious principle inflexibly austere, many were the most amusinganecdotes that she related to us and our compeers, all huddled roundher, "where heaved the turf in many a mouldering heap. " But the eveningconverse was always sure to have a serious termination--and thevenerable matron could not be more willing to tell, than we to hearagain and again, were it for the twentieth repetition, some old tragicevent that gathered a deeper interest from every recital, as if on eachwe became better acquainted with the characters of those to whom it hadbefallen, till the chasm that time had dug between them and usdisappeared, and we felt for the while that their happiness or miseryand ours were essentially interdependent. At first she used, we wellremember, to fix her solemn spirit-like eyes on our faces, to mark thedifferent effects her story produced on her hearers; but ere long shebecame possessed wholly by the pathos of her own narrative, and withfluctuating features and earnest action of head and hands poured forthher eloquence, as if soliloquising among the tombs. 

"Ay, ay, my dear boys, that is the grave o' the Martyrs. My father sawthem die. The tide o' the far-ebbed sea was again beginning to flow, butthe sands o' the bay o' death lay sae dry, that there were but few spotswhere a bairn could hae wat its feet. Thousands and tens o' thousandswere standing a' roun' the edge of the bay--that was in shape just likethat moon--and then twa stakes were driven deep into the sand, that thewaves o' the returning sea michtna loosen them--and my father, who wasbut a boy like ane o' yourselves noo, waes me, didna he see wi' his aineen Christian Logan, and her wee dochter Hannah, for she was but elevenyears auld--hurried alang by the enemies o' the Lord, and tied to theiraccursed stakes within the power o' the sea. He who holds the waters inthe hollow o' his hand, thocht my father, will not suffer them to chokethe prayer within those holy lips--but what kent he o' the dreadfu'judgments o' the Almighty? Dreadfu' as those judgments seemed to be, o'a' that crowd o' mortal creatures there were but only twa that drewtheir breath without a shudder--and these twa were Christian Logan andher beautifu' wee dochter Hannah, wi' her rosy cheeks, for they blanchednot in that last extremity, her blue een, and her gowden hair, thatglittered like a star in the darkness o' that dismal day. 'Mother, benot afraid, ' she was heard to say, when the foam o' the first wave brokeabout their feet--and just as these words were uttered, all the greatblack clouds melted away from the sky, and the sun shone forth in thefirmament like the all-seeing eye of God. The martyrs turned their facesa little towards one another, for the cords could not wholly hinderthem, and wi' voices as steady and as clear as ever they sang the psalmwithin the walls o' that kirk, did they, while the sea was mountingup--up from knee--waist--breast--neck--chin--lip--sing praises andthanksgivings unto God. As soon as Hannah's voice was drowned, it seemedas if her mother, before the water reached her own lips, bowed and gaveup the ghost. While the people were all gazing the heads of both martyrsdisappeared, and nothing then was to be seen on the face o' the waters, but here and there a bit white breaking wave or silly sea-bird floatingon the flow o' the tide into the bay. Back and back had aye fallen thepeople, as the tide was roarin' on wi' a hollow soun'--and now that thewater was high aboon the heads o' the martyrs, what chained that dismalcongregation to the sea-shore? It was the countenance o' a man that hadsuddenly come down frae his hiding-place amang the moors--and who nowknew that his wife and daughter were bound to stakes deep down in thewaters o' the very bay that his eyes beheld rolling, and his ears heardroaring--all the while that there was a God in heaven! Naebody couldspeak to him--although they all beseeched their Maker to havecompassion upon him, and not to let his heart break and his reason fail. 'The stakes! the stakes! O Jesus! point out to me, with thy own scarredhand, the place where my wife and daughter are bound to the stakes--andI may yet bear them up out of the sand, and bring the bodies ashore--tobe restored to life! O brethren, brethren!--said ye that my Christianand my Hannah have been for an hour below the sea? And was it from fearof fifty armed men, that so many thousand fathers and mothers, and sonsand daughters, and brothers and sisters, rescued them not from suchcruel, cruel death?' After uttering mony mair siclike raving words, hesuddenly plunged into the sea, and, being a strong swimmer, was soon farout into the bay--and led by some desperate instinct to the very placewhere the stakes were fixed in the sand. Perfectly resigned had themartyrs been to their doom--but in the agonies o' that horrible death, there had been some struggles o' the mortal body, and the weight o' thewaters had borne down the stakes, so that, just as if they had beenlashed to a spar to enable them to escape from shipwreck, baith thebodies came floatin' to the surface, and his hand grasped, withoutknowing it, his ain Hannah's gowden hair--sairly defiled, ye may weelthink, wi' the sand--baith their faces changed frae what they ance wereby the wrench o' death. Father, mother, and daughter came a'thegither tothe shore--and there was a cry went far and wide, up even to thehiding-places o' the faithfu' among the hags and cleuchs i' the moors, that the sea had given up the living, and that the martyrs weretriumphant, even in this world, over the powers o' Sin and o' Death. Yea, they were indeed triumphant;--and well might the faithfu' singaloud in the desert, 'O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thyvictory?' for these three bodies were but as the weeds on which they laystretched out to the pitying gaze of the multitude, but their spiritshad gane to heaven to receive the eternal rewards o' sanctity andtruth. "

Not a house in all the parish--scarcely excepting Mount Pleasantitself--all round and about which our heart could in some dreamy hourraise to life a greater multitude of dear old remembrances, all touchingourselves, than LOGAN BRAES. The old people, when we first knew them, weused to think somewhat apt to be surly--for they were Seceders--andowing to some unavoidable prejudices, which we were at no great pains tovanquish, we Manse-boys recognised something repulsive in that mostrespectable word. Yet for the sake of that sad story of the Martyrs, there was always something affecting to us in the name of Logan Braes;and though Beltane was of old a Pagan Festival, celebrated with graveidolatries round fires ablaze on a thousand hills, yet old LaurenceLogan would sweeten his vinegar aspect on May-day, would wipe out ascore of wrinkles, and calm, as far as that might be, the terrors of hisshaggy eyebrows. A little gentleness of manner goes a long way with suchyoung folk as we were all then, when it is seen naturally and easilyworn for our sakes, and in sympathy with our accustomed glee, by one whoin his ordinary deportment may have added the austerity of religion tothe venerableness of old age. Smiles from old Laurence Logan, theSeceder, were like rare sun-glimpses in the gloom--and made the hush ofhis house pleasant as a more cheerful place; for through the restraintlaid on reverent youth by feeling akin to fear, the heart ever and anonbounded with freedom in the smile of the old man's eyes. Plain was hisown apparel--a suit of the hodden-grey. His wife, when in full dress, did not remind us of a Quakeress, for a Quakeress then had we neverseen--but we often think now, when in company with a still, sensible, cheerful, and comely-visaged matron of that sect, of her of Logan Braes. No waster was she of her tears, or her smiles, or her words, or hermoney, or her meal--either among those of her own blood, or the strangeror the beggar that was within her gates. You heard not her foot on thefloor--yet never was she idle--moving about in doors and out, frommorning till night, so placid and so composed, and always at small costdressed so decently, so becomingly to one who was not yet old, and hadnot forgotten--why should she not remember it?--that she was esteemed inyouth a beauty, and that it was not for want of a richer and youngerlover that she agreed at last to become the wife of the Laird of LoganBraes. 

Their family consisted of two sons and a niece;--and be thou who thoumayest that hast so far read our May-day, we doubt not that thine eyeswill glance--however rapidly--over another page, nor fling itcontemptuously aside, because amidst all the chance and change ofadministrations, ministries, and ministers in high places, there murmuralong the channels of our memory "the simple annals of the poor, " likeunpolluted streams that sweep not by city walls. 

Never were two brothers more unlike in all things--in mind, body, habits, and disposition--than Lawrie and Willie Logan--and we see, as ina glass, at this very moment, both their images. "Wee Wise Willie"--forby that name he was known over several parishes--was one of thoseextraordinary creatures that one may liken to a rarest plant, whichnature sows here and there--sometimes for ever unregarded--among thecommon families of Flowers. Early sickness had been his lot--continuedwith scarcely any interruption from his cradle to school-years--so thatnot only was his stature stunted, but his whole frame was delicate inthe extreme; and his pale small-featured face, remarkable for large, soft, down-looking, hazel eyes, dark-lashed in their lustre, had a sweetfeminine character, that corresponded well with his voice, his motions, and his in-door pursuits--all serene and composed, and interfering withthe outgoings of no other living thing. All sorts of scholarship, suchas the parish schoolmaster knew, he mastered as if by intuition. Hisslate was quickly covered with long calculations, by which the mostpuzzling questions were solved; and ere he was nine years old, he hadmade many pretty mechanical contrivances with wheels and pulleys, thatshowed in what direction lay the natural bent of his genius. Languages, too, the creature seemed to see into with quickest eyes, and withquickest ears to catch their sounds--so that, at the same tender age, hemight have been called a linguist, sitting with his Greek and Latinbooks on a stool beside him by the fireside during the long winternights. All the neighbours who had any books, cheerfully lent them to"Wee Wise Willie, " and the Manse-boys gave him many a supply. At thehead of every class he, of course, was found--but no ambition had he tobe there; and like a bee that works among many thousand others on theclover-lea, heedless of their murmurs, and intent wholly on its ownfragrant toil, did he go from task to task--although that was no fittingname for the studious creature's meditations on all he read orwrought--no more a task for him to grow in knowledge and in thought, than for a lily of the field to lift up its head towards the sun. Thatchild's religion was like all the other parts of his character--as proneto tears as that of other children, when they read of the Divine Frienddying for them on the cross; but it was profounder far than theirs, whenit shed no tears, and only made the paleness of his countenance morelike that which we imagine to be the paleness of a phantom. No one eversaw him angry, complaining, or displeased; for angelical indeed was histemper, purified, like gold in fire, by suffering. He shunned not thecompany of other children, but loved all, as by them all he was morethan beloved. In few of their plays could he take an active share; butsitting a little way off, still attached to the merry brotherhood, though in their society he had no part to enact, he read his book on theknoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among the visions of his ownthoughts. There was poetry in that child's spirit, but it was tooessentially blended with his whole happiness in life, often to beembodied in written words. A few compositions were found in his ownsmall beautiful handwriting after his death--hymns and psalms. Prayers, too, had his heart indited--but they were not in measuredlanguage--framed, in his devout simplicity, on the model of our Lord's. How many hundred times have we formed a circle round him in thegloaming, all sitting or lying on the greensward, before the dews hadbegun to descend, listening to his tales and stories of holy or heroicmen and women, who had been greatly good and glorious in the days ofold! Not unendeared to his imagination were the patriots, who, livingand dying, loved the liberties of the land--Tell--Bruce--or Wallace, hein whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, while many a wood bearsit on its summits as they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a reed thatis shaken in the wind, or the stalk of a flower that tremblinglysustains its blossoms beneath the dews that feed their transitorylustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to read the eulogies ofmighty men of war riding mailed through bloody battles. What matters itthat this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny size--still may it be thetenement of a lordly spirit. But high as such warfare was, it satisfiednot that thoughtful child--for other warfare there was to read of, whichwas to him a far deeper and more divine delight--the warfare waged bygood men against the legions of sin, and closed triumphantly in the eyeof God--let this world deem as it will--on obscurest death-beds, or atthe stake, or on the scaffold, where a profounder even than Sabbathsilence glorifies the martyr far beyond any shout that from the immensemultitude would have torn the concave of the heavens. 

What a contrast to that creature was his elder brother! Lawrie waseighteen years old when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a perfecthero in strength and stature--Bob Howie alone his equal--but Bob wasthen in the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his work was over inthe fields or in the barn, he had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys toaccompany him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's angling or two in theevening, when the large trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as wewaded mid-leg deep, would sometimes take the fly among our very feet. Orhe would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us wherethe foxes had their earths--the party being sometimes so fortunate as tosee the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in thestrong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought itsafe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear andwonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, sawhim take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft ofwall-flowers. What was there of the bold and daring that Lawrie Loganwas not, in our belief, able to perform? We were all several yearsyounger--boys from nine to fifteen--and he had shot up into suddenmanhood--not only into its shape but its strength--yet still the boyishspirit was fresh within him, and he never wearied of us in suchexcursions. The minister had a good opinion of his principles, knowinghow he had been brought up, and did not discountenance his visits to theManse, nor ours to Logan Braes. Then what danger could we be in, gowhere we might, with one who had more than once shown how eager he wasto risk his own life when that of another was in jeopardy? Generous andfearless youth! To thee we owed our own life--although seldom is thatrescue now remembered--(for what will not in this turmoiling world beforgotten?) when in pride of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we hadventured--with our clothes on too--some ten yards into the Brother-Loch, to disentangle our line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a hundredcords had got entangled round our legs, and our heart quaked toodesperately to suffer us to shriek--but Lawrie Logan had his hand on usin a minute, and brought us to shore as easily as a Newfoundland doglands a bit of floating wood. 

But that was a momentary danger, and Lawrie Logan ran but small risk, you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of hisintrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth ofan old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrownwith thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a smallmount above it, for some yards down its throat--the very throat of deathand perdition. But can you fancy also the childish and superstitiousterror with which we all regarded that coal-pit, for it was said to be ahundred fathom deep--with water at the bottom--so that you had to waitfor many moments--almost a minute--before you heard a stone, firstbeating against its sides--from one to the other--plunge at last intothe pool profound. In that very field, too, a murder had beenperpetrated, and the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart into thatcoal-pit. One day some unaccountable impulse had led a band of us intothat interdicted field--which we remember was not arable--but said to bea place where a hare was always sure to be found sitting among thebinweeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling horror urged us on closer andcloser to the mouth of the pit--when Wee Wise Willie's foot slipping onthe brae, he bounded with inexplicable force along--in among the thorns, briers, and brackens--through the whole hanging mat, and without ashriek, down--down--down into destruction. We all saw it happen--everyone of us--and it is scarcely too much to say, that we were for a whileall mad with horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back instinctively fromthe horrible pit--and as aid we could give none, we listened if we couldhear any cry--but there was none--and we all flew together out of thedreadful field, and again collecting ourselves together, feared toseparate on the different roads to our homes. "Oh! can it be that ourWee Wise Willie has this moment died sic a death--and no a single aneamang us a' greetin for his sake?" said one of us aloud; and then indeeddid we burst out into rueful sobbing, and ask one another who couldcarry such tidings to Logan Braes? All at once we heard a clear, rich, mellow whistle as of a blackbird--and there with his favourite collie, searching for a stray lamb among the knolls, was Lawrie Logan, whohailed us with a laughing voice, and then asked us, "Where is WeeWillie?--hae ye flung him like another Joseph into the pit?" Theconsternation of our faces could not be misunderstood--whether we toldhim or not what had happened we do not know--but he staggered, as if hewould have fallen down--and then ran off with amazing speed--not towardsLogan Braes--but the village. We continued helplessly to wander aboutback and forwards along the near edge of a wood, when we beheld amultitude of people rapidly advancing, and in a few minutes theysurrounded the mouth of the pit. It was about the very end of thehay-harvest--and many ropes that had been employed that very day in theleading of the hay of the Landlord of the Inn, who was also an extensivefarmer, were tied together to the length of at least twenty fathom. Hopewas quite dead--but her work is often done by Despair. For a while therewas confusion all round the pit-mouth, but with a white fixed face andglaring eyes, Lawrie Logan advanced to the very brink, with the ropebound in many firm folds around him, and immediately behind him stoodhis grey-headed father, unbonneted, just as he had risen from a prayer. "Is't my ain father that's gaun to help me to gang doun to bring upWillie's body? O! merciful God, what a judgment is this!Father--father--Oh! lie doun at some distance awa frae the sicht o' thisplace. Robin Alison, and Gabriel Strang, and John Borland 'ill haud theropes firm and safe. O, father--father--lie doun, a bit apart frae thecrowd; and have mercy upon him--O thou, great God, have mercy upon him!"But the old man kept his place; and the only one son who now survived tohim disappeared within the jaws of the same murderous pit, and waslowered slowly down, nearer and nearer to his little brother's corpse. They had spoken to him of foul air, of which to breathe is death, but hehad taken his resolution, and not another word had been said to shakeit. And now, for a short time, there was no weight at the line, exceptthat of its own length. It was plain that he had reached the bottom ofthe pit. Silent was all that congregation, as if assembled in divineworship. Again, there was a weight at the rope, and in a minute or two, a voice was heard far down the pit that spread a sort of wildhope--else, why should it have spoken at all--and lo! the child--notlike one of the dead--clasped in the arms of his brother, who was allcovered with dust and blood. "Fall down on your knees--in the face o'heaven, and sing praises to God, for my brother is yet alive!"

During that Psalm, father, mother, and both their sons--the rescuer andthe rescued--and their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, werelying embraced in speechless--almost senseless trances; for the agony ofsuch a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures beendured. 

The child himself was the first to tell how his life had beenmiraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out ofthe inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, andamong them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. Fordays, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visitedLogan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received ashock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried himsubsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and itshospitable door open to all the neighbours. 

Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth--but tooapt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapt round a life ofpoverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently orcarelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all itsongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, anddistress. He did not keep evil society--but neither did he shun it: andhaving a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to astripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequentedall meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, andin such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character forrecklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticatedevil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quietretreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did allthe Manse-boys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! Itwas he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey theEgyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a waggon ofStaffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel, " as he called Lawrie, in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annualBaldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite thedust--nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whoseprovincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-ReadySchool. Even now--as in an ugly dream--we see the combatants alternatelyprostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood. All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at suchunchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherdsand the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of theShowmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick onthe King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which hadnearly been the gypsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie, amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a bettercause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruitingsergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the colours of the42d Regiment, and in the intoxication of victory, whisky, and thebagpipe, the young champion was as fairly enlisted into his Majesty'sservice, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married atGretna Green; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, goldcould not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board atransport. 

Logan Braes was not the same place--indeed, the whole parish seemedaltered--after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth anythingbut cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed tobe pining away--not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himselfknew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearlytwo years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemedlike a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring orexpired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues toglimmer even steadily with a protracted light. Every week--nay, almostevery day, they feared to lose him--yet there he still was at morningand evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother wasremarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened overmany woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful, and expressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and some others of hiscompanions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-day. There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best tolook cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had once been harsh andforbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down bythe perpetual yearnings at his heart towards "the distant far and absentlong, " nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child, whom everyhour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice. Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hourspassed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our many-toned talkand laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twitteringof the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing likesilver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bringgood tidings--or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to blessthe eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace. "Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculatedAnnie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know, is with the dead!"--Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of thedoor, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Loganstepped again across his father's threshold, and, ere he well uttered"God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. Hisfather and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, withfaces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted hisname aloud--while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on hismaster breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him asof yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us goout and play, " said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously intothe sunshine, we left the family within to themselves, and then walkedaway, without speaking, down to the Bridge. 

After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all consideringwhether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburnwas seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlikeher usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, tobeckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, aswe stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is worse, " were theonly words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering theroom, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, butwith a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you--but he isgone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld himalready _laid out_, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as ifshe were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie--God was graciousto let him live to this day, that he micht dee in his brither's arms. "

The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreamingaway the hours--a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over, since morning, along pleasant by-paths, where never dust lay, or fromgate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fearless of thosethreatening nonentities, spring-guns. There is the turnpike road--thegreat north and south road--for it is either the one or the other, according to the airt towards which you, choose to turn your face. Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with white-washedfront, and sign-board hanging from a tree, on which are painted thefigures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches, shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all mealsis a paulopost-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of thesestrapping hens is good augury;--hark, a cackle from the barn--anotheregg is laid--and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, andclapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultanatill the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please, " quoth acomely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an arm-chair, notwearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and wetake no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in whichwe shall put down a few jottings for MAY-DAY. Three boiled eggs--one toeach penny-roll--are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with thesame number fried with mutton ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman anda Tory. Nor do we remember--when tea-cups have been on a proper scale, ever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics, we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we lovemoderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie--ye needna keep keekin inthat gate fra ahint the door"--and in a few minutes the curly-patedprattler is murmuring on our knee. The sonsy wife, well-pleased withthe sight, and knowing from our kindness to children, that we are on thesame side of politics with her gudeman--Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch, and once Orderly to Garth himself--brings out her ain bottle from thespence--a hollow square, and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of itshonest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess kisses the glass, previouslyletting fall a not inelegant curtsy--for she had, we now learned, been alady's maid in her youth to one who is indeed a lady, all the time herlover was abroad in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Portugal, Holland, and, we think shesaid, Corfu. One of the children has been sent to the field, where herhusband is sowing barley, to tell him that there is fear lest dinnercool; and the mistress now draws herself up in pride of his nobleappearance, as the stately Highlander salutes us with the respectful butbold air of one who has seen some service at home and abroad. Never knewwe a man make other than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a chargeof bayonets. 

Shenstone's lines about always meeting the warmest welcome in an inn, are very natural and tender--as most of his compositions are, when hewas at all in earnest. For our own part, we cannot complain of evermeeting any other welcome than a warm one, go where we may; for we arenot obtrusive, and where we are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed, or admired (that last is a strong word, yet we all have our admirers), we are exceeding chary of the light of our countenance. But at an inn, the only kind of welcome that is indispensable, is a civil one. Whenthat is not forthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, off our feet, and pursue our journey, well assured that a few milestones will bring usto a humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have occasionally given usopportunities of beholding rare celestial phenomena--meteors--fallingand shooting stars--the Aurora Borealis, in her shiftingsplendours--haloes round the moon, variously bright as therainbow--electrical arches forming themselves on the sky in a manner sowondrously beautiful, that we should be sorry to hear them accounted forby philosophers--one-half of the horizon blue, and without a cloud, andthe other driving tempestuously like the sea-foam, with wavesmountain-high--and divinest show of all for a solitary night-wanderingman, who has anything of a soul at all, far and wide, and high up intothe gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burning as if their urnswere newly fed with light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or avapoury night, although then, too, are the softened or veiled luminariesbeautiful--but large, full, and free over the whole firmament--a galaxyof shining and unanswerable arguments in proof of the Immortality of theSoul. 

The whole world is improving; nor can there be a pleasanter proof ofthat than this very wayside inn--ycleped the SALUTATION. What amiserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, thatwould neither open nor shut--neither let you out nor in--immovable andintractable to foot or hand--or all at once, when you least expected itto yield, slamming to with a bang; a constant puddle in front duringrainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry--roof partly thatched, partlyslated, partly tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its nakedrafters. Broken windows repaired with an old petticoat, or a still olderpair of breeches, and walls that had always been plastered and betterplastered and worse plastered, in frosty weather--all labour in vain, ascrumbling patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains of dismalochre, meanest of all colours, and still symptomatic of want, mismanagement, bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenement thatwas never known to have paid any rent. Then what a pair of drunkardswere old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once were they seen drunk ona Sabbath or a fast-day--regular kirk-goers, and attentive observers ofordinances. They had not very many children, yet, pass the door when youmight, you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or the ban of themother, or the smacking of the palm of the hand on the part of the enemyeasiest of access; or you saw one of the ragged fiends pursued by aparent round the corner, and brought back by the hair of the head tillits eyes were like those of a Chinese. Now, what decency--whatneatness--what order--in this household--this private public! into whichcustomers step like neighbours on a visit, and are served with aheartiness and goodwill that deserve the name of hospitality, for theyare gratuitous, and can only be repaid in kind. A limited prospect doesthat latticed window command--and the small panes cut objects into toomany parts--little more than the breadth of the turnpike road, and ahundred yards of the same, to the north and to the south, with a fewbudding hedgerows, half-a-dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet couldwe sit and moralise, and intellectualise, for hours at this window, norhear the striking clock. 

There trips by a blooming maiden of middle degree, all alone--the more'sthe pity--yet perfectly happy in her own society, and one we venture tosay who never received a love-letter, valentines excepted, in all herinnocent days. --A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! somewhat red inthe face, as if he had dined early, and not so sure of the road as hishorse, who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of water, and isanxious to get to town that he may be rubbed down, and see oats oncemore. --Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for your sake, may thatcloud breathe forth rain and breeze, before you reach the burn, whichyou seem to fear may run dry before you can see the Pool where thetwo-pounders lie. --Methinks we know that old woman, and of the firstnovel we write she shall be the heroine. --Ha! a brilliant bevy ofmounted maidens, in riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swalingfeathers"--sisters, it is easy to see, and daughters of one whom weeither loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat andvulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husbandlead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time itwas _tout une autre chose_; for a smaller foot, a slimmer ankle, a moredelicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneathher bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn--such starlikeeyes, thrilling without seeking to reach the soul--But phoo! phoo! phoo!she married a jolter-headed squire with two thousand acres, and, inself-defence, has grown fat, vulgar, and a scold. --There is a Head for apainter! and what perfect peace and placidity all over the Blind Man'scountenance! He is not a beggar although he lives on alms--thosesightless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops at the kind voice of the traveller, and tellshis story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise moves, with his longsilvery hair, journeying contentedly in darkness towards the eternallight. --A gang of gypsies! with their numerous assery laden withhorn-spoons, pots, and pans, and black-eyed children. We should not besurprised to read some day in the newspapers, that the villain who leadsthe van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is themisfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarredcheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothingabout rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not madefor the wearer--long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating inhuge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails--a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the nightprowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor toawaken--so noiseless his stealthy advances--the unchained mastiff in hiskennel. 

But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regimentof soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment ofsoldiers--and that is as much as we can be expected to know about theirmovements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has beengorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation, blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bole of her pipe, have all burst asthey have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, andwith feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what iscalled the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all thesefine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for someunlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to diein their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the compositionof a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shallsuppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuineclodhoppers, chaw-bacons _sans peur et sans reproche_, except that theoverseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; addone shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of thespring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certainfleeces, for which no ingenuity could account; a laird's son, long knownby the name of the Neerdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept thebounty-money during a protracted strike--not dungs they, but flints allthe nine; a barber, like many a son of genius, ruined by his wit, andwho, after being driven from pole to pole, found refuge in the army atlast; a bankrupt butcher, once a bully, and now a poltroon; two of theSeven Young Men--all that now survive--impatient of the drudgery of thecompting-house, and the injustice of the age--but they, we believe, arein the band--the triangle and the serpent; twelve cotton-spinners at theleast; six weavers of woollens; a couple of colliers from the bowels ofthe earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabble--flunkies long out ofplace, and unable to live on their liveries--felons acquitted, or thathave dreed their punishment--picked men from the shilling galleries ofplayhouses--and the élite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Lookhow all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it ofsuch materials that our conquering army was made?--were such the heroesof Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo?

Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go, are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three yearsripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined intocourage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets becomepatriots--members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and stepout from the ranks to head the storm. Lord bless you! have you notstudied sympathy and _l'esprit de corps_? An army fifty thousand strongconsists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; andsaints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then, that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory tovictory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at workwith all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing _Te Deum?_You must not be permitted too curiously to analyse the composition ofthe British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them asWholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God tobless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar. 

The baggage-waggons halt, and some refreshment is sent for to the womenand children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there--ayear or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, nowmothers, with babies at their breasts--happy still perhaps; but thatpretty face is woefully wan--that hair did not use to be sodishevelled--and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that layso white, and warm, and smooth in the grasp of the seducer. 

Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on hermarriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and nomore, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots notfall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell. 

The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and twelve outsides--driver andguard excluded--rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stoppages. Why, in the name of Heaven, are all people nowadays in such haste andhurry? Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of this dozen and ahalf Protestants and Catholics--alike anxious for emancipation--shouldbe at a particular place, at one particular moment of time out of thetwenty-four hours given to man for motion and for rest? Confident are wethat that obese elderly gentleman beside the coachman--whose amplerotundity is encased in that antique and almost obsolete invention, aspenser--needed not to have been so carried in a whirlwind to hiscomfortable home. Scarcely is there time for pity as we behold an honestman's wife, pale as putty in the face at a tremendous swing, or lounge, or lurch of the Highflier, holding like grim death to the balustrades. But umbrellas, parasols, plaids, shawls, bonnets, and great-coats withas many necks as Hydra--the Pile of Life has disappeared in a cloud ofdust, and the faint bugle tells that already it has spun and reeledonwards a mile on its destination. 

But here comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us--a hearseand six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable thatthe person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, gothigher than a single-horse Chay--yet no fewer than half-a-dozen hackneysmust be hired for his dust. But clear the way! "Hurra! hurra! he rides arace, 'tis for a 'thousand pound!" Another, and another, andanother--all working away with legs and knees, arms and shoulders, oncart-horses in the Brooze--the Brooze! The hearse-horses take no sort ofnotice of the cavalry of cart and plough, but each in turn keeps itssnorting nostrils deep plunged in the pail of meal and water--for wellmay they be thirsty--the kirkyard being far among the hills, and theroads not yet civilised. "May I ask, friend, " addressing ourself to thehearseman, "whom you have had inside?" "Only Dr Sandilands, sir--if youare going my way, you may have a lift for a dram!" We had alwaysthought there was a superstition in Scotland against marrying in themonth of May; but it appears that people are wedded and bedded in thatmonth too--some in warm sheets--and some in cold--cold--cold--drippingdamp as the grave. 

But we must up, and off. Not many gentlemen's houses in the parish--thatis to say, old family seats; for of modern villas, or boxes, inhabitedby persons imagining themselves gentlemen, and, for anything we know tothe contrary, not wholly deceived in that belief, there is rather toogreat an abundance. Four family seats, however, there certainly are, ofsufficient antiquity to please a lover of the olden time; and of thosefour, the one which we used to love best to look at was--THE MAINS. Noneed to describe it in many words. A Hall on a river-side, embosomed inwoods--holms and meadows winding away in front, with their low thickhedgerows and stately single trees--on--on--on--as far as the eye canreach, a crowd of grove-tops--elms chiefly, or beeches--and a beautifulboundary of blue hills. "Good-day, Sergeant Stewart! farewell, Ma'am--farewell!" And in half an hour we are sitting in the moss-houseat the edge of the outer garden, and gazing up at the many-windowed greywalls of the MAINS, and its high steep-ridged roof, discoloured by theweather-stains of centuries. "The taxes on such a house, " quod SergeantStewart, "are of themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune--sothe Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years. " But he hadbeen speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he coulddo--and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand, undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its owndecay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our ownhands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice withshells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled floor--and thatbright scintillating piece of spar, the centre of the circle, came allthe way from Derbyshire in the knapsack of a geologist, who died aProfessor. It is strange the roof has not fallen in long ago; but what aslight ligature will often hold together a heap of ruins from tumblinginto nothing! The old moss-house, though somewhat decrepit, is alive;and, if these swallows don't take care, they will be stunning themselvesagainst our face, jerking out and in, through door and window, twentytimes in a minute. Yet with all that twittering of swallows--and withall that frequent crowing of a cock--and all that cawing of rooks--andcooing of doves--and lowing of cattle along the holms--and bleating oflambs along the braes--it is nevertheless a pensive place; and here sitwe like a hermit, world-sick, and to be revived only by hearkening inthe solitude to the voices of other years. 

What more mournful thought than that of a Decayed Family--a high-bornrace gradually worn out, and finally ceasing to be! The remote ancestorsof this House were famous men of war--then some no less famousstatesmen--then poets and historians--then minds still of fine, but ofless energetic mould--and last of all, the mystery of madness breakingsuddenly forth from spirits that seemed to have been especially formedfor profoundest peace. There were three sons and two daughters, undegenerate from the ancient stateliness of the race--the oldest on hisapproach to manhood erect as the young cedar, that seems conscious ofbeing destined one day to be the tallest tree in the woods. Thetwin-sisters were ladies indeed! Lovely as often are the low-born, nomaiden ever stepped from her native cottage-door, even in a poet'sdream, with such an air as that with which those fair beings walkedalong their saloons and lawns. Their beauty no one could at alldescribe--and no one beheld it who did not say that it transcended allthat imagination had been able to picture of angelic and divine. As thesisters were, so were the brothers--distinguished above all their matesconspicuously, and beyond all possibility of mistake; so that strangerscould single them out at once as the heirs of beauty, that, according toveritable pictures and true traditions, had been an unalienable giftfrom nature to that family ever since it bore the name. For the lastthree generations none of that house had ever reached even the meridianof life--and those of whom we now speak had from childhood been orphans. Yet how joyous and free were they one and all, and how often from thiscell did evening hear their holy harmonies, as the Five united togetherwith voice, harp, and dulcimer, till the stars themselves rejoiced!--Onemorning, Louisa, who loved the dewy dawn, was met bewildered in hermind, and perfectly astray--with no symptom of having been suddenlyalarmed or terrified--but with an unrecognising smile, and eyes scarcelychanged in their expression, although they knew not--but rarely--on whomthey looked. It was but a few months till she died--and Adelaide waslaughing carelessly on her sister's funeral day--and asked why mourningshould be worn at a marriage, and a plumed hearse sent to take away thebride. Fairest of God's creatures! can it be that thou art still alive?Not with cherubs smiling round thy knees--not walking in the free realmsof earth and heaven with thy husband--the noble youth, who loved theefrom thy childhood when himself a child; but oh! that such misery can bebeneath the sun--shut up in some narrow cell perhaps--no one knowswhere--whether in this thy native kingdom, or in some foreign land--withthose hands manacled--a demon-light in eyes once most angelical--andringing through undistinguishable days and nights imaginary shriekingsand yellings in thy poor distracted brain!--Down went the ship with allher crew in which Percy sailed;--the sabre must have been in the hand ofa skilful swordsman that in one of the Spanish battles hewed Sholtodown; and the gentle Richard, whose soul--while he possessed itclearly--was for ever among the sacred books, although too long he wasas a star vainly sought for in a cloudy region, yet did for a short timestarlike reappear--and on his death-bed he knew us, and the other mortalcreatures weeping beside him, and that there was One who died to savesinners. 

Let us away--let us away from this overpowering place--and make ourescape from such unendurable sadness. Is this fit celebration of merryMay-day? Is this the spirit in which we ought to look over the bosom ofthe earth, all teeming with buds and flowers just as man's heart shouldbe teeming--and why not ours--with hopes and joys? Yet beautiful as thisMay-day is--and all the country round which it so tenderly illumines, wecame not hither, a solitary pilgrim from our distant home, to indulgeourself in a joyful happiness. No, hither came we purposely to mournamong the scenes which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. Andtherefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all lifeis rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in thecloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after alife of wandering--and maybe not without sorrow--comes back to gaze onthe banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers ofParadise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still--for, praise be to Heaven!the sense of beauty is still strong within us--and methinks we couldfeel the beauty of this scene though our heart were broken. 

SACRED POETRY. 

CHAPTER I. 

We have often exposed the narrowness and weakness of that dogma, sopertinaciously adhered to by persons of cold hearts and limitedunderstandings, that Religion is not a fit theme for poetical genius, and that Sacred Poetry is beyond the powers of uninspired man. We do notknow that the grounds on which that dogma stands have ever been formallystated by any writer but Samuel Johnson; and therefore with all respect, nay, veneration, for his memory, we shall now shortly examine hisstatement, which, though, as we think, altogether unsatisfactory andsophistical, is yet a splendid specimen of false reasoning, andtherefore worthy of being exposed and overthrown. Dr Johnson was notoften utterly wrong in his mature and considerate judgments respectingany subject of paramount importance to the virtue and happiness ofmankind. He was a good and wise being; but sometimes he did grievouslyerr; and never more so than in his vain endeavour to exclude from theprovince of poetry its noblest, highest, and holiest domain. Shut thegates of Heaven against Poetry, and her flights along this earth will befeebler and lower, --her wings clogged and heavy by the attraction ofmatter, --and her voice--like that of the caged lark, so different fromits hymning when lost to sight in the sky--will fail to call forth thedeepest responses from the sanctuary of our spirit. 

"Let no pious ear be offended, " says Johnson, "if I advance, inopposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot oftenplease. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didacticpoem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not loseit because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and thegrandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praisehis Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of thedisputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of thedescription is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, orthe intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Manadmitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits ofhis Reedemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer. 

"The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producingsomething unexpected, surprises and delights. The topics of devotion arefew, and being few are universally known: but few as they are, they canbe made no more; they can receive no grace from novelty of sentiment, and very little from novelty of expression. Poetry pleases by exhibitingan idea more grateful in the mind than things themselves afford. Thiseffect proceeds from the display of those parts of nature which attract, and the concealment of those that repel, the imagination; but religionmust be shown as it is; suppression and addition equally corrupt it; andsuch as it is, it is known already. From poetry the reader justlyexpects, and from good poetry always obtains, the enlargement of hiscomprehension and the elevation of his fancy; but this is rarely to behoped by Christians from metrical devotion. Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the name of the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted; Infinity cannot be amplified; Perfectioncannot be improved. 

"The employments of pious meditation are _faith_, _thanksgiving_, _repentance_, and _supplication_. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot beinvested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyfulof all holy effusions, yet addressed to a Being without passions, isconfined to a few modes, and is to be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, is not at leisurefor cadences and epithets. Supplication to man may diffuse itselfthrough many topics of persuasion; but supplication to God can only cryfor mercy. 

"Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found that the most simpleexpression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustre and its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something more excellent thanitself. All that pious verse can do is to help the memory and delightthe ear, and for these purposes it may be very useful; but it suppliesnothing to the mind. The ideas of Christian Theology are too simple foreloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; torecommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirrorthe sidereal hemisphere. "

Here Dr Johnson confesses that sacred subjects are not unfit--that theyare fit--for didactic and descriptive poetry. Now, this is a very wideand comprehensive admission; and being a right, and natural, and justadmission, it cannot but strike the thoughtful reader at once asdestructive of the great dogma by which Sacred Poetry is condemned. Thedoctrines of Religion may be defended, he allows, in a didacticpoem--and, pray, how can they be defended unless they are alsoexpounded? And how can they be expounded without being steeped, as itwere, in religious feeling? Let such a poem be as didactic as canpossibly be imagined, still it must be pervaded by the very spirit ofreligion--and that spirit, breathing throughout the whole, must also befrequently expressed, vividly, and passionately, and profoundly, inparticular passages; and if so, must it not be, in the strictest sense, a Sacred poem?

"But, " says Dr Johnson, "the subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety. " Why introduce the word "disputation, " as ifit characterised justly and entirely all didactic poetry? And who everheard of an essential distinction between piety, and motives to piety?Mr James Montgomery, in a very excellent Essay prefixed to that mostinteresting collection, "The Christian Poet, " well observes, that"motives to piety must be of the _nature_ of piety, otherwise they couldnever incite to it--the precepts and sanctions of the Gospel might aswell be denied to be any part of the Gospel. " And, for our own parts, wescarcely know what piety is, separated from its motives--or how, soseparated, it could be expressed in words at all. 

With regard, again, to descriptive poetry, the argument, if argument itmay be called, is still more lame and impotent. "A poet, " it is said, "may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of thespring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and therevolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no readershall lay aside. " Most true he may; but then we are told, "the subjectof the description is not God, but the works of God!" Alas! whattrifling--what miserable trifling is this! In the works of God, God isfelt to be by us His creatures, whom He has spiritually endowed. Wecannot look on them, even in our least elevated moods, without someshadow of love or awe; in our most elevated moods, we gaze on them withreligion. By the very constitution of our intelligence, the effectsspeak of the cause. We are led by nature up to nature's God. The Bibleis not the only revelation--there is another--dimmer but not lessdivine--for surely the works are as the words of God. No great poet, indescribing the glories and beauties of the external world, is forgetfulof the existence and attributes of the Most High. That thought, and thatfeeling, animate all his strains; and though he dare not to describe Himthe Ineffable, he cannot prevent his poetry from being beautifullycoloured by devotion, tinged by piety--in its essence it is religious. 

It appears, then, that the qualifications or restrictions with which DrJohnson is willing to allow that there may be didactic and descriptivesacred poetry, are wholly unmeaning, and made to depend on distinctionswhich have no existence. 

Of narrative poetry of a sacred kind, Mr Montgomery well remarks, Johnson makes no mention, except it be implicated with the statement, that "the ideas of Christian Theology are too sacred for fiction--asentiment more just than the admirers of Milton and Klopstock arewilling to admit, without almost plenary indulgence in favour of thesegreat, but not infallible authorities. " Here Mr Montgomery expresseshimself very cautiously--perhaps rather too much so--for he leaves us inthe dark about his own belief. But this we do not hesitate to say, thatthough there is great danger of wrong being done to the ideas ofChristian theology by poetry--a wrong which must be most painful to thewhole inner being of a Christian; yet that there seems no necessity ofsuch a wrong, and that a great poet, guarded by awe, and fear, and love, may move his wings unblamed, and to the glory of God, even among themost awful sanctities of his faith. These sanctities may be too awfulfor "fiction"--but fiction is not the word here, any more thandisputation was the word there. Substitute for it the word poetry; andthen, reflecting on that of Isaiah and of David, conversant with theHoly of Holies, we feel that it need not profane those other sanctities, if it be, like its subject, indeed divine. True, that those bards wereinspired--with them

 ----"the name Of prophet and of poet was the same;"

but still, the power in the soul of a great poet, not in that highest ofsenses inspired, is, we may say it, of the same kind--inferior but indegree; for religion itself is always an inspiration. It is felt to beso in the prose of holy men--Why not in their poetry?

If these views be just, and we have expressed them "boldly, yethumbly"--all that remains to be set aside of Dr Johnson's argument is, "that contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and man, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Redeemer, is already in a higher state thanpoetry can confer. "

There is something very fine and true in the sentiment here; but thesentiment is only true in some cases, not in all. There are differentdegrees in the pious moods of the most pious spirit that ever soughtcommunion with its God and its Saviour. Some of these are awe-struck andspeechless. That line, "Come, then, expressive silence, muse his praise!"

denies the power of poetry to be adequate to adoration, while the lineitself is most glorious poetry. The temper even of our fallen spiritsmay be too divine for any words. Then the creature kneels mute beforehis Maker. But are there not other states of mind in which we feelourselves drawn near to God, when there is no such awful speechlessnesslaid upon us--but when, on the contrary, our tongues are loosened, andthe heart that burns within will speak? Will speak, perhaps, in song--inthe inspiration of our piety breathing forth hymns and psalms--poetryindeed--if there be poetry on this earth? Why may we not say that thespirits of just men made perfect--almost perfect, by such visitationsfrom heaven--will break forth--"rapt, inspired, " into poetry which maybe called holy, sacred, divine?

We feel as if treading on forbidden ground--and therefore speakreverently; but still we do not fear to say, that between that higheststate of contemplative piety which must be mute, down to that loweststate of the same feeling which evanishes and blends into mere humanemotion as between creature and creature, there are infinite degrees ofemotion which may be all embodied, without offence, in words--and if soembodied, with sincerity and humility, will be poetry, and poetry too ofthe most beautiful and affecting kind. 

"Man, admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the meritsof his Redeemer, is already in a higher state than poetry can confer. "Most true, indeed. But, though poetry did not confer that higher state, poetry may nevertheless, in some measure and to some degree, breatheaudibly some of the emotions which constitute its blessedness; poetrymay even help the soul to ascend to those celestial heights; becausepoetry may prepare it, and dispose it to expand itself, and open itselfout to the highest and holiest influences of religion; for poetry theremay be inspired directly from the word of God, using the language andstrong in the spirit of that word--unexistent but for the Old and theNew Testament. 

We agree with Mr Montgomery, that the sum of Dr Johnson's argumentamounts to this--that contemplative piety, or the intercourse betweenGod and the human soul, _cannot be poetical_. But here we at once askourselves, what does he mean by poetical? "The essence of poetry, " hesays, "is invention--such invention as, by producing somethingunexpected, surprises and delights. " Here, again, there is confusion andsophistry. There is much high and noble poetry of which invention, suchinvention as is here spoken of, is not the essence. Devotional poetry isof that character. Who would require something unexpected and surprisingin a strain of thanksgiving, repentance, or supplication? Such feelingsas these, if rightly expressed, may exalt or prostrate the soul, withoutmuch--without any aid from the imagination--except in as far as theimagination will work under the power of every great emotion that doesnot absolutely confound mortal beings, and humble them down even belowthe very dust. There may be "no grace from novelty of sentiment, " and"very little from novelty of expression"--to use Dr Johnson's words--forit is neither grace nor novelty that the spirit of the poet isseeking--"the strain we hear is of a higher mood;" and "few as thetopics of devotion may be, " (but are they few?) and "universally known, "they are all commensurate--nay, far more than commensurate, with thewhole power of the soul--never can they become unaffecting while it isour lot to die;--even from the lips of ordinary men, the words that flowon such topics flow effectually, if they are earnest, simple, andsincere; but from the lips of genius, inspired by religion, who shalldare to say that, on such topics, words have not flowed that are felt tobe poetry almost worthy of the Celestial Ardours around the Throne, andby their majesty to "link us to the radiant angels, " than whom we weremade but a little lower, and with whom we may, when time shall be nomore, be equalled in heaven?

We do not hesitate to say, that Dr Johnson's doctrine of the _effect_ ofpoetry is wholly false. If it do indeed please, by exhibiting an ideamore grateful to the mind than things themselves afford, that is onlybecause the things themselves are imperfect--more so than suits theaspirations of a spirit, always aspiring, because immortal, to a highersphere--a higher order of being. But when God himself is, with all aweand reverence, made the subject of song--then it is the office--thesacred office of poetry--not to exalt the subject, but to exalt the soulthat contemplates it. That poetry can do, else why does human natureglory in the "Paradise Lost?"

"Whatever is great, desirable, or tremendous, is comprised in the nameof the Supreme Being. Omnipotence cannot be exalted--Infinity cannot beamplified--Perfection cannot be improved. " Should not this go toprohibit all speech--all discourse--all sermons concerning the divineattributes? Immersed as they are in matter, our souls wax dull, and theattributes of the Deity are but as mere names. Those attributes cannot, indeed, be exalted by poetry. "The perfection of God cannot beimproved"--nor was it worthy of so wise a man so to speak; but while theCreator abideth in His own incomprehensible Being, the creature, toowilling to crawl blind and hoodwinked along the earth, like a worm, maybe raised by the voice of the charmer, "some sweet singer of Israel, "from his slimy track, and suddenly be made to soar on wings up into theether. 

Would Dr Johnson have declared the uselessness of Natural Theology? Onthe same ground he must have done so, to preserve consistency in hisdoctrine. Do we, by exploring wisdom, and power, and goodness, in allanimate and inanimate creation, exalt Omnipotence, amplify infinity, orimprove perfection? We become ourselves exalted by such divinecontemplations--by knowing the structure of a rose-leaf or of aninsect's wing. We are reminded of what, alas! we too often forget, andexclaim, "Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name!" Andwhile science explores, may not poetry celebrate the glories and themercies of our God?

The argument against which we contend gets weaker and weaker as itproceeds--the gross misconception of the nature of poetry on which it isfounded becomes more and more glaring--the paradoxes, dealt out asconfidently as if they were self-evident truths, more and more repulsivealike to our feelings and our understandings. "The employments of piousmeditation are faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication. Faith, invariably uniform, cannot be invested by fancy with decorations. Thanksgiving, though the most joyful of all holy effusions, yetaddressed to a Being superior to us, is confined to a few modes, and isto be felt rather than expressed. Repentance, trembling in the presenceof the Judge, is not at leisure for cadences and epithets. Supplicationto men may diffuse itself through many topics of persuasion; butsupplication to God can only cry for mercy. " What a vain attemptauthoritatively to impose upon the common sense of mankind! Faith is notinvariably uniform. To preserve it unwavering--unquaking--to save itfrom lingering or from sudden death--is the most difficult service towhich the frail spirit--frail even in its greatest strength--is calledevery day--every hour--of this troubled, perplexing, agitating, andoften most unintelligible life! "Liberty of will, " says Jeremy Taylor, "is like the motion of a magnetic needle towards the north, full oftrembling and uncertainty till it be fixed in the beloved point; itwavers as long as it is free, and is at rest when it can choose no more. It is humility and truth to allow to man this liberty; and, therefore, for this we may lay our faces in the dust, and confess that our dignityand excellence suppose misery, and are imperfection, but the instrumentand capacity of all duty and all virtue. " Happy he whose faith isfinally "fixed in the beloved point!" But even of that faith, whathinders the poet whom it has blessed to sing? While, of its tremblings, and veerings, and variations, why may not the poet, whose faith hasexperienced, and still may experience them all, breathe many amelancholy and mournful lay, assuaged, ere the close, by the descent ofpeace?

Thanksgiving, it is here admitted, is the "most joyful of all holyeffusions;" and the admission is sufficient to prove that it cannot be"confined to a few modes. " "Out of the fulness of the heart the tonguespeaketh;" and though at times the heart will be too full for speech, yet as often even the coldest lips prove eloquent in gratitude--yea, thevery dumb do speak--nor, in excess of joy, know the miracle that hasbeen wrought upon them by the power of their own mysterious and highenthusiasm. 

That "repentance, trembling in the presence of the Judge, should not beat leisure for cadences and epithets, " is in one respect true; butnobody supposes that during such moments--or hours--poetry is composed;and surely when they have passed away, which they must do, and the mindis left free to meditate upon them, and to recall them as shadows of thepast, there is nothing to prevent them from being steadily and calmlycontemplated, and depictured in somewhat softened and altogetherendurable light, so as to become proper subjects even of poetry--thatis, proper subjects of such expression as human nature is prompted toclothe with all its emotions, as soon as they have subsided, after aswell or a storm, into a calm, either placid altogether, or stillbearing traces of the agitation that has ceased, and have left the wholebeing self-possessed, and both capable and desirous of indulging itselfin an after-emotion at once melancholy and sublime. Then, repentancewill not only be "at leisure for cadences and epithets, " but cadencesand epithets will of themselves move harmonious numbers, and give birth, if genius as well as piety be there, to religious poetry. Cadences andepithets are indeed often sought for with care, and pains, andingenuity; but they often come unsought; and never more certainly andmore easily than when the mind recovers itself from some oppressivemood, and, along with a certain sublime sadness, is restored to the fullpossession of powers that had for a short severe season beenoverwhelmed, but afterwards look back, in very inspiration, on thefeelings that during their height were nearly unendurable, and thenunfit for any outward and palpable form. The criminal trembling at thebar of an earthly tribunal, and with remorse and repentance receivinghis doom, might, in like manner, be wholly unable to set his emotions tothe measures of speech; but when recovered from the shock by pardon, orreprieve, or submission, is there any reason why he should not calmlyrecall the miseries and the prostration of spirit attendant on thathour, and give them touching and pathetic expression?

"Supplication to man may diffuse itself through many topics ofpersuasion; but supplication to God can only cry for mercy. " And in thatcry we say that there may be poetry; for the God of Mercy suffers hiscreatures to approach his throne in supplication, with words which theyhave learned when supplicating one another; and the feeling of beingforgiven, which we are graciously permitted to believe may followsupplication, and spring from it, may vent itself in many various andmost affecting forms of speech. Men will supplicate God in many otherwords besides those of doubt and of despair; hope will mingle withprayer; and hope, as it glows, and burns, and expands, will speak inpoetry--else poetry there is none proceeding from any of our most sacredpassions. 

Dr Johnson says, "Of sentiments purely religious, it will be found thatthe most simple expression is the most sublime. Poetry loses its lustreand its power, because it is applied to the decoration of something moreexcellent than itself. " Here he had in his mind the most false notionsof poetry, which he had evidently imagined to be an art despisingsimplicity--whereas simplicity is its very soul. Simple expression, hetruly says, is in religion most sublime--and why should not poetry besimple in its expression? Is it not always so--when the mood of mind itexpresses is simple, concise, and strong, and collected into one greatemotion? But he uses--as we see--the terms "lustre" and "decoration"--asif poetry necessarily, by its very nature, was always ambitious andornate; whereas we all know, that it is often in all its glory directand simple as the language of very childhood, and for that reasonsublime. 

With such false notions of poetry, it is not to be wondered at that DrJohnson, enlightened man as he was, should have concluded his argumentwith this absurdity--"The ideas of Christian theology are too simple foreloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament; torecommend them by tropes and figures, is to magnify by a concave mirrorthe sidereal hemisphere. " No. Simple as they are--on them have beenbestowed, and by them awakened, the highest strains of eloquence--andhere we hail the shade of Jeremy Taylor alone--one of the highest thatever soared from earth to heaven; sacred as they are, they have not beendesecrated by the fictions--so to call them--of John Milton; majestic asare the heavens, their majesty has not been lowered by the ornamentsthat the rich genius of the old English divines has so profusely hungaround them, like dewdrops glistening on the fruitage of the Tree ofLife. Tropes and figures are nowhere more numerous and refulgent than inthe Scriptures themselves, from Isaiah to St John; and, magnificent asare the "sidereal heavens" when the eye looks aloft, they are not to oureyes less so, nor less lovely, when reflected in the bosom of a stilllake or the slumbering ocean. 

This statement of facts destroys at once all Dr Johnson's splendidsophistry--splendid at first sight--but on closer inspection a merehaze, mist, or smoke, illuminated by an artificial lustre. How far moretruly, and how far more sublimely, does Milton, "that mighty orb ofsong, " speak of his own divine gift--the gift of Poetry! "Theseabilities are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, and are ofpower to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue andpublic civility; to allay the perturbation of the mind, and set theaffections to a right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns thethrone and equipage of God's Almightiness, and what he suffers to bewrought with high providence in his Church; to sing victorious agoniesof Martyrs and Saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplorethe general relapse of kingdoms and states from virtue and God's trueworship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, and invirtue amiable or grave; whatsoever hath passion, or admiration in allthe changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wilysubtleties and reflections of men's thoughts from within; all thesethings, with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out anddescribe--Teaching over the whole book of morality and virtue, throughall instances of example, with such delight to those, especially of softand delicious temper, who will not so much as look upon Truth herselfunless they see her elegantly dressed; that, whereas the paths ofhonesty and good life that appear now rugged and difficult, appear toall men easy and pleasant, though they were rugged and difficultindeed. "

It is not easy to believe that no great broad lights have been thrown onthe mysteries of men's minds since the days of the great poets, moralists, and metaphysicians of the ancient world. We seem to feel moreprofoundly than they--to see, as it were, into a new world. The thingsof that world are of such surpassing worth, that in certain awe-struckmoods we regard them as almost above the province of Poetry. Since therevelation of Christianity, all moral thought has been sanctified byReligion. Religion has given it a purity, a solemnity, a sublimity, which, even among the noblest of the heathen, we shall look for in vain. The knowledge that shone but by fits and dimly on the eyes of Socratesand Plato, "that rolled in vain to find the light, " has descended overmany lands into "the huts where poor men lie"--and thoughts are familiarthere, beneath the low and smoky roofs, higher far than ever flowed fromthe lips of Grecian sage meditating among the magnificence of hispillared temples. The whole condition and character of the Human Being, in Christian countries, has been raised up to a loftier elevation; andhe may be looked at in the face without a sense of degradation, evenwhen he wears the aspect of poverty and distress. Since that Religionwas given us, and not before, has been felt the meaning of that sublimeexpression--The Brotherhood of Man. 

Yet it is just as true that there is as much misery and suffering inChristendom--nay, far more of them all--than troubled and tore men'shearts during the reign of all those superstitions and idolatries. Butwith what different feelings is it all thought of--spoken of--lookedat--alleviated--repented--expiated--atoned for--now! In the olden time, such was the prostration of the "million, " that it was only when seen inhigh places that even Guilt and Sin were felt to be appalling;--Remorsewas the privilege of Kings and Princes--and the Furies shook theirscourges but before the eyes of the high-born, whose crimes had broughteclipse across the ancestral glories of some ancient line. 

But we now know that there is but one origin from which flow alldisastrous issues, alike to the king and the beggar. It is sin that does"with the lofty equalise the low;" and the same deep-felt community ofguilt and groans which renders Religion awful, has given to poetry in alower degree something of the same character--has made it far moreprofoundly tender, more overpoweringly pathetic, more humane andthoughtful far, more humble as well as more high, like Christian Charitymore comprehensive; nay, we may say, like Christian Faith, felt by thoseto whom it is given to be from on high; and if not utterly destroyed, darkened and miserably weakened by a wicked or vicious life. 

We may affirm, then, that as human nature has been so greatly purifiedand elevated by the Christian Religion, Poetry, which deals with humannature in all its dearest and most intimate concerns, must have partakenof that purity and that elevation--and that it may now be a far holierand more sacred inspiration, than when it was fabled to be the gift ofApollo and the Muses. We may not circumscribe its sphere. To whatcerulean heights shall not the wing of Poetry soar? Into whatdungeon-gloom shall she not descend? If such be her powers andprivileges, shall she not be the servant and minister of Religion?

If from moral fictions of life Religion be altogether excluded, then itwould indeed be a waste of words to show that they must be worse thanworthless. They must be, not imperfect merely, but false; and not falsemerely, but calumnious against human nature. The agonies of passionfling men down to the dust on their knees, or smite them motionless asstone statues, sitting alone in their darkened chambers of despair. Butsooner or later, all eyes, all hearts, look for comfort to God. Thecoldest metaphysical analyst could not avoid _that_, in his sageenumeration of "each particular hair" that is twisted and untwisted byhim into a sort of moral tie; and surely the impassioned andphilosophical poet will not, dare not, for the spirit that is withinhim, exclude _that_ from his elegies, his hymns, and his songs, which, whether mournful or exulting, are inspired by the life-long, life-deepconviction, that all the greatness of the present is but for thefuture--that the praises of this passing earth are worthy of his lyreonly because it is overshadowed by the eternal heavens. 

But though the total exclusion of Religion from Poetry aspiring to be apicture of the life or soul of man, be manifestly destructive of itsvery essence--how, it may be asked, shall we set bounds to thisspirit--how shall we limit it--measure it--and accustom it to the curbof critical control? If Religion be indeed all-in-all, and there are fewwho openly deny it, must we, nevertheless, deal with it only inallusion--hint it as if we were half afraid of its spirit, halfashamed--and cunningly contrive to save our credit as Christians, without subjecting ourselves to the condemnation of critics, whosescorn, even in this enlightened age, has--the more is the pity--even bymen conscious of their genius and virtue, been feared as more fatal thandeath?

No: Let there be no compromise between false taste and true Religion. Better to be condemned by all the periodical publications in GreatBritain than your own conscience. Let the dunce, with diseased spleen, who edits one obscure Review, revile and rail at you to his heart'sdiscontent, in hollow league with his black-biled brother, who, sickenedby your success, has long laboured in vain to edit another, still moreunpublishable--but do you hold the even tenor of your way, assured thatthe beauty which nature, and the Lord of nature, have revealed to youreyes and your heart, when sown abroad will not be suffered to perish, but will have everlasting life. Your books--humble and unpretendingthough they be--yet here and there a page not uninspired by the spiritof Truth, and Faith, and Hope, and Charity--that is, by Religion--willbe held up before the ingle light, close to the eyes of the piouspatriarch, sitting with his children's children round his knees--norwill any one sentiment, chastened by that fire that tempers the sacredlinks that bind together the brotherhood of man, escape the solemnsearch of a soul, simple and strong in its Bible-taught wisdom, andhappy to feel and own communion of holy thought with one unknown--evenperhaps by name--who although dead yet speaketh--and, withoutsuperstition, is numbered among the saints of that lowly household. 

He who knows that he writes in the fear of God and in the love of man, will not arrest the thoughts that flow from his pen, because he knowsthat they may--will be--insulted and profaned by the name of cant, andhe himself held up as a hypocrite. In some hands, ridicule is indeed aterrible weapon. It is terrible in the hands of indignant genius, branding the audacious forehead of falsehood or pollution. But ridiculein the hands either of cold-blooded or infuriated Malice, is harmless asa birch-rod in the palsied fingers of a superannuated beldam, who in herblear-eyed dotage has lost her school. The Bird of Paradise might floatin the sunshine unharmed all its beautiful life long, although all thesportsmen of Cockaigne were to keep firing at the star-like plumageduring the Christmas holydays of a thousand years. 

We never are disposed not to enjoy a religious spirit in metricalcomposition, but when induced to suspect that it is not sincere; andthen we turn away from the hypocrite, just as we do from a piouspretender in the intercourse of life. Shocking it is, indeed, to see"fools rush in where angels fear to tread;" nor have we words to expressour disgust and horror at the sight of fools, not rushing in among thoseawful sanctities before which angels vail their faces with their wings, but mincing in, with red slippers and flowered dressing-gowns--would-befashionables, with crow-quills in hands like those of milliners, andrings on their fingers--afterwards extending their notes into SacredPoems for the use of the public--penny-a-liners, reporting the judgmentsof Providence as they would the proceedings of a police court. 

SACRED POETRY. 

CHAPTER II. 

The distinctive character of poetry, it has been said, and creditedalmost universally, is _to please_. That they who have studied the lawsof thought and passion should have suffered themselves to be deluded byan unmeaning word is mortifying enough; but it is more thanmortifying--it perplexes and confounds--to think that poets themselves, and poets too of the highest order, have declared the same degradingbelief of what is the scope and tendency, the end and aim of their owndivine art--forsooth, _to please_! Pleasure is no more the end ofpoetry, than it is the end of knowledge, or of virtue, or of religion, or of this world. The end of poetry is pleasure, delight, instruction, expansion, elevation, honour, glory, happiness here and hereafter, or itis nothing. Is the end of "Paradise Lost" to please? Is the end ofDante's Divine Comedy to please? Is the end of the Psalms of David toplease? Or of the songs of Isaiah? Yet it is probable that poetry hasoften been injured or vitiated by having been written in the spirit ofthis creed. It relieved poets from the burden of their duty--from theresponsibility of their endowments--from the conscience that is ingenius. We suspect that this doctrine has borne especially hard on allsacred poetry, disinclined poets to devoting their genius to it--andconsigned, if not to oblivion, to neglect, much of what is great in thatmagnificent walk. For if the masters of the Holy Harp are to strike itbut to please--if their high inspirations are to be deadened and draggeddown by the prevalent power of such a mean and unworthy aim--they willeither be contented to awaken a few touching tones of "those strainsthat once did sweet in Zion glide"--unwilling to prolong and deepen theminto the diapason of praise--or they will deposit their lyre within thegloom of the sanctuary, and leave unawakened "the soul of music sleepingon its strings. "

All arguments, or rather objections to, sacred poetry, dissolve as youinternally look at them, like unabiding mist-shapes, or rather likeimagined mirage where no mirage is, but the mind itself makes oculardeceptions for its own amusement. By sacred poetry is mostly meantScriptural; but there are, and always have been, conceited and callouscritics, who would exclude all religious feelings from poetry, andindeed from prose too, compendiously calling them all cant. Had suchcriticasters been right, all great nations would not have so gloried intheir great bards. Poetry, it is clear, embraces all we can experience;and every high, impassioned, imaginative, intellectual, and moral stateof being becomes religious before it passes away, provided it be leftfree to seek the empyrean, and not adstricted to the glebe by somesevere slavery of condition, which destroys the desire of ascent by thesame inexorable laws that palsy the power, and reconcile the toilers tothe doom of the dust. If all the states of being that poetry illustratesdo thus tend, of their own accord, towards religious elevation, all highpoetry must be religious; and so it is, for its whole language isbreathing of a life "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot which mencall earth;" and the feelings, impulses, motives, aspirations, obligations, duties, privileges, which it shadows forth or embodies, enveloping them in solemn shade or attractive light, are all, directlyor indirectly, manifestly or secretly, allied with the sense of theimmortality of the soul, and the belief of a future state of reward andretribution. Extinguish that sense and that belief in a poet's soul, andhe may hang up his harp. 

Among the great living poets, Wordsworth is the one whose poetry is tous the most inexplicable--with all our reverence for his transcendentgenius, we do not fear to say the most open to the most seriouscharges--on the score of its religion. From the first line of the"Lyrical Ballads" to the last of "The Excursion"--it is avowedly onesystem of thought and feeling, embracing his experiences of human life, and his meditations on the moral government of this world. The humanheart--the human mind--the human soul--to use his own fine words--is"the haunt and main region of his song. " There are few, perhaps none ofour affections--using that term in its largest sense--which have notbeen either slightly touched upon, or fully treated, by Wordsworth. Inhis poetry, therefore, we behold an image of what, to his eye, appearsto be human life. Is there, or is there not, some great and lamentabledefect in that image, marring both the truth and beauty of therepresentation? We think there is--and that it lies in his Religion. 

In none of Wordsworth's poetry, previous to his "Excursion, " is thereany allusion made, except of the most trivial and transient kind, toRevealed Religion. He certainly cannot be called a Christian poet. Thehopes that lie beyond the grave--and the many holy and awful feelings inwhich on earth these hopes are enshrined and fed, are rarely if everpart of the character of any of the persons--male or female--old oryoung--brought before us in his beautiful Pastorals. Yet all the mostinteresting and affecting ongoings of this life are exquisitelydelineated--and innumerable of course are the occasions on which, hadthe thoughts and feelings of revealed religion been in Wordsworth'sheart during the hours of inspiration--and he often has written like aman inspired--they must have found expression in his strains; and thepersonages, humble or high, that figure in his representations, wouldhave been, in their joys or their sorrows, their temptations and theirtrials, Christians. But most assuredly this is not the case; thereligion of this great Poet--in all his poetry published previous to"The Excursion"--is but the "Religion of the Woods. "

In "The Excursion, " his religion is brought forward--prominently andconspicuously--in many elaborate dialogues between Priest, Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary. And a very high religion it often is; but is itChristianity? No--it is not. There are glimpses given of some of theChristian doctrines; just as if the various philosophical disquisitions, in which the Poem abounds, would be imperfect without some allusion tothe Christian creed. The interlocutors--eloquent as they all are--saybut little on that theme; nor do they show--if we except thePriest--much interest in it--any solicitude; they may all, for anythingthat appears to the contrary, be deists. 

Now, perhaps, it may be said that Wordsworth was deterred from enteringon such a theme by the awe of his spirit. But there is no appearance ofthis having been the case in any one single passage in the whole poem. Nor could it have been the case with such a man--a man privileged, bythe power God has bestowed upon him, to speak unto all the nations ofthe earth, on all themes, however high and holy, which the children ofmen can feel and understand. Christianity, during almost all theirdisquisitions, lay in the way of all the speakers, as they keptjourneying among the hills, "On man, on nature, and on human life, Musing in Solitude!"

But they, one and all, either did not perceive it, or, perceiving it, looked upon it with a cold and indifferent regard, and passed by intothe poetry breathing from the dewy woods, or lowering from the cloudyskies. Their talk is of "Palmyra central, in the desert, " rather than ofJerusalem. On the mythology of the Heathen much beautiful poetry isbestowed, but none on the theology of the Christian. 

Yet there is no subject too high for Wordsworth's muse. In the prefaceto "The Excursion, " he says daringly--we fear too daringly, --

 "Urania, I shall need Thy guidance, or a greater muse, if such Descend to earth, or dwell in highest heaven! For I must tread on shadowy ground, must sink Deep--and aloft ascending, breathe in worlds To which the heaven of heavens is but a veil. All strength--all terror--single or in bands, That ever was put forth in personal form, Jehovah with his thunder, and the choir Of shouting angels, and the empyreal thrones; I passed them unalarm'd!"

Has the poet, who believes himself entitled to speak thus of the powerand province given to him to put forth and to possess, spoken inconsonance with such a strain, by avoiding, in part of the very work towhich he so triumphantly appeals, the Christian Revelation? Nothingcould have reconciled us to a burst of such--audacity--we use the wordconsiderately--but the exhibition of a spirit divinely imbued with theChristian faith. For what else, we ask, but the truths beheld by theChristian Faith, can be beyond those "personal forms, " "beyond Jehovah, ""the choirs of shouting angels, " and the "empyreal thrones?"

This omission is felt the more deeply--the more sadly--from suchintroduction as there is of Christianity; for one of the books of "TheExcursion" begins with a very long, and a very noble eulogy on theChurch Establishment in England. How happened it that he who pronouncedsuch eloquent panegyric--that they who so devoutly inclined their ear toimbibe it--should have been all contented with

 "That basis laid, these principles of faith Announced, "

and yet throughout the whole course of their discussions, before andafter, have forgotten apparently that there was either Christianity or aChristian Church in the world?

We do not hesitate to say, that the thoughtful and sincere student ofthis great poet's works, must regard such omission--such inconsistencyor contradiction--with more than the pain of regret; for there is norelief afforded to our defrauded hearts from any quarter to which we canlook. A pledge has been given, that all the powers and privileges of aChristian poet shall be put forth and exercised for our behoof--for ourdelight and instruction; all other poetry is to sink away before theheavenly splendour; Urania, or a greater muse, is invoked; and after allthis solemn, and more than solemn preparation made for our initiationinto the mysteries, we are put off with a well-merited encomium on theChurch of England, from Bishop to Curate inclusive; and though we havemuch fine poetry, and some high philosophy, it would puzzle the mostingenious to detect much, or any, Christian religion. 

Should the opinion boldly avowed be challenged, we shall enter intofurther exposition and illustration of it; meanwhile, we confineourselves to some remarks on one of the most elaborate tales of domesticsuffering in "The Excursion. " In the story of Margaret, containing, webelieve, more than four hundred lines--a tolerably long poem initself--though the whole and entire state of a poor deserted wife andmother's heart, for year after year of "hope deferred, that maketh theheart sick, " is described, or rather dissected, with an almost cruelanatomy--not one quivering fibre being left unexposed--all thefluctuating, and finally all the constant agitations laid bare and nakedthat carried her at last lingeringly to the grave--there is not--exceptone or two weak lines, that seem to have been afterwards purposelydropped in--one single syllable about Religion. Was Margaret aChristian?--Let the answer be yes--as good a Christian as ever kneeledin the small mountain chapel, in whose churchyard her body now waits forthe resurrection. If she was--then the picture painted of her and heragonies, is a libel not only on her character, but on the character ofall other poor Christian women in this Christian land. Placed as shewas, for so many years, in the clutches of so many passions--she surelymust have turned sometimes--ay, often, and often, and often, else hadshe sooner left the clay--towards her Lord and Saviour. But of such"comfort let no man speak, " seems to have been the principle of MrWordsworth; and the consequence is, that this, perhaps the mostelaborate picture he ever painted of any conflict within any one humanheart, is, with all its pathos, repulsive to every religiousmind--_that_ being wanting without which the entire representation isvitiated, and necessarily false to nature--to virtue--to resignation--tolife--and to death. These may seem strong words--but we are ready todefend them in the face of all who may venture to impugn their truth. 

This utter absence of Revealed Religion, where it ought to have beenall-in-all--for in such trials in real life it is all-in-all, or weregard the existence of sin or sorrow with repugnance--shocks far deeperfeelings within us than those of taste, and throws over the whole poemto which the tale of Margaret belongs, an unhappy suspicion ofhollowness and insincerity in that poetical religion, which at the bestis a sorry substitute indeed for the light that is from heaven. Aboveall, it flings, as indeed we have intimated, an air of absurdity overthe orthodox Church-of-Englandism--for once to quote a not inexpressivebarbarism of Bentham--which every now and then breaks out either inpassing compliment--amounting to but a bow--or in eloquent laudation, during which the poet appears to be prostrate on his knees. He speaksnobly of cathedrals, and minsters, and so forth, reverendly adorningall the land; but in none--no, not one of the houses of the humble, thehovels of the poor into which he takes us--is the religion preached inthose cathedrals and minsters, and chanted in prayer to the pealingorgan, represented as the power that in peace supports the roof-tree, lightens the hearth, and is the guardian, the tutelary spirit of thelowly dwelling. Can this be right? Impossible. And when we find theChristian religion thus excluded from Poetry, otherwise as good as everwas produced by human genius, what are we to think of the Poet, and ofthe world of thought and feeling, fancy and imagination, in which hebreathes, nor fears to declare to all men that he believes himself to beone of the order of the High Priests of nature?

Shall it be said, in justification of the poet, that he presents a veryinteresting state of mind, sometimes found actually existing, and doesnot pretend to present a model of virtue?--that there are miseries whichshut some hearts against religion, sensibilities which, being tooseverely tried, are disinclined, at least at certain stages of theirsuffering, to look to that source for comfort?--that this is humannature, and the description only follows it?--that when "in peace andcomfort" her best hopes were directed to "the God in heaven, " and thather habit in that respect was only broken up by the stroke of hercalamity, causing such a derangement of her mental power as shoulddeeply interest the sympathies?--in short, that the poet is an artist, and that the privation of all comfort from religion completes thepicture of her desolation?

Would that such defence were of avail! But of whom does the poet sopathetically speak?

 "Of one whose stock Of virtues bloom'd beneath this lowly roof. She was a woman of a steady mind, Tender and deep in her excess of love; Not speaking much--pleased rather with the joy Of her own thoughts. By some especial care Her temper had been framed, as if to make A Being who, by adding love to fear, Might live on earth a life of happiness. Her wedded partner lack'd not on his side The humble worth that satisfied her heart-- Frugal, affectionate, sober, and withal Keenly industrious. She with pride would tell That he was often seated at his loom In summer, ere the mower was abroad Among the dewy grass--in early spring, Ere the last star had vanish'd. They who pass'd At evening, from behind the garden fence Might hear his busy spade, which he would ply After his daily work, until the light Had fail'd, and every leaf and flower were lost In the dark hedges. So their days were spent In peace and comfort; and a pretty boy Was their best hope, next to the God in heaven. "

We are prepared by that character, so amply and beautifully drawn, topity her to the utmost demand that may be made on our pity--to judge herleniently, even if in her desertion she finally give way to inordinateand incurable grief. But we are not prepared to see her sinking fromdepth to depth of despair, in wilful abandonment to her anguish, withoutoft-repeated and long-continued passionate prayers for support ordeliverance from her trouble, to the throne of mercy. Alas! it is truethat in our happiness our gratitude to God is too often more selfishthan we think, and that in our misery it faints or dies. So is it evenwith the best of us--but surely not all life long--unless the heart hasbeen utterly crushed--the brain itself distorted in its functions, bysome calamity, under which nature's self gives way, and falls into ruinslike a rent house when the last prop is withdrawn. 

 "Nine tedious years From their first separation--nine long years She linger'd in unquiet widowhood-- A wife and widow. Needs must it have been A sore heart-wasting. "

It must indeed, and it is depicted by a master's hand. But even were itgranted that sufferings, such as hers, might, in the course of nature, have extinguished all heavenly comfort--all reliance on God and herSaviour--the process and progress of such fatal relinquishment shouldhave been shown, with all its struggles and all its agonies; if thereligion of one so good was so unavailing, its weakness should havebeen exhibited and explained, that we might have known assuredly why, inthe multitude of the thoughts within her, there was no solace for hersorrow, and how unpitying Heaven let her die of grief. 

This tale, too, is the very first told by the Pedlar to the Poet, undercircumstances of much solemnity, and with affecting note of preparation. It arises naturally from the sight of the ruined cottage near whichthey, by appointment, have met; the narrator puts his whole heart intoit, and the listener is overcome by its pathos. No remark is made onMargaret's grief, except that

 "I turn'd aside in weakness, nor had power To thank him for the tale which he had told. I stood, and leaning o'er the garden wall, Review'd that woman's sufferings; and it seem'd To comfort me, while, with a brother's love, I bless'd her in the impotence of grief. Then towards the cottage I return'd, and traced Fondly, though with an interest more mild, The sacred spirit of humanity, Which, 'mid the calm, oblivious tendencies Of nature--'mid her plants, and weeds, and flowers, And silent overgrowings, still survived. "

Such musings receive the Pedlar's approbation, and he says, --

 "My friend! enough to sorrow you have given. The purposes of wisdom ask no more. Be wise and cheerful, and no longer read The forms of things with an unworthy eye. She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here. "

As the Poet, then, was entirely satisfied with the tale, so ought to beall readers. No hint is dropped that there was anything to blame in thepoor woman's nine years' passion--no regret breathed that she had soughtnot, by means offered to all, for that peace of mind which passeth allunderstanding--no question asked, how it was that she had not communedwith her own afflicted heart, over the pages of that Book where it iswritten, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and Iwill give you rest!" The narrator had indeed said, that on revisitingher during her affliction, --

 "Her humble lot of books, Which in her cottage window, heretofore, Had been piled up against the corner panes In seemly order, now, with straggling leaves, Lay scatter'd here and there, open or shut, As they had chanced to fall. "

But he does not mention the Bible. 

What follows has always seemed to us of a questionable character:--

 "I well remember that those very plumes, Those weeds, and the high spear-grass on that wall, By mist and silent rain-drops silver'd o'er, As once I pass'd, into my heart convey'd So still an image of tranquillity, So calm and still, and look'd so beautiful Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind, _That what we feel of sorrow and despair From ruin and from change, and all the griefs The passing shows of Being leave behind_, Appear'd an idle dream, that could not live Where meditation was. I turn'd away, And walk'd along my road in happiness. "

These are fine lines; nor shall we dare, in face of them, to deny thepower of the beauty and serenity of nature to assuage the sorrow of usmortal beings, who live for awhile on her breast. Assuredly there issorrow that may be so assuaged; and the sorrow here spoken of--for poorMargaret, many years dead--was of that kind. But does not the heart of aman beat painfully, as if violence were offered to its most sacredmemories, to hear from the lips of wisdom, that "sorrow and despair fromruin and from change, and all the griefs" that we can suffer here below, appear an idle dream among plumes, and weeds, and spear-grass, andmists, and rain-drops? "Where meditation is!" What meditation? Turnthou, O child of a day! to the New Testament, and therein thou mayestfind comfort. It matters not whether a spring-bank be thy seat by RydalMere, "while heaven and earth do make one imagery, " or thou sittest inthe shadow of death, beside a tomb. 

We said, that for the present we should confine our remarks on thissubject to the story of Margaret; but they are, more or less, applicable to almost all the stories in "The Excursion. " In many of theeloquent disquisitions and harangues of the Three Friends, they carryalong with them the sympathies of all mankind; and the wisest may beenlightened by their wisdom. But what we complain of is, that neither injoy nor grief, happiness nor misery, is religion the dominant principleof thought and feeling in the character of any one human being with whomwe are made acquainted, living or dead. Of not a single one, man orwoman, are we made to feel the beauty of holiness--the power and theglory of the Christian Faith. Beings are brought before us whom we pity, respect, admire, love. The great poet is high-souled andtender-hearted--his song is pure as the morning, bright as day, solemnas night. But his inspiration is not drawn from the Book of God, butfrom the Book of Nature. Therefore it fails to sustain his genius whenventuring into the depths of tribulation and anguish. Thereforeimperfect are his most truthful delineations of sins and sorrows; andnot in his philosophy, lofty though it be, can be found alleviation orcure of the maladies that kill the soul. Therefore never will "TheExcursion" become a bosom-book, endeared to all ranks and conditions ofa Christian People, like "The Task" or the "Night Thoughts. " Theirreligion is that of revelation--it acknowledges no other source but theword of God. To that word, in all difficulty, distress, and dismay, these poets appeal; and though they may sometimes, or often, misinterpret its judgment, that is an evil incident to finiteintelligence; and the very consciousness that it is so, inspires aperpetual humility that is itself a virtue found to accompany only aChristian's Faith. 

We have elsewhere vindicated the choice of a person of low degree asChief of "The Excursion, " and exult to think that a great poet shouldhave delivered his highest doctrines through the lips of a ScottishPedlar. 

 "Early had he learn'd To reverence the volume that displays The mystery of life that cannot die. "

Throughout the poem he shows that he does reverence it, and that hiswhole being has been purified and elevated by its spirit. But fond as heis of preaching, and excellent in the art or gift, a Christian Preacherhe is not--at best a philosophical divine. Familiar by his parentage andnurture with all most hallowed round the poor man's hearth, and guardedby his noble nature from all offence to the sanctities there enshrined;yet the truth must be told, he speaks not, he expounds not the Word asthe servant of the Lord, as the follower of Him Crucified. There is verymuch in his announcements to his equals wide of the mark set up in theNew Testament. We seem to hear rather of a divine power and harmony inthe universe than of the Living God. The spirit of Christianity asconnected with the Incarnation of the Deity, the Human-God, the linkbetween heaven and earth, between helplessness and omnipotence, ought tobe everywhere visible in the religious effusions of a ChristianPoet--wonder and awe for the greatness of God, gratitude and love forhis goodness, humility and self-abasement for his own unworthiness. Passages may perhaps be found in "The Excursion" expressive of thatspirit, but they are few and faint, and somewhat professional, fallingnot from the Pedlar but from the Pastor. If the mind, in forming itsconceptions of divine things, is prouder of its own power than humbledin the comparison of its personal inferiority; and in enunciating themin verse, more rejoices in the consciousness of the power of its owngenius than in the contemplation of Him from whom cometh every good andperfect gift--it has not attained Piety, and its worship is not anacceptable service. For it is self-worship--worship of the creature'sown conceptions, and an overweening complacency with his own greatness, in being able to form and so to express them as to win or command thepraise and adoration of his fellow-mortals. Those lofty speculations, alternately declaimed among the mountains, with an accompaniment ofwaterfalls, by men full of fancies and eloquent of speech, elude thehold of the earnest spirit longing for truth; disappointment andimpatience grow on the humblest and most reverent mind, and escapingfrom the multitude of vain words, the neophyte finds in one chapter of aBook forgotten in that babblement, a light to his way and a support tohis steps, which, following and trusting, he knows will lead him toeverlasting life. 

Throughout the poem there is much talk of the light of nature, little ofthe light of revelation, and they all speak of the theologicaldoctrines of which our human reason gives us assurance. Such expressionsas these may easily lead to important error, and do, indeed, seem oftento have been misconceived and misemployed. What those truths are whichhuman reason, unassisted, would discover to us on these subjects, it isimpossible for us to know, for we have never seen it left absolutely toitself. Instruction, more or less, in wandering tradition, or inexpress, full, and recorded revelation, has always accompanied it; andwe have never had other experience of the human mind than as exertingits powers under the light of imparted knowledge. In thesecircumstances, all that can be properly meant by those expressions whichregard the power of the human mind to guide, to enlighten, or to satisfyitself in such great inquiries is, not that it can be the discoverer oftruth, but that, with the doctrines of truth set before it, it is ableto deduce arguments from its own independent sources which confirm it intheir belief; or that, with truth and error proposed to its choice, ithas means, to a certain extent, in its own power, of distinguishing onefrom the other. For ourselves, we may understand easily that it would beimpossible for us so to shut out from our minds the knowledge which hasbeen poured in upon them from our earliest years, in order to ascertainwhat self-left reason could find out. Yet this much we are able to do inthe speculations of our philosophy: We can inquire, in this light, whatare the grounds of evidence which nature and reason themselves offer forbelief in the same truths. A like remark must be extended to themorality which we seem now to inculcate from the authority of humanreason. We no longer possess any such independent morality. The spiritof a higher, purer, moral law than man could discover, has been breathedover the world, and we have grown up in the air and the light of asystem so congenial to the highest feelings of our human nature, thatthe wisest spirits amongst us have sometimes been tempted to forget thatits origin is divine. 

Had "The Excursion" been written in the poet's later life, it had notbeen so liable to such objections as these; for much of his poetrycomposed since that era is imbued with a religious spirit, answering thesoul's desire of the devoutest Christian. His Ecclesiastical Sonnets aresacred Poetry indeed. How comprehensive the sympathy of a truly piousheart! How religion reconciles different forms, and modes, and signs, and symbols of worship, provided only they are all imbued with thespirit of faith! This is the toleration Christianity sanctions--for itis inspired by its own universal love. No sectarian feeling here, thatwould exclude or debar from the holiest chamber in the poet's bosom onesincere worshipper of our Father which is in heaven. Christian brethren!By that mysterious bond our natures are brought into more endearingcommunion--now more than ever brethren, because of the blood that wasshed for us all from His blessed side! Even of that most awful mysteryin some prayer-like strains the Poet tremblingly speaks, in many astrain, at once so affecting and so elevating--breathing so divinely ofChristian charity to all whose trust is in the Cross! Who shall say whatform of worship is most acceptable to the Almighty? All are holy inwhich the soul seeks to approach him--holy

 "The chapel lurking among trees, Where a few villagers on bended knees Find solace which a busy world disdains;"

we feel as the poet felt when he breathed to the image of some oldabbey, --

 "Once ye were holy, ye are holy still!"

And what heart partakes not the awe of his

 "Beneath that branching roof Self-poised and scoop'd into ten thousand cells Where light and shade repose, where music dwells Lingering--and wandering on as loth to die"?

Read the first of these sonnets with the last--and then once more thestrains that come between--and you will be made to feel how various andhow vast beneath the sky are the regions set apart by the soul forprayer and worship; and that all places become consecrated--the high andthe humble--the mean and the magnificent--in which Faith and Piety havesought to hold communion with Heaven. 

But they who duly worship God in temples made with hands, meet everyhour of their lives "Devotional Excitements" as they walk among Hisworks; and in the later poetry of Wordsworth these abound--age havingsolemnised the whole frame of his being, that was always alive toreligious emotions--but more than ever now, as around his paths in theevening of life longer fall the mysterious shadows. More fervid lineshave seldom flowed from his spirit in its devoutest mood, than someawakened by the sounds and sights of a happy day in May--to him--thoughno church-bell was heard--a Sabbath. His occasional poems are often feltby us to be linked together by the finest affinities, which perhaps arebut affinities between the feelings they inspire. Thus we turn fromthose lines to some on a subject seemingly very different, from afeeling of such fine affinities--which haply are but those subsistingbetween all things and thoughts that are pure and good. We hear in themhow the Poet, as he gazes on a Family that holds not the ChristianFaith, embraces them in the folds of Christian Love--and how religion aswell as nature sanctifies the tenderness that is yearning at his hearttowards them--"a Jewish Family"--who, though outcasts by Heaven'sdecree, are not by Heaven, still merciful to man, left forlorn on earth. 

How exquisite the stanzas composed in one of the Catholic Chapels inSwitzerland, --

 "Doom'd as we are our native dust To wet with many a bitter shower, It ill befits us to disdain The Altar, to deride the Fane, Where patient sufferers bend, in trust To win a happier hour. 

 I love, where spreads the village lawn, Upon some knee-worn Cell to gaze; Hail to the firm unmoving Cross, Aloft, where pines their branches toss! And to the Chapel far withdrawn, That lurks by lonely ways!

 Where'er we roam--along the brink Of Rhine--or by the sweeping Po, Through Alpine vale, or champaign wide, _Whate'er we look on, at our side Be Charity--to bid us think And feel, if we would know. _"

How sweetly are interspersed among them some of humbler mood, mosttouching in their simple pathos--such as a Hymn for the boatmen as theyapproach the Rapids--Lines on hearing the song of the harvest damselsfloating homeward on the lake of Brientz--the Italian Itinerant and theSwiss Goat-herd--and the Three Cottage Girls, representatives ofItalian, of Helvetian, and of Scottish beauty, brought together, as ifby magic, into one picture, each breathing in her natural grace thepeculiar spirit and distinctive character of her country's charms! Suchgentle visions disappear, and we sit by the side of the Poet as he gazesfrom his boat floating on the Lake of Lugano, on the Church of SanSalvador, which was almost destroyed by lightning a few years ago, whilethe altar and the image of the patron saint were untouched, and devoutlylisten while he exclaims, --

 "Cliffs, fountains, rivers, seasons, times, Let all remind the soul of heaven; Our slack devotion needs them all; And faith, so oft of sense the thrall, While she, by aid of Nature, climbs, May hope to be forgiven. "

We do not hesitate to pronounce "Eclipse of the Sun, 1820, " one of thefinest lyrical effusions of combined thought, passion, sentiment, andimagery, within the whole compass of poetry. If the beautiful be indeedessentially different from the sublime, we here feel that they may bemade to coalesce so as to be in their united agencies one divine power. We called it lyrical, chiefly because of its transitions. Though not anode, it is ode-like in its invocations; and it might be set and sung tomusic if Handel were yet alive, and St Cecilia to come down for an hourfrom heaven. How solemn the opening strain! and from the momentaryvision of Science on her speculative Tower, how gently glidesImagination down, to take her place by the Poet's side, in his barkafloat beneath Italian skies--suddenly bedimmed, lake, land, and all, with a something between day and night. In a moment we are conscious ofEclipse. Our slight surprise is lost in the sense of a strangebeauty--solemn not sad--settling on the face of nature and the abodes ofmen. In a single stanza filled with beautiful names of the beautiful, wehave a vision of the Lake, with all its noblest banks, and bays, andbowers, and mountains--when in an instant we are wafted away from ascene that might well have satisfied our imagination and our heart--ifhigh emotions were not uncontrollable and omnipotent--wafted away byFancy with the speed of Fire--lakes, groves, cliffs, mountains, allforgotten--and alight amid an aerial host of figures, human and divine, on a spire that seeks the sky. How still those imaged sanctities andpurities, all white as snows of Apennine, stand in the heavenly region, circle above circle, and crowned as with a zone of stars! They areimbued with life. In their animation the figures of angels and saints, insensate stones no more, seem to feel the Eclipse that shadows them, and look awful in the portentous light. In his inspiration he transcendsthe grandeur even of that moment's vision--and beholds in the visages ofthat aerial host those of the sons of heaven darkening with celestialsorrow at the Fall of Man--when

 "Throngs of celestial visages, Darkening like water in the breeze, A holy sadness shared. "

Never since the day on which the wondrous edifice, in its consummateglory, first saluted the sun, had it inspired in the soul of kneelingsaint a thought so sad and so sublime--a thought beyond the reaches ofthe soul of him whose genius bade it bear up all its holy adornments sofar from earth, that the silent company seem sometimes, as light andshadow moves among them, to be in ascension to heaven. But the Sunbegins again to look like the Sun, and the poet, relieved by the joyfullight from that awful trance, delights to behold

 "Town and Tower, The Vineyard and the Olive Bower, Their lustre re-assume;"

and "breathes there a man with soul so dead, " that it burns not withinhim as he hears the heart of the husband and the father breathe forthits love and its fear, remembering on a sudden the far distant whom ithas never forgotten--a love and a fear that saddens, but disturbs not, for the vision he saw had inspired him with a trust in the tendermercies of God? Commit to faithful memory, O Friend! who may some timeor other be a traveller over the wide world, the sacred stanzas thatbring the Poem to a close--and it will not fail to comfort thee whensitting all alone by the well in the wilderness, or walking along thestrange streets of foreign cities, or lying in thy cot at midnightafloat on far-off seas. 

 "O ye, who guard and grace my Home While in far-distant lands we roam, Was such a vision given to you? Or, while we look'd with favour'd eyes, Did sullen mist hide lake and skies And mountains from your view?

 "I ask in vain--and know far less, If sickness, sorrow, or distress Have spared my Dwelling to this hour; Sad blindness! but ordained to prove Our faith in Heaven's unfailing love, And all-controlling power. "

Let us fly from Rydal to Sheffield. James Montgomery is truly areligious poet. His popularity, which is great, has, by some scribessitting in the armless chairs of the scorners, been attributed chieflyto the power of sectarianism. He is, we believe, a sectary; and, if allsects were animated by the spirit that breathes throughout his poetry, we should have no fears for the safety and stability of the EstablishedChurch; for in that self-same spirit was she built, and by thatself-same spirit were her foundations dug in a rock. Many are thelights--solemn and awful all--in which the eyes of us mortal creaturesmay see the Christian dispensation. Friends, looking down from the topof a high mountain on a city-sprinkled plain, have each his own visionof imagination--each his own sinking or swelling of heart. They urge noinquisition into the peculiar affections of each other's secretbreasts--all assured, from what each knows of his brother, that everyeye there may see God--that every tongue that has the gift of loftyutterance may sing His praises aloud--that the lips that remain silentmay be mute in adoration--and that all the distinctions of habits, customs, professions, modes of life, even natural constitution and formof character, if not lost, may be blended together in mild amalgamationunder the common atmosphere of emotion, even as the towers, domes, andtemples, are all softly or brightly interfused with the huts, cots, andhomesteads--the whole scene below harmonious because inhabited by beingscreated by the same God--in his own image--and destined for the sameimmortality. 

