coarser and coarser in each successive widow-I hood, when at their fourth husband are beyond expression hideous, and felt to be so by the whole canine tribe? Spenser must have seen some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and licking the hand of some virgin-sweet reader, like thyself-else never had he painted the posture of that Lion who guarded through Fairyland

"Heavenly Una and her milkwhite lamb." A divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall never cease quoting on to the last of our inditings, even to our dying day!

But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the mawsies, and the mallards? What! You have left them—hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the Still! We remember it now-and all the distillers are to-night to be at our Tent, bringing with them feathers, fur, and hide-ducks, pussy, and deer. But take the roe on your stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down to the silvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. Surefoot has a sufficient burden in us--for we are waxing more corpulent every day--and erelong shall be a Silenus.

life.

Look and listen far and wide through a sunshiny day, over a rich wooded region, with hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, and yet haply not one bird is to be seen or heard—neither plumage nor song. Yet many a bright lyrist is there, all mute till the harbinger-hour of sunset, when all earth, air, and heaven, shall be ringing with one song. Almost even so is it with this mountain-wilderness. Small bright-haired, bright-eyed, brightfaced children, come stealing out in the morning from many hidden huts, each solitary in its own site, the sole dwelling on its own bra€ or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, alone or in small bands, trippingly along the wide moors; meeting into pleasant parties at cross paths, or at fords, till one stated hour sees them all gathered together, as now in the small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the echo of the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard soft among the cliffs. But all at once the hum now ceases, and there is a hurry out of doors, and exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamish, with the roe on his shoulders, has passed the small lead-latticed window, and the SchoolAy, travel all the world over, and a human room has emptied itself on the green, which is dwelling lovelier in its wildness shall you now brightening with the young blossoms of nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in "A roe-a roe-a roe!"-is still the the depth of its own beauty, beneath the last chorus of their song; and the Schoolmaster of the green knolls besprinkling Gleno, dropt himself, though educated at college for the down there in presence of the peacefulest bay kirk, has not lost the least particle of his of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened passion for the chase, and with kindling eyes bosom it sees itself reflected among the con- assists Hamish in laying down his burden, and genial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a gazes on the spots with a hunter's joy. We murmur as of swarming bees! "Tis a Gaelic leave you to imagine his delight and his sur school--set down in this loneliest of all places, prise when, at first hardly trusting his optics, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the he beholds CHRISTOPHER ON SUREFOOT, and seeds of saving knowledge shall be sown over then, patting the shelty on the shoulder, bows all the wilds. That grayhaired minister of affectionately and respectfully to the Old Man, God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been and while our hands grasp, takes a pleasure here from the great city on one of his holy in repeating over and over again that celebrated pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and surname-North-North-North. that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a After a brief and bright hour of glee and Schoolhouse has risen with its blue roof-the merriment, mingled with grave talk, nor marred pure diamond-sparkling slates of Ballahulish by the sweet undisturbance of all those elves —beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But maddening on the Green around the Roe, we whence come they--the little scholars-who express a wish that the scholars may all again are all murmuring there? We said that the be gathered together in the Schoolroom, to shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem undergo an examination by the Christian Phithey to the eye of Imagination, that loves to losopher of Buchanan Lodge. "Tis in all things gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to gentle, in nothing severe. breathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of one vast wilderness. But Imagination was a liar ever-a romancer and a dealer in dreams. Hers are the realms of fiction,

All slates are in

stantly covered with numerals, and 'tis pleasant to see their skill in finest fractions, and in the wonder-working golden rule of three. And now the rustling of their manuals is like that of rainy breezes among the summer leaves. No fears are here that the Book of God will lose its sanctity by becoming too familiar to eye, lip, and hand. Like the sunlight in the sky, the light that shines there is for ever dear

"A boundless contiguity of shade !" But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the heart-there her eye reposes or expatiates, and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions arise before it, in a light that fadeth not away, and unlike any sunlight in any skies, never but abideth for ever! Cottages, huts, shielings, is it clouded, permanently bright, and unshe sees hidden--few and far between indeed dimmed before pious eyes by one single —but all filled with Christian life-among the shadow. We ought, perhaps, to be ashamed, hollows of the hills-and up, all the way up but we are not so we are happy that not an the great glens--and by the shores of the lone- urchin is there who is not fully better acliest lochs--and sprinkled, not so rarely, among quainted with the events and incidents rethe woods that enclose little fields and mea- corded in the Old and New Testaments than dows of their own-all the way down-more ourselves; and think not that all these could animated-till children are seen gathering be- have been so faithfully committed to memory fore their doors the shells of the contiguous sea. I without the perpetual operation of the heart.

Words are forgotten unless they are embalmed in spirit; and the air of the world, blow afterwards rudely as it may, shall never shrivel up one syllable that has been steeped into their souls by the spirit of the Gospel-felt by these almost infant disciples of Christ to be the very breath of God.

