less Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound pathos are they charged! "List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle; I think me on the ourie cattle, Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, What comes o' thee? Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, "Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, Lone from your savage homes exiled, While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats." Burns is our Lowland bard-but poetry is poetry all over the world, when streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm that enshrouds the day. Ay-the one single door of this Hut-the one single "winnock," does "rattle"-by fits-as the blast smites it, in spite of the white mound drifted hillhigh all round the buried dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan-fear has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle-and all the other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent, now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia-a realm of wrath-woe-danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood-when the bagpipe blows-is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of battle within the shadow of the Pyramids, "Brought from the dust the sound of liberty," while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on " that thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyry the eagle's wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand in hand as is their wont when crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful inland or the more wrathful sea. and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct. How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it— "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, What comes o' thee? Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, The whole earth is for a moment green again-trees whisper-streamlets murmur—and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those sweetsingers are now dead-or that they "cow'r the chittering wing"-never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the e'e" that shall never more be reillumined with love, when the Season of Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with the survivors of some gentler climate. The poet's heart, humanized to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each syllable tellseach stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these few simplest words "My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats!" They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the " silly sheep;" but who knows that they are not sent on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about to perish!-an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, that we felt that interference providential-as if we had indeed seen the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot it-but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday. One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco-the families of two brothers- seldom visiting each other on working-days-seldom meeting even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk— seldom coming together on rural festivals or holydays, for in the Highlands now these are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two dwellings together— as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to another, each with its own secret nest. And nestlike both dwellings were. That in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered rock-lown in all stormswith greensward and garden on a slope down to a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once wofully reddened!) and growing-so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stones that overshadow itout of the earth. That in Glencreran, more conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oaklike pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very silvan; but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive; and, except this old oaklike grove of pines, there is not a tree, and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts for they are huts and no more--and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your heart--and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay. These Huts belonged to brothers-and each had an only child—a son and a daughter-born on the same |