It is base therefore, and false, to attribute, in an invidious sense, any of Montgomery's fame to any such cause. No doubt many persons readhis poetry on account of its religion, who, but for that, would not haveread it; and no doubt, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. But so, too, do many persons read Wordsworth's poetry on account of itsreligion--the religion of the woods--who, but for that, would not haveread it; and so, too, many of them neither feel nor understand it. So isit with the common-manners-painting poetry of Crabbe--thedark-passion-painting poetry of Byron--the high-romance-painting poetryof Scott--and so on with Moore, Coleridge, Southey, and the rest. But itis to the _mens divinior_, however displayed, that they owe all theirfame. Had Montgomery not been a true poet, all the Religious Magazinesin the world could not have saved his name from forgetfulness andoblivion. He might have flaunted his day like the melancholyPoppy--melancholy in all its ill-scented gaudiness; but as it is, he islike the Rose of Sharon, whose balm and beauty shall not wither, plantedon the banks of "that river whose streams make glad the city of theLord. "

Indeed, we see no reason why poetry, conceived in the spirit of a mostexclusive sectarianism, may not be of a very high order, and powerfullyimpressive on minds whose religious tenets are most irreconcilable andhostile to those of the sect. Feelings, by being unduly concentrated, are not thereby necessarily enfeebled--on the contrary, oftenstrengthened; and there is a grand austerity which the imagination morethan admires--which the conscience scarcely condemns. The feeling, theconviction from which that austerity grows, is in itself right; for itis a feeling--a conviction of the perfect righteousness of God--theutter worthlessness of self-left man--the awful sanctity of duty--andthe dreadfulness of the judgment-doom, from which no soul is safe tillthe seals have been broken, and the Archangel has blown his trumpet. Areligion planted in such convictions as these, may become dark anddisordered in its future growth within the spirit; and the tree, thoughof good seed and in a strong soil, may come to be laden with bitterfruit, and the very droppings of its leaves may be pernicious to all whorest within its shade. Still, such shelter is better in the blast thanthe trunk of a dead faith; and such food, unwholesome though it be, isnot so miserable as famine to a hungry soul. 

Grant, then, that there may be in Mr Montgomery's poetry certainsentiments, which, in want of a better word, we call Sectarian. They arenot necessarily false, although not perfectly reconcilable to our owncreed, which, we shall suppose, is true. On the contrary, we may be mademuch the better and the wiser men by meditating upon them; for whilethey may, perhaps (and we are merely making a supposition), be toostrongly felt by him, they may be too feebly felt by us--they may, perhaps, be rather blots on the beauty of his poetry than of hisfaith--and if, in some degree, offensive in the composition of a poem, far less so, or not at all, in that of a life. 

All his shorter poems are stamped with the character of the man. Most ofthem are breathings of his own devout spirit, either delighted or awedby a sense of the Divine goodness and mercy towards itself, ortremblingly alive--not in mere sensibility to human virtues and joys, crimes and sorrows, for that often belongs to the diseased anddepraved--but in solemn, moral, and religious thought, to all of good orevil befalling his brethren of mankind. "A sparrow cannot fall to theground"--a flower of the field cannot wither immediately before hiseyes--without awakening in his heart such thoughts as we may believe Godintended should be awakened even by such sights as these; for the fallof a sparrow is a Scriptural illustration of His providence, and Hishand framed the lily, whose array is more royal than was that of Solomonin all his glory. Herein he resembles Wordsworth--less profoundcertainly--less lofty; for in its highest moods the genius of Wordsworthwalks by itself--unapproachable--on the earth it beautifies. ButMontgomery's poetical piety is far more prevalent over his wholecharacter; it belongs more essentially and permanently to the man. Perhaps, although we shall not say so, it may be more simple, natural, and true. More accordant it certainly is, with the sympathies ofordinary minds. The piety of his poetry is far more Christian than thatof Wordsworth. It is in all his feelings, all his thoughts, all hisimagery; and at the close of most of his beautiful compositions, whichare so often avowals, confessions, prayers, thanksgivings, we feel, notthe moral, but the religion of his song. He "improves" all the"occasions" of this life, because he has an "eye that broods on its ownheart;" and that heart is impressed by all lights and shadows, like ariver or lake whose waters are pure--pure in their sources and in theircourse. He is, manifestly, a man of the kindliest home-affections; andthese, though it is to be hoped the commonest of all, preserved to himin unabated glow and freshness by innocence and piety, often give ventto themselves in little hymns and ode-like strains, of which the richand even novel imagery shows how close is the connection between a pureheart and a fine fancy, and that the flowers of poetry may be broughtfrom afar, nor yet be felt to be exotics--to intertwine with the verysimplest domestic feelings and thoughts--so simple, so perfectly human, that there is a touch of surprise on seeing them capable of suchadornment, and more than a touch of pleasure on feeling how much thatadornment becomes them--brightening without changing, and addingadmiration to delight--wonder to love. 

Montgomery, too, is almost as much of an egotist as Wordsworth; andthence, frequently, his power. The poet who keeps all the appearances ofexternal nature, and even all the passions of humanity, at arm's length, that he may gaze on, inspect, study, and draw their portraits, either inthe garb they ordinarily wear, or in a fancy dress, is likely to producea strong likeness indeed; yet shall his pictures be wanting in ease andfreedom--they shall be cold and stiff--and both passion and imaginationshall desiderate something characteristic in nature, of the mountain orthe man. But the poet who hugs to his bosom everything he loves oradmires--themselves, or the thoughts that are their shadows--who ishimself still the centre of the enchanted circle--who, in the delusionof a strong creative genius, absolutely believes that were he to die, all that he now sees and hears delighted would die with him--who notonly sees

 "Poetic visions swarm on every bough, "

but the history of all his own most secret emotions written on the veryrocks--who gathers up the many beautiful things that in the prodigalityof nature lie scattered over the earth, neglected or unheeded, and themore dearly, the more passionately loves them, because they are nowappropriated to the uses of his own imagination, who will by her alchymyso further brighten them that the thousands of eyes that formerly passedthem by unseen or scorned, will be dazzled by their rare andtranscendent beauty--he is the "prevailing Poet!" Montgomery neitherseeks nor shuns those dark thoughts that will come and go, night andday, unbidden, forbidden, across the minds of all men--fortifiedalthough the main entrances may be; but when they do invade his secret, solitary hours, he turns even such visitants to a happy account, andquestions them, ghost-like as they are, concerning both the future andthe past. Melancholy as often his views are, we should not suppose him aman of other than a cheerful mind; for whenever the theme allows ordemands it, he is not averse to a sober glee, a composed gaiety that, although we cannot say it ever so far sparkles out as to deserve to becalled absolutely brilliant, yet lends a charm to his lighter-tonedcompositions, which it is peculiarly pleasant now and then to feel inthe writings of a man whose genius is naturally, and from the course oflife, not gloomy indeed, but pensive, and less disposed to indulgeitself in smiles than in tears. 

SACRED POETRY. 

CHAPTER III. 

People nowadays will write, because they see so many writing; theimpulse comes upon them from without, not from within; loud voices fromstreets and squares of cities call on them to join the throng, but thestill small voice that speaketh in the penetralia of the spirit is mute;and what else can be the result, but, in place of the song of lark, orlinnet, or nightingale, at the best a concert of mocking-birds, at theworst an oratorio of ganders and bubbleys?

At this particular juncture or crisis, the disease would fain assume thesymptoms of religious inspiration. The poetasters are all pious--allsmitten with sanctity--Christian all over--and crossing and jostling onthe Course of Time--as they think, on the high road to Heaven andImmortality. Never was seen before such a shameless set of hypocrites. Down on their knees they fall in booksellers' shops, and, crowned withfoolscap, repeat to Blue-Stockings prayers addressed in doggrel to theDeity! They bandy about the Bible as if it were an Album. They forgetthat the poorest sinner has a soul to be saved, as well as a set ofverses to be damned; they look forward to the First of the Month withmore fear and trembling than to the Last Day; and beseech a critic to bemerciful upon them with far more earnestness than they ever beseechedtheir Maker. They pray through the press--vainly striving to give somepublicity to what must be private for evermore; and are seen wipingaway, at tea-parties, the tears of contrition and repentance for capitalcrimes perpetrated but on paper, and perpetrated thereon so paltrily, that so far from being worthy of hell-fire, such delinquents, it isfelt, would be more suitably punished by being singed like plucked fowlswith their own unsaleable sheets. They are frequently so singed; yetsingeing has not the effect upon them for which singeing is designed;and like chickens in a shower that have got the pip, they keep stillgasping and shooting out their tongues, and walking on tip-toe withtheir tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner, and are no more seen among bipeds. 

Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spiritof imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two--who for thepresent must be nameless--have shown feeling; and would they but obeytheir feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own freefeet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings, they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditablereputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their handsthe sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with hisBible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with householdwords, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song. For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in thosepages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued withreligious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine. The study of THE BOOK must have been begun in the simplicity ofchildhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine--and carried on throughall those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored, during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. TheBible must be to such a poet even as the sky--with its sun, moon, andstars--its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries--its peace deeperthan the grave, because of realms beyond the grave--its tumult louderthan that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He whobegins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himselfto it--night and day--and with a humble and a contrite heart as well asan awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what heunderstands, or to understand what he feels--thoughts and feelingsbreathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery, between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly ventureon the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thoughtof doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent; itwould convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, andthe world. 

They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith, zeal, and benevolence--will, of their own accord, fix their Pinduseither on Lebanon or Calvary--and of these but few. The genius must behigh--the faith sure--and human love must coalesce with divine, that thestrain may have power to reach the spirits of men, immersed as they arein matter, and with all their apprehensions and conceptions blended withmaterial imagery, and the things of this moving earth and this restlesslife. 

So gifted and so endowed, a great or good poet, having chosen hissubject well within religion, is on the sure road to immortal fame. Hiswork, when done, must secure sympathy for ever; a sympathy not dependenton creeds, but out of which creeds spring, all of them manifestlymoulded by imaginative affections of religion. Christian Poetry willoutlive every other; for the time will come when Christian Poetry willbe deeper and higher far than any that has ever yet been known amongmen. Indeed, the sovereign songs hitherto have been either religious orsuperstitious; and as "the day-spring from on High that has visited us"spreads wider and wider over the earth, "the soul of the world, dreamingof things to come, " shall assuredly see more glorified visions than haveyet been submitted to her ken. That poetry has so seldom satisfied theutmost longings and aspirations of human nature, can only have beenbecause Poetry has so seldom dealt in its power with the only mysteriesworth knowing--the greater mysteries of religion, into which theChristian is initiated only through faith, an angel sent from heaven tospirits struggling by supplications and sacrifices to escape from sinand death. 

These, and many other thoughts and feelings concerning the "Vision andthe Faculty divine, " when employed on divine subjects, have arisenwithin us, on reading--which we have often done with delight--"TheChristian Year, " so full of Christian poetry of the purest character. MrKeble is a poet whom Cowper himself would have loved--for in him pietyinspires genius, and fancy and feeling are celestialised by religion. Weperuse his book in a tone and temper of spirit similar to that which isbreathed upon us by some calm day in spring, when all imagery is sereneand still--cheerful in the main--yet with a touch and a tinge ofmelancholy, which makes all the blended bliss and beauty at once moreendearing and more profound. We should no more think of criticising suchpoetry than of criticising the clear blue skies--the soft greenearth--the "liquid lapse" of an unpolluted stream, that

 "Doth make sweet music with the enamell'd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every flower It overtaketh on its pilgrimage. "

All is purity and peace; as we look and listen, we partake of theuniversal calm, and feel in nature the presence of Him from whom itemanated. Indeed, we do not remember any poetry nearly so beautiful asthis, which reminds one so seldom of the poet's art. We read it withoutever thinking of the place which its author may hold among poets, justas we behold a "lily of the field" without comparing it with otherflowers, but satisfied with its own pure and simple loveliness; or eachseparate poem may be likened, in itsunostentatious--unambitious--unconscious beauty--to

 "A violet by a mossy stone, Half hidden to the eye. "

Of all the flowers that sweeten this fair earth, the violet is indeedthe most delightful in itself--form, fragrance, and colour--nor less inthe humility of its birthplace, and its haunts in the "sunshiny shade. "Therefore, 'tis a meet emblem of those sacred songs that may be said toblossom on Mount Sion. 

The most imaginative poetry inspired by Nature, and dedicated to herpraise, is never perfectly and consummately beautiful till it ascendsinto the religious; but then religion breathes from, and around, andabout it, only at last when the poet has been brought, by the leading ofhis own aroused spirit, to the utmost pitch of his inspiration. Hebegins, and continues long, unblamed in mere emotions of beauty; and heoften pauses unblamed, and brings his strain to a close, without havingforsaken this earth, and the thoughts and feelings which belong alone tothis earth. But poetry like that of the "Christian Year" springs atonce, visibly and audibly, from religion as its fount. If it, indeed, issue from one of the many springs religion opens in the human heart, nofear of its ever being dried up. Small indeed may seem the silver line, when first the rill steals forth from its sacred source! But how soon itbegins to sing with a clear loud voice in the solitude! Bank andbrae--tree, shrub, and flower--grow greener at each successivewaterfall--the rains no more disturb that limpid element than thedews--and never does it lose some reflection of the heavens. 

In a few modest words, Mr Keble states the aim and object of his volume. He says truly, that it is the peculiar happiness of the Church ofEngland to possess in her authorised formularies an ample and secureprovision, both for a sound rule of faith and a sober standard offeeling in matters of practical religion. The object of his publicationwill be attained, if any person find assistance from it in bringing hisown thoughts and feelings into more entire unison with those recommendedand exemplified in the Prayer-Book. We add, that its object has beenattained. In England, "The Christian Year" is already placed in athousand homes among household books. People are neither blind nor deafyet to lovely sights and sounds--and a true poet is as certain ofrecognition now as at any period of our literature. In Scotland we haveno prayer-book printed on paper--perhaps it would be better if we had;but the prayer-book which has inspired Mr Keble, is compiled andcomposed from another Book, which, we believe, is more read in Scotlandthan in any other country. Here the Sabbath reigns in power, that isfelt to be a sovereign power over all the land. We have, it may be said, no prescribed holydays; but all the events recorded in the Bible, andwhich in England make certain days holy in outward as well as inwardobservances, are familiar to our knowledge and our feeling _here_; andtherefore the poetry that seeks still more to hallow them to the heart, will find every good heart recipient of its inspiration--for theChristian creed is "wide and general as the casing air, " and felt asprofoundly in the Highland heather-glen, where no sound of psalms isheard but on the Sabbath, as in the cathedral towns and cities ofEngland, where so often

 "Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise. "

Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about--toshow off upon--as if the writing and the reading of it were to bereckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poetshave too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to mostunworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy--for it impliesmuch voluntary self-degradation--is mere popularity. Against all suchlow aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches themuse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs onthe public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry ispraise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from someunseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer orwanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holiersolemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed _got byheart_; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on whatshe loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when evenhope itself is dead--if, indeed, hope ever dies--the trust is committedto despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; theybecome very thoughts themselves, and _are_ what they represent. How aremany of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalmsof David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of theScottish peasant's being!

 "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want. He makes me down to lie In pastures green: he leadeth me The quiet waters by. "

These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes everystream that glides through the solitary places--they have often givencolours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and ofall flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortalcreatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature andthe Book of Life!

Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathersand mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring. Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest andwisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories;the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smokyday; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallowup the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as aseparate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy, and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees farinto the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying--"Sufferlittle children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is thekingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the NewTestament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortalbrother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a deadinsensible flower--a lily--a rose--a violet--a daisy, poetry may pourout all its divinest power--just as the sun itself sometimes seems tolook with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once madetransparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all itsleaves--and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves bedead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall changedeath into sleep--till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shallseem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words ormarble--both alike still and serene as water upon grass--we turn to theNew Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents. " "They were redeemedfrom among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb. " Welook down into the depths of that text--and we then turn again toKeble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon theuninspired page! Yet not uninspired--if that name may be given tostrains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise, "whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets. " Revelation has shown usthat "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy ofthat Being for whom Godhead died!

They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthyof them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "TheEpiphany. " They are separated in the volume by some kindred andcongenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy thestill region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seemto occupy the entire sky. 

How far better than skilfully--how inspiredly does this Christian poettouch upon each successive holy theme--winging his way through thestainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leavingone place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding andunfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attemptedthe theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on sucha subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star ofBethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or hewill hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watchingtheir flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of thesages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the fewwords--"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw thestar, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. "

The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to astrain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism. " How soon theinfant spirit is touched with love--another name for religion--none maydare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling andthought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration--so strong itoften is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of naturalprocesses going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often beenseen in the simplicity of childhood--creatures but five or six yearsold--soon perhaps about to disappear--astonishing, and saddening, andsubliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by aholy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into amysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink ofdeath and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantineunfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not berare--nor are they rare--in truly Christian households. Almost as soonas the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverenteven to earthly parents--and, ere long, becomes piety towards the nameof God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must notbe too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No--letreligion--a myriad-meaning word--be whispered and breathed round aboutthem, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens theirears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yetmultitudinous world. 

Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read withtears by many a grateful heart--on the "Churching of Women. " What wouldbecome of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen thepiety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holyand divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify theaffections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before afather's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the fatheryearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving afterchildbirth!

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neitherdo they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glorywas not arrayed like one of these. " What is all the poetry that geniusever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divinesentence! It has inspired our Christian poet--and here is his heartfelthomily. 

FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. 

 "Sweet nurslings of the vernal skies, Bathed in soft airs, and fed with dew, What more than magic in you lies To fill the heart's fond view? In childhood's sports companions gay, In sorrow, on Life's downward way, How soothing! in our last decay Memorials prompt and true. 

 Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, As when ye crown'd the sunshine hours Of happy wanderers there. Fall'n all beside--the world of life, How is it stain'd with fear and strife! In Reason's world what storms are rife, What passions rage and glare!

 But cheerful and unchanged the while Your first and perfect form ye show, The same that won Eve's matron smile In the world's opening glow The stars of Heaven a course are taught Too high above our human thought;-- Ye may be found if ye are sought, And as we gaze we know. 

 Ye dwell beside our paths and homes, Our paths of sin, our homes of sorrow, And guilty man, where'er he roams, Your innocent mirth may borrow. The birds of air before us fleet, They cannot brook our shame to meet-- But we may taste your solace sweet, And come again to-morrow. 

 Ye fearless in your nests abide-- Nor may we scorn, too proudly wise, Your silent lessons undescried By all but lowly eyes; For ye could draw th' admiring gaze Of Him who worlds and hearts surveys: Your order wild, your fragrant maze, He taught us how to prize. 

 Ye felt your Maker's smile that hour, As when he paused and own'd you good; His blessing on earth's primal bower, Yet felt it all renew'd. What care ye now, if winter's storm Sweep ruthless o'er each silken form? Christ's blessing at your heart is warm, Ye fear no vexing mood. 

 Alas! of thousand bosoms kind, That daily court you and caress, How few the happy secret find Of your calm loveliness! 'Live for to-day! to-morrow's light To-morrow's cares shall bring to sight. Go, sleep like closing flowers at night, And Heaven thy morn will bless. '"

Such poetry as this must have a fine influence on all the best humanaffections. Sacred are such songs to sorrow--and sorrow is either afrequent visitor, or a domesticated inmate, in every household. Religion may thus be made to steal unawares, even during ordinary hours, into the commonest ongoings of life. Call not the mother unhappy whocloses the eyes of her dead child, whether it has smiled lonely in thehouse, the sole delight of her eyes, or bloomed among other flowers, nowall drooping for its sake--nor yet call the father unhappy who lays hissweet son below the earth, and returns to the home where his voice is tobe heard never more. That affliction brings forth feelings unknownbefore in his heart; calming all turbulent thoughts by the settled peaceof the grave. Then every page of the Bible is beautiful--and beautifulevery verse of poetry that thence draws its inspiration. Thus in thepale and almost ghost-like countenance of decay, our hearts are nottouched by the remembrance alone of beauty which is departed, and by thenear extinction of loveliness which we behold fading before oureyes--but a beauty, fairer and deeper far, lies around the hollow eyeand the sunken cheek, breathed from the calm air of the untroubledspirit that has heard resigned the voice that calls it away from the dimshades of mortality. Well may that beauty be said to be religious; forin it speaks the soul, conscious, in the undreaded dissolution of itsearthly frame, of a being destined to everlasting bliss. With every deepemotion arising from our contemplation of such beauty as this--religiousbeauty beaming in the human countenance, whether in joy or sadness, health or decay--there is profoundly interfused a sense of the soul'sspirituality, which silently sheds over the emotion something celestialand divine, rendering it not only different in degree, but altogetherdistinct in kind, from all the feelings that things merely perishablecan inspire--so that the spirit is fully satisfied, and the feeling ofbeauty is but a vivid recognition of its own deathless being andethereal essence. This is a feeling of beauty which was but faintlyknown to the human heart in those ages of the world when all otherfeelings of beauty were most perfect; and accordingly we find, in themost pathetic strains of their elegiac poetry, lamentations over thebeauty intensely worshipped in the dust, which was to lie for ever overits now beamless head. But to the Christian who may have seen the livinglustre leave the eye of some beloved friend, there must have shone abeauty in his latest smile, which spoke not alone of a brief sceneclosed, but of an endless scene unfolding; while its cessation, insteadof leaving him in utter darkness, seemed to be accompanied with a burstof light. 

Much of our most fashionable Modern Poetry is at once ludicrously andlamentably unsuitable and unseasonable to the innocent and youthfulcreatures who shed tears "such as angels weep" over the shameful sins ofshameless sinners, crimes which, when perpetrated out of Poetry, and bypersons with vulgar surnames, elevate their respective heroes to thatvulgar altitude--the gallows. The darker--the stronger passions, forsooth! And what hast thou to do--my dove-eyed Margaret, with thedarker and stronger passions? Nothing whatever in thy sweet, still, serene, and seemingly almost sinless world. Be the brighter and theweaker passions thine--brighter indeed--yet say not _weaker_, for theyare strong as death;--Love and Pity, Awe and Reverence, Joy, Grief, andSorrow, sunny smiles and showery tears--be these all thy own--andsometimes, too, on melancholy nights, let the heaven of thy imaginationbe spanned in its starriness by the most celestial Evanescence--a LunarRainbow. 

There is such perfect sincerity in the "Christian Year"--such perfectsincerity, and consequently such simplicity--that though the productionof a fine and finished scholar, we cannot doubt that it will some day orother find its way into many of the dwellings of humble life. Suchdescent, if descent it be, must be of all receptions the most delightfulto the heart of a Christian poet. As intelligence spreads more widelyover the land, why fear that it will deaden religion? Let us believethat it will rather vivify and quicken it; and that in time true poetry, such as this, of a character somewhat higher than probably can be yetfelt, understood, and appreciated by the people, will come to be easyand familiar, and blended with all the other benign influences breathedover their common existence by books. Meanwhile the "Christian Year"will be finding its way into many houses where the inmates read from thelove of reading--not for mere amusement only, but for instruction and adeeper delight; and we shall be happy if our recommendation causes itspages to be illumined by the gleams of a few more peaceful hearths, andto be rehearsed by a few more happy voices in the "parlour twilight. "

We cannot help expressing the pleasure it has given us to see so much, true poetry coming from Oxford. It is delightful to see that classicalliterature, which sometimes, we know not how, certainly has a chillingeffect on poetical feeling, there warming it as it ought to do, andcausing it to produce itself in song. Oxford has produced many truepoets; Collins, Warton, Bowles, Heber, Milman, and now Keble--are allher own--her inspired sons. Their strains are not steeped in "port andprejudice;" but in the--Isis. Heaven bless Iffley and Godstow--and manyanother sweet old ruined place--secluded, but not far apart from her owninspiring Sanctities! And those who love her not, never may the Museslove!

SACRED POETRY. 

CHAPTER IV. 

In his Poem, entitled, "The Omnipresence of the Deity, " Mr RobertMontgomery writes thus, --

 "Lo! there, in yonder fancy-haunted room, What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom, When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear, The dying sceptic felt his hour drew near! From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell, No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell; As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek, He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek, Rounded his eyes into a ghastly glare, Lock'd his white lips--and all was mute despair! Go, child of darkness, see a Christian die; No horror pales his lip, or rolls his eye; No dreadful doubts, or dreamy terrors, start The hope Religion pillows on his heart, When with a dying hand he waves adieu To all who love so well, and weep so true: Meek as an infant to the mother's breast Turns fondly longing for its wonted rest, He pants for where congenial spirits stray, Turns to his God, and sighs his soul away. "

First, as to the execution of this passage. "Fancy-haunted" may do, butit is not a sufficiently strong expression for the occasion. In everysuch picture as this, we demand appropriate vigour in every wordintended to be vigorous, and which is important to the effect of thewhole. 

 "From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell, No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell. "

How could they?--The line but one before is, "What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom. "

This, then, is purely ridiculous, and we cannot doubt that Mr Montgomerywill confess that it is so; but independently of that, he is describingthe deathbed of a person who, _ex hypothesi_, could have no brighthopes, could breathe no sainted murmurs. He might as well, in adescription of a negress, have told us that she had no long, smooth, shining, yellow locks--no light-blue eyes--no ruddy and rosy cheeks--noryet a bosom white as snow. The execution of the picture of the Christianis not much better--it is too much to use, in the sense here given tothem, no fewer than three verbs--"pales"--"rolls"--"starts, " in fourlines. 

 "The hope Religion pillows on his heart, "

is not a good line, and it is a borrowed one. 

 "When with a dying hand he waves adieu, "

conveys an unnatural image. Dying men do not act so. Not thus are takeneternal farewells. The motion in the sea-song was more natural--

 "She waved adieu, and kiss'd her lily hand. "

"_Weeps so true_, " means nothing, nor is it English. The grammar is notgood of, "He _pants for where_ congenial spirits"--

Neither is the word _pants_ by any means the right one; and in such anawful crisis, admire who may the simile of the infant longing for itsmother's breast, we never can in its present shape; while there is theline, "Turns to his God, _and sighs his soul away_;"

a prettiness we very much dislike--alter one word, and it would bevoluptuous--nor do we hesitate to call the passage a puling onealtogether, and such as ought to be expunged from all paper. 

But that is not all we have to say against it--it is radically andessentially bad, because it either proves nothing of what it is meant toprove--or what no human being on earth ever disputed. Be fair--be justin all that concerns religion. Take the best--the most moral, if theword can be used--the most enlightened Sceptic, and the true Christian, and compare their deathbeds. That of the Sceptic will be disturbed ordisconsolate--that of the Christian confiding or blessed. But tocontrast the deathbed of an absolute maniac, muttering curses, gnashingand scowling, and "raising a hideous shriek, " and "rounding his eyeswith a ghastly glare, " and convulsed, too, with severe bodilythroes--with that of a convinced, confiding, and conscientiousChristian, a calm, meek, undoubting believer, happy in the "hopereligion pillows on his heart, " and enduring no fleshly agonies, canserve no purpose under the sun. Men who have the misery of beingunbelievers, are at all times to be pitied--most of all in their lasthours; but though theirs be then dim melancholy, or dark despair, theyexpress neither the one state nor the other by mutterings, curses, andhideous shrieks. Such a wretch there may sometimes be--like him "whodied and made no sign;" but there is no more sense in seeking tobrighten the character of the Christian by its contrast with that ofsuch an Atheist, than by contrast with a fiend to brighten the beauty ofan angel. 

Finally, are the deathbeds of all good Christians so calm as this--anddo they all thus meekly

 "Pant for where congenial spirits stray, "

a line, besides its other vice, most unscriptural? Congenial spirit isnot the language of the New Testament. Alas! for poor weak human natureat the dying hour! Not even can the Christian always then retainunquaking trust in his Saviour! "This is the blood that was shed forthee, " are words whose mystery quells not always nature's terror. TheSacrament of the Lord's Supper is renewed in vain--and he remembers, indoubt and dismay, words that, if misunderstood, would appal all theChristian world--"My God--my God--why hast thou forsaken me?" Perhaps, before the Faith, that has waxed dim and died in his brain distracted bypain, and disease, and long sleeplessness, and a weight of woe--for heis a father who strove in vain to burst those silken ties, that windingall round and about his very soul and his very body, bound him to thosedear little ones, who are of the same spirit and the same flesh, --wesay, before that Faith could, by the prayers of holy men, be restoredand revivified, and the Christian once more comforted by thinking onHim, who for all human beings did take upon him the rueful burden andagonies of the Cross--Death may have come for his prey, and left thechamber, of late so hushed and silent, at full liberty to weep! Enoughto know, that though Christianity be divine, we are human, --that thevessel is weak in which that glorious light may be enshrined--weak asthe potter's clay--and that though Christ died to save sinners, sinnerswho believe in Him, and therefore shall not perish, may yet lose hold ofthe belief when their understandings are darkened by the shadow ofdeath, and, like Peter losing faith and sinking in the sea, feelthemselves descending into some fearful void, and cease here to be, erethey find voice to call on the name of the Lord--"Help, or I perish!"

What may be the nature of the thoughts and feelings of an Atheist, either when in great joy or great sorrow, full of life and the spirit oflife, or in mortal malady and environed with the toils of death, itpasses the power of our imagination even dimly to conceive; nor are weconvinced that there ever was an utter Atheist. The thought of a Godwill enter in, barred though the doors be both of the understanding andthe heart, and all the windows supposed to be blocked up against thelight. The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, cannot always resistthe intimations all life long, day and night, forced upon it from theouter world; its very necessities, nobler far than those of the body, even when most degraded, importunate when denied their manna, are to itoftentimes a silent or a loud revelation. Then, not to feel and think asother beings do with "discourse of reason, " is most hard and difficultindeed, even for a short time, and on occasions of very inferior moment. Being men, we are carried away, willing or unwilling, and oftenunconsciously, by the great common instinct; we keep sailing with thetide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb--fierce as demons and the sonsof perdition, if that be the temper of the congregating hour--mild andmeek as Pity, or the new-born babe, when the afflatus of some divinesympathy has breathed through the multitude, nor one creature escapedits influence, like a spring day that steals through a murmuring forest, till not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is without some touchof the season's sunshine. Think, then, of one who would fain be anAtheist, conversing with the "sound, healthy children of the God ofheaven!" To his reason, which is his solitary pride, arguments might invain be addressed, for he exults in being "an Intellectual All in All, "and is a bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of Truth--eyes whichcan indeed "outstare the eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven, but which are turned away in aversion from the human countenance thatwould dare to deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such a man, butto his heart; and let not even that appeal be conveyed in any fixed formof words--but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears ofaffectionate and loving lips and eyes--of common joys and common griefs, whose contagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, where two orthree are gathered together--among families thinly sprinkled over thewilderness, where, on God's own day, they repair to God's own house, alowly building on the brae, which the Creator of suns and systemsdespiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few contrite hearts thereinassembled to worship Him--in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles andfretted vaults"--in mighty multitudes all crowded in silence, as beneaththe shadow of a thunder-cloud, to see some one single human beingdie--or swaying and swinging backwards and forwards, and to and fro, tohail a victorious armament returning from the war of Liberty, with himwho hath "taken the start of this majestic world" conspicuous from afarin front, encircled with music, and with the standard of his unconqueredcountry afloat above his head. Thus, and by many thousand other potentinfluences for ever at work, and from which the human heart can nevermake its safe escape, let it flee to the uttermost parts of the earth, to the loneliest of the multitude of the isles of the sea, are men, whovainly dream that they are Atheists, forced to feel God. Nor happensthis but rarely--nor are such "angel-visits few and far between. " As themost cruel have often, very often, thoughts tender as dew, so have themost dark often, very often, thoughts bright as day. The sun's goldenfinger writes the name of God on the clouds, rising or setting, and theAtheist, falsely so called, starts in wonder and in delight, which hissoul, because it is immortal, cannot resist, to behold that Biblesuddenly opened before his eyes on the sky. Or some old, decrepit, greyhaired crone, holds out her shrivelled hand, with dim eyes patientlyfixed on his, silently asking charity--silently, but in the holy name ofGod; and the Atheist, taken unawares, at the very core of his heart bids"God bless her, " as he relieves her uncomplaining miseries. 

If then Atheists do exist, and if their deathbeds may be described forthe awful or melancholy instruction of their fellow-men, let them besuch Atheists as those whom, let us not hesitate to say, we mayblamelessly love with a troubled affection; for our Faith may not havepreserved us from sins from which they are free--and we may give even tomany of the qualities of their most imperfect and unhappy charactersalmost the name of virtues. No curses on their deathbeds will they beheard to utter. No black scowlings--no horrid gnashing of teeth--nohideous shriekings will there appal the loving ones who watch and weepby the side of him who is dying disconsolate. He will hope, and he willfear, now that there is a God indeed everywhere present--visible now inthe tears that fall, audible now in the sighs that breathe for hissake--in the still small voice. That Being forgets not those by whom hehas been forgotten; least of all, the poor "Fool who has said in hisheart there is no God, " and who knows at last that a God there is, notalways in terror and trembling, but as often perhaps in the assurance offorgiveness, which, undeserved by the best of the good, may not bewithheld even from the worst of the bad, if the thought of a God and aSaviour pass but for a moment through the darkness of the departingspirit--like a dove shooting swiftly, with its fair plumage, through thedeep but calm darkness that follows the subsided storm. 

So, too, with respect to Deists. Of unbelievers in Christianity thereare many kinds--the reckless, the ignorant, the callous, the confirmed, the melancholy, the doubting, the despairing--the _good_. At theirdeathbeds, too, may the Christian poet, in imagination, take hisstand--and there may he even hear

 "The still sad music of humanity, Not harsh nor grating, but of amplest power To soften and subdue!"

Oftener all the sounds and sights there will be full of most ruefulanguish; and that anguish will groan in the poet's lays when his humanheart, relieved from its load of painful sympathies, shall longafterwards be inspired with the pity of poetry, and sing in elegies, sublime in their pathos, the sore sufferings and the dim distress thatclouded and tore the dying spirit, longing, but all unable--profoundthough its longings be--as life's daylight is about to close upon thatawful gloaming, and the night of death to descend in oblivion--tobelieve in the Redeemer. 

Why then turn but to such deathbed, if indeed religion, and notsuperstition, described that scene--as that of Voltaire? Or even ofRousseau, whose dying eyes sought, in the last passion, the sight of thegreen earth, and the blue skies, and the sun shining so brightly, whenall within the brain of his worshipper was fast growing dimmer and moredim--when all the unsatisfied spirit, that scarcely hoped a future life, knew not how it could ever take farewell of the present with tendernessenough, and enough of yearning and craving after its disappearingbeauty, and when as if the whole earth were at that moment beloved evenas his small peculiar birthplace--

 "Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos. "

The Christian poet, in his humane wisdom, will, for instruction's sakeof his fellow-men, and for the discovery and the revealment ofever-sacred truth, keep aloof from such death-beds as these, or take hisawful stand beside them to drop the perplexed and pensive tear. For weknow not what it is that we either hear or see; and holy Conscience, hearing through a confused sound, and seeing through an obscure light, fears to condemn, when perhaps she ought only to pity--to judge another, when perhaps it is her duty but to use that inward eye for her owndelinquencies. He, then, who designs to benefit his kind by strains ofhigh instruction, will turn from the deathbed of the famous Wit, whosebrilliant fancy hath waxed dim as that of the clown--whose malignantheart is quaking beneath the Power it had so long derided, with terrorsover which his hated Christian triumphs--and whose intellect, once soperspicacious that it could see but too well the motes that are in thesun, the specks and stains that are in the flowing robe of natureherself--prone, in miserable contradiction to its better being, to turnthem as proofs against the power and goodness of the Holy One whoinhabiteth eternity--is now palsy-stricken as that of an idiot, andknows not even the sound of the name of its once vain and proudpossessor--when crowded theatres had risen up with one rustle to honour, and then, with deafening acclamations, "Raised a mortal to the skies!"

There he is--it matters not now whether on down or straw--stretched, already a skeleton, and gnashing--may it be in senselessness, forotherwise what pangs are these!--gnashing his teeth, within lips once soeloquent, now white with foam and slaver; and the whole mouth, of yoreso musical, grinning ghastly like the fleshless face of fear-painteddeath! Is that Voltaire? He who, with wit, thought to shear the Son ofGod of all His beams?--with wit, to loosen the dreadful fastenings ofthe Cross?--with wit, to scoff at Him who hung thereon, while the bloodand water came from the wound in His blessed side?--with wit, to driveaway those Shadows of Angels, that were said to have rolled off thestone from the mouth of the sepulchre of the resurrection?--with wit, toderide the ineffable glory of transfigured Godhead on the Mount, and thesweet and solemn semblance of the Man Jesus in the garden?--with wit, todarken all the decrees of Providence?--and with wit, "To shut the gates of Mercy on mankind?"

Nor yet will the Christian poet long dwell in his religious strains, though awhile he may linger there, "and from his eyelids wipe the tearsthat sacred pity hath engendered, " beside the dying couch of Jean JaquesRousseau--a couch of turf beneath trees--for he was ever a lover ofNature, though he loved all things living or dead as madmen love. Hissoul, while most spiritual, was sensual still, and with tendrils offlesh and blood embraced--even as it did embrace the balm-breathing formof voluptuous woman--the very phantoms of his most etherealisedimagination. Vice stained all his virtues--as roses are seen, in somecertain soils, and beneath some certain skies, always to be blighted, and their fairest petals to bear on them something like blots of blood. Over the surface of the mirror of his mind, which reflected so much ofthe imagery of man and nature, there was still, here and there, on thecentre or round the edges, rust-spots, that gave back no image, andmarred the proportions of the beauty and the grandeur that yet shoneover the rest of the circle set in the rich carved gold. His disturbed, and distracted, and defeated friendships, that all vanished in insanesuspicions, and seemed to leave his soul as well satisfied in its fierceor gloomy void, as when it was filled with airy and glittering visions, are all gone for ever now. Those many thoughts and feelings--somelancholy, yet still fair, and lovely, and beautiful--which, likebright birds encaged, with ruffled and drooping wings, once so apt tosoar, and their music mute, that used to make the wide woods to wring, were confined within the wires of his jealous heart--have now all flownaway, and are at rest! Who sits beside the wild and wondrous genius, whose ravings entrance the world? Who wipes the death-sweat from thatcapacious forehead, once filled with such a multitude of disordered butaspiring fancies? Who, that his beloved air of heaven may kiss and coolit for the last time, lays open the covering that hides the marblesallowness of Rousseau's sin-and-sorrow-haunted breast? One of Nature'sleast-gifted children--to whose eyes nor earth nor heaven ever beamedwith beauty--to whose heart were known but the meanest charities ofnature; yet mean as they were, how much better in such an hour than allhis imaginings most magnificent! For had he not suffered his ownoffspring to pass away from his eyes, even like the wood-shadows, onlyless beloved and less regretted? And in the very midst of theprodigality of love and passion, which he had poured out over thecreations of his ever-distempered fancy, let his living children, hisown flesh and blood, disappear as paupers in a chance-governed world? Aworld in which neither parental nor filial love were more than the namesof nonentities--Father, Son, Daughter, Child, but empty syllables, whichphilosophy heeded not--or rather loved them in their emptiness, butdespised, hated, or feared them, when for a moment they seemed pregnantwith a meaning from heaven, and each in its holy utterance signifyingGod!

No great moral or religious lesson can well be drawn, or say rather sowell, from such anomalous deathbeds, as from those of commonunbelievers. To show, in all its divine power, the blessedness of theChristian's faith, it must be compared, rather than contrasted, with thefaith of the best and wisest of Deists. The ascendancy of the heavenlyover the earthly will then be apparent--as apparent as the superiorlustre of a star to that of a lighted-up window in the night. For aboveall other things in which the Christian is happier than the Deist--withthe latter, the life beyond the grave is but a dark hope--to the former, "immortality has been brought to light by the Gospel. " That differenceembraces the whole spirit. It may be less felt--less seen when life isquick and strong; for this earth alone has much and many things toembrace and enchain our being--but in death the difference is as betweennight and day. 

 * * * * *

NOTE. --In the later editions of "The Omnipresence of the Deity, " thepassage animadverted on in the preceding chapter has been altered asfollows:--

 "Lo! there, in yonder spectre-haunted room, What sightless demons horrified the gloom, When pale and shivering, and bedew'd with fear, The dying Sceptic felt his hour draw near! Ere the last throes with anguish lined his cheek, He yell'd for mercy with a hollow shriek, Mutter'd some accents of unmeaning prayer, Lock'd his white lips--let God the rest declare. Go, child of Darkness! see a Christian die; No horror pales his lip, or dims his eye; No fiend-shaped phantoms of destruction start The hope Religion pillows on his heart, When with a falt'ring hand he waves adieu To hearts as tender as their tears are true; Meek as an infant to the mother's breast Turns, fondly longing for its wonted rest, So to our God the yielding soul retires, And in one sigh of sainted peace expires. "

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 

FIRST CANTICLE. 

The present Age, which, after all, is a very pretty and pleasant one, isfeelingly alive and widely awake to the manifold delights and advantageswith which the study of Natural History swarms, and especially thatbranch of it which unfolds the character and habits, physical, moral, and intellectual, of those most interesting and admirablecreatures--Birds. It is familiar not only with the shape and colour ofbeak, bill, claw, talon, and plume, but with the purposes for which theyare designed, and with the instincts which guide their use in thebeautiful economy of all-gracious Nature. We remember the time when thevery word Ornithology would have required interpretation in mixedcompany; when a naturalist was looked on as a sort of out-of-the-way butamiable monster. Now, one seldom meets with man, woman, or child, whodoes not know a hawk from a handsaw, or even, to adopt the more learnedreading, from a heron-shew; a black swan is no longer erroneouslyconsidered a _rara avis_ any more than a black sheep; while the GlasgowGander himself, no longer apocryphal, has taken his place in thenational creed, belief in his existence being merely blended with wonderat his magnitude, and some surprise perhaps among the scientific that heshould be as yet the sole specimen of that enormous Anser. 

The chief cause of this advancement of knowledge in one of its mostdelightful departments, has been the gradual extension of its study fromstale books written by men, to that book ever fresh from the hand ofGod. And the second--another yet the same--has been the gradual changewrought by a philosophical spirit in the observation, delineation, andarrangement of the facts and laws with which the science is conversant, and which it exhibits in the most perfect harmony and order. Neophytesnow range for themselves, according to their capacities andopportunities, the fields, woods, rivers, lakes, and seas; andproficients, no longer confining themselves to mere nomenclature, enrichtheir works with anecdotes and traits of character, which, withoutdeparture from truth, have imbued bird-biography with the double charmof reality and romance. 

Compare the intensity and truth of any natural knowledge insensiblyacquired by observation in very early youth, with that corresponding toit picked up in later life from books! In fact, the habit ofdistinguishing between things as different, or of similar forms, colours, and characters, formed in infancy, and childhood, and boyhood, in a free intercourse and communion with Nature, while we are merelyseeking and finding the divine joy of novelty and beauty, perpetuallyoccurring before our eyes in all her haunts, may be made the foundationof an accuracy of judgment of inappreciable value as an intellectualendowment. So entirely is this true, that we know many observantpersons--that is, observant in all things intimately related with theirown pursuits, and with the experience of their own early education--who, with all the pains they could take in after life, have never been ableto distinguish by name, when they saw them, above half-a-dozen, if somany, of our British singing-birds; while as to knowing them by theirsong, that is wholly beyond the reach of their uninstructed ear, and ashilfa chants to them like a yellow yoldrin. On seeing a small birdpeeping out of a hole in the eaves, and especially on hearing himchatter, they shrewdly suspect him to be a sparrow, though it does notby any means follow that their suspicions are always verified; andthough, when sitting with her white breast so lovely out of the "auldclay bigging" in the window-corner, he cannot mistake Mistress Swallow, yet when flitting in fly-search over the stream, and ever and anondipping her wing-tips in the lucid coolness, 'tis an equal chance thathe misnames her Miss Marten. 

What constant caution is necessary during the naturalist's perusal evenof the very best books! From the very best we can only obtain knowledgeat second-hand, and this, like a story circulated among village gossips, is more apt to gain in falsehood than in truth, as it passes from one toanother; but in field-study we go at once to the fountain-head, andobtain our facts pure and unalloyed by the theories and opinions ofprevious observers. Hence it is that the utility of books becomesobvious. You witness with your own eyes some puzzling, perplexing, strange, and unaccountable--fact; twenty different statements of it havebeen given by twenty different ornithologists; you consult them all, andgetting a hint from one, and a hint from another, here a glimmer oflight to be followed, and there a gloom of darkness to be avoided--why, who knows but that in the end you do yourself solve the mystery, andabsolutely become not only happy but illustrious? People sitting intheir own parlour with their feet on the fender, or in the sanctum ofsome museum, staring at stuffed specimens, imagine themselvesnaturalists; and in their presumptuous and insolent ignorance, which isoften total, scorn the wisdom of the wanderers of the woods, who havefor many studious and solitary years been making themselves familiarwith all the beautiful mysteries of instinctive life. Take two boys, andset them respectively to pursue the two plans of study. How puzzled andperplexed will be the one who pores over the "interminable terms" of asystem in books, having meanwhile no access to, or communion withnature! The poor wretch is to be pitied--nor is he anything else than aslave. But the young naturalist who takes his first lessons in thefields, observing the unrivalled scene which creation everywheredisplays, is perpetually studying in the power of delight and wonder, and laying up knowledge which can be derived from no other source. Therich boy is to be envied, nor is he anything else than a king. The onesits bewildered among words, the other walks enlightened among things;the one has not even the shadow, the other more than the substance--thevery essence and life of knowledge; and at twelve years old he may be abetter naturalist than ever the mere bookworm will be, were he tooutlive old Tommy Balmer. 

In education--late or early--for heaven's sake let us never separatethings and words! They are married in nature; and what God hath puttogether let no man put asunder--'tis a fatal divorce. Without things, words accumulated by misery in the memory, had far better die than dragout an useless existence in the dark; without words, their stay andsupport, things unaccountably disappear out of the store-house, and maybe for ever lost. But bind a thing with a word, a strange link, strongerthan any steel, and softer than any silk, and the captive remains forever happy in its bright prison-house. On this principle, it is indeedsurprising at how early an age children can be instructed in the mostinteresting parts of natural history--ay, even a babe in arms. RememberColeridge's beautiful lines to the Nightingale:--

 "That strain again! Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, Who, capable of no articulate sound, Mars all things with his imitative lisp, How he would place his hand beside his ear, His little hand, the small forefinger up, And bid us listen! _and I deem it wise To make him Nature's child_. "

How we come to love the Birds of Bewick, and White, and the two Wilsons, and Montague, and Mudie, and Knapp, and Selby, and Swainson, andAudubon, and many others familiar with their haunts and habits, theiraffections and their passions, till we feel that they are indeed ourfellow-creatures, and part of one wise and wonderful system! If there besermons in stones, what think ye of the hymns and psalms, matin andvesper, of the lark, who at heaven's gate sings--of the wren, who pipesher thanksgivings as the slant sunbeam shoots athwart the mossy portalof the cave, in whose fretted roof she builds her nest above thewaterfall! In cave-roof? Yea--we have seen it so--just beneath thecornice. But most frequently we have detected her procreant cradle onold mossy stump, mouldering walls or living rock--sometimes in cleft ofyew-tree or hawthorn--for hang the globe with its imperceptible orificein the sunshine or the storm, and St. Catharine sits within heedless ofthe outer world, counting her beads with her sensitive breast thatbroods in bliss over the priceless pearls. 

Ay, the men we have named, and many other blameless idolaters of Nature, have worshipped her in a truly religious spirit, and have taught ustheir religion. All our great poets have loved the _Minnesingers_ of thewoods--Thomson, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, as dearly as Spenser, andShakespeare, and Milton. From the inarticulate language of the groves, they have inhaled the enthusiasm that inspired some of the finest oftheir own immortal strains. "Lonely wanderer of Nature" must every poetbe--and though often self-wrapt his wanderings through a spiritual worldof his own, yet as some fair flower silently asks his eye to look on it, some glad bird his ear solicits with a song, how intense is then hisperception--his emotion how profound--while his spirit is thus appealedto, through all its human sensibilities, by the beauty and the joyperpetual even in the most solitary places!

Our moral being owes deep obligation to all who assist us to studynature aright; for believe us, it is high and rare knowledge to know andto have the true and full use of our eyes. Millions go to the grave inold age without ever having learned it; they were just beginning, perhaps, to acquire it when they sighed to think that "they who look outof the windows were darkened;" and that, while they had been instructedhow to look, sad shadows had fallen on the whole face of Nature, andthat the time for those intuitions was gone for ever. But the science ofseeing has now found favour in our eyes; and blessings be with them whocan discover, discern, and describe the least as the greatest ofNature's works--who can see as distinctly the finger of God in thelustre of the humming-bird murmuring round a rose-bush, as in that ofthe star of Jove shining sole in heaven. 

Take up now almost any book you may on any branch of Natural History, and instead of the endless, dry details of imaginary systems andclassifications, in which the ludicrous littlenesses of man's vainingenuity used to be set up as a sort of symbolical scheme of revelationof the sublime varieties of the inferior--as we choose to callit--creation of God, you find high attempts in an humble spirit ratherto illustrate tendencies, and uses, and harmonies, and order, anddesign. With some glorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of theday gone by showed us a science that was but a skeleton--little but drybones; with some inglorious exceptions, indeed, the naturalists of theday that is now, have been desirous to show us a living, breathing, andmoving body--to explain, as far as they might, its mechanism and itsspirit. Ere another century elapse, how familiar may men be with all thefamilies of the flowers of the field, and the birds of the air, withall the interdependencies of their characters and their kindreds, perhaps even with the mystery of that instinct which now is seen workingwonders, not only beyond the power of reason to comprehend, but ofimagination to conceive!

How deeply enshrouded are felt to be the mysteries of Nature, when, thousands of years after Aristotle, we hear Audubon confess his utterignorance of what migrations and non-migrations mean--that 'tis hard tounderstand why such general laws as these should be--though their benignoperation is beautifully seen in the happiness provided alike forall--whether they reside in their own comparatively small localities, nor ever wish to leave them--or at stated seasons instinctively fly awayover thousands of miles, to drop down and settle for a while on somespot adapted to their necessities, of which they had prescience afaroff, though seemingly wafted thither like leaves upon the wind! Verily, as great a mystery is that Natural Religion by the theist studied inwoods and on mountains and by sea-shores, as that Revelation whichphilosophers will not believe because they do not understand--"theblinded bigot's scorn" deriding man's highest and holiesthappiness--Faith!

We must not now go a bird-nesting, but first time we do we shall putBishop Mant's "Months" in our pocket. The good Bishop--who must havebeen an indefatigable bird-nester in his boyhood--though we answer forhim that he never stole but one egg out of four, and left undisturbedthe callow young--treats of those beauteous and wondrous structures in astyle that might make Professor Rennie jealous, who has written like aVitruvius on the architecture of birds. He expatiates with uncontrolleddelight on the unwearied activity of the architects, who, without anyapprenticeship to the trade, are journeymen, nay, master-builders, thefirst spring of their full-fledged lives; with no other tools but abill, unless we count their claws, which however seem, and that only insome kinds, to be used but in carrying materials. With their breasts andwhole bodies, indeed, most of them round off the soft insides of theirprocreant cradles, till they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to ahairbreadth, as it sits close and low on eggs or eyeless young, a_leetle_ higher raised up above their gaping babies, as they wax fromdowny infancy into plumier childhood, which they do how swiftly! andhow soon have they flown! You look some sunny morning into the bush, andthe abode in which they seemed so _cosy_ the day before is utterlyforsaken by the joyous ingrates--now feebly fluttering in the narrowgrove, to them a wide world teeming with delight and wonder--to bethought of never more. With all the various materials used by them inbuilding their different domiciles, the Bishop is as familiar as withthe sole material of his own wig--though, by the by, last time we hadthe pleasure of seeing and sitting by him, he wore his own hair--"butthat not much;" for, like our own, his sconce was bald, and, like it, showed the organ of constructiveness as fully developed as Christopheror a Chaffinch. He is perfectly well acquainted, too, with all thediversities of their modes of building--their orders ofarchitecture--and eke with all those of situation chosen by thekinds--whether seemingly simple, in cunning that deceives by a show ofcarelessness and heedlessness of notice, or with craft of concealmentthat baffles the most searching eye--hanging their beloved secret ingloom not impervious to sun and air--or, trustful in man's love of hisown home, affixing the nest beneath the eaves, or in the flowers of thelattice, kept shut for their sakes, or half-opened by fair hands ofvirgins whose eyes gladden with heart-born brightness as each morningthey mark the growing beauty of the brood, till they smile to see onealmost as large as its parent sitting on the rim of the nest, when allat once it hops over, and, as it flutters away like a leaf, seemssurprised that it can fly!

Yet there are still a few wretched quacks among us whom we may some dayperhaps drive down into the dirt. There are idiots who will not evensuffer sheep, cows, horses, and dogs, to escape the disgustingperversions of their anile anecdotage--who, by all manner of drivellinglies, libel even the common domestic fowl, and impair the reputation ofthe bantam. Newspapers are sometimes so infested by the trivial trash, that in the nostrils of a naturalist they smell on the breakfast-tablelike rotten eggs; and there are absolutely volumes of the slaver boundin linen, and lettered with the names of the expectorators on theoutside, resembling annuals--we almost fear with prints. In such hands, the ass loses his natural attributes, and takes the character of hisowner; and as the anecdote-monger is seen astride on his cuddy, youwonder what may be the meaning of the apparition, for we defy you todistinguish the one donk from the other, the rider from the ridden, except by the more inexpressive countenance of the one, and the ears ofthe other in uncomputed longitude dangling or erect. 

We can bear this libellous gossip least patiently of all with birds. Ifa ninny have some stories about a wonderful goose, let him out withthem, and then waddle away with his fat friend into the stackyard--wherethey may take sweet counsel together in the "fause-house. " Let him, withopen mouth and grozet eyes, say what he chooses of "Pretty Poll, " as sheclings in her cage, by beak or claws, to stick or wire, and in hernaughty vocabulary let him hear the impassioned eloquence of an Aspasiainspiring a Pericles. But, unless his crown itch for the Crutch, let himspare the linnet on the briery bush among the broom--the laverock on thedewy braird or in the rosy cloud--the swan on her shadow--the eagle inhis eyrie, in the sun, or at sea. 

The great ornithologists and the true are the authorities that areconstantly correcting those errors of popular opinion about the fowls ofthe air, which in every country, contrary to the evidence of the senses, and in spite of observations that may be familiar to all, gain credencewith the weak and ignorant, and in process of time compose even a sortof system of the vilest superstition. It would be a very curious inquiryto trace the operation of the causes that, in different lands, haveproduced with respect to birds national prejudices of admiration orcontempt, love or even hatred; and in doing so, we should have to openup some strange views of the influence of imagination on the head andheart. It may be remarked that an excuse will be generally found forsuch fallacies in the very sources from which they spring; but no excusecan be found--on the contrary, in every sentence the fool scribbles, aglaring argument is shown in favour of his being put to a lingering andcruel death--the fool who keeps gossiping every week in the year, penny-a-line-wise, with a gawky face and a mawkish mind, about God'screatures to whom reason has been denied, but instinct given, in orderthat they may be happy on moor and mountain, in the hedge-roots and onthe tops of heaven-kissing trees--by the side of rills whose sweet lowvoice gives no echo in the wild, and on the hollow thunder of seas onwhich they sit in safety around the sinking ship, or from all hershrieks flee away to some island and are at rest. 

Turn to the true Ornithologist, and how beautiful, each in theadaptation of its own structure to its own life, every bird that walksthe land, wades the water, or skims the air! In his pages, pictured bypen or pencil, all is wondrous--as nature ever is to

 "The quiet eye That broods and sleeps on its own heart, "

even while gazing on the inferior creatures of that creation to which webelong, and are linked in being's mysterious chain--till our breath, like theirs, expire. All is wondrous--but nothing monstrous in hisdelineations--for the more we know of nature in her infinite varieties, her laws reveal themselves to us in more majestic simplicity, and we areinspired with awe, solemn but sweet, by the incomprehensible, yet inpart comprehended, magnificence of Truth. The writings of such men arethe gospel of nature--and if the apocrypha be bound up along withit--'tis well; for in it, too, there is felt to be inspiration--andwhen, in good time, purified from error, the leaves all make but oneBible. 

Hark to the loud, clear, mellow, bold song of the BLACKBIRD. There heflits along upon a strong wing, with his yellow bill visible indistance, and disappears in the silent wood. Not long silent. It is aspring-day in our imagination--his clay-wall nest holds his mate at thefoot of the Silver-fir, and he is now perched on its pinnacle. Thatthrilling hymn will go vibrating down the stem till it reaches herbrooding breast. The whole vernal air is filled with the murmur and theglitter of insects; but the blackbird's song is over all other symptomsof love and life, and seems to call upon the leaves to unfold intohappiness. It is on that one Tree-top, conspicuous among many thousandson the fine breast of wood--here and there, a pine mingling not unmeetlywith the prevailing oak--that the forest-minstrel sits in hisinspirations. The rock above is one which we have often climbed. Therelies the glorious Loch and all its islands--one dearer than the rest toeye and imagination, with its old Religious House--year after yearcrumbling away unheeded into more entire ruin. Far away, a sea ofmountains, with all their billowing summits distinct in the sky, and nowuncertain and changeful as the clouds. Yonder Castle stands well on thepeninsula among the trees which the herons inhabit. Those coppice-woodson the other shore, stealing up to the heathery rocks and sprinkledbirches, are the haunts of the roe. That great glen, that stretchessullenly away into the distant darkness, has been for ages the birth andthe death-place of the red-deer. The cry of an Eagle! There he hangspoised in the sunlight, and now he flies off towards the sea. But againthe song of our BLACKBIRD rises like "a steam of rich distilledperfumes, " and our heart comes back to him upon the pinnacle of his ownHome-tree. The source of song is yet in the happy creature's heart--butthe song itself has subsided, like a rivulet that has been rejoicing ina sudden shower among the hills; the bird drops down among the balmybranches, and the other faint songs which that bold anthem had drowned, are heard at a distance, and seem to encroach every moment on thesilence. 

You say you greatly prefer the song of the THRUSH. Pray, why set suchdelightful singers by the ears? We dislike the habit that very manypeople have of trying everything by a scale. Nothing seems to them to begood positively--only relatively. Now, it is true wisdom to be charmedwith what is charming, to live in it for the time being, and compare theemotion with no former emotion whatever--unless it be unconsciously inthe working of an imagination set agoing by delight. Although, therefore, we cannot say that we prefer the Thrush to the Blackbird, yetwe agree with you in thinking him a most delightful bird. Where a Thrushis, we defy you to anticipate his song in the morning. He is indeed anearly riser. By the way, Chanticleer is far from being so. You hear himcrowing away from shortly after midnight, and, in your simplicity, maysuppose him to be up and strutting about the premises. Far from it;--heis at that very moment perched in his polygamy, between two of hisfattest wives. The sultan will perhaps not stir a foot for several hoursto come; while all the time the Thrush, having long ago rubbed his eyes, is on his topmost twig, broad awake, and charming the ear of dawn withhis beautiful vociferation. During mid-day he disappears, and is mute;but again, at dewy even, as at dewy morn, he pours his pipe like aprodigal, nor ceases sometimes when night has brought the moon andstars. 

Best beloved, and most beautiful of all Thrushes that ever broke fromthe blue-spotted shell!--thou who, for five springs, hast "hung thyprocreant cradle" among the roses, and honeysuckles, and ivy, andclematis that embower in bloom the lattice of our Cottage-study--howfarest thou now in the snow? Consider the whole place as your own, mydear bird; and remember, that when the gardener's children sprinkle foodfor you and yours all along your favourite haunts, that it is done byour orders. And when all the earth is green again, and all the sky blue, you will welcome us to our rural domicile, with light feet runningbefore us among the winter leaves, and then skim away to your new nestin the old spot, then about to be somewhat more cheerful in theundisturbing din of the human life within the flowery walls. 

Nay--how can we forget what is for ever before our eyes! Blessed beThou--on thy shadowy bed, belonging equally to earth and heaven--O Isle!who art called the Beautiful! and who of thyself canst make all the Lakeone floating Paradise--even were her shore-hills sylvan nomore--groveless the bases of all her remoter mountains--effaced thatloveliest splendour, sun-painted on their sky-piercing cliffs. And canit be that we have forsaken Thee! Fairy-land and Love-land of our youth!Hath imagination left our brain, and passion our heart, so that we canbear banishment from Thee and yet endure life! Such loss not yet isours--witness these gushing tears. But Duty, "stern daughter of thevoice of God, " dooms us to breathe our morning and evening orisons farfrom hearing and sight of Thee, whose music and whose light continuegladdening other ears and other eyes--as if ours had there neverlistened--and never gazed. As if thy worshipper--and sun! moon! andstars! he asks ye if he loved not you and your images--as if thyworshipper--O Windermere! were--dead! And does duty dispense no rewardto them who sacrifice at her bidding what was once the very soul oflife? Yes! an exceeding great reward--ample as the heart's desire--forcontentment is borne of obedience--where no repinings are, the wings ofthought are imped beyond the power of the eagle's plumes; and happy arewe now--with the human smiles and voices we love even more than thine, thou fairest region of nature! happier than when we rippled in ourpinnace through the billowy moonlight--than when we sat alone on themountain within the thunder-cloud. 

Why do the songs of the Blackbird and Thrush make us think of thesongless STARLING? It matters not. We do think of him, and see himtoo--a lovable bird, and his abode is majestic. What an object of wonderand awe is an old Castle to a boyish imagination! Its height howdreadful! up to whose mouldering edges his fear carries him, and hangshim over the battlements! What beauty in those unapproachable wallflowers, that cast a brightness on the old brown stones of the edifice, and make the horror pleasing! That sound so far below, is the sound of astream the eye cannot reach--of a waterfall echoing for ever among theblack rocks and pools. The schoolboy knows but little of the history ofthe old Castle--but that little is of war, and witchcraft, andimprisonment, and bloodshed. The ghostly glimmer of antiquity appalshim--he visits the ruin only with a companion, and at midday. There andthen it was that we first saw a Starling. We heard something wild andwonderful in their harsh scream, as they sat upon the edge of thebattlements, or flew out of the chinks and crannies. There were Martenstoo, so different in their looks from the prettyHouse-Swallows--Jack-daws clamouring afresh at every time we waved ourcaps, or vainly slung a pebble towards their nests--and one grove ofelms, to whose top, much lower than the castle, came, ever and anon, some noiseless Heron from the Muirs. 

Ruins! Among all the external objects of imagination, surely they aremost affecting! Some sumptuous edifice of a former age, still standingin its undecayed strength, has undoubtedly a great command over us, fromthe ages that have flowed over it; but the mouldering edifice whichNature has begun to win to herself, and to dissolve into her own bosom, is far more touching to the heart, and more awakening to the spirit. Itis beautiful in its decay--not merely because green leaves, and wildflowers, and creeping mosses soften its rugged frowns, but because theyhave sown themselves on the decay of greatness; they are monitors to ourfancy, like the flowers on a grave, of the untroubled rest of the dead. Battlements riven by the hand of time, and cloistered arches reft andrent, speak to us of the warfare and of the piety of our ancestors, ofthe pride of their might, and the consolations of their sorrow: theyrevive dim shadows of departed life, evoked from the land offorgetfulness; but they touch us more deeply when the brightness whichthe sun flings on the broken arches, and the warbling of birds that arenestled in the chambers of princes, and the moaning of winds through thecrevices of towers, round which the surges of war were shattered anddriven back, lay those phantoms again to rest in their silent bed, andshow us, in the monuments of human life and power, the visible footstepsof Time and Oblivion coming on in their everlasting and irresistiblecareer, to sweep down our perishable race, and to reduce all the formsof our momentary being into the undistinguishable elements of theiroriginal nothing. 

What is there below the skies like the place of mighty and departedcities? the vanishing or vanished capitals of renowned empires? There isno other such desolation. The solitudes of nature may be wild and drear, but they are not like the solitude from which human glory is swept away. The overthrow or decay of mighty human power is, of all thoughts thatcan enter the mind, the most overwhelming. The whole imagination is atonce stirred by the prostration of that, round which so many highassociations have been collected for so many ages. Beauty seems born butto perish, and its fragility is seen and felt to be inherent in it by alaw of its being. But power gives stability, as it were, to humanthought, and we forget our own perishable nature in the spectacle ofsome abiding and enduring greatness. Our own little span of years--ourown confined region of space--are lost in the endurance and far-spreaddominion of some mighty state, and we feel as if we partook of itsdeep-set and triumphant strength. When, therefore, a great and ancientempire falls into pieces, or when fragments of its power are heard rentasunder, like column after column disparting from some noble edifice, insad conviction, we feel as if all the cities of men were built onfoundations beneath which the earthquake sleeps. The same doom seems tobe imminent over all the other kingdoms that still stand; and in themidst of such changes, and decays, and overthrows--or as we read ofthem of old--we look, under such emotions, on all power asfoundationless, and in our wide imagination embrace empires covered onlywith the ruins of their desolation. Yet such is the pride of the humanspirit, that it often unconsciously, under the influence of suchimagination, strives to hide from itself the utter nothingness of itsmightiest works. And when all its glories are visibly crumbling intodust, it creates some imaginary power to overthrow the fabrics of humangreatness--and thus attempts to derive a kind of mournful triumph evenin its very fall. Thus, when nations have faded away in their sins andvices, rotten at the heart and palsied in all their limbs, we strive notto think of that sad internal decay, but imagine some mighty powersmiting empires and cutting short the records of mortal magnificence. Thus Fate and Destiny are said in our imagination to lay our glorieslow. Thus, even, the calm and silent air of Oblivion has been thought ofas an unsparing Power. Time, too, though in moral sadness wisely calleda shadow, has been clothed with terrific attributes, and the sweep ofhis scythe has shorn the towery diadem of cities. Thus the mere sigh inwhich we expire, has been changed into active power--and all the nationshave with one voice called out "Death!" And while mankind have sunk, andfallen, and disappeared in the helplessness of their own mortal being, we have still spoken of powers arrayed against them--powers that are ingood truth only another name for their own weaknesses. Thus imaginationis for ever fighting against truth--and even when humbled, her visionsare sublime--conscious even amongst saddest ruin of her own immortality. 

Higher and higher than ever rose the tower of Belus, uplifted byecstasy, soars the LARK, the lyrical poet of the sky. Listen, listen!and the more remote the bird the louder seems his hymn in heaven. Heseems, in such altitude, to have left the earth for ever, and to haveforgotten his lowly nest. The primroses and the daisies, and all thesweet hill-flowers, must be unremembered in that lofty region of light. But just as the Lark is lost--he and his song together--as if hisorisons had been accepted--both are seen and heard fondly waveringearthwards, and in a little while he is walking with his graceful crestcontented along the furrows of the brairded corn, or on the clover leathat in man's memory has not felt the ploughshare; or after a pause, inwhich he seems dallying with a home-sick passion, drooping down like onedead, beside his mate in her shallow nest. 

Of all birds to whom is given dominion over the air, the Lark alone letsloose the power that is in his wings only for the expression of love andgratitude. The eagle sweeps in passion of hunger--poised in the sky hisken is searching for prey on sea or sward--his flight is ever animatedby destruction. The dove seems still to be escaping from something thatpursues--afraid of enemies even in the dangerless solitudes where theold forests repose in primeval peace. The heron, high over houselessmoors, seems at dusk fearful in her laborious flight, and weariedlygathers her long wings on the tree-top, as if thankful that day is done, and night again ready with its rest. "The blackening trains o' craws totheir repose" is an image that affects the heart of "mortal man wholiveth here by toil, " through sympathy with creatures partaking with hima common lot. The swallow, for ever on the wing, and wheeling fitfullybefore fancy's eyes in element adapted for perpetual pastime, is flyingbut to feed--for lack of insects prepares to forsake the land of itsnativity, and yearns for the blast to bear it across the sea. Thoualone, O Lark! hast wings given thee that thou mayest be perfectlyhappy--none other bird but thou can at once soar and sing--andheavenward thou seemest to be borne, not more by those twinkling pinionsthan by the ever-varying, ever-deepening melody effusing from thy heart. 

How imagination unifies! then most intensive when working with and inthe heart. Who thinks, when profoundly listening with his eyes shut tothe warbling air, that there is another lark in creation? _The_lark--sole as the season--or the rainbow. We can fancy he sings to charmour own particular ear--to please us descends into silence--for oursakes erects his crest as he walks confidingly near our feet. Not tillthe dream-circle, of which ourselves are the centre, dissolves orsubsides, do the fairest sights and sweetest sounds in nature lose theirrelationship to us the beholder and hearer, and relapse into the commonproperty of all our kind. To self appertains the whole sensuous as wellas the whole spiritual world. Egoism is the creator of all beauty andall bliss, of all hope and of all faith. Even thus doth imaginationunify Sabbath worship. All our beloved Scotland is to the devout breaston that day one House of God. Each congregation--however farapart--hears but one hymn--sympathy with all is an all-comprehensiveself--and Christian love of our brethren is evolved from the convictionthat we have ourselves a soul to be saved or lost. 

Yet, methinks, imagination loveth just as well to pursue an oppositeprocess, and to furnish food to the heart in separate picture afterseparate picture, one and all imbued not with the same but congenialsentiment, and therefore succeeding one another at her will, be her willintimated by mild bidding or imperial command. In such mood imagination, in still series, visions a thousand parish-kirks, each with its owncharacteristic localities, Sabbath-sanctified; distributes the beauty ofthat hallowed day in allotments all over the happy land--so that in oneSabbath there are a thousand Sabbaths. 

Keep carolling, then, all together, ye countless Larks, till heaven isone hymn! Imagination thinks she sees each particular field that sendsup its own singer to the sky--the spot of each particular nest. And ofthe many hearts all over loveliest Scotland in the sweet vernal seasona-listening your lays, she is with the quiet beatings of the happy, withthe tumult in them that would wish to break! The little maiden by thewell in the brae-side above the cottage, with the Bible on her knees, left in tendance of an infant--the palsied crone placed safely in thesunshine till after service--the sickly student meditating in the shade, and somewhat sadly thinking that these spring flowers are the last hiseyes may see--lovers walking together on the Sabbath before theirmarriage to the house of God--life-wearied wanderers without ahome--remorseful men touched by the innocent happiness they cannot helphearing in heaven--the sceptic--the unbeliever--the atheist to whom"hope comes not that comes to all. " What different meanings to suchdifferent auditors hath the same music at the same moment filling thesame sky!

Does the Lark ever sing in winter? Ay, sometimes January is visited witha May-day hour; and in the genial glimpse, though the earth be yet barerthan the sky, the Lark, mute for months, feels called on by the sun tosing, not so near to heaven's gate, and a shorter than vernal lyric, orduring that sweetest season when neither he nor you can say whether itis summer or but spring. Unmated yet, nor of mate solicitous, in purejoy of heart he cannot refrain from ascent and song; but the snow-cloudslook cold, and ere he has mounted as high again as the church-spire, theaimless impulse dies, and he comes wavering down silently to the yetunprimrosed brae. 

In our boyish days, we never felt that the Spring had really come tillthe clear-singing Lark went careering before our gladdened eyes away upto heaven. Then all the earth wore a vernal look, and the ringing skysaid, "Winter is over and gone. " As we roamed, on a holiday, over thewide pastoral moors, to angle in the lochs and pools, unless the daywere very cloudy the song of some lark or other was still warblingaloft, and made a part of our happiness. The creature could not havebeen more joyful in the skies than we were on the greensward. We, too, had our wings, and flew through our holiday. Thou soul of glee! whostill leddest our flight in all our pastimes--representative child ofErin!--wildest of the wild--brightest of the bright--boldest of thebold!--the lark-loved vales in their stillness were no home for thee. The green glens of ocean, created by swelling and subsiding storms, orby calms around thy ship transformed into immeasurable plains, theyfilled thy fancy with images dominant over the memories of the steadfastearth. The petterel and the halcyon were the birds the sailor loved, andhe forgot the songs of the inland woods in the moanings that haunt thevery heart of the tumultuous sea. Of that ship nothing was ever knownbut that she perished. He, too, the grave and thoughtful English boy, whose exquisite scholarship we all so enthusiastically admired, withoutone single particle of hopeless envy--and who accompanied us on all ourwildest expeditions, rather from affection to his playmates than anylove of their sports--he who, timid and unadventurous as he seemed tobe, yet rescued little Marian of the Brae from a drowning death when somany grown-up men stood aloof in selfish fear--gone, too, for ever artthou, our beloved Edward Harrington! and, after a few brilliant years inthe Oriental clime, ----"on Hoogley's banks afar, Looks down on thy lone tomb the Evening Star. "

How genius shone o'er thy fine features, yet how pale thou ever wast;thou who sat'st then by the Sailor's side, and listened to his sallieswith a mournful smile--friend! dearest to our soul! loving us far betterthan we deserved; for though faultless thou, yet tolerant of all ourfrailties--and in those days of hope from thy lips how elevating waspraise! Yet how seldom do we think of thee! For months--years--not atall--not once--sometimes not even when by some chance we hear your name!It meets our eyes written on books that once belonged to you and thatyou gave us--and yet of yourself it recalls no image. Yet we sank downto the floor on hearing thou wast dead--ungrateful to thy memory formany years we were not--but it faded away till we forgot thee utterly, except when sleep showed thy grave!

Methinks we hear the song of the GREY LINTIE, the darling bird ofScotland. None other is more tenderly sung of in our old ballads. Whenthe simple and fervent love-poets of our pastoral times first applied tothe maiden the words, "my bonnie burdie, " they must have been thinkingof the Grey Lintie--its plumage ungaudy and soberly pure--its shapeelegant yet unobtrusive--and its song various without any effort--nowrich, gay, sprightly, but never rude nor riotous--now tender, almostmournful, but never gloomy or desponding. So, too, are all its habits, endearing and delightful. It is social, yet not averse to solitude, singing often in groups, and as often by itself in the furze brake, oron the briery knoll. You often find the lintie's nest in the mostsolitary places--in some small self-sown clump of trees by the brink ofa wild hill-stream, or on the tangled edge of a forest; and just asoften you find it in the hedgerow of the cottage garden, or in a bowerwithin, or even in an old gooseberry bush that has grown into a sort oftree. 

One wild and beautiful place we well remember--ay, the very bush, inwhich we first found a grey lintie's nest--for in our parish, from somecause or other, it was rather a rarish bird. That far-away day is asdistinct as the present NOW. Imagine, friend, first, a little wellsurrounded with wild cresses on the moor; something like a rivulet flowsfrom it, or rather you see a deep tinge of verdure, the line of which, you believe, must be produced by the oozing moisture--you follow it, andby-and-by there is a descent palpable to your feet--then you findyourself between low broomy knolls, that, heightening every step, becomeere long banks, and braes, and hills. You are surprised now to see astream, and look round for its source--and there seem now to be ahundred small sources in fissures and springs on every side--you hearthe murmurs of its course over beds of sand and gravel--and hark, awaterfall! A tree or two begins to shake its tresses on the horizon--abirch or a rowan. You get ready your angle--and by the time you havepanniered three dozen, you are at a wooden bridge--you fish the poolabove it with the delicate dexterity of a Boaz, capture the monarch ofthe flood, and on lifting your eyes from his starry side as he gasps hislast on the silvery shore, you behold a Cottage, at one gable-end anash, at the other a sycamore, and standing perhaps at the lonely door, amaiden like a fairy or an angel. 

This is the Age of Confessions; and why, therefore, may we not make aconfession of first-love? We had finished our sixteenth year--and wewere almost as tall as we are now; for our figure was then straight asan arrow, and almost like an arrow in its flight. We had given overbird-nesting--but we had not ceased to visit the dell where first wefound the Grey Lintie's brood. Tale-writers are told by critics toremember that the young shepherdesses of Scotland are not beautiful asthe fictions of a poet's dream. But SHE was beautiful beyond poetry. Shewas so then, when passion and imagination were young--and her image, herundying, unfading image, is so now, when passion and imagination areold, and when from eye and soul have disappeared much of the beauty andglory both of nature and life. We loved her from the first moment thatour eyes met--and we see their light at this moment--the same soft, burning light, that set body and soul on fire. She was but a poorshepherd's daughter; but what was that to us, when we heard her voicesinging one of her old plaintive ballads among the braes?--When we satdown beside her--when the same plaid was drawn over our shoulders in therain-storm--when we asked her for a kiss, and was not refused--for whathad she to fear in her beauty, and her innocence, and her filialpiety?--and were we not a mere boy, in the bliss of passion, ignorant ofdeceit or dishonour, and with a heart open to the eyes of all as to thegates of heaven? What music was in that stream! Could "Sabean odoursfrom the spicy shores of Araby the Blest" so penetrate our soul, as thatbreath, balmier than the broom on which we sat, forgetful of all otherhuman life! Father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts, andcousins, and all the tribe of friends that would throw us off--if weshould be so base and mad as to marry a low-born, low-bred, ignorant, uneducated, crafty, ay, crafty and designing beggar--were all forgottenin our delirium--if indeed it were delirium--and not aneverlastingly-sacred devotion to nature and to truth. For in what werewe deluded? A voice--a faint and dewy voice--deadened by the earth thatfills up her grave, and by the turf that, at this very hour, isexpanding its primroses to the dew of heaven--answers, "In nothing!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" exclaims some reader in derision. "Here's an attempt atthe pathetic!--a miserable attempt indeed; for who cares about the deathof a mean hut girl?--we are sick of low life. " Why, as to that matter, who cares for the death of any one mortal being? Who weeps for the deathof the late Emperor of all the Russias? Who wept over Napoleon theGreat? When Chatham or Burke, Pitt or Fox died--don't pretend to telllies about a nation's tears. And if yourself, who, perhaps, are not inlow life, were to die in half an hour (don't be alarmed), all who knewyou--except two or three of your bosom friends, who, partly from beingsomewhat dull, and partly from wishing to be decent, might whine--wouldwalk along George Street, at the fashionable hour of three, the very dayafter your funeral. Nor would it ever enter their heads to abstain froma dinner at the Club, ordered perhaps by yourself a fortnight ago, atwhich time you were in rude health, merely because you had foolishlyallowed a cold to fasten upon your lungs, and carry you off in the primeand promise of your professional life. In spite of all your criticalslang, therefore, Mr Editor, or Master Contributor to some LiteraryJournal, SHE, though a poor _Scottish Herd_, was most beautiful; andwhen, but a week after taking farewell of her, we went, according to ourtryst, to fold her in our arms, and was told by her father that she wasdead, --ay, dead--that she had no existence--that she was in acoffin, --when we awoke from the dead-fit in which we had lain on thefloor of that cottage, and saw her in her grave-clothes within an hourto be buried--when we stood at her burial--and knew that never more werewe or the day to behold her presence--we learned then how immeasurablymisery can surpass happiness--that the soul is ignorant of its ownbeing, till all at once a thunder-stone plunges down its depths, andgroans gurgle upwards upbraiding heaven. 

How easily can the heart change its mood from the awful to thesolemn--from the solemn to the sweet--and from the sweet to thegay--while the mirth of this careless moment is unconsciously temperedby the influence of that holy hour that has subsided but not died, andcontinues to colour the most ordinary emotion, as the common things ofearth look all lovelier in imbibed light, even after the serene moonthat had yielded it is no more visible in her place! Most gentle aresuch transitions in the calm of nature and of the heart; all true poetryis full of them; and in music how pleasant are they, or how affecting!Those alternations of tears and smiles, of fervent aspirations and ofquiet thoughts! The organ and the Ćolian harp! As the one has ceasedpealing praise, we can list the other whispering it--nor feels the soulany loss of emotion in the change--still true to itself and its wondrousnature--just as it is so when from the sunset clouds it turns its eyesto admire the beauty of a dewdrop or an insect's wing. 

Now, we hear many of our readers crying out against the barbarity ofconfining the free denizens of the air in wire or wicker Cages. Gentlereaders, do, we pray, keep your compassion for other objects. Or, if youare disposed to be argumentative with us, let us just walk down stairsto the larder, and tell the public truly what we there behold--threebrace of partridges, two ditto of moorfowl, a cock pheasant, poorfellow, --a man and his wife of the aquatic or duck kind, and a woodcock, vainly presenting his long Christmas bill, --

 "Some sleeping kill'd-- All murder'd. "

Why, you are indeed a most logical reasoner, and a most considerateChristian, when you launch out into an invective against the crueltyexhibited in our Cages. Let us leave this den of murder, and have aglass of our home-made frontignac in our own Sanctum. Come, come, sir, --look on this newly-married couple of CANARIES. --The architectureof their nest is certainly not of the florid order, but my LadyYellowlees sits on it a well-satisfied bride. Come back in a day or two, and you will see her nursing triplets. Meanwhile, hear the ear-piercingfife of the bridegroom!--Where will you find a set of happier people, unless perhaps it be in our parlour, or our library, or our nursery?For, to tell you the truth, there is a cage or two in almost every roomof the house. Where is the cruelty--here, or in your blood-stainedlarder? But you must eat, you reply. We answer--not necessarily birds. The question is about birds--cruelty to birds; and were that sagaciousold wild-goose, whom one single moment of heedlessness brought lastWednesday to your hospitable board, at this moment alive, to bear a partin our conversation, can you dream that, with all your ingenuity andeloquence, you could persuade him--the now defunct and disjected--thatyou had been under the painful necessity of eating him with stuffing andapple-sauce?

It is not in nature that an ornithologist should be cruel--he is mosthumane. Mere skin-stuffers are not ornithologists--and we have knownmore than one of that tribe who would have had no scruple in stranglingtheir own mothers, or reputed fathers. Yet if your true ornithologistcannot catch a poor dear bird alive, he must kill it--and leave you toweep for its death. There must be a few victims out of myriads ofmillions--and thousands and tens of thousands are few; but theornithologist knows the seasons when death is least afflictive--he ismerciful in his wisdom--for the spirit of knowledge is gentle--and"thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears, " reconcile him to thefluttering and ruffled plumage blood-stained by death. 'Tis hard, forexample, to be obliged to shoot a Zenaida dove! Yet a Zenaida dove mustdie for Audubon's Illustrations. How many has he loved in life, andtenderly preserved! And how many more pigeons of all sorts, cooked inall styles, have you devoured--ay, twenty for his one--you being aglutton and epicure in the same inhuman form, and he being contented atall times with the plainest fare--a salad perhaps of water-cressesplucked from a spring in the forest glade, or a bit of pemmican, or awafer of portable soup melted in the pot of some squatter--and sharedwith the admiring children before a drop has been permitted to touch hisown abstemious lips. 

The intelligent author of the "Treatise on British Birds" does notcondescend to justify the right we claim to encage them; but he showshis genuine humanity in instructing us how to render happy andhealthful their imprisonment. He says very prettily, "What are towngardens and shrubberies in squares, but an attempt to ruralise the city?So strong is the desire in man to participate in country pleasures, thathe tries to bring some of them even to his room. Plants and birds aresought after with avidity, and cherished with delight. With flowers heendeavours to make his apartments resemble a garden; and thinks ofgroves and fields, as he listens to the wild sweet melody of his littlecaptives. Those who keep and take an interest in song-birds, are oftenat a loss how to treat their little warblers during illness, or toprepare the proper food best suited to their various constitutions; butthat knowledge is absolutely necessary to preserve these littlecreatures in health: for want of it, young amateurs and bird-fanciershave often seen, with regret, many of their favourite birds perish. "

Now, here we confess is a good physician. In Edinburgh we understandthere are about five hundred medical practitioners on the humanrace--and we have dog-doctors, and horse-doctors, who come out innumbers--but we have no bird-doctors. Yet often, too often, when thewhole house rings, from garret to cellar, with the cries of childrenteething, or in the hooping-cough, the little linnet sits silent on hisperch, a moping bunch of feathers, and then falls down dead, when hislilting life might have been saved by the simplest medicinal foodskilfully administered. Surely if we have physicians to attend ourtreadmills, and regulate the diet and day's work of merciless ruffians, we should not suffer our innocent and useful prisoners thus to dieunattended. Why do not the ladies of Edinburgh form themselves into aSociety for this purpose?

Not one of all the philosophers in the world has been able to tell uswhat is happiness. Sterne's Starling is weakly supposed to have beenmiserable. Probably he was one of the most contented birds in theuniverse. Does confinement--the closest, most uncompanionedconfinement--make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sittingwith his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night, in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all daysewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is outwashing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurklingover the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is itso sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motionscircumscribed within the narrowest imaginable limits? Nonsense all!

Then, gentle reader, were you ever in a Highland shieling? Often sinceyou read our Recreations. It is built of turf, and is literally alive;for the beautiful heather is blooming, wildflowers and walls and roofare one sound of bees. The industrious little creatures must have comeseveral long miles for their balmy spoil. There is but one humancreature in that shieling, but he is not at all solitary. He no morewearies of that lonesome place than do the sunbeams or the shadows. Tohimself alone he chants his old Gaelic songs, or frames wild ditties ofhis own to the raven or red-deer. Months thus pass on; and he descendsagain to the lower country. Perhaps he goes to thewars--fights--bleeds--and returns to Badenoch or Lochaber; and oncemore, blending in his imagination the battles of his own regiment, inEgypt, Spain, or Flanders, with the deeds done of yore by Ossian sung, sits contented by the door of the same shieling, restored andbeautified, in which he had dreamt away the summers of his youth. 

What has become--we wonder--of Dartmoor Prison? During that long war itshuge and hideous bulk was filled with Frenchmen--ay, "Men of all climes--attach'd to none--were there;"

--a desperate race--robbers and reavers, and ruffians and rapers, andpirates and murderers--mingled with the heroes who, fired by freedom, had fought for the land of lilies, with its vine-vales and "hills ofsweet myrtle"--doomed to die in captivity, immured in that dolefulmansion on the sullen moor. There thousands pined and wore away andwasted--and when not another groan remained within the bones of theirbreasts, they gave up the ghost. Young heroes prematurely old in baffledpassions--life's best and strongest passions, that scorned to go tosleep but in the sleep of death. These died in their golden prime. Withthem went down into unpitied and unhonoured graves--for pity and honourdwell not in houses so haunted--veterans in their iron age--someself-smitten with ghastly wounds that let life finally bubble out ofsinewy neck or shaggy bosom--or the poison-bowl convulsed their giantlimbs unto unquivering rest. Yet there you saw a wild strange tumult oftroubled happiness--which, as you looked into its heart, wastransfigured into misery. There volatile spirits fluttered in theircage, like birds that seem not to hate nor to be unhappy in confinement, but, hanging by beak or claws, to be often playing with the glitteringwires--to be amusing themselves, so it seems, with drawing up, by smallenginery, their food and drink, which soon sickens, however, on theirstomachs, till, with ruffled plumage, they are often found in themorning lying on their backs, with clenched feet, and neck bent as iftwisted, on the scribbled sand, stone-dead. There you saw paleyouths--boys almost like girls, so delicate looked they in that hotinfected air which, ventilate it as you will, is never felt to breatheon the face like the fresh air of liberty--once bold and brightmidshipmen in frigate or first-rater, and saved by being picked up bythe boats of the ship that had sunk her by one double-shotted broadside, or sent her in one explosion splintering into the sky, and splashinginto the sea, in less than a minute the thunder silent, and the fieryshower over and gone--there you saw such lads as these, who used almostto weep if they got not duly the dear-desired letter from sister orsweetheart, and when they did duly get it, opened it with tremblingfingers, and even then let drop some natural tears--there we saw themleaping and dancing, with gross gesticulations and horrid oaths obscene, with grim outcasts from nature, whose mustached mouths were rank withsin and pollution--monsters for whom hell was yawning--their mortal mirealready possessed with a demon. There, wretched, woe-begone, and weariedout with recklessness and desperation, many wooed Chance and Fortune, who they hoped might yet listen to their prayers--and kept rattling thedice--cursing them that gave the indulgence--even in their cells ofpunishment for disobedience or mutiny. There you saw some, who in thecrowded courts "sat apart retired, "--bringing the practised skill thatonce supported, or the native genius that once adorned life, to bear onbeautiful contrivances and fancies elaborately executed with meanestinstruments, till they rivalled or outdid the work of art assisted byall the ministries of science. And thus won they a poor pittancewherewithal to purchase some little comfort or luxury, or ornament totheir persons; for vanity had not forsaken some in their rusty squalor, and they sought to please her, their mistress or their bride. There yousaw accomplished men conjuring before their eyes, on the paper or thecanvass, to feed the longings of their souls, the lights and the shadowsof the dear days that far away were beautifying some sacred spot of "_labelle France_"--perhaps some festal scene, for love in sorrow is stilltrue to remembered joy, where once with youths and maidens

 "They led the dance beside the murmuring Loire. "

There you heard--and hushed then was all the hubbub--some clear silvervoice, sweet almost as woman's, yet full of manhood in its depths, singing to the gay guitar, touched, though the musician was of the bestand noblest blood of France, with a master's hand, "La belle Gabrielle!"And there might be seen, in the solitude of their own abstractions, menwith minds that had sounded the profounds of science, and, seeminglyundisturbed by all that clamour, pursuing the mysteries of lines andnumbers--conversing with the harmonies and lofty stars of heaven, deafto all the discord and despair of earth. Or religious still even morethan they--for those were mental, these spiritual--you beheld there men, whose heads before their time were becoming grey, meditating on theirown souls, and in holy hope and humble trust in their Redeemer, if notyet prepared, perpetually preparing themselves for the world to come!

To return to Birds in Cages;--they are, when well, uniformly as happy asthe day is long. What else could oblige them, whether they will or no, to burst out into song--to hop about so pleased and pert--to play suchfantastic tricks, like so many whirligigs--to sleep so soundly, and toawake into a small, shrill, compressed twitter of joy at the dawn oflight? So utterly mistaken was Sterne, and all the othersentimentalists, that his Starling, who he absurdly opined was wishingto get out, would not have stirred a peg had the door of his cage beenflung wide open, but would have pecked like a very game-cock at the handinserted to give him his liberty. Depend upon it, that Starling had notthe slightest idea of what he was saying; and had he been up to themeaning of his words, would have been shocked at his ungrateful folly. Look at Canaries, and Chaffinches, and Bullfinches, and "the rest, " howthey amuse themselves for a while flitting about the room, and then, finding how dull a thing it is to be citizens of the world, bounce up totheir cages, and shut the door from the inside, glad to be once more athome. Begin to whistle or sing yourself, and forthwith you have a duetor a trio. We can imagine no more perfectly tranquil and cheerful lifethan that of a Goldfinch in a cage in spring, with his wife and hischildren. All his social affections are cultivated to the utmost. Hepossesses many accomplishments unknown to his brethren among thetrees;--he has never known what it is to want a meal in times of thegreatest scarcity; and he admires the beautiful frostwork on thewindows, when thousands of his feathered friends are buried in the snow, or, what is almost as bad, baked up into pies, and devoured by a largesupper-party of both sexes, who fortify their flummery and flirtation bysuch viands, and, remorseless, swallow dozens upon dozens of thewarblers of the woods. 