It has turned out one of the sweetest and serenest afternoons that ever breathed a hush over the face and bosom of August woods. Can we find it in our mind to think, in our heart to feel, in our hand to write that Scotland is now even more beautiful than in our youth! No-not in our heart to feel-but in our eyes to see for they tell us it is the truth. The people have cared for the land which the Lord their God hath given them, and have made the wilderness to blossom like the rose. The same Arts that have raised their condition have brightened their habitation; Agriculture, by fertilizing the loveliness of the low-lying vales, has sublimed the sterility of the stupendous mountain heights—and the thundrous tides, flowing up the lochs, bring power to the cornfields and pastures created on hillsides once horrid with rocks. The whole country laughs with a more vivid verdure-more pure the flow of her streams and rivers-for many a fen and marsh have been made dry, and the rainbow pictures itself on clearer cataracts.

The Highlands were, in our memory, overspread with a too dreary gloom. Vast tracts there were in which Nature herself seemed miserable; and if the heart find no human happiness to repose on, Imagination will fold her wings, or flee away to other regions, where in her own visionary world she may soar at will, and at will stoop down to the homes of this real earth. Assuredly the inhabitants are happier than they then were-better off-and therefore the change, whatever loss it may comprehend, has been a gain in good. Alas! poverty-penury--want-even of the necessaries of life—are too often there still rife; but patience and endurance dwell there, heroic and better far, Christian--nor has Charity been slow to succour regions remote but not inaccessible, Charity acting in power delegated by Heaven to our National Councils. And thus we can think not only without sadness, but with an elevation of soul inspired by such example of highest virtue in humblest estate, and in our own sphere exposed to other trials be induced to follow it, set to us in many "a virtuous household, though exceeding poor." What are all the poetical fancies about "mountain scenery," that ever fluttered on the leaves of albums, in comparison with any scheme, however prosaic, that tends in any way to increase human comforts? The best sonnet that ever was written by a versifier from the South to the Crown of Benlomond, is not worth the worst pair of worsted stockings trotted in by a small Celt going with his dad to seek for a lost sheep among the snow-wreaths round his base. As for eagles, and ravens, and red-deer, "those magnificent creatures so stately and bright," let them shift for themselves-and perhaps in spite of all our rhapsodies--the fewer of them the better--but among geese, and turkeys, and poultry, let propagation flourish-the fleecy

folk baa-and the hairy hordes bellow on a thousand hills. All the beauty and sublimity on earth-over the Four Quarters of the World --is not worth a straw if valued against a good harvest. An average crop is satisfactory; but a crop that soars high above an average-a golden year of golden ears-sends joy into the heart of heaven. No prating now of the degeneracy of the potato. We can sing now with our single voice, like a numerous chorus, of

"Potatoes drest both ways, both roasted and boiled ;" Sixty bolls to the acre on a field of our own of twenty acres--mealier than any meal-Perth reds to the hue on whose cheeks dull was that on the face of the Fair Maid of Perth, when she blushed to confess to Burn-y-win' that hand-over-hip he had struck the iron when it was hot, and that she was no more the Glover's. Oh bright are potato blooms!-Oh green are potato-shaws!-Oh yellow are potato plums! But how oft are blighted summer hopes and broken summer promises! Spare not the shaw-heap high the mounds-that damp nor frost may dim a single eye; so that all winter through poor men may.prosper, and spring see settings of such prolific vigour, that they shall yield a thousand-fold-and the sound of rumble-te-thumps be heard all over the land.

Let the people eat-let them have food for their bodies, and then they will have heart to care for their souls; and the good and the wise will look after their souls, with sure and certain hope of elevating them from their hovels to heaven, while prigs, with their eyes in a fine frenzy rolling, rail at railroads and all the other vile inventions of an utilitarian age to open up and expedite communication between the Children of the Mist and the Sons and Daughters of the Sunshine, to the utter annihilation of the sublime Spirit of Solitude. Be under no sort of alarm for Nature. There is some talk, it is true, of a tunnel through Cruachan to the Black Mount, but the general impression seems to be that it will be a great bore. A joint-stock company that undertook to remove Ben Nevis, is beginning to find unexpected obstructions. Feasible as we confess it appeared, the idea of draining Loch Lomond has been relinquished for the easier and more useful scheme of converting the Clyde from below Stonebyres, to above the Bannatyne Fall, into a canal-the chief lock being, in the opinion of the most ingenious speculators, almost ready-made at Corra Linn.

Shall we never be done with our soliloquy? It may be a little longish, for age is prolix-bu every whit as natural and congenial with circumstances, as Hamlet's "to be or not to be, that is the question." O beloved Albin! our soul yearneth towards thee, and we invoke a blessing on thy many thousand glens. The man who leaves a blessing on any one of thy solitary places, and gives expression to a good thought in presence of a Christian brother, is a missionary of the church. What uncomplaining and unrepining patience in thy solitary huts! What unshrinking endurance of physical pain and want, that might well shame the Stoic's

snow!