Ay, ay, Mr Goldy! you are wondering what we are now doing, andspeculating upon the scribbler with arch eyes and elevated crest, as ifyou would know the subject of his lucubrations. What the wiser or betterwouldst thou be of human knowledge? Sometimes that little heart of thinegoes pit-a-pat, when a great, ugly, staring contributor thrusts hisinquisitive nose within the wires--or when a strange cat glides roundand round the room, fascinating thee with the glare of his fierce fixedeyes;--but what is all that to the woes of an Editor?--Yes, sweetsimpleton! do you not know that we are the editor of _Blackwood'sMagazine_--Christopher North! Yes, indeed, we are that very man--thatself-same much-calumniated man-monster and Ogre. There, there!--perch onour shoulder, and let us laugh together at the whole world. 

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 

SECOND CANTICLE. 

The golden eagle leads the van of our Birds of Prey--and there she sitsin her usual carriage when in a state of rest. Her hunger and her thirsthave been appeased--her wings are folded up in a dignifiedtranquillity--her talons, grasping a leafless branch, are almost hiddenby the feathers of her breast--her sleepless eye has lost something ofits ferocity--and the Royal Bird is almost serene in her solitary statein the cliff. The gorcock unalarmed crows among the moors andmosses--the blackbird whistles in the birken shaw--and the cony erectshis ears at the mouth of his burrow, and whisks away frolicsome amongthe whins or heather. 

There is no index to the hour--neither light nor shadow--no cloud. Butfrom the composed aspect of the Bird, we may suppose it to be the hushof evening after a day of successful foray. The imps in the eyrie havebeen fed, and their hungry cry will not be heard till the dawn. Themother has there taken up her watchful rest, till in darkness she mayglide up to her brood--the sire is somewhere sitting within her viewamong the rocks--a sentinel whose eye, and ear, and nostril are true, inexquisite fineness of sense, to their trust, and on whom rarely, and asif by a miracle, can steal the adventurous shepherd or huntsman, towreak vengeance with his rifle on the spoiler of sheep-walk andforest-chase. 

Yet sometimes it chanceth that the yellow lustre of her keen, wild, fierce eye is veiled, even in daylight, by the film of sleep. Perhapssickness has been at the heart of the dejected bird, or fever wasted herwing. The sun may have smitten her, or the storm driven her against arock. Then hunger and thirst--which in pride of plumage she scorned, andwhich only made her fiercer on the edge of her unfed eyrie, as shewhetted her beak on the flint-stone, and clutched the strongheather-stalks in her talons, as if she were anticipating prey--quellher courage, and in famine she eyes afar off the fowls she is unable topursue, and with one stroke strike to earth. Her flight is heavier andheavier each succeeding day--she ventures not to cross the great glenswith or without lochs--but flaps her way from rock to rock, lower andlower down along the same mountain-side--and finally, drawn by herweakness into dangerous descent, she is discovered at grey dawn farbelow the region of snow, assailed and insulted by the meanest carrion;till a bullet whizzing through her heart, down she topples, and soon isdespatched by blows from the rifle-butt, the shepherd stretching out hisfoe's carcass on the sward, eight feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, withleg thick as his own wrist, and foot broad as his own hand. 

But behold the Golden Eagle, as she has pounced, and is exulting overher prey! With her head drawn back between the crescent of her upliftedwings, which she will not fold till that prey be devoured, eye glaringcruel joy, neck-plumage bristling, tail-feathers fan-spread, and talonsdriven through the victim's entrails and heart--there she is new lightedon the ledge of a precipice, and fancy hears her yell and its echo. Beakand talons, all her life long, have had a stain of blood, for themurderess observes no Sabbath, and seldom dips them in loch or sea, except when dashing down suddenly among the terrified water-fowl fromher watch-tower in the sky. The week-old fawn had left the doe's sidebut for a momentary race along the edge of the coppice; a rustle and ashadow--and the burden is borne off to the cliffs of Benevis. In aninstant the small animal is dead--after a short exultation torn intopieces, and by eagles and eaglets devoured, its unswallowed orundigested bones mingle with those of many other creatures, encumberingthe eyrie, and strewed around it over the bloody platform on which theyoung demons crawl forth to enjoy the sunshine. 

Oh for the life of an eagle written by himself! It would outsell theConfessions even of the English Opium-Eater. Proudly would he, or she, write of birth and parentage. On the rock of ages he first opened hiseyes to the sun, in noble instinct affronting and outstaring the light. The Great Glen of Scotland--hath it not been the inheritance of hisancestors for many thousand years? No polluting mixture of ignobleblood, from intermarriages of necessity or convenience with kite, buzzard, hawk, or falcon. No, the Golden Eagles of Glen-Falloch, surnamed the Sun-starers, have formed alliances with the Golden Eaglesof Cruachan, Benlawers, Shehallion, and Lochnagair--theLightning-Glints, the Flood-fallers, the Storm-wheelers, theCloud-cleavers, ever since the deluge. The education of theautobiographer had not been intrusted to a private tutor. Parental eyes, beaks, and talons, provided sustenance for his infant frame; and in thatcapacious eyrie, year after year repaired by dry branches from thedesert, parental advice was yelled into him, meet for the expansion ofhis instinct, as wide and wonderful as the reason of earth-crawling man. What a noble naturalist did he, in a single session at the College ofthe Cliff, become! Of the customs, and habits, and haunts of allinferior creatures, he speedily made himself master--ours included. Norwas his knowledge confined to theory, but reduced to daily practice. Hekept himself in constant training--taking a flight of a couple ofhundred miles before breakfast--paying a forenoon visit to the farthestof the Hebride Isles, and returning to dinner in Glenco. In one day hehas flown to Norway on a visit to his uncle by the mother's side, andreturned the next to comfort his paternal uncle, lying sick at the Headof the Cambrian Dee. He soon learned to despise himself for having onceyelled for food, when food was none; and to sit or sail, on rock orthrough ether, athirst and an hungered, but mute. The virtues ofpatience, endurance, and fortitude, have become with him, in strictaccordance with the Aristotelian Moral Philosophy--habits. A PeripateticPhilosopher he could hardly be called--properly speaking, he belongs tothe Solar School--an airy sect, who take very high ground, indulge inlofty flights, and are often lost in the clouds. Now and then a lightchapter might be introduced, setting forth how he and other youngstersof the Blood Royal were wont to take an occasional game at High-Jinks, or tourney in air lists, the champions on opposite sides flying from thePerthshire and from the Argyllshire mountains, and encountering with aclash in the azure common, six thousand feet high. But the fever of loveburned in his blood, and flying to the mountains of another continent, in obedience to the yell of an old oral tradition, he wooed and won hisvirgin bride--a monstrous beauty, wider-winged than himself, to kill orcaress, and bearing the proof of her noble nativity in the radiant Iristhat belongs in perfection of fierceness but to the Sun-starers, and inthem is found, unimpaired by cloudiest clime, over the uttermost partsof the earth. The bridegroom and his bride, during the honey-moon, slepton the naked rock--till they had built their eyrie beneath itscliff-canopy on the mountain-brow. When the bride was "as Eagles wish tobe who love their lords"--devoted unto her was the bridegroom, even asthe cushat murmuring to his brooding mate in the central pine-grove of aforest. Tenderly did he drop from his talons, close beside her beak, thedelicate spring lamb, or the too early leveret, owing to the hurried andimprudent marriage of its parents before March, buried in a living tombon April's closing day. Through all thy glens, Albyn! hadst thou reasonto mourn, at the bursting of the shells that Queen-bird had beencherishing beneath her bosom. Aloft in heaven wheeled the Royal Pair, from rising to setting sun. Among the bright-blooming heather theyespied the tartan'd shepherd, or hunter creeping like a lizard, and frombehind the vain shadow of a rock watching with his rifle the flight hewould fain see shorn of its beams. The flocks were thinned--and thebleating of desolate dams among the woolly people heard from many abrae. Poison was strewn over the glens for their destruction, but theEagle, like the lion, preys not on carcasses; and the shepherd dogshowled in agony over the carrion in which they devoured death. Ha! wasnot that a day of triumph to the Sun-starers of Cruachan, whensky-hunting in couples, far down on the greensward before the ruinedgateway of Kilchurn Castle, they saw, left all to himself in thesunshine, the infant heir of the Campbell of Breadalbane, the child ofthe Lord of Glenorchy and all its streams! Four talons in an instantwere in his heart. Too late were the outcries from all the turrets; forere the castle-gates were flung open, the golden head of the royal babewas lying in gore, in the Eyrie on the iron ramparts of Ben-Slarive--hisblue eyes dug out--his rosy cheeks torn--and his brains dropping frombeaks that revelled yelling within the skull!--Such are a few hints for"Some Passages in the Life of the Golden Eagle, written byHimself, "--in one volume crown octavo--Blackwoods, Edinburgh andLondon. 

O heavens and earth!--forests and barn-yards! what a difference with adistinction between a GOLDEN EAGLE and a GREEN GOOSE! There, all neckand bottom, splay-footed, and hissing in miserable imitation of aserpent, lolling from side to side, up and down like an ill-trimmedpunt, the downy gosling waddles through the green mire, and, imaginingthat King George the Fourth is meditating mischief against him, cacklesangrily as he plunges into the pond. No swan that "on still St Mary'slake floats double, swan and shadow, " so proud as he! He prides himselfon being a gander, and never forgets the lesson instilled into him byhis parents, soon as he chipt the shell in the nest among the nettles, that his ancestors saved the Roman Capitol. In process of time, incompany with swine, he grazes on the common, and insults the Egyptiansin their roving camp. Then comes the season of plucking--and this verypen bears testimony to his tortures. Out into the houseless winter is hedriven--and, if he escapes being frozen into a lump of fat ice, he iscrammed till his liver swells into a four-pounder--his cerebellum is cutby the cruel knife of a phrenological cook, and his remains buried witha cerement of apple sauce in the paunches of apoplectic aldermen, eatingagainst each other at a civic feast! Such are a few hints for "SomePassages in the Life of a Green Goose, " written by himself--in foolscapoctavo--published by Quack and Co. , Ludgate Lane, and sold by allbooksellers in town and country. 

Poor poets must not meddle with eagles. In the "Fall of Nineveh, " MrAtherstone describes a grand review of his army by Sardanapalus. Twomillion men are put into motion by the moving of the Assyrian flag-staffin the hand of the king, who takes his station on a mount conspicuous toall the army. This flag-staff, though "tall as a mast"--Mr Atherstonedoes not venture to go on to say with Milton, "hewn on Norwegian hills, "or "of some tall ammiral, " though the readers' minds supply thedeficiency--this mast was, we are told, for "_two strong men_ a task;"but it must have been so for twenty. To have had the least chance ofbeing all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have beenless than fifty feet high--and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standardof Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke tohim. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Suchshouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firmground made tremble. " But this was not all. 

 "At his height, A speck scarce visible, the eagle heard, And felt his strong wing falter: terror-struck, Fluttering and wildly screaming, down he sank-- Down through the quivering air: another shout, -- His talons droop--his sunny eye grows dark-- His strengthless pennons fail--plump down he falls, Even like a stone. Amid the far-off hills, With eye of fire, and shaggy mane uprear'd, The sleeping lion in his den sprang up; Listen'd awhile--then laid his monstrous mouth Close to the floor, and breathed hot roarings out In fierce reply. "

What think ye of that, John Audubon, Charles Buonaparte, J. PrideauxSelby, James Wilson, Sir William Jardine, and ye other European andAmerican ornithologists? Pray, Mr Atherstone, did you ever see aneagle--a speck in the sky? Never again suffer yourself, oh, dear sir! tobelieve old women's tales of men on earth shooting eagles with theirmouths; because the thing is impossible, even had their mouthpieces hadpercussion-locks--had they been crammed with ammunition to the muzzle. Had a stray sparrow been fluttering in the air, he would certainly havegot a fright, and probably a fall--nor would there have been any hopefor a tom-tit. But an eagle--an eagle ever so many thousand feetaloft--poo, poo!--he would merely have muted on the roaring multitude, and given Sardanapalus an additional epaulette. Why, had a string ofwild-geese at the time been warping their way on the wind, they wouldmerely have shot the wedge firmer and sharper into the air, and answeredthe earth-born shout with an air-born gabble--clangour to clangour. Where were Mr Atherstone's powers of ratiocination, and all hisacoustics? Two shouts slew an eagle. What became of all the otherdenizens of air--especially crows, ravens, and vultures, who, seeing twomillions of men, must have come flocking against a day of battle? Everymother's son of them must have gone to pot. Then what scrambling amongthe allied troops! And what was one eagle doing by himself "up-byyonder?" Was he the only eagle in Assyria--the secular bird of ages? Whowas looking at him, first a speck--then faltering--then fluttering andwildly screaming--then plump down like a stone? Mr Atherstone talks asif he saw it. In the circumstances he had no business with his "sunnyeye growing dark. " That is entering too much into the medical, or ratheranatomical symptoms of his apoplexy, and would be better for a medicaljournal than an epic poem. But to be done with it--two shouts that slewan eagle a mile up the sky, must have cracked all the tympana of the twomillion shouters. The entire army must have become as deaf as a post. Nay, Sardanapalus himself, on the mount, must have been blown into theair as by the explosion of a range of gunpowder-mills; the campaigntaken a new turn; and a revolution been brought about, of which, at thisdistance of place and time, it is not easy for us to conjecture whatmight have been the fundamental features on which it would havehinged--and thus an entirely new aspect given to all the histories ofthe world. 

What is said about the lion, is to our minds equally picturesque andabsurd. He was among the "far-off hills. " How far, pray? Twenty miles?If so, then without a silver ear-trumpet he could not have heard thehuzzas. If the far-off hills were so near Nineveh as to allow the lionto hear the huzzas even in his sleep, the epithet "far-off" should bealtered, and the lion himself brought from the interior. But we cannotbelieve that lions were permitted to live in dens within ear-shot ofNineveh. Nimrod had taught them "never to come there no more"--andSemiramis looked sharp after the suburbs. But, not to insist unduly upona mere matter of police, is it the nature of lions, lying in their densamong far-off hills, to start up from their sleep, and "breathe hotroarings out" in fierce reply to the shouts of armies? All stuff! MrAtherstone shows off his knowledge of natural history, in telling usthat the said lion, in roaring, "laid his monstrous mouth close to thefloor. " We believe he does so; but did Mr Atherstone learn the fact fromCuvier or from Wombwell? It is always dangerous to a poet to be toopicturesque; and in this case, you are made, whether you will or no, tosee an old, red, lean, mangy monster, called a lion, in his unhappy denin a menagerie, bathing his beard in the sawdust, and from his toothlessjaws "breathing hot roarings out, " to the terror of servant-girls andchildren, in fierce reply to a man in a hairy cap and full suit ofvelveteen, stirring him up with a long pole, and denominating him by thesacred name of the great asserter of Scottish independence. 

Sir Humphry Davy--in his own science the first man of his age--does notshine in his "Salmonia"--pleasant volume though it be--as anornithologist. Let us see. 

"POIET. --The scenery improves as we advance nearer the lower parts ofthe lake. The mountains become higher, and that small island orpeninsula presents a bold craggy outline; and the birch-wood below it, and the pines above, make a scene somewhat Alpine in character. But whatis that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards the end ofthe lake? Surely it is an eagle!

"HAL. --You are right; it is an eagle, and of a rare and peculiarspecies--the grey or silver eagle, a noble bird! From the size of theanimal, it must be the female; and her eyrie is in that high rock. Idare say the male is not far off. "

Sir Humphry speaks in his introductory pages of Mr Wordsworth as a loverof fishing and fishermen; and we cannot help thinking and feeling thathe intends Poietes as an image of that great Poet. What! WilliamWordsworth, the very high-priest of nature, represented to have seen aneagle for the first time of his life only then, and to have boldlyventured on a conjecture that such was the name and nature of the bird!"But what is that large bird soaring above the pointed rock, towards theend of the lake? Surely it is an eagle!" "Yes, you are right--it is aneagle. " Ha--ha--ha--ha--ha--ha! Sir Humphry--Sir Humphry--that guffawwas not ours--it came from the Bard of Rydal--albeit unused to thelaughing mood--in the haunted twilight of that beautiful--that solemnTerrace. 

Poietes having been confirmed, by the authority of Halieus, in hisbelief that the bird is an eagle, exclaims, agreeably to the part heplays, "Look at the bird! She dashes into the water, _falling like arock_ and raising a column of spray--she has _fallen from a greatheight_. And now she rises again into the air--_what an extraordinarysight_!" Nothing is so annoying as to be ordered to look at a sightwhich, unless you shut your eyes, it is impossible for you not to see. Aperson behaving in a boat like Poietes, deserved being flung overboard. "Look at the bird!" Why, every eye was already upon her; and if Poieteshad had a single spark of poetry in his composition, he would have beenstruck mute by such a sight, instead of bawling out, open-mouthed andgoggle-eyed, like a Cockney to a rocket at Vauxhall. Besides, an eagledoes not, when descending on her prey, fall like a rock. There isnothing like the "_vis inertić_" in her precipitation. You still see theself-willed energy of the ravenous bird, as the mass of plumes flashesin the spray--of which, by the by, there never was, nor will be, acolumn so raised. She is as much the queen of birds as she sinks as whenshe soars--her trust and her power are still seen and felt to be in herpinions, whether she shoots to or from the zenith--to a falling star shemight be likened--just as any other devil--either by Milton orWordsworth--for such a star seems to our eye and our imagination everinstinct with spirit, not to be impelled by exterior force, but to beself-shot from heaven. 

Upon our word, we begin to believe that we ourselves deserve the name ofPoietes much better than the gentleman who at threescore had never seenan eagle. "She has fallen from a great height, " quoth thegentleman--"What an extraordinary sight!" he continueth--while we aremute as the oar suspended by the up-gazing Celt, whose quiet eyebrightens as it pursues the Bird to her eyrie in the cliff over the covewhere the red-deer feed. 

Poietes having given vent to his emotions in such sublimeexclamations--"Look at the bird!" "What an extraordinary sight!" mighthave thenceforth held his tongue, and said no more about eagles. ButHalieus cries, "There! you see her rise with a fish in her talons"--andPoietes, very simply, or rather like a simpleton, returns for answer, "She _gives an interest which I hardly expected to have found in thisscene_. Pray, are there _many of these animals_ in this country?" A poethardly expecting to find interest in such a scene as a great Highlandloch--Loch Maree! "Pray, are there many _of these hanimals in thiscountry_?" Loud cries of Oh! oh! oh! No doubt an eagle is an animal;like Mr Cobbett or Mr O'Connell--"a very fine animal;" but weparticularly, and earnestly, and anxiously, request Sir Humphry Davynot to call her so again--but to use the term bird, or any other term hechooses, except animal. Animal, a living creature, is too general, toovague by far; and somehow or other it offends our ear shockingly whenapplied to an eagle. We may be wrong, but in a trifling matter of thiskind Sir Humphry surely will not refuse our supplication. Let him call ahorse an animal, if he chooses--or an ass--or a cow--but not aneagle--as he loves us, not an eagle; let him call it a bird--the Bird ofJove--the Queen or King of the Sky--or anything else he chooses--but notan animal--no--no--no--not an animal, as he hopes to prosper, to bepraised in Maga, embalmed and immortalised. 

Neither ought Poietes to have asked if there were "_many_ of theseanimals" in this country. He ought to have known that there are not_many_ of these animals in any country. Eagles are proud--apt to holdtheir heads very high--and to make themselves scarce. A great manyeagles all flying about together would look most absurd. They are awareof that, and fly in "ones and twos"--a couple perhaps to a county. Poietes might as well have asked Mungo Park if there were a great manylions in Africa. Mungo, we think, saw but one; and that was one toomuch. There were probably a few more between Sego and Timbuctoo--butthere are not a "great many of those animals in that country"--thoughquite sufficient for the purpose. How the Romans contrived to get athundreds for a single show, perplexes our power of conjecture. 

Halieus says--with a smile on his lip surely--in answer to the query ofPoietes--"Of this species I have seen but these two; and, I believe, theyoung ones migrate as soon as they can provide for themselves; for thissolitary bird requires a large space to move and feed in, and does notallow its offspring to partake its reign, or to live near it. " This isall pretty true, and known to every child rising or risen six, exceptpoor Poietes. He had imagined that there were "many of these animals inthis country, " that they all went a-fishing together as amicably as fivehundred sail of Manksmen among a shoal of herrings. 

Throughout these Dialogues we have observed that Ornither rarely openshis mouth. Why so taciturn? On the subject of birds he ought, from hisname, to be well informed; and how could he let slip an opportunity, such as will probably never be afforded him again in this life, of beingeloquent on the Silver Eagle? Ornithology is surely the department ofOrnither. Yet there is evidently something odd and peculiar in hisidiosyncrasy; for we observe that he never once alludes to "theseanimals, " birds, during the whole excursion. He has not taken his gunwith him into the Highlands, a sad oversight indeed in a gentleman who"is to be regarded as generally fond of the sports of the field. "Flappers are plentiful over all the moors about the middle of July; andhoodies, owls, hawks, ravens, make all first-rate shooting to sportsmennot over anxious about the pot. It is to be presumed, too, that he canstuff birds. What noble specimens might he not have shot for Mr Selby!On one occasion, "the SILVER EAGLE" is preying in a pool within slugrange, and there is some talk of shooting him--we suppose with an oar, or the butt of a fishing-rod, for the party have no firearms--butPoietes insists on sparing his life, because "these animals" are apicturesque accompaniment to the scenery, and "give it an interest whichhe had not expected to find" in mere rivers, lochs, moors, andmountains. Genus Falco must all the while have been laughing in hissleeve at the whole party--particularly at Ornither--who, to judge fromhis general demeanour, may be a fair shot with number five at an oldnewspaper expanded on a barn-door twenty yards off, but never could havehad the audacity to think in his most ambitious mood of letting off hisgun at an Eagle. 

But further, Halieus, before he took upon him to speak soauthoritatively about eagles, should have made himself master of theirnames and natures. He is manifestly no scientific ornithologist. We are. The general question concerning Eagles in Scotland may now be squeezedinto very small compass. Exclusive of the true Osprey (Falco Halićtus), which is rather a larger fishing-hawk than an eagle, there are twokinds, viz. --the GOLDEN EAGLE (F. Chrysaëtos), and the WHITE-TAILED orCINEROUS EAGLE (F. Albicilla). The other two _nominal_ species aredisposed of in the following manner:--First, the RING-TAILED EAGLE (F. Fulvus) is the young of the Golden Eagle, being distinguished in earlylife by having the basal and central portion of the tail white, whichcolour disappears as the bird attains the adult state. Second, the SEAEAGLE (F. Ossifragus), commonly so called, is the young of theWhite-tailed Eagle above named, from which it differs in having a browntail; for in this species the white of the tail becomes every year moreapparent as the bird increases in age, whereas, in the Golden Eagle, thewhite altogether disappears in the adult. 

It is to the RING-TAILED EAGLE, and, by consequence, to the GOLDENEAGLE, that the name of BLACK EAGLE is applied in the Highlands. 

The White-tailed or Sea Eagle, as it becomes old, attains, in additionto the pure tail, a pale or bleached appearance, from which it may meritand obtain the name of Grey or SILVER EAGLE, as Sir Humphry Davy choosesto call it; but it is not known among naturalists by that name. There isno other species, however, to which the name can apply; and, therefore, Sir Humphry has committed the very gross mistake of calling the Grey orSilver Eagle (to use his own nomenclature) a very rare Eagle, since itis the most common of all the Scots, and also--_a fortiori_--of all theEnglish Eagles--being in fact the SEA EAGLE of the Highlands. 

It preys often on fish dead or alive; but not exclusively, as it alsoattacks young lambs, and drives off the ravens from carrion prey, beingless fastidious in its diet than the GOLDEN EAGLE, which probably killsits own meat--and has been known to carry off children; for a strikingaccount of one of which hay-field robberies you have but a few minutesto wait. 

As to its driving off its young, its habits are probably similar in thisrespect to other birds of prey, none of which appear to keep together infamilies after the young can shift for themselves; but we have never metwith any one who has seen them in the act of driving. It is statedvaguely, in all books, of all eagles. 

As to its requiring a large range to feed in--we have only to remarkthat, from the powerful flight of these birds, and the wild and barrennature of the countries which they inhabit, there can be no doubt thatthey fly far, and "prey in distant isles"--as Thomson has it; butHalieus needed not have stated this circumstance as a character of thispeculiar eagle--for an eagle with a small range does not exist; andtherefore it is to be presumed that they require a large one. 

Further, all this being the case, there seems to be no necessity for theold eagles giving themselves the trouble to drive off the young ones, who by natural instinct will fly off of their own accord, as soon astheir wings can bear them over the sea. If an eagle were so partial tohis native vale, as never on any account, hungry or thirsty, drunk orsober, to venture into the next parish, why then the old people would beforced, on the old principle of self-preservation, to pack off theirprogeny to bed and board beyond Benevis. But an Eagle is a Citizen ofthe World. He is friendly to the views of Mr Huskisson on the WoolTrade, the Fisheries, and the Colonies--and acts upon the old adage, "Every bird for himself, and God for us all!"

To conclude, for the present, this branch of our subject, we beg leavehumbly to express our belief, that Sir Humphry Davy never saw the Eagle, by him called the Grey or Silver, hunting for fish in the styledescribed in "Salmonia. " It does not dislike fish--but it is not itsnature to keep hunting for them so, not in the Highlands at least, whatever it may do on American continent or isles. Sir Humphry talks ofthe bird dashing down repeatedly upon a pool within shot of the anglers. We have angled fifty times in the Highlands for Sir Humphry's once, butnever saw nor heard of such a sight. He has read of such things, andintroduced them into this dialogue for the sake of effect--all quiteright to do--had his reading lain among trustworthy Ornithologists. Thecommon Eagle--which he ignorantly, as we have seen, calls so rare--is ashy bird, as all shepherds know--and is seldom within range of therifle. Gorged with blood, they are sometimes run in upon and felled witha staff or club. So perished, in the flower of his age, that Eagle whosefeet now form handles to the bell-ropes of our Sanctum at BuchananLodge--and are the subject of a clever copy of verses by Mullion, entitled "All the Talons. "

We said in "The Moors, " that we envied not the eagle or any other birdhis wings, and showed cause why we preferred our own feet. Had Puckwings? If he had, we retract, and would sport Puck. 

 _Oberon. _

 "Fetch me this herb--and be thou here again, Ere the Leviathan can swim a league. "

 _Puck. _

 "I'll put a girdle round about the earth In forty minutes. "

How infinitely more poetical are wings like these than seven-leagueboots! We declare, on our conscience, that we would not accept thepresent of a pair of seven-league boots to-morrow--or, if we did, itwould be out of mere politeness to the genie who might press them on us, and the wisest thing we could do would be to lock them up in a drawerout of the reach of the servants. Suppose that we wished to walk fromClovenford to Innerleithen--why, with seven-league boots on, one singlestep would take us up to Posso, seven miles above Peebles! That wouldnever do. By mincing one's steps, indeed, one might contrive to stop atInnerleithen; but suppose a gad-fly were to sting one's hip at thePirn--one unintentional stride would deposit Christopher at Drummelzier, and another over the Cruik, and far away down Annan water! Therefore, there is nothing like wings. On wings you can flutter--and glide--andfloat and soar--now like a humming-bird among the flowers--now like aswan, half rowing, half sailing, and half flying adown a river--now likean eagle afloat in the blue ocean of heaven, or shooting sunwards, invisible in excess of light--and bidding farewell to earth and itshumble shadows. "O that I had the wings of a dove, that I might fleeaway and be at rest!" Who hath not, in some heavy hour or other, fromthe depth of his very soul, devoutly--passionately--hopelessly--breathedthat wish to escape beyond the limits of woe and sin--not into the worldof dreamless death; for weary though the immortal pilgrim may have been, never desired he the doom of annihilation, untroubled although it be, shorn of all the attributes of being--but he has prayed for the wings ofthe dove, because that fair creature, as she wheeled herself away fromthe sight of human dwellings, has seemed to disappear to his imaginationamong old glimmering forests, wherein she foldeth her wing and fallethgladly asleep--and therefore, in those agitated times when the spiritsof men acknowledge kindred with the inferior creatures, and would faininterchange with them powers and qualities, they are willing even to laydown their intelligence, their reason, their conscience itself, so thatthey could but be blessed with the faculty of escaping from all theagonies that intelligence, and reason, and conscience alone can know, and beyond the reach of this world's horizon to flee away and be atrest!

Puck says he will put a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. At what rate is that per second, taking the circumference of the earthat 27, 000 miles, more or less? There is a question for the mechanics, somewhat about as difficult of solution as Lord Brougham's celebratedone of the Smuggler and the Revenue Cutter--for the solution of which herecommended the aid of algebra. It is not so quick as you would imagine. We forget the usual rate of a cannon-ball in good condition, when he isin training--and before he is at all blown. So do we forget, we aresorry to confess, the number of centuries that it would take a good, stout, well-made, able-bodied cannon-ball, to accomplish a journey toour planet from one of the fixed stars. The great difficulty, weconfess, would be to get him safely conveyed thither. If that could bedone, we should have no fear of his finding his way back, if not in ourtime, in that of our posterity. However red-hot he might have been onstarting, he would be cool enough, no doubt, on his arrival at the goal;yet we should have no objection to back him against Time for atrifle--Time, we observe, in almost all matches being beat, often indeedby the most miserable hacks, that can with difficulty raise a gallop. Time, however, possibly runs booty; for when he does make play, it mustbe confessed that he is a spanker, and that nothing has been seen withsuch a stride since Eclipse. 

O beautiful and beloved Highland Parish! in whose dashing glens ourbeating heart first felt the awe of solitude, and learned to commune(alas! to what purpose?) with the tumult of its own thoughts! Thecircuit of thy skies was indeed a glorious arena spread over themountain-tops for the combats of the great birds of prey! One wild cryor another was in the lift--of the hawk, or the glead, or the raven, orthe eagle--or when those fiends slept, of the peaceful heron, andsea-bird by wandering boys pursued in its easy flight, till thesnow-white child of ocean wavered away far inland, as if in search of asteadfast happiness unknown on the restless waves. Seldom did the eaglestoop to the challenge of the inferior fowl; but when he did, it waslike a mailed knight treading down unknown men in battle. The hawks, andthe gleads, and the ravens, and the carrion-crows, and the hooded-crows, and the rooks, and the magpies, and all the rest of the rural militia, forgetting their own feuds, sometimes came sallying from all quarters, with even a few facetious jackdaws from the old castle, to show fightwith the monarch of the air. Amidst all that multitude of wingswinnowing the wind, was heard the sough and whizz of those mighty vans, as the Royal Bird, himself an army, performed his majestic evolutionswith all the calm confidence of a master in the art of aerial war, nowshooting up half-a-thousand feet perpendicular, and now suddenlyplump-down into the rear of the croaking, cawing, and chatteringbattalions, cutting off their retreat to the earth. Then the rout becamegeneral, the missing, however, far outnumbering the dead. Keepingpossession of the field of battle, hung the eagle for a short whilemotionless--till with one fierce yell of triumph he seemed to seek thesun, and disappear like a speck in the light, surveying half of Scotlandat a glance, and a thousand of her isles. 

Some people have a trick of describing incidents as having happenedwithin their own observation, when in fact they were at the time lyingasleep in bed, and disturbing the whole house with the snore of theirdormitory. Such is too often the character of the eyewitnesses of thepresent age. Now, we would not claim personal acquaintance with anincident we had not seen--no, not for a hundred guineas per sheet; and, therefore, we warn the reader not to believe the following little storyabout an eagle and child (by the way, that is the Derby crest, and afavourite sign of inns in the north of England) on our authority. "Itell the tale as 'twas told to me, " by the schoolmaster of Naemanslaws, in the shire of Ayr; and if the incident never occurred, then must hehave been one of the greatest liars that ever taught the young idea howto shoot. For our single selves, we are by nature credulous. Manyextraordinary things happen in this life, and though "seeing isbelieving, " so likewise "believing is seeing, " as every one must allowwho reads these our Recreations. 

Almost all the people in the parish were leading in their meadow-hay(there were not in all its ten miles square twenty acres of ryegrass)on the same day of midsummer, so drying was the sunshine and thewind, --and huge heaped-up wains, that almost hid from view the horsesthat drew them along the sward, beginning to get green with secondgrowth, were moving in all directions towards the snug farmyards. Neverhad the parish seemed before so populous. Jocund was the balmy air withlaughter, whistle, and song. But the Tree-gnomons threw the shadow of"one o'clock" on the green dial-face of the earth--the horses wereunyoked, and took instantly to grazing--groups of men, women, lads, lasses, and children collected under grove, and bush, andhedgerow--graces were pronounced, some of them rather too tedious inpresence of the mantling milk-cans, bullion-bars of butter, andcrackling cakes; and the great Being who gave them that day their dailybread, looked down from his Eternal Throne, well pleased with the pietyof his thankful creatures. 

The great Golden Eagle, the pride and the pest of the parish, stoopeddown, and away with something in his talons. One single sudden femaleshriek--and then shouts and outcries as if a church spire had tumbleddown on a congregation at a sacrament. "Hannah Lamond's bairn! HannahLamond's bairn!" was the loud fast-spreading cry. "The Eagle's taen affHannah Lamond's bairn!" and many hundred feet were in another instanthurrying towards the mountain. Two miles of hill and dale, and copse andshingle, and many intersecting brooks, lay between; but in an incrediblyshort time the foot of the mountain was alive with people. The eyrie waswell known, and both old birds were visible on the rock-ledge. But whoshall scale that dizzy cliff, which Mark Steuart the sailor, who hadbeen at the storming of many a fort, once attempted in vain? All keptgazing, or weeping, or wringing of hands, rooted to the ground, orrunning back and forwards, like so many ants, essaying their new wings, in discomfiture. "What's the use--what's the use o' ony puir humanmeans? We have nae power but in prayer!" And many knelt down--fathersand mothers thinking of their own babies--as if they would force thedeaf heavens to hear. 

Hannah Lamond had been all this while sitting on a stone, with a faceperfectly white, and eyes like those of a mad person, fixed on theeyrie. Nobody noticed her; for strong as all sympathies with her hadbeen at the swoop of the Eagle, they were now swallowed up in the agonyof eyesight. "Only last Sabbath was my sweet wee wean baptised in thename o' the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost!" and on utteringthese words, she flew off through the brakes and over the huge stones, up--up--up--faster than ever huntsman ran in to the death--fearless as agoat playing among the precipices. No one doubted, no one could doubt, that she would soon be dashed to pieces. But have not people who walk intheir sleep, obedient to the mysterious guidance of dreams, clomb thewalls of old ruins, and found footing, even in decrepitude, along theedge of unguarded battlements, and down dilapidated stair-cases deep asdraw-wells or coal-pits, and returned with open, fixed, and unseeingeyes, unharmed, to their beds at midnight? It is all the work of thesoul, to whom the body is a slave; and shall not the agony of a mother'spassion--who sees her baby, whose warm mouth had just left her breast, hurried off by a demon to a hideous death--bear her limbs aloft whereverthere is dust to dust, till she reach that devouring den, and fiercerand more furious than any bird of prey that ever bathed its beak inblood, throttle the fiends that with their heavy wing would fain flapher down the cliffs, and hold up her child in deliverance?

No stop--no stay--she knew not that she drew her breath. Beneath herfeet Providence fastened every loose stone, and to her handsstrengthened every root. How was she ever to descend? That fear, then, but once crossed her heart, as up--up--up--to the little image made ofher own flesh and blood. "The God who holds me now from perishing--willnot the same God save me when my child is at my breast?" Down came thefierce rushing of the Eagle's wings--each savage bird dashing close toher head, so that she saw the yellow of their wrathful eyes. All at oncethey quailed, and were cowed. Yelling, they flew off to the stump of anash jutting out of a cliff, a thousand feet above the cataract; and theChristian mother, falling across the eyrie, in the midst of bones andblood, clasped her child--dead--dead--no doubt--but unmangled anduntorn, and swaddled up just as it was when she laid it down asleepamong the fresh hay in a nook of the harvest-field. Oh! what pang ofperfect blessedness transfixed her heart from that faint, feeblecry--"It lives! it lives! it lives!" and baring her bosom, with loudlaughter, and eyes dry as stones, she felt the lips of the unconsciousinnocent once more murmuring at the fount of life and love. "O, thougreat and thou dreadful God! whither hast thou brought me--one of themost sinful of thy creatures? Oh! save me lest I perish, even for thyown name's sake! O Thou, who died to save sinners, have mercy upon me!"Cliffs, chasms, blocks of stone, and the skeletons of oldtrees--far--far down--and dwindled into specks a thousand creatures ofher own kind, stationary, or running to and fro! Was that the sound ofthe waterfall, or the faint roar of voices? Is that her nativestrath?--and that tuft of trees, does it contain the hut in which standsthe cradle of her child? Never more shall it be rocked by her foot! Heremust she die--and when her breast is exhausted--her baby too. And thosehorrid beaks, and eyes, and talons, and wings will return, and her childwill be devoured at last, even within the dead arms that can protect itno more. 

Where, all this while, was Mark Steuart, the sailor? Half-way up thecliffs. But his eyes had got dim, and his head dizzy, and his heartsick--and he who had so often reefed the topgallant-sail, when atmidnight the coming of the gale was heard afar, covered his face withhis hands, and dared look no longer on the swimming heights. "And whowill take care of my poor bedridden mother?" thought Hannah, who, through exhaustion of so many passions, could no more retain in hergrasp the hope she had clutched in despair. A voice whispered, "God. "She looked round expecting to see a spirit; but nothing moved except arotten branch, that, under its own weight, broke off from the crumblingrock. Her eye--by some secret sympathy with the inanimateobject--watched its fall; and it seemed to stop, not far off, on a smallplatform. Her child was bound upon her shoulders--she knew not how orwhen--but it was safe--and scarcely daring to open her eyes, she sliddown the shelving rocks, and found herself on a small piece of firmroot-bound soil, with the tops of bushes appearing below. With fingerssuddenly strengthened into the power of iron, she swung herself down bybrier, and broom, and heather, and dwarf-birch. There, a loosened stoneleapt over a ledge and no sound was heard, so profound was its fall. There, the shingle rattled down the screes, and she hesitated not tofollow. Her feet bounded against the huge stone that stopped them; butshe felt no pain. Her body was callous as the cliff. Steep as the wallof a house was now the side of the precipice. But it was matted with ivycenturies old--long ago dead, and without a single green leaf--but withthousands of arm-thick stems petrified into the rock, and covering it aswith a trellice. She felt her baby on her neck--and with hands and feetclung to that fearful ladder. Turning round her head, and looking down, she saw the whole population of the parish--so great was themultitude--on their knees. She heard the voice of psalms--a hymnbreathing the spirit of one united prayer. Sad and solemn was thestrain--but nothing dirge-like--sounding not of death, but deliverance. Often had she sung that tune--perhaps the very words--but them she heardnot--in her own hut, she and her mother--or in the kirk, along with allthe congregation. An unseen hand seemed fastening her fingers to theribs of ivy, and in sudden inspiration, believing that her life was tobe saved, she became almost as fearless as if she had been changed intoa winged creature. Again her feet touched stones and earth--the psalmwas hushed--but a tremulous sobbing voice was close beside her, and ashe-goat, with two little kids at her feet. "Wild heights, " thought she, "do these creatures climb--but the dam will lead down her kids by theeasiest paths; for in the brute creatures holy is the power of amother's love!" and turning round her head, she kissed her sleepingbaby, and for the first time she wept. 

Overhead frowned the front of the precipice, never touched before byhuman hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the GoldenEagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built theireyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part ofthe mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yetaccessible--and more than one person in the parish had reached thebottom of the Glead's Cliff. Many were now attempting it--and ere thecautious mother had followed her dumb guides a hundred yards, throughamong dangers that, although enough to terrify the stoutest heart, weretraversed by her without a shudder, the head of one man appeared, andthen the head of another, and she knew that God had delivered her andher child into the care of their fellow-creatures. Not a word wasspoken--she hushed her friends with her hands--and with uplifted eyespointed to the guides sent to her by Heaven. Small green plats, wherethose creatures nibble the wildflowers, became now morefrequent--trodden lines, almost as plain as sheep-paths, showed that thedam had not led her young into danger; and now the brushwood dwindledaway into straggling shrubs, and the party stood on a little eminenceabove the stream, and forming part of the strath. 

There had been trouble and agitation, much sobbing and many tears, amongthe multitude, while the mother was scaling the cliffs--sublime was theshout that echoed afar the moment she reached the eyrie--then hadsucceeded a silence deep as death--in a little while arose that hymningprayer, succeeded by mute supplication--the wildness of thankful andcongratulatory joy had next its sway--and now that her salvation wassure, the great crowd rustled like a wind-swept wood. And for whose sakewas all this alternation of agony? A poor humble creature, unknown tomany even by name--one who had had but few friends, nor wished formore--contented to work all day, here--there--anywhere--that she mightbe able to support her aged mother and her child--and who on Sabbathtook her seat in an obscure pew, set apart for paupers, in the kirk. 

"Fall back, and give her fresh air, " said the old minister of theparish; and the ring of close faces widened round her lying as in death. "Gie me the bonny bit bairn into my arms, " cried first one mother andthen another, and it was tenderly handed round the circle of kisses, many of the snooded maidens bathing its face in tears. "There's no asingle scratch about the puir innocent, for the Eagle, you see, maun haestuck its talons into the lang claes and the shawl. Blin', blin' maunthey be who see not the finger o' God in this thing!"

Hannah started up from her swoon--and, looking wildly round, cried, "Oh!the Bird--the Bird!--the Eagle--the Eagle!--the Eagle has carried off mybonny wee Walter--is there nane to pursue?" A neighbour put her babyinto her breast; and shutting her eyes, and smiting her forehead, thesorely bewildered creature said in a low voice, "Am I wauken--oh! tellme if I'm wauken--or if a' this be but the wark o' a fever. "

Hannah Lamond was not yet twenty years old, and although she was amother--and you may guess what a mother--yet--frown not, fair and gentlereader--frown not, pure and stainless as thou art--to her belonged notthe sacred name of wife--and that baby was the child of sin and ofshame--yes--"the child of misery, baptised in tears!" She hadloved--trusted--been betrayed--and deserted. In sorrow andsolitude--uncomforted and despised--she bore her burden. Dismal had beenthe hour of travail--and she feared her mother's heart would havebroken, even when her own was cleft in twain. But how healing isforgiveness--alike to the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! Andthen Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was notsuch as her fellow-creatures deemed it--for there were dreadful secretswhich should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So shebowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes ofrepentance--walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered thekirk--yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Hersadness inspired a general pity--she was excluded from no house she hadheart to visit--no coarse comment, no ribald jest accompanied the noticepeople took of her baby--no licentious rustic presumed on her frailty;for the pale, melancholy face of the nursing mother, weeping as she sungthe lullaby, forbade all such approach--and an universal sentiment ofindignation drove from the parish the heartless and unprincipledseducer--if all had been known, too weak word for his crime--who leftthus to pine in sorrow, and in shame far worse than sorrow, one who tillher unhappy fall had been held up by every mother as an example to herdaughters. 

Never had she striven to cease to love her betrayer--but she hadstriven--and an appeased conscience had enabled her to do so--to thinknot of him now that he had deserted her for ever. Sometimes his image, as well in love as in wrath, passed before the eye of her heart--but sheclosed it in tears of blood, and the phantom disappeared. Thus all thelove towards him that slept--but was not dead--arose in yearnings ofstill more exceeding love towards his child. Round its head was gatheredall hope of comfort--of peace--of reward of her repentance. One of itssmiles was enough to brighten up the darkness of a whole day. In herbreast--on her knee--in its cradle, she regarded it with a perpetualprayer. And this feeling it was, with all the overwhelming tenderness ofaffection, all the invigorating power of passion, that, under the handof God, bore her up and down that fearful mountain's brow, and after thehour of rescue and deliverance, stretched her on the greensward like acorpse. 

The rumour of the miracle circled the mountain's base, and a strangestory without names had been told to the Wood-ranger of theCairn-Forest, by a wayfaring man. Anxious to know what truth there wasin it, he crossed the hill, and making his way through the sullen crowd, went up to the eminence, and beheld her whom he had so wickedly ruined, and so basely deserted. Hisses, and groans, and hootings, and fierceeyes, and clenched hands assailed and threatened him on every side. 

His heart died within him, not in fear, but in remorse. What a worm hefelt himself to be! And fain would he have become a worm, that, toescape all that united human scorn, he might have wriggled away in slimeinto some hole of the earth. But the meek eye of Hannah met his inforgiveness--an un-upbraiding tear--a faint smile of love. All hisbetter nature rose within him, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes, good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is yourscorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in thewoods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her--but here Iam--not to offer retribution--for that may not--will not--must notbe--guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim thatinnocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, todeliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder--I call on you toseize your prisoner. "

The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge andenlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Theiranger subsided into a stern satisfaction--and that soon softened, insight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness, into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been, had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in hisuncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness. The oldclergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers, whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer wasover, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferiorto a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation wasfreed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. Andalthough the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much betterthan we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-rangernever became altogether a saint--nor acquired the edifying habit ofpulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of hiseyes--yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything veryserious laid to his prejudice--that he became in due time an elder ofthe Kirk--gave his children a religious education--erring only in makingrather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up tomanhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet. 

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 

THIRD CANTICLE. 

The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roamingpedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has notyet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional bigrain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimesutters a sullen groan--the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise isrepeated, but instead of a groan, a croak--croak--croak! manifestly froma thing with life. A pause of silence! and hollower and hoarser thecroak is heard from the opposite side of the glen. Eyeing the blacksultry heaven, he feels the warm plash on his face, but sees no bird onthe wing. By-and-by something black lifts itself slowly and heavily upfrom a precipice, in deep shadow; and before it has cleared therock-range, and entered the upper region of air, he knows it to be aRaven. The creature seems wroth to be disturbed in his solitude, and inhis strong straight-forward flight aims at the head of another glen; buthe wheels round at the iron barrier, and, alighting among the heather, folds his huge massy wings, and leaps about as if in anger, with thesame savage croak--croak--croak! No other bird so like a demon--andshould you chance to break a leg in the desert, and be unable to crawlto a hut, your life is not worth twenty-four hours' purchase. Never wasthere a single hound in Lord Darlington's packs, since his lordshipbecame a mighty hunter, with nostrils so fine as those of that featheredfiend, covered though they be with strong hairs or bristles, that grimlyadorn a bill of formidable dimensions, and apt for digging outeye-socket and splitting skull-structure of dying man or beast. Thatbill cannot tear in pieces like the eagle's beak, nor are its talons sopowerful to smite as to compress--but a better bill forcut-and-thrust--- push, carte, and tierce--the dig dismal and the plungeprofound--belongs to no other bird. It inflicts great gashes; nor needsthe wound to be repeated on the same spot. Feeder foul and obscene! tothy nostril upturned "into the murky air, sagacious of thy quarry fromafar, " sweeter is the scent of carrion, than to the panting lover'ssense and soul the fragrance of his own virgin's breath and bosom, when, lying in her innocence in his arms, her dishevelled tresses seem ladenwith something more ethereally pure than "Sabean odours from the spicyshores of Araby the Blest. "

The Raven dislikes all animal food that has not a deathy smack. Itcannot be thought that he has any reverence or awe of the mystery oflife. Neither is he a coward; at least, not such a coward as to fear thedying kick of a lamb or sheep. Yet so long as his victim can stand, orsit, or lie in a strong struggle, the raven keeps aloof--hopping in acircle that narrows and narrows as the sick animal's nostrils keepdilating in convulsions, and its eyes grow dimmer and more dim. When theprey is in the last agonies, croaking, he leaps upon the breathingcarcass, and whets his bill upon his own blue-ringed legs, steadied byclaws in the fleece, yet not so fiercely inserted as to get entangledand fast. With his large level-crowned head bobbing up and down, andturned a little first to one side and then to another, all the while aself-congratulatory leer in his eye, he unfolds his wings, and thenfolds them again, twenty or thirty times, as if dubious how to begin togratify his lust of blood; and frequently, when just on the brink ofconsummation, jumps off side, back, or throat, and goes dallying about, round and round, and off to a small safe distance, scenting, almostsnorting, the smell of the blood running cold, colder, and more cold. Atlast the poor wretch is still; and then, without waiting till it isstiff, he goes to work earnestly and passionately, and taught by horridinstinct how to reach the entrails, revels in obscene gluttony, andpreserves, it may be, eye, lip, palate, and brain, for the last courseof his meal, gorged to the throat, incapacitated to return thanks, andwith difficulty able either to croak or to fly. 

The Raven, it is thought, is in the habit of living upwards of a hundredyears, perhaps a couple of centuries. Children grow into girls, girlsinto maidens, maidens into wives, wives into widows, widows into olddecrepit crones, and crones into dust; and the Raven who wons at thehead of the glen, is aware of all the births, baptisms, marriages, deathbeds, and funerals. Certain it is--at least so men say--that he isaware of the deathbeds and the funerals. Often does he flap his wingsagainst door and window of hut, when the wretch within is in extremity, or, sitting on the heather-roof, croaks horror into the dying dream. Asthe funeral winds its way towards the mountain cemetery he hovers aloftin the air--or, swooping down nearer to the bier, precedes the corpselike a sable saulie. While the party of friends are carousing in thehouse of death, he too, scorning funeral-baked meats, croaks hoarsehymns and dismal dirges as he is devouring the pet-lamb of the littlegrandchild of the deceased. The shepherds maintain that the Raven issometimes heard to laugh. Why not, as well as the hyena? Then it is thathe is most diabolical, for he knows that his laughter is prophetic ofhuman death. True it is, and it would be injustice to conceal the fact, much more to deny it, that Ravens of old fed Elijah; but that was thepunishment of some old sin committed by Two who before the Flood borethe human shape, and who, soon as the Ark rested on Mount Ararat, flewoff to the desolation of swamped forests and the disfigured solitude ofthe drowned glens. Dying Ravens hide themselves from daylight inburial-places among the rocks, and are seen hobbling into their tombs, as if driven thither by a flock of fears, and crouching under a remorsethat disturbs instinct, even as if it were conscience. So sings and saysthe Celtic superstition--muttered to us in a dream--adding that thereare Raven ghosts, great black bundles of feathers, for ever in theforest, night-hunting in famine for prey, emitting a last feeble croakat the blush of dawn, and then all at once invisible. 

There can be no doubt that that foolish Quaker, who some twenty yearsago perished at the foot of a crag near Red Tarn, "far in the bosom ofHelvyllyn, " was devoured by ravens. We call him foolish, because noadherent of that sect was ever qualified to find his way among mountainswhen the day was shortish, and the snow, if not very deep, yet wreathedand pit-falled. In such season and weather, no place so fit for a Quakeras the fireside. Not to insist, however, on that point, with what gleethe few hungry and thirsty old Ravens belonging to the Red Tarn Clubmust have flocked to the Ordinary! Without asking each other to whichpart this, that, or the other croaker chose to be helped, the maximwhich regulated their behaviour at table was doubtless, "First come, first served. " Forthwith each bill was busy, and the scene becameanimated in the extreme. There must have been great difficulty to themost accomplished of the carrion in stripping the Quaker of his drab. The broad-brim had probably escaped with the first intention, and aftergoing before the wind half across the unfrozen Tarn, capsized, filled, and sunk. Picture to yourself so many devils, all in glossy blackfeather coats and dark breeches, with waistcoats inclining to blue, pully-hawlying away at the unresisting figure of the follower of Fox, and getting first vexed and then irritated with the pieces of chokingsoft armour in which, five or six ply thick, his inviting carcass was soprovokingly insheathed! First a drab duffle cloak--then a drabwraprascal--then a drab broadcloth coat, made in the oldestfashion--then a drab waistcoat of the same--then a drab under-waistcoatof thinner mould--then a linen-shirt, somewhat drabbish--then aflannel-shirt, entirely so, and most odorous to the nostrils of themembers of the Red Tarn Club. All this must have taken a couple of daysat the least; so, supposing the majority of members assembled abouteight A. M. On the Sabbath morning, it must have been well on to twelveo'clock on Monday night before the club could have comfortably sat downto supper. During these two denuding days, we can well believe that thePresident must have been hard put to it to keep the secretary, treasurer, chaplain, and other office-bearers, ordinary andextraordinary members, from giving a sly dig at Obadiah's face, sotempting in the sallow hue and rank smell of first corruption. Deadbodies keep well in frost; but the subject had in this case probablyfallen from a great height, had his bones broken to smash, his fleshbruised and mangled. The President, therefore, we repeat it, evenalthough a raven of great age and authority, must have had inconceivabledifficulty in controlling the Club. The croak of"Order!--order!--Chair!--chair!"--must have been frequent; and had theoffice not been hereditary, the old gentleman would no doubt have thrownit up, and declared the chair vacant. All obstacles and obstructionshaving been by indefatigable activity removed, no attempt, we may wellbelieve, was made by the seneschal to place the guests according totheir rank, above or below the salt, and the party sat promiscuouslydown to a late supper. Not a word was tittered during the firsthalf-hour, till a queer-looking mortal, who had spent several years ofhis prime of birdhood at old Calgarth, and picked up a tolerable commandof the Westmoreland dialect by means of the Hamiltonian system, exclaimed, "I'se weel nee brussen--there be's Mister Wudsworth--Ho, ho, ho!" It was indeed the bard, benighted in the Excursion from Patterdaleto Jobson's Cherry-Tree; and the Red Tarn Club, afraid of having theirorgies put into blank verse, sailed away in floating fragments beneaththe moon and stars. 

But over the doom of one true Lover of Nature let us shed a flood ofrueful tears; for at what tale shall mortal man weep, if not at the taleof youthful genius and virtue shrouded suddenly in a winding-sheetwreathed of snow by the pitiless tempest! Elate in the joy of solitude, he hurried like a fast-travelling shadow into the silence of the frozenmountains, all beautifully encrusted with pearls, and jewels, anddiamonds, beneath the resplendent night-heavens. The din of populouscities had long stunned his brain, and his soul had sickened in thepresence of the money-hunting eyes of selfish men, all madly pursuingtheir multifarious machinations in the great mart of commerce. The verysheeted masts of ships, bearing the flags of foreign countries, in alltheir pomp and beauty sailing homeward or outward-bound, had becomehateful to his spirit--for what were they but the floating enginery ofMammon? Truth, integrity, honour, were all recklessly sacrificed to gainby the friends he loved and had respected most--sacrificed without shameand without remorse--repentance being with them a repentance only overill-laid schemes of villany--plans for the ruination of widows andorphans, blasted in the bud of their iniquity. The brother of his bosommade him a bankrupt--and for a year the jointure of his widow-mother wasunpaid. But she died before the second Christmas--and he was left alonein the world. Poor indeed he was, but not a beggar. A legacy came to himfrom a distant relation--almost the only one of his name--who diedabroad. Small as it was, it was enough to live on--and his enthusiasticspirit gathering joy from distress, vowed to dedicate itself in someprofound solitude to the love of Nature, and the study of her GreatLaws. He bade an eternal farewell to cities at the dead of midnight, beside his mother's grave, scarcely distinguishable among the thousandflat stones, sunk, or sinking into the wide churchyard, along which agreat thoroughfare of life roared like the sea. And now, for the firsttime, his sorrow flung from him like a useless garment, he found himselfalone among the Cumbrian mountains, and impelled in strong idolatryalmost to kneel down and worship the divine beauty of the moon, and"stars that are the poetry of heaven. "

Not uninstructed was the wanderer in the lore that links the human heartto the gracious form and aspects of the Mighty Mother. In early youth hehad been intended for the Church, and subsequent years of ungrateful andungenial toils had not extinguished the fine scholarship that nativeaptitude for learning had acquired in the humble school of the villagein which he was born. He had been ripe for College when the sudden deathof his father, who had long been at the head of a great mercantileconcern, imposed it upon him, as a sacred duty owed to his mother andhis sisters, to embark in trade. Not otherwise could he hope ever toretrieve their fortunes--and for ten years for their sake he was aslave, till ruin set him free. Now he was master of his own destiny--andsought some humble hut in that magnificent scenery, where he might passa blameless life, and among earth's purest joys prepare his soul forheaven. Many such humble huts had he seen during that one bold, bright, beautiful spring winter-day. Each wreath of smoke from the breathingchimneys, while the huts themselves seemed hardly awakened from sleep inthe morning-calm, led his imagination up into the profound peace of thesky. In any one of those dwellings, peeping from sheltered dells, orperched on wind-swept eminences, could he have taken up his abode, andsat down contented at the board of their simple inmates. But in the verydelirium of a new bliss, the day faded before him--twilight lookedlovelier than dream-land in the reflected glimmer of the snow--and thushad midnight found him, in a place so utterly lonesome in its remotenessfrom all habitations, that even in summer no stranger sought it withoutthe guidance of some shepherd familiar with the many bewildering passesthat stretched away in all directions through among the mountains todistant vales. No more fear or thought had he of being lost in thewilderness, than the ring-dove that flies from forest to forest in thewinter season, and, without the aid even of vision, trusts to theinstinctive wafting of her wings through the paths of ether. 

As he continued gazing on the heavens, the moon all at once lostsomething of her brightness--the stars seemed fewer in number--and thelustre of the rest as by mist obscured. The blue ethereal frame grewdiscoloured with streaks of red and yellow--and a sort of dim darknessdeepened and deepened on the air, while the mountains appeared higher, and at the same time further off, as if he had been transported in adream to another region of the earth. A sound was heard, made up offar-mustering winds, echoes from caves, swinging of trees, and themurmur as of a great lake or sea beginning to break on the shore. A fewflakes of snow touched his face, and the air grew cold. A clear tarn hada few minutes before glittered with moonbeams, but now it haddisappeared. Sleet came thicker and faster, and ere long it was a stormof snow. "O God! my last hour is come!" and scarcely did he hear his ownvoice in the roaring tempest. 

Men have died in dungeons--and their skeletons been found long yearsafterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through whathideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eyesaw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders, but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day inspring--long after the snows were melted--except here and there a patchlike a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure--a huge Raven roseheavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who, going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld arotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, andbegan to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of itsmaster--a name unknown in that part of the country--and weeks elapsedbefore any person could be heard of that could tell the history of thesufferer. A stranger came and went--taking the faithful creature withhim that had so long watched by the dead--but long before his arrivalthe remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little wayon from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yardsfrom the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of----, not far from the footof Ullswater. 

Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story--andpray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, thesecond the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are notdecided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining thatwe are strongest in humour--others, that our power is in pathos. Thejudicious declare that our forte lies in both--in the two united, oralternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking, " exclaimssome scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very seriousan affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treatedwith such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, ofthe Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!"Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that--this--articleconfesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. Butno intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as thefact--and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say whatthey will--would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to, to bring in a verdict of "Justifiable homicide. " The gentleman or ladywho has honoured us so far with perusal, knows enough of human life, andof their own hearts, to know also that there is no other subject whichmen of genius--and who ever denied that we are men of genius?--have beenaccustomed to view in so many ludicrous lights as this same subject ofdeath; and the reason is at once obvious--yet _recherché_--videlicet, Death is, in itself and all that belongs to it, such a sad, cold, wild, dreary, dismal, distracting, and dreadful thing, that at times mentalking about it cannot choose but laugh!

Too-hoo--too-hoo--too-whit-too-hoo!--we have got among the OWLS. Venerable personages, in truth, they are--perfect Solomons! Thespectator, as in most cases of very solemn characters, feels himself atfirst strongly disposed to commit the gross indecorum of bursting outa-laughing in their face. One does not see the absolute necessity eitherof man or bird looking at all times so unaccountably wise. Why will anOwl persist in his stare? Why will a Bishop never lay aside his wig?

People ignorant of Ornithology will stare like the Bird of Wisdomhimself on being told that an OWL is an Eagle. Yet, bating a littleinaccuracy, it is so. Eagles, kites, hawks, and owls, all belong to thegenus Falco. We hear a great deal too much in poetry of the moping Owl, the melancholy Owl, the boding Owl, whereas he neither mopes nor bodes, and is no more melancholy than becomes a gentleman. We also hear of theOwl being addicted to spirituous liquors; and hence the expression, asdrunk as an Owl. All this is mere Whig personality, the Owl being a Toryof the old school, and a friend of the ancient establishments of churchand state. Nay, the same political party, although certainly the mostshortsighted of God's creatures, taunt the Owl with being blind. Asblind as an Owl, is a libel in frequent use out of ornithologicalsociety. Shut up Lord Jeffrey himself in a hay-barn with a well-builtmow, and ask him in the darkness to catch you a few mice, and he willtell you whether or not the Owl be blind. This would be just as fair asto expect the Owl to see, like Lord Jeffrey, through a case in theParliament House during daylight. Nay, we once heard a writer in Taylorand Hessey call the Owl stupid, he himself having longer ears than anyspecies of Owl extant. What is the positive character of the Owl mayperhaps appear by-and-by; but we have seen that, describing hischaracter by negations, we may say that he resembles Napoleon Buonapartemuch more than Joseph Hume or Alderman Wood. He is not moping--notboding--not melancholy--not a drunkard--not blind--not stupid; as muchas it would be prudent to say of any man, whether editor or contributor, in her Majesty's dominions. 

We really have no patience with people who persist in all manner ofmisconceptions regarding the character of birds. Birds often appear tosuch persons, judging from, of, and by themselves, to be in mind andmanners the reverse of their real character. They judge the inner birdby outward circumstances inaccurately observed. There is the owl. Howlittle do the people of England know of him--even of him the barn-doorand domestic owl--yea, even at this day--we had almost said the Poets!Shakespeare, of course, and his freres, knew him to be a merryfellow--quite a madcap--and so do now all the Lakers. But Cowper had hisdoubts about it; and Gray, as every schoolboy knows, speaks of him likean old wife. The force of folly can go no further, than to imagine anowl complaining to the moon of being disturbed by people walking in acountry churchyard. And among all our present bardlings, the owl issupposed to be constantly on the eve of suicide. If it were really so, he ought in a Christian country to be pitied, not pelted, as he is sureto be when accidentally seen in sunlight--for melancholy is amisfortune, especially when hereditary and constitutional, as it ispopularly believed to be in the Black-billed Bubo, and certainly was inDr Johnson. In young masters and misses we can pardon any childishness;but we cannot pardon the antipathy to the owl entertained by the manlyminds of grown-up English clodhoppers, ploughmen, and threshers. Theykeep terriers to kill rats and mice in barns, and they shoot the owls, any one of whom we would cheerfully back against the famous Billy. "Thevery commonest observation teaches us, " says the author of the "Gardensof the Menagerie, " "that they are in reality the best and most efficientprotectors of our cornfields and granaries from the devastating pillageof the swarms of mice and other small _rodents_. " Nay, by their constantdestruction of these petty but dangerous enemies, the owls, he says, "earn an unquestionable title to be regarded as among the _most activeof the friends of man_; a title which only one or two among themoccasionally forfeit by their aggressions on the defenceless poultry. "Roger or Dolly beholds him in the act of murdering a duckling, and, likeother light-headed, giddy, unthinking creatures, they forget all theservice he has done the farm, the parish, and the state; he is shot _inthe act_, and nailed, wide-extended in cruel spread-eagle, on thebarn-door. Others again call him dull and shortsighted--nay, go thelength of asserting that he is stupid--as stupid as an owl. Why, ourexcellent fellow, when you have the tithe of the talent of the commonowl, and know half as well how to use it, you may claim the medal. 

The eagles, kites, and hawks, hunt by day. The Owl is the Nimrod of theNight. Then, like one who shall be nameless, he sails about seekingthose whom he may devour. To do him justice, he has a truly ghost-likehead and shoulders of his own. What horror to the "small birds rejoicingin spring's leafy bowers, " fast-locked we were going to say in eachother's arms, but sitting side by side in the same cosy nuptial nest, tobe startled out of their love-dreams by the great lamp-eyed, beaked faceof a horrible monster with horns, picked out of feathered bed, andwafted off in one bunch, within talons, to pacify a set of hissing, andsnappish, and shapeless powder-puffs, in the loophole of a barn? In ahouse where a cat is kept, mice are much to be pitied. They are soinfatuated with the smell of a respectable larder, that to leave thepremises, they confess, is impossible. Yet every hour--nay, every minuteof their lives--must they be in the fear of being leaped out upon byfour velvet paws--and devoured with kisses from a whiskered mouth, and athroat full of that incomprehensible music--a purr. Life, on such terms, seems to us anything but desirable. But the truth is, that mice in thefields are not a whit better off. Owls are cats with wings. Skimmingalong the grass tops, they stop in a momentary hover, let drop a talon, and away with Mus, his wife, and small family of blind children. It isthe white, or yellow, or barn, or church, or Screech-Owl, orGilley-Owlet, that behaves in this way; and he makes no bones of amouse, uniformly swallowing him alive. Our friend, we suspect, though nodrunkard, is somewhat of a glutton. In one thing we agree with him, thatthere is no sort of harm in a heavy supper. There, however, we areguilty of some confusion of ideas; for what to us, who rise in themorning, seems a supper, is to him who gets up at evening twilight, abreakfast. We therefore agree with him in thinking that there is no sortof harm in a heavy breakfast. After having passed a pleasant night ineating and flirting, he goes to bed betimes about four o'clock in themorning; and, as Bewick observes, makes a blowing hissing noise, resembling the snoring of a man. Indeed nothing can be more diverting toa person annoyed by blue devils, than to look at a white Owl and hiswife asleep. With their heads gently inclined towards each other, therethey keep snoring away like any Christian couple. Should the one make apause, the other that instant awakes, and, fearing something may bewrong with his spouse, opens a pair of glimmering winking eyes, andinspects the adjacent physiognomy with the scrutinising stare of avillage apothecary. If all be right, the concert is resumed, the snoresometimes degenerating into a sort of snivel, and the snivel into ablowing hiss. First time we heard this noise was in a churchyard when wewere mere boys, having ventured in after dark to catch the minister'scolt for a gallop over to the parish capital, where there was adancing-school ball. There had been a nest of Owls in some hole in thespire; but we never doubted for a moment that the noise of snoring, blowing, hissing, and snapping proceeded from a testy old gentleman thathad been buried that forenoon, and had come alive again a day after thefair. Had we reasoned the matter a little, we must soon have convincedourselves that there was no ground for alarm to us at least; for thenoise was like that of some one half stifled, and little likely to heaveup from above him a six-feet-deep load of earth--to say nothing of theimprobability of his being able to unscrew the coffin from the inside. Be that as it may, we cleared about a dozen of decent tombstones atthree jumps--the fourth took us over a wall five feet high within andabout fifteen without, and landed us, with a squash, in acabbage-garden, enclosed on the other three sides by a house and aholly-hedge. The house was the sexton's, who, apprehending the stramashto proceed from a resurrectionary surgeon mistaken in his latitude, thrust out a long duck-gun from a window in the thatch, and swore toblow out our brains if we did not instantly surrender ourselves, anddeliver up the corpse. It was in vain to cry out our name, which he knewas well as his own. He was deaf to reason, and would not withdraw hispatterero till we had laid down the corpse. He swore that he saw thesack in the moonlight. This was a horse-cloth with which we had intendedto saddle the "cowt, " and that had remained, during the supernaturalagency under which we laboured, clutched unconsciously and convulsivelyin our grasp. Long was it ere Davie Donald would see us in our truelight--but at length he drew on his Kilmarnock nightcap, and coming outwith a bouet, let us through the trance and out of the front door, thoroughly convinced, till we read Bewick, that old Southfield was notdead, although in a very bad way indeed. Let this be a lesson toschoolboys not to neglect the science of natural history, and to studythe character of the White Owl. 

OWLS--both White and common Brown, are not only useful in a mountainouscountry, but highly ornamental. How serenely beautiful their noiselessflight; a flake of snow is not winnowed through the air moresoftly-silent! Gliding along the dark shadows of a wood, how spiritualthe motion--how like the thought of a dream! And then, during the hushedmidnight hours, how jocund the whoop and hollo from the heart of asycamore--grey rock, or ivied Tower! How the Owls of Windermere mustlaugh at the silly Lakers, that under the garish eye of day, envelopedin clouds of dust, whirl along in rattling post-shays in pursuit of thepicturesque! Why, the least imaginative Owl that ever hunted mice bymoonlight on the banks of Windermere, must know the character of itsscenery better than any poetaster that ever dined on char at Bowness orLowood. The long quivering lines of light illumining some sylvanisle--the evening-star shining from the water to its counterpart in thesky--the glorious phenomenon of the double moon--the night-colours ofthe woods--and, once in the three years perhaps, that loveliest and mostlustrous of celestial forms, the lunar rainbow--all these and many morebeauteous and magnificent sights are familiar to the Owls of Windermere. And who know half so well as they do the echoes of Furness, andApplethwaite, and Loughrigg, and Landale, all the way on to Dungeon-Gilland Pavey-Ark, Scawfell and the Great Gable, and that sea of mountains, of which every wave has a name? Midnight--when asleep so still andsilent--seems inspired with the joyous spirit of the Owls in theirrevelry--and answers to their mirth and merriment through all herclouds. The Moping Owl, indeed!--the Boding Owl, forsooth!--theMelancholy Owl, you blockhead!--why, they are the mostcheerful--joy-portending--and exulting of God's creatures! Their flow ofanimal spirits is incessant--crowing-cocks are a joke to them--bluedevils are to them unknown--not one hypochondriac in a thousandbarns--and the Man-in-the-Moon acknowledges that he never heard one ofthem utter a complaint. 

But what say ye to an Owl, not only like an eagle in plumage, but equalto the largest eagle in size--and therefore named, from the King ofBirds, the EAGLE OWL. Mr Selby! you have done justice to the monarch ofthe Bubos. We hold ourselves to be persons of tolerable courage, as theworld goes--but we could not answer for ourselves showing fight withsuch a customer, were he to waylay us by night in a wood. In comparison, Jack Thurtell looked harmless. No--that bold, bright-eyed murderer, withHorns on his head like those on Michael Angelo's statue of Moses, wouldnever have had the cruel cowardice to cut the weasand, and smash out thebrains of such a miserable wretch as Weare! True, he is fond ofblood--and where's the harm in that? It is his nature. But if there beany truth in the science of Physiognomy--and be that of Phrenology whatit will, most assuredly there is truth in it--the original of that Owl, for whose portrait the world is indebted to Mr Selby, and Sir ThomasLawrence never painted a finer one of Prince or Potentate of any Holy orUnholy Alliance, must have despised Probert from the very bottom of hisheart. No prudent Eagle but would be exceedingly desirous of keeping ongood terms with him--devilish shy, i' faith, of giving him any offenceby the least hauteur of manner, or the slightest violation of etiquette. An Owl of this character and calibre is not afraid to show his horns atmid-day on the mountain. The Fox is not over and above fond of him--andhis claws can kill a cub at a blow. The Doe sees the monster sitting onthe back of her fawn, and, maternal instinct overcome by horror, boundsinto the brake, and leaves the pretty creature to its fate. ThankHeaven, he is, in Great Britain, a rare bird! Tempest-driven across theNorthern Ocean from his native forests in Russia, an occasional visitanthe "frightens this isle from its propriety, " and causes a hideousscreaming through every wood he haunts. Some years ago, one was killedin the upland moors in the county of Durham--and, of course, paid avisit to Mr Bullock's Museum. Eagle-like in all its habits, it buildsits nest on high rocks--sometimes on the loftiest trees--and seldom laysmore than two eggs. One is one more than enough--and we who fly by nighttrust never to fall in with a live specimen of the Strix-Bubo ofLinnćus. 

But largest and loveliest of all the silent night-gliders--the SNOWYOWL! Gentle reader--if you long to see his picture, we have told youwhere it may be found;--and in the College Museum, within a glass vaseon the central table in the Palace of Stuffed Birds, you may admire hisoutward very self--the semblance of the Owl he was when he used to eyethe moon shining over the Northern Sea:--but if you would see the nobleand beautiful Creature himself, in all his living glory, you must seekhim through the long summer twilight among the Orkney or the ShetlandIsles. The Snowy Owl dearly loves the snow--and there is, we believe, atradition among them, that their first ancestor and ancestress rose uptogether from a melting snow-wreath on the very last day of a Greenlandwinter, when all at once the bright fields reappear. The race stillinhabits that frozen coast--being common, indeed, through all theregions of the Arctic Circle. It is numerous on the shores of Hudson'sBay, in Norway, Sweden, and Lapland--but in the temperate parts ofEurope and America "rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno. "

We defy all the tailors on the face of the habitable globe; and whatcountless cross-legged fractional parts of men--who, like the beings ofwhom they are constituents, are thought to double their numbers everythirty years--must not the four quarters of the earth, in their presentadvanced state of civilisation, contain!--we defy, we say, all thetailors on the face of the habitable globe to construct such a surtoutas that of the Snowy Owl, covering him, with equal luxury and comfort, in summer's heat and winter's cold. The elements, in all their freezingfury, cannot reach the body of the bird through that beautifuldown-mail. Well guarded are the opening of those great eyes. Neither thedriving dust, nor the searching sleet, nor the sharp frozen snow-stour, give him the ophthalmia. Gutta Serena is to him unknown--no Snowy Owlwas ever couched for cataract--no need has he for an oculist, should helive an hundred years; and were they to attempt any operation on hislens or iris, how he would hoot at Alexander and Wardrope!

Night, doubtless, is the usual season of his prey; but he does not shunthe day, and is sometimes seen hovering unhurt in the sunshine. The redor black grouse flies as if pursued by a ghost; but the Snowy Owl, little slower than the eagle, in dreadful silence overtakes his flight, and then death is sudden and sure. Hawking is, or was, a noblepastime--and we have now prevented our eyes from glancing atJer-falcon, Peregrine, or Goshawk; but Owling, we do not doubt, would benoways inferior sport; and were it to become prevalent in modern times, as Hawking was in times of old, why, each lady, as Venus already fair, with an Owl on her wrist, would look as wise as Minerva. 

But our soul sickens at all those dreams of blood! and fain would turnaway from fierce eye, cruel beak, and tearing talon--war-weapons of themthat delight in wounds and death--to the contemplation of creatureswhose characteristics are the love of solitude--shy gentleness ofmanner--the tender devotion of mutual attachment--and, in field orforest, a lifelong passion for peace. 

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY. 

FOURTH CANTICLE. 

Welcome then the RING-DOVE--the QUEST--or CUSHAT, for that is the verybird we have had in our imagination. There is his full-length portrait, stealthily sketched as the Solitary was sitting on a tree. You mustcatch him napping, indeed, before he will allow you an opportunity ofcolouring him on the spot from nature. It is not that he is more jealousor suspicious of man's approach than other bird; for never shall wesuffer ourselves to believe that any tribe of the descendants of theDove that brought to the Ark the olive tidings of reappearing earth, canin their hearts hate or fear the race of the children of man. But Naturehas made the Cushat a lover of the still forest-gloom; and therefore, when his lonesome haunts are disturbed or intruded on, he flies to someyet profounder, some more central solitude, and folds his wing in thehermitage of a Yew, sown in the time of the ancient Britons. 

It is the Stock-Dove, we believe, not the Ring-Dove, from whom aredescended all the varieties of the races of Doves. What tenderer praisecan we give them all, than that the Dove is the emblem of Innocence, andthat the name of innocence--not of frailty--is Woman? When Hamlet saidthe reverse, he was thinking, you know, of the Queen--not of Ophelia. Isnot woman by nature chaste as the Dove--as the Dove faithful? Sittingall alone with her babe in her bosom, is she not as a Dove devoted toher own nest? Murmureth she not a pleasant welcome to her weariedhome-returned husband, even like the Dove among the woodlands when hermate re-alights on the pine? Should her spouse be taken from her anddisappear, doth not her heart sometimes break, as they say it happens tothe Dove? But oftener far, findeth not the widow that her orphans arestill fed by her own hand, that is filled with good things byProvidence; till grown up, and able to shift for themselves, away theygo--just as the poor Dove lamenteth for her mate in the snare of thefowler, yet feedeth her young continually through the whole day, tillaway too go they--alas, in neither case, perhaps, ever more to return!

We dislike all favouritism, all foolish and capricious partiality forparticular bird or beast; but dear, old, sacred associations, will_tell_ upon all one thinks or feels towards any place or person in thisworld of ours, near or remote. God forbid we should criticise theCushat! We desire to speak of him as tenderly as of a friend buried inour early youth. Too true it is, that often and oft, when schoolboys, have we striven to steal upon him in his solitude, and to shoot him todeath. In morals, and in religion, it would be heterodox to deny thatthe will is as the deed. Yet in cases of high and low-way robbery andmurder, there does seem, treating the subject not in philosophical butpopular style, to be some little difference between the two; at least wehope so, for otherwise we can with difficulty imagine one person notdeserving to be ordered for execution, on Wednesday next, between thehours of eight and nine ante-meridian. Happily, however, for our futurepeace of mind, and not improbably for the whole confirmation of ourcharacter, our Guardian Genius--(every boy has one constantly at hisside, both during school and play hours, though it must be confessedsometimes a little remiss in his duty, for the nature even of angelicalbeings is imperfect)--always so contrived it, that with all our cunningwe never could kill a Cushat. Many a long hour--indeed wholeSaturdays--have we lain perdue among broom and whins, the beautifulgreen and yellow skirting of sweet Scotia's woods, watching his egressor ingress, our gun ready cocked, and finger on trigger, that on theflapping of his wings not a moment might be lost in bringing him to theground. But couch where we might, no Cushat ever came near our insidiouslair. Now and then a Magpie--birds who, by the by, when they suspect youof any intention of shooting them, are as distant in their manners asCushats themselves, otherwise as impudent as Cockneys--would come, hopping in continual tail-jerks, with his really beautiful plumage, ifone could bring oneself to think it so, and then sport the pensivewithin twenty yards of the muzzle of Brown-Bess, impatient to let fly. But our soul burned, our heart panted for a Cushat; and in that strongfever-fit of passion, could we seek to slake our thirst for that wildblood with the murder of a thievish eavesdropper of a Pye? TheBlackbird, too, often dropt out of the thicket into an open glade in thehazel-shaws, and the distinctness of his yellow bill showed he was farwithin shot-range. Yet, let us do ourselves justice, we never in all ourborn days dreamt of shooting a Blackbird--him that scares away sadnessfrom the woodland twilight gloom, at morn or eve; whose anthem, even inthose dim days when Nature herself it might be well thought weremelancholy, forceth the firmament to ring with joy. Once "the snow-whitecony sought its evening meal, " unconscious of our dangerous vicinity, issuing with erected ears from the wood edge. That last was, we confess, such a temptation to touch the trigger, that had we resisted it we musthave been either more or less than boy. We fired; and kicking up hisheels, doubtless in fright, but as it then seemed to us, during ourdisappointment, much rather in frolic--nay, absolute derision--awaybounced Master Rabbit to his burrow, without one particle of softsilvery wool on sward or bush, to bear witness to our unerring aim. Asif the branch on which he had been sitting were broken, away then wentthe crashing Cushat through the intermingling sprays. The free flappingof his wings was soon heard in the air above the tree-tops, and ere wecould recover from our almost bitter amazement, the creature wasmurmuring to his mate on her shallow nest--a far-off murmur, solitaryand profound--to reach unto which, through the tangled mazes of theforest, would have required a separate sense, instinct, or faculty, which we did not possess. So, skulking out of our hiding-place, we madeno comment on the remark of homeward-plodding labourer, who had heardthe report, and now smelt the powder--"Cushats are geyan kittle birds tokill"--but returned, with our shooting-bag as empty as our stomach, tothe Manse. 

"Why do the birds sing on Sunday?" said once a little boy to us--and weanswered him in a lyrical ballad, which we have lost. But although thebirds certainly do sing on Sunday--behaviour that with our small gentleCalvinist, who dearly loved them, caused some doubts of their being soinnocent as during the week-days they appeared to be--we cannot setdown their fault to the score of ignorance. Is it in the holysuperstition of the world-wearied heart that man believes the inferiorcreatures to be conscious of the calm of the Sabbath, and that they knowit to be the day of our rest? Or is it that we transfer the feeling ofour inward calm to all the goings-on of Nature, and thus imbue them witha character of reposing sanctity, existing only in our own spirits? Bothsolutions are true. The instincts of those creatures we know only intheir symptoms and their effects, in the wonderful range of action overwhich they reign. Of the instincts themselves--as feelings or ideas--weknow not anything, nor ever can know; for an impassable gulf separatesthe nature of those that may be to perish, from ours that are to livefor ever. But their power of memory, we must believe, is not onlycapable of minutest retention, but also stretches back to afar--and somepower or other they do possess, that gathers up the past experience intorules of conduct that guide them in their solitary or gregarious life. Why, therefore, should not the birds of Scotland know the Sabbath-day?On that day the Water-Ouzel is never disturbed by angler among themurmurs of his own waterfall; and, as he flits down the banks and braesof the burn, he sees no motion, he hears no sound about the cottage thatis the boundary of his furthest flight--for "the dizzying mill-wheelrests. " The merry-nodding rooks, that in spring-time keep following thevery heels of the ploughman--may they not know it to be Sabbath, whenall the horses are standing idle in the field, or taking a gallop bythemselves round the head-rig? Quick of hearing are birds--one andall--and in every action of their lives are obedient to sounds. May theynot, then--do they not connect a feeling of perfect safety with thetinkle of the small kirk-bell? The very jay himself is not shy of peopleon their way to worship. The magpie, that never sits more than a minuteat a time in the same place on a Saturday, will on the Sabbath remain onthe kirkyard wall with all the composure of a dove. The whole featheredcreation know our hours of sleep. They awake before us; and ere theearliest labourer has said his prayers, have not the woods and valleysbeen ringing with their hymns? Why, therefore, may not they, who know, each week-day, the hour of our lying down and our rising up, know alsothe day of our general rest? The animals whose lot is labour, shallthey not know it? Yes; the horse on that day sleeps in shade or sunshinewithout fear of being disturbed--his neck forgets the galling collar, "and there are forty feeding like one, " all well knowing that theirfresh meal on the tender herbage will not be broken in upon before thedews of next morning, ushering in a new day to them of toil or travel. 

So much for our belief in the knowledge, instinctive or from a sort ofreason, possessed by the creatures of the inferior creation of theheaven-appointed Sabbath to man and beast. But it is also true that wetransfer our inward feelings to their outward condition, and with ourreligious spirit imbue all the ongoings of animated and even inanimatedlife. There is always a shade of melancholy, a tinge of pensiveness, atouch of pathos, in all profound rest. Perhaps because it is so much incontrast with the turmoil of our ordinary being. Perhaps because thesoul, when undisturbed, will, from the impulse of its own divine nature, have high, solemn, and awful thoughts. In such state, it transmutes allthings into a show of sympathy with itself. The church-spire, risinghigh above the smoke and stir of a town, when struck by the sun-fire, seems, on a market-day, a tall building in the air, that may serve as aguide to people from a distance flocking into the bazaars. The samechurch-spire, were its loud-tongued bell to call from aloft on thegathering multitude below, to celebrate the anniversary of some greatvictory, Waterloo or Trafalgar, would appear to stretch up its staturetriumphantly into the sky--so much the more triumphantly, if thestandard of England were floating from its upper battlements. But to thedevout eye of faith, doth it not seem to express its own character, whenon the Sabbath it performs no other office than to point to heaven?

So much for the second solution. But independently of both, no wonderthat all nature seems to rest on the Sabbath; for it doth rest--all ofit, at least, that appertains to man and his condition. If the FourthCommandment be kept--at rest is all the household--and all the fieldsround it are at rest. Calm flows the current of human life, on thatgracious day, throughout all the glens and valleys of Scotland, as astream that wimples in the morning sunshine, freshened but not floodedwith the soft-falling rain of a summer night. The spiral smoke-wreathabove the cottage is not calmer than the motion within. True, that thewood warblers do not cease their songs; but the louder they sing, thedeeper is the stillness. And what perfect blessedness, when it is onlyjoy that is astir in rest!

Loud-flapping Cushat! it was thou that inspiredst these solemn fancies;and we have only to wish thee, for thy part contributed to ourRecreations, now that the acorns of autumn must be well-nigh consumed, many a plentiful repast, amid the multitude of thy now congregatedcomrades, in the cleared stubble lands--as severe weather advances, andthe ground becomes covered with snow, regales undisturbed by fowler, onthe tops of turnip, rape, and other cruciform plants, which all of thyrace affect so passionately--and soft blow the sea-breezes on thyunruffled plumage, when thou takest thy winter's walk with kindredmyriads on the shelly shore, and for a season minglest with gull andseamew--apart every tribe, one from the other, in the province of itsown peculiar instinct--yet all mysteriously taught to feed or sleeptogether within the roar or margin of the main. 

Sole-sitting Cushat! We see thee through the yew-tree's shade, on someday of the olden time, but when or where we remember not--for what hasplace or time to do with the vision of a dream? That we see thee is allwe know, and that serenely beautiful thou art! Most pleasant is it todream, and to know we dream! By sweet volition we keep ourselves halfasleep and half awake; and all our visions of thought, as they goswimming along, partake at once of reality and imagination. Fiction andtruth--clouds, shadows, phantoms and phantasms--ether, sunshine, substantial forms and sounds that have a being, blending together in ascene created by us, and partly impressed upon us, and which one motionof the head on the pillow may dissolve, or deepen into more oppressivedelight! In some such dreaming state of mind are we now; and, gentlereader, if thou art broad awake, lay aside the visionary volume, or reada little longer, and likely enough is it that thou too mayest fall halfasleep. If so, let thy drowsy eyes still pursue the glimmeringparagraphs--and wafted away wilt thou feel thyself to be into the heartof a Highland forest, that knows no bounds but those of the uncertainsky. 

Away from our remembrance fades the noisy world of men into a silentglimmer--and now it is all no more than a mere faint thought. On--on--on! through briery brake--matted thicket--grassyglade--On--on--on! further into the Forest! What a confusion of hugestones, rocks, knolls, all tumbled together into a chaos--not withoutits stern and sterile beauty! Still are there, above, blue glimpses ofthe sky--deep though the umbrage be, and wide-flung the arms of theoaks, and of pines in their native wilderness gigantic as oaks, andextending as broad a shadow. Now the firmament has vanished--and all istwilight. Immense stems, "in number without numbernumberless, "--bewildering eye and soul--allstill--silent--steadfast--and so would they be in a storm. For whatstorm--let it rage aloft as it might, till the surface of the foresttoss and roar like the sea--could force its path through these manymillion trunks? The thunder-stone might split that giant there--howvast! how magnificent!--but the brother by his side would not tremble;and the sound--in the awful width of the silence--what more would it bethan that of the woodpecker alarming the insects of one particular tree!

Poor wretch that we are!--to us the uncompanioned silence of thesolitude hath become terrible. More dreadful is it than the silence ofthe tomb; for there, often arise responses to the unuttered soliloquiesof the pensive heart. But this is as the silence, not of Time, but ofEternity. No burial heaps--no mounds--no cairns! It is not as if man hadperished here, and been forgotten; but as if this were a world in whichthere had been neither living nor dying. Too utter is the solitarinesseven for the ghosts of dead! For they are thought to haunt theburial-places of what once was their bodies--the chamber where thespirit breathed its final farewell--the spot of its transitory love anddelight, or of its sin and sorrow--to gaze with troubled tenderness onthe eyes that once they worshipped--with cold ear to drink the music ofthe voices long ago adored; and in all their permitted visitations, toexpress, if but by the beckoning of the shadow of a hand, someunextinguishable longing after the converse of the upper world, evenwithin the gates of the grave. 

A change comes over us. Deep and still as is the solitude, we arerelieved of our awe, and out of the forest-gloom arise images of beautythat come and go, gliding as on wings, or, statue-like, stand in theglades, like the sylvan deities to whom of old belonged, by birthright, all the regions of the woods. On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--andlet the awe of imagination be still further tempered by the delightbreathed even from any one of the lovely names sweet-sounding throughthe famous fables of antiquity. Dryad, Hamadryad! Faunus!Sylvanus!--Now, alas! ye are but names, and no more! Great Pan himselfis dead, or here he would set up his reign. But what right has such adreamer to dream of the dethroned deities of Greece? The language theyspoke is not his language; yet the words of the great poets who sang ofgods and demigods, are beautiful in their silent meanings as they meethis adoring eyes; and, mighty Lyrists! has he not often floated down thetemple-crowned and altar-shaded rivers of your great Choral Odes?

On--on--on!--further into the Forest!--unless, indeed, thou dreadestthat the limbs that bear on thy fleshy tabernacle may fail, and thebody, left to itself, sink down and die. Ha! such fears thou laughest toscorn; for from youth upwards thou hast dallied with the wild andperilous: and what but the chill delight in which thou hast so oftenshivered in threatening solitude brought thee here! These dens are notdungeons, nor are we a thrall. Yet if dungeons they must be called--andthey are deep, and dark, and grim--ten thousand gates hath this greatprison-house, and wide open are they all. So on--on--on!--further intothe Forest! But who shall ascend to its summit? Eagles and dreams. Roundits base we go, rejoicing in the new-found day, and once more cheeredand charmed with the music of birds. Say whence came, ye scientificworld-makers, these vast blocks of granite? Was it fire or water, thinkye, that hung in air the semblance of yon Gothic cathedral, withoutnave, or chancel, or aisle--a mass of solid rock? Yet it looks like theabode of Echoes; and haply when there is thunder, rolls out itslengthening shadow of sound to the ear of the solitary shepherd afar offon Cairngorm. 

On--on--on!--further into the Forest! Now on all sides leagues ofancient trees surround us, and we are safe as in the grave from thepersecuting love or hatred of friends or foes. The sun shall not find usby day, nor the moon by night. Were our life forfeited to what arecalled the laws, how could the laws discover the criminal? How couldthey drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? Andif here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death--and famine is anatural death--what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but soit often is with us in severest solitude--our dreams will be hideouswith sin and death. 

Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying againstus like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of theirprey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither--by somesecret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not thesovereign virtue of its own great desires--have we been led as into apenitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down theburden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardonedman. What guilt?--O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabitetheternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?--For the dereliction of dutyevery day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of goodand of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dreadconviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthyof everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused aknowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soulwill live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all thosetransitory joys and griefs--of all those fears, hopes, loves, that soshook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on whichthy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, andambition--what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thybirth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was likethe opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of itsnakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awfulthoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated, swept, and cleansed them--and let us break away from beneath the weightof confession. 

Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears--of abjectsuperstitions--and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for agesbeen laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them--and, withoutviolation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to beartestimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened, and elevated conscience of the highest natures--from which objectlessfear has been excluded--and which hears, in its stillness, the eternalvoice of God. What calm celestial joy fills all the being of a good man, when conscience tells him he is obeying God's law! What dismal fear andsudden remorse assail him, whenever he swerves but one single step outof the right path that is shining before his feet! It is not a mereselfish terror--it is not the dread of punishment only that appalshim--for, on the contrary, he can calmly look on the punishment which heknows his guilt has incurred, and almost desires that it should beinflicted, that the incensed power may be appeased. It is theconsciousness of offence that is unendurable--not the fear of consequentsuffering; it is the degradation of sin that his soul deplores--it isthe guilt which he would expiate, if possible, in torments; it is theunited sense of wrong, sin, guilt, degradation, shame, and remorse, thatrenders a moment's pang of the conscience more terrible to the good thanyears of any other punishment--and it thus is the power of the humansoul to render its whole life miserable by its very love of that virtuewhich it has fatally violated. This is a passion which the soul couldnot suffer--unless it were immortal. Reason, so powerful in the highestminds, would escape from the vain delusion; but it is in the highestminds where reason is most subjected to this awful power--they wouldseek reconcilement with offended Heaven by the loss of all the happinessthat earth ever yielded--and would rejoice to pour out their heart'sblood if it could wipe away from the conscience the stain of one deeptransgression! These are not the high-wrought and delusive states ofmind of religious enthusiasts, passing away with the bodily agitation ofthe dreamer; but they are the feelings of the loftiest of men'ssons--and when the troubled spirit has escaped from their burden, orfound strength to support it, the conviction of their reasonableness andof their awful reality remains; nor can it be removed from the minds ofthe wise and virtuous, without the obliteration from the tablets ofmemory of all the moral judgments which conscience has there recorded. 

It is melancholy to think that even in our own day, a philosopher, andone of high name too, should have spoken slightingly of the universaldesire of immortality, as no argument at all in proof of it, becausearising inevitably from the regret with which all men must regard therelinquishment of this life. By thus speaking of the desire as adelusion necessarily accompanying the constitution of mind which it haspleased the Deity to bestow on us, such reasoners but darken the mysteryboth of man and of Providence. But this desire of immortality is not ofthe kind they say it is, nor does it partake, in any degree, of thecharacter of a blind and weak feeling of regret at merely leaving thispresent life. "I would not live alway, " is a feeling which all menunderstand--but who can endure the momentary thought of annihilation?Thousands, and tens of thousands--awful a thing as it is to die--arewilling to do so--"passing through nature to eternity"--nay, when thelast hour comes, death almost always finds his victim ready, if notresigned. To leave earth, and all the light both of the sun and of thesoul, is a sad thought to us all--transient as are human smiles, wecannot bear to see them no more--and there is a beauty that binds us tolife in the tears of tenderness that the dying man sees gushing for hissake. But between that regret for departing loves and affections, andall the gorgeous or beautiful shows of this earth--between that love andthe dread of annihilation, there is no connection. The soul can bear topart with all it loves--the soft voice--the kindling smile--the startingtear--and the profoundest sighs of all by whom it is beloved; but itcannot bear to part with its existence. It cannot even believe thepossibility of that which yet it may darkly dread. Its loves--itspassions--its joys--its agonies are _not itself_. They may perish, butit is imperishable. Strip it of all it has seen, touched, enjoyed, orsuffered--still it seems to survive; bury all it knew, or could know inthe grave--but itself cannot be trodden down into the corruption. Itsees nothing like itself in what perishes, except in dim analogies thatvanish before its last profound self-meditation--and though it partswith its mortal weeds at last, as with a garment, its life is felt atlast to be something not even in contrast with the death of the body, but to flow on like a flood, that we believe continues still to flowafter it has entered into the unseen solitude of some boundless desert. 

 "Behind the cloud of death, Once, I beheld a sun; a sun which gilt That sable cloud, and turn'd it all to gold. How the grave's alter'd! fathomless as hell! A real hell to those who dream'd of heaven, ANNIHILATION! How it yawns before me! Next moment I may drop from thought, from sense, The privilege of angels and of worms, An outcast from existence! and this spirit, This all-pervading, this all-conscious soul, This particle of energy divine, Which travels nature, flies from star to star, And visits gods, and emulates their powers, _For ever is extinguish'd. _"

If intellect be, indeed, doomed utterly to perish, why may not we askGod, in that deep despair which, in that case, must inevitably flow fromthe consciousness of those powers with which He has at once blessed andcursed us--why that intellect, whose final doom is death, and that finaldoom within a moment, finds no thought that can satisfy it but that ofLife, and no idea in which its flight can be lost but that of Eternity?If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why shouldthat cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined bytheir eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not thisearth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capaciousenough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to beextinguished in the darkness of its bosom? What had we to do withplanets, and suns, and spheres, "and all the dread magnificence ofheaven?" Were we framed merely that we might for a few years rejoice inthe beauty of the stars, as in that of the flowers beneath our feet? Andought we to be grateful for those transitory glimpses of the heavens, asfor the fading splendour of the earth? But the heavens are not an idleshow, hung out for the gaze of that idle dreamer Man. They are the workof the Eternal God, and He has given us power therein to read and tounderstand His glory. It is not our eyes only that are dazzled by theface of heaven--our souls can comprehend the laws by which that face isoverspread by its celestial smiles. The dwelling-place of our spirits isalready in the heavens. Well are we entitled to give names unto thestars; for we know the moment of their rising and their setting, andcan be with them at every part of their shining journey through theboundless ether. While generations of men have lived, died, and areburied, the astronomer thinks of the golden orb that shone centuries agowithin the vision of man, and lifts up his eye undoubting, at the verymoment when it again comes glorious on its predicted return. Were theEternal Being to slacken the course of a planet, or increase even thedistance of the fixed stars, the decree would be soon known on earth. Our ignorance is great, because so is our knowledge; for it is from themightiness and vastness of what we do know that we imagine theillimitable unknown creation. And to whom has God made theserevelations? To a worm that next moment is to be in darkness? To a pieceof earth momentarily raised into breathing existence? To a soulperishable as the telescope through which it looks into the gates ofheaven?

 "Oh! star-eyed science, hast thou wander'd there To waft us home--the message of despair?"

No; there is no despair in the gracious light of heaven. As we travelthrough those orbs, we feel indeed that we have no power, but we feelthat we have mighty knowledge. We can create nothing, but we can dimlyunderstand all. It belongs to God only to _create_, but it is given toman to _know_--and that knowledge is itself an assurance of immortality. 

 "Renounce St Evremont, and read St Paul. Ere rapt by miracle, by reason wing'd, His mounting mind made long abode in heaven. This is freethinking, unconfined to parts, To send the soul, on curious travel bent, Through all the provinces of human thought: To dart her flight through the whole sphere of man; Of this vast universe to make the tour; In each recess of space and time, at home; Familiar with their wonders: diving deep; And like a prince of boundless interests there, Still most ambitious of the most remote; To look on truth unbroken, and entire; Truth in the system, the full orb; where truths, By truths enlighten'd and sustain'd, afford An archlike, strong foundation, to support Th' incumbent weight of absolute, complete Conviction: here, the more we press, we stand More firm; who most examine, most believe. Parts, like half-sentences, confound: the whole Conveys the sense, and GOD is understood, Who not in fragments writes to human race. Read his whole volume, sceptic! then reply. "

Renounce St Evremont! Ay, and many a Deistical writer of high repute nowin the world. But how came they by the truths they did know? Not by thework of their own unassisted faculties--for they lived in a Christiancountry; they had already been imbued with many high and holy beliefs, of which--had they willed it--they could never have got rid; and to thevery last the light which they, in their pride, believed to haveemanated from the inner shrine--the penetralia of Philosophy--came fromthe temples of the living God. They walked all their lives long---though they knew it not, or strived to forget it--in the light ofrevelation, which, though often darkened to men's eyes by clouds fromearth, was still shining strong in heaven. Had the New Testament neverbeen--think ye that men in their pride, though

 "Poor sons of a day, "

could have discerned the necessity of framing for themselves a _religionof humility_? No. As by pride we are told the angels fell--so by prideman, after his miserable fall, strove to lift up his helpless being fromthe dust; and though trailing himself, soul and body, along the soilingearth, and glorying in his own corruption, sought to eternise here hisvery sins by naming the stars of heaven after heroes, conquerors, murderers, violators of the mandates of the Maker whom they hadforgotten, or whose attributes they had debased by their own foulimaginations. They believed themselves, in the delusion of their ownidolatries, to be "Lords of the world and Demigods of Fame, " while theywere the slaves of their own sins and their own sinful Deities. Shouldwe have been wiser in our generation than they, but for the Bible? If inmoral speculation we hear but little--too little--of the confession ofwhat it owes to the Christian religion--in all the Philosophy, nevertheless, that is pure and of good report, we _see_ that "thedayspring from on high has visited it. " In all philosophic inquiry thereis, perhaps, a tendency to the soul's exaltation of itself--which thespirit and genius of Christianity subdues. It is not sufficient to saythat a natural sense of our own infirmities will do so--for seldomindeed have Deists been lowly-minded. They have talked proudly ofhumility. Compare their moral meditations with those of our greatdivines. Their thoughts and feelings are of the "earth earthy;" but whenwe listen to those others, we feel that their lore has been God-given. 

 "It is as if an angel shook his wings. "

Thus has Christianity glorified Philosophy; its celestial purity is nowthe air in which intellect breathes. In the liberty and equality of thatreligion, the soul of the highest Philosopher dare not offend that ofthe humblest peasant. Nay, it sometimes stands rebuked before it--andthe lowly dweller in the hut, or the shieling on the mountain-side, orin the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing tothe Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount--and saying, "I see my duties toman and God _here_!" The religious establishments of Christianity, therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but toshow all its springs and sources, than all the works of all thePhilosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice. 

Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of thered-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Erenow we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from arock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as ourfigure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'sthaughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly andslowly through the gloom--no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy largebeaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself downin unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance ofwhose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through theforest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile naturewont to pursue thy race unto death. --The hunter is uponthee--away--away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, andin the gloom as suddenly is lost. 

On--on--on! further into the Forest!--and now a noise as of "thunderheard remote. " Waterfalls--hundreds of waterfalls sounding forever--here--there--everywhere--among the remoter woods. Northwards onefierce torrent dashes through the centre--but no villages--only a fewwoodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent ofprecipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out ofthe reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is inflood. 

Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns againfor the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows byour feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters--wiltthou--short as hitherto has been thy journeying--wilt thou be our guideout into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once moreof the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to thelabyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread ofsilver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will windwithout entanglement round the roots of the old trees, and the bases ofthe shaggy rocks. As if glad to escape from its savage birthplace, thesmall rivulet now gives utterance to a song; and sliding down shelvingrocks, so low in their mossy verdure as hardly to deserve that name, glides along the almost level lawns, here and there disclosing a littlehermit flower. No danger now of its being imbibed wholly by the thirstyearth; for it has a channel and banks of its own--and there is awaterfall! Thenceforwards the rivulet never loses its merry voice--andin an hour it is a torrent. What beautiful symptoms now of its approachto the edge of the Forest! Wandering lights and whispering airs are herevisitants--and there the blue eye of a wild violet looking up from theground! The glades are more frequent--more frequent open spaces clearedby the woodman's axe--and the antique Oak-Tree all alone by itself, itself a grove. The torrent may be called noble now; and that deep blueatmosphere--or say rather, that glimmer of purple air--lies over theStrath in which a great River rolls along to the Sea. 

Nothing in all nature more beautiful than the boundary of a greatHighland Forest. Masses of rocks thrown together in magnificentconfusion, many of them lichened and weather-stained with coloursgorgeous as the eyed plumage of the peacock, the lustre of the rainbow, or the barred and clouded glories of setting suns--some towering aloftwith trees sown in the crevices by bird or breeze, and checkering theblue sky--others bare, black, abrupt, grim as volcanoes, and shatteredas if by the lightning-stroke. Yet interspersed, places of perfectpeace--circles among the tall heather, or taller lady-fern, smoothedinto velvet, it is there easy to believe, by Fairies' feet--rocks wherethe undisturbed linnet hangs her nest among the blooming briers, allfloating with dew-draperies of honeysuckle alive with bees--glades greenas emerald, where lie the lambs in tempered sunshine, or haply a lovelydoe reposes with her fawn; and further down, where the fields halfbelong to the mountain and half to the strath, the smoke of hiddenhuts--a log-bridge flung across the torrent--a hanging-garden, and alittle broomy knoll, with a few laughing children at play, almost aswild-looking as the wanderers of the woods!

Turn your eyes, if you can, from that lovely wilderness, and behold downalong a mile-broad Strath, fed by a thousand torrents, floweth thenoblest of Scotia's rivers, the strong-sweeping Spey! Let Imaginationlaunch her canoe, and be thou a solitary steersman--for need is none ofoar or sail; keep the middle course while all the groves go by, and erethe sun has sunk behind yon golden mountains--nay, mountains they arenot, but a transitory pomp of clouds--thou mayest list the roaring, andbehold the foaming of the Sea. 

Was there ever such a descriptive dream of a coloured engraving of theCushat, Quest, or Ring-Dove, dreamt before? Poor worn-out and glimmeringcandle!--whose wick of light and life in a few more flickerings will beno more--what a contrast dost thou present with thyself of eight hoursago! Then, truly, wert thou a shining light, and high aloft in theroom-gloaming burned thy clear crest like a star--during its midnightsilence, a _memento mori_ of which our spirit was not afraid. Now thouart dying--dying--dead! Our cell is in darkness. But methinks we seeanother--a purer--a clearer light--one more directly from Heaven. Wetouch but a spring in a wooden shutter--and lo! the full blaze of day. Oh! why should we mortal beings dread that night-prison--the Grave?

DR KITCHINER. 

FIRST COURSE. 

It greatly grieved us to think that Dr Kitchiner should have died beforeour numerous avocations had allowed us an opportunity of dining withhim, and subjecting to the test-act of our experienced palate his claimsto immortality as a Cook and a Christian. The Doctor had, we know, adread of Us--not altogether unalloyed by delight; and on the dinner toUs, which he had meditated for nearly a quarter of a century, he knewand felt must have hung his reputation with posterity--his posthumousfame. We understand that there is an unfinished sketch of that Dinneramong the Doctor's papers, and that the design is magnificent. Yet, perhaps, it is better for his glory that Kitchiner should have diedwithout attempting to embody in forms the Idea of that Dinner. It mighthave been a failure. How liable to imperfection the _matériel_ on whichhe would have had to work! How defective the instruments!Yes--yes!--happier far was it for the good old man that he should havefallen asleep with the undimmed idea of that unattempted Dinner in hisimagination, than, vainly contending with the physical evil inherent inmatter, have detected the Bishop's foot in the first course, and died ofa broken heart!

"Travelling, " it is remarked by our poor dear dead Doctor in his"Traveller's Oracle, " "is a recreation to be recommended, especially tothose whose employments are sedentary--who are engaged in abstractstudies--whose minds have been sunk in a state of morbid melancholy byhypochondriasis, or, by what is worst of all, a lack of domesticfelicity. Nature, however, will not suffer any sudden transition; andtherefore it is improper for people accustomed to a sedentary life toundertake suddenly a journey, during which they will be exposed to longand violent jolting. The case here is the same as if one accustomed todrink water should, all at once, begin to drink wine. "

Had the Doctor been alive, we should have asked him what he meant by"long and violent jolting?" Jolting is now absolutely unknown inEngland, and it is of England the Doctor speaks. No doubt, someoccasional jolting might still be discovered among the lanes andcross-roads; but, though violent, it could not be long: and we defy themost sedentary gentleman living to be more so, when sitting in aneasy-chair by his parlour fireside, than in a cushioned carriagespinning along the turnpike. But for the trees and hedgerows allgalloping by, he would never know that he was himself in motion. Thetruth is, that no gentleman can be said, nowadays, to lead a sedentarylife, who is not constantly travelling before the insensible touch ofM'Adam. Look at the first twenty people that come towering by on theroof of a Highflier or a Defiance. What can be more sedentary? Only lookat that elderly gentleman with the wig, evidently a parson, jammed inbetween a brace of buxom virgins on their way down to Doncaster races. Could he be more sedentary, during the psalm, in his own pulpit?

We must object, too, to the illustration of wine and water. Let no manwho has been so unfortunate as to be accustomed to drink water, beafraid all at once to begin to drink wine. Let him, without fear ortrembling, boldly fill bumpers to the Throne--the Navy--and the Army. These three bumpers will have made him a new man. We have no objectionwhatever to his drinking, in animated succession, the Apotheosis of theWhigs--the Angler's delight--the cause of Liberty all over theWorld--Christopher North--Maga the Immortal. --"Nature will not sufferany sudden transition!" Will she not? Look at our water-drinker now! Hisvery own mother could not know him--he has lost all resemblance to histwin-brother, from whom, two short hours ago, you could not havedistinguished him but for a slight scar on his brow--so completely ishis apparent personal identity lost, that it would be impossible for himto establish an _alibi_. He sees a figure in the mirror above thechimney-piece, but has not the slightest suspicion that the rosy-facedBacchanal is himself, the water-drinker; but then he takes care toimitate the manual exercise of the phantom--lifting his glass to hislips at the very same moment, as if they were both moved by one soul. 

The Doctor then wisely remarks, that it is "impossible to lay down anyrule by which to regulate the number of miles a man may journey in aday, or to prescribe the precise number of ounces he ought to eat; butthat nature has given us a very excellent guide in a sense of lassitude, which is as unerring in exercise as the sense of satiety is in eating. "

We say the Doctor wisely remarks, yet not altogether wisely; for therule does not seem to hold always good either in exercise or in eating. What more common than to feel oneself very much fatigued--quite done upas it were, and unwilling to stir hand or foot. Up goes a lark inheaven--tira-lira--or suddenly the breezes blow among the clouds, whoforthwith all begin campaigning in the sky, or, quick as lightning, thesunshine in a moment resuscitates a drowned day--or tripping along, allby her happy self, to the sweet accompaniment of her joy-varied songs, the woodman's daughter passes by on her way, with a basket in her hand, to her father in the forest, who has already laid down his axe on themeridian shadow darkening one side of the straight stem of an oak, beneath whose grove might be drawn up five-score of plumed chivalry!Where is your "sense of lassitude now, nature's unerring guide inexercise?" You spring up from the mossy wayside bank, and renewed bothin mind and body, "rejoicing in Nature's joy, " you continue to pass overhouseless moors, by small, single, solitary, straw-roofed huts, throughvillages gathered round Stone Cross, Elm Grove, or old Monastic Tower, till, unwearied in lith and limb, you see sunset beautifying all thewest, and drop in, perhaps, among the hush of the Cottar's SaturdayNight--for it is in sweet Scotland we are walking in our dream--and knownot, till we have stretched ourselves on a bed of rushes or of heather, that "kind Nature's sweet restorer balmy sleep, " is yet among the numberof our bosom friends--alas! daily diminishing beneath fate or fortune, the sweeping scythe-stroke of death, or the whisper of some one poor, puny, idle, and unmeaning word!

Then, as to "the sense of satiety in eating. " It is produced in us bythree platefuls of hotch-potch--and, to the eyes of an ordinaryobserver, our dinner would seem to be at an end. But no--strictlyspeaking, it is just going to begin. About an hour ago did we, standingon the very beautiful bridge of Perth, see that identical salmon, withhis back-fin just visible above the translucent tide, arrowing up theTay, bold as a bridegroom, and nothing doubting that he should spend hishoneymoon among the gravel-beds of Kinnaird or Moulinearn, or the rockysofas of the Tummel, or the green marble couches of the Tilt. What hasbecome now of "the sense of satiety in eating?" John--thecastors!--mustard--vinegar--cayenne--catchup--pease and potatoes, with avery little butter--the biscuit called "rusk"--and the memory of thehotch-potch is as that of Babylon the Great. That any gigot of mutton, exquisite though much of the five-year-old blackfaced must assuredly be, can, with any rational hopes of success, contend against a haunch ofvenison, will be asserted by no devout lover of truth. Try the two byalternate platefuls, and you will uniformly find that you leave offafter the venison. That "sense of satiety in eating, " of which DrKitchiner speaks, was produced by the Tay salmon devoured above--but ofall the transitory feelings of us transitory creatures on our transitthrough this transitory world, in which the Doctor asserts nature willnot suffer any sudden transitions, the most transitory ever experiencedby us is "the sense of satiety in eating. " Therefore, we have now seenit for a moment existing on the disappearance of the hotch-potch--dyingon the appearance of the Tay salmon--once more noticeable as the lastplate of the noble fish melted away--extinguished suddenly by the visionof the venison--again felt for an instant, and but for an instant--for abrace and a half of as fine grouse as ever expanded their voluptuousbosoms to be devoured by hungry love! Sense of satiety in eating indeed!If you please, my dear friend, one of the backs--pungent with the mostpalate-piercing, stomach-stirring, heart-warming, soul-exalting of alltastes--the wild bitter-sweet. 

But the Doctor returns to the subject of travelling--and fatigue. "Whenone begins, " he says, "to be low-spirited and dejected, to yawn oftenand be drowsy, when the appetite is impaired, when the smallest movementoccasions a fluttering of the pulse, when the mouth becomes dry, and issensible of a bitter taste, _seek refreshment and repose_, if you wishto PREVENT ILLNESS, already beginning to take place. " Why, our dearDoctor, illness in such a deplorable case as this, is just about to end, and death is beginning to take place. Thank Heaven, it is a condition towhich we do not remember having very nearly approximated! Who ever sawus yawn? or drowsy? or with our appetite impaired, except on thewithdrawal of the table-cloth? or low-spirited, but when the Glenlivetwas at ebb? Who dare declare that he ever saw our mouth dry? or sensibleof a bitter taste, since we gave over munching rowans? Put your ringeron our wrist, at any moment you choose, from June to January, fromJanuary to June, and by its pulsation you may rectify Harrison's orKendal's chronometer. 

But the Doctor proceeds--"By raising the temperature of my room to about65°, a broth diet, and taking a tea-spoonful of Epsom salts in half apint of warm water, and repeating it every half-hour till it moves thebowels twice or thrice, and retiring to rest an hour or two sooner thanusual, I have often very speedily got rid of colds, &c. "

Why, there may be no great harm in acting as above; although we shouldfar rather recommend a screed of the Epsoms. A tea-spoonful of Epsomsalts in half a pint of warm water, reminds one, somehow or other, ofTims. A small matter works a Cockney. It is not so easy--and that theCockneys well know--to move the bowels of old Christopher North. We donot believe that a tea-spoonful of anything in this world would have anyserious effect on old "Ironsides. " We should have no hesitation inbacking him against so much corrosive sublimate. He would dine out onthe day he had bolted that quantity of arsenic;--and would, we verilybelieve, rise triumphant from a tea-spoonful of Prussic acid. 

We could mention a thousand cures for "colds, et cetera, " moreefficacious than a broth diet, a warm room, a tea-spoonful of Epsomsalts, or early roosting. What say you, our dear Dean, to half-a-dozentumblers of hot toddy? Your share of a brown jug to the same amount? Oran equal quantity, in its gradual decrease revealing deeper and deeperstill the romantic Welsh scenery of the Devil's Punch-Bowl? _Adde tot_small-bearded oysters, all redolent of the salt-sea foam, and worthy, asthey stud the Ambrosial brodd, to be licked off all at once by thelambent tongue of Neptune. That antiquated calumny against thecharacter of toasted cheese--that, forsooth, it is indigestible--hasbeen trampled under the march of mind; and therefore, you may tuck in apound of double Gloucester. Other patients, labouring under catarrh, may, very possibly, prefer the roasted how-towdy--or the green goosefrom his first stubble-field--or why not, by way of a little variety, aroasted maukin, midway between hare and leveret, tempting as maidenbetween woman and girl, or, as the Eastern poet says, between a frockand a gown? Go to bed--no need of warming-pans--about a quarter beforeone;--you will not hear that small hour strike--you will sleep soundtill sunrise, sound as the Black Stone at Scone, on which the Kings ofScotland were crowned of old. And if you contrive to carry a cold aboutyou next day, you deserve to be sent to Coventry by all sensiblepeople--and may, if you choose, begin taking, with Tims, a tea-spoonfulof Epsom salts in a half-pint of warm water every half-hour, till itmoves your bowels twice or thrice; but if you do, be your sex, politics, or religion what they may, never shall ye be suffered to contribute evena bit of Balaam to the Magazine. 

The Doctor then treats of the best Season for travelling, and veryjudiciously observes that it is during these months when there is nooccasion for a fire--that is, just before and after the extreme heat. Inwinter, Dr Kitchiner, who was a man of extraordinary powers ofobservation, observed, "that the ways are generally bad, and oftendangerous, especially in hilly countries, by reason of the snow and ice. The days are short--a traveller comes late to his lodging, and is oftenforced to rise before the sun in the morning--besides, the country looksdismal--nature is, as it were, half dead. The summer corrects all theseinconveniences. " Paradoxical as this doctrine may at first sightappear--yet we have verified it by experience--having for many yearsfound, without meeting with one single exception, that the fine, long, warm days of summer are an agreeable and infallible corrective of theinconveniences attending the foul, short, cold days of winter--a seasonwhich is surly without being sincere, blustering rather than bold--anintolerable bore--always pretending to be taking his leave, yetdomiciliating himself in another man's house for weeks together--and, tobe plain, a season so regardless of truth, that nobody believes him tillfrost has hung an ice-padlock on his mouth, and his many-river'd voiceis dumb under the wreathed snows. 

"Cleanliness when travelling, " observes the Doctor, "is doublynecessary; to sponge the body every morning with tepid water, and thenrub it dry with a rough towel, will greatly contribute to preservehealth. To put the feet into warm water for a couple of minutes justbefore going to bed, is very refreshing, and inviting to sleep; forpromoting tranquillity, both mental and corporeal, a clean skin may beregarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience. "

Far be it from us to seek to impugn such doctrine. A dirty dog is anuisance not to be borne. But here the question arises--who--what--is adirty dog? Now there are men (no women) naturally--necessarily--dirty. They are not dirty by chance--or accident--say twice or thrice per diem;but they are always dirty--at all times and in all places--and never andnowhere more disgustingly so than when figged out for going to church. It is in the skin, in the blood--in the flesh, and in the bone--thatwith such the disease of dirt more especially lies. We beg pardon--noless in the hair. Now, such persons do not know that they aredirty--that they are unclean beasts. On the contrary, they often thinkthemselves pinks of purity--incarnations of carnations--impersonationsof moss-roses--the spiritual essences of lilies, "imparadised in form ofthat sweet flesh. " Now, were such persons to change their linen everyhalf-hour, night and day, that is, were they to put on forty-eight cleanshirts in the twenty-four hours--and it might not be reasonable, perhaps, to demand more of them under a government somewhat tooWhiggish--yet though we cheerfully grant that one and all of the shirtswould be dirty, we as sulkily deny that at any given moment from sunriseto sunset, and over again, the wearer would be clean. He would be justevery whit and bit as dirty as if he had known but one single shirt allhis life--and firmly believed his to be the only shirt in the universe. 

Men again, on the other hand, there are--and, thank God, in greatnumbers--who are naturally so clean, that we defy you to make them _bonâfide_ dirty. You may as well drive down a duck into a dirty puddle, andexpect lasting stains on its pretty plumage. Pope says the same thing ofswans--that is, Poets--when speaking of Aaron Hill diving into theditch, --

 "He bears no tokens of the sabler streams, But soars far off among the swans of Thames. "

Pleasant people of this kind of constitution you see going about of amorning rather in dishabille--hair uncombed haply--face and hands evenunwashed--and shirt with a somewhat day-before-yesterdayish hue. Yet arethey, so far from being dirty, at once felt, seen, and smelt, to beamong the very cleanest of her Majesty's subjects. The moment you shakehands with them, you feel in the firm flesh of palm and finger thattheir heart's-blood circulates purely and freely from the point of thehighest hair on the apex of the pericranium, to the edge of the nail onthe large toe of the right foot. Their eyes are as clear as uncloudedskies--the apples on their cheeks are like those on the tree--what need, in either case, of rubbing off dust or dew with a towel? What though, from sleeping without a nightcap, their hair may be a little toozy? Itis not dim--dull--oily--like half-withered sea-weeds! It will soon combitself with the fingers of the west wind--that tent-like tree itstoilette--its mirror that pool of the clear-flowing Tweed. 

Some streams, just like some men, are always dirty--you cannot possiblytell why--unproducible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wetweather. In dry, the oozy wretches are weeping among the slippery weeds, infested with eels and powheads. In wet, they are like so manycommon-sewers, strewn with dead cats and broken crockery, andthreatening with their fierce fulzie to pollute the sea. The sweet, soft, pure rains, soon as they touch the flood are changed into filth. The sun sees his face in one of the pools, and is terrified out of hissenses. He shines no more that day. The clouds have no notion of beingcaricatured, and the trees keep cautiously away from the brink of suchstreams--save, perchance, now and then, here and there, a weakwell-meaning willow--a thing of shreds and patches--its leafless wandscovered with bits of old worsted stockings, crowns of hats, a bauchle(see Dr Jamieson), and the remains of a pair of corduroy breeches, longhereditary in the family of the Blood-Royal of the Yetholm Gypsies. 

Some streams, just like some men, are always clean--you cannot well tellwhy--producible to good pic-nic society either in dry or wet weather. Indry, the pearly waters are singing among the freshened flowers--so thatthe trout, if he chooses, may breakfast upon bees. In wet, they grow, itis true, dark and drumly--and at midnight, when heaven's candles are putout, loud and oft the angry spirit of the water shrieks. But Aurorabeholds her face in the clarified pools and shallows--far and wideglittering with silver or with gold. All the banks and braes reappeargreen as emerald from the subsiding current--into which look with theeye of an angler, and you behold a Fish--a twenty-pounder--steadyinghimself--like an uncertain shadow; and oh! for George Scougal's leisterto strike him through the spine! Yes, these are the images of trees fardown, as if in another world; and, whether you look up or look down, alike in all its blue, braided, and unbounded beauty, is the morningsky!

Irishmen are generally men of the kind thus illustrated--generallysweet--at least in their own green Isle; and that was the best argumentin favour of Catholic Emancipation. --So are Scotsmen. Whereas, blindfolded, take a London, Edinburgh, or Glasgow Cockney's hand, immediately after it has been washed and scented, and put it to yournose--and you will begin to be apprehensive that some practical wit hassubstituted in lieu of the sonnet-scribbling bunch of little fetidfives, the body of some chicken-butcher of a weasel, that died of theplague. We have seen as much of what is most ignorantly and malignantlydenominated dirt--one week's earth--washed off the feet of a prettyyoung girl on a Saturday night, at a single sitting in the littlerivulet that runs almost round about her father's hut, as would haveserved him to raise his mignonette in, or his crop of cresses. Howbeautifully glowed the crimson-snow of the singing creature's new-washedfeet! First, as they shone almost motionless beneath the lucidwaters--and then, fearless of the hard bent and rough roots of theheather, bore the almost alarming Fairy dancing away from the eyes ofthe stranger; till the courteous spirit that reigns over all theHighland wilds arrested her steps knee-deep in bloom, and bade her bowher auburn head, as, blushing, she faltered forth, in her sweet Gaelicaccents, a welcome that thrilled like a blessing through the heart ofthe Sassenach, nearly benighted, and wearied sore with the fiftyglorious mountain-miles that intermit at times their frowning forestsfrom the corries of Cruachan to the cliffs of Cairngorm. 

It will be seen from these hurried remarks, that there is more truththan perhaps Dr Kitchiner was aware of in his apothegm--"that a cleanskin may be regarded as next in efficacy to a clear conscience. " But theDoctor had but a very imperfect notion of the meaning of the words"clean skin"--his observation being not even skin-deep. A wash-handbasin, a bit of soap, and a coarse towel, he thought would give aCockney on Ludgate-hill a clean skin--just as many good people thinkthat a Bible, a prayer-book, and a long sermon, can give a clearconscience to a criminal in Newgate. The cause of the evil, in bothcases, lies too deep for tears. Millions of men and women pass throughnature to eternity clean-skinned and pious--with slight expense eitherin soap or sermons; while millions more, with much week-day bodilyscrubbing, and much Sabbath spiritual sanctification, are held in badodour here, while they live, by those who happen to sit near them, andfinally go out like the stink of a candle. 

Never stir, quoth the Doctor, "without paper, pen, and ink, and anote-book in your pocket. Notes made by pencils are easily obliteratedby the motion of travelling. Commit to paper whatever you see, hear, orread, that is remarkable, with your sensations on observing it--do thisupon the spot, if possible, at the moment it first strikes you--at allevents do not delay it beyond the first convenient opportunity. "

Suppose all people behaved in this way--and what an absurd world weshould have of it--every man, woman, and child who could write, jottingaway at their note-books! This committing to paper of whatever you see, hear, or read, has, among many other bad effects, this oneespecially--in a few years it reduces you to a state of idiocy. Thememory of all men who commit to paper becomes regularly extinct, we haveobserved, about the age of thirty. Now, although the Memory does notbear a very brilliant reputation among the faculties, a man findshimself very much at a stand who is unprovided with one; for theImagination, the Judgment, and the Reason walk off in search of theMemory--each in opposite directions; and the Mind, left at home byitself, is in a very awkward predicament--gets comatose--snores loudly, and expires. For our own part, we would much rather lose our Imaginationand our Judgment--nay, our very Reason itself--than our Memory--providedwe were suffered to retain a little Feeling and a little Fancy. Committers to paper forget that the Memory is a tablet, or theycarelessly fling that mysterious tablet away, soft as wax to receiveimpressions, and harder than adamant to retain, and put their trust in abit of calf-skin, or a bundle of old rags. 

The observer who instantly jots down every object he sees, never, properly speaking, saw an object in his life. There has always been inthe creature's mind a feeling alien to that which the object would, ofits pure self, have excited. The very preservation of a sort of style inthe creature's remarks, costs him an effort which disables him fromunderstanding what is before him, by dividing the small attention ofwhich he might have been capable, between the jotting, the jotter, andthe thing jotted. Then your committer to paper of whatever he sees, hears, or reads, forgets or has never known that all real knowledge, either of men or things, must be gathered up by operations which are intheir very being spontaneous and free--the mind being even unconsciousof them as they are going on--while the edifice has all the time beensilently rising up under the unintermitting labours of those silentworkers--Thoughts; and is finally seen, not without wonder, by the Mindor Soul itself, which, gentle reader, was all along Architect andForeman--had not only originally planned, but had even dailysuperintended the building of the Temple. 

Were Dr Kitchiner not dead, we should just put to him this simplequestion--Could you, Doctor, not recollect all the dishes of the mostvarious dinner at which you ever assisted, down to the obscurest kidney, without committing every item to your note-book? Yes, Doctor, you could. Well, then, all the universe is but one great dinner. Heaven and earth, what a show of dishes! From a sun to a salad--a moon to a mutton chop--acomet to a curry--a planet to a pâté! What gross ingratitude to theGiver of the feast, not to be able, with the memory he has given us, toremember his bounties! It is true, what the Doctor says, that notes madewith pencils are easily obliterated by the motion of travelling; butthen, Doctor, notes made by the Mind herself, with the Ruby Pen Naturegives all her children who have also discourse of Reason, are with theslightest touch, easilier far than glass by the diamond, traced on thetablets that disease alone seems to deface, death alone to break, butwhich, ineffaceable, and not to be broken, shall with all theirmiscellaneous inscriptions endure for ever--yea, even to the great Dayof Judgment. 

If men will but look and listen, and feel and think--they will neverforget anything worth being remembered. Do we forget "our children, thatto our eyes are dearer than the sun?" Do we forget ourwives--unreasonable and almost downright disagreeable as they sometimeswill be? Do we forget our triumphs--our defeats--our ecstasies, ouragonies--the face of a dear friend, or "dearest foe"--the ghost-likevoice of conscience at midnight arraigning us of crimes--or her seraphhymn, at which the gates of heaven seem to expand for us that we mayenter in among the white-robed spirits, and

 "Summer high in bliss upon the hills of God?"

What are all the jottings that ever were jotted down on his jot-book, bythe most inveterate jotter that ever reached a raven age, in comparisonwith the Library of Useful Knowledge, that _every_ man--who is aman--carries within the Ratcliffe--the Bodleian of his own breast?

What are you grinning at in the corner there, you little ugly Beelzebubof a Printer's Devil? and have you dropped through a seam in theceiling? More copy do you want? There, you imp--vanished like athought!

DR KITCHINER. 

SECOND COURSE. 

Above all things, continues Dr Kitchiner, "avoid travelling through thenight, which, by interrupting sleep, and exposing the body to the nightair, is always prejudicial, even in the mildest weather, and to thestrongest constitutions. " Pray, Doctor, what ails you at the night air?If the night air be, even in the mildest weather, prejudicial to thestrongest constitutions, what do you think becomes of the cattle on athousand hills? Why don't all the bulls in Bashan die of the asthma--orlook interesting by moonlight in a galloping consumption? Nay, if thenight air be so very fatal, how do you account for the longevity ofowls? Have you never read of the Chaldean shepherds watching the coursesof the stars? Or, to come nearer our own times, do you not know thatevery blessed night throughout the year, thousands of young lads andlasses meet, either beneath the milk-white thorn--or on the lea-rig, although the night be ne'er sae wet, and they be ne'er sae weary--orunder a rock on the hill--or--no uncommon case--beneath a frozenstack--not of chimneys, but of corn-sheaves--or on a couch of snow--andthat they are all as warm as so many pies; while, instead of feelingwhat you call "the lack of vigour attendant on the loss of sleep, whichis as enfeebling and as distressing as the languor that attends the wantof food, " they are, to use a homely Scotch expression, "neither to haudnor bind;" the eyes of the young lads being all as brisk, bold, andbright as the stars in Charles's Wain, while those of the young lassesshine with a soft, faint, obscure, but beautiful lustre, like the dewyPleiades, over which nature has insensibly been breathing a mist almostwaving and wavering into a veil of clouds?

Have you, our dear Doctor, no compassion for those unfortunate blades, who, _nolentes-volentes_, must remain out perennially all night--we meanthe blades of grass, and also the flowers? Their constitutions seemoften far from strong; and shut your eyes on a frosty night, and youwill hear them--we have done so many million times--shivering, ay, absolutely shivering under their coat of hoar-frost! If the night air beindeed what Dr Kitchiner has declared it to be--Lord have mercy on thevegetable world! What agonies in that field of turnips! Alas, poorSwedes! The imagination recoils from the condition of that club ofwinter cabbages--and of what materials, pray, must the heart of that manbe made, who could think but for a moment on the case of those carrots, without bursting into a flood of tears!

The Doctor avers that the firm health and fine spirits of persons wholive in the country, are not more from breathing a purer air, than fromenjoying plenty of sound sleep; and the most distressing misery of "thisElysium of bricks and mortar, " is the rareness with which we enjoy "thesweets of a slumber unbroke. "

Doctor--in the first place, it is somewhat doubtful whether or notpersons who live in the country have firmer health and finer spiritsthan persons who live in towns--even in London. What kind of persons doyou mean? You must not be allowed to select some dozen or two of thehairiest among the curates--a few chosen rectors whose faces have beenbut lately elevated to the purple--a team of prebends issuing sleek fromtheir golden stalls--a picked bishop--a sacred band the élite of thesquirearchy--with a corresponding sprinkling of superior noblemen fromlords to dukes--and then to compare them, cheek by jowl, with an equalnumber of external objects taken from the common run of Cockneys. This, Doctor, is manifestly what you are ettling at--but you must clap yourhand, Doctor, without discrimination, on the great body of the ruralpopulation of England, male and female, and take whatever comesfirst--be it a poor, wrinkled, toothless, blear-eyed, palsied hag, tottering horizontally on a staff, under the load of a premature old age(for she is not yet fifty), brought on by annual rheumatism andperennial poverty;--Be it a young, ugly, unmarried woman, far advancedin pregnancy, and sullenly trooping to the alehouse, to meet theoverseer of the parish poor, who, enraged with the unborn bastard, isabout to force the parish bully to marry the parish prostitute;--Be it alandlord of a rural inn, with pig eyes peering over his ruby cheeks, thewhole machinery of his mouth so deranged by tippling that hesimultaneously snorts, stutters, slavers andsnores--pot-bellied--shanked like a spindle-strae--and bidding fair tobe buried on or before Saturday week;--Be it a half-drunk horse-cowper, swinging to and fro in a wraprascal on a bit of broken-down blood thatonce won a fifty, every sentence, however short, having but twointelligible words, an oath and a lie--his heart rotten with falsehood, and his bowels burned up with brandy, so that sudden death may pull himfrom his saddle before he put spurs to his sporting filly that she maybilk the turnpike man, and carry him more speedily home to beat ormurder his poor, pale, industrious char-woman of a wife;--Be it--not abeggar, for beggars are prohibited from this parish--but a pauper in thesulks, dying on her pittance from the poor-rates, which altogetheramount in merry England but to about the paltry sum of, more or less, six millions a-year--her son, all the while, being in a thriving way asa general merchant in the capital of the parish, and with clear profitsfrom his business of Ł300 per annum, yet suffering the mother that borehim, and suckled him, and washed his childish hands, and combed thebumpkin's hair, and gave him Epsoms in a cup when her dear Johnny-rawhad the belly-ache, to go down, step by step, as surely and as obviouslyas one is seen going down a stair with a feeble hold of the banisters, and stumbling every foot-fall down that other flight of steps thatconsist of flags that are mortal damp and mortal cold, and lead tonothing but a parcel of rotten planks, and overhead a vault drippingwith perpetual moisture, green and slobbery, such as toads delight incrawling heavily through with now and then a bloated leap, and hideousthings more worm-like, that go wriggling briskly in and out among therefuse of the coffins, and are heard, by imagination at least, to emitfaint angry sounds, because the light of day has hurt their eyes, andthe air from the upper world weakened the rank savoury smell ofcorruption, clothing, as with a pall, all the inside walls of thetombs;--Be it a man yet in the prime of life as to years, six feet andan inch high, and measuring round the chest forty-eight inches (which ismore, reader, than thou dost by six, we bet a sovereign, memberalthough thou even be'st of the Edinburgh Six Feet Club), to whomWashington Irving's Jack Tibbuts was but a Tims--but then ever so manygamekeepers met him all alone in my lord's pheasant preserve, and thoughtwo of them died within the month, two within the year, and two are nowin the workhouse--one a mere idiot, and the other a madman--bothshadows--so terribly were their bodies mauled, and so sorely were theirskulls fractured;--yet the poacher was taken, tried, hulked; and therehe sits now, sunning himself on a bank by the edge of the wood whosehaunts he must thread no more--for the keepers were grim bone-breakersenough in their way--and when they had gotten him on his back, onegouged him like a Yankee, and the other bit off his nose like a BoltonTrotter--and one smashed his _os frontis_ with the nailed heel of atwo-pound wooden clog, a Preston Purrer;--so that Master Allonby is nowfar from being a beauty, with a face of that description attached to ahead wagging from side to side under a powerful palsy, while theMandarin drinks damnation to the Lord of the Manor in a horn ofeleemosynary ale, handed to him by the village blacksmith, in days ofold not the worst of the gang, and who, but for a stupid jury, amerciful judge, and something like prevarication in the circumstantialevidence, would have been hanged for a murderer--as he was--dissected, and hung in chains;--Be it a red-haired woman, with a pug nose, smallfiery eyes, high cheekbones, bulging lips, and teeth likeswine-tusks, --bearded--flat-breasted as a man--tall, scambling in hergait, but swift, and full of wild motions in her weather-withered arms, all starting with sinews like whipcord--the Pedestrian Post to and frothe market town twelve miles off--and so powerful a pugilist that shehit Grace Maddox senseless in seven minutes--tried before she waseighteen for child-murder, but not hanged, although the man-child, ofwhich the drab was self-delivered in a ditch, was found with bluefinger-marks on its windpipe, bloody mouth, and eyes forced out of theirsockets, buried in the dunghill behind her father's hut--not hanged, because a surgeon, originally bred a sow-gelder, swore that he believedthe mother had unconsciously destroyed her offspring in the throes oftravail, if indeed it had ever breathed, for the lungs would not swim, he swore, in a basin of water--so the incestuous murderess was letloose; her brother got hanged in due time after the mutiny at theNore--and her father, the fishmonger--why, he went red raving mad as ifa dog had bitten him--and died, as the same surgeon and sow-gelderaverred, of the hydrophobia, foaming at the mouth, gnashing his teeth, and some said cursing, but that was a calumny, for something seemed tobe the matter with his tongue, and he could not speak, onlysplutter--nobody venturing, except his amiable daughter--and in thatparticular act of filial affection she was amiable--to hold in thearticle of death the old man's head;--Be it that moping idiot that wouldsit, were she suffered, on, on, on--night and day for ever, on theself-same spot, whatever that spot might be on which she happened tosquat at morning, mound, wall, or stone--motionless, dumb, and, as astranger would think, also blind, for the eyelids are still shut--neveropened in sun or storm;--yet that figure--that which is now, and has foryears been, an utter and hopeless idiot, was once a gay, laughing, dancing, singing girl, whose blue eyes seemed full of light, whetherthey looked on earth or heaven, the flowers or the stars--hersweetheart--a rational young man, it would appear--having leapt out uponher suddenly, as she was passing through the churchyard at night, frombehind a tombstone, in a sack which she, having little time forconsideration, and being naturally superstitious, supposed to be ashroud, and the wearer thereof, who was an active stripling of soundflesh and blood, to be a ghost or skeleton, all one horrid rattle ofbones; so that the trick succeeded far beyond the most sanguineexpectation of the Tailor who played the principal part--and sense, feeling, memory, imagination, and reason, were all felled by one blow offear--as butcher felleth ox--while by one of those mysteries, whichneither we, nor you, nor anybody else, can understand, life remained notonly unimpaired, but even invigorated; and there she sits, like a clockwound up to go a certain time, the machinery of which being good, hasnot been altogether deranged by the shock that sorely cracked the case, and will work till the chain is run down, and then it will tick nomore;--Be it that tall, fair, lovely girl, so thin and attenuated thatall wonder she can walk by herself--that she is not blown away even bythe gentle summer breeze that wooes the hectic of her cheek--dying allsee--and none better than her poor old mother--and yet herselfthoughtless of the coming doom, and cheerful as a nest-buildingbird--while her lover, too deep in despair to be betrayed into tears, ashe carries her to her couch, each successive day feels the dear anddreadful burden lighter and lighter in his arms. Small strength will itneed to support her bier! The coffin, as if empty, will be loweredunfelt by the hands that hold those rueful cords!

In mercy to our readers and ourselves, we shall endeavour to preventourselves from pursuing this argument any further--and perhaps quiteenough has been said to show that Dr Kitchiner's assertion, that personswho live in the country have firmer health and finer spirits than theinhabitants of towns--is exceedingly problematical. But even admittingthe fact to be as the Doctor has stated it, we do not think he hasattributed the phenomenon to the right cause. He attributes it to "theirenjoying plenty of sound sleep. " The worthy Doctor is entirely out inhis conjecture. The working classes in the country enjoy, we don't doubtit, sound sleep--but not plenty of it. They have but a short allowanceof sleep--and whether it be sound or not, depends chiefly on themselves;while as to the noises in towns and cities, they are nothing to what onehears in the country--unless, indeed, you perversely prefer privatelodgings at a pewterer's. Did we wish to be personal, we could name asingle waterfall who, even in dry weather, keeps all the visitors fromtown awake within a circle of four miles diameter; and in wet weather, not only keeps them all awake, but impresses them with a constantlyrecurring conviction during the hours of night, that there is somethingseriously amiss about the foundation of the river, and that the wholeparish is about to be overflowed, up to the battlements of the oldcastle that over-looks the linn. Then, on another point, we arecertain--namely, that rural thunder is many hundred times more powerfulthan villatic. London porter is above admiration--but London thunderbelow contempt. An ordinary hackney-coach beats it hollow. But, myfaith! a thunderstorm in the country--especially if it be mountainous, with a few fine Woods and Forests, makes you inevitably think of thatland from whose bourne no traveller returns; and even our town readerswill acknowledge that country thunder much more frequently proves mortalthan the thunder you meet with in cities. In the country, fewthunderstorms are contented to pass over without killing at least onehorse, some milch-kine, half-a-dozen sucking pigs or turkeys, an oldwoman or two, perhaps the Minister of the parish, a man about forty, name unknown, and a nursing mother at the ingle, the child escaping withsinged eyebrows, and a singular black mark on one of its great toes. Wesay nothing of the numbers stupified, who awake the day after, as from adream, with strange pains in their heads, and not altogether sure aboutthe names or countenances of the somewhat unaccountable people whom theysee variously employed about the premises, and making themselves prettymuch at home. In towns, not one thunderstorm in fifty that performs anexploit more magnanimous than knocking down an old wife from achimney-top--singeing a pair of worsted stockings that, knit in anill-starred hour, when the sun had entered Aries, had been hung out todry on a line in the backyard, or garden as it is called--or cutting afew inches off the tail of an old Whig weathercock that for years hadbeen pecking the eyes out of all the airts the wind can blaw, greedy ofsome still higher preferment. 

Our dear deceased author proceeds to tell his Traveller how to eat anddrink; and remarks, "that people are apt to imagine that they mayindulge a little more in high living when on a journey. Travellingitself, however, acts as a stimulus; therefore less nourishment isrequired than in a state of rest. What you might not considerintemperate at home, may occasion violent irritation, fatalinflammations, &c. , in situations where you are least able to obtainmedical assistance. "

All this is very loosely stated, and must be set to rights. If you shutyourself up for some fifty hours or so in a mail-coach, that keepswheeling along at the rate of ten miles an hour, and changes horses inhalf a minute, certainly for obvious reasons the less you eat and drinkthe better; and perhaps an hourly hundred drops of laudanum, orequivalent grain of opium, would be advisable, so that the transit fromLondon to Edinburgh might be performed in a phantasma. But the freeagent ought to live well on his travels--some degrees better, withoutdoubt, than when at home. People seldom live very well at home. There isalways something requiring to be eaten up, that it may not be lost, which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of anunexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through manyunprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce ofdomestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in oneof the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travellingat one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and, except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is anagreeable variety both in the natural and artificial disposition of thedishes. True that travelling may act as a stimulus--but false thattherefore less nourishment is required. Would Dr Kitchiner, if nowalive, presume to say that it was right for him, who had sat all daywith his feet on the fender, to gobble up, at six o'clock of theafternoon, as enormous a dinner as we who had walked since sunrise fortyor fifty miles? Because our stimulus had been greater, was ournourishment to be less? We don't care a curse about stimulus. What wewant, in such a case, is lots of fresh food; and we hold that, undersuch circumstances, a man with a sound Tory Church-and-King stomach andconstitution cannot over-eat himself--no, not for his immortal soul. 

We had almost forgot to take the deceased Doctor to task for one of themost free-and-easy suggestions ever made to the ill-disposed, how todisturb and destroy the domestic happiness of eminent literarycharacters. "An introduction to eminent authors may be obtained, " quothhe slyly, "from the booksellers who publish their works. "

The booksellers who publish the works of eminent authors have rathermore common sense and feeling, it is to be hoped, than this comesto--and know better what is the province of their profession. Any oneman may, if he chooses, give any other man an introduction to any thirdman in this world. Thus the tailor of any eminent author--or hisbookseller--or his parish minister--or his butcher--or his baker--or his"man of business"--or his house-builder--may, one and all, give suchtravellers as Dr Kitchiner and others, letters of introduction to thesaid eminent author in prose or verse. This, we have heard, is sometimesdone--but fortunately we cannot speak from experience, not beingourselves an eminent author. The more general the intercourse betweenmen of taste, feeling, cultivation, learning, genius, the better; butthat intercourse should be brought about freely and of its own accord, as fortunate circumstances permit, and there should be no impertinentinterference of selfish or benevolent go-betweens. It would seem that DrKitchiner thought the commonest traveller, one who was almost, as itwere, bordering on a Bagman, had nothing to do but call on the publisherof any great writer, and get a free admission into his house. Had theDoctor not been dead, we should have given him a severe rowing andblowing-up for this vulgar folly; but as he is dead, we have only tohope that the readers of the Oracle who intend to travel will notdegrade themselves, and disgust "authors of eminence, " by thrustingtheir ugly or comely faces--both are equally odious--into the privacy ofgentlemen who have done nothing to exclude themselves from theprotection of the laws of civilised society--or subject their fire-sidesto be infested by one-half of the curious men of the country, two-thirdsof the clever, and all the blockheads. 

DR KITCHINER. 

THIRD COURSE. 

Having thus briefly instructed travellers how to get a look at Lions, the Doctor suddenly exclaims--"IMPRIMIS, BEWARE OF DOGS!" "There have, "he says, "been many arguments, _pro_ and _con_, on the dreadful diseasetheir bite produces--it is enough to prove that multitudes of men, women, and children have died in consequence of having been bitten bydogs. What does it matter whether they were the victims of bodilydisease or mental irritation? The life of the most humble human being isof more value than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynicsay otherwise?"

Dr Kitchiner always travelled, it appears, in chaises; and a chaise ofone kind or other he recommends to all his brethren of mankind. Why, then, this intense fear of the canine species? Who ever saw a mad dogleap into the mail-coach, or even a gig? The creature, when soafflicted, hangs his head, and goes snapping right and left atpedestrians. Poor people like us, who must walk, may well fearhydrophobia--though, thank Heaven, we have never, during the course of atolerably long and well-spent life, been so much as once bitten by "therabid animal!" But what have rich authors, who loll in carriages, todread from dogs, who always go on foot? We cannot credit the verysweeping assertion, that multitudes of men, women, and children havedied in consequence of being bitten by dogs. Even the newspapers do notrun up the amount above a dozen per annum, from which you may safelydeduct two-thirds. Now, four men, women, and children, are not "amultitude. " Of those four, we may set down two as problematical--havingdied, it is true, _in_, but not _of_ hydrophobia--states of mind andbody wide as the poles asunder. He who drinks two bottles of purespirit every day he buttons and unbuttons his breeches, generally dies_in_ a state of hydrophobia--for he abhorred water, and knewinstinctively the jug containing that insipid element. But he never diesat all _of_ hydrophobia, there being evidence to prove that for twentyyears he had drank nothing but brandy. Suppose we are driven to confessthe other two--why, one of them was an old woman of eighty, who wasdying as fast as she could hobble, at the very time she thought herselfbitten--and the other a nine-year-old brat, in hooping-cough andmeasles, who, had there not been such a quadruped as a dog created, would have worried itself to death before evening, so lamentably had itseducation been neglected, and so dangerous an accomplishment is animpish temper. The twelve cases for the year of that most horribledisease, hydrophobia, have, we flatter ourselves, been satisfactorilydisposed of--eight of the alleged deceased being at this moment engagedat various handicrafts, on low wages indeed, but still such as enablethe industrious to live--two having died of drinking--one of extreme oldage, and one of a complication of complaints incident to childhood, their violence having, in this particular instance, been aggravated byneglect and devilish temper. Where now the "multitude" of men, women, and children, who have died in consequence of being bitten by mad dogs?

Gentle reader--a mad dog is a bugbear; we have walked many hundred timesthe diameter and the circumference of this our habitable globe--alongall roads, public and private--with stiles or turnpikes--metropolitanstreets and suburban paths--and at all seasons of the revolving year andday; but never, as we padded the hoof along, met we nor were over-takenby greyhound, mastiff, or cur, in a state of hydrophobia. We have manymillion times seen them with their tongues lolling out about ayard--their sides panting--flag struck--and the whole dog showingsymptoms of severe distress. That such travellers were not mad we do notassert--they may have been mad--but they certainly were fatigued; andthe difference, we hope, is often considerable between weariness andinsanity. Dr Kitchiner, had he seen such dogs as we have seen, wouldhave fainted on the spot. He would have raised the country against theharmless jog-trotter. Pitchforks would have gleamed in the setting sun, and the flower of the agricultural youth of a midland county, forming alevy _en masse_, would have offered battle to a turnspit. The Doctor, sitting in his coach--like Napoleon at Waterloo--would have cried "_Toutest perdu--sauve, qui peut!_"--and re-galloping to a provincial town, would have found refuge under the gateway of the Hen and Chickens. 

"The life of the most humble human being, " quoth the Doctor, "is of morevalue than all the dogs in the world--dare the most brutal cynic sayotherwise?"

This question is not put to us; for so far from being the most brutalCynic, we do not belong to the Cynic school at all--being an Eclectic, and our philosophy composed chiefly of Stoicism, Epicureanism, andPeripateticism--with a fine, pure, clear, bold dash of Platonicism. Themost brutal Cynic, if now alive and snarling, must therefore answer forhimself--while we tell the Doctor, that so far from holding, with him, that the life of the most humble human being is of more value than allthe dogs in the world, we, on the contrary, verily believe that there ismany a humble dog whose life far transcends in value the lives of manymen, women, and children. Whether or not dogs have souls, is a questionin philosophy never yet solved; although we have ourselves no doubt onthe subject, and firmly believe that they have souls. But the question, as put by the Doctor, is not about souls, but about lives; and as thehuman soul does not die when the human body does, the death of an oldwoman, middle-aged man, or young child, is no such very great calamity, either to themselves or to the world. Better, perhaps, that all the dogsnow alive should be massacred, to prevent hydrophobia, than that a humansoul should be lost;--but not a single human soul is going to be lost, although the whole canine species should become insane to-morrow. Now, would the Doctor have laid one hand on his heart and the other on hisBible, and taken a solemn oath that rather than that one old woman of acentury and a quarter should suddenly be cut off by the bite of a maddog, he would have signed the warrant of execution of all the packs ofharriers and fox-hounds, all the pointers, spaniels, setters, andcockers, all the stag-hounds, greyhounds, and lurchers, all theNewfoundlanders, shepherd-dogs, mastiffs, bull-dogs, and terriers, theinfinite generation of mongrels and crosses included, in Great Britainand Ireland--to say nothing of the sledge-drawers in Kamtschatka, and inthe realms slow-moving near the Pole? To clench the argument atonce--What are all the old women in Europe, one-half of the men, andone-third of the children, when compared, in value, with any one ofChristopher North's Newfoundland dogs--Fro--Bronte--or O'Bronte?Finally, does he include in his sweeping condemnation the whole brutecreation, lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami, camelopardales, zebras, quaggas, cattle, horses, asses, mules, cats, the ichneumon, cranes, storks, cocks-of-the-wood, geese, and how-towdies?

"Semi-drowning in the sea"--he continues--"and all the pretendedspecifics, are mere delusions--there is no real remedy but cutting thepart out immediately. If the bite be near a blood-vessel, that cannotalways be done, nor when done, however well done, will it always preventthe miserable victim from dying the most dreadful of deaths. Well mightSt Paul tell us to '_beware of dogs_. ' First Epistle to Philippians, chap. Iii. , v. 2. "

Semi-drowning in the sea is, we grant, a bad specific, and difficult tobe administered. It is not possible to tell, _a priori_, how muchdrowning any particular patient can bear. What is mere semi-drowning toJames, is total drowning to John;--Tom is easy of resuscitation--Bobwill not stir a muscle for all the Humane Societies in the UnitedKingdoms. To cut a pound of flesh from the rump of a fat dowager, whoturns sixteen stone, is within the practical skill of the veriestbungler in the anatomy of the human frame--to scarify the fleshlessspindle-shank of an antiquated spinstress, who lives on a small annuity, might be beyond the scalpel of an Abernethy or a Liston. A largeblood-vessel, as the Doctor well remarks, is an awkward neighbour to thewound made by the bite of a mad dog, "when a new excision has to beattempted"--but will any Doctor living inform us how, in a thousandother cases besides hydrophobia, "the miserable victim may always beprevented from dying?" There are, probably, more dogs in Britain thanhorses; yet a hundred men, women, and children are killed by kicks ofsane horses, for one by bites of insane dogs. Is the British army, therefore, to be deprived of its left arm, the cavalry? Is there to beno flying artillery? What is to become of the horse-marines?

Still the Doctor, though too dogmatical, and rather puppyish above, is, at times, sensible on dogs. 

"Therefore, " quoth he, "never travel without a good tough Black Thorn inyour Fist, not less than three feet in length, on which may be markedthe Inches, and so it may serve for a measure. 

"Pampered Dogs, that are permitted to prance about as they please, whenthey hear a knock, scamper to the door, and not seldom snap at unwaryvisitors. Whenever _Counsellor Cautious_ went to a house, &c. , where hewas not quite certain that there was no Dog, after he had rapped at thedoor, he retired three or four yards from it, and prepared against theEnemy: when the door was opened, he desired, if there was any Dog, thatit might be shut up till he was gone, and would not enter the House tillit was. 

"_Sword_ and _Tuck Sticks_, as commonly made, are hardly so good aweapon as a stout Stick--the Blades are often inserted into the Handlesin such a slight manner, that one smart blow will break them out;--ifyou wish for a _Sword-Cane_, you must have one made with a goodRegulation Blade, which alone will cost more than is usually charged forthe entire Stick. --I have seen a Cane made by Mr PRICE, _of the Stickand Umbrella Warehouse, 221, in the Strand_, near Temple Bar, which wasexcellently put together. 

"A powerful weapon, and a very smart and light-looking thing, is _anIron Stick_ of about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, with a Hooknext the Hand, and terminating at the other end in a Spike about fiveinches in length, which is covered by a Ferrule, the whole painted thecolour of a common walking-stick; it has a light natty appearance, whileit is in fact a most formidable Instrument. "

We cannot charge our memory with this instrument, yet had we seen oneonce, we hardly think we could have forgot it. But Colonel de Berengerin his _Helps and Hints_ prefers the umbrella. Umbrellas are usuallycarried, we believe, in wet weather, and dogs run mad, if ever, in dry. So the safe plan is to carry one all the year through, like the Duke. 

"I found it a valuable weapon, although by mere chance; for, walkingalone in the rain, a large mad dog, pursued by men, suddenly turned uponme, out of a street which I had just approached; by instinct more thanjudgment, I gave point at him severely, opened as the umbrella was, which, screening me at the same time, _was an article from which he didnot expect thrusts_; but which, although made at guess, for I could notsee him, turned him over and over, and before he could recover himself, his pursuers had come up immediately to despatch him; the whole beingthe work of even few seconds; but for the umbrella the horrors ofhydrophobia might have fallen to my lot. "

There is another mode, which, with the omission or alteration of a wordor two, looks feasible, supposing we had to deal not with a bull-dog, but a young lady of our own species. "If, " says the Colonel, "you canseize a dog's front paw neatly, and immediately squeeze it sharply, hecannot bite you till you cease to squeeze it; therefore, by keeping himthus well pinched, you may lead him wherever you like; or you may, withthe other hand, seize him by the skin of the neck, to hold him thuswithout danger, provided your strength is equal to his efforts atextrication. " But here comes the Colonel's infallible _vade-mecum_. 

"Look at them with your face from between your opened legs, holding theskirts away, and running at them thus backwards, of course head below, stern exposed, and above all growling angrily; most dogs, seeing sostrange an animal, the head at the heels, the eyes below the mouth, &c. , are so dismayed, that, with their tails between their legs, they areglad to scamper away, some even howling with affright. I have nevertried it with a thorough-bred bull-dog, nor do I advise it with them;though I have practised it, and successfully, with most of the otherkinds; it might fail with these, still I cannot say it will. "

Thus armed against the canine species, the Traveller, according to ourOracle, must also provide himself with a portable case of instrumentsfor drawing--a sketch and note-book--paper--ink--and PINS--NEEDLES--ANDTHREAD! A ruby or Rhodium pen, made by Doughty, No. 10, Great OrmondStreet--pencils from Langdon's of Great Russell Street--a foldingone-foot rule, divided into eighths, tenths, and twelfths of inches--ahunting-watch with seconds, with a detached lever or Dupleix escapement, in good strong silver cases--a Dollond's achromatic opera-glass--anight-lamp--a tinder-box--two pair of spectacles, with strong silverframes--an eye-glass in a silver ring slung round the neck--atraveller's knife, containing a large and a small blade, a saw, hook fortaking a stone out of a horse's shoe, turnscrew, gun-picker, tweezers, and long corkscrew--galoches or paraloses--your own knife and fork, andspoon--a Welsh wig--a spare hat--umbrella--two great-coats, one for cooland fair weather (_i. E. _ between 45° and 55° of Fahrenheit), and anotherfor cold and foul weather, of broad cloth, lined with fur, anddenominated a "dreadnought. "

Such are a few of the articles with which every sensible traveller willprovide himself before leaving _Dulce Domum_ to brave the perils of aTour through the Hop-districts. 

"If circumstances compel you, " continues the Doctor, "to ride on theoutside of a coach, put on two shirts and two pair of stockings, turn upthe collar of your great-coat, and tie a handkerchief round it, and haveplenty of dry straw to set your feet on. "

In our younger days we used to ride a pretty considerable deal on theoutside of coaches, and much hardship did we endure before we hit on thediscovery above promulgated. We once rode outside from Edinburgh toLondon, in winter, without a great-coat, in nankeen trousers _sans_drawers, and all other articles of our dress thin and light inproportion. That we are alive at this day, is no less singular thantrue--no more true than singular. We have known ourselves so firmlyfrozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required theunited strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, toseparate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel. All at once the device of the double shirt flashed upon us--and itunderwent signal improvements before we reduced the theory to practice. For, first, we endued ourselves with a leather shirt--then with aflannel one--and then, in regular succession, with three linen shirts. This concluded the Series of Shirts. Then commenced the waistcoats. Aplain woollen waistcoat without buttons--with hooks and eyes--took thelead, and kept it; it was closely pressed by what is, in common palaver, called an under-waistcoat--the body being flannel, the breast-edgesbearing a pretty pattern of stripes or bars--then came a natty redwaistcoat, of which we were particularly proud, and of which the effecton landlady, bar-maid, and chamber-maid, we remember wasirresistible--and, fourthly and finally, to complete that department ofour investiture, shone with soft yet sprightly lustre--thedouble-breasted bright-buttoned Buff. Five and four are nine--so thatbetween our carcass and our coat, it might have been classically said ofour dress--"Novies interfusa coercet. " At this juncture of affairs beganthe coats, which--as it is a great mistake to wear too many coats--neverexceeded six. The first used generally to be a pretty old coat that hadlived to moralise over the mutability of humanaffairs--thread-bare--napless--and what ignorant people might havecalled shabby-genteel. It was followed by a plain, sensible, honest, unpretending, commonplace, everyday sort of a coat--and not, perhaps, ofthe very best merino. Over it was drawn, with some little difficulty, what had, in its prime of life, attracted universal admiration inPrinces Street, as a blue surtout. Then came your regular olive-colouredgreat-coat--not braided and embroidered _ŕ la militaire_--for we scornedto sham travelling-captain--but _simplex munditiis_, plain in itsneatness; not wanting then was your shag-hued wraprascal, betokeningthat its wearer was up to snuff--and to close this strange eventfulhistory, the seven-caped Dreadnought, that loved to dally with thesleets and snows--held in calm contempt Boreas, Notus, Auster, Eurus, and "the rest"--and drove baffled Winter howling behind the Pole. 

The same principle of accumulation was made applicable to the neck. Nostock. Neckcloth above neckcloth--beginning with singles--and thengetting into the full uncut squares--the amount of the whole beingsomewhere about a dozen: The concluding neckcloth worn cravat-fashion, and flowing down the breast in a cascade, like that of anattorney-general. Round our cheek and ear, leaving the lips at libertyto breathe and imbibe, was wreathed, in undying remembrance of thebravest of the brave, a Jem Belcher Fogle--and beneath thecravat-cascade a comforter netted by the fair hands of her who hadkissed us at our departure, and was sighing for our return. One hat wealways found sufficient--and that a black beaver--for a lily castorsuits not the knowledge-box of a friend to "a limited constitutional andhereditary monarchy. "

As to our lower extremities--One pair only of roomy shoes--one pair ofstockings of the finest lamb's-wool--another of common close worsted, knit by the hand of a Lancashire witch--thirdly, Shetland hose. Allthree pair reaching well up towards the fork--each about aninch-and-a-half longer than its predecessor. Flannel drawers--one paironly--within the lamb's-wool, and touching the instep--then one pair ofelderly casimeres, of yore worn at balls--one pair of Manchester whitecords--ditto of strong black quilt trousers, "capacious and serene"--andat or beneath the freezing-point, overalls of the same stuff as"Johnny's grey breeks"--neat but not gaudy--mud-repellers--themselves ahost--never in all their lives "thoroughly wetthrough"--frost-proof--and often mistaken by the shepherd on the wold, as the Telegraph hung for a moment on the misty upland, for the philibegof Phoebus in his dawn-dress, hastily slipt on as he bade farewell tosome star-paramour, and, like a giant about to run a race, devoured thecerulean course of day, as if impatient to reach the goal set in theWestern Sea. 

DR KITCHINER. 

FOURTH COURSE. 

Pray, reader, do you know what line of conduct you ought to pursue ifyou are to sleep on the road? "The earlier you arrive, " says the Doctor, "and the earlier after your arrival you apply, the better the chance ofgetting a good bed--this done, order your luggage to your room. Atravelling-bag, or a 'sac de nuit, ' in addition to your trunk, is verynecessary; it should be large enough to contain one or two changes oflinen--a night-shirt--shaving apparatus--comb, clothes, tooth and hairbrushes, &c. Take care, too, to see your sheets well aired, and that youcan fasten your room at night. Carry firearms also, and take the firstunostentatious opportunity of showing your pistols to the landlord. However well-made your pistols, however carefully you have chosen yourflint, and however dry your powder, look to the priming and touch-holeevery night. Let your pistols be double-barrelled, and with springbayonets. "

Now, really, it appears to us, that in lieu of double-barrelled pistolswith spring bayonets, it would be advisable to substitute a brace ofblack-puddings for daylight, and a brace of Oxford or Bologna sausagesfor the dark hours. They will be equally formidable to the robber, andfar safer to yourself. Indeed we should like to see duellingblack-puddings, or sausages, introduced at Chalk-Farm;--and, thatetiquette might not be violated, each party might take his antagonist'sweapon, and the seconds, as usual, see them loaded. Surgeons will haveto attend as usual. Far more blood, indeed, would be thus spilt, thanaccording to the present fashion. 

The Doctor, as might be expected, makes a mighty rout--a prodigiousfuss--all through the Oracle, about damp sheets; he must immediately seethe chambermaid, and overlook the airing with his own hands and eyes. He is also an advocate of the warming-pan--and for the adoption, indeed, of every imaginable scheme for excluding death from his chamber. He goeson the basis of everything being as it should not be in inns--and oftenreminds us of our old friend Death-in-the-Pot. Nay, as Travellers nevercan be sure that those who have slept in the beds before them were notafflicted with some contagious disease, whenever they can they shouldcarry their own sheets with them--namely, a "light eider-down quilt, andtwo dressed hart-skins, to be put on the mattresses, to hinder thedisagreeable contact. These are to be covered with the traveller's ownsheets--and if an eider-down quilt be not sufficient to keep him warm, his coat put upon it will increase the heat sufficiently. If thetraveller is not provided with these accommodations, it will sometimesbe prudent not to undress entirely; however, the neckcloth, gaiters, shirt, and everything which checks the circulation, must be loosened. "

Clean sheets, the Doctor thinks, are rare in inns; and he believes thatit is the practice to "take them from the bed, sprinkle them with water, fold them down, and put them into a press. When they are wanted again, they are, literally speaking, shown to the fire, and, in a reekingstate, laid on the bed. The traveller is tired and sleepy, dreams ofthat pleasure or business which brought him from home, and the remotestthing from his mind is, that from the very repose which he fancies hasrefreshed him, he has received the rheumatism. The receipt, therefore, to sleep comfortably at inns, is to take your own sheets, to have plentyof flannel gowns, and to promise, and take care to pay, a handsomeconsideration for the liberty of choosing your bed. "

Now, Doctor, suppose all travellers behaved at inns on such principles, what a perpetual commotion there would be in the house! The kitchens, back-kitchens, laundries, drying-rooms, would at all times be crammedchoke-full of a miscellaneous rabble of Editors, Authors, Lords, Baronets, Squires, Doctors of Divinity, Fellows of Colleges, Half-payOfficers, and Bagmen, oppressing the chambermaids to death, and in theheadlong gratification of their passion for well-aired sheets, settingfire so incessantly to public premises as to raise the rate of insuranceto a ruinous height, and thus bring bankruptcy on all the principalestablishments in Great Britain. But shutting our eyes, for a moment, to such general conflagration and bankruptcy, and indulging ourselves inthe violent supposition that some inns might still continue to exist, think, O think, worthy Doctor, to what other fatal results this system, if universally acted upon, would, in a very few years of the transitorylife of man, inevitably lead! In the first place, in a country where alltravellers carried with them their own sheets, none would be kept ininns except for the use of the establishment's own members. This wouldbe inflicting a vital blow, indeed, on the inns of a country. For mark, in the second place, that the blankets would not be long of followingthe sheets. The blankets would soon fly after the sheets on the wings oflove and despair. Thirdly, are you so ignorant, Doctor, of this worldand its ways, as not to see that the bed-steads would, in the twinklingof an eye, follow the blankets? What a wild, desolate, wintry appearancewould a bedroom then exhibit!

The foresight of such consequences as these may well make a man shudder. We have no objections, however, to suffer the Doctor himself, and a fewother occasional damp-dreading old quizzes, "to see the bed-clothes putto the fire in their presence, " merely at the expense of subjugatingthemselves to the derision of all the chambermaids, cooks, scullions, boots, ostlers, and painters. (The painter is the artist who is employedin inns, to paint the buttered toast. He always works in oils. As theDirector-General would say--he deals in buttery touches. ) Their feverishand restless anxiety about sheets, and their agitated discourse on dampsand deaths, hold them up to vulgar eyes in the light of lunatics. Theybecome the groundwork of practical jokes--perhaps are bitten to death byfleas; for a chambermaid, of a disposition naturally witty and cruel, has a dangerous power put into her hands, in the charge of blankets. TheDoctor's whole soul and body are wrapt up in well-aired sheets; but theinsidious Abigail, tormented by his flustering, becomes in turn thetormentor--and selecting the yellowest, dingiest, and dirtiest pair ofblankets to be found throughout the whole gallery of garrets (those foryears past used by long-bearded old-clothesmen Jews), with a wicked leerthat would lull all suspicion asleep in a man of a far less inflammabletemperament, she literally envelopes him in vermin, and after a night ofone of the plagues of Egypt, the Doctor rises in the morning, from topto bottom absolutely tattooed!

The Doctor, of course, is one of those travellers who believe thatunless they use the most ingenious precautions, they will be uniformlyrobbed and murdered in inns. The villains steal upon you during themidnight hour, when all the world is asleep. They leave their shoes downstairs, and leopard-like, ascend with velvet, or--what is almost asnoiseless--worsted steps, the wooden stairs. True, that your breechesare beneath your bolster--but that trick of travellers has long been "asnotorious as the sun at noonday;" and although you are aware of yourbreeches, with all the ready money perhaps that you are worth in thisworld, eloping from beneath your parental eye, you in vain try to cryout--for a long, broad, iron hand, with ever so many iron fingers, is onyour mouth; another, with still more numerous digits, compresses yourwindpipe, while a low hoarse voice, in a whisper to which SarahSiddons's was empty air, on pain of instant death enforces silence froma man unable for his life to utter a single word; and after pulling offall the bed-clothes, and then clothing you with curses, the ruffians, whose accent betrays them to be Irishmen, inflict upon you divers wantonwounds with a blunt instrument, probably a crow-bar--swearing by Satanand all his saints, that if you stir an inch of your body beforedaybreak, they will instantly return, cut your throat, knock out yourbrains, sack you, and carry you off for sale to a surgeon: Therefore youmust use pocket door-bolts, which are applicable to almost all sorts ofdoors, and on many occasions save the property and life of thetraveller. The corkscrew door-fastening the Doctor recommends as thesimplest. This is screwed in between the door and the door-post, andunites them so firmly, that great power is required to force a door sofastened. They are as portable as common cork-screws, and their weightdoes not exceed an ounce and a half. The safety of your bedroom shouldalways be carefully examined; and in case of bolts not being at hand, itwill be useful to hinder entrance into the room by putting a table andchair upon it against the door. Take a peep below the bed, and into theclosets, and every place where concealment is possible--of course, although the Doctor forgets to suggest it, into the chimney. A friend ofthe Doctor's used to place a bureau against the door, and "thereon heset a basin and ewer in such a position as easily to rattle, so that, onbeing shook, they instantly became _molto agitato_. " Upon one alarmingoccasion this device frightened away one of the chambermaids, or someother Paulina Pry, who attempted to steal on the virgin sleep of thetravelling Joseph, who all the time was hiding his head beneath thebolster. Joseph, however, believed that it was a horrible midnightassassin, with mustaches and a dagger. "The chattering of the crockerygave the alarm, and the attempt, after many attempts, was abandoned. "

With all these fearful apprehensions--in his mind, Dr Kitchiner musthave been a man of great natural personal courage and intrepidity, tohave slept even once in his whole lifetime from home. What dangers mustwe have passed, who used to plump in, without a thought of damp in thebed, or scamp below it--closet and chimney uninspected, door unboltedand unscrewed, exposed to rape, robbery, and murder! It is mortifying tothink that we should be alive at this day. Nobody, male or female, thought it worth their while to rob, ravish, or murder us! There we lay, forgotten by the whole world--till the crowing of cocks, or the ringingof bells, or blundering Boots insisting on it that we were a ManchesterBagman, who had taken an inside in the Heavy at five, broke our repose, and Sol laughing in at the unshuttered and uncurtained window showed usthe floor of our dormitory, not streaming with a gore of blood. Wereally know not whether to be most proud of having been the favouritechild of Fortune, or the neglected brat of Fate. One only precaution didwe ever use to take against assassination, and all the other ills thatflesh is heir to, sleep where one may, and that was to say inwardly ashort fervent prayer, humbly thanking our Maker for all thehappiness--let us trust it was innocent--of the day; and humblyimploring his blessing on all the hopes of to-morrow. For, at the timewe speak of, we were young--and every morning, whatever the atmospheremight be, rose bright and beautiful with hopes that, far as the eyes ofthe soul could reach, glittered on earth's, and heaven's, and life'shorizon!

But suppose that after all this trouble to get himself bolted andscrewed into a paradisaical tabernacle of a dormitory, there hadsuddenly rung through the house the cry of FIRE--FIRE--FIRE! how was DrKitchiner to get out? Tables, bureaus, benches, chairs, blocked up theonly door--all laden with wash-hand basins and other utensils, the wholecrockery shepherdesses of the chimney-piece, double-barrelled pistolswith spring bayonets ready to shoot and stab, without distinction ofpersons, as their proprietor was madly seeking to escape the roaringflames! Both windows are iron-bound, with all their shutters, and overand above tightly fastened with "the cork-screw fastening, the simplestthat we have seen. " The wind-board is in like manner, and by the sameunhappy contrivance, firmly jammed into the jaws of the chimney, soegress to the Doctor up the vent is wholly denied--no fire-engine in thetown--but one under repair. There has not been a drop of rain for amonth, and the river is not only distant but dry. The element isgrowling along the galleries like a lion, and the room is filling withsomething more deadly than back-smoke. A shrill voice is heardcrying--"Number 5 will be burned alive! Number 5 will be burned alive!Is there no possibility of saving the life of Number 5?" The Doctorfalls down before the barricado, and is stretched all his hapless lengthfainting on the floor. At last the door is burst open, and landlord, landlady, chambermaid, and boots--each in a different key--from manlybass to childish treble, demand of Number 5 if he be a murderer or amadman--for, gentle reader, it has been a--Dream. 

We must hurry to a close, and shall perform the short remainder of ourjourney on foot. The first volume of the Oracle concludes with"Observations on Pedestrians. " Here we are at home--and could, weimagine, have given the Doctor a mile in the hour in a year-match. Thestrength of man, we are given distinctly to understand by the Doctor, is"in the ratio of the performance of the restorative process, which is asthe quantity and quality of what he puts into his stomach, the energy ofthat organ, and the quantity of exercise he takes. " This statement ofthe strength of man may be unexceptionably true, and most philosophicalto those who are up to it--but to us it resembles a definition we haveheard of thunder, "the conjection of the sulphur congeals the matter. "It appears to us that a strong stomach is not the sole constituent of astrong man--but that it is not much amiss to be provided with a strongback, a strong breast, strong thighs, strong legs, and strong feet. Witha strong stomach alone--yea, even the stomach of a horse--a man willmake but a sorry Pedestrian. The Doctor, however, speedily redeemshimself by saying admirably well, "that nutrition does not depend moreon the state of the stomach, or of what we put into it, than it does onthe stimulus given to the system by exercise, which alone can producethat perfect circulation of the blood which is required to throw offsuperfluous secretions, and give the absorbents an appetite to suck upfresh materials. This requires the action of every petty artery, and ofthe minutest ramifications of every nerve and fibre in our body. " Thus, he remarks, a little further on, by way of illustration, "that a man, suffering under a fit of the vapours, after half an hour's briskambulation, will often find that he has walked it off, and that theaction of the body has exonerated the mind. "

The Doctor warms as he walks--and is very near leaping over the fence ofPolitical Economy. "Providence, he remarks, furnishes materials, butexpects that we should work them up for ourselves. The earth must belaboured before it gives its increase, and when it is forced to produceits several products, how many hands must they pass through before theyare fit for use! Manufactures, trade, and agriculture, naturally employmore than nineteen persons out of twenty; and as for those who are, bythe condition in which they are born, exempted from work, they are moremiserable than the rest of mankind, unless they daily and duly employthemselves in that VOLUNTARY LABOUR WHICH GOES BY THE NAME OF EXERCISE. "Inflexible justice, however, forces us to say, that although the Doctorthrows a fine philosophical light over the most general principles ofwalking, as they are involved in "that voluntary labour which goes bythe name of exercise, " yet he falls into frequent and fatal error whenhe descends into the particulars of the practice of pedestrianism. Thus, he says, that no person should sit down to a hearty meal immediatelyafter any great exertion, either of mind or body--that is, one mightsay, after a few miles of Plinlimmon, or a few pages of the Principia. Let the man, quoth he, "who comes home fatigued by bodily exertion, especially if he feel heated by it, throw his legs upon a chair, andremain quite tranquil and composed, that the energy which has beendispersed to the extremities may have time to return to the stomach, when it is required. " To all this we say--Fudge! The sooner you get holdof a leg of roasted mutton the better; but meanwhile, off rapidly witha pot of porter--then leisurely on with a clean shirt--wash your faceand hands in gelid--none of your tepid water. There is no harm done ifyou should shave--then keep walking up and down the parlour ratherimpatiently, for such conduct is natural, and in all things actagreeably to nature--stir up the waiter with some original jest by wayof stimulant, and to give the knave's face a well-pleased stare--andnever doubting "that the energy which has been dispersed to theextremities" has had ample time to return to the stomach, in God's namefall to! and take care that the second course shall not appear tillthere is no vestige left of the first--a second course being looked onby the judicious moralist and pedestrian very much in the light in whichthe poet has made a celebrated character consider it, --

 "Nor fame I slight--nor for her favours call-- She comes unlook'd for--if she comes at all. "

To prove how astonishingly our strength may be diminished by indolence, the Doctor tells us, that meeting a gentleman who had lately returnedfrom India, to his inquiry after his health he replied, "Why, better--better, thank ye--I think I begin to feel some symptoms of thereturn of a little English energy. Do you know that the day beforeyesterday I was in such high spirits, and felt so strong, I actually puton one of my stockings myself?"

The Doctor then asserts, that it "has been repeatedly proved that a mancan travel further for a week or a month than a horse. " On reading thissentence to Will Whipcord--"Yes, sir, " replied that renowned Professorof the Newmarket Philosophy, "that's all right, sir--a man can beat ahorse!"

Now, Will Whipcord may be right in his opinion, and a man may beat ahorse. But it never has been tried: There is no match of pedestrianismon record between a first-rate man and a first-rate horse; and as soonas there is, we shall lay our money on the horse--only mind, the horsecarries no weight, and he must be allowed to do his work on turf. Weknow that Arab horses will carry their rider, provision and provender, arms and accoutrements (no light weight) across the desert, eighty milesa-day, for many days--and that for four days they have gone a hundredmiles a-day. That would have puzzled Captain Barclay in his prime, thePrince of Pedestrians. However, be that as it may, the comparativepedestrian powers of man and horse have never yet been ascertained byany accredited match in England. 

The Doctor then quotes an extract from a Pedestrian Tour in Wales by aMr Shepherd, who, we are afraid, is no great headpiece, though we shallbe happy to find ourselves in error. Mr Shepherd, speaking of theinconveniencies and difficulties attending a pedestrian excursion, says, "that at one time the roads are rendered so muddy by the rain, that itis almost impossible to proceed;"--"at other times you are exposed tothe inclemency of the weather, and by wasting time under a tree or ahedge are benighted in your journey, and again reduced to anuncomfortable dilemma. " "Another disadvantage is, that your track isnecessarily more confined--a deviation of ten or twelve miles makes animportant difference, which, if you were on horseback, would beconsidered as trivial. " "Under all these circumstances, " he says, "itmay appear rather remarkable that we should have chosen a pedestrianexcursion--_in answer to which, it may be observed, that we were notapprised of these things till we had experienced them_. " What! MrShepherd, were you, who we presume have reached the age of puberty, notapprised, before you penetrated as a pedestrian into the Principality, that "roads are rendered muddy by the rain?" Had you never met, eitherin your experience of life, or in the course of your reading, proofpositive that pedestrians "are exposed to the inclemency of theweather?" That, if a man will linger too long under a tree or a hedgewhen the sun is going down, "he will be benighted?" Under what sereneatmosphere, in what happy clime, have you pursued your preparatorystudies _sub dio_? But, our dear Mr Shepherd, why waste time under theshelter of a tree or a hedge? Waste time nowhere, our young and unknownfriend. What the worse would you have been of being soaked to the skin?Besides, consider the danger you ran of being killed by lightning, hadthere been a few flashes, under a tree? Further, what will become ofyou, if you addict yourself on every small emergency to trees andhedges, when the country you walk through happens to be as bare as thepalm of your hand? Button your jacket, good sir--scorn anumbrella--emerge boldly from the sylvan shade, snap your fingers at thepitiful pelting of the pitiless storm--poor spite indeed in DensissimusImber--and we will insure your life for a presentation copy of your Touragainst all the diseases that leapt out of Pandora's box, not only tillyou have reached the Inn at Capel-Cerig, but your own home in England(we forget the county)--ay, till your marriage, and the baptism of yourfirst-born. 

Dr Kitchiner seems to have been much frightened by Mr Shepherd's pictureof a storm in a puddle, and proposes a plan of alleviation of one greatinconvenience of pedestrianising. "Persons, " quoth he, "who take apedestrian excursion, and intend to subject themselves to theuncertainties of accommodation, by going across the country and visitingunfrequented paths, will act wisely to carry with them a _piece ofoil-skin_ to sit upon while taking refreshments out of doors, which theywill often find needful during such excursions. " To save trouble, thebreech of the pedestrian's breeches should be a patch of oil-skin. Herea question of great difficulty and importance arises--Breeches ortrousers? Dr Kitchiner is decidedly for breeches. "The garter, " says he, "should be below the knee, and breeches are much better than trousers. The general adoption of those which, till our late wars, wereexclusively used by 'the Lords of the Ocean, ' has often excited myastonishment. However convenient trousers may be to the sailor who hasto cling to slippery shrouds, for the landsman nothing can be moreinconvenient. They are heating in summer, and in winter they arecollectors of mud. Moreover, they occasion a necessity for wearinggarters. Breeches are, in all respects, much more convenient. Theseshould have the knee-band three quarters of an inch wide, lined on theupper side with a piece of plush, and fastened with a buckle, which ismuch easier than even double strings, and, by observing the strap, youalways know the exact degree of tightness that is required to keep upthe stocking; any pressure beyond that is prejudicial, especially tothose who walk long distances. "

We are strongly inclined to agree with the Doctor in his panegyric onbreeches. True, that in the forenoons, especially if of a dark colour, such as black, and worn with white, or even grey or bluish, stockings, they are apt, in the present state of public taste, to stamp you aschoolmaster, or a small grocer in full dress, or an exciseman going toa ball. We could dispense too with the knee-buckles and plushlining--though we allow the one might be ornamental and the otheruseful. But what think you, gentle reader, of walking with a Pedometer?A Pedometer is an instrument cunningly devised to tell you how far andhow fast you walk, and is, quoth the Doctor, a "perambulator inminiature. " The box containing the wheels is made of the size of awatch-case, and goes into the breeches pocket, and by means of a stringand hook, fastened at the waistband or at the knee, the number of stepsa man takes, in his regular paces, are registered from the action of thespring upon the internal wheel-work at every step, to the amount of30, 000. It is necessary, to ascertain the distance walked, that theaverage length of one pace be precisely known, and that multiplied bythe number of steps registered on the dial-plate. 

All this is very ingenious; and we know one tolerable pedestrian who isalso a Pedometrist. But no Pedometrician will ever make a fortune in amountainous island, like Great Britain, where pedestrianism isindigenous to the soil. A good walker is as regular in his going asclock-work. He has his different paces--three, three and a half--four, four and a half--five, five and a half--six miles an hour--toe and heel. A common watch, therefore, is to him, in the absence of milestones, asgood as a Pedometer, with this great and indisputable advantage, that acommon watch continues to go even after you have yourself stopped, whereas, the moment you sit down on your oil-skin patch, why, yourPedometer (which, indeed, from its name and construction, is notunreasonable) immediately stands still. Neither, we believe, can youaccurately note the pulse of a friend in a fever by a Pedometer. 

What pleasure on this earth transcends a breakfast after a twelve-milewalk? Or is there in this sublunary scene a delight superior to thegradual, dying-away, dreamy drowsiness that, at the close of a longsummer day's journey up hill and down dale, seals up the glimmering eyeswith honey-dew, and stretches out, under the loving hands of nourriceNature, the whole elongated animal economy, steeped in rest divine fromthe organ of veneration to the point of the great toe, be it on a bedof down, chaff, straw, or heather, in palace, hall, hotel, or hut? If inan inn, nobody interferes with you in meddling officiousness; neitherlandlord, bagman, waiter, chambermaid, boots;--you are left to yourselfwithout being neglected. Your bell may not be emulously answered by allthe menials on the establishment, but a smug or shock-headed drawerappears in good time; and if mine host may not always dignify yourdinner by the deposition of the first dish, yet, influenced by therumour that soon spreads through the premises, he bows farewell at yourdeparture, with a shrewd suspicion that you are a nobleman in disguise. 

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 

FIRST RHAPSODY. 

No weather more pleasant than that of a mild WINTER day. So gracious theseason, that Hyems is like Ver--Januarius like Christopher North. Artthou the Sun of whom Milton said, --

 "Looks through the horizontal misty air, Shorn of his beams, "

an image of disconsolate obscuration? Bright art thou as at meridian ona June Sabbath; but effusing a more temperate lustre, not unfelt by thesleeping though not insensate earth. She stirs in her sleep, andmurmurs--the mighty mother; and quiet as herself, though broad awake, her old ally the ship-bearing sea. What though the woods beleafless--they look as alive as when laden, with umbrage; and who cantell what is going on now within the heart of that calm oak grove? Thefields laugh not now--but here and there they smile. If we see noflowers we think of them--and less of the perished than of the unborn;for regret is vain, and hope is blest; in peace there is the promise ofjoy--and therefore in the silent pastures a perfect beauty howrestorative to man's troubled heart!

The Shortest Day in all the year--yet is it lovelier than the Longest. Can that be the voice of birds? With the laverock's lyric our fancyfilled the sky--with the throstle's roundelay it awoke the wood. In theair life is audible--circling unseen. Such serenity must be inhabited byhappiness. Ha! there thou art, our Familiar--the self-same RobinRedbreast that pecked at our nursery window, and used to warble from thegable of the school-house his sweet winter song!

In company we are silent--in solitude we soliloquise. So dearly do welove our own voice that we cannot bear to hear it mixed with that ofothers--perhaps drowned; and then our bashfulness tongue-ties us in thehush expectant of our "golden opinions, " when all eyes are turned to thespeechless "old man eloquent, " and you might hear a tangle dishevellingitself in Nećra's hair. But all alone by ourselves, in the country, among trees standing still among untrodden leaves--as now--how we dospeak! All thoughts--all feelings--desire utterance; left to themselvesthey are not happy till they have evolved into words--winged words thatsometimes settle on the ground, like moths on flowers--sometimes seekthe sky, like eagles above the clouds. 

No such soliloquies in written poetry as these of ours--the act ofcomposition is fatal as frost to their flow; yet composition there is atsuch solitary times going on among the moods of the mind, as among theclouds on a still but not airless sky, perpetual but imperceptibletransformations of the beautiful, obedient to the bidding of the spiritof beauty. 

Who but Him who made it knoweth aught of the Laws of Spirit? All of usmay know much of what is "wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best, " inobedience to them; but leaving the open day, we enter at once intothickest night. Why at this moment do we see a spot once only visited byus--unremembered for ever so many flights of black or bright wingedyears--see it in fancy as it then was in nature, with the same dewdropson that wondrous myrtle beheld but on that morning--such a myrtle as noother eyes beheld ever on this earth but ours, and the eyes of one nowin heaven?

Another year is about to die--and how wags the world? "What great eventsare on the gale?" Go ask our statesmen. But their rule--their guidanceis but over the outer world, and almost powerless their folly or theirwisdom over the inner region in which we mortals live, and move, andhave our being, where the fall of a throne makes no more noise than thatof a leaf!

Thank Heaven! Summer and Autumn are both dead and buried at last, andwhite lie the snow on their graves! Youth is the season of all sorts ofinsolence, and therefore we can forgive and forget almost anything inSPRING. He has always been a privileged personage; and we have no doubtthat he played his pranks even in Paradise. To-day, he meets youunexpectedly on the hill-side; and was there ever a face in this worldso celestialised by smiles! All the features are framed of light. Gazeinto his eyes, and you feel that in the untroubled lustre there issomething more sublime than in the heights of the cloudless heavens, orin the depths of the waveless seas. More sublime, because essentiallyspiritual. There stands the young Angel, entranced in the consciousmystery of his own beautiful and blessed being; and the earth becomesall at once fit region for the sojourn of the Son of the Morning. Somight some great painter image the First-born of the Year, till nationsadored the picture. --To-morrow you repair, with hermit steps, to theMount of the Vision, and, "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, "

Spring clutches you by the hair with the fingers of frost; blashes astorm of sleet in your face, and finishes, perhaps, by folding you in awinding-sheet of snow, in which you would infallibly perish but for apocket-pistol of Glenlivet. --The day after to-morrow, you beholdhim--Spring--walking along the firmament, sad, but not sullen--mournful, but not miserable--disturbed, but not despairing--now coming out towardsyou in a burst of light--and now fading away from you in a gathering ofgloom--even as one might figure in his imagination a fallen Angel. OnThursday, confound you if you know what the deuce to make of hisSpringship. There he is, stripped to the buff--playing at hide-and-seek, hare-and-hound, with a queer crazy crony of his in a fur cap, swan-downwaistcoat, and hairy breeches, Lodbrog or Winter. You turn up the whitesof your eyes, and the browns of your hands in amazement, till the Two, by way of change of pastime, cease their mutual vagaries, and, like acouple of hawks diverting themselves with an owl, in conclusion buffetyou off the premises. You insert the occurrence, with suitablereflections, in your Meteorological Diary, under the head--Spring. --OnFriday, nothing is seen of you but the blue tip of your nose, for youare confined to bed by rheumatism, and nobody admitted to your sleeplesssanctum but your condoling Mawsey. 'Tis a pity. For never since theflood-greened earth on her first resurrection morn laughed aroundArarat, spanned was she by such a Rainbow! By all that is various andvanishing, the arch seems many miles broad, and many miles high, and allcreation to be gladly and gloriously gathered together without beingcrowded--plains, woods, villages, towns, hills, and clouds, beneath thepathway of Spring, once more an Angel--an unfallen Angel! While thetinge that trembles into transcendent hues fading andfluctuating--deepening and dying--now gone, as if for ever--and now backagain in an instant, as if breathing and alive--is felt, during all thatwavering visitation, to be of all sights the most evanescent, and yetinspirative of a beauty-born belief, bright as the sun that flung theimage on the cloud--profound as the gloom it illumines--that it shoneand is shining there at the bidding of Him who inhabiteth eternity. --Thegrim noon of Saturday, after a moaning morning, and one silentintermediate lour of grave-like stillness, begins to gleam fitfully withlightning like a maniac's eye; and is not that

 "The sound Of thunder heard remote?"

On earth wind there is none--not so much as a breath. But there is astrong wind in heaven--for see how that huge cloud-city, a night withina day, comes moving on along the hidden mountain-tops, and hangs overthe loch all at once black as pitch, except that here and there a sortof sullen purple heaves upon the long slow swell, and here and therealong the shores--how caused we know not--are seen, but heard not, thewhite melancholy breakers! Is no one smitten blind? No! Thank God! Butere the thanksgiving has been worded, an airquake has split asunder thecloud-city, the night within the day, and all its towers and temples aredisordered along the firmament, to a sound that might waken the dead. Where are ye, ye echo-hunters, that grudge not to purchase gunpowderexplosions on Lowood bowling-green at four shillings the blast? See!there are our artillerymen stalking from battery to battery--all hung upaloft facing the west--or "each standing by his gun" with lighted match, moving or motionless, Shadow-figures, and all clothed in black-blueuniform, with blood-red facings portentously glancing in the sun, as hestrives to struggle into heaven. The Generalissimo of all the forces, who is he but--Spring?--Hand in hand with Spring, Sabbath descends fromheaven unto earth; and are not their feet beautiful on the mountains?Small as is the voice of that tinkling bell from that humble spire, overtopped by its coeval trees, yet is it heard in the heart ofinfinitude. So is the bleating of these silly sheep on the braes--andso is that voice of psalms, all at once rising so spirit-like, as if thevery kirk were animated, and singing a joyous song in the wilderness tothe ear of the Most High. For all things are under his care--those that, as we dream, have no life--the flowers, and the herbs, and thetrees--those that some dim scripture seems to say, when they die, utterly perish--and those that all bright scripture, whether written inthe book of God, or the book of Nature, declares will live for ever!

If such be the character and conduct of Spring during one week, wiltthou not forget and forgive--with us--much occasional conduct on hispart that appears not only inexplicable, but incomprehensible? But wecannot extend the same indulgence to Summer and to Autumn. SUMMER is aseason come to the years of discretion, and ought to conduct himselflike a staid, sober, sensible, middle-aged man, not past, but passing, his prime. Now, Summer, we are sorry to say it, often behaves in a wayto make his best friends ashamed of him--in a way absolutely disgracefulto a person of his time of life. Having picked a quarrel with theSun--his benefactor, nay, his father--what else could he expect but thatthat enlightened Christian would altogether withhold his countenancefrom so undutiful and ungrateful a child, and leave him to travel alongthe mire and beneath the clouds? For some weeks Summer was sulky--andsullenly scorned to shed a tear. His eyes were like ice. By-and-by, likea great school-boy, he began to whine and whimper--and when he foundthat would not do, he blubbered like the booby of the lowest form. Stillthe Sun would not look on him--or if he did, 'twas with a sudden andshort half-smile half-scowl that froze the ingrate's blood. At last theSummer grew contrite, and the Sun forgiving, the one burst out into aflood of tears, the other into a flood of light. In simple words, theSummer wept and the Sun smiled--and for one broken month there was aperpetual alternation of rain and radiance! How beautiful is penitence!How beautiful forgiveness! For one week the Summer was restored to hispristine peace and old luxuriance, and the desert blossomed like therose. 

Therefore ask we the Summer's pardon for thanking Heaven that he wasdead. Would that he were alive again, and buried not for ever beneaththe yellow forest leaves! O thou first, faint, fair, finest tinge ofdawning Light that streaks the still-sleeping yet just-waking face ofthe morn, Light and no-Light, a shadowy Something, that as we gaze isfelt to be growing into an emotion that must be either Innocence orBeauty, or both blending together into devotion before Deity, once moreduly visible in the divine colouring that forebodes another day tomortal life--before Thee what holy bliss to kneel upon the greensward insome forest glade, while every leaf is a-tremble with dewdrops, and thehappy little birds are beginning to twitter, yet motionless among theboughs--before Thee to kneel as at a shrine, and breathe deeper anddeeper--as the lustre waxeth purer and purer, brighter and more bright, till range after range arise of crimson clouds in altitude sublime, andbreast above breast expands of yellow woods softly glittering in theirfar-spread magnificence--then what holy bliss to breathe deeper anddeeper unto Him who holds in the hollow of his hand the heavens and theearth, our high but most humble orisons! But now it is Day, and broadawake seems the whole joyful world. The clouds--lustrous no more--areall anchored on the sky, white as fleets waiting for the wind. Time isnot felt--and one might dream that the Day was to endure for ever. Yetthe great river rolls on in the light--and why will he leave thoselovely inland woods for the naked shores? Why--responds somevoice--hurry we on our own lives--impetuous and passionate far more thanhe with all his cataracts--as if anxious to forsake the regions of theupper day for the dim place from which we yet recoil in fear--the dimplace which imagination sometimes seems to see even through thesunshine, beyond the bourne of this our unintelligible being, stretchingsea-like into a still more mysterious night! Long as a Midsummer Day is, it has gone by like a Heron's flight. The sun is setting!--and let himset without being scribbled upon by Christopher North. We took apen-and-ink sketch of him in a "Day on Windermere. " Poor nature is muchto be pitied among painters and poets. They are perpetually falling into

 "Such perusal of her face As they would draw it. "

And often must she be sick of the Curious Impertinents. But a CuriousImpertinent are not we--if ever there was one beneath the skies, adevout worshipper of Nature; and though we often seem to heed not hershrine--it stands in our imagination, like a temple in a perpetualSabbath. 

It was poetically and piously said by the Ettrick Shepherd, at a Noctes, that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. Take Summer, whichearly in our soliloquy we abused in good set terms. Its weather wasbroken, but not bad; and much various beauty and sublimity is involvedin the epithet "broken, " when applied to the "season of the year. "Commonplace people, especially town-dwellers, who _flit_ into thecountry for a few months, have a silly and absurd idea of Summer, whichall the atmospherical phenomena fail to drive out of their foolishfancies. They insist on its remaining with us for half a year at least, and on its being dressed in its Sunday's best every day in the week aslong as they continue in country quarters. The Sun must rise, like alabourer, at the very earliest hour, shine all day, and go to bed late, else they treat him contumeliously, and declare that he is not worth hismeat. Should he retire occasionally behind a cloud, which it seems mostnatural and reasonable for one to do who lives so much in the publiceye, why, a whole watering-place, uplifting a face of dissatisfiedexpostulation to heaven, exclaims, "Where is the Sun? Are we never tohave any Sun?" They also insist that there shall be no rain of more thanan hour's duration in the daytime, but that it shall all fall by night. Yet when the Sun does exert himself, as if at their bidding, and isshining, as he supposes, to their heart's content, up go a hundred greenparasols in his face, enough to startle the celestial steeds in hischariot. A _broken_ summer for us. Now and then a few continuousdays--perhaps a whole week--but, if that be denied, now and then, "Like angels' visits, few and far between, "

one single Day--blue-spread over heaven, green-spread over earth--nocloud above, no shade below, save that dove-coloured marble lyingmotionless like the mansions of peace, and that pensive gloom that fallsfrom some old castle or venerable wood--the stillness of a sleeping joy, to our heart profounder than that of death, in the air, in the sky, andresting on our mighty mother's undisturbed breast--no lowing on thehills, no bleating on the braes--the rivers almost silent as lochs, andthe lochs, just visible in their aerial purity, floating dream-likebetween earth and sky, imbued with the beauty of both, and seeming tobelong to either, as the heart melts to human tenderness, or beyond allmortal loves the imagination soars! Such days seem now to us--as memoryand imagination half restore and half create the past into such weatheras may have shone over the bridal morn of our first parents inParadise--to have been frequent--nay, to have lasted all the Summerlong--when our boyhood was bright from the hands of God. Each of thosedays was in itself a life! Yet all those sunny lives melted into oneSummer--and all those Summers formed one continuous bliss. Storms andsnows vanished out of our ideal year; and then morning, noon, and night, wherever we breathed, we _felt_, what now we but _know_, the inmostmeaning of that profound verse of Virgil the Divine--

 "Devenere locos lćtos, et amoena vireta Fortunatorum nemorum, sedesque beatas. Largior hîc campos ćther et lumine vestit Purpureo: solemque suum, sua sidera norunt. "

Few--no such days as those seem now ever to be born. Sometimes we indeedgaze through the face into the heart of the sky, and for a moment feelthat the ancient glory of the heavens has returned on our dream of life. But to the perfect beatitude of the skies there comes from the soulwithin us a mournful response, that betokens some wide and deep--someeverlasting change. Joy is not now what joy was of yore; like a finediamond with a flaw is now Imagination's eye; other motes than thosethat float through ether cross between its orb and the sun; the "finegold has become dim, " with which morning and evening of old embossed theskies; the dewdrops are not now the pearls once they were, left on

 "Flowers, and weeds as beautiful as flowers, "

by angels' and by fairies' wings; knowledge, custom, experience, fate, fortune, error, vice, and sin, have dulled, and darkened, and deadenedall things; and the soul, unable to bring over the Present the ineffablebliss and beauty of the Past, almost swoons to think what a ghastlythunder-gloom may by Providence be reserved for the Future!

Nay--nay--things are not altogether so bad with us as thisstrain--sincere though it be as a stream from the sacredmountains--might seem to declare. We can yet enjoy a _broken_ Summer. Itwould do your heart good to see us hobbling with our crutch along theHighland hills, _sans_ great-coat or umbrella, in a summer-shower, aiblins cap in hand that our hair may grow, up to the knees in the bonnyblooming heather, or clambering, like an old goat, among the cliffs. Nothing so good for gout or rheumatism as to get wet through, while thethermometer keeps ranging between 60° and 70°, three times a-day. Whatrefreshment in the very sound--Soaking! Old bones wax dry--nervesnumb--sinews stiff--flesh frail--and there is a sad drawback on theWhole Duty of Man. But a sweet, soft, sou'-wester blows "caller" on ourcraziness, and all our pores instinctively open their mouths at theapproach of rain. Look but at those dozen downward showers, all denizensof heaven; how black, and blue, and bright they in their glee arestreaming, and gleaming athwart the sunny mountain-gloom, while ever asthey descend on earth, lift up the streams along the wilderness louderand louder a choral song. Look now at the heather--and smile wheneverhenceforth you hear people talk of _purple_. You have been wont to calla gold guinea or a sovereign _yellow_--but if you have got one in yourpocket, place it on your palm, and in the light of that broom is it nota _dirty brown_? You have an emerald ring on your finger--but how greyit looks beside the _green_ of those brackens, that pasture, that wood!Purple, yellow, and green, you have now seen, sir, for the first time inyour life. Widening and widening over your head, all the while you havebeen gazing on the heather, the broom, the bracken, the pastures, andthe woods, have the eternal heavens been preparing for you a vision ofthe sacred _Blue_. Is not that an Indigo Divine? Or, if you scorn thatmercantile and manufacturing image, steal that blue from the sky, andlet the lady of your love tinge but her eyelids with one touch, and asaintlier beauty will be in her upward looks as she beseeches Heaven tobless thee in her prayers! Set slowly--slowly--slowly--O Sun of Suns! asmay be allowed by the laws of Nature. For not long after Thou hast sunkbehind those mountains into the sea, will that celestial ROSY-RED betabernacled in the heavens!

Meanwhile, three of the dozen showers have so soaked and steeped our oldcrazy carcass in refreshment, and restoration, and renewal of youth, that we should not be surprised were we to outlive that raven croakingin pure _gaieté du coeur_ on the cliff. Threescore and ten years!Poo--'tis a pitiful span! At a hundred we shall cut capers--for twentyyears more keep to the Highland fling--and at the close of other twenty, jig it into the grave to that matchless strathspey, the Reel ofTullochgorum!

Having thus made our peace with last Summer, can we allow the Sun to godown on our wrath towards the AUTUMN, whose back we yet see on thehorizon, before he turn about to bow adieu to our hemisphere? Hollo! Imeet us half-way in yonder immense field of potatoes, our worthy Season, and among these peacemakers, the Mealies and the Waxies, shall we twosmoke together the calumet or cigar of reconciliation. The floods fell, and the folk feared famine. The people whined over the smut in wheat, and pored pale on the Monthly Agricultural Report. Grain grew greenerand greener--reapers stood at the crosses of villages, towns, andcities, passing from one to another comfortless quaichs of sma' yill, with their straw-bound sickles hanging idle across their shoulders, andwith unhired-looking faces, as ragged a company as if you were to dreamof a Symposium of Scarecrows. Alarmed imagination beheld harvesttreading on the heels of Christmas, "And Britain sadden'd at the long delay!"

when, whew! to dash the dismal predictions of foolish and falseprophets, came rustling from all the airts, far, far and wide over therain-drenched kingdom, the great armament of the Autumnal Winds! Groanedthe grain, as in sudden resurrection it lifted up its head, and knewthat again the Sun was in Heaven. Death became life; and the hearts ofthe husbandmen sang aloud for joy. Like Turks, the reapers brandishedtheir sickles in the breezy light, and every field glittered withChristian crescents. Auld wives and bits o' weans mingled on therig--kilted to the knees, like the comely cummers, and the handsomehizzies, and the lo'esome lassies wi' their silken snoods--among theheather-legged Highlandmen, and the bandy Irishers, brawny all, and withhook, scythe, or flail, inferior to none of the children of men. Thescene lies in Scotland--but now, too, is England "Merry England"indeed, and outside passengers on a thousand coaches see stooks risinglike stacks, and far and wide, over the tree-speckled champaign, rejoicein the sun-given promise of a glorious harvest-home. Intervenes the restof two sunny Sabbaths sent to dry the brows of labour, and give the lastripeness to the overladen stalks that, top-heavy with aliment, fall overin their yellowy whiteness into the fast reaper's hands. Few fieldsnow--but here and there one thin and greenish, of cold, unclean, orstony soil--are waving in the shadowy winds; for all are cleared, butsome stooked stubbles from which the stooks are fast disappearing, asthe huge wains seem to halt for a moment, impeded by the gates theyhide, and then, crested perhaps with laughing boys and girls, "Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings, "

no--not rings--for Beattie, in that admirable line, lets us hear a cartgoing out empty in the morning--but with a _cheerful dull_ sound, ploughing along the black soil, _the clean dirt_ almost up to theaxletree, and then, as the wheels, rimmed you might always think withsilver, reach the road, macadamised till it acts like a railway, howglides along downhill the moving mountain! And see now, the growingStack glittering with a charge of pitchforks! The trams fly up fromDobbin's back, and a shoal of sheaves overflows the mire. Up they go, tossed from sinewy arms like feathers, and the Stack grows before youreyes, fairly proportioned as a beehive, without line or measure, butshaped by the look and the feel, true almost as the spring instinct ofthe nest-building bird. And are we not heartily ashamed of ourselves, amidst this general din of working mirthfulness, for having, but an hourago, abused the jovial and generous Autumn, and thanked Heaven that hewas dead? Let us retire into the barn with Shoosy, and hide our blushes. 

Comparisons are odoriferous, and therefore for one paragraph let uscompare AUTUMN with SPRING. Suppose ourselves sitting beneath THESYCAMORE of Windermere! Poets call Spring Green-Mantle--and true it isthat the groundwork of his garb is green--even like that of the proudpeacock's changeful neck, when the creature treads in the circle of hisown splendour, and the scholar who may have forgotten his classics, hasyet a dream of Juno and of her watchful Argus with his hundred, histhousand eyes. But the coat of Spring, like that of Joseph, is a coat ofmany colours. Call it patch-work if you choose, "And be yourself the great sublime you draw. "

Some people look on nature with a milliner's or a mantua-maker'seye--arraying her in furbelows and flounces. But use your own eyes andours, and from beneath THE SYCAMORE let us two, sitting together inamity, look lovingly on the SPRING. Felt ever your heart before, withsuch an emotion of harmonious beauty, the exquisitely delicatedistinctions of character among the lovely tribes of trees! That isBELLE ISLE. Earliest to salute the vernal rainbow, with a glow of greengentle as its own, is the lake-loving ALDER, whose home, too, is by theflowings of all the streams. Just one degree fainter in its hue--orshall we rather say brighter--for we feel the difference without knowingin what it lies--stands, by the Alder's rounded softness, the spiralLARCH, all hung over its limber sprays, were you near enough to admirethem, with cones of the Tyrian dye. That stem, white as silver, andsmooth as silk, seen so straight in the green sylvan light, and thereairily overarching the coppice with lambent tresses, such as fancy mightpicture for the mermaid's hair, pleasant as is her life on thatFortunate Isle, is yet said by us, who vainly attribute our own sadnessto unsorrowing things--to belong to a Tree that _weeps_, --though aweight of joy it is, and of exceeding gladness, that thus depresses theBIRCH'S pendent beauty, till it droops--as we think--like that of abeing overcome with grief! Seen standing all along by themselves, withsomething of a foreign air, and an exotic expression, yet not unwelcomeor obtrusive among our indigenous fair forest-trees, twinkling to thetouch of every wandering wind, and restless even amidst what seemeth nowto be everlasting rest, we cannot choose but admire that somewhat darkergrove of columnar Lombardy POPLARS. How comes it that some SYCAMORES somuch sooner than others salute the Spring? Yonder are some but budding, as if yet the frost lay on the honey-dew that protects the beamy germs. There are others warming into expansion, half-budded and half-leaved, with a various light of colour visible in that sun-glint distinctly fromafar. And in that nook of the still sunnier south, trending eastward, afew are almost in their full summer foliage, and soon will the bees beswarming among their flowers. A HORSE CHESTNUT has a grand oriental air, and like a satrap uplifts his green banner yellowing in the light--thatshows he belongs to the line of the Prophet. ELMS are then mostmagnificent--witness Christ-Church walk--when they hang over head inheaven like the chancel of a cathedral. Yet here, too, are theaugust--and methinks "a dim religious light" is in that vault ofbranches just vivifying to the Spring, and though almost bare, tingedwith a coming hue that ere long will be majestic brightness. Those oldOAKS seem sullen in the sunshine, and slow to put forth their power, like the Spirit of the Land they emblem. But they, too, are relaxingfrom their wonted sternness--soon will that faint green be a gloriousyellow; and while the gold-laden boughs stoop boldly to the storms withwhich they love to dally, bounds not the heart of every Briton to themusic of his national anthem, "Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!"

The ASH is a manly tree, but "dreigh and dour" in the leafing; andyonder stands an Ash-grove like a forest of ships with bare poles in thedocks of Liverpool. Yet like the town of Kilkenny

 "It shines well where it stands;"

and the bare grey-blue of the branches, apart but not repulsive, likesome cunning discord in music, deepens the harmony of the Isle ofGroves. Contrast is one of the finest of all the laws of association, asevery philosopher, poet, and peasant kens. At this moment, it brings, bythe bonds of beauty, though many glades intervene, close beside thatpale grey-blue leafless Ash-Clump, that bright black-green PINE Clan, whose "leaf fadeth never, " a glorious Scottish tartan triumphing in theEnglish woods. Though many glades intervene, we said; for thou seestthat BELLE ISLE is not all one various flush of wood, but bedropt allover--bedropt and besprinkled with grass-gems, some cloud-shadowed, sometree-shaded, some mist-bedimmed, and some luminous as small soil-suns, on which as the eye alights, it feels soothed and strengthened, andgifted with a profounder power to see into the mystery of the beauty ofnature. But what are those living Hills of snow, or of some substancepurer in its brightness even than any snow that fades in one night onthe mountain-top! Trees are they--fruit-trees--The WILD CHERRY, thatgrows stately and widespreading even as the monarch of the wood--and canthat be a load of blossoms! Fairer never grew before poet's eye of oldin the fabled Hesperides. See how what we call snow brightens intopink--yet still the whole glory is white, and fadeth not away the purityof the balmy snow-blush. Ay, balmy as the bliss breathing from virginlips, when, moving in the beauty left by her morning prayers, a gladfond daughter steals towards him on the feet of light, and as his armsopen to receive and return the blessing, lays her innocence with smilesthat are almost tears, within her father's bosom. 

 "As when to those who sail Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow Sabćan odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest; with such delay Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league, Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles. "

Shut your eyes--suppose five months gone--and lo! BELLE ISLE in Autumn, like a scene in another hemisphere of our globe. There is a slight frostin the air, in the sky, on the lake, and mid-day is as still asmidnight. But, though still, it is cheerful; for close at hand RobinRedbreast--God bless him!--is warbling on the copestone of that old barngable; and though Millar-Ground Bay is half a mile off, how distinct theclank of the two oars like one, accompanying that large wood-boat on itsslow voyage from Ambleside to Bowness, the metropolitan port of theQueen of the Lakes. The water has lost, you see, its summer sunniness, yet it is as transparent as ever it was in summer; and how closetogether seem, with their almost meeting shadows, the two oppositeshores! But we wish you to look at BELLE ISLE, though we ourselves arealmost afraid to do so, so transcendently glorious is the sight that weknow will disturb us with an emotion too deep to be endured. --Could younot think that a splendid sunset had fallen down in fragments on theIsle called Beautiful, and set it all ablaze! The woods are on fire, yetthey burn not; beauty subdues while it fosters the flame; and there, asin a many-tented tabernacle, has Colour pitched his royal residence, andreigns in glory beyond that of any Oriental king. What are all thecanopies, and balconies, and galleries of human state, all hung withthe richest drapery that ever the skill of Art, that Wizard, drew forthin gorgeous folds from his enchanted loom, if ideally suspended in theair of imagination beside the sun-and-storm-stained furniture of thesePalaces of Autumn, framed by the Spirit of the Season, of living anddying umbrage, for his latest delight, ere he move in annual migration, with all his Court, to some foreign clime far beyond the seas! No namesof trees are remembered--a glorious confusion comprehends in one thewhole leafy race--orange, and purple, and scarlet, and crimson, are allseen to be there, and interfused through the silent splendour is ayefelt the presence of that terrestrial green, native and unextinguishablein earth's bosom, as that celestial blue is that of the sky. That trancegoes by, and the spirit, gradually filled with a stiller delight, takesdown all those tents into pieces, and contemplates the encampment withless of imagination, and with more of love. It knows and blesses eachone of those many glorious groves, each becoming, as it gazes, less andless glorious, more and more beautiful; till memory revives all thehappiest and holiest hours of the Summer and the Spring, and re-peoplesthe melancholy umbrage with a thousand visions of joy, that may returnnever more! Images, it may be, of forms and faces now mouldering in thedust! For as human hearts have felt, and all human lips havedeclared--melancholy making poets of us all, ay, even prophets--till thepensive air of Autumn has been filled with the music of elegiac andforeboding hymns--as is the Race of Leaves--now old Homer speaks--so isthe Race of Men! Nor till time shall have an end, insensate will be anycreature endowed "with discourse of reason" to those mysteriousmisgivings, alternating with triumphant aspirations more mysteriousstill, when the Religion of Nature leans in awe on the Religion of God, and we hear the voice of both in such strains as these--the earthly, inits sadness, momentarily deadening the divine:--

 "But when shall Spring visit the mouldering urn? Oh! when shall it dawn on the night of the grave?"

SOLILOQUY ON THE SEASONS. 

SECOND RHAPSODY. 

Have we not been speaking of all the Seasons as belonging to themasculine gender? They are generally, we believe, in this country, painted in petticoats, apparently by bagmen, as may be daily seen in thepretty prints that bedeck the paper-walls of the parlours of inns. Spring is always there represented as a spanker in a blue symar, verypertly exposing her budding breast, and her limbs from feet to fork, ina style that must be very offensive to the mealy-mouthed members of thatshamefaced corporation, the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Sheholds a flower between her finger and her thumb, crocus, violet, orprimrose; and though we verily believe she means no harm, she no doubtdoes look rather leeringly upon you, like one of the frail sisterhood ofthe Come-atables. Summer again is an enormous and monstrous mawsey, _inpuris naturalibus_, meant to image Musidora, or the Medicean, or ratherthe Hottentot Venus. 

 "So stands the statue that enchants the world!"

She seems, at the very lightest, a good round half hundred heavier thanSpring; and, when you imagine her plunging into the pool, you think youhear a porpus. May no Damon run away with her clothes, leaving behind inexchange his heart! Gadflies are rife in the dogdays, and should one"imparadise himself in form of that sweet flesh, " there will be a cry inthe woods that will speedily bring to her assistance Pan and all hisSatyrs. Autumn is a motherly matron, evidently _enceinte_, and, likeLove and Charity, who probably are smiling on the opposite wall, she hasa brace of bouncing babies at her breast--in her right hand a formidablesickle, like a Turkish scymitar--in her left an extraordinary utensil, bearing, we believe, the heathenish appellation of cornucopia--on herback a sheaf of wheat--and on her head a diadem--planted there by JohnBarleycorn. She is a fearsome dear; as ugly a customer as a lonely manwould wish to encounter beneath the light of a September moon. On herfeet are bauchles--on her legs huggers--and the breadth of her soles, and the thickness of her ankles, we leave to your own conjectures. Herfine bust is conspicuous in an open laced boddice--and her huge hips areset off to the biggest advantage, by a jacket that she seems to havepicked up by the wayside, after some jolly tar, on his return from along voyage, had there been performing his toilet, and, by getting ridof certain encumbrances, enabled to pursue his inland journey with lessresemblance than before to a walking scarecrow. Winter is a withered oldbeldam, too poor to keep a cat, hurkling on her hunkers over a feeblefire of sticks, extinguished fast as it is beeted, with a fizz in themelted snow which all around that unhoused wretchedness is induratedwith frost; while a blue pool close at hand is chained in iciness, andan old stump, half buried in the drift. Poor old, miserable, coweringcrone! One cannot look at her without unconsciously putting one's handin his pocket, and fumbling for a tester. Yes, there is pathos in thepicture, especially while, on turning round your head, you behold a bigblockhead of a vulgar bagman, with his coat-tails over his arms, warminghis loathsome hideousness at a fire that would roast an ox. 

Such are the Seasons! And though we have spoken of them, as mere criticson art, somewhat superciliously, yet there is almost always noinconsiderable merit in all prints, pictures, paintings, poems, orprose-works, that--pardon our tautology--are popular with the people. The emblematical figments now alluded to, have been the creations ofpersons of genius, who had never had access to the works of the oldmasters; so that, though the conception is good, the execution is, ingeneral, far from perfect. Yet many a time, when lying at our ease in aWayside Inn, stretched on three wooden chairs, with a little rounddeal-table before us, well laden with oatmeal cakes and cheese andbutter, nor, you may be sure, without its "tappit hen"--have we after along day's journey--perhaps the longest day--

 "Through moors and mosses many, O, "

regarded with no imaginative spirit--when Joseph and his brethren werewanting--even such symbols of the Seasons as these--while arose togladden us many as fair an image as ever nature sent from her woods andwildernesses to cheer the heart of her worshipper who, on his pilgrimageto her loftiest shrines, and most majestic temples, spared not to stoophis head below the lowest lintel, and held all men his equal who earnedby honest industry the scanty fare which they never ate without thoseholy words of supplication and thanksgiving, "Give us this day our dailybread!"

Our memory is a treasure-house of written and unwritten poetry--theingots, the gifts of the great bards, and the bars of bullion--much ofthe coin our own--some of it borrowed mayhap, but always on goodsecurity, and repaid with interest--a legal transaction, of which even anot unwealthy man has no need to be ashamed--none of it stolen, nor yetfound where the Highlandman found the tongs. But our riches are likethose that encumbered the floor of the Sanctum of the Dey of Algiers, not very tidily arranged; and we are frequently foiled in our efforts tolay our hand, for immediate use or ornament, on a ducat or a diamond, apistole or a pearl, a sovereign, or only his crown. We feel ourselves atthis moment in that predicament, when trying to recollect the genders ofThomson's "Seasons"--

 "Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veil'd in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend!"

That picture is indistinctly and obscurely beautiful to the imagination, and there is not a syllable about sex--though "ethereal mildness, " whichis an Impersonation, and hardly an Impersonation, must be, it is felt, aVirgin Goddess, whom all the divinities that dwell between heaven andearth must love. Never to our taste--but our taste is inferior to ourfeeling and our genius--though you will seldom go far wrong even intrusting it--never had a poem a more beautiful beginning. It is notsimple--nor ought it to be--it is rich, and even gorgeous--for the Bardcame to his subject full of inspiration; and as it was the inspiration, here, not of profound thought, but of passionate emotion, it was rightthat music at the very first moment should overflow the page, and thatit should be literally strewed with roses. An imperfect Impersonation isoften proof positive of the highest state of poetical enthusiasm. Theforms of nature undergo a half humanising process under the intensity ofour love, yet still retain the character of the insensate creation, thusaffecting us with a sweet, strange, almost bewildering, blended emotionthat scarcely belongs to either separately, but to both together clingsas to a phenomenon that only the eye of genius sees, because only thesoul of genius can give it a presence--though afterwards all eyes dimlyrecognise it, on its being shown to them, as something more vivid thantheir own faint experience, yet either kindred to it, or virtually oneand the same. Almost all human nature can, in some measure, understandand feel the most exquisite and recondite image which only the rarestgenius could produce. Were it not so, great poets might break theirharps, and go drown themselves in Helicon. 

 "From brightening fields of ether fair disclosed, Child of the Sun, refulgent SUMMER comes, In pride of youth, and felt through Nature's depth: He comes attended by the sultry hours, And ever-fanning breezes, on his way; While, from his ardent look, the turning Spring Averts her blushful face, and earth, and skies, All smiling, to his hot dominion leaves. "

Here the Impersonation is stronger--and perhaps the superior strengthlies in the words "child of the Sun. " And here in the words describingSpring, she too is more of an Impersonation than in the otherpassage--averting her blushful face from the Summer's ardent look. Thepoet having made Summer masculine, very properly makes Spring feminine;and 'tis a jewel of a picture--for ladies should always avert theirblushful faces from the ardent looks of gentlemen. Thomson, indeed, elsewhere says of an enamoured youth overpowered by the loving looks ofhis mistress, --

 "From the keen gaze her lover turns away, Full of the dear ecstatic power, and sick With sighing languishment. "

This, we have heard, from experienced persons of both sexes, is asdelicate as it is natural; but for our own simple and single selves, wenever remember having got sick on any such occasion. Much agitated, wecannot deny--if we did, the most credulous would not credit us--muchagitated we have been, when our lady-love, not contented with fixingupon us her dove-eyes, began billing and cooing in a style from whichthe cushat might have taken a lesson with advantage, that she might thebetter perform her innocent part on her first assignation with heraffianced in the pine-grove on St Valentine's day; but never in all ourlong lives got we absolutely _sick_--nor even _squeamish_--never were weobliged to turn away with our hand to our mouth--but, on the contrary, we were commonly as brisk as a bee at a pot of honey; or, if that be tooluscious a simile, as brisk as that same wonderful insect murmuring fora few moments round and round a rose-bush, and then settling himselfdown seriously to work, as mute as a mouse, among the half-blown petals. However, we are not now writing our Confessions--and what we wished tosay about this passage is, that in it the one sex is represented asturning away the face from that of the other, which may be all naturalenough, though polite on the gentleman's part we can never call it; and, had the female virgin done so, we cannot help thinking it would haveread better in poetry. But for Spring to avert _his_ blushful face fromthe ardent looks of Summer, has on us the effect of making both Seasonsseem simpletons. Spring, in the character of "ethereal mildness, " wasunquestionably a female; but here she is "unsexed from the crown to thetoe, " and changed into an awkward hobbletehoy, who, having passed hisboyhood in the country, is a booby who blushes black at the gaze of hisown brother, and if brought into the company of the lasses, would notfail to faint away in a fit, nor revive till his face felt a pitcherfulof cold water. 

 "Crown'd with the sickle and the wheaten sheaf, While Autumn, nodding o'er the yellow plain, Comes jovial on, " &c. , is, we think, bad. The Impersonation here is complete, and though thesex of Autumn is not mentioned, it is manifestly meant to be male. Sofar, there is nothing amiss either one way or another. But "nodding o'erthe yellow plain" is a mere statement of a fact in nature--anddescriptive of the growing and ripening or ripened harvest--whereas itis applied here to Autumn, as a figure who "comes jovial on. " This isnot obscurity--or indistinctness--which, as we have said before, isoften a great beauty in Impersonation; but it is an inconsistency and acontradiction--and therefore indefensible on any ground either ofconception or expression. 

"There are no such essential vices as this in the "Castle ofIndolence"--for by that time Thomson had subjected his inspiration tothought--and his poetry, guided and guarded by philosophy, becamecelestial as an angel's song. 

 "See, Winter comes, to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train, Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme, These! that exalt the soul to solemn thought, And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail! with frequent foot, Pleased have I, in my cheerful morn of life, When nursed by careless Solitude I lived, And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleased have I wander'd through your rough domain; Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure; Heard the winds roar, and the big torrents burst; Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew'd In the grim evening sky. Thus passed the time, Till through the lucid chambers of the south Look'd out the joyous Spring, look'd out, and smiled!"

Divine inspiration indeed! Poetry, that if read by the bedside of adying lover of nature, might

 "Create a soul Under the ribs of death!"

What in the name of goodness makes us suppose that a mean, and miserableNovember day, even while we are thus Rhapsodising, is drizzling allEdinburgh with the worst of all imaginable Scottish mists--an EasterlyHaur? We know that he infests all the year, but shows his poor spite inits bleakest bitterness in March and in November. Earth and heaven arenot only not worth looking at in an Easterly Haur, but the Visible isabsolute wretchedness, and people wonder why they were born. Thevisitation begins with a sort of characterless haze, waxing more andmore wetly obscure, till you know not whether it be rain, snow, orsleet, that drenches your clothes in dampness, till you feel it in yourskin, then in your flesh, then in your bones, then in your marrow, andthen in your mind. Your blinking eyes have it too--and so, shut it asyou will, has your moping mouth. Yet the streets, though looking blue, are not puddled, and the dead cat lies dry in the gutter. There is noeavesdropping--no gushing of waterspouts. To say it rained would be nobreach of veracity, but a mere misstatement of a melancholy fact. Thetruth is, that _the weather cannot rain_, but keeps spit, spit, spitting, in a style sufficient to irritate Socrates--or even Moseshimself; and yet true, veritable, sincere, genuine, and authentic Raincould not--or if he could would not--so thoroughly soak you and yourwhole wardrobe, were you to allow him a day to do it, as that shabbyimitation of a tenth-rate shower, in about the time of a usual sizedsermon. So much cold and so much wet, with so little to show for it, isa disgrace to the atmosphere, which it will take weeks of the sunniestthe weather can afford to wipe off. But the stores of sunniness which itis in the power of Winter in this northern latitude to accumulate, cannot be immense; and therefore we verily believe that it would be toomuch to expect that it ever can make amends for the hideous horrors ofthis Easterly Haur. The Cut-throat!

On such days suicides rush to judgment. That sin is mysterious asinsanity--their graves are unintelligible as the cells in Bedlam. Oh!the brain and the heart of man! Therein is the only Hell. Small theseregions in space, and of narrow room--but haunted may they be with allthe Fiends and all the Furies. A few nerves transmit to the soul despairor bliss. At the touch of something--whence and wherefore sent, who cansay--something that serenes or troubles, soothes or jars--she soars upinto life and light, just as you may have seen a dove suddenly cleavethe sunshine--or down she dives into death and darkness, like a shoteagle tumbling into the sea!

Materialism! Immaterialism! Why should mortals, whom conscience tellsthat they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon thedust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dustdies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not thatspirit its immortality in each sacred thought? When did ever religioussoul fear annihilation? Or shudder to think that, having once known, itcould ever forget God? Such forgetfulness is in the idea of eternaldeath. Therefore is eternal death impossible to us who can holdcommunion with our Maker. Our knowledge of Him--dim and remote though itbe--is a God-given pledge that He will redeem us from the doom of thegrave. 

Let us then, and all our friends, believe, with Coleridge, in hisbeautiful poem of the "Nightingale, " that

 "In Nature there is nothing melancholy, "

not even November. The disease of the body may cause disease in thesoul; yet not the less trust we in the mercy of the merciful--not theless strive we to keep feeding and trimming that spiritual lamp which iswithin us, even when it flickers feebly in the dampy gloom, like anearthly lamp left in a vaulted sepulchre, about to die among the dead. Heaven seems to have placed a power in our Will as mighty as it ismysterious. Call it not Liberty, lest you should wax proud; call it notNecessity, lest you should despair. But turn from the oracles ofman--still dim even in their clearest responses--to the Oracles of God, which are never dark; or if so, but

 "Dark with excessive bright"

to eyes not constantly accustomed to sustain the splendour. Bury allyour books, when you feel the night of scepticism gathering aroundyou--bury them all, powerful though you may have deemed their spells toilluminate the unfathomable--open your Bible, and all the spiritualworld will be as bright as day. 

The disease of the body may cause disease to the soul. Ay, madness. Somerapture in the soul makes the brain numb, and thence sudden or lingeringdeath;--some rupture in the brain makes the soul insane, and thence lifeworse than death, and haunted by horrors beyond what is dreamt of thegrave and all its corruption. Perhaps the line fullest of meaning thatever was written, is--

 "Mens sana in corpore sano. "

When nature feels the flow of its vital blood pure and unimpeded, whatunutterable gladness bathes the spirit in that one feeling of--health!Then the mere consciousness of existence is like that emotion whichMilton speaks of as breathed from the bowers of Paradise--

 "Vernal delight and joy, able to drive All sadness but despair"

It does more--for despair itself cannot prevail against it. What a dawnof bliss rises upon us with the dawn of light, when our life ishealthful as the sun! Then

 "It feels that it is greater than it knows. "

God created the earth and the air beautiful through the senses; and atthe uplifting of a little lid, a whole flood of imagery is let in uponthe spirit, all of which becomes part of its very self, as if theenjoying and the enjoyed were one. Health flies away like an angel, andher absence disenchants the earth. What shadows then pass over theethereal surface of the spirit, from the breath of disorderedmatter!--from the first scarcely-felt breath of despondency, to the lastscowling blackness of despair! Often men know not what power placed thefatal fetters upon them--they see even that a link may be open, and thatone effort might fling off the bondage; but their souls are in slavery, and will not be free. Till something like a fresh wind, or a suddensunbeam, comes across them, and in a moment their whole existence ischanged, and they see the very vanishing of their most dismal anddesperate dream. 

"Somewhat too much of this"--so let us strike the chords to a merriermeasure--to a "livelier lilt"--as suits the variable spirit of ourSoliloquy. Be it observed, then, that the sole certain way of gettingrid of the blue devils, is to drown them in a shower-bath. You would notsuppose that we are subject to the blue devils? Yet we are sometimestheir very slave. When driven to it by their lash, every occupation, which when free we resort to as pastime, becomes taskwork; nor willthese dogged masters suffer us to purchase emancipation with theproceeds of the toil of our groaning genius. But whenever the worstcomes to the worst, and we almost wish to die so that we might escapethe galling pressure of our chains, we sport buff, and into theshower-bath. Yet such is the weakness of poor human nature, that like acriminal on the scaffold, shifting the signal kerchief from hand tohand, much to the irritation of his excellency the hangman, one of themost impatient of men--and more to the satisfaction of the crowd, themost patient of men and women--we often stand shut up in thatsentry-looking canvass box, dexterously and sinistrously fingering thestring, perhaps for five shrinking, and shuddering, and _grueing_minutes, ere we can summon up desperation to pull down upon ourselvesthe rushing waterfall! Soon as the agony is over, we bounce out thecolour of beetroot, and survey ourselves in a five-foot mirror, with anamazement that, on each successive exhibition, is still as fresh as whenwe first experienced it, "In life's morning march, when our spirits were young. "

By-and-by we assume the similitude of an immense boiled lobster that hasleapt out of the pan--and then, seeming for a while to be anemblematical or symbolical representation of the setting Sun, we soberdown into a faint pink, like that of the Morn, and finally subside intoour own permanent flesh-light, which, as we turn our back uponourselves, after the fashion of some of his majesty's ministers, remindsus of that line in Cowper descriptive of the November Moon--

 "Resplendent less, but of an ampler round!"

Like that of the eagle, our youth is renewed--we feel strong as thehorse in Homer--a divine glow permeates our being, as if it were thesubdued spiritual essence of caloric. An intense feeling of self--notself-love, mind ye, and the farthest state imaginable in this wide worldfrom selfishness--elevates us far up above the clouds, into the loftiestregions of the sunny blue, and we seem to breathe an atmosphere, ofwhich every glorious gulp is inspiration. Despondency is thrown to thedogs. Despair appears in his true colours, a more grotesque idiot thanGrimaldi, and we treat him with a guffaw. All ante-bath difficultiesseem now--what they really are--facilities of which we are by far toomuch elated to avail ourselves; dangers that used to appear appallingare felt now to be lulling securities--obstacles, like mountains, lyingin our way of life as we walked towards the temple of Apollo or Plutus, we smile at the idea of surmounting, so molehillish do they look, and wekick them aside like an old footstool. Let the country ask us for ascheme to pay off the national debt--_there she has it_; do you requestus to have the kindness to leap over the moon--here we go; excellent MrBlackwood has but to say the word, and a ready-made Leading Article isin his hand, promotive of the sale of countless numbers of "myMagazine, " and of the happiness of countless numbers of mankind. Wefeel--and the feeling proves the fact--as bold as Joshua the son ofNun--as brave as David the son of Jesse--as wise as Solomon the son ofDavid--and as proud as Nebuchadnezzar the son of Nebopolazzar. We surveyour image in the mirror--and think of Adam. We put ourselves into theposture of the Belvidere Apollo. 

 "Then view the Lord of the unerring bow, The God of life, and poesy, and light, The Sun in human arms array'd, and brow All radiant from his triumph in the fight. The shaft hath just been shot--the arrow bright With an immortal vengeance; in his eye And nostril beautiful disdain, and might And majesty flash their full lightnings by, Developing in that one glance the Deity. "

Up four flight of stairs we fly--for the bath is in the double-sunkstory--ten steps at a bound--and in five minutes have devoured onequartern loaf, six eggs, and a rizzar, washing all over with apunch-bowl of congou and a tea-bowl of coffee. 

 "Enormous breakfast, Wild without rule or art! Where nature plays Her virgin fancies. "

And then, leaning back on our Easy-chair, we perform an exploit beyondthe reach of Euclid--why, WE SQUARE THE CIRCLE, and to the utterdemolition of our admirable friend Sir David Brewster's diatribe, in alate number of the _Quarterly Review_, on the indifference of Governmentto men of science, chuckle over our nobly-won order K. C. C. B. , KnightCompanion of the Cold Bath. 

Many analogies between the seasons of the year and the seasons of life, being natural, have been a frequent theme of poetry in all countries. Had the gods made us poetical, we should now have poured forth, a fewexquisite illustrations of some that are very affecting and impressive. It has, however, often been felt by us, that not a few of those onemeets with in the lamentations of whey-faced sentimentalists, are falseor fantastic, and do equal violence to all the seasons, both of the yearand of life. These gentry have been especially silly upon the similitudeof Old Age to Winter. Winter, in external nature, is not the season ofdecay. An old tree, for example, in the very _dead_ of winter, as it isfiguratively called, though bare of leaves, is full of life. The sap, indeed, has sunk down from his bole and branches--down into his toes orroots. But there it is, ready, in due time, to reascend. Not so with anold man--the present company always excepted;--his sap is not sunk downto his toes, but much of it is gone clean out of the system--therefore, individual natural objects in Winter are not analogically emblematicalof people stricken in years. Far less does the Winter itself of theyear, considered as a season, resemble the old age of life considered asa season. To what peculiarities, pray, in the character and conduct ofaged gentlemen in general, do rain, sleet, hail, frost, ice, snow, winds, blasts, storms, hurricanes, and occasional thunder and lightning, bear analogy? We pause for a reply. Old men's heads, it is true, arefrequently white, though more frequently bald, and their blood is not sohot as when they were springalds. But though there be no great harm inlikening a sprinkling of white hair on mine ancient's temples to theappearance of the surface of the earth, flat or mountainous, after aslight fall of snow--and indeed, in an impassioned state of mind, wefeel a moral beauty in such poetical expression as "sorrow shedding onthe head of youth its untimely snows"--yet the natural propriety of suchan image, so far from justifying the assertion of a general analogybetween Winter and Old Age, proves that the analogies between them arein fact very few, and felt to be analogies at all, only when touchedupon very seldom, and very slightly, and, for the most part, veryvaguely--the truth being, that they scarcely exist at all in reality, but have an existence given to them by the power of creative passion, which often works like genius. Shakespeare knew this well--as he kneweverything else; and, accordingly, he gives us Seven Ages of Life--notFour Seasons. But how finely does he sometimes, by the mere use of thenames of the Seasons of the Year, intensify to our imagination themental state to which they are for the moment felt to be analogous?--

 "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by the sun of York!"

That will do. The feeling he wished to inspire, is inspired; and thefurther analogical images which follow add nothing to _our_ feeling, though they show the strength and depth of _his_ into whose lips theyare put. A bungler would have bored us with ever so many ramificationsof the same idea, on one of which, in our weariness, we might havewished him hanged by the neck till he was dead. 

We are an Old Man, and though single not singular; yet, without vanity, we think ourselves entitled to say, that we are no more like Winter, inparticular, than we are like Spring, Summer, or Autumn. The truth is, that we are much less like any one of the Seasons, than we are like thewhole Set. Is not Spring sharp? So are we. Is not Spring snappish? Soare we. Is not Spring boisterous? So are we. Is not Spring "beautifulexceedingly?" So are we. Is not Spring capricious? So are we. Is notSpring, at times, the gladdest, gayest, gentlest, mildest, meekest, modestest, softest, sweetest, and sunniest of all God's creatures thatsteal along the face of the earth? So are we. So much for oursimilitude--a staring and striking one--to Spring. But were you to stopthere, what an inadequate idea would you have of our character! For onlyask your senses, and they will tell you that we are much liker Summer. Is not Summer often infernally hot? So are we. Is not Summer sometimescool as its own cucumbers? So are we. Does not Summer love the shade? Sodo we. Is not Summer, nevertheless, somewhat "too much i' the sun?" Soare we. Is not Summer famous for its thunder and lightning? So are we. Is not Summer, when he chooses, still, silent, and serene as a sleepingseraph? And so too--when Christopher chooses--are not we? Though, withkeen remorse we confess it, that, when suddenly wakened, we are toooften more like a fury or a fiend--and that completes the likeness; forall who know a Scottish Summer, with one voice exclaim--"So is he!" Butour portrait is but half-drawn; you know but a moiety of our character. Is Autumn jovial?--ask Thomson--so are we. Is Autumn melancholy?--askAlison and Gillespie--so are we. Is Autumn bright?--ask the woods andgroves--so are we. Is Autumn rich?--ask the whole world--so are we. DoesAutumn rejoice in the yellow grain and the golden vintage, that, storedup in his great Magazine of Nature, are lavishly thence dispensed to allthat hunger, and quench the thirst of the nations? So do we. After that, no one can be so pur-and-bat-blind as not see that North is, in verytruth, Autumn's gracious self, rather than his Likeness or Eidolon. But--

 "Lo, Winter comes to rule th' inverted year!"

So do we, "Sullen and sad, with all his rising train-- Vapours, and clouds, and storms!"

So are we. The great author of the "Seasons" says, that Winter and histrain

 "Exalt the soul to solemn thought, And heavenly musing!"

So do we. And, "lest aught less great should stamp us mortal, " here weconclude the comparison, dashed off in few lines by the hand of a greatmaster, and ask, Is not North, Winter? Thus, listener after our ownheart! thou feelest that we are imaged aright in all our attributesneither by Spring, nor Summer, nor Autumn, nor Winter; but that thecharacter of Christopher is shadowed forth and reflected by the EntireYear. 

A FEW WORDS ON THOMSON. 

Poetry, one might imagine, must be full of Snow-scenes. If so, they havealmost all dissolved--melted away from our memory--as the transienciesin nature do which they coldly pictured. Thomson's "Winter, " of course, we do not include in our obliviousness--and from Cowper's "Task" wemight quote many a most picturesque Snow-piece. But have frost and snowbeen done full justice to by them or any other of our poets? They havebeen well spoken of by two--Southey and Coleridge--of whose mostpoetical compositions respectively, "Thalaba" and the "Ancient Mariner, "in some future volume we may dissert. Thomson's genius does not so oftendelight us by exquisite minute touches in the description of nature asthat of Cowper. It loves to paint on a great scale, and to dash objectsoff sweepingly by bold strokes--such, indeed, as have almost alwaysdistinguished the mighty masters of the lyre and the rainbow. Cowpersets nature before your eyes--Thomson before your imagination. Which doyou prefer? Both. Be assured that both poets had pored night and dayupon her--in all her aspects--and that she had revealed herself fully toboth. But they, in their religion, elected different modes ofworship--and both were worthy of the mighty mother. In one mood of mindwe love Cowper best, in another Thomson. Sometimes the Seasons arealmost a Task--and sometimes the Task is out of Season. There isdelightful distinctness in all the pictures of the Bard ofOlney--glorious gloom or glimmer in most of those of the Bard of Ednam. Cowper paints trees--Thomson woods. Thomson paints, in a few wondrouslines, rivers from source to sea, like the mighty Burrampooter--Cowper, in many no very wondrous lines, brightens up one bend of a stream, orawakens our fancy to the murmur of some single waterfall. But a truce toantithesis--a deceptive style of criticism--and see how Thomson singsof Snow. Why, in the following lines, as well as Christopher North inhis Soliloquy on the Seasons--

 "The cherish'd fields Put on their winter-robe of purest white. 'Tis brightness all; save where the new snow melts Along the mazy current. "

Nothing can be more vivid. 'Tis of the nature of an ocular spectrum. 

Here is a touch like one of Cowper's. Note the beauty of the epithet"brown, " where all that is motionless is white--

 "The foodless wilds Pour forth their _brown_ inhabitants. "

That one word proves the poet. Does it not?

The entire description from which these two sentences are selected bymemory--a critic you may always trust to--is admirable; except in one ortwo places where Thomson seems to have striven to be strongly pathetic, and where he seems to us to have overshot his mark, and to have ceasedto be perfectly natural. Thus--

 "Drooping, the ox Stands cover'd o'er with snow, and then demands The fruit of all his toil. "

The image of the ox is as good as possible. We see him, and could painthim in oils. But, to our mind, the notion of his "demanding the fruit ofall his toils"--to which we freely acknowledge the worthy animal waswell entitled--sounds, as it is here expressed, rather fantastical. Callit doubtful--for Jemmy was never utterly in the wrong in any sentiment. Again--

 "The bleating kind Eye the bleak heaven, and next the glistening earth, _With looks of dumb despair. _"

The second line is perfect; but the Ettrick Shepherd agreed with us--onenight at Ambrose's--that the third was not quite right. Sheep, he agreedwith us, do not deliver themselves up to despair under anycircumstances; and here Thomson transferred what would have been his ownfeeling in a corresponding condition, to animals who dreadlessly followtheir instincts. Thomson redeems himself in what immediately succeeds--

 "Then, sad dispersed, Dig for the wither'd herb through heaps of snow. "

For, as they disperse, they do look very sad--and no doubt are so; buthad they been in despair, they would not so readily, and constantly, anduniformly, and successfully, have taken to the digging, but whole flockshad perished. 

You will not, we are confident, be angry with us for quoting a few linesthat occur soon after, and which are a noble example of the sweepingstyle of description which, we said above, characterises the genius ofthis sublime poet:--

 "From the bellowing east, In this dire season, oft the whirlwind's wing Sweeps up the burden of whole wintry plains At one wide waft, and o'er the hapless flocks, Hid in the hollow of two neighbouring hills, The billowy tempest whelms; till, upward urged, The valley to a shining mountain swells, Tipp'd with a wreath high-curling in the sky. "

Well might the Bard, with such a snow-storm in his imagination, whentelling the shepherds to be kind to their helpless charge, addressedthem in language which, in an ordinary mood, would have been bombast. "Shepherds, " says he, "baffle the raging year!" How? Why merely byfilling their pens with food. But the whirlwind was up--

 "Far off its coming _groan'd_, "

and the poet was inspired. Had he not been so, he had not cried, "Bafflethe raging year;" and if you be not so, you will think it a most absurdexpression. 

Did you ever see water beginning to change itself into ice? Yes. Thentry to describe the sight. Success in that trial will prove you a poet. People do not prove themselves poets only by writing long poems. Aline--two words--may show that they are the Muse's sons. How exquisitelydoes Burns picture to our eyes moonlight water undergoing an ice-change!

 "The chilly frost beneath the silver beam, Crept, gently crusting o'er the glittering stream!"

Thomson does it with an almost finer spirit of perception--orconception--or memory--or whatever else you choose to call it; for ourpart, we call it genius--

 "An icy gale, oft shifting, o'er the pool _Breathes a blue film_, and in its mid career Arrests the bickering stream. "

And afterwards, having frozen the entire stream into a "crystalpavement, " how strongly doth he conclude thus--

 "_The whole imprison'd river growls below. _"

Here, again, 'tis pleasant to see the peculiar genius of Cowpercontrasted with that of Thomson. The gentle Cowper delighting, for themost part, in tranquil images--for his life was passed amidst tranquilnature; the enthusiastic Thomson, more pleased with images of power. Cowper says--

 "On the flood, Indurated and fixed, the snowy weight Lies undissolved, _while silently beneath, And unperceived, the current steals away_. "

How many thousand times the lines we are now going to quote have beenquoted, nobody can tell; but we quote them once more for the purpose ofasking you, if you think that any one poet of this age could havewritten them--could have chilled one's very blood with such intensefeeling of cold! Not one. 

 "In these fell regions, in Arzina caught, _And to the stony deep his idle ship Immediate seal'd_, he with his hapless crew, Each full exerted at his several task, _Froze into statues; to the cordage glued The sailor, and the pilot to the helm!_"

The oftener--the more we read the "Winter"--especially the last two orthree hundred lines--the angrier is our wonder with Wordsworth forasserting that Thomson owed the national popularity that his "Winter"immediately won, to his "commonplace sentimentalities, and his viciousstyle!" Yet true it is, that he was sometimes guilty of both; and, butfor his transcendent genius, they might have obscured the lustre of hisfame. But such sins are not very frequent in the "Seasons, " and were allcommitted in the glow of that fine and bold enthusiasm, which to hisimagination arrayed all things, and all words, in a light that seemed tohim at the time to be poetry--though sometimes it was but "falseglitter. " Admitting, then, that sometimes the style of the "Seasons" issomewhat too florid, we must not criticise single and separate passages, without holding in mind the character of the poet's genius and hisinspirations. He luxuriates--he revels--he wantons--at once with animaginative and a sensuous delight in nature. Besides, he was but young;and his great work was his first. He had not philosophised his poeticallanguage, as Wordsworth himself has done, after long years ofprofoundest study of the laws of thought and speech. But in such study, while much is gained, may not something be lost? And is there not acharm in the free, flowing, chartered libertinism of the diction andversification of the "Seasons"--above all, in the closing strains of the"Winter, " and in the whole of the "Hymn, " which inspires a delight andwonder seldom breathed upon us--glorious poem, on the whole, as itis--from the more measured march of the "Excursion?"

All those children of the Pensive Public who have been much at school, know Thomson's description of the wolves among the Alps, Apennines, andPyrenees, "Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave! Burning for blood, bony and gaunt and grim!" &c. 

The first fifteen lines are equal to anything in the whole range ofEnglish descriptive poetry; but the last ten are positively bad. Herethey are:--

 "The godlike face of man avails him nought! Even beauty, force divine! at whose bright glance The generous lion stands in soften'd gaze, Now bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey. But if, apprised of the severe attack, The country be shut up, lured by the scent, On churchyard drear (inhuman to relate!) The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig The shrouded body from the grave; o'er which, Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl. "

Wild beasts do not like the look of the human eye--they think us uglycustomers--and sometimes stand shilly-shallying in our presence, in anawkward but alarming attitude, of hunger mixed with fear. A single wolfseldom or never attacks a man. He cannot stand the face. But a personwould need to have a godlike face indeed to terrify therewith an army ofwolves some thousand strong. It would be the height of presumption inany man, though beautiful as Moore thought Byron, to attempt it. If so, then

 "The godlike face of man avails him nought, "

is, under the circumstances, ludicrous. Still more so is the trash about"beauty, force divine!" It is too much to expect of an army of wolvessome thousand strong, "and hungry as the grave, " that they should allfall down on their knees before a sweet morsel of flesh and blood, merely because the young lady was so beautiful that she might have satto Sir Thomas Lawrence for a frontispiece to Mr Watts's "Souvenir. " 'Tisall stuff, too, about the generous lion standing in softened gaze atbeauty's bright glance. True, he has been known to look with a certainsort of soft surliness upon a pretty Caffre girl, and to walk pastwithout eating her--but simply because, an hour or two before, he haddined on a Hottentot Venus. The secret lay not in his heart, but in hisstomach. Still the notion is a popular one, and how exquisitely hasSpenser changed it into the divinest poetry in the character of theattendant lion of

 "Heavenly Una, with her milk-white lamb!"

But Thomson, so far from making poetry of it in this passage, hasvulgarised and blurred by it the natural and inevitable emotion ofterror and pity. Famished wolves _howking_ up the dead is a dreadfulimage--but "_inhuman to relate_, " is not an expression heavily ladenwith meaning; and the sudden, abrupt, violent, and, as we feel, unnatural introduction of ideas purely superstitious, at the close, isrevolting, and miserably mars the terrible _truth_. 

 "Mix'd with foul shades and frighted ghosts, they howl. "

Why, pray, are the shades foul, and the ghosts only frightened? Andwherein lies the specific difference between a shade and a ghost?Besides, if the ghosts were frightened, which they had good reason tobe, why were not they off? We have frequently read of their wanderingfar from home, on occasions when they had no such excellent excuse tooffer. This line, therefore, we have taken the liberty to erase from ourpocket-copy of the "Seasons"--and to draw a few keelavine strokes overthe rest of the passage--beginning with "man's godlike face. "

Go read, then, the opening of "Winter, " and acknowledge that, of allclimates and all countries, there are none within any of the zones ofthe earth that will bear a moment's comparison with those of Scotland. Forget the people if you can, and think only of the region. The lovelyLowlands undulating away into the glorious Highlands--the spirit ofsublimity and the spirit of beauty one and the same, as it blends themin indissoluble union. Bury us alive in the dungeon'sgloom--incommunicable with the light of day as the grave--it could notseal our eyes to the sight of Scotland. We should see it still by risingor by setting suns. Whatever blessed scene we chose to call on wouldbecome an instant apparition. Nor in that thick-ribbed vault would oureyes be deaf to her rivers and her seas. We should say our prayers totheir music, and to the voice of the thunder on a hundred hills. Westand now in no need of senses. They are waxing dim--but our spirit maycontinue to brighten long as the light of love is allowed to dwelltherein, thence proceeding over nature like a victorious morn. 

There are many beautiful passages in the poets about RAIN; but who eversang its advent so passionately as in these strains?--

 "The effusive south Warms the wide air, and o'er the void of heaven Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent. At first a dusky wreath they seem to rise, Scarce staining ether; but by swift degrees, In heaps on heaps, the doubling vapour sails Along the loaded sky, and mingling deep Sits on th' horizon round a settled gloom: Not such as wintry storms on mortals shed, Oppressing life; but lovely, gentle, kind, And full of every hope and every joy, The wish of nature. Gradual sinks the breeze Into a perfect calm, that not a breath Is heard to quiver through the closing woods, Or rustling turn the many-twinkling leaves Of aspen tall. Th' uncurling floods diffused In glassy breadth, seem through delusive lapse Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all And pleasing expectation. Herds and flocks Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye The falling verdure!"

All that follows is, you know, as good--better it cannot be--till wecome to the close, the perfection of poetry, and then sally out into theshower, and join the hymn of earth to heaven--

 "The stealing shower is scarce to patter heard By such as wander through the forest walks, Beneath th' umbrageous multitude of leaves. But who can hold the shade, while heaven descends In universal bounty, shedding herbs, And fruits, and flowers, on Nature's ample lap? Swift Fancy fired anticipates their growth; And, while the milky nutriment distils, Beholds the kindling country colour round. "

Thomson, they say, was too fond of epithets. Not he, indeed. Strike outone of the many there--and your sconce shall feel the crutch. A poetless conversant with nature would have feared to say, "sits on thehorizon round _a settled gloom_, " or rather, he would not have seen orthought it was a settled gloom; and, therefore, he could not have said--

 ----"But lovely, gentle, kind, And full of every hope and every joy, _The wish of Nature. _"

Leigh Hunt--most vivid of poets, and most cordial of critics--somewherefinely speaks of a ghastly line in a poem of Keats'--

 "Riding to Florence with the murder'd man;"

that is, the man about to be murdered--imagination conceiving as one, doom and death. Equally great are the words--

 "Herds and flocks Drop the dry sprig, and, mute-imploring, eye The falling verdure. "

The verdure is seen in the shower--to be the very shower--by the poet atleast--perhaps by the cattle, in their thirsty hunger forgetful of thebrown ground, and swallowing the dropping herbage. The birds had notbeen so sorely distressed by the drought as the beasts, and thereforethe poet speaks of them, not as relieved from misery, but as visitedwith gladness--

 "Hush'd in short suspense, The plumy people streak their wings with oil, To throw the lucid moisture trickling off, And wait th' approaching sign, to strike, at once, Into the general choir. "

Then, and not till then, the _humane_ poet bethinks him of the insensateearth--insensate not; for beast and bird being satisfied, and lowing andsinging in their gratitude, so do the places of their habitation yearnfor the blessing--

 "E'en mountains, vales, And forests, seem impatient, to demand The promised sweetness. "

The _religious_ Poet then speaks for his kind--and says devoutly--

 "Man superior walks Amid the glad creation, musing praise, And looking lively gratitude. "

In that mood he is justified to feast his fancy with images of thebeauty as well as the bounty of nature; and genius in one line hasconcentrated them all--

 "Beholds the kindling country colour round. "

'Tis "an a' day's rain"--and "the well-showered earth is deep-enrichedwith vegetable life. " And what kind of an evening? We have seen manysuch--and every succeeding one more beautiful, more glorious to our eyesthan another--because of these words in which the beauty and the gloryof one and all are enshrined--

 "Till, in the western sky, the downward sun Looks out, effulgent, from amid the flush Of broken clouds, gay-shifting to his beam. The rapid radiance, instantaneous, strikes Th' illumined mountain, through the forest streams, Shakes on the floods, and in a yellow mist, Far smoking o'er th' interminable plain, In twinkling myriads lights the dewy gems. Moist, bright, and green, the landscape laughs around. Full swell the woods; their every music wakes, Mix'd in wild concert with the warbling brooks Increased, the distant bleatings of the hills, And hollow lows responsive from the vales, Whence, blending all, the sweeten'd zephyr springs. Meantime, refracted from yon eastern cloud, Bestriding earth, the grand ethereal bow Shoots up immense; and every hue unfolds In fair proportion, running from the red To where the violet fades into the sky. "

How do you like our recitation of that surpassing strain? Every shade offeeling should have its shade of sound--every pause its silence. Butthese must all come and go, untaught, unbidden, from the fulness of theheart. Then indeed, and not till then, can words be said to be set tomusic--_to a celestial sing-song_. 

The mighty Minstrel recited old Ballads with a warlike march of soundthat made one's heart leap, while his usually sweet smile was drawn in, and disappeared among the glooms that sternly gathered about hislowering brows, and gave his whole aspect a most heroic character. Rudeverses, that from ordinary lips would have been almost meaningless, fromhis came inspired with passion. Sir Philip Sidney, who said that "ChevyChase" roused him like the sound of a trumpet, had he heard Sir WalterScott recite it, would have gone distracted. Yet the "best judges" saidhe murdered his own poetry--we say about as much as Homer. Wordsworthrecites his own Poetry (catch him reciting any other)magnificently--while his eyes seem blind to all outward objects, likethose of a somnambulist. Coleridge was the sweetest of sing-songers--andhis silver voice "warbled melody. " Next to theirs, we believe our ownrecitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times, though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced itdetestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what iscalled Elocution, as it is taught by player-folk. 

O friendly reader of these our Recreations! thou needst not to betold--yet in love let us tell thee--that there are a thousand ways ofdealing in description with Nature, so as to make her poetical; butsentiment there always must be, else it is stark nought. You may infusethe sentiment by a single touch--by a ray of light no thicker, nor onethousandth part so thick, as the finest needle ever silk-threaded bylady's finger; or you may dance it in with a flutter of sunbeams; or youmay splash it in as with a gorgeous cloud-stain stolen from sunset; oryou may bathe it in with a shred of the rainbow. Perhaps the highestpower of all possessed by the sons of song, is to breathe it in with thebreath, to let it slip in with the light of the common day!

Then some poets there are, who show you a scene all of a sudden, bymeans of a few magical words--just as if you opened your eyes at theirbidding--and in place of a blank, a world. Others, again, as good and asgreat, create their world gradually before your eyes, for the delight ofyour soul, that loves to gaze on the growing glory; but delight is lostin wonder, and you know that they, too, are warlocks. Some heap imageupon image, piles of imagery on piles of imagery, as if they wereransacking and robbing, and red-reavering earth, sea, and sky; yet allthings there are consentaneous with one grand design, which, whenconsummated, is a Whole that seems to typify the universe. Others giveyou but fragments--but such as awaken imaginations of beauty and ofpower transcendent, like that famous Torso. And some show you Natureglimmering beneath a veil which, nunlike, she has religiously taken; andthen call not Nature ideal only in that holy twilight, for then it isthat she is spiritual, and we who belong to her feel that we shall livefor ever. 

Thus--and in other wondrous ways--the great poets are the greatpainters, and so are they the great musicians. But how they are so, someother time may we tell; suffice it now to say, that as we listen to themighty masters--"sole or responsive to each other's voice"--

 "Now, 'tis like all instruments, Now like a lonely lute; And now 'tis like an angel's song That bids the heavens be mute!"

Why will so many myriads of men and women, denied by nature "the visionand the faculty divine, " persist in the delusion that they arepoetising, while they are but versifying "this bright and breathingworld?" They see truly not even the outward objects of sight. But of allthe rare affinities and relationships in Nature, visible or audible toFine-ear-and-Far-eye the Poet, not a whisper--not a glimpse have theyever heard or seen, any more than had they been born deaf-blind. 

They paint a landscape, but nothing "prates of their whereabouts, " whilethey were sitting on a tripod, with their paper on their knees, drawing--their breath. For, in the front ground is a castle, againstwhich, if you offer to stir a step, you infallibly break your head, unless providentially stopped by that extraordinary vegetable-lookingsubstance, perhaps a tree, growing bolt upright out of an intermediatestone, that has wedged itself in long after there had ceased to be evenstanding-room in that strange theatre of nature. But down from "theswelling instep of a mountain's foot, " that has protruded itself througha wood, while the body of the mountain prudently remains in the extremedistance, descends on you, ere you have recovered from your unexpectedencounter with the old Roman cement, an unconscionable cataract. Therestands a deer or goat, or rather some beast with horns, "strictlyanonymous, " placed for effect, contrary to all cause, in a place whereit seems as uncertain how he got in as it is certain that he never canget out till he becomes a hippogriff. 

The true poet, again, has such potent eyes, that when he lets down thelids, he sees just as well, perhaps better than when they were up; forin that deep, earnest, inward gaze, the fluctuating sea of scenerysubsides into a settled calm, where all is harmony as well asbeauty--order as well as peace. What though he have been fated, throughyouth and manhood, to dwell in city smoke? His childhood--hisboyhood--were overhung with trees, and through its heart went the murmurof waters. Then it is, we verily believe, that in all poets, is filledwith images up to the brim, Imagination's treasury. Genius, growing, andgrown up to maturity, is still a prodigal. But he draws on the Bank ofYouth. His bills, whether at a short or long date, are neverdishonoured; nay, made payable at sight, they are as good as gold. Norcares that Bank for a run, made even in a panic, for besides bars andbillets, and wedges and blocks of gold, there are, unappreciable beyondthe riches which against a time of trouble

 "The Sultaun hides in his ancestral tombs, "

jewels and diamonds sufficient

 "To ransom great kings from captivity. "

We sometimes think that the power of painting Nature to the life, whether in her real or ideal beauty (both belong to _life_, ) is seldomevolved to its utmost, until the mind possessing it is withdrawn in thebody from all rural _environment_. It has not been so with Wordsworth, but it was so with Milton. The descriptive poetry in "Comus" is indeedrich as rich may be, but certainly not so great, perhaps not sobeautiful, as that in "Paradise Lost. "

It would seem to be so with all of us, small as well as great; and were_we_--Christopher North--to compose a poem on Loch Skene, two thousandfeet or so above the level of the sea, and some miles from a house, weshould desire to do so in a metropolitan cellar. Desire springs fromseparation. The spirit seeks to unite itself to the beauty it loves, thegrandeur it admires, the sublimity it almost fears; and all these beingo'er the hills and far away, or on the hills cloud-hidden, why it--thespirit--makes itself wings--or rather wings grow up of themselves in itspassion, and naturewards it flies like a dove or an eagle. Peoplelooking at us believe us present, but they never were so far mistaken intheir lives; for in the Seamew are we sailing with the tide through themoonshine on Loch Etive--or hanging o'er that gulf of peril on the bosomof Skyroura. 

We are sitting now in a dusky den--with our eyes shut--but we see thewhole Highlands. Our Highland Mountains are of the best possiblemagnitude--ranging between two and four thousand feet high--and then inwhat multitudes! The more familiar you become with them, the mightierthey appear--and you feel that it is all sheer folly to seek to dwindleor dwarf them, by comparing them as they rise before your eyes with yourimagination of Mont Blanc and those eternal glaciers. If you can bringthem under your command, you are indeed a sovereign--and have a nobleset of subjects. In some weather they are of any height you choose toput them--say thirty thousand feet--in other states of the atmosphereyou think you could walk over their summits and down into the regionbeyond in an hour. Try. We have seen Cruachan, during a whole black day, swollen into such enormous bulk, that Loch Awe looked like but a sullenriver at his base, her woods bushes, and Kilchurn no bigger than acottage. The whole visible scene was but he and his shadow. They seemedto make the day black, rather than the day to make them so--and atnightfall he took wider and loftier possession of the sky--the cloudscongregated round without hiding his summit, on which seemed to twinkle, like earth-lighted fires, a few uncertain stars. Rain drives you into ashieling--and you sit there for an hour or two in eloquent confabulationwith the herdsman, your English against his Gaelic. Out of the door youcreep--and gaze in astonishment on a new world. The mist is slowlyrolling up and away in long lines of clouds, preserving, perhaps, abeautiful regularity on their ascension and evanescence, and betweenthem

 "Tier above tier, a wooded theatre Of stateliest view, "

or cliff galleries with strange stone-images sitting up aloft; and yetyour eyes have not reached the summits, nor will they reach them, tillall that vapoury ten-mile-long mass dissolve, or be scattered, and thenyou start to see them, as if therein had been but their bases, THEMOUNTAINS, with here and there a peak illumined, reposing in the blueserene that smiles as if all the while it had been above reach of thestorm. 

The power of Egoism accompanies us into solitude; nay, is even morelife-pervading there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stonesare more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in humansociety, and, moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to givethem; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and wemay have left at home our fiddle--more potent we in our actuality thanthe fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher!Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our biddingsilent the cataract on the cliff--the thunder on the sky. The seabeholds us on the shore--and his one huge frown transformed into amultitudinous smile, he turns flowing affections towards us along thegolden sands--and in a fluctuating hindrance of lovely foam-wreathsenvelopes our feet!

To return to Thomson. Wordsworth labours to prove, in one of his"postliminious prefaces, " that the true spirit of "The Seasons, " tilllong after their publication, was neither felt nor understood. In theconduct of his argument he does not shine. That the poem was at onceadmired he is forced to admit; but then, according to him, theadmiration was false and hollow--it was regarded but with that wonderwhich is the "natural product of ignorance. " After having observed that, excepting the "Nocturnal Reverie" of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage ortwo in the "Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the periodintervening between the publication of the "Paradise Lost" and "TheSeasons" does not contain a single new image of external nature, heproceeds to call the once well-known verses of Dryden in the "IndianEmperor, " descriptive of the hush of night, "vague, bombastic, andsenseless, " and Pope's celebrated translation of the moonlight scene inthe "Iliad, " altogether "absurd, "--and then, without ever once dreamingof any necessity of showing them to be so, or even, if he had succeededin doing so, of the utter illogicality of any argument drawn from theirfailure to establish the point he is hammering at, he all at once says, with the most astounding assumption, "_having shown_ that much of whathis [Thomson's] biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, in fact, have been blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?"_"Having shown"!!!_ Why, he has shown nothing but his own arrogance insupposing that his mere _ipse dixit_ will be taken by the whole world asproof that Dryden and Pope had not the use of their eyes. "Strange tothink of an enthusiast, " he says (alluding to the passage in Pope'stranslation of the "Iliad"), "as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without havinghis raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their_absurdity_!" We are no enthusiasts--we are far too old for that folly;but we have eyes in our head, though sometimes rather dim and motey, andas good eyes, too, as Mr Wordsworth, and we often have recited--and hopeoften will recite them again--Pope's exquisite lines, not only withoutany "suspicion of their absurdity, " but with the conviction of a mostdevout belief that, with some little vagueness perhaps, and repetition, and a word here and there that might be altered for the better, thedescription is most beautiful. But grant it miserable--grant all MrWordsworth has so dictatorially uttered--and what then? Thoughdescriptive poetry did not flourish during the period between "ParadiseLost" and "The Seasons, " nevertheless, did not mankind enjoy the use oftheir seven senses? Could they not see and hear without the aid of thoseoculists and aurists, the poets? Were all the shepherds andagriculturists of England and Scotland blind and deaf to all the sightsand sounds of nature, and all the gentlemen and ladies too, from theking and queen upon the throne, to the lowest of their subjects? Verylike a whale! Causes there were why poetry flowed during that era inanother channel than that of the description of natural scenery; and ifit flowed too little in that channel then--which is true--equally is ittrue that it flows now in it too much--especially among the poets of theLake School, to the neglect, not of sentiments and affections--for therethey excel--but of strong direct human passion applied to the stir andtumult--of which the interest is profound and eternal--of all the greataffairs of human life. But though the descriptive poets during theperiod between Milton and Thomson were few and indifferent, no reason isthere in this world for imagining, with Mr Wordsworth, that men hadforgotten both the heavens and the earth. They had not--nor was thewonder with which they must have regarded the great shows of nature, the"natural product of ignorance, " then, any more than it is now, or everwas during a civilised age. If we be right in saying so--then neithercould the admiration which "The Seasons, " on the first appearance ofthat glorious poem, excited, be said, with any truth, to have been but a"wonder, the natural product of ignorance. "

Mr Wordsworth having thus signally failed in his attempt to show that"much of what Thomson's biographer deemed genuine admiration, must, infact, have been blind wonderment, " let us accompany him in his equallyfutile efforts to show "how the rest is to be accounted for. " Heattempts to do so after this fashion: "Thomson was fortunate in the verytitle of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the preparedsympathies of every one; in the next place, notwithstanding his highpowers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactlyof that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. Helikewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner inwhich they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In anywell-used copy of 'The Seasons, ' the book generally opens of itself withthe Rhapsody on Love, or with one of the stories, perhaps of Damon andMusidora. These also are prominent in our Collections of Extracts, andare the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficientin first recommending the author to general notice. "

Thomson, in one sense, _was fortunate_ in the _title_ of his poem. But agreat poet like Wordsworth might--nay, ought to have chosen anotherword--or have given of that word a loftier explanation, when applied toThomson's _choice_ of the Seasons for the subject of his immortal poem. Genius made that choice--not fortune. The "Seasons" are not merely the"_title_" of his poem--they are his poem, and his poem is the Seasons. But how, pray, can Thomson be said to have been _fortunate_ in the_title_ or the subject either of his poem, in the sense that MrWordsworth means? Why, according to him, people knew little, and caredless, about the Seasons. "The art of seeing had in some measure beenlearned!" That he allows--but that was all--and that all is butlittle--and surely far from being enough to have disposed people ingeneral to listen to the strains of a poet who painted nature in all hermoods, and under all her aspects. Thomson, then, we say, was either most_unfortunate_ in the title of his poem, or there was not with the manythat indifference to, and ignorance of natural scenery, on which MrWordsworth so strenuously insists as part, or rather whole, of hispreceding argument. 

The title, Mr Wordsworth says, seemed "to bring the poem home to the_prepared sympathies_ of every one!" What! to the prepared sympathies ofthose who had merely, in some measure, learned the "art of seeing, " andwho had "paid, " as he says in another sentence, "little accurateattention to the appearances of nature!" Never did the weakest mind everfall into grosser contradictions than does here one of the strongest, invainly labouring to bolster up a silly assertion, which he hasdesperately ventured on from a most mistaken conceit that it wasnecessary to account for the kind of reception which his own poetry hadmet with from the present age. The truth is, that had Mr Wordsworthknown, when he indited these luckless and helpless sentences, that hisown poetry was, in the best sense of the word, a thousand times morepopular than he supposed it to be--and Heaven be praised, for the honourof the age, it was and is so!--never had they been written, nor had hehere and elsewhere laboured to prove that in proportion as poetry isbad, or rather as it is no poetry at all, is it, has been, and alwayswill be, more and more popular in the age contemporary with the writer. That Thomson, in "The Seasons, " _sometimes_ writes a _vicious style_, may be true; but it is not true that he _often_ does so. His style hasits faults, no doubt, and some of them inextricably interwoven with theweb of his composition. It is a dangerous style to imitate--especiallyto dunces. But its _virtue is divine_; and that _divine virtue_, even inthis low world of ours, wins admiration more surely and widely than_earthly vice_--be it in words, thoughts, feelings, or actions--is acreed that we will not relinquish at the beck or bidding even of thegreat author of "The Excursion. "

That many did--do--and will admire the bad or indifferent passages in"The Seasons"--won by their false glitter or commonplace sentimentalism, is no doubt true: but the delight, though as intense as perhaps it maybe foolish, with which boys and virgins, woman-mantuamakers andman-milliners, and "the rest, " peruse the Rhapsody on Love--one passageof which we ventured to be facetious on in our Soliloquy on theSeasons--and hang over the picture of Musidora undressing, while Damonwatches the process of disrobement, panting behind a tree, will neveraccount for the admiration with which the whole world hailed the"Winter, " the first published of "The Seasons;" during which, Thomsonhad not the barbarity to plunge any young lady naked into the cold bath, nor the ignorance to represent, during such cold weather, any young ladyturning her lover sick by the ardour of her looks, and the vehemence ofher whole enamoured deportment. The time never was--nor could havebeen--when such passages were generally esteemed the glory of the poem. Indeed, independently of its own gross absurdity, the assertion is attotal variance with that other assertion, equally absurd, that peopleadmired most in the poem what they least understood; for the Rhapsody onLove is certainly very intelligible, nor does there seem much mystery inMusidora going into the water to wash and cool herself on a hot day. Isit not melancholy, then, to hear such a man as Mr Wordsworth, earnestly, and even somewhat angrily, trying to prove that "these arethe parts of the work which, after all, were probably most efficient infirst recommending the author to general notice?"

With respect to the "sentimental commonplaces with which Thomsonabounds, " no doubt they were and are popular; and many of them deserveto be so, for they are on a level with the usual current of humanfeeling, and many of them are eminently beautiful. Thomson had not thephilosophical genius of Wordsworth, but he had a warm human heart, andits generous feelings overflow all his poem. These are not the mostpoetical parts of "The Seasons, " certainly, where such effusionsprevail; but still, so far from being either _vicious_ or _worthless_, they have often a virtue and a worth that must be felt by all thechildren of men. There is something not very credible in the situationof the parties in the story of the "lovely young Lavinia, " for example, and much of the sentiment is commonplace enough; but will Mr Wordsworthsay--in support of his theory, that the worst poetry is always at first(and at last too, it would seem, from the pleasure with which that taleis still read by all simple minds) the most popular--that that story isa bad one? It is a very beautiful one. 

Mr Wordsworth, in all his argumentation, is so blinded by hisdetermination to see everything in but one light, and that a mostmistaken one, that he is insensible to the conclusion to which it allleads, or rather, which is involved in it. Why, according to him, _evennow_, when people have not only learned the "art of seeing"--a blessingfor which they can never be too thankful--but when descriptive poetryhas long flourished far beyond its palmiest state in any other era ofour literature, still are we poor common mortals who admire "TheSeasons, " just as deaf and blind now, or nearly so, to their realmerits--allowed to be transcendent--as our unhappy forefathers were whenthat poem first appeared, "a glorious apparition. " The Rhapsody on Love, and Damon and Musidora, are still, according to him, its chiefattraction--its false ornaments--and its sentimental commonplaces--suchas those, we presume, on the benefits of early rising, and, "Oh! little think the gay licentious proud!"

What a nest of ninnies must people in general be in Mr Wordsworth'seyes! And is "The Excursion" not to be placed by the side of "ParadiseLost, " till the Millennium?

Such is the _reasoning (!)_ of one of the first of our English poets, against not only the people of Britain, but mankind. One other sentencethere is which we had forgotten--but now remember--which is to help usto distinguish, in the case of the reception "The Seasons" met with, between "wonder and legitimate admiration!" "The subject of the work isthe changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution ofthe year; _and, undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himselfto treat his subject as became a poet_!" How original and profound!Thomson redeemed his pledge; and that great pawnbroker, the public, returned to him his poem at the end of a year and a day. Now, what isthe "mighty stream of tendency" of that remark? Were the public, or thepeople, or the world, gulled by this unheard-of pledge of Thomson, toregard his work with that "wonder which is the natural product ofignorance!" If they were so in his case, why not in every other? Allpoets pledge themselves to be poetical, but too many of them arewretchedly prosaic--die and are buried, or what is worse, protract amiserable existence, in spite of their sentimental commonplaces, falseornaments, and a vicious style. But Thomson, in spite of all these, leapt at once into a glorious life, and a still more gloriousimmortality. 

There is no mystery in the matter. Thomson--a great poet--poured hisgenius over a subject of universal interest; and "The Seasons" from thathour to this--then, now, and for ever--have been, are, and will beloved, and admired by all the world. All over Scotland "The Seasons" isa household book. Let the taste and feeling shown by the Collectors ofElegant Extracts be poor as possible; yet Thomson's countrymen, high andlow, rich and poor, have all along not only gloried in his illustriousfame, but have made a very manual of his great work. It lies in manythousand cottages. We have ourselves seen it in the shepherd's shieling, and in the woodsman's bower--small, yellow-leaved, tatter'd, mean, miserable, calf-skin-bound, smoked, _stinking_ copies--let us not fearto utter the word, ugly but true--yet perused, pored, and pondered overby those humble dwellers, by the winter ingle or on the summer brae, perhaps with as enlightened--certainly with as imagination-overmasteringa delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born andhighly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables, and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of paintingstrives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend itsbeauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortalspirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for manycenturies in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to herloveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keepsgrowing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone

 "The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!"

In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery isapplied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that makeththe clouds His chariot?" The Scottish peasantry--Highland andLowland--look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heartof the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they loveThomson as an inspired bard--only a little lower than the Prophets. Inlike manner have the people of Scotland--from time immemorial--enjoyedthe use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are notdeaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which wehave quoted--we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in hisboyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, faraway from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did notthousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among themists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "hereeternise on earth" his joy--but many millions have had souls to joinreligiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with onemighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded, "These, as they change, Almighty Father, these Are but the varied God!"

THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT. 

Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, howgrey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters thatglorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was moredelightful even than the green--and we prayed that the fine fleecyflakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! Nosooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles. Then, it was a year in itself--a whole life. We remember slides aquarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, downthe sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on oneleg now--not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style ofskating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vainfor the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age ofits perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play. " The cryof "swoop-swoop" is heard still--but a faint, feeble, and unimpassionedcry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to makethe welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars--thosein the sky, as well as those below the ice--till again the tumultsubsided--and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene asa world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on apond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old onthe Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice ofhim that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of hisawkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own singlecrank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!

Again we see--again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of adrift in the minister's glebe, a drift--judging by the steeple, whichwas sixty--about twenty feet high--and purer than any marble. The roofwas all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porchof the palace was pillared--and the character of the building outsidewas, without any servile imitation--for we worked in the glow oforiginal genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or itspicture--wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself ina superb hall, lighted up--not with gas, for up to that era gas had notbeen used except in Pandemonium--but with a vast multitude of farthingcandles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall--while a chandelier offrozen snow-branches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber ina blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North--thenthe king of boys, as now of men--and proud were his subjects to do himhomage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered withhare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins--furnished by these animals slainby us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorlandparish--the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide fromLochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung--in sweet singlevoice--or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller onhis way to the lone Kings-well; and then in the intermediate hush, oldtales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy, " or of Wallace Wight at theBarns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling--or, a glorious outlaw, harbouringin caves among the Cartlane Craigs--or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, onhis shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, onhis thundering war-steed, armed cap-ŕ-pie, while the King of Scotlandhad nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales ofthe Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undyingsong!

Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. Withthose smiles was heard the harmless love-whisper, and the harmless kissof love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses inflower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairyfrozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old peoplethemselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-tablestood a huge bowl--not of snow--steaming with nectar that made Hyemssmile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the ministerhimself--with his mother and sister--was with us in our fantasticfestivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wonderingpraise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latinscholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddlejig or strathspey--and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with aconfused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, andmaddened by many a whoop and yell--so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king!

Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away--and of allwho danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw! as many probably asthen danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever--let usthen live well and wisely; and when death comes--from that sleep howblessed to awake! in a region where is no frost--no snow--but the sun ofeternal life. 

Mercy on us! what a hubbub!--Can the harriers be hunting in such asnowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderouspack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why--Imagination, thou art anass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but acountry Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life asin a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of hishelter-skelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, manyof them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the fire-eyed Poetpedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all theNine. " Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce--all come alike to him; andof all the bards we have ever known--and the sum total cannot be under athousand--he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse--we wot not whilk it be--ofperpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of aspringe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevilin the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingersup the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. Thecorbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood;and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs willbear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there befledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling withguttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty groundfloor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, witha squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming weshould not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred againstthe best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves--while, with thesteel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ringwould he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club?

Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyesin your head--only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bashthat shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue, _alias_ the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, haschosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head ofthat Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels allfoolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and DuxBooby--and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero. 

 "The combat deepens--on, ye brave, Who rush to glory or the grave! Wave, Nitton, all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy schoolery!"

Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, insolid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken thedead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the greatSnow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by lastnight's frost. But there lies a fresh fall--and a better day for abicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, andprodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up indrifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs, flung out in front, commence the conflict by a shower of balls that, from the bosom of theyet untrodden snow between the two battles, makes spin like spray theshining surface. Then falling back on the main body, they find theirplaces in the front rank, and the whole mottled mass, grey, blue, andscarlet, moves onwards o'er the whiteness, a moment ere they close, "Calm as the breeze, but dreadful as the storm!"

"Let fly, " cries a clear voice--and the snowball storm hurtles throughthe sky. Just then the valley-mouth blew sleety in the faces of thefoe--their eyes, as if darkened with snuff or salt, blinkedbat-like--and with erring aim flew their feckless return to that showerof frosty fire. Incessant is the silent cannonade of the resistlessSchool--silent but when shouts proclaim the fall or flight of somedoughty champion in the adverse legion. 

See--see--the Sacred Band are broken! The cravens take ignominiously toflight--and the Mad Dominie and Bob Howie alone are left to bear thebrunt of battle. A dreadful brotherhood! But the bashing balls areshowered upon them right and left from scores of catapultic arms--andthe day is going sore against them, though they fight less like men thandevils. Hurra! the Dominie's down, and Bob staggers. "Guards, up and atthem!" "A simultaneous charge of cocks, hens, and earocks!" No soonersaid than done. Bob Howie is buried--and the whole School is tramplingon its Master!

 "Oh, for a blast of that dread horn, On Fontarabian echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, When Rowland brave and Olivier, And every paladin and peer, On Roncesvalles died!"

The smothered ban of Bob, and the stifled denunciations of the Dominie, have echoed o'er the hill, and, "Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell, "

the runaways, shaking the snows of panic from their pows, "Like dewdrops from the lion's mane, "

come rushing to the rescue. Two of the Six tremble and turn. The highheroic scorn of their former selves urges four to renew the charge, andthe sound of their feet on the snow is like that of an earthquake. Whatbashes on bloody noses! What bungings-up of eyes! Of lips whatslittings! Red is many a spittle! And as the coughing urchin groans, andclaps his hand to his mouth, distained is the snowball that dropsunlaunched at his feet. The School are broken--their hearts die withinthem--and--can we trust our blasted eyes?--the white livers show thewhite feather, and fly! O shame! O sorrow! O sin! they turn their backsand fly! Disgraced are the mothers that bore them--and "happy in mymind, " wives and widows, "were ye that died, " undoomed to hear thetidings of this wretched overthrow! Heavens and earth! sixty are flyingbefore Six!--and half of sixty--oh! that we should record it!--_arepretending to be dead!!_ Would indeed that the snow were theirwinding-sheet, so that it might but hide our dishonour!

Look, we beseech you, at the Mad Dominie! like Hector issuing from thegates of Troy, and driving back the Greeks to their ships; orrather--hear, spirit of Homer!--like some great, shaggy, outlandishwolf-dog, that hath swum ashore from some strange wreck, and, after afortnight's famine on the bare sea-cliffs, been driven by the hungerthat gnaws his stomach like a cancer, and the thirst-fever that can onlybe slaked in blood, to venture prowling for prey up the vale, till, snuffing the scent of a flock of sheep, after some grim tiger-likecreeping on his belly, he springs at last, with huge long spangs, on thewoolly people, with bull-like growlings quailing their poor harmlesshearts, and then fast throttling them, one after another--till, as itmight seem rather in wantonness of rage than in empty pangs, he liesdown at last in the midst of all the murdered carcasses, licking theblood off his flews and paws--and then, looking and listening round withhis red turbid eyes, and sharp-pointed ears savagely erect, conscious ofcrime and fearful of punishment, soon as he sees and hears that all thecoast is clear and still, again gloatingly fastens his tusks behind theears, and then eats into the kidneys of the fattest of the flock, till, sated with gore and tallow, he sneaks stealthily into the wood, andcoiling himself up all his wiry length--now no longer lank, but swollenand knotted like that of a deer-devouring snake--he falls suddenlyasleep, and re-banquets in a dream of murder. 

That simile was conceived in the spirit of Dan Homer, but delivered inthat of Kit North. No matter. Like two such wolf-dogs are now Bob Howieand the Mad Dominie--and the School like such silly sheep. Those otherhell-dogs are leaping in the rear--and to the eyes of fear and flighteach one of the Six seems more many-headed than Cerberus, while theirmouths kindle the frosty air into fire, and thunder-bolts pursue thepell-mell of the panic. 

Such and so imaginative is not only mental but corporeal fear. Whatthough it be but a Snowball bicker! The air is darkened--no, brightenedby the balls, as in many a curve they describe their airy flight--somehard as stones--some soft as slush--some blae and drippy in the cold-hothand that launches them on the flying foe, and these are theteazers--some almost transparent in the cerulean sky, and broken erethey reach their aim, abortive "armamentaria coeli"--and some uselessfrom the first, and felt, as they leave the palm, to be fozier than thefoziest turnip, and unfit to bash a fly. 

Far and wide, over hill, bank, and brae, are spread the flying School!Squads of us, at sore sixes and sevens, are making for the frozen woods. Alas! poor covert now in their naked leaflessness for the stricken deer!Twos and threes in miserable plight floundering in drift-wreaths! Andhere and there--woefullest sight of all--single boys distractedlyettling at the sanctuaries of distant houses--with their heads all thewhile insanely twisted back over their shoulders, and the glare of theireyes fixed frightfully on the swift-footed Mad Dominie, till souse overneck and ears, bubble and squeak, precipitated into traitorous pitfall, and in a moment evanished from this upper world!

Disturbed crows fly away a short distance and alight silent, --themagpies chatter pert even in alarm, --the lean kine, collected on thelown sides of braes, wonder at the rippet--their horns moving, but nottheir tails, --while the tempest-tamed bull--almost dull now as anox--gives a short sullen growl as he feebly paws the snow. 

But who is he--the tall slender boy--slender, but sinewy--a wirychap--five feet eight on his stocking-soles--and on his stocking-soleshe stands--for the snow has sucked his shoes from his feet--that plantshimself like an oak sapling, rooted ankle-deep on a knoll, and there, ajuvenile Jupiter Stator, with voice and arm arrests the Flight, andfiercely gesticulating vengeance on the insolent foe, recalls andrallies the shattered School, that he may re-lead them to victory? Thephantom of a visionary dream! KIT NORTH HIMSELF--

 "In life's morning march when his spirit was young. "

And once on a day was that figure--ours! Then like a chamois-hunter ofthe Alps! Now, alas! like--

 "But be hush'd, my dark spirit--for wisdom condemns, When the faint and the feeble deplore; Be strong as a rock of the ocean that stems A thousand wild waves on the shore. Through the perils of chance and the scowl of disdain, Let thy front be unalter'd, thy courage elate; _Yea! even the name we have worshipp'd in vain_ Shall awake not a pang of remembrance again; _To bear, is to conquer our fate!_"

Half a century is annihilated as if it had never been: it is as if youngKit had become not old Kit--but were standing now as then front tofront, with but a rood of trampled snow between them, before the MadDominie and Bob Howie--both the bravest of the brave in Snowball orStone bicker--in street, lane, or muir fight--hand to hand, single-pitched with Black King Carey of the Gypsies--or in irregularhigh-road row--two to twelve--with a gang of Irish horse-coupers fromthe fair of Glasgow returning by Portpatrick to Donaghadee. 'Tis astrange thing so distinctly to see One's Self as he looked of yore--tolose one's present frail personal identity in that of the powerful past. Or rather to admire One's Self as he _was_, without consciousness of themean vice of egotism, because of the pity almost bordering on contemptwith which One regards One's Self as he _is_, shrivelled up into a sortof shrimp of a man--or blown out into a flounder. 

The Snowball bicker owns an armistice--and Kit North--that is, we of theolden and the golden time--advance into the debatable ground between thetwo armies, with a frozen branch in our hand as a flag of truce. The MadDominie loved us, because then-a-days--bating and barring the cock andthe squint of his eye--we were like himself a poet, and while a goosemight continue standing on one leg, could have composed one jolly act ofa tragedy, or book of an epic, while Bob--God bless him!--to guard usfrom scathe would have risked his life against a whole craal of tinkers. With open arms they come forward to receive us; but our blood is up--andwe are jealous of the honour of the School, which has received a stainwhich must be wiped out in blood. From what mixed motives act boys andmen in the deeds deemed most heroic, and worthy of the meed ofeverlasting fame! Even so is it now with us--when sternly eyeing theother Six, and then respectfully the Mad Dominie, we challenge--not atlong bowls--but toe to toe, at the scratch on the snow, with the nakedmawlies, the brawny boy with the red shock-head, the villain with thecarrots, who, by moonlight nights, "Round the stacks with the lasses at bogles to play, "

had dared to stand between us and the ladye of our love. Off fly ourjackets and stocks--it is not a day for buff--and at it like bull-dogs. Twice before had we fought him--at our own option--over the bonnet; for'twas a sturdy villain, and famous for the cross-buttock. But now, afterthe first close, in which we lose the fall--with straight right-handerswe keep him at off-fighting--and that was a gush of blood from hissmeller. "How do you like that, Ben?" Giving his head, with a mad rush, he makes a plunge with his heavy left--for he was ker-handed--at ourstomach. But a dip of our right elbow caught the blow, to the loudadmiration of Bob Howie--and even the Mad Dominie, the umpire, could notchoose but smile. Like lightning, our left returns between theogles--and Ben bites the snow. Three cheers from the School--and, liftedon the knee of his second, James Maxwell Wallace, since signalised atWaterloo, and now a knighted colonel of horse, "he grins horribly aghastly smile, " and is brought up staggering to the scratch. We knowthat we have him--and ask considerately, "what he means by winking?" Andnow we play around him, "Just like unto a trundling mop, Or a wild-goose at play. "

He is brought down now to our own weight--then nine stone jimp--hiseyes are getting momently more and more pig-like--water-logged, likethose of Queen Bleary, whose stone image lies in the echoing aisle ofthe old Abbey Church of Paisley--and bat-blind, he hits past our headand body, like an awkward hand at the flail, when drunk, thrashing corn. Another hit on the smeller, and a stinger on the throat-apple--and downhe sinks like a poppy--deaf to the call of "time"--and victory smilesupon us from the bright blue skies. "Hurra--hurra--hurra! Christopherfor ever!" and perched aloft, astride on the shoulders of Bob Howie--he, the Invincible, gallops with us all over the field, followed by theshouting School, exulting that Ben the Bully has at last met with anoverthrow. We exact an oath that he will never again meddle with MegWhitelaw--shake hands cordially, and

 "Off to some other game we all together flew. "

And so ended the famous Snowball Bicker of Pedmount, now immortalised inour Prose-Poem. 

Some men, it is sarcastically said, are boys all life-long, and carrywith them their puerility to the grave. 'Twould be well for the worldwere there in it more such men. By way of proving their manhood, we haveheard grown-up people abuse their own boyhood--forgetting what our greatPhilosophical Poet--after Milton and Dryden--has told them, that

 "The boy is father of the man, "

and thus libelling the author of their existence. A poor boy indeed musthe have been, who submitted to misery when the sun was new in heaven. Did he hate or despise the flowers around his feet, congratulating himon being young like themselves? the stars, young always, though Heavenonly knows how many million years old, every night sparkling inhappiness which they manifestly wished him to share? Did he indeed inhis heart believe that the moon, in spite of her shining midnight face, was made of green cheese? Not only are the foundations dug and laid inboyhood, of all the knowledge and the feelings of our prime, but theground-flat too built, and often the second story of the entiresuperstructure, from the windows of which, the soul looking out, beholdsnature in her state, and leaps down, unafraid of a fall on the green orwhite bosom of earth, to join with hymns the front of the procession. The soul afterwards perfects her palace--building up tier after tier ofall imaginable orders of architecture--till the shadowy roof, gleamingwith golden cupolas, like the cloud-region of the setting sun, set theheavens ablaze. 

Gaze up on the highest idea--gaze down on the profoundest emotion--andyou will know and feel in a moment that it is not a new birth. Youbecome a devout believer in the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine ofmetempsychosis and reminiscence, and are awed by the mysteriousconsciousness of the thought "BEFORE!" Try then to fix its date, andback travels your soul, now groping its way in utter darkness, and nowin darkness visible--now launching along lines of steady lustre, such asthe moon throws on the broad bosoms of starry lakes--now dazzled bysudden contrast--

 "Blind with excess of light!"

But back let it travel, as best or worst it may, through and amidst erasafter eras of the wan or radiant past; yet never, except for some sweetinstant of delusion, breaking dewdrop-like at a touch or a breath, during all that perilous pilgrimage--and perilous must it be, haunted byso many ghosts--never may it reach the shrine it seeks--the fountainfrom which first flowed that feeling whose origin seems to have been outof the world of time--dare we say--in eternity!

CHRISTMAS DREAMS. 

How graciously provided are all the subdivisions of Time, diversifyingthe dream of human life! And why should moralists mourn over themutability that gives the chief charm to all that passes so transitorilybefore our eyes!--leaving image upon image in the waters of memory, thatcan bear being stirred without being disturbed, and contain steadier andsteadier reflections as they seem to repose on an unfathomabledepth!--the years, the months, the weeks, the days, the nights, thehours, the minutes, the moments, each in itself a different living, andpeopled, and haunted world. One life is a thousand lives, and eachindividual, as he fully renews the past, reappears in a thousandcharacters; yet all of them bearing a mysterious identity not to bemisunderstood, and all of them, while every passion has been shiftingand ceasing, and reascending into power, still under the dominion of thesame Conscience, that feels and knows it is from God. 

Who will complain of the shortness of human life, that can re-travel allthe windings, and wanderings, and mazes that his feet have trodden sincethe farthest back hour at which memory pauses, baffled and blindfolded, as she vainly tries to penetrate and illumine the palpable, theimpervious darkness that shrouds the few first years of our inscrutablebeing? Long, long, long ago seems it to be indeed, when we now rememberit, the Time we first pulled the primroses on the sunny braes, wonderingin our first blissful emotions of beauty at the leaves with a softnessall their own--a yellowness nowhere else so vivid--"the brightconsummate flower" so starlike to our awakened imagination among thelowly grass--lovely indeed to our admiring eyes as any one of all thestars that, in their turn, did seem themselves like flowers in the bluefields of heaven! Long, long, long ago, the time when we danced hand inhand with our golden-haired sister! Long, long, long ago, the day onwhich she died--the hour, so far more dismal than any hour that can nowdarken us on this earth, when her coffin descended slowly, slowly intothe horrid clay, and we were borne death-like, and wishing to die, outof the churchyard, that, from that moment, we thought we could enternever more! What a multitudinous being must ours have been, when, beforeour boyhood was gone, we could have forgotten her buried face! or at thedream of it, dashed off a tear, and away, with a bounding heart, in themidst of a cloud of playmates, breaking into fragments on the hill-side, and hurrying round the shores of those wild moorland lochs, in vain hopeto surprise the heron that slowly uplifted his blue bulk, and floatedaway, regardless of our shouts, to the old castle woods. It is all likea reminiscence of some other state of existence. 

Then, after all the joys and sorrows of those few years, which we nowcall transitory, but which our BOYHOOD felt as if they would beendless--as if they would endure for ever--arose upon us the gloriousdawning of another new life--YOUTH--with its insupportable sunshine, andits agitating storms. Transitory, too, we now know, and well deservingthe same name of dream. But while it lasted, long, various, andagonising; as, unable to sustain the eyes that first revealed to us thelight of love, we hurried away from the parting hour, and, looking up tomoon and stars, invocated in sacred oaths, hugged the very heavens toour heart. Yet life had not then nearly reached its meridian, journeyingup the sunbright firmament. How long hung it there exulting, when "itflamed on the forehead of the noontide sky!" Let not the Time becomputed by the lights and shadows of the years, but by the innumerablearray of visionary thoughts, that kept deploying as if from one eternityinto another--now in dark sullen masses, now in long array, brightenedas if with spear-points and standards, and moving along through chasm, abyss, and forest, and over the summits of the highest mountains, to thesound of ethereal music, now warlike and tempestuous--now, as "fromflutes and soft recorders" accompanying not pćans of victory but hymnsof peace. That Life, too, seems, now that it is gone, to have been of athousand years. Is it gone? Its skirts are yet hovering on the horizon. And is there yet another Life destined for us? That Life which men fearto face--Age, Old Age! Four dreams within a dream--and _where_ to awake?

At dead of night--and it is now dead of night--how the heart quakes on asudden at the silent resurrection of buried thoughts! Perhaps thesunshine of some one single Sabbath of more exceeding holiness comesfirst glimmering, and then brightening upon us, with the very samesanctity that filled all the air at the tolling of the kirk-bell, whenall the parish was hushed, and the voice of streams heard moredistinctly among the banks and braes. Then, all at once, a thunderstorm, that many years before, or many years after, drove us, when walkingalone over the mountains, into a shieling, will seem to succeed; and webehold the same threatening aspect of the heavens that then quailed ourbeating hearts, and frowned down our eyelids before the lightning beganto flash, and the black rain to deluge all the glens. No need now forany effort of thought. The images rise of themselves--independently ofour volition--as if another being, studying the working of our minds, conjured up the phantasmagoria before us who are beholding it with love, wonder, and fear. Darkness and silence have a power of sorcery over thepast; the soul has then, too, often restored to it feelings and thoughtsthat it had lost, and is made to know that nothing it once experiencesever perishes, but that all things spiritual possess a principle ofimmortal life. 

Why linger on the shadowy wall some of those phantasmagoria--returningafter they have disappeared--and reluctant to pass away into theirformer oblivion? Why shoot others athwart the gloom, quick as spectralfigures seen hurrying among mountains during a great storm? Why do someglare and threaten--why others fade away with a melancholy smile? Why_that one_--a Figure all in white, and with white roses in herhair--come forward through the haze, beautifying into distincter formand face, till her pale beseeching hands almost touch our neck--andthen, in a moment, it is as nothing?

But now the room is disenchanted--and feebly our lamp is glimmering, about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it istrimmed again--and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart withinus like a festal strain. And To-Morrow--To-Morrow is Merry Christmas;and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and thelight sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholywalls--and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room, will be banished far over the sea--and morning will be reluctant toallow her light to break up the innocent orgies. 

Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration, painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that asameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness thatpervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to commoneyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moonand some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a fewcastellated, clouds? Yet no two nights ever bore more than a familyresemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of himwho has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile andfrown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so withthe Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars thatillumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall beblack as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora. 

 "Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--

is a fine line of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow piercesthe air, without producing some change in the Universe, which will lastto the day of doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; norirrecoverable by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike;though many a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seemsto be buried among the dead. But they are not dead--but only sleep;though to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, andwe, wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passingsweet when of their own accord they arise to greet us in oursolitude?--as a friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in ouryouth, has been thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenlystand before us, with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness closeupon our heart. 

My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with thedin of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birdson earth. It is the Christmas Holidays--Christmas Day itself--ChristmasNight--and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were webrothers and sisters so dear to one another--never before had our heartsso yearned towards the authors of our being--our blissful being! Therethey sit--silent in all that outcry--composed in all thatdisarray--still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying impsweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to catch aprisoner--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered symar befelt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy-flight. Oneold game treads on the heels of another--twenty within the hour--andmany a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by thecollision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies ofgenius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once, there is ahush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a forest whenthe moon drops behind the mountain, and the small green-robed People ofPeace at once cease their pastime, and evanish. For She--theSilver-Tongued--is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alikehundreds of years old--and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall, with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below--and, ereanother Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to bemute on earth--but to be hymning in Heaven. 

Of that House--to our eyes the fairest of earthly dwellings--with itsold ivied turrets, and orchard-garden bright alike with fruit and withflowers, not one stone remains. The very brook that washed itsfoundations has vanished along with them--and a crowd of otherbuildings, wholly without character, has long stood where here a singletree, and there a grove, did once render so lovely that small demesne;which, how could we, who thought it the very heart of Paradise, even forone moment have believed was one day to be blotted out of being, and weourselves--then so linked in love that the band which bound us alltogether was, in its gentle pressure, felt not nor understood--to bescattered far and abroad, like so many leaves that after one wildparting rustle are separated by roaring wind-eddies, and broughttogether no more! The old Abbey--it still survives; and there, in thatcorner of the burial-ground, below that part of the wall which wasleast in ruins, and which we often climbed to reach the flowers andnests--there, in hopes of a joyful resurrection, lie the Loved andVenerated--for whom, even now that so many grief-deadening years havefled, we feel, in this holy hour, as if it were impiety so utterly tohave ceased to weep--so seldom to have remembered!--And then, with apowerlessness of sympathy to keep pace with youth's frantic grief, thefloods we all wept together--at no long interval--on those pale andplacid faces as they lay, most beautiful and most dreadful to behold, intheir coffins. 

We believe that there is genius in all childhood. But the creative joythat makes it great in its simplicity dies a natural death or is killed, and genius dies with it. In favoured spirits, neither few nor many, thejoy and the might survive; for you must know that unless it beaccompanied with imagination, memory is cold and lifeless. The forms itbrings before us must be inspired with beauty--that is, with affectionor passion. All minds, even the dullest, remember the days of theiryouth; but all cannot bring back the indescribable brightness of thatblessed season. They who would know what they once were, must not merelyrecollect, but they must imagine, the hills and valleys--if any suchthere were--in which their childhood played, the torrents, thewaterfalls, the lakes, the heather, the rocks, the heaven's imperialdome, the raven floating only a little lower than the eagle in the sky. To imagine what he then heard and saw, he must imagine his own nature. He must collect from many vanished hours the power of his untamed heart, and he must, perhaps, transfuse also something of his maturer mind intothese dreams of his former being, thus linking the past with the presentby a continuous chain, which, though often invisible, is never broken. So is it too with the calmer affections that have grown within theshelter of a roof. We do not merely remember, we imagine our father'shouse, the fireside, all his features then most living, now dead andburied; the very manner of his smile, every tone of his voice. We mustcombine with all the passionate and plastic power of imagination thespirit of a thousand happy hours into one moment; and we must investwith all that we ever felt to be venerable such an image as alone cansatisfy our filial hearts. It is thus that imagination, which firstaided the growth of all our holiest and happiest affections, canpreserve them to us unimpaired--

 "For she can give us back the dead, Even in the loveliest looks they wore. "

Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated one year in thisfamily, another year in that--none present but those whom Charles Lambthe Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces;" something in allfeatures, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening originfrom one root--relations all, happy, and with no reason either to beashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth--their lot beingcast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean, " where the dwellingsare connecting-links between the hut and the hall--fair edificesresembling manse or mansion-house, according as the atmosphere expandsor contracts their dimensions--in which Competence is next-doorneighbour to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk ofContentment. 

Merry Christmases they were indeed--one Lady always presiding, with afigure that once had been the stateliest among the stately, but thensomewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an easy weight of mostvenerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all hergrandchildren's ears. Nor did those solemn eyes, bedimmed into apathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in orbsthat had as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity. Dearlyshe loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to leave;but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voicethat called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear, that itsaccents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word that washeard in the silence, as from another world. 

Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves--uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins, and "the rest, " itmight be presumptuous in us, who were considered by ourselves and a fewothers not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of timeto decide--especially in the affirmative; but how the roof did ring withsally, pun, retort, and repartee! Ay, with pun--a species ofimpertinence for which we have therefore a kindness even to this day. Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been born acousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone atthose Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all itsdifferent branches, has ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears;and we think we hear ourselves--all those uncles and aunts, nephews andnieces, and cousins--singing now! Easy is it to "warble melody" as tobreathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things topeople in general, for to us it was impossible; and what attempts oursused to be at Seconds! Yet the most woeful failures were rapturouslyencored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most extraordinaryvoices indeed, every one hoarser than another, till at last, walkinghome with a fair cousin, there was nothing left for it but a tenderglance of the eye--a tender pressure of the hand--for cousins are notaltogether sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character, possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms of their own;as didst thou, Emily the "Wild-cap!"--That _sobriquet_ all forgottennow--for now thou art a matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elffair and frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest andwisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancings, thy singings, and thyshowering smiles. 

On rolled Suns and Seasons--the old died--the elderly became old--andthe young, one after another, were wafted joyously away on the wings ofhope, like birds almost as soon as they can fly ungratefully forsakingtheir nests and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed theirpinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few days trimmedtheir snow-white sails in the land-locked bay, close to whose shores ofsilvery sand had grown the trees that furnished timber both for hull andmast, slip their tiny cables on some summer-day, and gathering everybreeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine, and melt faroff into the main. Or, haply, some were like fair young trees, transplanted during no favourable season, and never to take root inanother soil, but soon leaf and branch to wither beneath the tropic sun, and die almost unheeded by those who knew not how beautiful they hadbeen beneath the dews and mists of their own native climate. 

Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too painfully to touchthe heart. For some hearts grow cold and forbidding with selfishcares--some, warm as ever in their own generous glow, were touched bythe chill of Fortune's frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenlysucceeding her smiles--some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, tookrefuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past--dutybanished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others at home--estrangementsthere were, at first unconscious and unintended, yet ere long, thoughcauseless, complete--changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even inthe innermost nature of those who being friends knew no guile, yet camethereby at last to be friends no more--unrequited love broke somebonds--requited love relaxed others--the death of one altered theconditions of many--and so--year after year--the Christmas Meeting wasinterrupted--deferred--till finally it ceased with one accord, unrenewedand unrenewable. For when Some Things cease for a time--that time turnsout to be for ever. 

Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be--should these imperfectremembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life'sbusy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards theinditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts--for his, though "absent long and distant far, " has never been utterly forgetfulof the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted inbody is not to be estranged in spirit--and many a dream and many avision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind ofone whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather theexpression of a doubt--of a fear--than of a belief or a conviction. Thesoul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through allintervening darkness--and of those more especially dear it keeps withinitself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think itnot, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishableas they are hallowed. 

All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists ofmorning--ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing thatfamous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnighthush--methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music--

 "Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault, The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"

How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale, pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with hereand there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to thememory of the pious--the immortal dead. Some great clock is strikingfrom one of many domes--from the majestic Tower of St Mary Magdalen--andin the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the mingling watersof the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence of the holynight. 

Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the nativegrowth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed andmeditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty moodwhich held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and Sages ofold in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as thatAttic Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursedsuch excellent music that his life seemed to the imaginationspiritualised--a dim reminiscence of some former state of being. Howsank then the Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into ourhearts! Not faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers hadloved; but Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings thatrose within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir ofyouthful voices so sweetly to join the diapason, --our eyes fixed all thewhile on that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour

 "Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary. "

The City of Palaces disappears--and in the setting sunlight we beholdmountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even morebeautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in allits glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods ofWindermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up todwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow--

 "Nodding their heads, before us go, The merry minstrelsy. "

They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young bytheir Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales tothe hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of thedancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, andthe merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across thosehumble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights ofyore--wandering through our solitary sylvan haunts, under the branchesof trees within whose hollow trunk the squirrel slept--venture in, unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of theseason, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And nowthat we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers, and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightenedbeneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very worldthey worshipped? And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, withoutthe shadow of our figure? And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully, though our voice be forgotten? We hang over Westmoreland, anunobserved--but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales, woods, groves, single trees, dwellings--all asleep! O Lakes! but ye are, indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for humanhabitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself--it willnot sink into the earth--it will rise; and risen, it will stand steadywith its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, that ONE TREE! that ONEHOUSE!--and well might the sight of ye two together--were itharder--break our heart. But hard at all it is not--therefore it is butcrushed. 

Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higherthan the Andes in heaven--but sole-sitting at midnight in a smallchamber--a melancholy man are we--and there seems a smile ofconsolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust. 

Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest, "have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memoryeven of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Ourspirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in herrecords--blanks are there that ought to have been painted withimperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning onlife's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation--for whocan bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on theghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come whenwe call on them to comfort us, are too often at our side when in ouranguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion. Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary--they come andgo like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretchout our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek tointrench ourselves by thoughts of this world against their visitation?The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love toresign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, theybeing dead! Shall we the survivors, for yet a little while, walk inother companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle ontheir heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, andshow to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed byremorse and penitence!

Sometimes we have fears about our memory--that it is decaying; for, lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which weregarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping awayalmost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by theirreturn, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimeswretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon themerry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful--confusion, by no fault ofours, of piteous and of gladsome faces--tears where smiles were a dutyas well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religionhallowed, a sacrifice of tears. 

For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters asfine as frostwork filigree, which we could not break without destroyinga whole world of endearment. That seems an obscure image; but it meanswhat the Germans would call in English--our winter environment. We areimprisoned in a net of our own weaving--an invisible net; yet we can seeit when we choose--just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the wires ofhis cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he keeps hopping andfluttering about all day long, or haply dreaming on his perch with hispoll under his plumes--as free in confinement as if let loose into theboundless sky. That seems an obscure image too; but we mean, in truth, the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is; and we haveimproved on that idea, for we have built our own--and are prisoner, turnkey, and jailer all in one, and 'tis noiseless as the house ofsleep. Or what if we declare that Christopher North is a king in hispalace, with no subjects but his own thoughts--his rule peaceful overthose lights and shadows--and undisputed to reign over them his rightdivine. 

The opening year in a town, now, answers in all things to our heart'sdesire. How beautiful the smoky air! The clouds have a homely look asthey hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they lovedtheir birthplace; all unlike those heartless clouds that keep_stravaiging_ over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the sky! Poetsspeak of living rocks, but what is their life to that of houses? Whoever saw a rock with eyes--that is, with windows? Stone-blind all, andstone-deaf, and with hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a housewithout eyes--that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the good oldConservative grudges not the assessed taxes--his optics are as cheerfulas the day that lends them light, and they love to salute the settingsun, as if a hundred beacons, level above level, were kindled along amountain side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who preferred anavenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have no chimneys; and, were youto kindle a fire in the hollow of an oak, you would soon be as dead as aDruid. It won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap. Agrove in winter, bole and branch--leaves it has none--is as dry as avolume of sermons. But a street, or a square, is full of "vital sparksof heavenly flame" as a volume of poetry, and the heart's bloodcirculates through the system like rosy wine. 

But a truce to comparisons; for we are beginning to feel contrition forour crime against the country, and, with humbled head and heart, webeseech you to pardon us--ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces ofthe storms--ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead ofHelvellyn--ye trees, that hang the shadows of your undying beauty overthe "one perfect chrysolite" of blessed Windermere!

Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an apparition waving peaceand goodwill to all dwellers in the land of dreams. In plainer but notsimpler words (for words are like flowers, often rich in theirsimplicity--witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song)--Christian people all, we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New-Year, in town or incountry--or in ships at sea. 

A Happy New-Year!--Ah! ere this ARIA, sung _sotto voce_, reach your ears(eyes are ears, and ears eyes), the week of all weeks will be over andgone, and the New-Year will seem growing out of the old year'sashes!--for the year is your only Phoenix. But what with time to dohas a wish--a hope--a prayer! Their power is in the Spirit that givesthem birth. And what is Spirit but the well-head of thoughts andfeelings flowing and overflowing all life, yet leaving the well-headfull of water as ever--so lucid, that on your gazing intently into itsdepths, it seems to become a large soft spiritual eye, reflecting theheavens and the earth; and no one knows what the heavens and the earthare, till he has seen them there--for that God made the heavens and theearth we feel from that beautiful revelation--and where feeling is not, knowledge is dead, and a blank the universe. Love is life. The unlovingmerely breathe. A single sweet beat of the heart is token of somethingspiritual that will be with us again in Paradise. "O, bliss and beauty!are these our feelings"--thought we once in a dream--"all circling inthe sunshine--fair-plumed in a flight of doves!" The vision kept sailingon the sky--"to and fro for our delight"--no sound on their wings morethan on their breasts; and they melted away in light as if they werecomposed of light--and in the hush we heard high-up and far-offmusic--as of an angel's song. 

That was a dream of the mysterious night; but now we are broadawake--and see no emblematical phantoms, but the mere sights of thecommon day. But sufficient for the day is the beauty thereof--and itinspires us with affection for all beneath the skies. Will the wholeworld, then, promise henceforth to love us?--and we promise henceforthto love the whole world. 

It seems the easiest of all easy things to be kind and good--and then itis so pleasant! "Self-love and social are the same, " beyond allquestion; and in that lies the nobility of our nature. The intensestfeeling of self is that of belonging to a brotherhood. All selves thenknow they have duties which are in truth loves--and loves arejoys--whether breathed in silence, or uttered in words, or embodied inactions; and if they filled all life, then all life would be good--andheaven would be no more than a better earth. And how may all men go toheaven? By making themselves a heaven on earth, and thus preparing theirspirits to breathe empyreal air when they have dropped the dust. And howmay they make for themselves a heaven on earth? By building up a happyHOME FOR THE HEART. Much, but not all--oh! not nearly all--is in thesite. But it must be within the precincts of the holy ground--and withinhearing of the waters of life. 

Pleasures of Imagination! Pleasures of Memory! Pleasures of Hope! Allthree most delightful poems; yet all the thoughts and all the feelingsthat inspired them--etherealised--will not make--FAITH! "The day-springfrom on high hath visited us!" Blessed is he who feels that line--norneed his heart die within him, were a voice to be heard at midnightsaying--"This New-Year's day shall be thy last!"

One voice--one young voice--all by its sweet, sad, solitary self, singing to us a Christmas Hymn! Listening to that music is like lookingat the sky with all its stars. 

Was it a spirit?

 "Millions of spiritual creatures walk unseen, Sole or responsive to each other's voice, Hymning their great Creator. "

No, the singer, like ourselves, is mortal; and in that thought, to ourhearts, lies the pathos of her prayers. The angels, veiling their faceswith their wings, sing in their bliss hallelujahs round the throne ofheaven; but she--a poor child of clay, with her face veiled but with theshades of humility and contrition, while

 "Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon, "--

sings, in her sorrow, supplications to be suffered to see afar-off itseverlasting gates--opening not surely for her own sake--for all of womanborn are sinful--and even she in what love calls her innocence feelsthat her fallen being does of itself deserve but to die. The hymn isfading away, liker and liker an echo, and our spirit having lost it inthe distance, returns back holier to the heart-hush of home. 

The million hunger and thirst after the stronger and darker passions;nothing will go down with them but _the intense_. They areintolerant--or careless--or even ashamed of those emotions andaffections that compose the blessing of our daily life, and give itslustre to the fire on the hearth of every Christian household. Yet, forall that, they are inexperienced in those same stronger and darkerpassions of which they prate, and know nothing of the import of thosepictures of them painted, with background of gloom and foreground offire, in the works of the truly great masters. The disturbed spirit ofsuch delineations is far beyond the reaches of their souls; and theymistake their own senseless stupor for solemn awe--or their own merephysical excitement for the enthusiasm of imagination soaring throughthe storm on the wings of intellect. There are such things in "Satan'sInvisible World Displayed" in poetry, as strong and dark passions; andthey who are acquainted with their origin and end call them _bad_passions; but the good passions are not dark, but bright--and they arestrong too, stronger than death or the grave. 

All human beings who know how to reap

 "The harvest of a quiet eye, That broods and sleeps on its own heart, "

feel, by the touch, the flowers of affection in every handful of beautythey gather up from those fortunate fields on which shines, for everthrough all seasons, the sun of life. How soft the leaves! and, as theymeet the eye, how fair! Framed, so might it seem, of green dewconsolidated into fragrance. Nor do they fade when gently taken fromtheir stalk on its native bed. They flourish for ever if you bruise themnot--sensitive indeed; and, if you are so forgetful as to treat themrashly, like those of the plant that bears that name, they shrink, andseem to shrivel for a time--growing pale, as if upbraiding yourharshness; but cherished, they are seen to be all of

 "Immortal amaranth, the tree that grows Fast by the throne of God;"

for the seeds have fallen from heaven to earth, and for eighteen hundredyears have been spreading themselves over all soils fit for theirreception--and what soil is not fit? Even fit are stony places, andplaces full of thorns. For they will live and grow there in spite ofsuch obstruction--and among rank and matted weeds will often be seenpeering out like primroses gladdening the desert. 

That voice again--"One of old Scotland's songs, so sad and slow!" Herheart is now blamelessly with things of earth. "Sad and slow!" and mostpurely sweet. Almost mournful although it be, it breathes ofhappiness--for the joy dearest to the soul has ever a faint tinge ofgrief. O innocent enchantress! thou encirclest us with a wavering hazeof beautiful imagery, by the spell of that voice awakening after a moodof awe, but for thy own delight. From the long dim tracts of the pastcome strangely blended recognitions of woe and bliss, undistinguishablenow to our own heart--nor knows that heart if it be a dream ofimagination or of memory. Yet why should we wonder? In our happiesthours there may have been something in common with our mostsorrowful--some shade of sadness cast over them by a passing cloud, thatnow allies them in retrospect with the sombre spirit of grief; and inour unhappiest hours there may have been gleams of gladness, that seemnow to give the return the calm character of peace. Do not all thoughtsand feelings, almost all events, seem to resemble each other--when theyare dreamt of as all past? All receive a sort of sanctification in thestillness of the time that has gone by--just like the human being whomthey adorned or degraded--when they, too, are at last buried together inthe bosom of the same earth. 

Perhaps none among us ever wrote verses of any worth, who had not been, more or less, readers of our old ballads. All our poets have beenso--and even Wordsworth would not have been the veritable and onlyWordsworth, had he not in boyhood pored--oh, the miser!--over Percy's"Reliques. " From the highest to the humblest, they have all drunk fromthose silver springs. Shepherds and herdsmen and woodsmen have been themasters of the mighty--their strains have, like the voice of a solitarylute, inspired a power of sadness into the hearts of great poets thatgave their genius to be prevalent over all tears, or with a power ofsublimity that gave it dominion over all terror, like the sound of atrumpet. "The Babes in the Wood!" "Chevy Chace!" Men become women whilethey weep--

 "Or start up heroes from the glorious strain. "

Sing then "The Dirge, " my Margaret, to the Old Man, "so tender and sotrue" to the spirit of those old ballads, which we might think werewritten by Pity's self. 

DIRGE. 

 "O dig a grave, and dig it deep, Where I and my true love may sleep! We'll dig a grave, and dig it deep, Where thou and thy true love shall sleep!

 And let it be five fathom low, Where winter winds may never blow!-- And it shall be five fathom low, Where winter winds shall never blow!

 And let it be on yonder hill, Where grows the mountain daffodil!-- And it shall be on yonder hill, Where grows the mountain daffodil!

 And plant it round with holy briers, To fright away the fairy fires!-- We'll plant it round with holy briers! To fright away the fairy fires!

 And set it round with celandine, And nodding heads of columbine!-- We'll set it round with celandine, And nodding heads of columbine!

 And let the ruddock build his nest Just above my true love's breast!-- The ruddock he shall build his nest Just above thy true love's breast!

 And warble his sweet wintry song O'er our dwelling all day long! And he shall warble his sweet song O'er your dwelling all day long. 

 Now, tender friends, my garments take, And lay me out for Jesus' sake! And we will now thy garments take, And lay thee out for Jesus' sake!

 And lay me by my true love's side, That I may be a faithful bride!-- We'll lay thee by thy true love's side, That thou may'st be a faithful bride!"

Ay--ay--thou too art gone, WILLIAM STANLEY ROSCOE! What years have flownsince we walked among the "alleys green" of Allerton with thee and thyillustrious father! and who ever conversed with him for a few hours inand about his own home--where the stream of life flowed on so full andclear--without carrying away impressions that never seemed to beremembrances--so vivid have they remained amidst the obscurations andobliterations of Time, that sweeps with his wings all that lies on thesurface, but has no power to disturb, much less destroy, the recordprinted on the heart. 

We are all of us getting old--or older; nor would we, for our ownpart--if we could--renew our youth. Methinks the river of life is nobleras it nears the sea. The young are dancing in their skiffs on thepellucid shallows near the source on the Sacred Mountains of the GoldenEast. They whose lot it is to be in their prime, are dropping down thelonger and wider reaches, that seem wheeling by with their sylvanamphitheatres, as if the beauty were moving morn-wards, while thevoyagers are stationary among the shadows, or slowly descending thestream to meet the meridian day. Many forget

 "The torrent's smoothness ere it dash below, "

and are lost in the roaring whirlpool. Under Providence, we seeourselves on the river expanded into a sea-like lake, or arm of the sea;and for all our soul has escaped and suffered, we look up to the starsin gratitude--and down to the stars--for the water too is full of starsas well as the sky--faint and dim indeed--but blended by the pervadingspirit of beauty, with the brighter and bolder luminaries reposing oninfinitude. 

OUR WINTER QUARTERS. 

BUCHANAN LODGE--for a few months--farewell! 'Tis the Twelfth ofNovember; and for the City we leave thee not without reluctance, earlyin March by the blessing of Heaven again to creep into thy bloomingbourne. Yet now and then we shall take a drive down, to while away asunny forenoon among thy undecaying evergreens, to breathe the balm ofthy Christmas roses, and for one _Gentle_ bosom to cull the earliestcrocuses that may be yellowing through the thin snows of Spring. 

In truth, we know not well why we should ever leave thee, for thou artthe Darling of all the Seasons; and Winter, so churlish elsewhere, isever bland to thee, and, daily alighting in these gardens, loves to foldand unfold, in the cool sunshine, the stainless splendour of hispale-plumaged wings. But we are no hermit. Dear to us though Nature be, here, hand-in-hand with Art walking through our peaceful but notunpeopled POLICY, a voice comes to us from the city-heart--winning usaway from the stillness of solitude into the stir of life. Milton speaksof a region

 "Above the stir and smoke of this dim spot, Which men call earth;"

and oft have we visited it; but while yet we pursue the ends of this ourmortal being, in the mystery of the brain whence ideas arise, and in themystery of the heart whence emotions flow--kindred and congenialall--thought ever blending with feeling, reason with imagination, andconscience with passion--'tis our duty to draw our delight fromintercommunion with the spirit of our kind. Weakest or wickedest ofmortals are your soul-sick, life-loathing, world-wearied men. Insolitude we are prone to be swallowed up in selfishness; and out ofselfishness what sins and crimes may not grow! At the best, moralstagnation ensues--and the spirit becomes, like "a green-mantled pool, "the abode of reptiles. Then ever welcome to us be living faces, andliving voices, the light and the music of reality--dearer far than anymere ideas or emotions hanging or floating aloof by themselves in theatmosphere of imagination. Blest be the cordial grasp of the hand offriendship--blest the tender embrace of the arms of love! Nay, smilenot, fair reader, at an old man's fervour; for Love is a graciousspirit, who deserteth not declining age. 

The DROSKY is at the door--and, my eye! what a figure is Peter! There hesits, like a bear, with the ribbons in his paws--no part visible of hishuman face or form divine, but his small red eyes--and his ruby nose, whose re-grown enormity laughs at Liston. One little month ago, theknife of that skilful chirurgeon pared it down to the dimensions of aChristian proboscis. Again 'tis like a wart on a frost-reddened Swedishturnip. Pretty Poll, with small delicate pale features, sits beside himlike a snowdrop. How shaggy since he returned from our last Highlandtour is Filho da Puta! His mane long as his tail--and the hair on hisears like that on his fetlocks. He absolutely reminds us of Hogg'sBonassus. Ay, bless these patent steps--on the same principle as thoseby which we ascend our nightly couch--we are self-deposited in ourDrosky. Oh! the lazy luxury of an air-seat! We seem to be sitting onnothing but a voluptuous warmth, restorative as a bath. And then whatfurry softness envelopes our feet! Yes--Mrs Gentle--Mrs Gentle--thyCashmere shawl, twined round our bust, feels almost as silken-smooth asthine own, and scented is it with the balm of thy own lips. Boreas blowson it tenderly as a zephyr--and the wintry sunshine seems summery as itplays on the celestial colours. Thy pelisse, too, over our old happyshoulders, purple as the neck of the dove when careering round his mate. Thy comforter, too, in our bosom--till the dear, delightful, delicious, wicked worsted thrills through skin and flesh to our very heart. Itdirls. Drive away, Peter. Farewell Lodge--and welcome, in a jiffy, MorayPlace. 

And now, doucely and decently sitting in our Drosky, behold us driven byPeter, proud as Punch to tool along the staring streets thegreat-grandson of the Desert-born! Yet--yet--couldst thou lead thefield, Filho, with old Kit Castor on thy spine. But though our day benot quite gone by, we think we see the stealing shades of eve, and, alittle further on in the solemn vista, the darkness of night; andtherefore, like wise children of nature, not unproud of the past, notungrateful for the present, and unfearful of the future, thus do we nowskim along the road of life, broad and smooth to our heart's content, able to pay the turnpikes, and willing, when we shall have reached theend of our journey, to lie down, in hope, at the goal. 

What pretty, little, low lines of garden-fronted cottages! leading usalong out of rural into suburban cheerfulness, across the Bridge, andpast the Oriental-looking Oil-Gas Works, with a sweep winding into thefull view of PITT Street (what a glorious name!) steep as some straightcliff-glen, and an approach truly majestic--yea, call it at oncemagnificent--right up to the great city's heart. "There goes OldChristopher North!" the bright boys in the playground of the New Academyexclaim. God bless you, you little rascals!--We could almost find it inour heart to ask the Rector for a holiday. But, under him, all your daysare holidays--for when the precious hours of study are enlightened by aclassic spirit, how naturally do they melt into those of play!

 "Gay hope is yours, by fancy fed, Less pleasing when possest; The tear forgot as soon as shed, The sunshine of the breast; Yours buxom health, of rosy hue, Wild wit, invention ever new, And lively cheer, of vigour born; The thoughtless day, the easy night, The spirits pure, the slumbers light, That fly th' approach of morn. "

Descending from our Drosky, we find No. 99 Moray Place, exhibitingthroughout all its calm interior the self-same expression it wore theday we left it for the Lodge, eight months ago. There is our venerablewinter Hat--as like Ourselves, it is said, as he can stare--sitting onthe Circular in the Entrance-hall. Everything has been tenderly dustedas if by hands that touched with a Sabbath feeling; and though thefurniture cannot be said to be new, yet while it is in all sobered, itis in nothing faded. You are at first unaware of its richness on accountof its simplicity--its grace is felt gradually to grow out of itscomfort--and that which you thought but ease lightens into elegance, while there is but one image in nature which can adequately express itsrepose--that of a hill-sheltered field by sunset, under a fresh-fallenvest of virgin snow. For then snow blushes with a faint crimson--nay, sometimes when Sol is extraordinarily splendid, not faint, but with agorgeousness of colouring that fears not to face in rivalry the westernclouds. 

Let no man have two houses with one set of furniture. Home's deepestdelight is undisturbance. Some people think no articles fixtures--noteven grates. But sofas and ottomans, and chairs and footstools, andscreens--and above all, beds--all are fixtures in the dwelling of a wiseman, cognoscitive and sensitive of the blessings of this life. Each hasits own place assigned to it by the taste, tact, and feeling of themaster of the mansion, where order and elegance minister to comfort, andcomfort is but a homely word for happiness. In various moods we varytheir arrangement--nor is even the easiest of all Easy-chairs secure forlife against being gently pushed on his wheels from chimney-nook towindow-corner, when the sunshine may have extinguished the fire, and theblue sky tempts the _Paterfamilias_, or him who is but an uncle, to lieback with half-shut eyes, and gaze upon the cheerful purity, even like ashepherd on the hill. But these little occasional disarrangements servebut to preserve the spirit of permanent arrangement, without which thevery virtue of domesticity dies. What sacrilege, therefore, against theLares and Penates, to turn a whole house topsy-turvy, from garret tocellar, regularly as May-flowers deck the zone of the year! Why, aTurkey or a Persian, or even a Wilton or a Kidderminster carpet, is asmuch the garb of the wooden floor inside, as the grass is of the earthenfloor outside of your house. Would you lift and lay down the greensward?But without further illustration--be assured the cases are kindred--andso, too, with sofas and shrubs, tent-beds and trees. Independently, however, of these analogies, not fanciful, but lying deep in the natureof things, the inside of one's tabernacle, in town and country, oughtever to be sacred from all radical revolutionary movements, and to liefor ever in a waking dream of graceful repose. All our affectionstowards lifeless things become tenderer and deeper in the continuous andunbroken flow of domestic habit. The eye gets lovingly familiarised witheach object occupying its own peculiar and appropriate place, and feelsin a moment when the most insignificant is missing or removed. We saynot a word about children, for fortunately, since we are yet unmarried, we have none; but even they, if brought up Christians, are no dissentersfrom this creed, and however rackety in the nursery, in an orderly-keptparlour or drawing-room how like so many pretty little white mice dothey glide cannily along the floor! Let no such horror, then, as a_flitting_ ever befall us or our friends! O mercy! only look at a longhuge train of waggons, heaped up to the windows of the first floors, moving along the dust-driving or mire-choked streets with furniture froma gutted town-house towards one standing in the rural shades with anempty stomach! All is dimmed or destroyed--chairs crushed on thetable-land, and four-posted beds lying helplessly with their astonishedfeet up to heaven--a sight that might make the angels weep!

People have wondered why we, an old barren bachelor, should live in sucha large house. It is a palace; but never was there a greater mistakethan to seek the solution in our pride. Silence can be had but in alarge house. And silence is the chief condition of home happiness. Wecould now hear a leaf fall--a leaf of the finest wire-wove. Peter andBetty, Polly and the rest, inhabit the second sunk story--and it isdelightful to know that they may be kicking up the most infernaldisturbance at this blessed moment, and tearing out each other's hair inhandfuls, without the faintest whisper of the uproar reaching us in ouraltitude above the drawing-room flat. On New-Year's Day morning there isregularly a competition of bagpipers in the kitchen, and we could fondlyimagine 'tis an Eolian Harp. In his pantry Peter practised for years onthe shrill clarion, and for years on the echoing horn; yet had he thrownup both instruments in despair of perfection ere we so much as knew thathe had commenced his musical studies. In the sunk story, immediatelybelow _that_, having been for a season consumptive, we kept a Jenny assand her daughter--and though we believe it was not unheard around Morayand Ainslie Places, and even in Charlotte Square, we cannot charge ourmemory with an audit of their bray. In the sunk story immediately belowthat again, that distinguished officer on half-pay, Captain Campbell ofthe Highlanders--when on a visit to us for a year or two--though weseldom saw him--got up a _Sma' still_--and though a more harmlesscreature could not be, there he used to sit for hours together, with theworm that never dies. On one occasion, it having been supposed by Peterthat the Captain had gone to the East Neuk of Fife, weeks elapsed, weremember, ere he was found sitting dead, just as if he had been alive, in his usual attitude in his arm-chair, commanding a view of theprecipice of the back court. 

Just as quiet are the Attics. They, too, are furnished; for the feelingof there being one unfurnished room, however small, in the largesthouse, disturbs the entire state of mind of such an occupant, and whencherished and dwelt on, which it must not unfrequently be, inspires acold air of desolation throughout the domicile, till "thoughts offlitting rise. " There is no lumber-room. The room containingBlue-Beard's murdered wives might in idea be entered without distractionby a bold mind. --But oh! the lumber-room, into which, on an early walkthrough the house of a friend on whom we had been sorning, allunprepared did we once set our foot! From the moment--and it was but fora moment, and about six o'clock--far away in the country--that appallingvision met our eyes--till we found ourselves, about another six o'clock, in Moray Place, we have no memory of the flight of time. Part of thejourney--or voyage--we suspect, was performed in a steamer. The noise ofknocking, and puffing, and splashing seems to be in our inner ears; butafter all it may have been a sail-boat, possibly a yacht!--In the Atticsan Aviary open to the sky. And to us below, the many voices, softenedinto one sometimes in the pauses of severer thought, are sometimes veryaffecting, so serenely sweet it seems, as the laverock's in our youth atthe gates of heaven. 

At our door stand the Guardian Genii, Sleep and Silence. We had an earto them in the building of our house, and planned it after a long summerday's perusal of the "Castle of Indolence. " O Jemmy Thomson! JemmyThomson!--O that thou and we had been rowers in the same boat on thesilent river! Rowers, indeed! Short the spells and far between that weshould have taken--the one would not have turned round the other, butwhen the oar chanced to drop out of his listless hand--and the canoewould have been allowed to drift with the stream, unobservant we of ourbackward course, and wondering and then ceasing to wonder at theslow-receding beauty of the hanging banks of grove--the cloud-mountains, immovable as those of earth, and in spirit one world. 

Ay! Great noise as we have made in the world--our heart's desire is forsilence--its delight is in peace. And is it not so with all men, turbulent as may have been their lives, who have ever looked into theirown being? The soul longs for peace in itself; therefore, wherever itdiscerns it, it rejoices in the image of which it seeks the reality. Theserene human countenance, the wide water sleeping in the moonlight, thestainless marble-depth of the immeasurable heavens, reflect to it thattranquillity which it imagines within itself, though it never long dweltthere, restless as a dove on a dark tree that cannot be happy but in thesunshine. It loves to look on what it loves, even though it cannotpossess it; and hence its feeling, on contemplating such calm, is not ofsimple repose, but desire stirs in it, as if it would fain blend itselfmore deeply with the quiet it beholds! The sleep of a desert would notso affect it; it is Beauty that makes the difference--that attractsspirit to matter, while spirit becomes not thereby materialised--butmatter spiritualised; and we fluctuate in the air-boat of imaginationbetween earth and heaven. In most and in all great instances there isapprehension, dim and faint, or more distinct, of pervasion of a spiritthroughout that which we conceive Beautiful. Stars, the moon, the deepbright ether, waters, the rainbow, a pure lovely flower--none of themever appear to us, or are believed by us to be mere physical andunconscious dead aggregates of atoms. That is what they are; but wecould have no pleasure in them, if we knew them as such. There isillusion, then, of some sort, and to what does it amount? We cannot welltell. But if there is really a love in human hearts to these distantorbs--if there is an emotion of tenderness to the fair, opening, breathing blossom that we would not crush it--"in gentleness of hearttouch, for there is a spirit in the leaves"--it must be that we do notsee them as they are, but "create a soul under the ribs of death. " Wecould not be touched, or care for what has no affinity to ourselves--wemake the affinity--we animate, we vivify them, and thenceforward, "Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet. "

Now you do believe that we do love Silence--and every other thing worthyto be loved--you and yours--and even that romp, your shock-headed Coz, to whom Priscilla Tomboy was an Imogen. 

All our ceilings are deadened--we walk ankle-deep in carpeting--nobodyis suffered to open a door but ourselves--and they are so constructed, that it is out of their power to _slam_. Our winter furniture is allmassy--deepening the repose. In all the large rooms two fireplaces--andfires are kept perpetually burning day and night, in them all, which, reflected from spacious mirrors, give the mansion quite the appearanceof a Pandemonium. _Not gas always. _ Palm-oil burns scentless asmoonlight; and when motion, not rest, in a place is signified, weaccompany ourselves with a wax candle, or taper from time immemorialgreen. Yet think not that there is a blaze of light. We have seen themidnight heaven and earth nearly as bright, with but one moon and asmall scatter of stars. And places of glimmer--and places of gloom--andplaces "deaf to sound and blind to light" there are in this our mansion, known but to ourselves--cells--penitentiaries--where an old man may sitsighing and groaning, or stupified in his misery--or at times almosthappy. So senseless, and worse than senseless, seems then all mortaltribulation and anguish, while the self-communing soul is assured, byits own profound responses, that "whatever is, is best. "

And thus is our domicile a domain--a kingdom. We should not care to beconfined to it all the rest of our days. Seldom, indeed, do we leave ourown door--yet call on us, and ten to one you hear us in winter chirpinglike a cricket, or in summer like a grasshopper. We have the whole rangeof the house to ourselves, and many an Excursion make we on the Crutch. Ascending and descending the wide-winding stair-cases, each broad stepnot above two inches high, we find ourselves on spacious landing-placesillumined by the dim religious light of stained windows, on whichpilgrims, and palmers, and prophets, single or in pairs or troops, aretravelling on missions through glens or forests or by sea-shores--orshepherd piping in the shade, or poet playing with the tangles ofNećra's hair. We have discovered a new principle on which, within narrowbounds, we have constructed Panoramic Dioramas, that show splendidsegments of the great circle of the world. We paint all of themourselves--now a Poussin, now a Thomson, now a Claude, now a Turner, nowa Rubens, now a Danby, now a Salvator, now a Maclise. 

Most people, nay, we suspect all people but ourselves, make a point ofsleeping in the same bed (that is awkwardly expressed) all life through;and out of that bed many of them avow their inability to "bow an eye;"such is the power of custom, of habit, of use and wont, over wearymortals even in the blessing of sleep. No such slavish fidelity do weobserve towards any one bed of the numerous beds in our mansion. No onedormitory is entitled to plume itself, in the pride of its heart, onbeing peculiarly Ours; nor is any one suffered to sink into despondencyfrom being debarred the privilege of contributing to Our repose. Theyare all furnished, if not luxuriously, comfortably in the extreme; innumber, nine--each, of course, with its two dressing-rooms--those on thesame story communicating with one another, and with the parlours, drawing-rooms, and libraries--"a mighty maze, but not without a plan, "and all harmoniously combined by one prevailing and pervading spirit ofquietude by day and by night, awake or asleep--the chairs beingcouch-like, the couches bed-like, the beds, whether tent or canopy, enveloped in a drapery of dreams. 

We go to bed at no stated hour--but when we are tired of sitting up, then do we lie down; at any time of the night or the day; and we rise, neither with the lark, nor the swallow, nor the sparrow, nor the cock, nor the owl, nor the sun, nor the moon, nor the stars, nor Lucifer, norAurora, but with Christopher North. Yellow, or green, or blue, orcrimson, or fawn, or orange, or pinky light salutes our eyes, as sleep'svisionary worlds recede and relapse into airy nothing, and as we know ofa certainty that _these_ are real web-and-woof damask curtains, _that_flock palpable on substantial walls. 

True wisdom soon accommodates itself even to involuntary or inevitablechange--but to that which flows from our own sweet will, however suddenand strong, it instantly moulds itself in a novel delight, with all itsfamiliar and domestic habits. Why, we have not been in 99 Moray Placefor a week--nay, not for two days and nights--till you might swear wehad been all our life a Cit, we look so like a Native. The rustic air ofthe Lodge has entirely left us, and all our movements are metropolitan. You see before you a Gentleman of the Old School, who knows that theeyes of the town are upon him when he seeks the open air, and whopreserves, even in the privacy of the parlour, that dignity of dress anddemeanour which, during winter, befits his age, his rank, and hischaracter. Now, we shave every morning; John, who in his boyish daysserved under Barbarossa, lightly passes the comb through our "sablesilvered;" and then, in our shawl dressing-gown, we descend about ten toour study, and sit, not unstately, beside the hissing urn at ourprotracted breakfast. In one little month or less, "or ere our shoes areold, " we feel as if we had belonged to _this_ house alone, and it to us, from our birth. The Lodge is seen to be standing in its stillness, faraway! Dear memories of the pensive past now and then come floating uponthe cheerful present--like birds of fairest plumage floating far inlandfrom the main. But there is no idle longing--no vain regret. This, wesay, is true wisdom. For each scene and season--each pleasure andplace--ought to be trusted to itself in the economy of human life, andto be allowed its own proper power over our spirit. People in thecountry are often restless to return to town--and people in town unhappytill they rush away into the country--thus cheating their entireexistence out of its natural calm and satisfaction. Not so we. We giveboth their due--and that due is an almost undivided delight in eachwhile we live under its reign. For Nature, believe us, is no jealousmistress. She is an affectionate wife, who, being assured of hisfidelity, is not afraid to trust her husband out of her sight, "When still the town affairs do call him thence, "

and who waits with cheerful patience for his return, duly welcomed witha conjugal shower of smiles and kisses. 

But what is this we see before us? Winter--we declare--and in full figwith his powdered wig! On the mid-day of November, absolutely snow! afull, fair, and free fall of indisputable snow. 

Not the slightest idea had we, the day before, that a single flake hadyet been formed in the atmosphere, which, on closing of our shutters, looked through the clear-obscure, indicative of a still night and abright morning. But we had not seen the moon. She, we are told by aneyewitness, early in the evening, _stared_ from the south-east, "throughthe misty horizontal air, " with a face of portentous magnitude andbrazen hue, symptomatic, so weatherwise seers do say, of the approach ofthe Snow-king. On such occasions it requires all one's astronomicalscience to distinguish between sun and moon; for then sister resemblesbrother in that wan splendour, and you wonder for a moment, as the largebeamless orb (how unlike Dian's silver bow!) is in ascension, what canhave brought the lord of day, at this untimeous hour, from his sea-couchbehind the mountains of the west. Yet during the night-calm we suspectedsnow--for the hush of the heavens had that downy feel, to ourhalf-sleeping fancy, that belongs to the eider-pillow in whichdisappears our aged, honoured, and un-nightcap'd head. Looking out bypeep of day--rather a ghostlike appearance in our long night-shirt, which trails a regal train--we beheld the fair feathers dimly descendingthrough the glimmer, while momently the world kept whitening andwhitening, till we knew not our home-returning white cat on what wasyesterday the back-_green_, but by the sable tail that singularly shootsfrom the rump of that phenomenon. We were delighted. Into the coldplunge-bath we played plop like a salmon--and came out as red as a cutof that incomparable fish. One ply of leather--one of flannel--and oneof the linen fine; and then the suit of pepper-and-salt over all; andyou behold us welcoming, hailing, and blessing the return of day. Frost, too, felt at the finger and toe tips--and in unequivocal true-blue atthe point, Pensive Public, of thy Grecian or Roman nose. Furs, at once, are all the rage; the month of muffs has come; and round the neck ofEve, and every one of all her daughters, is seen harmlessly coiling aboa-constrictor. On their lovely cheeks the Christmas roses are alreadyin full blow, and the heart of Christopher North sings aloud for joy. Furred, muffed, and boa'd, Mrs Gentle adventures abroad in the blast;and, shouldering his Crutch, the rough, ready, and ruddy old man showshow widows are won, whispers in that delicate ear of the publication ofbans, and points his gouty toe towards the hymeneal altar. In thebracing air, his frame is strung like Paganini's fiddle, and he is feltto be irresistible in the _piggicato_. "Lord of his presence, and smallland beside, " what cares he even for a knight of the Guelphic order? Onhis breast shines a star--may it never prove a cross--beyond bestowal byking or kaisar; nor is Maga's self jealous or envious of these weddedloves. And who knows but that ere another November snow sheets theShotts, a curious little Kit, with the word North distinctly traceablein blue letters on the whites of his eyes, may not be playing antics onhis mother's knee, and with the true Tory face in miniature, smilingupon the guardian of the merry fellow's own and his country'sconstitution?

What kind of a Winter--we wonder--are we to have in the way of wind andweather? We trust it will be severe. As summer set in with his usualseverity, Winter must not be behindhand with him; but after anoccasional week's rain of a commendably boisterous character, must comeout in full fig of frost. He has two suits which we greatly admire, combining the splendour of a court-dress with the strength of a work-daygarb--we mean his garments of black and his garments of white frost. Helooks best in the former, we think, on to about Christmas--and thelatter become the old gentleman well from that festival season, on toabout the day sacred to a class of persons who will never read ourRecreations. 

Of all the months of the year, November--in our climate--whether in townor country, bears the worst character. He is almost universally thoughtto be a sour, sulky, sullen, savage, dim, dull, dark, disconsolate, yetdesigning month--in fewer words, a month scarcely fit to live. Abhorringall personalities, we repent having sometimes given in to this nationalabuse of November. We know him well--and though we admit at once that heis no beauty, and that his manners are at the best bluff, at the worstrepulsive, yet on those who choose to cultivate his acquaintance, hischaracter continues so to mellow and ameliorate itself, that they comeat last, if not to love, to like him, and even to prefer his company "inthe season of the year, " to that of other more brilliant visitors. Sotrue is it with months and men, that it requires only to know the mostunpleasant of them, and to see them during a favourable phasis, in orderto regard them with that Christian complacency which a good heart shedsover all its habits. 'Tis unlucky for November--poor fellow!--that hefollows October. October is a month so much admired by the world, thatwe often wonder he has not been spoiled. "What a glorious October!""Why, you will surely not leave us till October comes!" "October is themonth of all months--and, till you see him, you have not seen theLakes. " We acknowledge his claims. He is often truly delightful; but, like other brilliant persons, thinks himself not only privileged to beat times extremely dull, but his intensest stupidity is panegyrised aswit of the first water--while his not unfrequent rudeness, of which manya common month would be ashamed, passes for the ease of high birth orthe eccentricity of genius. A very different feeling indeed existstowards unfortunate November. The moment he shows his face, all otherfaces are glum. We defy month or man, under such a trial, to makehimself even tolerably agreeable. He feels that he is no favourite, andthat a most sinister misinterpretation will be put on all his motions, manners, thoughts, words, and deeds. A man or a month so circumstancedis much to be pitied. Think, look, speak, act as he will--yea, even morelike an angel than a man or a month--every eyebrow arches--every nostrildistends--every lip curls towards him in contempt, while blow over theice that enchains all his feelings and faculties, heavy-chillwhisperings of "who is that disagreeable fellow?" In such a frozenatmosphere, eloquence would be congealed on the lips of anUlysses--Poetry prosified on those of an Apollo. 

Edinburgh, during the dead of Summer, is a far more solitary place thanGlenetive, Glenevis, or Glenco. There is not, however, so much danger ofbeing lost in it as in the Moor of Rannoch--for streets and squares, though then utterly tenantless, are useful as landmarks to the pilgrimpassing through what seems to be

 "A still forsaken City of the Dead!"

But, like a frost-bound river suddenly dissolved by a strong thaw, andcoming down in spate from the mountains to the low lands, about thebeginning of November life annually re-overflows our metropolis, with anoise like "the rushing of many chariots. " The streets, that for monthshad been like the stony channels of dried-up streams--only not quite sowell paved--are again all a-murmur, and people addicted to the study ofpolitical economy begin to hold

 "Each strange tale devoutly true"

in the Malthusian theory of population. What swarms keep hovering roundthe great Northern Hive! Add eke after eke to the skep, and still seemsit too small to contain all the insects. Edinburgh is almost as large asLondon. Nay, don't stare! We speak comparatively; and as England issomewhere about six times more populous than Scotland, you may, bybrushing up your arithmetic, and applying to the Census, discover thatwe are not so far wrong in our apparent paradox. 

Were November in himself a far more wearifu' month than he is, Edinburghwould nevertheless be gladsome in the midst of all his gloom, even as awood in May with the Gathering of the Clans. The country flows into thetown--all its life seems to do so--and to leave nothing behind but thebare trees and hedges. Equipages again go glittering along all thestreets, squares, circuses, and crescents; and one might think that theentire "nation of ladies and gentlemen"--for King George the Fourth, wepresume, meant to include the sex in his compliment--were moving throughtheir metropolis. Amusement and business walk hand-in-hand--you hardlyknow, from their cheerful countenances, which is which; for the Scots, though a high-cheeked, are not an ill-favoured folk in theirfeatures--and though their mouths are somewhat of the widest, theirteeth are white as well as sharp, and on the opening of their ruddylips, their ivory-cases are still further brightened by hearty smiles. 'Twould be false to say that their figures are distinguished by an airof fashion--for we have no court, and our nobles are almost allabsentees. But though, in one sense, the men are ugly customers, as theywill find

 "Who chance to tread upon their freeborn toe, "

yet, literally, they are a comely crew, and if formed into battalions inmarching order, would make the National Guard in Paris look like

 "That small infantry Warr'd on by cranes. "

Our females have figures that can thaw any frost; and 'tis universallyallowed that they walk well, though their style of pedestrianism doesnot so readily recall to the imagination Virgil's picture of Camillaflying along the heads of corn without touching their ears, as theimages of paviers with post-looking mallets driving down dislodgedstones into the streets. Intermingling with the lighter and more elasticfootsteps of your Southron dames, the ongoings of our native virginsproduce a pleasant variety of motion in the forenoon męlée that alongthe Street of Princes now goes nodding in the sun-glint. 

 "Amid the general dance and minstrelsy"

who would wear a long face, unless it were in sympathy with his lengthof ears? A din of multitudinous joy hums in the air; you cannot see thecity for the houses, its inhabitants for the people; and as for findingone particular acquaintance in the crowd, why, to use an elegant simile, you might as well go search for a needle in a bottle of hay. 

But hark! a hollow sound, distant, and as yet referred to no distinctplace--then a faint mixture of a clear chime that is almost music--now atune--and at last, rousing the massy multitude to enthusiasm, a militarymarch, swelling various, profound, and high, with drum, trombone, serpent, trump, clarionet, fife, flute, and cymbal, bringing slowly on(is it the measured tramp of the feet of men, or the confused tramplingof horses?) banners floating over the procession, above the glitter ofsteel, and the golden glow of helmets. 'Tis a regiment ofcavalry--hurra! the Carbineers! What an Advanced Guard!

 "There England sends her men, of men the chief, "

still, staid, bold, bronzed faces, with keen eyes, looking straightforward from between sabres; while beneath the equable but haughtymotion of their steeds, almost disciplined as their riders, with longblack horse-hair flowing in martial majesty, nod their high Romancasques. The sweet storm of music has been passing by while we weregazing, and is now somewhat deadened by the retiring distance and bythat mass of buildings (how the windows are alive, and agaze withfaces!) while troop after troop comes on, still moving, it is felt byall, to the motion of the warlike tune, though now across the WaterlooBridge sounding like an echo, till the glorious war-pageant is all goneby, and the dull day is deadened down again into the stillness andsilence of an ignoble peace. 

 "Now all the youth of Scotland are on fire!"

All her cities and towns are rejoicing in the welcome Winter; and mind, invigorated by holidays, is now at work, like a giant refreshed, in allprofessions. The busy bar growls, grumphs, squeaks, like an old sow witha litter of pigs pretending to be quarrelling about straws. Enter theOuter or the Inner House, and you hear eloquence that would have putCicero to the blush, and reduced Demosthenes to his original stutter. The wigs of the Judges seem to have been growing during the longvacation, and to have expanded into an ampler wisdom. Seldom have weseen a more solemn set of men. Every one looks more _gash_ than another, and those three in the centre seem to us the embodied spirits of Law, Equity, and Justice. What can be the meaning of all this endlesslitigation? On what immutable principles in human nature depends theprosperity of the Fee-fund? Life is strife. Inestimable the blessing ofthe great institution of Property! For without it, how could people gotogether by the ears, as if they would tear one another to pieces? Allthe strong, we must not call them bad passions, denied their naturalelement, would find out some channels to run in, far more destructive tothe commonweal than lawsuits, and the people would be reduced to thelowest ebb of misery, and raised to the highest flow of crime. OurParliament House here is a vast safety-valve for the escape of the foulsteam that would otherwise explode and shatter the engine of the State, blowing the body and members of society to smash. As it is, how theengine works! There it goes! like Erickson's Novelty or Stephenson'sRocket along a railroad; and though an accident may occur now and then, such as an occasional passenger chucked by some uncalculated collisioninto the distant horizon, to be picked up whole, or in fragments, by thehoers in some turnip-field in the adjacent county, yet few or none arelikely to be fatal on a great scale; and on goes the Novelty or Rocket, like a thought, with many weighty considerations after it, in the shapeof waggons of Christians or cottons, while Manufactures and Commerceexult in the cause of Liberty and Locomotion all over the world. 

But to us utter idlesse is perfect bliss. And why? Because, like a lullat sea, or _lown_ on land, it is felt to descend from Heaven on man'stoilsome lot. The lull and the lown, what are they when most profound, but the transient cessation of the restlessness of winds and waters--achange wrought for an hour of peace in the heart of the hurricane!Therefore the sailor enjoys it on the green wave--the shepherd on thegreensward; while the memory of mists and storms deepens theenchantment. Even so, Idlesse can be enjoyed but by those who arepermitted to indulge it, while enduring the labours of an active or acontemplative life. To use another, and a still livelier image--see thepedlar toiling along the dusty road, with an enormous pack, on hisexcursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on thebank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys, like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering throughthe air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider thewayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or abotanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese witha mute prayer and a munching appetite--not idle, it must be confessed, in that sense--but in every other idle even as the shadow of thesycamore, beneath which, with his eyes half-open--for by hypothesis heis a Scotsman--he finally sinks into a wakeful, but quiet half-sleep. "Hallo! why are you sleeping there, you _idle_ fellow?" bawls somebeadle, or some overseer, or some magistrate, or perhaps merely one ofthose private persons who, out of season and in season, are constantlysending the sluggard to the ant to learn wisdom--though the ant, Heavenbless her! at proper times sleeps as sound as a sick-nurse. 

We are now the idlest, because once were we the most industrious of men. Up to the time that we engaged to take an occasional glance over theself-growing sheets of The Periodical, we were tied to one of the oarsthat move along the great vessel of life; and we believe that it wasallowed by all the best watermen, that

 "We feather'd our oars with skill and dexterity. "

But ever since we became an Editor, our repose, bodily and mental, hasbeen like that of a Hindoo god. Often do we sit whole winter nights, leaning back on our chair, more like the image of a man than a manhimself, with shut eyes, that keep seeing in succession all the thingsthat ever happened to us, and all the persons that we ever loved, hated, or despised, embraced, beat, or insulted, since we were a little boy. They too have all an image-like appearance, and 'tis wondrous strangehow silent they all are, actors and actresses on the stage of thatrevived drama, which sometimes seems to be a genteel comedy, andsometimes a broad farce, and then to undergo dreadful transfigurationinto a tragedy deep as death. 

We presume that the Public read in her own papers--we cannot be but hurtthat no account of it has appeared in the "Court Journal"--that onThursday the 12th current, No. 99 Moray Place was illuminated by ourannual Soireé, Conversazione, Rout, Ball, and Supper. A Ball! yes--forChristopher North, acting in the spirit of his favourite JamesThomson, --

 "No purpose gay, Amusement, dance, or song he sternly scorns; For happiness and true philosophy Are of the social, still, and smiling kind. "

All the rooms in the house were thrown open, except the cellars and theSanctum. To the people congregated outside, the building, we have beenassured, had all the brilliancy of the Bude Light. It was like a palaceof light, of which the framework or skeleton was of white unveinedmarble. So strong was the reflection on the nocturnal heavens, that arumour ran through the City that there was a great fire in Moray Place, nor did it subside till after the arrival and departure of severalengines. The alarm of some huge conflagration prevailed during most partof the night all over the kingdom of Fife; while, in the Lothians, ourillumination was much admired as an uncommonly fine specimen of theAurora Borealis. 

 "From the arch'd roof, Pendent by subtle magic, many a row Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light As from a sky. The hasty multitude Admiring enter'd. "

We need not say who received the company, and with what grace SHE didso, standing at the first landing-place of the great staircase in sablestole; for the widow's weeds have not _yet_ been doffed for the robes ofsaffron--with a Queen-Mary cap pointed in the front of her serene andample forehead, and, to please us, a few pearls sprinkled among herhair, still an unfaded auburn, and on her bosom one star-bright diamond. Had the old General himself come to life again, and beheld her then andthere, he could not have been offended with such simple ornaments. Theweeds he would have felt due to him, and all that his memory was fairlyentitled to; but the flowers--to speak figuratively--he would havecheerfully acknowledged were due to us, and that they well became bothface and figure of his lovely relict. As she moved from one room toanother, showering around her serene smiles, we felt the dignity ofthose Virgilian words, "Incedit Regina. "

Surely there is something very poetical in the gradual flowing in of thetide of grace, elegance, and beauty, over the floors of a suite ofregal-looking rooms, splendidly illuminated. Each party as it comes onhas its own peculiar picturesqueness, and affects the heart orimagination by some novel charm, gently gliding onward a little while byitself, as if not unconscious of its own attractions, nor unproud of thegaze of perhaps critical admiration that attends its progressivemovement. We confess ourselves partial to plumes of feathers above theradiant braidings of the silken tresses on the heads of virgins andmatrons--provided they be not "dumpy women"--tall, white, blue, and pinkplumes, silent in their wavings as gossamer, and as finely delicate, stirred up by your very breath as you bend down to salute theircheeks--not with kisses--for they would be out of order both of time andplace--but with words almost as tender as kisses, and awakening almostas tender a return--a few sweet syllables breathed in a silver voice, with blushing cheeks, and downcast eyes that, when again uplifted, areseen to be from heaven. 

A long hour ago, and all the mansion was empty and motionless--with ustwo alone sitting by each other's side affectionately and respectfullyon a sofa. Now it is filled with life, and heard you ever such a happymurmur? Yet no one in particular looks as if he or she were speakingmuch above breath, so gentle is true refinement, like a delightfulfragrance

 "From the calm manners quietly exhaled. "

Oh! the atrocious wickedness of a great, big, hearty, huge, hulking, horse-laugh, in an assemblage of ladies and gentlemen, gatheredgracefully together to enjoy the courtesies, the amenities, theurbanities, and the humanities of cultivated Christian life! The paganwho perpetrates it should be burnt alive--not at a slow fire--thoughthat would be but justice--but at a quick one--that all remnants of himand his enormity may be instantly extinguished. Lord Chesterfield hasbeen loudly laughed at with leathern lungs for his anathema againstlaughter. But though often wrong, there his lordship was right, and forthat one single rule of manners he deserves a monument, as having beenone of the benefactors of his species. Let smiles mantle--and thatsweet, soft, low sound be heard, the _susurrus_. Let there be amany-voiced quiet music, like that of the summer moonlight sea when thestars are in its breast. But laughter--loud peals of laughter--are likebreakers--blind breakers on a blind coast, where no verdure grows exceptthat of tangle, and whatever is made into that vulgarist of allcommodities, kelp. 

'Tis not a literary conversazione, mind ye, gentle reader; for we leavethat to S. T. Coleridge, the Monarch of the Monologue. But allspeak--talk--whisper--or smile, of all the speakable, talkable, whisperable, and smileable little interesting affairs, incidents, andoccurrences, real or fabulous, of public, private, demi-public, ordemi-semi-private life. Topics are as plentiful as snow-flakes, and meltaway as fast in the stream of social pleasure, "A moment white, then gone for ever!"

Not a little scandal--much gossip, we daresay; but as for scandal, itis the vulgarest error in the world to think that it either means, ordoes any harm to any mortal. It does infinite good. It ventilates theatmosphere, and prevents the "golden-fretted vault" from becoming "afoul congregation of vapours. " As for gossip, what other vindicationdoes it need, than an order for you to look at a soirée of swallows inSeptember on a slate-roof, the most innocent and white-breastedcreatures that pay

 "Their annual visits round the globe, Companions of the sun, "

but such gossipers that the whole air is a-twitter with their talk abouttheir neighbours' nest--when--whew! off and away they go, winnowingtheir way westwards, through the setting sunlight, and all in perfectamity with themselves and their kind, while

 "The world is all before them, where to choose, And Providence their guide. "

And, madam, you do not matronise--and, sir, you do notpatronise--_waltzing_? 'Tis very O fie-fieish, you think--and in dangerof becoming very, very faux-papa-ish!

 "Oh! the great goodness of the knights of old, "

whose mind-motto was still--

 "_Honi soit qui mal y pense!_"

Judging by ourselves, 'tis a wicked world we unwillingly confess; but benot terrified at trifles, we beseech you, and be not gross in yourcensure of innocent and delicate delights. Byron's exquisitely sensitivemodesty was shocked by the sight of waltzing, which he would not havesuffered the Guiccioli, while she was in his keeping, to have indulgedin even with her own husband. Thus it is that sinners see sin only whereit is not--and shut their eyes to it when it comes upon them open-armed, bare-bosomed, and brazen-faced, and clutches them in a grasp more likethe hug of a bear than the embrace of a woman. Away with such mawkishmodesty and mouthing morality--for 'tis the slang of the hypocrite. Waltzing does our old eyes good to look on it, when the whole CirclingFlight goes gracefully and airily on its orbit, and we think we see therealisation of that picture (we are sad misquoters) when the Hours--

 "Knit by the Graces and the Loves in dance, Lead on the eternal spring!"

But the Circling Flight breaks into airy fragments, the InstrumentalBand is hushed, and so is the whole central Drawing-room; for, blushingly obedient to the old man's beck, THE STAR OF EVE--so call weher who is our heart's-ease and heart's-delight--the granddaughter ofone whom hopelessly we loved in youth, yet with no unreturnedpassion--but

 "The course of true love never yet ran smooth"--

comes glidingly to our side, and having heard our wish breathedwhisperingly into her ear--a rare feature when small, thin, and delicateas a leaf--just as glidingly she goes, in stature that is almoststateliness, towards her Harp, and assuming at once a posture that wouldhave charmed Canova, after a few prelusive touches that betray the handof a mistress in the divine art, to the enchantment of the white motionsof those graceful arms and fingers fine, awakes a spirit in the stringsaccordant to the spirit in that voice worthy to have blended with StCecilia's in her hymning orisons. A Hebrew melody! And now your heartfeels the utter mournfulness of these words, "By Babel's streams we sat and wept!"

How sudden, yet how unviolent, the transitions among all our feelings!Under no other power so swift and so soft as that of Music. The soulthat sincerely loves Music, offers at no time the slightest resistanceto her sway, but yields itself up entirely to all its moods andmeasures, led captive by each successive strain through the wholemysterious world of modulated air. Not a smile over all that hush. Entranced in listening, they are all still as images. A sigh--almost asob--is heard, and there is shedding of tears. The sweet singer's selfseems as if she felt all alone at some solitary shrine--

 "Her face, oh! call it fair, not pale!"

Yet pale now it is, as if her heart almost died within her at thepathos of her own beautiful lament in a foreign land, and lovelier inher captivity never was the fairest of the daughters of Zion!

How it howls! That was a very avalanche. The snow-winds preach charityto all who have roofs overhead--towards the houseless and them whohuddle round hearths where the fire is dying or dead. Those blanketsmust have been a God-send indeed to not a few families, and your plan ispreferable to a Fancy-Fair. Yet that is good too--nor do we find faultwith them who dance for the Destitute. We sanction amusements that giverelief to misery--and the wealthy may waltz unblamed for behoof of thepoor. 

Again, what a howling in the chimney! What a blattering on the windows, and what a cannonading on the battlements! What can the night be about?and what has put old Nox into such a most outrageous passion? He hasdriven our Winter Rhapsody clean out of our noddle--and to-morrow wemust be sending for the slater, the plumber, and the glazier. To go tobed in such a hurly-burly, would be to make an Ultra-Toryishacknowledgment, not only of the divine right, but of the divine power ofKing Morpheus. But an Ultra-Tory we are not--though Ultra-Trimmers tryto impose upon themselves that fiction among a thousand others; so weshall smoke a cigar, and let sleep go to the dogs, the deuce, the devil, and the Chartists. 

STROLL TO GRASSMERE. 

FIRST SAUNTER. 

Companion of the Crutch! hast thou been a loving observer of the weatherof our island-clime? We do not mean to ask if you have from youth beenin the daily practice of rising from your study-chair at regularintervals, and ascertaining the precise point of Mercury's elevation onthe barometrical scale. The idea of trusting, throughout all thefluctuations of the changeful and capricious atmosphere in which welive, to quicksilver, is indeed preposterous; and we have long noticedthat meteorologists make an early figure in our obituaries. Seeing thehead of the god above the mark "fair, " or "settled, " out they march inthins, without great-coat or umbrella, when such a thunder-plump fallsdown in a deluge, that, returning home by water and steam, they take tobed, and on the ninth day fever hurries them off, victims to theirconfidence in that treacherous tube. But we mean to ask have you an eye, an ear, and a sixth sense, anonymous and instinctive, for all theprognosticating sights and sounds, and motions and shapes, of nature?Have you studied, in silence and solitude, the low, strange, andspirit-like whisperings, that often, when bird and bee are mute, comeand go, here and there, now from crag, now from coppice, and now frommoor, all over the sultry stillness of the clouded landscape? Have youlistened among mountains to the voice of streams, till you heard themprophesying change? Have you so mastered the occult science of mists, asthat you can foretell each proud or fair Emergency, and the hour whengrove, precipice, or plain, shall in sudden revelation be clothed withthe pomp of sunshine? Are all Bewick's birds, and beasts, and fishesvisible to your eyes in the woods, wastes, and waves of the clouds? Andknow ye what aerial condor, dragon, and whale, respectively portend? Arethe Fata Morgana as familiar to you as the Aberdeen Almanac? When amile-square hover of crows darkens air and earth, or settling loadsevery tree with sable fruitage, are you your own augur, equally as whenone raven lifts up his hoary blackness from a stone, and sails sullenlyoff with a croak, that gets fiercer and more savage in the loftydistance? Does the leaf of the forest twinkle futurity? the lonelylichen brighten or pale its lustre with change? Does not the gift ofprophecy dwell with the family of the violets and the lilies? Theprescient harebells, do they not let drop their closing blossoms whenthe heavens are niggard of their dews, or uphold them like cups thirstyfor wine, when the blessing, yet unfelt by duller animal life, isbeginning to drop balmily down from the rainy cloud embosomed in theblue of a midsummer's meridian day?

Forgive these friendly interrogatories. Perhaps you are weather-wiserthan ourselves; yet for not a few years we bore the name of "The Man ofthe Mountains;" and, though no great linguists, we hope that we knowsomewhat more than the vocabulary of the languages of calm and storm. Remember that we are now at Ambleside--and one week's residence theremay let you into some of the secrets of the unsteady Cabinet of StCloud. 

One advice we give you, and by following it you cannot fail to be happyat Ambleside, and everywhere else. Whatever the weather be, love, admire, and delight in it, and vow that you would not change it for theatmosphere of a dream. If it be close, hot, oppressive, be thankful forthe faint air that comes down fitfully from cliff and chasm, or thebreeze that ever and anon gushes from stream and lake. If the heavensare filled with sunshine, and you feel the vanity of parasols, how coolthe sylvan shade for ever moistened by the murmurs of that fairywaterfall! Should it blow great guns, cannot you take shelter in yondermagnificent fort, whose hanging battlements are warded even from thethunder-bolt by the dense umbrage of unviolated woods?Rain--rain--rain--an even-down pour of rain, that forces upon youvisions of Noah and his ark, and the top of Mount Ararat--still, webeseech you, be happy. It cannot last long at that rate; the thing isimpossible. Even this very afternoon will the rainbow span the blueentrance into Rydal's woody vale, as if to hail the westering sun onhis approach to the mountains--and a hundred hill-born torrents will beseen flashing out of the upfolding mists. What a delightful dazzle onthe light-stricken river! Each meadow shames the lustre of the emerald;and the soul wishes not for language to speak the pomp and prodigalityof colours that Heaven now rejoices to lavish on the grove-girdledFairfield, who has just tossed off the clouds from his rocky crest. 

You will not imagine, from anything we have ever said, that we areenemies to early rising. Now and then, what purer bliss than to embracethe new-wakened Morn, just as she is rising from her dewy bed! At suchhour, we feel as if there were neither physical nor moral evil in theworld. The united power of peace, innocence, and beauty subdueseverything to itself, and life is love. 

Forgive us, loveliest of Mornings! for having overslept the assignationhour, and allowed thee to remain all by thyself in the solitude, wondering why thy worshipper could prefer to thy presence the fairestphantoms that ever visited a dream. And thou hast forgiven us--for notclouds of displeasure these that have settled on thy forehead: theunreproaching light of thy countenance is upon us--a loving murmursteals into our heart from thine--and pure as a child's, daughter ofHeaven! is thy breath. 

In the spirit of that invocation we look around us, and as the idea ofmorning dies, sufficient for our happiness is "the light of commonday"--the imagery of common earth. There has been rain during thenight--enough, and no more, to enliven nature--the mists are ascendingcomposedly with promise of gentle weather--and the sun, so mild that wecan look him in the face with unwinking eyes, gives assurance that as hehas risen so will he reign, and so will he set in peace. 

Yet we cannot help thinking it somewhat remarkable, that, to the best ofour memory, never once were we the very first out into the dawn. We saynothing of birds--for they, with their sweet jargoning, anticipate it, and from their bed on the bough feel the forerunning warmth of thesunrise; neither do we allude to hares, for they are "hirpling hame, " tosleep away the light hours, open-eyed, in the briery quarry in thecentre of the trackless wood. Even cows and horses we can excuse beingup before us, for they have bivouacked; and the latter, as they oftensleep standing, are naturally somnambulists. Weasels, too, we can pardonfor running across the road before us, and as they reach thehole-in-the-wall, showing by their clear eyes that they have been awakefor hours, and have probably breakfasted on leveret. We have no spite atchanticleer, nor the hooting owls against whom he is so lustily crowinghours before the orient; nor do we care although we know that is not thefirst sudden plunge of the tyrant trout into the insect cloud alreadyhovering over the tarn. But we confess that it is a little mortifying toour pride of time and place, to meet an old beggar-woman, who from thedust on her tattered brogues has evidently marched miles from her lastnight's wayside howf, and who holds out her withered palm for charity, at an hour when a cripple of fourscore might have been supposed sleepingon her pallet of straw. A pedlar, too, who has got through a portion ofthe Excursion before the sun has illumed the mountain-tops, ismortifying, with his piled pack and ellwand. There, as we are aChristian, is Ned Hurd, landing a pike on the margin of the Reed-pool, on his way from Hayswater, where he has been all night angling, till hiscreel is as heavy as a sermon; and a little further on, comes issuinglike a Dryad's daughter, from the gate in the lane, sweet little AliceElleray, with a basket dangling beneath her arm, going in her orphanbeauty to gather, in their season, wild strawberries or violets in thewoods. 

Sweet orphan of Wood-edge! what would many a childless pair give for acreature one-half so beautiful as thou, to break the stillness of a homethat wants but one blessing to make it perfectly happy! Yet there arefew or none to lay a hand on that golden head, or leave a kiss upon itsringlets. The father of Alice Elleray was a wild and reckless youth, and, going to the wars, died in a foreign land. Her mother soon fadedaway of a broken heart;--and who was to care for the orphan child of theforgotten friendless? An old pauper who lives in that hut, scarcelydistinguishable from the shielings of the charcoal-burners, was glad totake her from the parish for a weekly mite that helps to eke out her ownsubsistence. For two or three years the child was felt a burden by thesolitary widow; but ere she had reached her fifth summer, Alice Elleraynever left the hut without darkness seeming to overshadow it--neverentered the door without bringing the sunshine. Where can the small, lonely creature have heard so many tunes, and airs, and snatches of oldsongs--as if some fairy bird had taught her melodies of fairyland? Sheis now in her tenth year, nor an idler in her solitude. Do you wish fora flowery bracelet for the neck of a chosen one, whose perfumes maymingle with the bosom-balm of her virgin beauty? The orphan of Wood-edgewill wreath it of blossoms cropt before the sun hath melted the dew onleaf or petal. Will you be for carrying away with you to the far-offcity some pretty little sylvan toy, to remind you of Ambleside andRydal, and other beautiful names of beautiful localities near the lucidwaters of Windermere? Then, Lady! purchase, at little cost, from thefair basket-maker, an ornament for your parlour, that will not disgraceits fanciful furniture, and, as you sit at your dreamy needlework, willrecall the green forest glades of Brathy or Calgarth. Industriouscreature! each day is to thee, in thy simplicity, an entire life. Allthoughts, all feelings, arise and die in peace between sunrise andsunset. What carest thou for being an orphan! knowing, as thou welldost, that God is thy father and thy mother, and that a prayer to Himbrings health, food, and sleep to the innocent. 

Letting drop a curtsy, taught by Nature, the mother of the Graces, AliceElleray, the orphan of Wood-edge, without waiting to be twice bidden, trills, as if from a silver pipe, a wild, bird-like warble, that in itscheerfulness has now and then a melancholy fall, and, at the close ofthe song, hers are the only eyes that are not dimmed with the haze oftears. Then away she glides with a thankful smile, and dancing over thegreensward, like an uncertain sunbeam, lays the treasure, won by herbeauty, her skill, and her industry, on the lap of her old guardian, whoblesses her with the uplifting of withered hands. 

Meanwhile, we request you to walk away with us up to Stockgill-force. There has been a new series of dry weather, to be sure; but to ourliking, a waterfall is best in a rainless summer. After a flood, thenoise is beyond all endurance. You get stunned and stupified till yourhead splits. Then you may open your mouth like a barn-door--we arespeaking to you, sir--and roar into a friend's ear all in vain a remarkon the cataract. To him you are a dumb man. In two minutes you are ascompletely drenched in spray as if you had fallen out of a boat--anddescend to dinner with a toothache that keeps you in starvation in thepresence of provender sufficient for a whole bench of bishops. In dryweather, on the contrary, the waterfall is in moderation; and instead oftumbling over the cliff in a perpetual peal of thunder, why, it slidesand slidders merrily and musically away down the green shelving rocks, and sinks into repose in many a dim or lucid pool, amidst whosefoam-bells is playing or asleep the fearless Naiad. Deuce a headachehave you--speak in a whisper, and not a syllable of your excellentobservation is lost; your coat is dry, except that a few dewdrops havebeen shook over you from the branches stirred by the sudden wing-clap ofthe cushat--and as for toothache interfering with dinner, you eat as ifyour tusks had been just sharpened, and would not scruple to discussnuts, upper-and-lower-jaw-work fashion, against the best crackers in thecounty. And all this comes of looking at Stockgill-force, or any otherwaterfall, in dry weather, after a few refreshing and fertilisingshowers that make the tributary rills to murmur, and set at work athousand additional feeders to every Lake. 

Ha! Matutine Roses!--budding, half-blown, consummate--you are, indeed, in irresistible blush! We shall not say which of you we love best--_sheknows it_; but we see there is no hope to-day for the old man--for youare all paired--and he must trudge it _solus_, in capacity ofGuide-General of the Forces. What! the nymphs are going to pony it? Andyou intend, you selfish fellows, that we shall hold all the reinswhenever the spirit moveth you to deviate from bridle-path, to clambercliff for a bird's-eye view, or dive into dells for some rare plant?Well, well--there is a tradition, that once we were young ourselves; andso redolent of youth are these hills, that we are more than halfinclined to believe it--so blush and titter, and laugh and look down, yeinnocent wicked ones, each with her squire by her palfrey's mane, whilegood old Christopher, like a true guide, keeps hobbling in the rear onhis Crutch. Holla there!--to the right of our friend Mr Benson'ssmithy--and to Rothay-bridge. Turn in at a gate to the right hand, which, twenty to one, you will find open, that the cattle may take anoccasional promenade along the turnpike, and cool their palates with alittle ditch grass, and saunter along by Millar-bridge and Foxgill on toPelter-bridge, and, if you please, to Rydal-mere. Thus, and thus only, is seen the vale of Ambleside; and what a vale of grove, and glade, andstream, and cliff, and cottage, and villa, and grassfield, and garden, and orchard, and--But not another word, for you would forthwith compareour description with the reality, and seeing it faint and feeble, wouldtoss it into the Rothay, and laugh as the Vol. Plumped over a waterfall!

The sylvan--or say rather the forest scenery--(for there is to us anindescribable difference between these two words)--of Rydal-park, was, in memory of living men, magnificent, and it still contains a treasureof old trees. Lady Diana's white pea-fowl, sitting on the limbs of thathuge old tree like creatures newly alighted from the Isles of Paradise!all undisturbed by the waterfalls, which, as you keep gazing on thelong-depending plumage illumining the forest gloom, seem indeed to losetheir sound, and to partake the peace of that resplendent show--eachsplendour a wondrous Bird! For they stretch themselves all up, withtheir graceful crests, o'ercanopied by the umbrage draperied as from athrone. And never surely were seen in this daylight world suchunterrestrial creatures--though come from afar, all happy as at home inthe Fairies' Oak. 

By all means ride away into these woods, and lose yourself for half anhour among the cooing of cushats, and the shrill shriek of startledblackbirds, and the rustle of the harmless slow-worm among the lastyear's red beech-leaves. No very great harm in a kiss under the shadowof an oak (oh fie!) while the magpie chatters angrily at safe distance, and the more innocent squirrel peeps down upon you from a bough of thecanopy, and, hoisting his tail, glides into the obscurity of theloftiest umbrage. You still continue to see and hear; but the sight is aglimmer, and the sound a hum, as if the forest-glade were swarming withbees, from the ground-flowers to the herons' nests. Refreshed by yourdream of Dryads, follow a lonesome din that issues from a pile of woodedcliffs, and you are led to a Waterfall. Five minutes are enough fortaking an impression, if your mind be of the right material, and youcarry it away with you further down the Forest. Such a torrent will notreach the lake without disporting itself into many little cataracts; andsaw ye ever such a fairy one as that flowing through below an iviedbridge into a circular basin overshadowed by the uncertain twilight ofmany checkering branches, and washing the rook-base of a Hermitage, inwhich a sin-sickened or pleasure-palled man might, before his hairs weregrey, forget all the gratifications and all the guilt of the noisyworld?

You are now all standing together in a group beside Ivy-cottage, theriver gliding below its wooden bridge from Rydal-mere. It is a perfectmodel of such architecture--breathing the very spirit of Westmoreland. The public road, skirted by its front paling, does not in the leastdegree injure its character of privacy and retirement; so we think atthis dewy hour of prime, when the gossamer meets our faces, extendedfrom the honey-suckled slate-porch to the trees on the other side of theturnpike. And see how the multitude of low-hanging roofs and gable-ends, and dovecot-looking windows, steal away up a green and shrubberiedacclivity, and terminating in wooded rocks that seem part of thebuilding, in the uniting richness of ivy, lichens, moss-roses, broom, and sweet-brier, murmuring with birds and bees, busy near hive and nest!It would be extremely pleasant to breakfast in that deep-windowed roomon the ground-floor, on cream and barley cakes, eggs, coffee, anddry-toast, with a little mutton-ham not too severely salted, and at theconclusion, a nut-shell of Glenlivet or Cognac. But, Lord preserve ye!it is not yet six o'clock in the morning; and what Christian kettlesimmereth before seven? Yes, my sweet Harriet, that sketch does youcredit, and it is far from being very unlike the original. Rather toomany chimneys by about half-a-dozen; and where did you find that steepleimmediately over the window marked "Dairy?" The pigs are somewhat toosumptuously lodged in that elegant sty, and the hen-roost mightaccommodate a phoenix. But the features of the chief porch are veryhappily hit off--you have caught the very attic spirit of the roof--andsome of the windows may be justly said to be staringlikenesses. --Ivy-cottage is slipped into our portfolio, and we shallcompare it, on our return to Scotland, with Buchanan Lodge. 

Gallantry forbids, but Truth demands to say, that young ladies are butindifferent sketchers. The dear creatures have no notion of perspective. At flower-painting and embroidery, they are pretty fair hands, but theymake sad work among waterfalls and ruins. Notwithstanding, it ispleasant to hang over them, seated on stone or stool, drawing fromnature; and now and then to help them in with a horse or a hermit. It isa difficult, almost an impossible thing--that foreshortening. The mostspeculative genius is often at a loss to conjecture the species of ahuman being foreshortened by a young lady. The hanging Tower at Pisa is, we believe, some thirty feet or so off the perpendicular, and there isone at Caerphilly about seventeen; but these are nothing to the castlesin the air we have seen built by the touch of a female magician; nor isit an unusual thing with artists of the fair sex to order their plumedchivalry to gallop down precipices considerably steeper than a house, onanimals apparently produced between the tiger and the bonassus. Whenthey have succeeded in getting something like the appearance of waterbetween what may be conjectured banks, they are not very particularabout its running occasionally up-hill; and it is interesting to see astream stealing quietly below trees in gradual ascension, till, disappearing for a few minutes over one summit, it comes thundering downanother, in the shape of a waterfall, on the head of an elderlygentleman, unsuspectingly reading Mr Wordsworth's "Excursion, " perhaps, in the foreground. Nevertheless, we repeat, that it is delightful tohang over one of the dear creatures, seated on stone or stool, drawingfrom nature; for whatever may be the pencil's skill, the eye may beholdthe glimpse of a vision whose beauty shall be remembered when evenWindermere herself has for a while faded into oblivion. 

On such excursions there are sure to occur a few enviable adventures. First, the girths get wrong, and, without allowing your beloved virginto alight, you spend more time than is absolutely necessary in arrangingthem; nor can you help admiring the attitude into which the gracefulcreature is forced to draw up her delicate limbs, that her fairy feetmay not be in the way to impede your services. By-and-by a calf--whichyou hope will be allowed to grow up into a cow--stretching up her curvedred back from behind a wall, startles John Darby, albeit unused to thestarting mood, and you leap four yards to the timely assistance of thefair shrieker, tenderly pressing her bridle-hand as you find the reinthat has not been lost, and wonder what has become of the whip thatnever existed. A little further on, a bridgeless stream crosses theroad--a dangerous-looking ford indeed--a foot deep at the very least, and scorning wet feet, as they ought to be scorned, you almost carry, serene in danger, your affianced bride (or she is in a fair way ofbecoming so) in your arms off the saddle, nor relinquish the delightfulclasp till all risk is at an end, some hundred yards on, along thevelvet herbage. Next stream you come to has indeed a bridge--but thenwhat a bridge! A long, coggly, cracked slate-stone, whose unsteadyclatter would make the soberest steed jump over the moon. You beseechthe timid girl to sit fast, and she almost leans down to your breast asyou press to meet the blessed burden, and to prevent the steady oldstager from leaping over the battlements. But now the chasm on each sideof the narrow path is so tremendous, that she must dismount, after duedisentanglement, from that awkward, old-fashioned crutch and pummel, andfrom a stirrup, into which a little foot, when it has once crept like amouse, finds itself caught as in a trap of singular construction, anddifficult to open for releasement. You feel that all you love in theworld is indeed fully, freshly, and warmly in your arms, nor can youbear to set the treasure down on the rough stony road, but look round, and round, and round, for a soft spot, which you finally prophesy atsome distance up the hill, whitherwards, in spite of pouting Yea andNay, you persist in carrying her whose head is ere long to lie in yourtranquil bosom. 

Ivy-cottage, you see, is the domicile of gentlemen and lady folk; butlook through yonder dispersion, and in a minute or two your eyes willsee distinctly, in spite of the trees, a _bonâ fide_ farmhouse, inhabited by a family whose head is at once an agriculturist, ashepherd, and a woodsman. A Westmoreland cottage has scarcely anyresemblance to a Scottish one. A Scottish cottage (in the Lowlands) hasrarely any picturesque beauty in itself--a narrow oblong, with steepthatched roof, and an ear-like chimney at each of the two gable-ends. Many of the Westmoreland cottages would seem, to an ignorant observer, to have been originally built on a model conceived by the finestpoetical genius. In the first place, they are almost always builtprecisely where they ought to be, had the builder's prime object been tobeautify the dale; at least, so we have often felt in moods, whenperhaps our emotions were unconsciously soothed into complacency by thespirit of the scene. Where the sedgy brink of the lake or tarn circlesinto a lone bay, with a low hill of coppice-wood on one side, and a fewtall pines on the other, no--it is a grove of sycamores--there, about ahundred yards from the water, and about ten above its ordinary level, peeps out from its cheerful seclusion that prettiest of allhamlets--Braithwaite-fold. The hill behind is scarcely sylvan--yet ithas many hazels--a few bushes--here and there a holly--and why orwherefore, who can now tell, a grove of enormous yews. There is sweetpasturage among the rocks, and as you may suppose it a spring-day, mildwithout much sunshine, there is a bleating of lambs, a twitter of smallbirds, and the deep coo of the stock-dove. A wreath of smoke is always afeature of such a scene in description; but here there is now none, forprobably the whole household are at work in the open air, and the fire, since fuel is not to be wasted, has been wisely suffered to expire onthe hearth. No. There is a volume of smoke, as if the chimney were inflame--a tumultuous cloud pours aloft, straggling and broken, throughthe broad slate stones that defend the mouth of the vomitory from everyblast. The matron within is doubtless about to prepare breakfast, andlast year's rotten pea-sticks have soon heated the capacious grid-iron. Let the smoke-wreath melt away at its leisure, and do you admire, alongwith us, the infinite variety of all those little shelving and slopingroofs. To feel the full force of the peculiar beauty of these antiquetenements, you must understand their domestic economy. If ignorant ofthat, you can have no conception of the meaning of any one thing yousee--roofs, eaves, chimneys, beams, props, doors, hovels, and sheds, andhanging staircase, being all huddled together, as you think, inunintelligible confusion; whereas they are all precisely what and wherethey ought to be, and have had their colours painted, forms shaped, andplaces allotted by wind and weather, and the perpetually but pleasantlyfelt necessities Of the natural condition of mountaineers. 

Dear, dear is the thatch to the eyes of a son of Caledonia, for he mayremember the house in which he was born; but what thatch was ever sobeautiful as that slate from the quarry of the White-moss? Eachone--no--not each one--but almost each one--of these little overhangingroofs seems to have been slated, or repaired at least, in its ownseparate season, so various is the lustre of lichens that bathes thewhole, as richly as ever rock was bathed fronting the sun on themountain's brow. Here and there is seen some small window, beforeunobserved, curtained perhaps--for the statesman, and the statesman'swife, and the statesman's daughters, have a taste--a taste inspired bydomestic happiness, which, seeking simply comfort, unconsciously createsbeauty, and whatever its homely hand touches, that it adorns. Therewould seem to be many fireplaces in Braithwaite-fold, from such a numberof chimney-pillars, each rising up to a different altitude from adifferent base, round as the bole of a tree--and elegant, as if shapedby Vitruvius. To us, we confess, there is nothing offensive in the mostglaring white rough-cast that ever changed a cottage into a patch ofsunny snow. Yet here that greyish-tempered unobtrusive hue doescertainly blend to perfection with roof, rock, and sky. Every instrumentis in tune. Not even in sylvan glade, nor among the mountain rocks, didwanderer's eyes ever behold a porch of meeting tree-stems, or recliningcliffs, more gracefully festooned than the porch from which now issuesone of the fairest of Westmeria's daughters. With one arm crossed beforeher eyes in a sudden burst of sunshine, with the other Ellinor Inmanwaves to her little brother and sisters among the bark-peelers in theRydal woods. The graceful signal is repeated till seen, and in a fewminutes a boat steals twinkling from the opposite side of the lake, eachtug of the youthful rowers distinctly heard through the hollow of thevale. A singing voice rises and ceases--as if the singer were watchingthe echo--and is not now the picture complete?

After a time old buildings undergo no perceptible change, any more thanold trees; and after they have begun to feel the touch of decay, it islong before they look melancholy; for while they continue to be used, they cannot help looking cheerful, and even dilapidation is painful onlywhen felt to be lifeless. The house now in ruins, that we passed a fewhundred yards ago without your seeing it--we saw it with a sigh--amongsome dark firs, just before we began to ascend the hill, was many yearsago inhabited by Miles Mackareth, a man of some substance, anduniversally esteemed for his honest and pious character. His integrity, however, wanted the grace of courteousness, and his religion wassomewhat gloomy and austere, while all the habits of his life were sad, secluded, and solitary. His fireside was always decent, but nevercheerful--there the passing traveller partook of an ungrudging, but agrave hospitality; and although neighbours dropping in unasked werealways treated as neighbours, yet seldom were they invited to pass anevening below his roof, except upon the stated festivals of the seasons, or some domestic event demanding sociality, according to the countrycustom. Year after year the gloom deepened on his strong-markedintellectual countenance; and his hair, once black as jet, becameuntimely grey. Indeed, although little more than fifty years old, whenyou saw his head uncovered, you would have taken him for a manapproaching to threescore and ten. His wife and only daughter, bothnaturally of a cheerful disposition, grew every year more retired, tillat last they shunned society altogether, and were seldom seen but atchurch. And now a vague rumour ran through the hamlets of theneighbouring valleys, that he was scarcely in his right mind--that hehad been heard by shepherds on the hills talking to himself wild words, and pacing up and down in a state of distraction. The family ceased toattend divine worship, and as for some time the Sabbath had been theonly day they were visible, few or none now knew how they fared, and bymany they were nearly forgotten. Meanwhile, during the whole summer, themiserable man haunted the loneliest places; and, to the terror of hiswife and daughter, who had lost all power over him, and durst not speak, frequently passed whole days they knew not where, and came home, silent, haggard, and ghastly, about midnight. His widow afterwards told that heseldom slept, and never without dreadful dreams--that often he would situp all night in his bed, with his eyes fixed and staring on nothing, anduttering ejaculations for mercy for all his sins. 

What these sins were he never confessed--nor, as far as man may judge ofman, had he ever committed any act that needed to lie heavy on hisconscience. But his whole being, he said, was one black sin--and aspirit had been sent to tell him, that his doom was to be with thewicked through all the ages of eternity. That spirit, without form orshadow--only a voice--seldom left his side day or night, go where hewould; but its most dreadful haunt was under a steep rock calledBlakerigg-scaur; and thither, in whatever direction he turned his faceon leaving his own door, he was led by an irresistible impulse, even asa child is led by the hand. Tenderly and truly had he once loved hiswife and daughter, nor less because that love had been of few words, andwith a shade of sorrow. But now he looked on them almost as if they hadbeen strangers--except at times, when he started up, kissed them, andwept. His whole soul was possessed by horrid fantasies, of which it wasitself object and victim; and it is probable that had he seen them bothlying dead, he would have left their corpses in the house, and taken hisway to the mountains. At last one night passed away and he came not. Hiswife and daughter, who had not gone to bed, went to the nearest houseand told their tale. In an hour a hundred feet were traversing all theloneliest places--till a hat was seen floating on Loughrigg-tarn, andthen all knew that the search was near an end. Drags were soon got fromthe fishermen on Windermere, and a boat crossed and recrossed the tarnon its miserable quest, till in an hour, during which wife and daughtersat without speaking on a stone by the water-edge, the body camefloating to the surface, with its long silver hair. One single shriekonly, it is said, was heard, and from that shriek till three yearsafterwards, his widow knew not that her husband was with the dead. Onthe brink of that small sandy bay the body was laid down and cleansed ofthe muddy weeds--his daughter's own hands assisting in the ruefulwork--and she walked among the mourners, the day before the Sabbath, when the funeral entered the little burial-ground of Langdale chapel, and the congregation sung a Christian psalm over the grave of theforgiven suicide. 

We cannot patronise the practice of walking in large parties of ten or ascore, ram-stam and helter-skelter, on to the front-green or gravel-walkof any private nobleman's or gentleman's house, to enjoy, from acommanding station, an extensive or picturesque view of the circumjacentcountry. It is too much in the style of the Free and Easy. The familywithin, sitting perhaps at dinner with the windows open, or sewing andreading in a cool dishabille, cannot like to be stared in upon by somany curious and inquisitive pupils all a-hunt for prospects; nor werethese rose-bushes planted there for public use, nor that cherry-tree invain netted against the blackbirds. Not but that a party may now andthen excusably enough pretend to lose their way in a strange country;and looking around them in well-assumed bewilderment, bow hesitatinglyand respectfully to maid or matron at door or window, and, with athousand apologies, lingeringly offer to retire by the avenue gate, onthe other side of the spacious lawn, that terrace-like hangs over vale, lake, and river. But to avoid all possible imputation of impertinence, follow you our example, and make all such incursions by break of day. Wehold that, for a couple of hours before and after sunrise, all the earthis common property. Nobody surely would think for a moment of lookingblack on any number of freebooting lakers coming full sail up theavenue, right against the front, at four o'clock in the morning? At thathour, even the poet would grant them the privilege of the arbour wherehe sits when inspired, and writing for immortality. He feels consciousthat he ought to have been in bed; and hastens, on such occasions, toapologise for his intrusion on strangers availing themselves of therights and privileges of the Dawn. 

Leaving Ivy-cottage, then, and its yet unbreathing chimneys, turn in atthe first gate to your right (if it be not built up, in which case leapthe wall), and find your way the best you can through among oldpollarded and ivied ash-trees, intermingled with yews, and over knollyground, brier-woven, and here and there whitened with the jagged thorn, till you reach, through a slate-stile, a wide gravel walk, shaded bypine-trees, and open on the one side to an orchard. Proceed--and littlemore than a hundred steps will land you on the front of Rydal-mount, thehouse of the great Poet of the Lakes. Mr Wordsworth is not at home, butaway to cloudland in his little boat so like the crescent moon. But donot by too much eloquence awaken the family, or scare the silence, orfrighten "the innocent brightness of the new-born day. " We hate allsentimentalism; but we bid you, in his own words, "With gentle hand Touch, for there is a spirit in the leaves. "

From a quaint platform of evergreens you see a blue gleam of Windermereover the grove-tops--close at hand are Rydal-hall and its ancientwoods--right opposite the Loughrigg-fells, ferny, rocky, and sylvan, butthe chief breadth of breast pastoral--and to the right Rydal-mere, seen, and scarcely seen, through embowering trees, and mountain-massesbathed in the morning light, and the white-wreathed mists for a littlewhile longer shrouding their summits. A lately erected private chapellifts its little tower from below, surrounded by a green, on which thereare yet no graves--nor do we know if it be intended for a place ofburial. A few houses are sleeping beyond the chapel by the river-side;and the people beginning to set them in order, here and there a pillarof smoke ascends into the air, giving cheerfulness and animation to thescene. 

The Lake-Poets! ay, their day is come. The lakes are worthy of thepoets, and the poets of the lakes. That poets should love and live amonglakes, once seemed most absurd to critics whose domiciles were on theNor-Loch, in which there was not sufficient water for a tolerablequagmire. Edinburgh Castle is a noble rock--so are the Salisbury Craigsnoble craigs--and Arthur's seat a noble lion couchant, who, were he toleap down on Auld Reekie, would break her backbone and bury her in theCowgate. But place them by Pavey-ark, or Red-scaur, or the glamour ofGlaramara, and they would look about as magnificent as an upset pack ofcards. Who, pray, are the Nor-Loch poets? Not the Minstrel--he holds bythe tenure of the Tweed. Not Campbell--"he heard in dreams the music ofthe Clyde. " Not Joanna Baillie--her inspiration was nursed on theCalder's sylvan banks and the moors of Strathaven. Stream-loving Coilanurtured Burns; and the Shepherd's grave is close to the cot in which hewas born--within hearing of the Ettrick's mournful voice on its way tomeet the Yarrow. Skiddaw overshadows, and Greta freshens the bower ofhim who framed, "Of Thalaba, the wild and wondrous song. "

Here the woods, mountains, and waters of Rydal imparadise the abode ofthe wisest of nature's bards, with whom poetry is religion. And wherewas he ever so happy as in that region, he who created "Christabelle, ""beautiful exceedingly;" and sent the "Auncient Mariner" on the wildestof all voyagings, and brought him back with the ghastliest of all crews, and the strangest of all curses that ever haunted crime?

Of all Poets that ever lived Wordsworth has been at once the mosttruthful and the most idealising; external nature from him has receiveda soul, and becomes our teacher; while he has so filled our minds withimages from her, that every mood finds some fine affinities there, andthus we all hang for sustenance and delight on the bosom of our mightyMother. We believe that there are many who have an eye for Nature, andeven a sense of the beautiful, without any very profound feeling; and tothem Wordsworth's finest descriptive passages seem often languid ordiffuse, and not to present to their eyes any distinct picture. Perhapssometimes this objection may be just; but to paint to the eye is easierthan to the imagination--and Wordsworth, taking it for granted thatpeople can now see and hear, desires to make them feel and understand;of his pupil it must not be said, "A primrose by the river's brim A yellow primrose is to him, And it is nothing more;"

the poet gives the something more till we start at the disclosure as ata lovely apparition--yet an apparition of beauty not foreign to theflower, but exhaling from its petals, which till that moment seemed tous but an ordinary bunch of leaves. In these lines is a humbler exampleof how recondite may be the spirit of beauty in any most familiar thingbelonging to the kingdom of nature; one higher far--but of the samekind--is couched in two immortal verses--

 "To me the humblest flower that blows, can give Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears. "

In what would the poet differ from the worthy man of prose, if hisimagination possessed not a beautifying and transmuting power over theobjects of the inanimate world? Nay, even the naked truth itself is seenclearly but by poetic eyes; and were a sumph all at once to become apoet, he would all at once be stark-staring mad. Yonder ass licking hislips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glowwith the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots atLowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausingwith curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on SallyChambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who hascultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns theirphraseology, and declares the sunset to be exceedingly handsome. TheLaker, who sometimes has a soul, feels it rise within him as the rim ofthe orb disappears in the glow of softened fire. The artist complimentsNature, by likening her evening glories to a picture of ClaudLorraine--while the poet feels the sense sublime

 "Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. "

Compare any one page, or any twenty pages, with the character given ofWordsworth's poetry in the obsolete criticism that sought to send it tooblivion. The poet now sits on his throne in the blue serene--and novoice from below dares deny his supremacy in his own calm dominions. Andwas it of him, whom devout imagination, dreaming of ages to come, nowsees, placed in his immortality between Milton and Spenser, that thewhole land once rang with ridicule, while her wise men wiped their eyes"of tears that sacred _pity_ had engendered, " and then relieved theirhearts by joining in the laughter "of the universal British nation?" Allthe ineffable absurdities of the bard are now embodied in SevenVolumes--the sense of the ridiculous still survives among us--our men ofwit and power are not all dead--we have yet our satirists, great andsmall--editors in thousands, and contributors in tens of thousands--yetnot a whisper is heard to breathe detraction from the genius of thehigh-priest of nature; while the voice of the awakened and enlightenedland declares it to be divine--using towards him not the language merelyof admiration but of reverence--of love and gratitude due to thebenefactor of humanity, who has purified its passions by loftiestthoughts and noblest sentiments, stilling their turbulence by the sameprocesses that magnify their power, and showing how the soul, in ebb andflow, and when its tide is at full, may be at once as strong and asserene as the sea. 

There are few pictures painted by him merely for the pleasure of theeye, or even the imagination, though all the pictures he ever paintedare beautiful to both; they have all a moral meaning--many a meaningmore than moral--and his poetry can be comprehended, in its full scopeand spirit, but by those who feel the sublimity of these four lines inhis "Ode to Duty, "--

 "Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong, And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong. "

Is thy life disturbed by guilty or sinful passions? Have they gained amastery of thee--and art thou indeed their slave? Then the poetry ofWordsworth must be to thee

 "As is a picture to a blind man's eye;"

or if thine eyes yet see the light in which it is enveloped, and thyheart yet feels the beauty it reveals, in spite of the clouds thatoverhang and the storms that trouble them, that beauty will beunbearable, till regret become remorse, and remorse penitence, andpenitence restore thee to those intuitions of the truth that illuminehis sacred pages, and thou knowest and feelest once more that

 "The primal duties shine aloft--like stars, "

that life's best pleasures grow like flowers all around and beneath thyfeet. 

Nor are we not privileged to cherish a better feeling than pride in thebelief, or rather knowledge, that WE have helped to diffuse Wordsworth'spoetry not only over this Island, but the furthest dependencies of theBritish empire, and throughout the United States of America. Manythousands have owed to us their emancipation from the prejudices againstit, under which they had wilfully remained ignorant of it during manyyears; and we have instructed as many more, whose hearts were free, howto look on it with those eyes of love which alone can discover theBeautiful. Communications have been made to us from across the Atlantic, and from the heart of India--from the Occident and the Orient--thankingus for having vindicated and extended the fame of the best of ourliving bards, till the name of Wordsworth has become a household word onthe banks of the Mississippi and the Ganges. It would have been so hadwe never lived, _but not so soon_; and many a noble nature hasworshipped his genius, as displayed in our pages, not in fragments butin perfect poems, accompanied with our comments, who had no means inthose distant regions of possessing his volumes, whereas Maga flies onwings to the uttermost parts of the earth. 

As for our own dear Scotland--for whose sake, with all her faults, thelight of day is sweet to our eyes--twenty years ago there were nottwenty copies--we question if there were ten--of the "Lyrical Ballads"in all the land of the mountain and the flood. Now Wordsworth is studiedall Scotland over--and Scotland is proud and happy to know, from hisMemorials of the Tours he has made through her brown heaths and shaggywoods, that the Bard's heart overflows with kindness towards herchildren--that his songs have celebrated the simple and heroic characterof her olden times, nor left unhonoured the virtues that yet survive inher national character. All her generous youth regard him now as a greatPoet; and we have been more affected than we should choose to confess, by the grateful acknowledgment of many a gifted spirit, that to us itwas owing that they had opened their eyes and their hearts to theineffable beauty of that poetry in which they had, under ourinstructions, found not a vain visionary delight, but a strength andsuccour and consolation, breathed as from a shrine in the silence andsolitude of nature, in which stood their father's hut, sanctifying theirhumble birthplace with pious thoughts that made the very weekdays tothem like Sabbaths--nor on the evening of the Sabbath might they notblamelessly be blended with those breathed from the Bible, enlargingtheir souls to religion by those meditative moods which such pure poetryinspires, and by those habits of reflection which its study forms, whenpursued under the influence of thoughtful peace. 

Why, if it were not for that everlasting--we beg pardon--immortalWordsworth--the LAKES, and all that belong to them, would be ourown--_jure divino_--for we are the heir-apparent to the

 "Sole King of rocky Cumberland. "

But Wordsworth never will--never can die; and so we are in danger ofbeing cheated out of our due dominion. We cannot think this fatherlytreatment of such a son--and yet in our loftiest moods of filialreverence we have heard ourselves exclaiming, while

 "The Cataract of Lodore Peal'd to our orisons, "

O King! live for ever!

Therefore, with the fear of "The Excursion" before our eyes, we took toprose--to numerous prose--ay, though we say it that should not say it, to prose as numerous as any verse--and showed such scenes

 "As savage Rosa dash'd, or learned Poussin drew. "

Here an English Lake--there a Scottish loch--till Turner grew jealous, and Thomson flung his brush at one of his own unfinished mountains--whenlo! a miracle! Creative of grandeur in his very despair, he stoodastonished at the cliff that came prerupt from his canvass, andchristened itself "the Eagle's Eyrie, " as it _frowned serenely_ upon thesea, maddening in a foamy circle at its inaccessible feet. 

Only in such prose as ours can the heart pour forth its effusions like astrong spring discharging ever so many gallons in a minute, either intopipes that conduct it through some great Metropolitan city, or into awater-course that soon becomes a rivulet, then a stream, then a river, then a lake, and then a sea. Would Fancy luxuriate? Then let her expandwings of prose. In verse, however irregular, her flight is lime-twigged, and she soon takes to hopping on the ground. Would Imagination dive? Letthe bell in which she sinks be constructed on the prose principle, anddeeper than ever plummet sunk, it will startle monsters at the roots ofthe coral caves, yet be impervious to the strokes of the most tremendousof tails. Would she soar? In a prose balloon she seeks the stars. Thereis room and power of ascension for any quantity of ballast--fling itout, and up she goes! Let some gas escape, and she descends far moregingerly than Mrs Graham and his Serene Highness; the grapnel catches astile, and she steps "like a dreadless angel unpursued" once more upon_terra firma_, and may then celebrate her aerial voyage, if she choose, in an Ode which will be sure near the end to rise--into prose. 

Prose, we believe, is destined to drive what is called Poetry out of theworld. Here is a fair challenge. Let any Poet send us a poem of fivehundred lines--blanks or not--on any subject; and we shall write on thatsubject a passage of the same number of words in prose; and the Editorsof the Quarterly, Edinburgh, and Westminster, shall decide whichdeserves the prize. Milton was woefully wrong in speaking of "prose ornumerous verse. " Prose is a million times more numerous than verse. Thenprose improves the more poetical it becomes; but verse, the moment itbecomes prosaic, goes to the dogs. Then, the connecting links betweentwo fine passages in verse, it is enjoined, shall be as little likeverse as possible; nay, whole passages, critics say, should be of thatsort; and why, pray, not prose at once? Why clip the King's English, orthe Emperor's German, or the Sublime Porte's Turkish, into bits of dulljingle--pretending to be verses merely because of the proper number ofsyllables--some of them imprisoned perhaps in parentheses, where theysit helplessly protruding the bare soles of their feet, like folks thathave got muzzy, in the stocks?

Wordsworth says well, that the language of common people, when givingutterance to passionate emotions, is highly figurative; and hence heconcludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility isgreat, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but bythe merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never--the utmost theyreach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk!The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dreamof asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion!The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, everyet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet, in his sublimest moods, speaks in prose--Lady Macbeth talks prose in hersleep--and so it should be printed. "Out damned spot!" are three wordsof prose; and who that beheld Siddons wringing her hands to wash them ofmurder, did not feel that they were the most dreadful ever extorted byremorse from guilt?

A green old age is the most loving season of life, for almost all theother passions are then dead or dying--or the mind, no more at the mercyof a troubled heart, compares the little pleasure their gratificationcan ever yield now with what it could at any time long ago, and letsthem rest. Envy is the worst disturber or embitterer of man's decliningyears; but it does not deserve the name of a passion--and is a disease, not of the poor in spirit--for they are blessed--but of the mean, andthen they indeed are cursed. For our own parts, we know Envy but as wehave studied it in others--and never felt it except towards the wise andgood; and then 'twas a longing desire to be like them--painful only whenwe thought that might never be, and that all our loftiest aspirationsmight be in vain. Our envy of Genius is of a nature so noble, that itknows no happiness like that of guarding from mildew the laurels on thebrows of the Muses' Sons. What a dear kind soul of a critic is oldChristopher North! Watering the flowers of poetry, and removing theweeds that might choke them--letting in the sunshine upon them, andfencing them from the blast--proclaiming where the gardens grow, andleading boys and virgins into the pleasant alleys--teaching hearts tolove and eyes to see their beauty, and classifying, by the attributes ithas pleased nature to bestow on the various orders, the plants ofParadise--This is our occupation--and the happiness of witnessing themall growing in the light of admiration is our reward. 

Finding our way back as we choose to Ivy-cottage, we cross the woodenbridge, and away along the western shore of Rydal-mere. Hence you seethe mountains in magnificent composition, and craggy coppices withintervening green fields shelving down to the lake margin. It is a smalllake, not much more than a mile round, and of a very peculiar character. One memorable cottage only, as far as we remember, peeps on its shorefrom a grove of sycamores, a statesman's pleasant dwelling; and thereare the ruins of another on a slope near the upper end, the circle ofthe garden still visible. Everything has a quiet but wildish pastoraland sylvan look, and the bleating of sheep fills the hollow of thehills. The lake has a reedy inlet and outlet, and the angler thinks ofpike when he looks upon such harbours. There is a single boat-house, where the Lady of the Hall has a padlocked and painted barge forpleasure parties; and the heronry on the high pine-trees of the onlyisland connects the scene with the ancient park of Rydal, whose oakwoods, though thinned and decayed, still preserve the majestic andvenerable character of antiquity and baronial state. 

Having taken a lingering farewell of Rydal-mere, and of the newChapel-tower, that seems among the groves already to be an antique, wemay either sink down to the stream that flows out of Grassmere andconnects the two lakes, crossing a wooden bridge, and then joining thenew road that sweeps along to the Village, or we may keep up on the faceof the hill, and by a terrace-path reach the Loughrigg-road, a fewhundred yards above Tail-end, a pretty cottage-ornée which you willobserve crowning a wooded eminence, and looking cheerfully abroad overall the vale. There is one Mount in particular, whence we see toadvantage the delightful panorama--encircling mountains--Grassmere Lakefar down below your feet, with its one green pastoral isle, sylvanshores, and emerald meadows--huts and houses sprinkled up and down inall directions--the village partly embowered in groves, and partly openbelow the shadow of large single trees--and the Church-tower, almostalways a fine feature in the scenery of the north of England, standingin stately simplicity among the clustering tenements, nor dwindled evenby the great height of the hills. 

It is pleasant to lose sight entirely of a beautiful scene, and to plodalong for a few hundred yards in almost objectless shadow. Ourconceptions and feelings are bright and strong from the nearness oftheir objects, yet the dream is somewhat different from the reality. Allat once, at a turning of the road, the splendour reappears like anunfurled banner, and the heart leaps in the joy of the senses. This sortof enjoyment comes upon you before you reach the Village of Grassmerefrom the point of vision above described, and a stranger sometimes isapt to doubt if it be really the same Lake--that one island, and thosefew promontories, shifting into such varied combinations with thevarying mountain-ridges and ranges, that show top over top inbewildering succession, and give hints of other valleys beyond, and ofTarns rarely visited, among the moorland wastes. A single long dimshadow, falling across the water, alters the whole physiognomy of thescene--nor less a single bright streak of sunshine, brightening up somefeature formerly hidden, and giving animation and expression to thewhole face of the Lake. 

About a short mile from the Village Inn, you will pass by without seeingit--unless warned not to do so--one of the most singularly beautifulhabitations in the world. It belongs to a gentleman of the name ofBarber, and, we believe, has been almost entirely built by him--theoriginal hut on which his taste has worked having been a mere shell. Thespirit of the place seems to us to be that of Shadowy Silence. Itsbounds are small; but it is an indivisible part of a hill-side so secretand sylvan, that it might be the haunt of the roe. You hear the tinkleof a rill, invisible among the hazels--a bird sings or flutters--a beehums his way through the bewildering wood--but no louder sound. Somefine old forest-trees extend widely their cool and glimmering shade; anda few stumps or armless trunks, whose bulk is increased by a load of ivythat hides the hollow wherein the owls have their domicile, give an airof antiquity to the spot, that, but for other accompaniments, wouldalmost be melancholy. As it is, the scene has a pensive character. Asyet you have seen no house, and wonder whither the gravel-walks are toconduct you, winding fancifully and fantastically through thesmooth-shaven lawn, bestrewed by a few large leaves of thehorse-chestnut or sycamore. But there are clustered verandas where thenightingale might woo the rose, and lattice-windows reaching from eavesto ground-sill, so sheltered that they might stand open in storm andrain, and tall circular chimneys, shaped almost like the stems of thetrees that overshadow the roof irregular, and over all a gleam of bluesky and a few motionless clouds. The noisy world ceases to be, and thetranquil heart, delighted with the sweet seclusion, breathes, "Oh! thatthis were my cell, and that I were a hermit!"

But you soon see that the proprietor is not a hermit; for everywhere youdiscern unostentatious traces of that elegance and refinement thatbelong to social and cultivated life; nothing rude and rough-hewn, yetnothing prim and precise. Snails and spiders are taught to keep theirown places; and among the flowers of that hanging garden on a sunnyslope, not a weed is to be seen, for weeds are beautiful only by thewayside, in the matting of hedge-roots, by the mossy stone, and thebrink of the well in the brae--and are offensive only when they intrudeinto society above their own rank, and where they have the air andaccent of aliens. By pretty pebbled steps of stairs you mount up fromplatform to platform of the sloping woodland banks--the prospectwidening as you ascend, till from a bridge that spans a leaping rivulet, you behold in full blow all Grassmere Vale, Village, Church-tower, andLake, the whole of the mountains, and a noble arch of sky, thecircumference of that little world of peace. 

Circumscribed as are the boundaries of this place, yet the grounds areso artfully, while one thinks so artlessly, laid out, that, wanderingthrough their labyrinthine recesses, you might believe yourself in anextensive wilderness. Here you come out upon a green open glade (you seeby the sun-dial it is past seven o'clock)--there the arms of an immensetree overshadow what is in itself a scene--yonder you have an alley thatserpentises into gloom and obscurity--and from that cliff you doubtlesswould see over the tree-tops into the outer and airy world. With all itsnatural beauties is intermingled an agreeable quaintness, that shows theowner has occasionally been working in the spirit of fancy, almostcaprice; the tool-house in the garden is not without its ornaments--thebarn seems habitable, and the byre has somewhat the appearance of achapel. You see at once that the man who lives here, instead of beingsick of the world, is attached to all elegant socialities and amities;that he uses silver cups instead of maple bowls, shows his scallop-shellamong other curiosities in his cabinet, and will treat the passingpilgrim with pure water from the spring, if he insists upon thatbeverage, but will first offer him a glass of the yellow cowslip-wine, the cooling claret, or the sparkling champagne. 

Perhaps we are all beginning to get a little hungry, but it is too soonto breakfast; so, leaving the village of Grassmere on the right, keepyour eye on Helm-crag, while we are finding, without seeking, our way upEasdale. Easdale is an arm of Grassmere, and in the words of Mr Greenthe artist, "it is in places profusely wooded, and charminglysequestered among the mountains. " Here you may hunt the waterfalls, inrainy weather easily run down, but difficult of detection in a drought. Several pretty rustic bridges cross and recross the main stream and itstributaries; the cottages, in nook and on hill-side, are among the mostpicturesque and engaging in the whole country; the vale widens intospacious and noble meadow-grounds, on which might suitably stand themansion of any nobleman in England--as you near its head, everythinggets wild and broken, with a slight touch of dreariness, and by no verydifficult ascent we might reach Easdale-tarn in less than an hour'swalking from Grassmere--a lonely and impressive scene, and the haunt ofthe angler almost as frequently as of the shepherd. 

How far can we enjoy the beauty of external nature under a sharpappetite for breakfast or dinner? On our imagination the effect ofhunger is somewhat singular. We no longer regard sheep, for instance, asthe fleecy or the bleating flock. Their wool or their baaing is nothingto us--we think of necks, and jigots, and saddles of mutton; and eventhe lamb frisking on the sunny bank is eaten by us in the shape ofsteaks and fry. If it is in the morning, we see no part of the cow buther udder, distilling richest milkiness. Instead of ascending to heavenon the smoke of a cottage chimney, we put our arms round the column, anddescend on the lid of the great pan preparing the family breakfast. Every interesting object in the landscape seems edible--our mouth watersall over the vale--as the village clock tolls eight, we involuntarilysay grace, and Price on the Picturesque gives way to Meg Dods's Cookery. 

Mrs Bell of the Red Lion Inn, Grassmere, can give a breakfast with anywoman in England. She bakes incomparable bread--firm, close, compact, and white, thin-crusted, and admirably raised. Her yeast always workswell. What butter! Before it a primrose must hide its unyellowed head. Then jam of the finest quality, goose, rasp, and strawberry! and as thejam is, so are her jellies. Hens cackle that the eggs are fresh--andthese shrimps were scraping the sand last night in the Whitehaven sea. What glorious bannocks of barley-meal! Crisp wheaten cakes, too, nothicker than a wafer. Do not, our good sir, appropriate that cut ofpickled salmon; it is heavier than it looks, and will weigh about fourpounds. One might live a thousand years, yet never weary of suchmutton-ham. Virgin honey, indeed! Let us hope that the bees were notsmothered, but by some gracious disciple of Bonar or Huber decoyed froma full hive into an empty one, with half the summer and all the autumnbefore them to build and saturate their new Comb-Palace. No bad thingis a cold pigeon-pie, especially of cushats. To hear them cooing in thecentre of a wood is one thing, and to see them lying at the bottom of apie is another--which is the better, depends entirely on time, place, and circumstance. Well, a beef-steak at breakfast is ratherstartling--but let us try a bit with these fine ingenuous youthfulpotatoes, from a light sandy soil on a warm slope. Next to the countryclergy, smugglers are the most spiritual of characters; and we verilybelieve that to be "sma' still. " Our dear sir--you are in orders, webelieve--will you have the goodness to return thanks? Yes, now you mayring the bell for the bill. Moderate indeed! With a day's work beforeone, there is nothing like the deep broad basis of breakfast. 

STROLL TO GRASSMERE. 

SECOND SAUNTER. 

It is yet only ten o'clock--and what a multitude of thoughts andfeelings, sights and sounds, lights and shadows, have been ours sincesunrise! Had we been in bed, all would have remained unfelt and unknown. But, to be sure, one dream might have been worth them all. Dreams, however, when they are over, are gone, be they of bliss or bale, heavenor the shades. No one weeps over a dream. With such tears no one wouldsympathise. Give us reality, "the sober certainty of waking bliss, " andto it memory shall cling. Let the object of our sorrow belong to theliving world, and, transient though it be, its power may be immortal. Away then, as of little worth, all the unsubstantial and wavering worldof dreams, and in their place give us the very humblest humanities, somuch the better if enjoyed in some beautiful scene of nature like this, where all is steadfast but the clouds, whose very being is change, andthe flow of waters that have been in motion since the Flood. 

Ha! a splendid equipage with a coronet. And out steps, handed by herelated husband, a high-born beautiful and graceful bride. They aremaking a tour of the Lakes, and the honeymoon hath not yet filled herhorns. If there be indeed such a thing as happiness on this earth, hereit is--youth, elegance, health, rank, riches, and love--all united inties that death alone can sunder. How they hang towards each other--theblissful pair! Blind in their passion to all the scenery they came toadmire, or beholding it but by fits and snatches, with eyes that can seeonly one object. She hath already learnt to forget father and mother, and sister and brother, and all the young creatures like herself--everyone--that shared the pastimes and the confidence of her virginyouthhood. With her, as with Genevieve--

 "All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame!"

And will this holy state of the spirit endure? No--it will fade, andfade, and fade away, so imperceptibly, so unconsciously (so like theshortening of the long summer-days, that lose minute after minute of thelight, till again we hear the yellow leaves rustling in autumnaltwilight), that the heart within that snow-drifted bosom will know nothow great has been the change, till at last it shall be told the truth, and know that all mortal emotion, however paradisiacal, is born to die. 

Fain would we believe that forebodings like these are, on all suchoccasions, whispered by a blind and ignorant misanthropy, and that ofwedded life it may generally be said, "O, happy state, where souls together draw, Where love is liberty, and nature law!"

What profound powers of affection, grief, pity, sympathy, delight, andreligion belong, by its constitution, to the frame of every human soul!And if the courses of life have not greatly thwarted the divinedispensations of nature, will they not all rise into genial play withinbosoms consecrated to each other's happiness, till comes between themthe cold hand of death? It would seem that everything fair and good mustflourish under that holy necessity--everything foul and bad fade away;and that no quarrel or unkindness could ever be between pilgrimstravelling together through time to eternity, whether their path leadthrough an Eden or a waste. Habit itself comes with humble hearts to begracious and benign; they who have once loved, will not, for that veryreason, cease to love; memory shall brighten when hope decays; and ifthe present be not now so blissful, so thrilling, so steeped in raptureas it was in the golden prime, yet shall it without repining suffice tothem whose thoughts borrow unconsciously sweet comforts from the pastand future, and have been taught by mutual cares and sorrows to indulgetempered expectations of the best earthly felicity. And is it not so?How much tranquillity and contentment in human homes! Calm onflowings oflife shaded in domestic privacy, and seen but at times coming out intothe open light! What brave patience under poverty! What beautifulresignation in grief! Riches take wings to themselves and flee away--yetwithout and within the door there is the decency of a changed, not anunhappy lot--The clouds of adversity darken men's characters even as ifthey were the shadows of dishonour, but conscience quails not in thegloom--The well out of which humility hath her daily drink, is nearlydried up to the very spring, but she upbraideth not Heaven--Children, those flowers that make the hovel's earthen floor delightful as theglades of Paradise, wither in a day, but there is holy comfort in themother's tears; nor are the groans of the father altogether withoutrelief--for they have gone whither they came, and are blooming now inthe bowers of heaven. 

Reverse the picture--and tremble for the fate of those whom God hathmade one, and whom no one man must put asunder. In common natures, whathot and sensual passions, whose gratification ends in indifference, disgust, loathing, or hatred! What a power of misery, from fretting tomadness, lies in that mean but mighty word--Temper! The face, to whosemeek beauty smiles seemed native during the days of virgin love, showsnow but a sneer, a scowl, a frown, or a glare of scorn. The shape ofthose features is still fine--the eye of the gazelle--the Grecian noseand forehead--the ivory teeth, so small and regular--and thin line ofruby lips breathing Circassian luxury--the snow-drifts of the bosomstill heave there--a lovelier waist Apollo never encircled stepping fromthe chariot of the sun--nor limbs more graceful did ever Diana veilbeneath the shadows of Mount Latmos. But she is a fiend--a devilincarnate, and the sovereign beauty of three counties has made yourhouse a hell. 

But suppose that you have had the sense and sagacity to marry a homelywife--or one comely at the best--nay, even that you have sought tosecure your peace by admitted ugliness--or wedded a woman whom alltongues call--plain; then may an insurance-ticket, indeed, flame likethe sun in miniature on the front of your house--but what Joint-StockCompany can undertake to repay the loss incurred by the perpetualsingeing of the smouldering flames of strife, that blaze up withoutwarning at bed and board, and keep you in an everlasting alarm of fire?We defy you to utter the most glaring truth that shall not be instantlycontradicted. The most rational proposals for a day or hour of pleasure, at home or abroad, are on the nail negatived as absurd. If you dine athome every day for a month, she wonders why nobody asks you out, andfears you take no trouble to make yourself agreeable. If you dine fromhome one day in a month, then are you charged with being addicted totavern-clubs. Children are perpetual bones of contention--there ishatred and sorrow in house-bills--rent and taxes are productive ofendless grievances; and although education be an excellent thing--indeedquite a fortune in itself--especially to a poor Scotsman going toEngland, where all the people are barbarous--yet is it irritatinglyexpensive when a great Northern Nursery sends out its hordes, and gawkyhoydens and hobbletehoys are getting themselves accomplished in theforeign languages, music, drawing, geography, the use of the globes, andthe dumb-bells. 

 "Let observation, with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru, "

(two bad lines, by the way, though written by Dr Johnson)--andobservation will find the literature of all countries filled withsarcasms against the marriage-life. Our old Scottish songs and balladsespecially, delight in representing it as a state of ludicrous miseryand discomfort. There is little or no talk of horns--the dilemma ofEnglish wit; but every individual moment of every individual minute, ofevery individual hour of every individual day, and so on, has itspeculiar, appropriate, characteristic, and incurable wretchedness. Yetthe delightful thing is, that in spite of all this jeering and gibing, and grinning and hissing, and pointing with the finger--marrying andgiving in marriage, births and christenings, continue their career ofprosperity; and the legitimate population doubles itself somewhere aboutevery thirty-five years. Single houses rise out of the earth--doublehouses become villages--villages towns--towns cities--and our Metropolisis itself a world!

While the lyrical poetry of Scotland is thus rife with reproach againstwedlock, it is equally rife with panegyric on the tender passion thatleads into its toils. In one page you shudder in a cold sweat over themean miseries of the poor "gudeman;" in the next you see, unconscious ofthe same approaching destiny, the enamoured youth lying on his Mary'sbosom beneath the milk-white thorn. The pastoral pipe is tuned under afate that hurries on all living creatures to love; and not one lawfulembrace is shunned from any other fears than those which of themselvesspring up in the poor man's thoughtful heart. The wicked betray, and theweak fall--bitter tears are shed at midnight from eyes once bright asthe day--fair faces never smile again, and many a hut has its brokenheart--hope comes and goes, finally vanquishing, or yielding todespair--crowned passion dies the sated death, or, with increase ofappetite, grows by what it feeds on--wide, but unseen, over all theregions of the land, are cheated hopes, vain desires, gnawing jealousy, dispirited fear, and swarthy-souled revenge--beseechings, seductions, suicides, and insanities--and all, all spring from the root of Love; yetall the nations of the earth call the Tree blest, and long as timeendures, will continue to flock thither panting to devour the fruitage, of which every other golden globe is poison and death. 

Smile away then, with all thy most irresistible blandishments, thouyoung and happy Bride! What business have we to prophesy bedimming tearsto those resplendent eyes? or that the talisman of that witching smilecan ever lose its magic? Are not the high-born daughters of England alsothe high-souled? And have not honour and virtue, and charity andreligion, guarded for centuries the lofty line of thy pure andunpolluted blood? Joyful, therefore, mayst thou be, as the dove in thesunshine on the Tower-top--and as the dove serene, when she sitteth onher nest within the yew-tree's gloom, far within the wood!

Passing from our episode, let us say that we are too well acquaintedwith your taste, feeling, and judgment, to tell you on what objects togaze or glance, in such a scene as the vale and village of Grassmere. Ofyourselves you will find out the nooks and corners from which the prettywhite-washed and flowering cottages do most picturesquely combine witheach other, and with the hills, and groves, and old church-tower. Without our guiding hand will you ascend knoll and eminence, be therepathway or no pathway, and discover for yourselves new Lake-Landscapes. Led by your own sweet and idle, chaste and noble fancies, you willdisappear, single, or in pairs and parties, into little woodywildernesses, where you will see nothing but ground-flowers and aglimmering contiguity of shade. Solitude sometimes, you know, is bestsociety, and short retirement urges sweet return. Various travels orvoyages of discovery may be undertaken, and their grand object attainedin little more than an hour. The sudden whirr of a cushat is anincident, or the leaping of a lamb among the broom. In the quiet ofnature, matchless seems the music of the milkmaid's song--and of thehearty laugh of the haymakers, crossing the meadow in rows, how sweetthe cheerful echo from Helm-crag! Grassmere appears by far the mostbeautiful place in all the Lake-country. You buy a field--build acottage--and in imagination lie (for they are too short to enable you tosit) beneath the shadow of your own trees!

In an English village--highland or lowland--seldom is there any spot sobeautiful as the churchyard. That of Grassmere is especially so, withthe pensive shadows of the old church-tower settling over its cheerfulgraves. Ay, its cheerful graves! Startle not at the word as toostrong--for the pigeons are cooing in the belfry, the stream ismurmuring round the mossy churchyard wall, a few lambs are lying on themounds, and flowers laughing in the sunshine over the cells of the dead. But hark! the bell tolls--one--one--one--a funeral knell, speaking notof time, but of eternity! To-day there is to be a burial--and close tothe wall of the Tower you see the new-dug grave. 

Hush! The sound of singing voices in yonder wood, deadened by the weightof umbrage! Now it issues forth into the clear air, and now all issilence--but the pause speaks of death. Again the melancholy swellascends the sky--and then comes slowly along the funeral procession, thecoffin borne aloft, and the mourners all in white; for it is a virginwho is carried to her last home. Let every head be reverently uncoveredwhile the psalm enters the gate, and the bier is borne for holy ritesalong the chancel of the church, and laid down close to the altar. Asmothered sobbing disturbeth not the service--'tis a human spiritbreathing in accordance with the divine. Mortals weeping for theimmortal--Earth's passions cleaving to one who is now in heaven. 

Was she one flower of many, and singled out by death's unsparing fingerfrom a wreath of beauty, whose remaining blossoms seem now to have lostall their fragrance and all their brightness? Or was she the soledelight of her greyhaired parents' eyes, and is the voice of joyextinguished in their low-roofed home for ever? Had her loveliness beenbeloved, and had her innocent hopes anticipated the bridal-day, nor herheart, whose beatings were numbered, ever feared that narrow bed? Allthat we know is her name and age--you see them glittering on hercoffin--"Anabella Irvine, aged xix years"!

The day seems something dim, now that we are all on our way back toAmbleside; and although the clouds are neither heavier nor more numerousthan before, somehow or other the sun is a little obscured. We must notindulge too long in a mournful mood--yet let us all sit down under theshadow of this grove of sycamores, overshadowing this reedy bay ofRydal-mere, and listen to a Tale of Tears. 

Many a tame tradition, embalmed in a few pathetic verses, lives forages, while the memory of the most affecting incidents, to which geniushas allied no general emotion, fades like the mist, and leavesheart-rending griefs undeplored. Elegies and dirges might indeed havewell been sung amidst the green ruins of yonder Cottage, that looks nowalmost like a fallen wall--at best, the remnants of a cattle-shed shakendown by the storm. 

Thirty years ago--how short a time in national history--how long in thatof private sorrows!--all tongues were speaking of the death that therebefell; and to have seen the weeping, you would have thought that thefuneral could never have been forgotten. But stop now the shepherd onthe hill, and ask him who lived in that nook, and chance is he knows noteven their name, much less the story of their afflictions. It wasinhabited by Allan Fleming, his wife, and an only child, knownfamiliarly in her own small world by the name of LUCY OF THE FOLD. Inalmost every district among the mountains, there is its peculiarpride--some one creature to whom nature has been especially kind, andwhose personal beauty, sweetness of disposition, and felt superiority ofmind and manner, single her out, unconsciously, as an object ofattraction and praise, making her the May-day Queen of the unendingyear. Such a darling was Lucy Fleming ere she had finished herthirteenth year; and strangers, who had heard tell of her loveliness, often dropt in, as if by accident, to see the Beauty of Rydal-mere. Herparents rejoiced in their child; nor was there any reason why theyshould dislike the expression of delight and wonder with which so manyregarded her. Shy was she as a woodland bird, but as fond too of hernest; and when there was nothing near to disturb her, her life wasalmost a perpetual hymn. From joy to sadness, and from sadness to joy;from silence to song, and from song to silence; from stillness like thatof the butterfly on the flower, to motion like that of the same creaturewavering in the sunshine over the wood-top--was to Lucy as welcome achange as the change of lights and shadows, breezes and calms, in themountain-country of her birth. 

One summer day, a youthful stranger appeared at the door of the house, and after an hour's stay, during which Lucy was from home, asked if theywould let him have lodging with them for a few months--a single room forbed and books, and that he would take his meals with the family. Enthusiastic boy! to him poetry had been the light of life, nor did evercreature of poetry belong more entirely than he to the world ofimagination. He had come into the free mountain region from theconfinement of college walls, and his spirit expanded within him like arainbow. No eyes had he for realities--all nature was seen in the lightof genius--not a single object at sunrise and sunset the same. All wasbeautiful within the circle of the green hill-tops, whether shrouded inthe soft mists or clearly outlined in a cloudless sky. Home, friends, colleges, cities--all sunk away into oblivion, and HARRY HOWARD felt asif wafted off on the wings of a spirit, and set down in a land beyondthe sea, foreign to all he had before experienced, yet in its perfectand endless beauty appealing every hour more tenderly and strongly to aspirit awakened to new power, and revelling in new emotion. In thatcottage he took up his abode. In a few weeks came a library of books inall languages; and there was much wondering talk over all thecountryside about the mysterious young stranger who now lived at theFold. 

Every day--and, when he chose to absent himself from his haunts amongthe hills, every hour was Lucy before the young poet's eyes--and everyhour did her beauty wax more beautiful in his imagination. Who Mr Howardwas, or even if that were indeed his real name, no one knew; but nonedoubted that he was of gentle birth, and all with whom he had everconversed in his elegant amenity, could have sworn that a youth so blandand free, and with such a voice, and such eyes, would not have injuredthe humblest of God's creatures, much less such a creature as Lucy ofthe Fold. It was indeed even so--for, before the long summer days weregone, he who had never had a sister, loved her even as if she had slepton the same maternal bosom. Father or mother he now had none--indeed, scarcely one near relation--although he was rich in this world's riches, but in them poor in comparison with the noble endowments that nature hadlavished upon his mind. His guardians took little heed of the splendidbut wayward youth--and knew not now whither his fancies had carried him, were it even to some savage land. Thus the Fold became to him the onedearest roof under the roof of heaven. All the simple ongoings of thathumble home, love and imagination beautified into poetry; and all therough or coarser edges of lowly life were softened away in the light ofgenius that transmuted everything on which it fell; while all the silentintimations which nature gave there of her primal sympathies, in the hutas fine and forceful as in the hall, showed to his excited spiritpre-eminently lovely, and chained it to the hearth, around which wasread the morning and the evening prayer. 

What wild schemes does not love imagine, and in the face of veryimpossibility achieve! "I will take Lucy to myself, if it should be inplace of all the world. I will myself shed light over her being, till ina new spring it shall be adorned with living flowers that fade not away, perennial and self-renewed. In a few years the bright docile creaturewill have the soul of a very angel--and then, before God and at His holyaltar, mine shall she become for ever--here and hereafter--in thisparadise of earth, and, if more celestial be, in the paradise ofheaven. "

Thus two summers and two winters wheeled away into the past; and in thechange, imperceptible from day to day, but glorious at last, wrought onLucy's nature by communication with one so prodigally endowed, scarcelycould her parents believe it was their same child, except that she wasdutiful as before, as affectionate, and as fond of all the familiarobjects, dead or living, round and about her birthplace. She had nowgrown to woman's stature--tall, though she scarcely seemed so exceptwhen among her playmates; and in her maturing loveliness, fulfilling, and far more than fulfilling, the fair promise of her childhood. Neveronce had the young stranger--stranger no more--spoken to daughter, father, or mother, of his love. Indeed, for all that he felt towardsLucy there must have been some other word than love. Tenderness, whichwas almost pity--an affection that was often sad--wonder at hersurpassing beauty, nor less at her unconsciousness of itspower--admiration of her spiritual qualities, that ever rose up to meetinstruction as if already formed--and that heart-throbbing that stirsthe blood of youth when the innocent eyes it loves are beaming in thetwilight through smiles or through tears, --these, and a thousand otherfeelings, and above all, the creative faculty of a poet's soul, nowconstituted his very being when Lucy was in presence, nor forsook himwhen he was alone among the mountains. 

At last it was known through the country that Mr Howard--the stranger, the scholar, the poet, the elegant gentleman, of whom nobody knew much, but whom everybody loved, and whose father must at the least have been alord, was going--in a year or less--to marry the daughter of AllanFleming--Lucy of the Fold. O, grief and shame to the parents--if stillliving--of the noble Boy! O, sorrow for himself when his passiondies--when the dream is dissolved--and when, in place of the angel oflight who now moves before him, he sees only a child of earth, lowlyborn, and long rudely bred--a being only fair as many others are fair, sister in her simplicity to maidens no less pleasing than she, andpartaking of many weaknesses, frailties, and faults now unknown toherself in her happiness, and to him in his love! Was there no one torescue them from such a fate--from a few months of imaginary bliss, andfrom many years of real bale? How could such a man as Allan Fleming beso infatuated as sell his child to fickle youth, who would soon deserther broken-hearted? Yet kind thoughts, wishes, hopes, and beliefsprevailed; nor were there wanting stories of the olden time, oflow-born maidens married to youths of high estate, and raised from hutto hall, becoming mothers of a lordly line of sons, that werecounsellors to Kings and Princes. 

In Spring, Mr Howard went away for a few months--it was said to thegreat city--and on his return at midsummer, Lucy was to be his bride. They parted with a few peaceful tears, and though absent were stilltogether. And now a letter came, saying that before another Sabbath hewould be at the Fold. A few fields in Easdale, long mortgaged beyondtheir fee-simple by the hard-working statesman from whom theyreluctantly were passing away, had meanwhile been purchased by MrHoward, and in that cottage they were to abide, till they had built forthemselves a house a little further up the side of the sylvan hill, below the shadow of Helm-crag. Lucy saw the Sabbath of his return andits golden sun, but it was in her mind's eye only; for ere it was todescend behind the hills, she was not to be among the number of livingthings. 

Up Forest-Ullswater the youth had come by the light of the setting sun;and as he crossed the mountains to Grassmere by the majestic pass of theHawse, still as every new star arose in heaven, with it arose aslustrous a new emotion from the bosom of his betrothed. The midnighthour had been fixed for his return to the Fold; and as he reached thecliffs above White-moss, according to agreement a light was burning inthe low window, the very planet of love. It seemed to shed a brightserenity over all the vale, and the moon-glittering waters of Rydal-merewere as an image of life, pure, lonely, undisturbed, and at the pensivehour how profound! "Blessing and praise be to the gracious God! whoframed my spirit so to delight in His beautiful and gloriouscreation--blessing and praise to the Holy One, for the boon of my Lucy'sinnocent and religious love!" Prayers crowded fast into his soul, andtears of joy fell from his eyes, as he stood at the threshold, almostafraid, in the trembling of life-deep affection, to meet her firstembrace. 

In the silence, sobs and sighs, and one or two long deep groans! Then inanother moment, he saw, through the open door of the room where Lucyused to sleep, several figures moving to and fro in the light, and onefigure upon its knees--who else could it be but her father! Unnoticed hebecame one of the pale-faced company--and there he beheld her on herbed, mute and motionless, her face covered with a deplorablebeauty--eyes closed, and her hands clasped upon her breast! "Dead, dead, dead!" muttered in his ringing ears a voice from the tombs, and he felldown in the midst of them with great violence upon the floor. 

Encircled with arms that lay round him softer and silkier far thanflower-wreaths on the neck of a child who has laid him down from play, was he when he awoke from that fit--lying even on his own maiden's bed, and within her very bosom, that beat yet, although soon about to beat nomore. At that blest awakening moment, he might have thought he saw thefirst glimpse of light of the morning after his marriage-day; for herface was turned towards his breast, and with her faint breathings hefelt the touch of tears. Not tears alone now bedimmed those eyes, fortears he could have kissed away; but the blue lids were heavy withsomething that was not slumber--the orbs themselves were scarcelyvisible--and her voice--it was gone, to be heard never again, till inthe choir of white-robed spirits that sing at the right hand of God. 

Yet no one doubted that she knew him--him who had dropt down, like asuperior being, from another sphere, on the innocence of her simplechildhood--had taught her to know so much of her own soul--to love herparents with a profounder and more holy love--to see, in characters moredivine, Heaven's promises of forgiveness to every contrite heart--and alife of perfect blessedness beyond death and the grave. A smile thatshone over her face the moment that she had been brought to know that hehad come at last, and was nigh at hand--and that never left it while herbosom moved--no--not for all the three days and nights that he continuedto sit beside the corpse, when father and mother were forgetting theircares in sleep--that smile told all who stood around, watching herdeparture, neighbour, friend, priest, parent, and him the suddenlydistracted and desolate, that in the very moment of expiration she knewhim well, and was recommending him and his afflictions to the pity ofOne who died to save sinners. 

Three days and three nights, we have said, did he sit beside her who sosoon was to have been his bride; and come or go who would into the room, he saw them not--his sight was fixed on the winding-sheet, eyeing it, without a single tear, from feet to forehead, and sometimes looking upto heaven. As men forgotten in dungeons have lived miserably longwithout food, so did he--and so he would have done, on and on to themost far-off funeral day. From that one chair, close to the bedside, henever rose. Night after night, when all the vale was hushed, he neverslept. Through one of the midnights there had been a great thunderstorm, the lightning smiting a cliff close to the cottage; but it seemed thathe heard it not--and during the floods of next day, to him the roaringvale was silent. On the morning of the funeral, the old people--for nowthey seemed to be old--wept to see him sitting still beside their deadchild; for each of the few remaining hours had now its own sad office, and a man had come to nail down the coffin. Three black specks suddenlyalighted on the face of the corpse--and then off--and on--and away--andreturning--was heard the buzzing of large flies, attracted by beauty inits corruption. "Ha--ha!" starting up, he cried in horror--"What birdsof prey are these, whom Satan has sent to devour the corpse?" He becamestricken with a sort of palsy--and, being led out to the open air, waslaid down, seemingly as dead as her within, on the green daisied turf, where, beneath the shadow of the sycamore, they had so often sat, building up beautiful visions of a long blissful life. 

The company assembled--but not before his eyes--the bier was lifted upand moved away down the sylvan slope, and away round the head of theLake, and over the wooden bridge, accompanied, here and there, as itpassed the wayside houses on the road to Grassmere, by the sound ofpsalms--but he saw--he heard not;--when the last sound of the spaderebounded from the smooth arch of the grave, he was not by--but all thewhile he was lying where they left him, with one or two pitying dalesmenat his head and feet. When he awoke again and rose up, the cottage ofthe Fold was as if she had never been born--for she had vanished forever and aye, and her sixteen years' smiling life was all extinguishedin the dust. 

Weeks and months passed on, and still there was a vacant wildness in hiseyes, and a mortal ghastliness all over his face, inexpressive of areasonable soul. It scarcely seemed that he knew where he was, or inwhat part of the earth, yet, when left by himself, he never sought tomove beyond the boundaries of the Fold. During the first faintglimmerings of returning reason, he would utter her name, over and overmany times, with a mournful voice, but still he knew not that she wasdead--then he began to caution them all to tread softly, for that sleephad fallen upon her, and her fever in its blessed balm might abate--thenwith groans too affecting to be borne by those who heard them, he wouldask why, since she was dead, God had the cruelty to keep him, herhusband, in life; and finally, and last of all, he imagined himself inGrassmere Churchyard, and clasping a little mound on the green, which itwas evident he thought was her grave, he wept over it for hours andhours, and kissed it, and placed a stone at its head, and sometimes allat once broke out into fits of laughter, till the hideous fainting-fitsreturned, and after long convulsions left him lying as if stone-dead. Asfor his bodily frame, when Lucy's father lifted it up in his arms, little heavier was it than a bundle of withered fern. Nobody supposedthat one so miserably attenuated and ghost-like could for many days bealive--yet not till the earth had thrice revolved round the sun did thatbody die, and then it was buried far away from the Fold, the banks ofRydal-water, and the sweet mountains of Westmoreland; for after passinglike a shadow through many foreign lands, he ceased his pilgrimage inPalestine, even beneath the shadow of Mount Sion, and was laid, with alock of hair--which, from the place it held, strangers knew to havebelonged to one dearly beloved--close to his heart, on which it had lainso long, and was to moulder away in darkness together, by Christianhands and in a Christian sepulchre. 

L'ENVOY. 

Periodical literature is a type of many of the most beautiful things andinteresting events in nature; or say, rather, that _they_ are types of_it_--the Flowers and the Stars. As to Flowers, they are the prettiestperiodicals ever published in folio--the leaves are wire-wove andhot-pressed by Nature's self; their circulation is wide over all theland; from castle to cottage they are regularly taken in; as old agebends over them, his youth is renewed; and you see childhood poring uponthem pressed close to its very bosom. Some of them are ephemeral--theircontents are exhaled between the rising and setting sun. Once a-weekothers break through their green, pink, or crimson cover; and howdelightful, on the seventh day, smiles in the sunshine the SabbathFlower--a Sunday publication perused without blame by the mostreligious--even before morning prayer! Each month, indeed, throughoutthe whole year, has its own Flower periodical. Some are annual, somebiennial, some triennial, and there are perennials that seem to live forever--and yet are still periodical--though our love will not allow us toknow when they die, and phoenix-like reappear from their own ashes. Somuch for Flowers--typifying or typified;--leaves emblematical ofpages--buds of binding--dew-veils of covers--and the wafting away ofbloom and fragrance like the dissemination of fine feelings, brightfancies, and winged thoughts. 

The Flowers are the periodicals of the earth--the Stars are theperiodicals of heaven. With what unfailing regularity do the numbersissue forth! Hesperus and Lucifer! ye are one concern. The Pole-star isstudied by all nations. How popular the poetry of the Moon! On whatsubject does not the Sun throw light? No fear of hurting your eyes byreading that fine clear large type on that softened page. As you turnthem over, one blue, another yellow, and another green, all are alikedelightful to the pupil, dear as the very apple of his eye. Yes, thegreat Periodical Press of heaven is unceasingly at work--night and day;the only free power all over the world--'tis indeed like the air webreathe--if we have it not, we die. 

Look, then, at all paper periodicals with pleasure, for sake of theFlowers and the Stars. Suppose them all extinct, and life would be likea flowerless earth, a starless heaven. We should soon forget theSeasons. The periodicals of the External would soon all lose theirmeaning, were there no longer any periodicals of the Internal. These arethe lights and shadows of life, merrily dancing or gravely stealing overthe dial; remembrancers of the past--teachers of the present--prophetsof the future hours. Were they all dead, Spring would in vain renew herpromise--wearisome would be the interminable summer days--the fruits ofautumn tasteless--the winter ingle blink mournfully round the hearth. What are the blessed Seasons themselves, in nature and in Thomson, butperiodicals of a larger growth? We should doubt the goodness of thatman's heart, who loved not the periodical literature of earth andsky--who would not weep to see one of its flowers wither--one of itsstars fall--one beauty die on its humble bed--one glory drop from itslofty sphere. Let them bloom and burn on--flowers in which there is nopoison, stars in which there is no disease--whose blossoms are allsweet, and whose rays are all sanative--both alike steeped in dew, andboth, to the fine ear of nature's worshipper, bathed in music. 

Pomposo never reads Magazine poetry--nor, we presume, ever looks at afield or wayside flower. He studies only the standard authors. He walksonly in gardens with high brick walls--and then admires only at a hintfrom the head-gardener. Pomposo does not know that many of the finestpoems of our day first appeared in magazines--or, worse still, innewspapers; and that in our periodicals, daily and weekly, equally withthe monthlies and quarterlies, is to be found the best criticism ofpoetry anywhere extant, superior far, in that unpretending form, tonine-tenths of the learned lucubrations of Germany--though some of it, too, is good--almost as one's heart could desire. What is thecirculation even of a popular volume of verses--if any such therebe--to that of a number of Maga? Hundreds of thousands at home peruse itbefore it is a week old--as many abroad ere the moon has thrice renewedher horns; and the Series ceases not--regular as the Seasons that makeup the perfect year. Our periodical literature--say of it what youwill--gives light to the heads and heat to the hearts of millions of ourrace. The greatest and best men of the age have not disdained to belongto the brotherhood; and thus the hovel holds what must not be missing inthe hall--the furniture of the cot is the same as that of thepalace--and duke and ditcher read their lessons from the same page. 

Good people have said, and it would be misanthropical to disbelieve ordiscredit their judgment, that our Prose is original--nay, has created anew era in the history of Periodical Literature. Only think of that, Christopher, and up with your Tail like a Peacock! Why, there is somecomfort in that reflection, while we sit rubbing our withered hands upand down on these shrivelled shanks. Our feet are on the fender, andthat fire is felt on our face; but we verily believe our ice-cold shankswould not shrink from the application of the red-hot poker. Peter has anotion that but for that red-hot poker the fire would go out; so tohumour him we let it remain in the ribs, and occasionally brandish itround our head in moments of enthusiasm when the Crutch looks tame, andthe Knout a silken leash for Italian Greyhound. 

Old Simonides--old Mimnermus--old Theognis--old Solon-old Anacreon--oldSophocles--old Pindar--old Hesiod--old Homer--and old Methuselah! Whatmean we by the word _old_? All these men are old in three lights--theylived to a raven age--long long ago--and we heard tell of them in ouryouth. Their glory dawned on us in a dream of life's golden prime--andfar away seems now that dawn, as if in another world beyond a millionseas! In that use of the word "old, " far from us is all thought ofdotage or decay. Old are those great personages as the stars are old; aheaven there is in which are seen shining, for ever young, all the mostancient spiritual "orbs of Song. "

In our delight, too, we love to speak of old Venus and of old Cupid--ofold Eve and of old Cleopatra--of old Helen and of old Dalilah; yea, ofold Psyche, though her aerial wings are as rainbow bright as the firsthour she waved them in the eye of the youthful Sun. 

How full of endearment "old boy!"--"old girl!" "Old ChristopherNorth!"--"old Maga!" To our simplest sayings age seems to give aconsecration which youth reveres. And why may not our hand, witheredsomewhat though it be, but yet unpalsied, point out aloft to heedlesseyes single light or constellation, or lily by herself or in groupsunsuspected along the waysides of our mortal pilgrimage?

Age like ours is even more lovable than venerable; and, thinking onourselves, were we a young woman, we should assuredly marry an old man. Indeed, no man ought to marry before thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty;and, were it not that life is so short, soon enough at threescore andten. At seventy you are sager than ever, though scarcely so strong. Youand life love each other as well as ever; yet 'tis unpleasant, whensailing on Windermere or Lochlomond with your bride, to observe the Manin the Honeymoon looking at you with a congratulatory grin ofcondolence, to fear that the old villain will smile over your grave inthe Season of Kirns and Harvest Homes, when the fiddle is heard in everyfarmhouse, and the bagpipes are lowing like cattle on a thousand hills. Fain would he insure his life on the Tipperary Tables. But the enamouredannuitant is haunted with visions of his own Funeral deploying in a longline of chariots--one at the head of all armed with scythes--through thecity, into the wide gates of the Greyfriars. Lovely is his bride inwhite, nor less so his widow in black--more so in grey, portentous of agreat change. Sad, too, to the Sage the thought of leaving hisfirst-born as yet unborn--or if born, haply an elfish Creature with aprecocious countenance, looking as if he had begun life with borrowingten years at least from his own father--auld-farrant as a Fairy, andgash as the Last of the Lairds. 

Dearly do we love the young--yea, the young of all animals--the youngswallows twittering from their straw-built shed--the young lambsbleating on the lea--the young bees, God bless them! on their firstflight away off to the heather--the young butterflies, who, born in themorning, will die of old age ere night--the young salmon-fry glorying inthe gravel at the first feeling of their fins--the young adders basking, ere they can bite, in the sun, as yet unconscious, like suckingsatirists, of their stings--young pigs, pretty dears! all a-squeak withtheir curled tails after prolific grumphie--young lions and tigers, charming cubs! like very Christian children nuzzling in their nurse'sbreast--young devils, ere Satan has sent them to Sin, who keeps afashionable boarding-school in Hades, and sends up into the worldabove-ground only her finished scholars. 

Oh! lad of the lightsome forehead! Thou art smiling at Us; and for thesake of our own Past we enjoy thy Present, and pardon the contumely withwhich thou silently insultest our thin grey hairs. Just such another"were we at Ravensburg. " "_Carpe Diem_" was then our motto, as now it isyours; "no fear that dinner cool, " for we fed then, as you feed now, onflowers and fruits of Eden. We lived then under the reign of the SevenSenses; Imagination was Prime Minister, and Reason, as Lord-Chancellor, had the keeping of the Royal Conscience; and they were kings, nottyrants--we subjects, not slaves. Supercilious as thou art, Puer, artthou as well read in Greek as we were at thy flowering age? Come closethat we may whisper in thine ear--while we lean our left shoulder onthine--our right on the Crutch. The time will come when thou wilt be, OSon of the Morning! even like unto the shadow by thy side! Was he notonce a mountaineer? If he be a vainglorious boaster, give him the lie, Ben-y-glo and thy brotherhood--ye who so often heard our shouts mixedwith the red-deer's belling--tossed back in exultation by Echo, Omnipresent Auditress on youth's golden hills. 

Know, all ye Neophytes, that three lovely Sisters often visit the oldman's solitude--Memory, Imagination, Hope. It would be hard to say whichis the most beautiful. Memory has deep, dark, quiet eyes, and when shecloses their light, the long eyelashes lie like shadows on her pensivecheeks, that smile faintly as if the dreamer were half asleep--avisionary slumber, which sometimes the dewdrop melting on the leaf willbreak, sometimes not the thunder-peal with all its echoes. Imaginationis a brighter and bolder Beauty, with large lamping eyes of uncertaincolour, as if fluctuating with rainbow light, and with features fine asthose which Grecian genius gave to the Muses in the Parian Marble, yetin their daring delicacy defined like the face of Apollo. As forHope--divinest of the divine--Collins, in one long line of light, haspainted the picture of the angel, --

 "And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair. "

All our great prose-writers owe the glory of their power to our greatpoets. Even Hobbes translated Homer as well--that is as ill--asThucidydes; the Epic in his prime after eighty; the History in his youthat forty; and it is fearful to dream what the brainful and heartlessmetaphysician would have been, had he never heard of the Iliad and theOdyssey. What is the greatest of prose-writers in comparison with agreat poet? Nay--we shall not be deterred by the fear ofself-contradiction (see our "Stroll to Grassmere") from asking who is agreat prose-writer? We cannot name one; they all sink in Shakespeare. Campbell finely asks and answers--

 "Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh! what were man? a world without a sun. "

Suppose the world without poetry--how absurd would seem the Sun! Stripthe word "phenomena" of its poetical meaning, and forthwith the wholehuman race, "moving about in worlds _realised_, " would lose their powersof speech. But, thank Heaven! we are Makers all. Inhabiting, we verilybelieve, a real, and substantial, and palpable outer world, whichnevertheless shall one day perish like a scroll, we build our bowers ofjoy in the Apparent, and lie down to rest in a drapery of Dreams. 

Thus we often love to dream our silent way even through the noisy world. And dreamers are with dreamers spiritually, though in the body apart;nor wandering at will think they whence they come, or whither they aregoing, assured by delight that they will reach their journey's end--likea bee, that in many a musical gyration goes humming round men's headsand tree-tops, aimlessly curious in his joy, yet knowing instinctivelythe straight line that intersects all those airy circles, leading to andfro between his hive in the garden and the honey-dew on the heatherhills. 

What can it be that now recalls to our remembrance a few lines of Esop, the delightful old Fabulist, the Merry and Wise, who set our soulsa-thinking and our hearts a-feeling in boyhood, by moral lessons read tothem in almost every incident befalling in life's common walks--solemnas Simonides in this his sole surviving elegiac strain?

 "What weary woe, what endless strife Bring'st thou to mortal men, O Life! Each hour they draw their breath. Alas! the wretches all despair To flee the ills they cannot bear, But through the gates of Death. 

 And yet how beautiful art Thou On Earth and Sea--and on the brow Of starry Heaven! The Night Sends forth the moon Thee to adorn; And thee to glorify the Morn Restores the Orb of Light. 

 Yet all is full of Pain and Dread; Bedrench'd in tears for ever shed; The darkness render'd worse By gleams of joy--and if by Heaven A Blessing seemeth to be given, It changes to a curse. "

Even in our paraphrase are not these lines very impressive? In theoriginal they are much more solemn. They are not querulous, yet full oflamentation. We see in them not a weak spirit quarrelling with fate, buta strong spirit subdued by a sense of the conditions on which life hasbeen given; conditions against which it is vain to contend, to which itis hard to submit, but which may yet be borne by a will derivingstrength from necessity, and in itself noble by nature. Nor, dark as thedoctrine is, can we say it is false. Intellect and Imagination may fromdoleful experiences have too much generalised their inductions, so as toseem to themselves to have established the Law of Misery as the Law ofLife. But perhaps it is only thus that the Truth can be made availableto man, as it regards the necessity of Endurance. All is notwretchedness; but the soul seeks to support itself by the belief that itis really so. Holding that creed, it has no excuse for itself, if at anytime it is stung to madness by misery, or grovels in the dust in apassion of grief; none, if at any time it delivers itself wholly up, abandoning itself to joy, and acts as if it trusted to the permanenceof any blessing under the law of Mutability. The Poet, in the hour ofprofound emotion, declares that every blessing sent from heaven is aNemesis. That oracular response inspires awe. A salutary fear is keptalive in the foolish by such sayings of the wise. Even to us--now--theysound like a knell. Religion has instructed Philosophy; and for Fate wesubstitute God. But all men feel that the foundations of Faith are laidin the dark depths of their being, and that all human happiness ismysteriously allied with pain and sorrow. The most perfect bliss is everawful, as if we enjoyed it under the shadow of some great and graciouswing that would not long be detained from heaven. 

It is not for ordinary minds to attempt giving utterance to suchsimplicities. On their tongues truths become truisms. Sentiments, thatseem always fresh, falling from the lips of moral wisdom, are stale inthe mouths of men uninitiated in the greater mysteries. Genius colourscommon words with an impressive light, that makes them moral to alleyes--breathes into them an affecting music, that steals into all heartslike a revelation and a religion. They become memorable. They pass, asmaxims, from generation to generation; and all because the divinity thatis in every man's bosom responds to the truthful strain it had of yoreitself inspired. Just so with the men we meet on our life-journey. Oneman is impressive in all his looks and words, on all serious or solemnoccasions; and we carry away with us moral impressions from his eyes orlips. Another man says the same things, or nearly so, and perhaps withmore fervour, and his locks are silver. But we forget his person in anhour; nor does his voice ever haunt our solitude. Simonides--Solon--Esop!--why do such lines of theirs as those assure usthey were Sages? The same sentiments are the staple of many a sermonthat has soothed sinners into snoring sleep. 

Men take refuge even in ocular deception from despair. Over buriedbeauty, that once glowed with the same passion that consumes themselves, they build a white marble tomb, or a green grass grave, and forget muchthey ought to remember--all profounder thoughts--while gazing on theepitaph of letters or flowers. 'Tis a vision to their senses, with whichImagination would fain seek to delude Love. And 'tis well that thedeception prospers; for what if Love could bid the burial-ground giveup or disclose its dead? Or if Love's eyes saw through dust as throughair? What if this planet--which men call Earth--were at all times seenand felt to be a cemetery circling round the sun that feeds it withdeath, and not a globe of green animated with life--even as the dewdropon the rose's leaf is animated with millions of invisible creatures, wantoning in bliss born of the sunshine and the vernal prime. 

Are we sermonising overmuch in this our L'ENVOY to these our misnamedRECREATIONS? Even a sermon is not always useless; the few concludingsentences are sometimes luminous, like stars rising on a dull twilight;the little flower that attracted Park's eyes when he was fainting in thedesert, was to him beauteous as the rose of Sharon; there is solemnityin the shadow of quiet trees on a noisy road; a churchyard may be felteven in a village fair; a face of sorrow passes by us in our gaiety, neither unfelt nor unremembered in its uncomplaining calm; and sweetfrom some still house in the city stir is

 "The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise. "

We daresay you are a very modest person; but we are all given toself-glorification, private men and public, individuals and nations; andevery one Era and Ego has been prouder than another of its respectiveachievements. To hear the Present Generation speak, such an elderlygentleman as the Past Generation begins to suspect that his personalorigin lies hid in the darkness of antiquity; and worse--that he is ofthe Pechs. Now, we offer to back the Past Generation against the PresentGeneration, at any feat the Present Generation chooses, and give thelong odds. Say Poetry. Well, we bring to the scratch a fewchampions--such as, Beattie, Cowper, Crabbe, Rogers, Bowles, Burns, Baillie, Campbell, Graham, Montgomery, Scott, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Hunt, Hogg, Shelley, Keates, Pollok, Cunningham, Bloomfield, Clare, and _risum teneatis amici_--Ourselves. 

 "All with waistcoats of red and breeches of blue, And mighty long tails that come swingeing through. "

And at sight of the cavalcade--for each poet is on his Pegasus--thechampions of the Present Generation, accoutred in corduroy kilts andtop-boots, and on animals which, "well do we know, but dare not name, "wheel to the right-about with "one dismal universal bray, " brandishingtheir wooden sabres, till, frenzied by their own trumpeters, they chargemadly a palisade in their own rear, and as dismounted cavalry make goodtheir retreat. This in their strategies is called a drawn battle. 

Heroes, alive or dead, of the Past Generation, we bid you hail!Exceeding happiness to have been born among such Births--to have livedamong such Lives--to be buried among such Graves. O great glory to haveseen such Stars rising one after another larger and more lustrous--attimes, when dilated with delight, more like Moons than Stars--likeSeraphs hovering over the earth they loved, though seeming so high up inheaven!

To whom now may the young enthusiast turn as to Beings of the same kindwith himself, but of a higher order, and therefore with a love thatfears no sin in its idolatry? The young enthusiast may turn to some ofthe living, but he will think more of others who are gone. The dead knownot of his love, and he can hold no communion with the grave. But Poetsnever die--immortal in their works, the Library is the world of spirits;there they dwell, the same as in the flesh, when by meditation mostcleansed and purified--yet with some holy change it seems--a change notin them but in us, who are stilled by the stillness, and attributesomething supernatural to the Living Dead. 

Since first this Golden Pen of ours--given us by One who meant it butfor a memorial--began, many years ago, to let drop on paper a fewcareless words, what quires so distained--some pages, let us hope, withdurable ink--have accumulated on our hands! Some haughty ones havechosen to say rather, how many leaves have been wafted away to wither?But not a few of the gifted--near and afar--have called on us with othervoices--reminding us that long ago we were elected, on sight of ourcredentials--not indeed without a few black balls--into the Brotherhood. The shelf marked with our initials exhibits some half-dozen volumesonly, and has room for scores. It may not be easily found in that vastLibrary; but, humble member as we are, we feel it now to be a point ofhonour to make an occasional contribution to the Club. So here is theFIRST SERIES of what we have chosen to call our RECREATIONS. There havebeen much recasting and remoulding--many alterations, believed by us tohave been wrought with no unskilful spirit of change--cruel, we confess, to our feelings, rejections of numerous lucubrations to their fatherdear--and if we may use such words, not a few new creations, in the same_genial_ spirit in which we worked of old--not always unrewarded bysympathy, which is better than praise. 

For kindness shown when kindness was most needed--for sympathy andaffection--yea, love itself--for grief and pity not misplaced, thoughbestowed in a mistaken belief of our condition, forlorn indeed, but notwholly forlorn--for solace and encouragement sent to us from afar, fromcities and solitudes, and from beyond seas and oceans, from brethren whonever saw our face, and never may see it, we owe a debt of everlastinggratitude; and life itself must leave our heart, that beats not now asit used to beat, but with dismal trepidation, before it forget, or ceaseto remember as clearly as now it hears them, every one of the many wordsthat came sweetly and solemnly to us from the Great and Good. Joy andsorrow make up the lot of our mortal estate, and by sympathy with them, we acknowledge our brotherhood with all our kind. We do far more. Thestrength that is untasked, lends itself to divide the load under whichanother is bowed; and the calamity that lies on the heads of men islightened, while those who at the time are not called to bear, are yetwilling to involve themselves in the sorrow of a brother. So soothed bysuch sympathy may a poor mortal be, that the wretch almost upbraidshimself for transient gleams of gladness, as if he were false to thesorrow which he sighs to think he ought to have cherished more sacredlywithin his miserable heart. 

One word embraces all these pages of ours--Memorials. Friends are lostto us by removal--for then even the dearest are often utterly forgotten. But let something that once was theirs suddenly meet our eyes, and in amoment, returning from the region of the rising or the setting sun, thefriend of our youth seems at our side, unchanged his voice and hissmile; or dearer to our eyes than ever, because of some affectingchange wrought on face and figure by climate and by years. Let it be buthis name written with his own hand on the title-page of a book; or a fewsyllables on the margin of a favourite passage which long ago we mayhave read together, "when life itself was new, " and poetry overflowedthe whole world; or a lock of _her_ hair in whose eyes we first knew themeaning of the word "depth. " And if death hath stretched out the absenceinto the dim arms of eternity--and removed the distance away into thatbourne from which no traveller returns--the absence and the distance ofher on whose forehead once hung the relic we adore--what heart may abidethe beauty of the ghost that doth sometimes at midnight appear at oursleepless bed, and with pale uplifted arms waft over us at once ablessing and a farewell!

Why so sad a word--_Farewell_? We should not weep in wishing welfare, nor sully felicity with tears. But we do weep because evil lies lurkingin wait over all the earth for the innocent and the good, the happy andthe beautiful; and, when guarded no more by our eyes, it seems as if thedemon would leap out upon his prey. Or is it because we are so selfishthat we cannot bear the thought of losing the sight of the happiness ofa beloved object, and are troubled with a strange jealousy of beingsunknown to us, and for ever to be unknown, about to be taken into thevery heart, perhaps, of the friend from whom we are parting, and to whomin that fear we give almost a sullen farewell? Or does the shadow ofdeath pass over us while we stand for the last time together on thesea-shore, and see the ship with all her sails about to voyage away tothe uttermost parts of the earth? Or do we shudder at the thought ofmutability in all created things--and know that ere a few suns shallhave brightened the path of the swift vessel on the sea, we shall bedimly remembered--at last forgotten--and all those days, months, andyears that once seemed eternal, swallowed up in everlasting oblivion?

With us all ambitious desires some years ago expired. Far rather wouldwe read than write nowadays--far rather than read, sit with shut eyesand no book in the room--far rather than so sit, walk about aloneanywhere

 "Beneath the umbrage deep That shades the silent world of memory. "

Shall we live? or "like beasts and common people die?" There issomething harsh and grating in the collocation of these words of the"Melancholy Cowley;" yet he meant no harm, for he was a kind, goodcreature as ever was born, and a true genius. He there has expressedconcisely, but too abruptly, the mere fact of their falling alike andtogether into oblivion. Far better Gray's exquisite words, "On some fond breast the parting soul relies!"

The reliance is firm and sure; the "fond breast" is faithful to itstrust, and dying, transmits it to another; till after two or threetransmissions--holy all, but fainter and dimmer--the pious traditiondies, and all memorial of the love and the delight, the pity and thesorrow, is swallowed up in vacant night. 

Posthumous Fame! Proud words--yet may they be uttered in a humblespirit. The common lot of man is, after death--oblivion. Yet genius, however small its sphere, if conversant with the conditions of the humanheart, may vivify with indestructible life some happy delineations, thatshall continue to be held dear by successive sorrowers in this vale oftears. If the _name_ of the delineator continue to have something sacredin its sound--obscure to the many as it may be, or non-existent--thehope of such posthumous fame is sufficient to one who overrates not hisown endowments. And as the hope has its root in love and sympathy, hewho by his writings has inspired towards himself when in life, some ofthese feelings in the hearts of not a few who never saw his face, seemsto be justified in believing that even after final obliteration of _Hicjacet_ from his tombstone, his memory will be regarded with something ofthe same affection in his REMAINS. 

REMARKS

ON THE

SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS. 

REMARKS

ON THE

SCENERY OF THE HIGHLANDS. 

 [Professor Wilson's "Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands" were first published as a Preface to _Swan's Select Views of the Lakes of Scotland_, 2d edition, 1836. They were not included originally in the "Recreations of Christopher North;" but the harmony of their tone and spirit seemed to recommend them as an appropriate sequel to that work; and accordingly they are now reprinted as such. The thanks of the Editor and Publishers of Professor Wilson's writings are due to the Messrs Fullarton, the proprietors of "Swan's Views, " for the liberal manner in which they have placed this valuable article at their disposal. ]

 * * * * *

In no other country does nature exhibit herself in more various forms ofbeauty and sublimity, than in the North of England and the Highlands ofScotland. This is acknowledged by all who, having studied theircharacter, and become familiar with the feelings it inspires, havecompared the effects produced on their minds by our own mountainousregions, with what they have experienced among the scenery of the Alps. There, indeed, all objects are on so vast a scale, that we are for awhile astonished as we gaze on the gigantic; and all other emotions aresunk in an overwhelming sense of awe that prostrates the imagination. But on recovering from its subjection to the prodigious, that facultyeverywhere recognises in those mighty mountains of dark forests, glittering glaciers, and regions of eternal snow--infinite all--thepower and dominion of the Sublime. True that all these are butmaterials for the mind to work on, and that to its creative energynature owes much of that grandeur which seems to be inherent in her ownforms; yet surely she in herself is great, and there is a regalitybelonging of divine right to such a monarch as Mont Blanc. 

Those are the very regions of sublimity, and if brought into immediatecomparison with them in their immense magnitude, the most magnificentscenery of our own country would no doubt seem to lose its character ofgreatness. But such is not the process of the imagination in herintercourse with Nature. To her sufficient for the day is the goodthereof; and on each new glorious sight being shown to her eyes, sheemploys her God-given power to magnify or irradiate what she beholds, without diminishing or obscuring what she remembers. Thus, to her allthings in nature hold their own due place, and retain for ever their owndue impressions, aggrandised and beautified by mutual reaction in thosevisionary worlds, which by a thought she can create, and which as theyarise are all shadowy representations of realities--new compositions inwhich the image of the earth we tread is reflected fairer or greaterthan any realities, but not therefore less, but more true to the spiritof nature. It is thus that Poets and Painters at once obey and controltheir own inspirations. They visit all the regions of the earth, but tolove, admire, and adore; and the greatest of them all, native to oursoil, from their travel or sojourn in foreign lands, have always broughthome a clearer insight into the character of the scenery of their own, aprofounder affection for it all, and a higher power of imaging itsattributes in colours or in words. In our poetry, more than in anyother, nature sees herself reflected in a magic mirror; and though manya various show passes processionally along its lustre, displaying thescenery of "lands and seas, whatever clime the sun's bright circlewarms, " among them all there are none more delightful or elevating tobehold, than those which genius, inspired by love, has framed of theimagery, which in all her pomp and prodigality heaven has been pleasedto shower, through all seasons, on our own beautiful island. It is notfor us to say whether our native Painters, or the "old masters, " haveshown the greatest genius in landscape; but if the palm must be yieldedto them whose works have been consecrated by a reverence, as often, perhaps, superstitious as religious, we do not fear to say that theirsuperiority is not to be attributed in any degree to the scenery onwhich they exercised the art its beauty had inspired. Whatever may bethe associations connected with the subjects of their landscapes--and weknow not why they should be higher or holier than those belonging toinnumerable places in our own land--assuredly in themselves they are notmore interesting or impressive; nay, though none who have shared with usthe spirit of the few imperfect sentences we have now written, will, fora moment, suppose us capable of instituting an invidious comparisonbetween our own scenery and that of any other country, why should wehesitate to assert that our own storm-loving Northern Isle is equallyrich in all kinds of beauty as the sunny South, and richer far in allkinds of grandeur, whether we regard the forms or colouring ofnature--earth, sea, or air, --

 "Or all the dread magnificence of heaven. "

What other region in all the world like that of the Lakes in the Northof England! And yet how the true lover of nature, while he carries alongwith him its delightful character in his heart, and can so revive anyspot of especial beauty in his imagination, as that it shall seem in aninstant to be again before his very eyes, can deliver himself up, afterthe lapse of a day, to the genius of some savage scene in the Highlandsof Scotland, rent and riven by the fury of some wild sea-loch! Not thatthe regions do not resemble one another, but surely the prevailingspirit of the one--not so of the other--is a spirit of joy and of peace. Her mountains, invested, though they often be, in gloom--and we havebeen more than once benighted during day, as a thunder-cloud thickenedthe shadows that for ever sleep in the deepest dungeons ofHelvellyn--are yet--so it seems to us--such mountains as in nature oughtto belong to "merry England. " They boldly meet the storms, and seen instorms, you might think they loved the trouble; but pitch your tentamong them, and you will feel that theirs is a grandeur that iscongenial with the sunshine, and that their spirit fully rejoices in thebrightness of light. In clear weather, verdant from base to summit, howmajestic their repose! And as mists slowly withdraw themselves inthickening folds up along their sides, the revelation made is still ofmore and more of the beautiful--arable fields below--then coppice woodsstudded with standard trees--enclosed pastures above and among thewoods--broad breasts of close-nibbled herbage here and there adorned byrich dyed rocks, that do not break the expanse--till the whole veil hasdisappeared, and, lo! the long lofty range, with its wavy line, risingand sinking so softly in the blue serenity perhaps of an almostcloudless sky. Yet though we have thus characterised the mountains bywhat we have always felt to be the pervading spirit of the region, chasms and ravines, and cliffs and precipices, are there; in some placesyou see such assemblages as inspire the fear that quakes at the heart, when suddenly struck in the solitude with a sense of the sublime; andthough we have called the mountains green--and during Spring and Summer, in spite of frost or drought, they are green as emerald--yet in Autumnthey are many-coloured, and are girdled with a glow of variegated light, that at sunset sometimes seems like fire kindled in the woods. 

The larger Vales are all serene and cheerful, and among the sylvanknolls with which their wide levels highly cultivated are interspersed, cottages, single or in groups, are frequent, of an architecture alwaysadmirably suited to the scenery, because in a style suggested not bytaste or fancy, which so often disfigure nature to produce thepicturesque, but resorted to for sake of the uses and conveniences ofin-door life, to weather-fend it in storms, and in calm to give it theenjoyment of sunshine. Many of these dwellings are not what are properlycalled cottages, but Statesmen's houses, of ample front, with their manyroofs, overshadowed by a stately grove, and inhabited by the same racefor many generations. All alike have their suitable gardens, and theporches of the poorest are often clustered with roses; for everywhereamong these hills, even in minds the most rude and uncultivated, thereis a natural love of flowers. The villages, though somewhat too muchmodernised in those days of improvement, and indeed not a few of themwith hardly any remains now of their original architecture--nothing oldabout them but the church tower, perhaps the parsonage--are neverthelessgenerally of a pleasing character, and accordant, if not with the greatfeatures of nature, which are unchanged and unchangeable, with theincreased cultivation of the country, and the many villas andornamented cottages that have risen and are rising by every lake andriver side. Rivers indeed, properly so called, there are none amongthese mountains; but every vale, great and small, has at all times itspure and undefiled stream or rivulet; every hill has its hundreds ofevanescent rills, almost every one its own perennial torrent flowingfrom spring, marsh, or tarn; and the whole region is often alive withwaterfalls, of many of which, in its exquisite loveliness, the sceneryis fit for fairy festivals--and of many, in its horrid gloom, forgatherings of gnomes revisiting the glimpses of the moon from theirsubterraneous prisons. One lake there is which has been called "woodedWinandermere, the river lake;" and there is another--Ulswater--which youmight imagine to be a river too, and to have come flowing from afar: theone excelling in isles, and bays, and promontories, serene and gentleall, and perfectly beautiful; the other, matchless in its majesty ofcliff and mountain, and in its old forests, among whose hoary gloom isfor ever breaking out the green light of young generations, andperpetual renovation triumphing over perpetual decay. Of the otherlakes--not river-like--the character may be imagined even from that wehave faintly described of the mountains:--almost every vale has itslake, or a series of lakes--and though some of them have at times astern aspect, and have scenes to show almost of desolation, descendingsheer to the water's edge, or overhanging the depth that looksprofounder in the gloom, yet even these, to eyes and hearts familiarwith their spirit, wear a sweet smile which seldom passes away: witnessWastwater--with its huge single mountains, and hugest of all themountains of England, Scawfell, with its terrific precipices--which, inthe accidents of storm, gloom, or mist, has seemed, to the lonelypasser-by, savage in the extreme--a howling or dreary wilderness--but inits enduring character, is surrounded with all quiet pastoral imagery, the deep glen in which it is imbedded being, in good truth, the abode ofSabbath peace. That hugest mountain is indeed the centre from which allthe vales irregularly diverge; the whole circumjacent region may betraversed in a week; and though no other district of equal extentcontains such variety of the sublime and beautiful, yet the beautiful isso prevalent, that we feel its presence, even in places where it isoverpowered; and on leaving "The Lakes, " our imagination is haunted andpossessed with images, not of dread, but of delight. 

We have sometimes been asked, whether the North of England or theHighlands of Scotland should be visited first; but, simple as thequestion seems, it is really one which it is impossible to answer;though we suspect it would equally puzzle Scotchman or Englishman togive a sufficient reason for his wishing to see any part of any othercountry before he had seen what was best worth seeing in his own. Hisown country ought to be, and generally is, dearest to every man. There, if nothing forbid, he should not only begin his study of nature, butcontinue his education in her school, wherever it may happen to besituated, till he has taken his first degree. We believe that the loveof nature is strong in the hearts of the inhabitants of our Island. Andhow wide and profound may that knowledge of nature be, which the lovingheart has acquired, without having studied her anywhere but within theFour Seas! The impulses that make us desire to widen the circle of ourobservation, are all impulses of delight and love; and it would bestrange indeed, did they not move us, first of all, towards whatever ismost beautiful belonging to our own land. Were it otherwise, it wouldseem as if the heart were faithless to the home-affections, out ofwhich, in their strength, spring all others that are good; and it isessential, we do not doubt, to the full growth of the Love of Country, that we should all have our earliest imaginative delights associatedwith our native soil. Such associations will for ever keep it loveliestto our eyes; nor is it possible that we can ever as perfectly understandthe character of any other; but we can afterwards transfer and transfuseour feelings in imagination kindled by our own will; and the beauty, born before our eyes, among the banks and braes of our childhood, andthen believed to be but there, and nothing like it anywhere else in allthe world, becomes a golden light, "whose home is everywhere, " which ifwe do not darken it, will shine unshadowed in the dreariest places, till"the desert blossom like the rose. "

For our own parts, before we beheld one of "the beautiful fields ofEngland, " we had walked all Scotland thorough, and had seen many asecret place, which now, in the confusion of our crowded memory, seemoften to shift their uncertain ground; but still, wherever theyglimmeringly reappear, invested with the same heavenly light in which, long ago, they took possession of our soul. And now, that we are almostas familiar with the fair sister-land, and love her almost as well asScotland's self, not all the charms in which she is arrayed, and theyare at once graceful and glorious, have ever for a day withdrawn ourdeeper dreams from the regions where, "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young, "

unaccompanied but by our own shadow in the wilderness, we first heardthe belling of the red-deer and the eagle's cry. 

In those days there was some difficulty, if not a little danger, ingetting in among some of the noblest regions of our Alps. They could notbe traversed without strong personal exertion; and a solitary pedestrianexcursion through the Grampians was seldom achieved without a fewincidents that might almost have been called adventures. It is verydifferent now; yet the _Genius Loci_, though tamed, is not subdued; andthey who would become acquainted with the heart of the Highlands, willhave need of some endurance still, and must care nothing about thecondition of earth or sky. Formerly, it was not possible to survey morethan a district or division in a single season, except to thoseunenviable persons who had no other pursuit but that of amusement, andwaged a weary war with time. The industrious dwellers in cities, whosought those solitudes, for a while to relieve their hearts from worldlyanxieties, and gratify that love of nature which is inextinguishable inevery bosom that in youth has beat with its noble inspirations, werecontented with a week or two of such intercommunion with the spirit ofthe mountains, and thus continued to extend their acquaintance with theglorious wildernesses, visit after visit, for years. Now the wholeHighlands, western and northern, may be commanded in a month. Not thatany one who knows what they are, will imagine that they can be exhaustedin a lifetime. The man does not live who knows all worth knowing there;and were they who made the Trigonometrical Survey to be questioned ontheir experiences, they would be found ignorant of thousands of sights, any one of which would be worth a journey for its own sake. But nowsteam has bridged the Great Glen, and connected the two seas. Salt-water lochs the most remote and inaccessible, it has brought withinreach of a summer-day's voyage. In a week a joyous company can gatherall the mainland shores, leaving not one magnificent bay uncircled; and, having rounded St Kilda and

 "the Hebride Isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main, "

and heard the pealing anthem of waves in the cave-cathedral of Staffa, may bless the bells of St Mungo's tolling on the first Sabbath. Thousands and tens of thousands, who, but for those smoking sea-horses, had never been beyond view of the city spires, have seen sights which, though passing by almost like dreams, are not like dreams forgotten, butrevive of themselves in memory and imagination; and, when the heart isweary with the work of the hand, quicken its pulses with a suddenpleasure that is felt like a renovation of youth. 

All through the interior, too, how many hundreds of miles of roads nowintersect regions not long ago deemed impracticable!--firm on the fen, in safety flung across the chasm--and winding smoothly amidstshatterings of rocks, round the huge mountain bases, and down the glensonce felt as if interminable, now travelled almost with the speed of theraven's wing!

In the Highlands now, there is no _Terra Incognita_. But there are manyplaces yet well worth seeing, which it is not easy for all men to find, and to which every man must be his own guide. It is somewhat of aselfish feeling, indeed, but the pride is not a mean one, with which thesolitary pedestrian sits down to contemplate some strange, or wild, orsavage scene, or some view of surpassing sweetness and serenity, so farremoved from the track of men that he can well believe for a time thathis eyes have been the first to behold it, and that for them alone ithas now become a visible revelation. The memory of such places issometimes kept as a secret which we would not communicate but to acongenial friend. They are hallowed by those mysterious "thoughts that, like phantoms, trackless come and go;" no words can tell another how tofind his way thither; and were we ourselves to seek to return, we shouldhave to trust to some consciousness mysterious as the instinct of abird that carries it through the blind night to the place of its desire. 

It is well to have in our mind the conception of a route: but withoutbeing utterly departed from--nay, without ceasing to control us withincertain bounds--it admits of almost any degrees of deviation. We haveknown persons apparently travelling for pleasure, who were afraid toturn a few miles to the right or the left, for fear of subjectingthemselves to the reproach of their own conscience for infirmity ofpurpose. They had "chalked out a route, " and acted as if they had sworna solemn oath to follow it. This is to be a slave among the boundlessdominions of nature, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever itlisteth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought toshackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, thatfor a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings. 

 "A voice calls on me from the mountain depths, And it must be obeyed. "

The voice was our own--and yet though but a whisper from the heart, itseemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice--sweet and wildas an echo. 

On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, whereat night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:

 "Among the hills a hundred homes have I; My table in the wilderness is spread; In these lone spots one honest smile can buy Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed. "

If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powersof Nature--the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. Wemust keep a look-out--

 "To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd, In the grim evening sky;"

that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; andif they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain, and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with theheather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited butfor that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with goldenlight, --for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there, during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced inthe trembling dews. 

There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as theclimate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherdor herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many anight's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage itschanges from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when thelong-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise haveoften perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms, there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and hewill often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power. " Manya glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whoseinstructed eye--beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all thepurple heather--"far off its coming shone. " Leagues of continuousmagnificence have gradually unveiled themselves on either side to him, as he has slowly paced, midway between, along the banks of the River ofWaterfalls; having been assured by the light struggling through themist, that it would not be long till there was a break-up of all thatghastly dreariment, and that the sun would call on him to come forthfrom his cave of shelter, and behold in all its pride the Glenaffronting the sea. 

Some Tourists--as they call themselves--are provided with map andcompass; and we hope they find them of avail in extremities, though wefear few such understand their use. No map can tell--except veryvaguely--how the aspect of the localities, looked at on its lines, islikely to be affected by sun-rise, meridian, or sun-set. Yet, true itis, that every region has its own happy hours, which the fortunate oftenfind unawares, and know them at once to be so the moment they lift uptheir eyes. At such times, while "our hearts rejoice in Nature's joy, "we feel the presence of a spirit that brings out the essential characterof the place, be it of beauty or of grandeur. Harmonious as music isthen the composition of colours and of forms. It becomes a perfectpicture in memory, more and more idealised by imagination, every momentthe veil is withdrawn before it; its aerial lineaments never fade; yetthey too, though their being be but in the soul, are mellowed by thetouch, of time--and every glimpse of such a vision, the longer we live, and the more we suffer, seems suffused with a mournful light, as if seenthrough tears. 

It would serve no good purpose, supposing we had the power, to analysethe composition of that scenery, which in the aggregate so moves eventhe most sluggish faculties, as to make "the dullest wight a poet. " Itrises before the mind in imagination, as it does before the eyes innature; and we can no more speak of it than look at it, but--as a whole. We can indeed fix our mental or our visual gaze on scene after scene tothe exclusion of all beside, and picture it even in words that shall bemore than shadows. But how shall any succession of such pictures, however clear and complete, give an idea of that picture whichcomprehends them all, and infinite as are its manifestations, nevertheless is imbued with one spirit?

Try to forget that in the Highlands there are any Lochs. Then the solepower is that of the Mountains. We speak of a sea of mountains; but thatimage has never more than momentary possession of us, because, but for amoment, in nature it has no truth. Tumultuary movements envelope them;but they themselves are for ever steadfast and for ever still. Theirpower is that of an enduring calm no storms can disturb--and is oftenfelt to be more majestical, the more furious are the storms. As thetempest-driven clouds are franticly hurrying to and fro, how serene thesummits in the sky! Or if they be hidden, how peaceful the glimpses ofsome great mountain's breast! They disregard the hurricane that goescrashing through their old woods; the cloud-thunder disturbs not themany more than that of their own cataracts, and the lightnings play fortheir pastime. All minds under any excitation, more or less personifymountains. When much moved, that natural process affects all ourfeelings, as the language of passion awakened by such objects vividlydeclares; and then we do assuredly conceive of mountains as endued withlife--however dim and vague the conception may be--and feel theircharacter in their very names. Utterly strip our ideas of them of allthat is attached to them as impersonations, and their power is gone. Butwhile we are creatures of imagination as well as of reason, will thosemonarchs remain invested with the purple and seated on thrones. 

In such imaginative moods as these must every one be, far morefrequently than he is conscious of, and in far higher degrees, who, witha cultivated mind and a heart open to the influences of nature, findshimself, it matters not whether for the first or the hundredth time, inthe Highlands. We fancy the Neophyte wandering, all by himself, on the"Longest Day;" rejoicing to think that the light will not fail him, whenat last the sun must go down, for that a starry gloaming will continueits gentle reign till morn. He thinks but of what he sees, and thatis--the mountains. All memories of any other world but that whichencloses him with its still sublimities, are not excluded merely, butobliterated: his whole being is there! And now he stands on table-land, and with his eyes sweeps the horizon, bewildered for a while, for itseems chaos all. But soon the mighty masses begin arranging themselvesinto order; the confusion insensibly subsides as he comprehends more andmore of their magnificent combinations; he discovers centres round whichare associated altitudes towering afar off; and finally, he feels, andblesses himself on his felicity, that his good genius has placed him onthe very centre of those wondrous assemblages altogether, from whichalone he could command an empire of realities, more glorious far thanwas ever empire of dreams. 

It is a cloudy, but not a stormy day; the clouds occupy but portions ofthe sky, --and are they all in slow motion together, or are they all atrest? Huge shadows stalking along the earth, tell that there are changesgoing on in heaven; but to the upward gaze, all seems hanging there inthe same repose; and with the same soft illumination the sun to continueshining, a concentration rather than an orb of light. All above isbeautiful, and the clouds themselves are like celestial mountains; butthe eye forsakes them, though it sees them still, and more quietly nowit moves along the pageantry below that endures for ever--till chainedon a sudden by that range of cliffs. 'Tis along them that the giantshadows are stalking--but now they have passed by--and the long line ofprecipice seems to come forward in the light. To look down from thebrink might be terrible--to look up from the base would be sublime--butfronting the eye thus, horrid though it be, the sight is most beautiful;for weather-stains, and mosses, and lichens, and floweringplants--conspicuous most the broom and the heather--and shrubs that, among their leaves of light, have no need of flowers--and hollies, andbirks, and hazels, and many a slender tree beside with pensile tresses, besprinkle all the cliffs, that in no gloom could ever lose theirlustre; but now the day though not bright is fair, and brings out thewhole beauty of the precipice--call it the hanging garden of thewilderness. 

The Highlands have been said to be a gloomy region, and worse gloom thantheirs might well be borne, if not unfrequently illumined with suchsights as these; but that is not the character of the mountains, thoughthe purple light in which, for usual, they are so richly steeped, isoften for a season tamed, or for a short while extinguished, while astrange night-like day lets fall over them all a something like ashroud. Such days we have seen--but now in fancy we are with thepilgrim, and see preparation making for a sun-set. It is drawing towardsevening, and the clouds that have all this time been moving, though weknew it not, have assuredly settled now, and taken up their rest. Thesun has gone down, and all that unspeakable glory has left the sky. Evening has come and gone without our knowing that she had been here;but there is no gloom on any place in the whole of this vast wilderness, and the mountains, as they wax dimmer and dimmer, look as if they weresurrendering themselves to a repose like sleep. Day had no voice hereaudible to human ear--but night is murmuring--and gentle though themurmur be, it filleth the great void, and we imagine that ever and anonit awakens echoes. And now it is darker than we thought, for lo! onesoft-burning star! And we see that there are many stars; but not theirsthe light that begins again to reveal object after object as graduallyas they had disappeared; the moon is about to rise--is rising--hasarisen--has taken her place high in heaven; and as the glorious worldagain expands around us, faintly tinged, clearly illumined, softlyshadowed, and deeply begloomed, we say within our hearts, "How beautiful is night!"

There are many such table-lands as the one we have now been imagining, and it requires but a slight acquaintance with the country to conjecturerightly where they lie. Independently of the panoramas they display, they are in themselves always impressive; perhaps a bare level thatshows but bleached bent, and scatterings of stones, with here and therean unaccountable rock; or hundreds of fairy greensward knolls, fringedwith tiny forests of fern that have almost displaced the heather; or awild withered moor or moss intersected with pits dug not by men's hands;and, strange to see! a huge log lying half exposed, and as if blackenedby fire. High as such places are, on one of them a young gorcock wasstricken down by a hawk close to our feet. Indeed, hawks seem to hauntsuch places, and we have rarely crossed one of them, without eitherseeing the creature's stealthy flight, or hearing, whether he be alarmedor preying, his ever-angry cry. 

From a few such stations, you get an insight into the configuration ofthe whole Western Highlands. By the dip of the mountains, you discoverat a glance all the openings in the panorama around you into otherregions. Follow your fancies fearlessly wherever they may lead; and ifthe blue aerial haze that hangs over a pass winding eastward, tempt youfrom your line of march due north, forthwith descend in that direction, and haply an omen will confirm you--an eagle rising on the left, andsailing away before you into that very spot of sky. 

No man, however well read, should travel by book. In books you finddescriptions, and often good ones, of the most celebrated scenes, butseldom a word about the vast tracts between; and it would seem as ifmany Tourists had used their eyes only in those places where they hadbeen told by common fame there was something greatly to admire. Travelin the faith, that go where you will, the cravings of your heart will besatisfied, and you will find it so, if you be a true lover of nature. You hope to be inspired by her spirit, that you may may read aright herworks. But such inspiration comes not from one object or another, however great or fair, but from the whole "mighty world of eye and ear, "and it must be supported continuously, or it perishes. You may see athousand sights never before seen by human eye, at every step you take, wherever be your path; for no steps but yours have ever walked alongthat same level; and moreover, never on the same spot twice rested thesame lights or shadows. Then there may be something in the air, andmore in your own heart, that invests every ordinary object withextraordinary beauty; old images affect you with a new delight; agrandeur grows upon your eyes in the undulations of the simplest hills;and you feel there is sublimity in the common skies. It is thus that allthe stores of imagery are insensibly gathered, with which the minds ofmen are filled, who from youth have communed with nature. And it is thusthat all those feelings have flowed into their hearts by which thatimagery is sanctified; and these are the Poets. 

It is in this way that we become familiar with the mountains. Far morethan we were aware of have we trusted to the strong spirit of delightwithin us, to prompt and to guide. And in such a country as theHighlands, thus led, we cannot err. Therefore, if your desire be for thesummits, set your face thitherwards, and wind a way of your own, stillascending and ascending, along some vast brow, that seems almost a wholeday's journey, and where it is lost from your sight, not to end, but togo sweeping round, with undiminished grandeur into another region. Youare not yet half-way up the mountain, but you care not for the summitnow; for you find yourself among a number of green knolls--all of themsprinkled, and some of them crowned with trees--as large almost as ourlowland hills--surrounded close to the brink with the purpleheather--and without impairing the majesty of the immense expanse, imbuing it with pastoral and sylvan beauty;--and there, lying in a smallforest glade of the lady-fern, ambitious no longer of a throne onBenlomond or Ben-nevis, you dream away the still hours till sunset, yetthen have no reason to weep that you have lost a day. 

But the best way to view the mountains is to trace the Glens. To findout the glens you must often scale the shoulders of mountains, and insuch journeys of discovery, you have for ever going on before your eyesglorious transfigurations. Sometimes for a whole day one mighty masslowers before you unchanged; look at it after the interval of hours, andstill the giant is one and the same. It rules the region, subjecting allother altitudes to its sway, though many of them range away to a greatdistance; and at sunset retains it supremacy, blazing almost like avolcano with fiery clouds. Your line of journey lies, perhaps, some twothousand feet above the level of the sea, and seldom dips down to onethousand; and these are the heights from which all above and all belowyou looks most magnificent, for both regions have their full power overyou--the unscaleable cliffs, the unfathomable abysses--and you know notwhich is the more sublime. The sublimity indeed is one. It is then thatyou may do well to ascend to the very mountain-top. For it may happen tobe one of those heavenly days indeed, when the whole Highlands seem tobe reposing in the cloudless sky. 

But we were about to speak of the Glens. And some of them are bestentered by such descents as these--perhaps at their very head--where allat once you are in another world, how still, how gloomy, how profound!An hour ago and the eye of the eagle had not wider command of earth, sea, and sky, than yours--almost blinded now by the superincumbentprecipices that imprison you, and seem to shut you out from life. 

 "Such the grim desolation, where Ben-Hun And Craig-na-Torr, by earthquake shatterings Disjoined with horrid chasms prerupt, enclose What superstition calls the Glen of Ghosts. "

Or you may enter some great glen from the foot, where it widens intovale or strath--and there are many such--and some into which you cansail up an arm of the sea. For a while it partakes of the cultivatedbeauty of the lowlands, and glen and vale seem almost one and the same;but gradually it undergoes a strange wild change of character, and in afew miles that similitude is lost. There is little or no arable groundhere; but the pasture is rich on the unenclosed plain--and here andthere are enclosures, near the few houses or huts standing, some of themin the middle of the glen, quite exposed, on eminences above reach ofthe floods--some more happily placed on the edge of the coppices, thatsprinkle the steep sides of the hills, yet barely mountains. Butmountains they soon become; and leaving behind you those few barrenhabitations, you see before you a wide black moor. Beautiful hithertohad been the river, for a river you had inclined to think it, long afterit had narrowed into a stream, with many a waterfall, and in one chasm acataract. But the torrent now has a wild mountain cry, and though thereis still beauty on its banks, they are bare of all trees, now swellinginto multitudes of low green knolls among the heather, now composed butof heather and rocks. Through the very middle of the black moor itflows, yet are its waters clear, for all is not moss, and it seems towind its way where there is nothing to pollute its purity, or tame itslustre. 'Tis a solitary scene, but still sweet; the mountains are ofgreat magnitude, but they are not precipitous; vast herds of cattle arebrowsing there, on heights from which fire has cleared the heather, andwide ranges of greensward upon the lofty gloom seem to lie in perpetuallight. 

The moor is crossed, and you prepare to scale the mountain in front, foryou imagine the torrent by your side flows from a tarn in yonder cove, and forms that series of waterfalls. You have been all along wellpleased with the glen, and here at the head, though there is a want ofcliffs of the highest class, you feel nevertheless that it has acharacter of grandeur. Looking westward, you are astounded to see themranging away on either side of another reach of the glen, terrific intheir height, but in their formation beautiful, for like the walls ofsome vast temple they stand, roofed with sky. Yet are they but as aportal or gateway of the glen. For entering in with awe, that deepens, as you advance, almost into dread, you behold, beyond, mountains thatcarry their cliffs up into the clouds, seamed with chasms, and hollowedout into coves, where night dwells visibly by the side of day; and stillthe glen seems winding on beneath a purple light, that almost looks likegloom; such vast forms and such prodigious colours, and such utterstillness, become oppressive to your very life, and you wish that somehuman being were by, to relieve, by his mere presence, the insupportableweight of such a solitude. 

But we should never have done were we to attempt to sketch, howeverslightly, the character of all the different kinds of glens. Some aresublime in their prodigious depth and vast extent, and would be felt tobe so, even were the mountains that enclose them of no great majesty;but these are all of the highest order, and sometimes are seen frombelow to the very cairns on their summits. Now we walk along a reach, between astonishing ranges of cliffs, among large heaps of rocks--not atree--scarcely a shrub--no herbage--the very heather blasted--alllifelessness and desolation. The glen gradually grows less and lesshorrid, and though its sides are seamed with clefts and chasms, in thegloom there are places for the sunshine, and there is felt to be evenbeauty in the repose. Descends suddenly on either side a steep slope ofhanging wood, and we find ourselves among verdant mounds, and knolls, and waterfalls. We come then into what seems of old to have been aforest. Here and there a stately pine survives, but the rest are allskeletons; and now the glen widens, and widens, yet ceases not to beprofound, for several high mountains enclose a plain on which armiesmight encamp, and castellated clouds hang round the heights of theglorious amphitheatre, while the sky-roof is clear, and as if in itscentre, the refulgent sun. 'Tis the plain called "The Meeting of theGlens. " From the east and the west, the north and the south, they comelike rivers into the sea. 

Other glens there are, as long, but not so profound, nor so grandlycomposed; yet they too conduct us nobly in among the mountains, and uptheir sides, and on even to their very summits. Such are the glens ofAtholl, in the neighbourhood of Ben-y-gloe. From them the heather is notwholly banished, and the fire has left a green light without quenchingthe purple colour native to the hills. We think that we almost rememberthe time when those glens were in many places sprinkled with huts, andall animated with human life. Now they are solitary; and you may walkfrom sunrise till sunset without seeing a single soul. For a hundredthousand acres have there been changed into a forest, for sake of thepastime, indeed, which was dear of old to chieftains and kings. Vastherds of red-deer are there, for they herd in thousands--yet may youwander for days over the boundless waste, nor once be startled by onestag bounding by. Yet may a herd, a thousand strong, be drawn up, as inbattle array, on the cliffs above your head. For they will long standmotionless, at gaze, when danger is in the wind--and then their antlersto unpractised eyes seem but boughs grotesque, or are invisible; andwhen all at once, with one accord, at signal from the stag, whom theyobey, they wheel off towards the Corries, you think it but thunder, andlook up to the clouds. Fortunate if you see such a sight once in yourlife. Once only have we seen it; and it was, of a sudden, all byourselves, "Ere yet the hunter's startling horn was heard Upon the golden hills. "

Almost within rifle-shot, the herd occupied a position, high up indeed, but below several ridges of rocks, running parallel for a long distance, with slopes between of sward and heather. Standing still, they seemed toextend about a quarter of a mile, and as with a loud clattering of hoofsand antlers, they took more open order, the line at least doubled itslength, and the whole mountain-side seemed alive. They might not begoing at full speed, but the pace was equal to that of any charge ofcavalry; and once and again the flight passed before us, till itovercame the ridges, and then deploying round the shoulder of themountain, disappeared, without dust or noise, into the blue light ofanother glen. 

We question, if there be in the Highlands any one glen comparable withBorrowdale in Cumberland. But there are several that approach it, inthat combination of beauty and grandeur, which perhaps no other sceneequals in all the world. The "Gorge" of that Dale exhibits the finestimaginable assemblage of rocks and rocky hills, all wildly wooded;beyond them, yet before we have entered into the Dale, the Pass widens, with noble cliffs on one side, and on the other a sylvan stream, notwithout its abysses; and we see before us some lovely hills, on which--

 "The smiling power of cultivation lies, "

yet leaves, with lines defined by the steeps that defy the ploughshare, copses and groves; and thus we are brought into the Dale itself, andsoon have a vision of the whole--green and golden fields--for thoughmost are in pasture, almost all seem arable--sprinkled with fine singletrees--and lying in flats and levels, or swelling into mounds andknolls, and all diversified with every kind of woods; single cottages, with their out-buildings, standing everywhere they should stand, andcoloured like the rocks from which in some lights they are hardly to bedistinguished--strong-roofed and undilapidated, though many of them veryold; villages, apart from one another a mile--and there are three--yeton their sites, distant and different in much though they be, allassociated together by the same spirit of beauty that pervades all theDale. Half way up, and in some places more, the enclosing hills and evenmountains are sylvan indeed, and though there be a few inoffensivealiens, they are all adorned with their native trees. The mountains arenot so high as in our Highlands, but they are very majestic; and thePasses over into Langdale, and Wastdalehead, and Buttermere, aremagnificent, and show precipices in which the Golden Eagle himself mightrejoice. 

No--there is no glen in all the Highlands comparable with Borrowdale. Yet we know of some that are felt to be kindred places, and their beautythough less, almost as much affects us, because though contending, as itwere, with the darker spirit of the mountain, it is not overcome, butprevails; and their beauty will increase with years. For while the rockscontinue to frown aloft for ever, and the cliffs to range along thecorries, unbroken by trees, which there the tempest will not suffer torise, the woods and groves below, preserved from the axe, for sake oftheir needful shelter, shall become statelier, till the birch equal thepine; reclaimed from the waste, shall many a fresh field recline amongthe heather, tempering the gloom; and houses arise where now there arebut huts, and every house have its garden:--such changes are now goingon, and we have been glad to observe their progress, even thoughsometimes they had removed, or were removing, objects dear from oldassociations, and which, had it been possible, but it was not, we shouldhave loved to see preserved. 

And one word on those sweet pastoral seclusions into which one oftendrops unexpectedly, it may be at the close of day, and finds a night'slodging in the only hut. Yet they lie, sometimes, embosomed in their owngreen hills, among the most rugged mountains, and even among the wildestmoors. They have no features by which you can describe them; it is theirserenity that charms you, and their cheerful peace; perhaps it is wrongto call them glens, and they are but dells. Yet one thinks of a dell asdeep, however small it may be; but these are not deep, for the hillsslope down gently upon them, and leave room perhaps between for a littleshallow loch. Often they have not any visible water at all, only a fewsprings and rivulets, and you wonder to see them so very green; there isno herbage like theirs; and to such spots of old, and sometimes yet, the kine are led in summer, and there the lonely family live in theirshieling till the harvest moon. 

We have all along used the same word, and called the places we havespoken of--glens. A fine observer--the Editor of Gilpin's ForestScenery--has said: "The gradation from extreme width downwards should bethus arranged, --strath, vale, dale, valley, glen, dell, ravine, chasm. In the strath, vale, and dale, we may expect to find the large, majestic, gently flowing river, or even the deeper or smaller lake. Inthe glen, if the river be large, it flows more rapidly, and with greatervariety. In the dell the stream is smaller. In the ravine, we find themountain torrent and the waterfall. In the chasm, we find the roaringcataract, or the rill, bursting from its haunted fountain. The chasmdischarges its small tribute into the ravine, while the ravine istributary to the dell, and thence to the glen; and the glen to thedale. "

These distinctions are admirably expressed, and perfectly true tonature; yet we doubt if it would be possible to preserve them indescribing a country, and assuredly they are very often indeed confusedby common use in the naming of places. We have said nothing aboutStraths--nor shall we try to describe one--but suggest to your ownimagination--as specimens--Strath-Spey, Strath-Tay, Strath-Earn. Thedominion claimed by each of those rivers, within the mountain rangesthat environ their courses, is a strath; and three noble straths theyare, from source to sea. 

And now we are brought to speak of the Highland Rivers, Streams, andTorrents; but we shall let them rush or flow, murmur or thunder in yourown ears, for you cannot fail to imagine what the waters must be in aland of such glens and such mountains. The chief rivers possess all theattributes essential to greatness--width--depth--clearness--rapidity--inone word power. And some of them have long courses--rising in thecentral heights, and winding round many a huge projection, against whichin flood we have seen them dashing like the sea. Highland droughts arenot of long duration; the supplies are seldom withheld at once by allthe tributaries; and one wild night among the mountains converts a calminto a commotion--the many-murmuring voice into one roar. In flood theyare terrible to look at; and every whirlpool seems a place of torment. Winds can make a mighty noise in swinging woods, but there is somethingto our ears more appalling in that of the fall of waters. Let them beunited--and add thunder from the clouds--and we have heard in theHighlands all three in one--and the auditor need not care that he hasnever stood by Niagara. But when "though not o'erflowing full, " aHighland river is in perfection; far better do we love to see and hearhim rejoicing than raging; his attributes appear more his own in calmand majestic manifestations, and as he glides or rolls on, without anydisturbance, we behold in him an image at once of power and peace. 

Of rivers--comparatively speaking--of the second and third order--theHighlands are full--and on some of them the sylvan scenery is beyondcompare. No need there to go hunting the waterfalls. Hundreds ofthem--some tiny indeed, but others tall--are for ever dinning in thewoods; yet, at a distance from the cataract, how sweet and quiet is thesound! It hinders you not from listening to the cushat's voice; clearamidst the mellow murmur comes the bleating from the mountain; and allother sound ceases, as you hearken in the sky to the bark of theeagle--rare indeed anywhere, but sometimes to be heard as you thread the"glimmer or the gloom" of the umbrage overhanging the Garry or theTummel--for he used to build in the cliffs of Ben-Brackie, and if he hasshifted his eyrie, a few minutes' waftage will bear him to Cairn-Gower. 

In speaking of the glens, we but alluded to the rivers or streams, andsome of them, indeed, even the great ones, have but rivulets; while inthe greatest, the waters often flow on without a single tree, shadowedbut by rocks and clouds. Wade them, and you find they are larger thanthey seem to be; for looked at along the bottom of those profoundhollows, they are but mere slips of sinuous light in the sunshine, andin the gloom you see them not at all. We do not remember any veryimpressive glen, without a stream, that would not suffer some diminutionof its power by our fancying it to have one; we may not be aware, at thetime, that the conformation of the glen prevents its having anywater-flow, but if we feel its character aright, that want is among thecauses of our feeling; just as there are some scenes of which the beautywould not be so touching were there a single tree. 

Thousands and tens of thousands there are of nameless perennialtorrents, and "in number without number numberless" those that seldomlive a week--perhaps not a day. Up among the loftiest regions you hearnothing, even when they are all allow; yet, there is music in the sight, and the thought of the "general dance and minstrelsy" enlivens the air, where no insect hums. As on your descent you come within hearing of the"liquid lapses, " your heart leaps within you, so merrily do they sing;the first torrent-rill you meet with you take for your guide, and itleads you perhaps into some fairy dell, where it wantons awhile inwaterfalls, and then gliding along a little dale of its own with "bankso' green bracken, " finishes its short course in a stream--one of manythat meet and mingle before the current takes the name of river, whichin a mile or less becomes a small woodland lake. There are many such ofrememberable beauty; living lakes indeed, for they are but pausings ofexpanded rivers, which again soon pursue their way, and the water-lilieshave ever a gentle motion there as if touched by a tide. 

It used, not very long ago, to be pretty generally believed by oursouthern brethren, that there were few trees in the Lowlands ofScotland, and none at all in the Highlands. They had an obscure notionthat trees either could not or would not grow in such a soil andclimate--cold and bleak enough at times and places, heaven knows--yetnot altogether unproductive of diverse stately plants. They know betternow; nor were we ever angry with their ignorance, which was nothing morethan what was to be expected in persons living perpetually at home sofar remote. They rejoice now to visit, and sojourn, and travel hereamong us, foreigners and a foreign land no more; and we rejoice to seeand receive them not as strangers, but friends, and are proud to knowthey are well pleased to behold our habitation. They do us and ourcountry justice now, and we have sometimes thought even more thanjustice; for they are lost in admiration of our cities--above all, ofEdinburgh--and speak with such raptures of our scenery, that they wouldappear to prefer it even to their own. They are charmed with our baregreen hills, with our shaggy brown mountains they are astonished, ourlochs are their delight, our woods their wonder, and they hold up theirhands and clap them at our cliffs. This is generous, for we are notblind to the fact of England being the most beautiful land on all theearth. What are our woods to hers! To hers, what are our single trees!We have no such glorious standards to show as her indomitable andeverlasting oaks. She is all over sylvan--Scotland but here and there;look on England from any point in any place, and you see she is rich, from almost any point in any place in Scotland, and you feel thatcomparatively she is poor. Yet our Lowlands have long been beautifyingthemselves into a resemblance of hers; as for our Highlands, though manychanges have been going on there too, and most we believe for good, theyare in their great features, and in their spirit unalterable by art, stamped and inspired by enduring Nature. 

We have spoken, slightly, of the sylvan scenery of the Highlands. InPerthshire, especially, it is of rare and extraordinary beauty, and weare always glad to hear of Englishmen travelling up the Tay and theEarn. We desire that eyes familiar with all that is umbrageous shouldreceive their first impressions of our Scottish trees at Duneira andDunkeld. Nor will those impressions be weakened as they proceed towardsBlair Atholl. In that famous Pass, they will feel the power possessed bythe sweet wild monotony of the universal birch woods--broken but by greycrags in every shape--grotesque, fantastical, majestic, magnificent, andsublime--on the many-ridged mountains, that are loth to lose the greenlight of their beloved forests, retain it as long as they can, and onthe masses of living lustre seem to look down with pride from theirskies. 

An English forest, meaning thereby any one wide continuous scene of allkinds of old English trees, with glades of pasture, and it may be ofheath between, with dells dipping down into the gloom, and hillocksundulating in the light--ravines and chasms too, rills, and rivulets, and a haunted stream, and not without some melancholy old ruins, andhere and there a cheerful cottage that feels not the touch of time--sucha forest there is not, and hardly can be imagined to be in Scotland. Butin the Highlands, there once were, and are still other forests of quitea different character, and of equal grandeur. In his "Forest Scenery, "Gilpin shows that he understood it well; all the knowledge, which as astranger, almost of necessity he wanted, Lauder has supplied in hisannotations; and the book should now be in the hands of every one whocares about the woods. "The English Forest, " says Gilpin, "is commonlycomposed of woodland views, interspersed with extensive heaths andlawns. Its trees are oak and beech, whose lively green correspondsbetter than the gloomy pine with the nature of the scene, which seldomassumes the dignity of a mountain one, but generally exhibits a cheerfullandscape. It aspires, indeed, to grandeur; but its grandeur does notdepend, like that of the Scottish forest, on the sublimity of theobjects, but on the vastness of the whole--the extent of its woods andthe wideness of its plains. In its inhabitants also the English forestdiffers from the Scottish; instead of the stag and the roebuck, it isfrequented by cattle and fallow-deer, and exchanges the scream of theeagle and the falcon for the crowing of pheasants, and the melody of thenightingale. The Scottish forest, no doubt, is the sublimer scene, andspeaks to the imagination in a loftier language than the English forestcan reach. The latter, indeed, often rouses the imagination, but seldomin so great a degree, being generally content with captivating the eye. The scenery, too, of the Scottish forest is better calculated to lastthrough ages than that of the English. The woods of both are almostdestroyed. But while the English forest hath lost all its beauty withits oaks, and becomes only a desolate waste, the rocks and themountains, the lakes and the torrents of the Scottish forest make itstill an interesting scene. "

The Tree of the Highlands is the Pine. There are Scotch firs, indeed, well worth looking at, in the Lowlands, and in England, but to learntheir true character you must see them in the glen, among rooks, by theriver-side and on the mountain. "We for our parts, " says Lauder veryfinely, "confess that when we have seen it towering in full majesty inthe midst of some appropriate Highland scene, and sending its limbsabroad with all the unrestrained freedom of a hardy mountaineer, as ifit claimed dominion over the savage region round it, we have looked uponit as a very sublime object. People who have not seen it in its nativeclimate and soil, and who judge of it from the wretched abortions whichare swaddled and suffocated in English plantations, among dark, heavy, and eternally wet clays, may well call it a wretched tree; but when itsfoot is among its own Highland heather, and when it stands freely inits native knoll of dry gravel, or thinly covered rock, over which itsroots wander afar in the wildest reticulation, whilst its tall, furrowed, and often gracefully sweeping red and grey trunk, of enormouscircumference, rears aloft its high umbrageous canopy, then would thegreatest sceptic on this point be compelled to prostrate his mind beforeit with a veneration which perhaps was never before excited in him byany other tree. " The colour of the pine has been objected to asmurky--and murky it often is, or seems to be; and so then is the colourof the heather, and of the river, and of the loch, and of the sky itselfthunder-laden, and murkiest of all are the clouds. But a stream ofsunshine is let loose, and the gloom is confounded with glory; over allthat night-like reign the jocund day goes dancing, and the forest revelsin green or in golden light. Thousands and tens of thousands of pinesare there, and as you gaze upon the whole mighty array, you fear, lestit might break the spell, to fix your gaze on any one single tree. Butthere are trees there that will force you to look on themselves alone, and they grow before your eyes into the kings of the forest. Straightstand their stems in the sunshine, and you feel that as straight havethey stood in the storm. As yet you look not up, for your heart is awed, and you see but the stately columns reddening away into the gloom. Butall the while you feel the power of the umbrage aloft, and whenthitherwards you lift your eyes, what a roof to such a cathedral! A conedrops at your feet--nor other sound nor other stir--but afar off youthink you hear a cataract. Inaudible your footsteps on the soft yellowfloor, composed of the autumnal sheddings of countless years. Then it istrue that you can indeed hear the beating of your own heart; you fear, but know not what you fear; and being the only living creature there, you are impressed with a thought of death. But soon to that severesilence you are more than reconciled; the solitude, without ceasing tobe sublime, is felt to be solemn and not awful, and ere long, utter asit is, serene. Seen from afar, the forest was one black mass; but as youadvance, it opens up into spacious glades, beautiful as gardens, withappropriate trees of gentler tribes, and ground-flowering in the sun. But there is no murmur of bee--no song of bird. In the air a thinwhisper of insects--intermittent--and wafted quite away by a breath. Forwe are now in the very centre of the forest, and even the cushat hauntsnot here. Hither the red-deer may come--but not now--for at this seasonthey love the hill. To such places the stricken stag might steal to liedown and die. 

And thus for hours may you be lost in the forest, nor all the while havewasted one thought on the outer-world, till with no other warning but anuncertain glimmer and a strange noise, you all at once issue forth intothe open day, and are standing on the brink of a precipice above aflood. It comes tumbling down with a succession of falls, in a mile-longcourse, right opposite your stance--rocks, cliffs, and trees, all theway up on either side, majestically retiring back to afford amplechannel, and showing an unobstructed vista, closed up by the purplemountain, that seems to send forth the river from a cavern in itsbreast. 'Tis the Glen of Pines. Nor ash nor oak is suffered to intrudeon their dominion. Since the earthquake first shattered it out, thisgreat chasm, with all its chasms, has been held by one race of trees. Noother seed could there spring to life; for from the rocks has all soil, ages ago, been washed and swept by the tempests. But there they standwith glossy boles, spreading arms, and glittering crest; and those twoby themselves on the summit, known all over Badenoch as "theGiants"--their "statures reach the sky. "

We have been indulging in a dream of old. Before our day the immemorialgloom of Glenmore had perished, and it ceased to be a forest. But therebordered on it another region of night or twilight, and in its vastdepths we first felt the sublimity of lonesome fear. Rothiemurchus! Thevery word blackens before our eyes with necromantic characters--again weplunge into its gulfs desirous of what we dread--again, "in pleasurehigh and turbulent, " we climb the cliffs of Cairngorm. 

Would you wish to know what is now the look of Glenmore? One now deadand gone--a man of wayward temper, but of genius--shall tell you--andthink not the picture exaggerated--for you would not, if you were_there_. "It is the wreck of the ancient forest which arrests all theattention, and which renders Glenmore a melancholy, more than amelancholy, a terrific spectacle. Trees of enormous height, which haveescaped alike the axe and the tempest, are still standing, stripped bythe winds, even of the bark, and, like gigantic skeletons, throwing farand wide their white and bleached bones to the storms and rains ofheaven; while others, broken by the violence of the gales, lift up theirsplit and fractured trunks in a thousand shapes of resistance and ofdestruction, or still display some knotted and tortuous branches, stretched out, in sturdy and fantastic forms of defiance, to thewhirlwind and the winter. Noble trunks also, which had long resisted, but resisted in vain, strew the ground; some lying on the declivitywhere they have fallen, others still adhering to the precipice wherethey were rooted, many upturned, with their twisted and entangled rootshigh in air; while not a few astonish us by the space which they cover, and by dimensions which we could not otherwise have estimated. It is onewide image of death, as if the angel of destruction had passed over thevalley. The sight even of a felled tree is painful; still more is thatof the fallen forest, with all its green branches on the ground, withering, silent, and at rest, where once they glittered in the dew andthe sun, and trembled in the breeze. Yet this is but an image ofvegetable death. It is familiar, and the impression passes away. It isthe naked skeleton bleaching in the winds, the gigantic bones of theforest still erect, the speaking records of former life, and of strengthstill unsubdued, vigorous even in death, which renders Glenmore oneenormous charnel-house. "

What happened of old to the aboriginal Forests of Scotland, that longbefore these later destructions they had almost all perished, leaving, to bear witness what they were, such survivors? They were chieflydestroyed by fire. What power could extinguish chance-kindledconflagrations, when sailing before the wind? And no doubt fire was setto clear the country at once of Scotch firs, wolves, wild-boars, andoutlaws. Tradition yet tells of such burnings; and, if we mistake not, the pines found in the Scottish mosses, the logs and the stocks, allshow that they were destroyed by Vulcan, though Neptune buried them inthe quagmires. Storms no doubt often levelled them by thousands; but hadmillions so fallen they had never been missed, and one Elementonly--which has been often fearfully commissioned--could achieve thework. In our own day the axe has indeed done wonders--and sixteen squaremiles of the Forest of Rothiemurchus "went to the ground. " John ofGhent, Gilpin tells us, to avenge an inroad, set twenty-four thousandaxes at work in the Caledonian Forest. 

Yet Scotland has perhaps sufficient forests at this day. For more hasbeen planted than cut down; Glenmore will soon be populous as ever withself-sown pines, and Rothiemurchus may revive; the shades are yet deepof Loch Arkaig, Glengarry, Glenmoriston, Strathglass, Glen-Strathfarrar, and Loch-Shiel; deeper still on the Findhorn--and deepest of all on theDee, rejoicing in the magnificent pine-woods of Invercauld and Braemar. 

We feel that we have spoken feebly of our Highland forests. Some, perhaps, who have never been off the high-roads, may accuse us ofexaggeration too; but they contain wondrous beauties of which we havesaid not a word; and no imagination can conceive what they may be inanother hundred years. But, apparently far apart from the forests, though still belonging to them, for they hold in fancy by the tenure ofthe olden time, how many woods, and groves, and sprinklings of fairtrees, rise up during a day's journey, in almost every region of theNorth! And among them all, it may be, scarcely a pine. For the oak, andthe ash, and the elm, are also all native trees; nowhere else does therowan flush with more dazzling lustre; in spring, the alder with itsvivid green stands well beside the birk--the yew was not neglected ofyore, though the bow of the Celt was weak to that of the Saxon; and theholly, in winter emulating the brightness of the pine, flourished, andstill flourishes on many a mountain-side. There is sufficient sylvanscenery for beauty in a land of mountains. More may be needed forshelter--but let the young plants and seedlings have time to grow--andas for the old trees, may they live for ever! Too many millions oflarches are perhaps growing now behind the Tay and the Tilt; yet whyshould the hills of Perthshire be thought to be disfigured by whatennobles the Alps and the Apennines?

Hitherto we have hardly said a word about Lochs, and have been doing ourbest to forget them, while imagining scenes that were chieflycharacterised by other great features of Highland Landscape. A countrythus constituted, and with such an aspect, even if we could suppose itwithout lochs, would still be a glorious region; but its lochs areindeed its greatest glory: by them its glens, its mountains, and itswoods, are all illumined, and its rivers made to sing aloud for joy. Inthe pure element, overflowing so many spacious vales and glens profound, the great and stern objects of nature look even more sublime or morebeautiful in their reflected shadows, which appear in that stillness tobelong rather to heaven than earth. Or the evanescence of all thatimagery at a breath may touch us with the thought, that all itrepresents, steadfast as seems its endurance, will as utterly pass away. Such visions, when gazed on in that wondrous depth and purity they aresometimes seen to assume on a still summer day, always inspire some suchfaint feeling as this; and we sigh to think how transitory must be allthings, when the setting sun is seen to sink beneath the mountain, andall its golden pomp at the same instant to evanish from the lake. 

The first that takes possession of the imagination, dreaming of theHighlands as the region of Lochs, is the Queen of them all, Loch Lomond. A great poet has said that, "in Scotland, the proportion of diffusedwater is often too great, as at the Lake of Geneva, for instance, and inmost of the Scottish lakes. No doubt it sounds magnificent, and flattersthe imagination, to hear at a distance of masses of water, so manyleagues in length and miles in width; and such ample room may bedelightful to the fresh-water sailor, scudding with a lively breeze amidthe rapidly-shifting scenery. But who ever travelled along the banks ofLoch Lomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feelingthat a speedier termination of the long vista of blank water would beacceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side? In fact, a notion of grandeur, as connected with magnitude, has seduced personsof taste into a general mistake upon this subject. It is much moredesirable, for the purposes of pleasure, that lakes should be numerousand small or middle-sized, than large, not only for communication bywalks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similarappearances. To illustrate this by one instance: how pleasing is it tohave a ready and frequent opportunity of watching, at the outlet of alake, the stream, pushing its way among the rocks, in lively contrastwith the stillness from which it has escaped! and how amusing to compareits noisy and turbulent motions with the gentle playfulness of thebreezes that may be starting up, or wandering here and there, over thefaintly-rippled surface of the broad water! I may add, as a generalremark, that in lakes of great width the shores cannot be distinctlyseen at the same time, and therefore contribute little to mutualillustration and ornament; and if the opposite shores are out of sightof each other, like those of the American and Asiatic lakes, thenunfortunately the traveller is reminded of a nobler object--he has theblankness of a sea-prospect without the grandeur and accompanying senseof power. "

We shall not be suspected of an inclination to dissent, on lightgrounds, from any sentiments of Wordsworth. But finely felt andexpressed as all this is, we do not hesitate to say that it is notapplicable to Loch Lomond. Far be it from us to criticise this passagesentence by sentence; for we have quoted it not in a captious, but areverent spirit, as we have ever done with the works of this illustriousman. He has studied nature more widely and profoundly than we have; butit is out of our power to look on Loch Lomond without a feeling ofperfection. The "diffusion of water" is indeed great; but in what aworld it floats! At first sight of it, how our soul expands! The suddenrevelation of such majestic beauty, wide as it is and extending afar, inspires us with a power of comprehending it all. Sea-like indeed itis--a Mediterranean Sea--enclosed with lofty hills and as loftymountains--and these indeed are the Fortunate Isles! We shall not dwellon the feeling which all must have experienced on the first sight ofsuch a vision--the feeling of a lovely and a mighty calm; it is manifestthat the spacious "diffusion of water" more than conspires with theother components of such a scene to produce the feeling; that to itbelongs the spell that makes our spirit serene, still, and bright, asits own. Nor when such feeling ceases so entirely to possess, and sodeeply to affect us, does the softened and subdued charm of the scenebefore us depend less on the expanse of the "diffusion of water. " Theislands, that before had lain we knew not how--or we had only felt thatthey were all most lovely--begin to show themselves in the order oftheir relation to one another and to the shores. The eye rests on thelargest, and with them the lesser combine; or we look at one or two ofthe least, away by themselves, or remote from all a tufted rock; andmany as they are, they break not the breadth of the liquid plain, forit is ample as the sky. They show its amplitude, as masses andsprinklings of clouds, and single clouds, show the amplitude of thecerulean vault. And then the long promontories--stretching out fromopposite mainlands, and enclosing bays that in themselves arelakes--they too magnify the empire of water; for long as they are, theyseem so only as our eye attends them with their cliffs and woods fromthe retiring shores, and far distant are their shadows from the centrallight. Then what shores! On one side, where the lake is widest, low-lying they seem, and therefore lovelier--undulating with fields andgroves, where many a pleasant dwelling is embowered, into lines of hillsthat gradually soften away into another land. On the other side, slopingback, or overhanging, mounts beautiful in their bareness, for they aregreen as emerald; others, scarcely more beautiful, studded with fairtrees--some altogether woods. They soon form into mountains--and themountains become more and more majestical, yet beauty never desertsthem, and her spirit continues to tame that of the frowning cliffs. Faroff as they are, Benlomond and Benvorlich are seen to be giants;magnificent is their retinue, but they two are supreme, each in his owndominion; and clear as the day is here, they are diadem'd with clouds. 

It cannot be that the "proportion of diffused water is here too great;"and is it then true that no one "ever travelled along the banks of LochLomond, variegated as the lower part is by islands, without feeling thata speedier termination to the long vista of blank water would beacceptable, and without wishing for an interposition of green meadows, trees, and cottages, and a sparkling stream to run by his side?" We havetravelled along them in all weathers and never felt such a wish. Forthere they all are--all but the "sparkling stream to run by our side, "and we see not how that well could be in nature. "Streams that sparkleas they run, " cross our path on their own; and brighter never issuedfrom the woods. Along the margin of the water, as far as Luss--ay, andmuch farther--the variations of the foreground are incessant; "had it noother beauties, " it has been truly said, "but those of its shores, itwould still be an object of prime attraction; whether from thebright-green meadows sprinkled with luxuriant ash-trees, that sometimesskirt its margin, or its white pebbled shores on which its gentlebillows murmur, like a miniature ocean, or its bold rocky promontoriesrising from the dark water, rich in wildflowers and ferns, and tangledwith wild roses and honeysuckles, or its retired bays where the wavesdash, reflecting, like a mirror, the trees which hang over them, aninverted landscape. " The islands are for ever arranging themselves intonew forms, every one more and more beautiful; at least so they seem tobe, perpetually occurring, yet always unexpected, and there is apleasure even in such a series of slight surprises that enhances thedelight of admiration. And alongside, or behind us, all the while, arethe sylvan mountains, "laden with beauty;" and ever and anon open glenswiden down upon us from chasms; or forest-glades lead our hearts awayinto the inner gloom--perhaps our feet; and there, in a field that looksnot as if it had been cleared by his own hands, but left clear bynature, a woodsman's hut. 

Half-way between Luss and Tarbet the water narrows, but it is stillwide; the new road, we believe, winds round the point of Firkin, the oldroad boldly scaled the height, as all old roads loved to do; ascend it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell. Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt tobelong to them--to be subjected to their will--and that is capricious;for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, andsometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at theirbiding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences"which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigiousmountains; for we cannot look on them without feeling that they reignover the solitude they compose; the lights and shadows flung by the sunand the clouds imagination assuredly regards as put forth by the vastobjects which they colour; and we are inclined to think some such beliefis essential in the profound awe, often amounting to dread, with whichwe are inspired by the presences of mere material forms. But be this asit may, the upper portion of Loch Lomond is felt by all to be mostsublime. Near the head, all the manifold impressions of the beautifulwhich for hours our mind had been receiving, begin to fade; if somegloomy change has taken place in the air, there is a total obliteration, and the mighty scene before us is felt to possess not the hour merely, but the day. Yet should sunshine come, and abide a while, beauty willglimpse upon us even here, for green pastures will smile vividly high upamong the rocks; the sylvan spirit is serene the moment it is touchedwith light, and here there is not only many a fair tree by thewater-side, but yon old oak-wood will look joyful on the mountain, andthe gloom become glimmer in the profound abyss. 

Wordsworth says that "it must be more desirable, for the purposes ofpleasure, that lakes should be numerous, and small or middle-sized, thanlarge, not only for communication by walks and rides, but for variety, and for recurrence of similar appearances. " The Highlands have them ofall sizes--and that surely is best. But here is one which, it has beentruly said, is not only "incomparable in its beauty as in itsdimensions, exceeding all others in variety as it does in extent andsplendour, but unites in itself every style of scenery which is found inthe other lakes of the Highlands. " He who has studied, and understood, and felt all Loch Lomond, will be prepared at once to enjoy any otherfine lake he looks on; nor will he admire nor love it the less, thoughits chief character should consist in what forms but one part of that ofthe Wonder in which all kinds of beauty and sublimity are combined. 

We feel that it would be idle, and worse than idle, to describe anynumber of the Highland lochs, for so many of the finest have been seenby so many eyes that few persons probably will ever read these pages towhom such descriptions would be, at the best, more than shadowings ofscenery that their own imaginations can more vividly re-create. Thereare other reasons for not saying a single word about some of the mostbeautiful; for genius has pictured and peopled them and the surroundingregions in colours that will never fade. Besides, in the volumes towhich these "Remarks" are a preface--contributed with pleasure, somewhatimpaired indeed by the consciousness of their many defects andimperfections--views of them all are submitted to the eye; and it is notto be thought that we could by words add to the effect of the works ofsuch artists. These objections do not apply to what we have writtenrespecting the character of the Scenery of the Highlands, apart, as faras that may be, from their lochs; and it may have in some measureillustrated them also, if it has at all truly characterised themountains, the glens, the rivers, the forests, and the woods. 

We may be allowed, however, to say, that there cannot be a greatermistake than to think, as many, we believe, do who have only heard ofthe Highland Lochs, that, with the exception of those famous for theirbeauty as well as their grandeur, beauty is not only not the quality bywhich they are distinguished, but that it is rarely found in them atall. There are few, possessing any very marked character, in whichbeauty is not either an ingredient or an accompaniment; and there aremany "beautiful exceedingly, " which, lying out of the way even ofsomewhat adventurous travellers, or very remote, are known, if even bythat, only by name. It does not, indeed, require much, in somesituations, to give a very touching beauty to water. A few trees, a fewknolls, a few tufted rocks, will do it, where all around and above isstern or sterile; and how strong may be the gentle charm, if the torrentthat feeds the little loch chance to flow into it from a lucid poolformed by a waterfall, and to flow out of it in a rivulet that enlivensthe dark heather with a vale of verdure over which a stag mightbound--and more especially if there be two or three huts in which it isperceived there is human life! We believe we slightly touched before onsuch scenes; but any little repetition will be excused for the sake of avery picturesque passage, which we have much pleasure in quoting fromthe very valuable "Guide to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, " bythe brothers Anderson. We well remember walking into the scene here sowell painted, many long years ago, and have indeed, somewhere or other, described it. The Fall of Foyers is the most magnificent cataract, outof all sight and hearing, in Britain. The din is quite loud enough inordinary weather--and it is only in ordinary weather that you canapproach the place from which you have a full view of all its grandeur. When the Fall is in flood--to say nothing of being drenched to theskin--you are so blinded by the sharp spray-smoke, and so deafened bythe dashing and clashing, and tumbling and rumbling thunder, that yourcondition is far from enviable, as you cling, "lonely lover of nature, "to a shelf by no means eminent for safety, above the horrid gulf. Nor informer times was there any likelihood of your being comforted by theaccommodations of the General's Hut. In ordinary Highlandweather--meaning thereby weather neither very wet nor very dry--it isworth walking a thousand miles for one hour to behold the Fall ofFoyers. The spacious cavity is enclosed by "complicated cliffs andperpendicular precipices" of immense height, and though for a while itwears to the eye a savage aspect, yet beauty fears not to dwell eventhere, and the horror is softened by what appears to be masses of tallshrubs, or single shrubs almost like trees. And they are trees, which onthe level plain would look even stately; but as they ascend ledge aboveledge the walls of that awful chasm, it takes the eye time to see themas they really are, while on our first discernment of their character, serenely standing among the tumult, they are felt on such sites to besublime. 

"Between the Falls and the Strath of Stratherrik, " says the Book we wereabout to quote, "a space of three or four miles, the river Foyers flowsthrough a series of low rocky hills clothed with birch. They presentvarious quiet glades and open spaces, where little patches of cultivatedground are encircled by wooded hillocks, whose surface is pleasinglydiversified by nodding trees, bare rocks, empurpled heath, and brackenbearing herbage. " It was the excessive loveliness of some of the scenerythere that suggested to us the thought of going to look what kind of astream the Foyers was above the Fall. We went, and in the quiet of asummer evening, found it

 "Was even the gentlest of all gentle things. "

But here is the promised description of it. "Before pursuing our waywestward, we would wish to direct the traveller's attention to asequestered spot of peculiar beauty on the river Foyers. This is asecluded vale, called Killean, which, besides its naturalattractions--and these are many--is distinguished as one of the fewplaces where the old practice of resorting to the 'shieling' for summergrazing of cattle is still observed. It is encompassed on all sides bysteep mountains; but at the north end there is a small lake, about amile and a half in length, and from one-third to half a mile in breadth. The remainder of the bottom of the glen is a perfectly level tract, ofthe same width with the lake, and about two miles and a half in length, covered with the richest herbage, and traversed by a small meanderingriver flowing through it into the lake. The surface of this flat isbedecked with the little huts or bothies which afford temporaryaccommodation to the herdsmen and others in charge of the cattle. Thisportion of the glen is bordered on the west by continuous hills risingabruptly in a uniformly steep acclivity, and passing above into aperpendicular range of precipices, the whole covered with a scantyverdure sprouted with heath. At a bend of the lake near its middle, where it inclines from a northernly course towards the west, amagnificent rounded precipice, which, like the continuous ranges, may beabout 1200 feet in height, rises immediately out of the water; and a fewnarrow and inclined verdant stripes alone preserve it from exhibiting aperfectly mural character. To this noble rock succeeds, along the restof the lake, a beautiful, lofty, and nearly vertical hill-side, clothedwith birch, intermingled with hanging mossy banks, shaded over with thedeeper-tinted bracken. The eastern side of the plain, and the adjoiningportion of the lake, are lined by mountains corresponding in height withthose opposed to them; but their lower extremities are, to aconsiderable extent, strewed with broken fragments of rock, to whichsucceeds an uninterrupted zone of birch and alder, which is againovertopped in its turn by naked cliffs. An elevated terrace occupies theremainder of this side of the lake; above the wooded face of which isseen a sloping expanse of mingled heath and herbage. About half a milefrom the south end, Mr Fraser of Lovat, the proprietor, has erected ashooting-lodge; viewed from which, or from either end, or from the topof the platform on the north-east side of the lake, fancy could scarcelypicture a more attractive and fairy landscape than is unfolded by thissequestered vale, to which Dr Johnson's description of the 'HappyValley' not inaptly applies. The milch cows, to the number of severalhundreds, are generally kept here from the beginning of June to themiddle of August, when they are replaced by the yeld cattle. The riversweeps to the northward from Loch Killean through richly birch-cladhills, which rise in swelling slopes from its banks. A large tarn whichimmediately joins it from the east is crossed at its mouth by a rusticbridge, from which a single footpath conducts across the brow of thehill to Whitebridge, a small public-house or inn, four miles distant. "

There is a loch of a very different character from Killean, almost aslittle known (one view of it is given in the book), equal to anything inthe Highlands, only two miles distant from Loch Lochy, in the GreatGlen--Loch Arkaig. We first visited it many years since, having beeninduced to do so by a passage in John Stoddart's "Remarks on the LocalScenery and Manners of Scotland;" and it was then a very noble oak andpine forest loch. The axe went to work and kept steadily at it; and agreat change was wrought; but it is still a grand scene, with a largerinfusion of beauty than it possessed of old. The scenery of the valleyseparating it from Loch Lochy is very similar to that of the Trossachs;through it there are two approaches to the loch, and the _Mile-Dubh_, orthe Dark Mile, according to our feeling, is more impressive than anypart of the approach to Loch Katrine. The woods and rocks are verysolemn, and yet very sweet; for though many old pines and oaks and ashesare there, and the wall of rocks is immense, young trees prevail now onmany places, as well along the heights as among the knolls and hillocksbelow, where alders and hawthorns are thick; almost everywhere the youngare intermingled with the old, and look cheerful under their protection, without danger of being chilled by their shade. The loch, more or lesssylvan from end to end, shows on its nearer shores some magnificentremains of the ancient forest, and makes a noble sweep like some greatriver. There may be more, but we remember but one island--not large, butwooded as it should be--the burying-place of the family of Lochiel. Whatrest! It is a long journey from Loch Lochy to Kinloch Arkaig--and by thesilent waters we walked or sat all a summer's day. There was nothinglike a road that we observed, but the shores are easily travelled, andthere it is you may be almost sure of seeing some red-deer. They are nobetter worth looking at from a window than Fallow--no offence to Fallow, who are fine creatures; indeed, we had rather not see them so at all;but on the shores or steeps of Loch Arkaig, with hardly a humanhabitation within many, many miles, and these few rather known than seento be there, the huts of Highlanders contented to cultivate here andthere some spot that seems cultivatable, but probably is found not tobe so after some laborious years--there they are at home; and you, ifyoung, looking on them, feel at home too, and go bounding, like one ofthemselves, over what, did you choose, were an evitable steep. Roe, too, frequent the copses, but to be seen they must be started; grouse springup before you oftener than you might expect in a deer forest; but, to besure, it is a rough and shaggy one, though lovelier lines of verdurenever lay in the sunshine than we think we see now lying for miles alongthe margin of that loch. The numerous mountains towards the head of theloch are very lofty, and glens diverge in grand style into opposite anddistant regions. Glen Dessary, with its beautiful pastures, opens on theloch, and leads to Loch Nevish on the coast of Knoidart--Glen Pćan toOben-a-Cave on Loch Morer, Glen Canagorie into Glenfinnan and LochShiel; and Glen Kingie to Glengarry and Loch Quoich. There is a choice!We chose Glen Kingie, and after a long climb found a torrent that tookus down to Glengarry before sunset. It is a loch little known, and ingrandeur not equal to Loch Arkaig; but at the close of such a day'sjourney, the mind, elevated by the long contemplation of the greatobjects of nature, cannot fail to feel aright, whatever it may be, thespirit of the scene, that seems to usher in the grateful hour of rest. It is surpassing fair--and having lain all night long on its gentlebanks, sleeping or waking we know not, we have never remembered it sincebut as the Land of Dreams. 

Which is the dreariest, most desolate, and dismal of the Highland Lochs?We should say Loch Ericht. It lies in a prodigious wilderness, withwhich perhaps no man alive is conversant, and in which you may travelfor days without seeing even any symptoms of human life. We speak of theregions comprehended between the Forest of Atholl and Ben-nevis, theMoor of Rannoch and Glen Spean. There are many lochs--and Loch Ericht istheir griesly Queen. Herdsmen, shepherds, hunters, fowlers, anglers, traverse its borders, but few have been far in the interior, and wenever knew anybody who had crossed it from south to north, from east towest. We have ourselves seen more of it, perhaps, than any otherLowlander; and had traversed many of its vast glens and moors, before wefound our way to the southern solitude of Loch Ericht. We came into thewestern gloom of Ben Auler from Loch Ouchan, and up and down for hoursdismal but not dangerous precipices that opened out into what mightalmost be called passes--but we had frequently to go back, for they wereblind--contrived to clamber to the edge of one of the mountains thatrose from the water a few miles down the loch. All was vast, shapeless, savage, black, and wrathfully grim; for it was one of those days thatkeep frowning and lowering, yet will not thunder; such as one conceivesof on the eve of an earthquake. At first the sight was dreadful, butthere was no reason for dread; imagination remains not longer than shechooses the slave of her own eyes, and we soon began to enjoy the gloom, and to feel how congenial it was in nature with the character of allthose lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together insolitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. Andthey were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a greatdistance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, covering theirfeet. 

Loch Ericht is many miles long--nearly twenty; but there is a loch amongthe Grampians not more than two miles round, if so much, which issublimer far--Loch Aven. You come upon the sight of it at once, a shortway down from the summit of Cairngorm, and then it is some two thousandfeet below you, itself being as many above the level of the sea. But tocome upon it so as to feel best its transcendent grandeur, you shouldapproach it up Glenaven--and from as far down as Inch-Rouran, which isabout half-way between Loch Aven and Tomantoul. Between Inch-Rouran andTomantoul the glen is wild, but it is inhabited; above that house thereis but one other; and for about a dozen miles--we have heard it calledfar more--there is utter solitude. But never was there a solitude atonce so wild, so solemn, so serene, so sweet! The glen is narrow; but onone side there are openings into several wider glens, that show youmighty coves as you pass on; on the other side the mountains are withouta break, and the only variation with them is from smooth to shaggy, fromdark to bright; but their prevailing character is that of pastoral or offorest peace. The mountains that show the coves belong to the bases ofBen-Aven and Ben-y-buird. The heads of those giants are not seen--but itsublimes the long glen to know that it belongs to their dominion, andthat it is leading us on to an elevation that ere long will be on alevel with the roots of their topmost cliffs. The Aven is so clear--onaccount of the nature of its channel--that you see the fishes hanging inevery pool; and 'tis not possible to imagine how beautiful in suchtransparencies are the reflections of its green ferny banks. For milesthey are composed of knolls, seldom interspersed with rocks, and therecease to be any trees. But ever and anon we walk for a while on a levelfloor, and the voice of the stream is mute. Hitherto sheep have beennoticed on the hill, but not many, and red and black cattle grazing onthe lower pastures; but they disappear, and we find ourselves all atonce in a desert. So it is felt to be, coming so suddenly with its blackheather on that greenest grass; but 'tis such a desert as the red-deerlove. We are now high up on the breast of the mountain, which appears tobe Cairngorm; but such heights are deceptive, and it is not till weagain see the bed of the Aven that we are assured we are still in theglen. Prodigious precipices, belonging to several different mountains, for between mass and mass there is blue sky, suddenly arise, formingthemselves more and more regularly into circular order, as we near; andnow we have sight of the whole magnificence; yet vast as it is, we knownot yet how vast; it grows as we gaze, till in a while we feel thatsublimer it may not be; and then so quiet in all its horrid grandeur wefeel too that it is beautiful, and think of the Maker. 

This is Loch Aven. How different the whole region round from thatenclosing Loch Ericht! There, vast wildernesses of more than melancholymoors--huge hollows hating their own gloom that keeps themherbless--disconsolate glens left far away by themselves, without anysign of life--cliffs that frown back the sunshine--and mountains, as ifthey were all dead, insensible to the heavens. Is this all mereimagination--or the truth? We deceive ourselves in what we call adesert. For we have so associated our own being with the appearances ofoutward things, that we attribute to them, with an uninquiring faith, the very feelings and the very thoughts, of which we have chosen to makethem emblems. But here the sources of the Dee seem to lie in a region ashappy as it is high; for the bases of the mountains are all such as thesoul has chosen to make sublime--the colouring of the mountains allsuch, as the soul has chosen to make beautiful; and the whole region, thus imbued with a power to inspire elevation and delight, is felt to beindeed one of the very noblest in nature. 

We have now nearly reached the limits assigned to our "Remarks on theCharacter of the Scenery of the Highlands;" and we feel that thesketches we have drawn of its component qualities--occasionally filledup with some details--must be very imperfect indeed withoutcomprehending some parts of the coast, and some of the sea-arms thatstretch into the interior. But even had our limits allowed, we do notthink we could have ventured on such an attempt; for though we havesailed along most of the western shores, and through some of its sounds, and into many of its bays, and up not a few of its reaches, yet theycontain such an endless variety of all the fairest and greatest objectsof nature, that we feel it would be far beyond our powers to giveanything like an adequate idea of the beauty and the grandeur that forever kept unfolding themselves around our summer voyagings in calm orstorm. Who can say that he knows a thousandth part of the wonders of"the marine" between the Mull of Cantire and Cape Wrath? He may havegathered many an extensive shore--threaded many a mazy multitude ofisles--sailed up many a spacious bay--and cast anchor at the head ofmany a haven land-locked so as no more to seem to belong to the sea--yetother voyagers shall speak to him of innumerable sights which he hasnever witnessed; and they who are most conversant with those coasts, best know how much they have left and must leave for ever unexplored. 

Look now only at the Linnhe Loch--how it gladdens Argyll! Without it andthe Sound of Mull how sad would be the shadows of Morvern! Eclipsed thesplendours of Lorn! Ascend one of the heights of Appin, and as the wavesroll in light, you will see how the mountains are beautified by the sea. There is a majestic rolling onwards there that belongs to noland-loch--only to the world of waves. There is no nobler image ofordered power than the tide, whether in flow or in ebb; and on all nowit is felt to be beneficent, coming and going daily, to enrich andadorn. Or in fancy will you embark, and let the Amethyst bound away "ather own sweet will, " accordant with yours, till she reach the distantand long-desired loch. 

 "Loch-Sunart! who, when tides and tempests roar, Comes in among these mountains from the main, 'Twixt wooded Ardnamurchan's rocky cape And Ardmore's shingly beach of hissing spray; And while his thunders bid the sound of Mull Be dumb, sweeps onwards past a hundred bays Hill-shelter'd from the wrath that foams along The mad mid-channel, --All as quiet they As little separate worlds of summer dreams, -- And by storm-loving birds attended up The mountain-hollow, white in their career As are the breaking billows, spurns the Isles Of craggy Carnich, and green Oronsay Drench'd in that sea-horn shower o'er tree-tops driven, And ivied stones of what was once a tower, Now hardly known from rocks--and gathering might In the long reach between Dungallan caves And point of Arderinis ever fair With her Elysian groves, bursts through that strait Into another ampler inland sea; Till lo! subdued by some sweet influence, -- And potent is she, though so meek the Eve, -- Down sinketh wearied the old Ocean Insensibly into a solemn calm, -- And all along that ancient burial-ground (Its kirk is gone), that seemeth now to lend Its own eternal quiet to the waves, Restless no more, into a perfect peace Lulling and lull'd at last, while drop the airs Away as they were dead, the first-risen star Beholds that lovely Archipelago, All shadow'd there as in a spiritual world, Where time's mutations shall come never more!"

These lines describe but one of innumerable lochs that owe theirgreatest charm to the sea. It is indeed one of those on which nature haslavished all her infinite varieties of loveliness; but Loch Leven isscarcely less fair, and perhaps grander; and there is matchlessmagnificence above Loch Etive. All round about Ballahulish and Invercothe scenery of Loch Leven is the sweetest ever seen overshadowed bysuch mountains; the deeper their gloom, the brighter its lustre; in allweathers it wears a cheerful smile; and often while tip among the rocksthe tall trees are tossing in the storm, the heart of the woods beneathis calm, and the vivid fields they shelter look as if they still enjoyedthe sun. Nor closes the beauty there, but even animates the entranceinto that dreadful glen--Glencoe. All the way up its river, Loch Levenwould be fair, were it only for her hanging woods. But though the glennarrows, it still continues broad, and there are green plains betweenher waters and the mountains, on which stately trees stand single, andthere is ample room for groves. The returning tide tells us, should weforget it, that this is no inland loch, for it hurries away back to thesea, not turbulent, but fast as a river in flood. The river Leven is oneof the finest in the Highlands, and there is no other such series ofwaterfalls, all seen at once, one above the other, along an immensevista; and all the way up to the furthest there are noble assemblages ofrocks--nowhere any want of wood--and in places, trees that seem to havebelonged to some old forest. Beyond, the opening in the sky seems tolead into another region, and it does so; for we have gone that way, past some small lochs, across a wide wilderness, with mountains on allsides, and descended on Loch Treag, "A loch whom there are none to praise, And very few to love, "

but overflowing in our memory with all pleasantest images of pastoralcontentment and peace. 

Loch Etive, between the ferries of Connel and Bunawe, has been seen byalmost all who have visited the Highlands--but very imperfectly; to knowwhat it is, you must row or sail up it, for the banks on both sides areoften richly wooded, assume many fine forms, and are frequently wellembayed, while the expanse of water is sufficiently wide to allow youfrom its centre to command a view of many of the distant heights. Butabove Bunawe it is not like the same loch. For a couple of miles it isnot wide, and it is so darkened by enormous shadows that it looks evenless like a strait than a gulf--huge overhanging rocks on both sidesascending high, and yet felt to belong but to the bases of mountainsthat sloping far back have their summits among clouds of their own inanother region of the sky. Yet are they not all horrid; for nowhere elseis there such lofty heather--it seems a wild sort of brushwood; talltrees flourish, single or in groves, chiefly birches, with now and thenan oak--and they are in their youth or their prime--and even theprodigious trunks, some of which have been dead for centuries, are notall dead, but shoot from their knotted rind symptoms of lifeinextinguishable by time and tempest. Out of this gulf we emerge intothe Upper Loch, and its amplitude sustains the majesty of the mountains, all of the highest order, and seen from their feet to their crests. Cruachan wears the crown, and reigns over them all--king at once of LochEtive and of Loch Awe. But Buachaille Etive, though afar off, is still agiant, and in some lights comes forwards, bringing with him the BlackMount and its dependents, so that they all seem to belong to this mostmagnificent of all Highland lochs. "I know not, " says Macculloch, "thatLoch Etive could bear an ornament without an infringement on that aspectof solitary vastness which it presents throughout. Nor is there one. Therocks and bays on the shore, which might elsewhere attract attention, are here swallowed up in the enormous dimensions of the surroundingmountains, and the wide and ample expanse of the lake. A solitary house, here fearfully solitary, situated far up in Glen Etive, is only visiblewhen at the upper extremity; and if there be a tree, as there are in afew places on the shore, it is unseen; extinguished as if it were ahumble mountain flower, by the universal magnitude around. " This isfinely felt and expressed; but even on the shores of Loch Etive there ismuch of the beautiful; Ardmatty smiles with its meadows, and woods, andbay, and sylvan stream; other sunny nooks repose among the grey granitemasses; the colouring of the banks and braes is often bright; severalhouses or huts become visible no long way up the glen; and though thatlong hollow--half a day's journey--till you reach the wild road betweenInveruran and King's House--lies in gloom, yet the hillsides arecheerful, and you delight in the greensward, wide and rock-broken, should you ascend the passes that lead into Glencreran or Glencoe. Butto feel the full power of Glen Etive you must walk up it till it ceasesto be a glen. When in the middle of the moor, you see far off asolitary dwelling indeed--perhaps the loneliest house in all theHighlands--and the solitude is made profounder, as you pass by, by thevoice of a cataract, hidden in an awful chasm, bridged by two or threestems of trees, along which the red-deer might fear to venture--but wehave seen them and the deer-hounds glide over it, followed by otherfearless feet, when far and wide the Forest of Dalness was echoing tothe hunter's horn. 

We have now brought our Remarks on the Scenery of the Highlands to aclose, and would fain have said a few words on the character and life ofthe people; but are precluded from even touching on that mostinteresting subject. It is impossible that the minds of travellersthrough those wonderful regions, can be so occupied with thecontemplation of mere inanimate nature, as not to give many a thought totheir inhabitants, now and in the olden time. Indeed, without suchthoughts, they would often seem to be but blank and barren wildernesses, in which the heart would languish, and imagination itself recoil; butthey cannot long be so looked at, for houseless as are many extensivetracts, and therefore at times felt to be too dreary even for moods thatfor a while enjoyed the absence of all that might tell of human life, yet symptoms and traces of human life are noticeable to the instructedeye almost everywhere, and in them often lies the spell that charms us, even while we think that we are wholly delivered up to the influence of"dead insensate things. " None will visit the Highlands without havingsome knowledge of their history; and the changes that have long beentaking place in the condition of the people will be affectinglyrecognised wherever they go, in spite even of what might have appearedthe insuperable barriers of nature. 

 "Time and Tide Have washed away, like weeds upon the sands, Crowds of the olden life's memorials; And 'mid the mountains you as well might seek For the lone site of fancy's filmy dreams. Towers have decay'd and moulder'd from the cliffs, Or their green age, or grey, has help'd to build New dwellings sending up their household smoke From treeless places once inhabited But by the secret sylvans. On the moors The pillar-stone, reared to perpetuate The fame of some great battle, or the power Of storied necromancer in the wild, Among the wide change on the heather-bloom By power more wondrous wrought than his, its name Has lost, or fallen itself has disappear'd; No broken fragment suffer'd to impede The glancing ploughshare. All the ancient woods Are thinn'd and let in floods of daylight now, Then dark and dern as when the Druids lived. Narrow'd is now the red-deer's forest reign; The royal race of eagles is extinct. But other changes than on moor and cliff Have tamed the aspect of the wilderness; The simple system of primeval life, Simple but stately, hath been broken down; The clans are scatter'd, and the chieftain's power Is dead, or dying--but a name--though yet It sometimes stirs the desert; to the winds The tall plumes wave no more--the tartan green With fiery streaks among the heather-bells Now glows unfrequent; and the echoes mourn The silence of the music that of old Kept war-thoughts stern amid the calm of peace. Yet to far battle plains still Morven sends Her heroes, and still glittering in the sun, Or blood-dimm'd, her dread line of bayonets Marches with loud shouts straight to victory. A soften'd radiance now floats o'er her glens; No rare sight now upon her sea-arm lochs The sail oft-veering up the solitude; And from afar the noise of life is brought Within the thunders of her cataracts. These will flow on for ever; and the crests, Gold-tipt by rising and by setting suns, Of her old mountains inaccessible Glance down their scorn for ever on the toils That load with harvests now the humbler hills, Now shorn of all their heather bloom, and green Or yellow as the gleam of lowland fields. And bold hearts in broad bosoms still are there, Living and dying peacefully; the huts Abodes are still of high-soul'd poverty; And underneath their lintels beauty stoops Her silken-snooded head, when singing goes The maiden to her father at his work Among the woods, or joins the scanty line Of barley-reapers on their narrow ridge, In some small field among the pastoral braes. Still fragments dim of ancient poetry In melancholy music down the glens Go floating; and from shieling roof'd with boughs, And turf-wall'd, high up in some lonely place Where flocks of sheep are nibbling the sweet grass Of mid-summer, and browsing on the plants On the cliff mosses a few goats are seen Among their kids, you hear sweet melodies Attuned to some traditionary tale, By young wife sitting all alone, aware From shadow on the mountain horologe Of the glad hour that brings her husband home Before the gloaming, from the far-off moor Where the black cattle feed; there all alone She sits and sings, except that on her knees Sleeps the sweet offspring of their faithful loves. "

We love the people too well to praise them--we have had too heartfeltexperience of their virtues. In castle, hall, house, manse, hut, hovel, shieling--on mountain and moor, we have known, without having to studytheir character. It manifests itself in their manners, and in theirwhole frame of life. They are now, as they ever were, affectionate, faithful, and fearless; and far more delightful surely it is to see suchqualities in all their pristine strength--for civilisation has notweakened, nor ever will weaken them--without that alloy of fiercenessand ferocity which was inseparable from them in the turbulence of feudaltimes. They are now indeed a peaceful people; severe as are thehardships of their condition, they are, in the main, contented with it;and nothing short of necessity can dissever them from their dearmountains. We devoutly trust that there need be no more forcedemigration--that henceforth it will be free--at the option of theadventurous--and that all who will, when the day cometh, may be gatheredto their fathers in the land that gave them birth. Much remains to bedone not only to relieve but enlighten; yet Christian benevolence hasnot been forgetful of their wants; schools and churches are arising inremote places; and that they are in good truth a religious as well as amoral people is proved by the passionate earnestness with which, intheir worst destitution, they embrace every offer of instruction in theknowledge that leads to everlasting life. The blessing of Heaven willlie on all such missions as these; and the time will come when we shallbe able to contemplate, without any pain, the condition of a race who, to use the noble language of one, though often scornful and sarcasticovermuch, yet at heart their friend, "almost in an hour subsided intopeace and virtue, retaining their places, their possessions, theirchiefs, their songs, their traditions, their superstitions and peculiarusages--even that language and those recollections which still separatethem from the rest of the nation. They retained even their pride, andthey retained their contempt of those who imposed that order on them, and still they settled into a state of obedience to that government, ofwhich the world produces no other instance! It is a splendid moralphenomenon, and reflects a lustre on the Highland character, whether ofthe chiefs or the people, which extinguishes all past faults, and whichatones for what little remains to be amended. A peculiar politicalsituation was the cause of their faults; and that which swept away thecause, has rendered the effects a tale of other times. "

END OF VOL. II. 

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.