philosophic pride! What calm contentment, A gentleman ought not to shoot like a gameakin to mirth, in so many lonesome households, keeper, any more than at billiards to play like hidden the greatest part of the year in mist and a marker, nor with four-in-hand ought he to What peaceful deathbeds, witnessed tool his prads like the Portsmouth Dragsman. but by a few, a very few grave but tearless We choose to shoot like a philosopher as we eyes! Ay, how many martyrdoms for the holy are, and to preserve the golden mean in murlove and religion of nature, worse to endure der. We hold, with Aristotle, that all virtue than those of old at the stake, because pro- consists in the middle, between the two extracted through years of sore distress, for ever tremes; and thus we shoot in a style equidistant on the very limit of famine, yet for ever far from that of the gamekeeper on the one hand, removed from despair! Such is the people and that of the bagman on the other, neither among whom we seek to drop the books, whose killing nor missing every bird; but, true to the sacred leaves are too often scattered to the spirit of the Aristotelian doctrine, leaning with winds, or buried in the dust of Pagan lands. a decided inclination towards the first rather Blessed is the fount from whose wisely managed than the second predicament. If we shoot too munificence the small house of God will rise well one day, we are pretty sure to make frequent in the wide and sea-divided wilds, with amends for it by shooting just as much too ill its humble associate, the heath-roofed school, another; and thus, at the close of the week, in which, through the silence of nature, will be we can go to bed with a clear conscience, In heard the murmuring voices of the children of short, we shoot like gentlemen, scholars, poets, the poor, instructed in the knowledge useful philosophers as we are; and looking at us, you for time, and of avail for eternity. have a sight

We leave a loose sovereign or two to the Bible Fund; and remounting Surefoot, while our friend the school-master holds the stirrup tenderly to our toe, jog down the road which is rather alarmingly like the channel of a droughtdried torrent, and turning round on the saddle, send our farewell salutes to the gazing scholars, first, bonnet waved round our head, and then, that replaced, a kiss flung from our hand. Hamish, relieved of the roe, which will be taken up (how you shall by-and-by hear) on our way back to the Tent, is close at our side, to be ready should Shelty stumble; O'Bronte as usual bounds in the van, and Ponto, Piro, and Basta, impatient for the next heather hill, keep close at our heels through the wood.

"Of him who walks (rides) in glory and in joy, Following his dog upon the mountain side,"

a man evidently not shooting for a wager, and performing a match from the mean motive of avarice or ambition, but blazing away" at his own sweet will," and, without seeming to know it, making a great noise in the world. Such, believe us, is ever the mode in which true genius displays at once the earnestness and the modesty of its character. But, Hamish-HamishHamish-look with both thine eyes on yonder bank-yonder sunny bank, beneath the shade of that fantastic cliff's superincumbent shadow

Ha!

and seest thou not basking there a miraculous amount of the right sort of feathers? They have packed, Hamish-they have packed, We do not admire that shooting-ground which early as it yet is in the season; and the question resembles a poultry-yard. Grouse and barn- is-What shall we do? We have it. Take up door fowls are constructed on opposite princi- a position-Hamish-about a hundred yards ples, the former being wild, and the latter tame in the rear-on yonder knoll-with the Colocreatures, when in their respective perfection. nel's Sweeper. Fire from the rest-mind, Of all dull pastimes, the dullest seems to us from the rest, Hamish-right into the centre sporting in a preserve; and we believe that we of that bed of plumage, and we shall be ready, share that feeling with the Grand Signior. The with Brown Bess and her sister, to pour in our sign of a lonely wayside inn in the Highlands, quartette upon the remains as they rise-so ought not to be the Hen and Chickens. Some that not escape shall one single feather. Let shooters, we know, sick of common sport, love our coming "to the present" be your signal.— slaughter. From sunrise to sunset of the First Bang! Whew!-what a flutter! Now take Day of the Moors, they must bag their hundred that-and that-and that-and that! brace. That can only be done where pouts Hamish-as at the springing of a mine, the prevail, and cheepers keep chiding; and where whole company has perished. Count the dead. you have half-a-dozen attendants to hand you Twenty-one! Life is short-and by this comdouble-barrels sans intermission, for a round pendious style we take Time by the forelock. dozen of hours spent in a perpetual fire. Com- But where the devil are the ducks? Oh, yes! mend us to a plentiful sprinkling of game; to with the deer at the Still. Bag, and be stirground which seems occasionally barren, and ring. For the Salmon-pond is murmuring in which it needs a fine instructed eye to traverse our ear; and in another hour we must be at scientifically, and thereof to detect the latent Inveraw. Who said that Cruachan was a riches. Fear and Hope are the Deities whom steep mountain? Why, with a gentle, smooth, Christopher in his Sporting Jacket worships; and easy slope, he dips his footsteps in the and were they unpropitious, the Moors would sea-salt waters of Loch-Etive's tide, as if to lose all their witchcraft. We are a dead shot, accommodate the old gentleman who, half-abut not always, for the forefinger of our right century ago, used to beard him in his pride on hand is the most fitful forefinger in all this his throne of clouds. Heaven bless him !—he capricious world. Like all performers in the Fine Arts, our execution is very uncertain; and though "toujours pret" is the impress on one side of our shield, "hit and miss" is that on the other, and often the more characteristic.

is a kind-hearted mountain, though his forehead be furrowed, and his aspect grim in stormy weather. A million memories "o' auld lang syne" revive, as almost "smooth-sliding without step" Surefoot travels through the

or religious house, secluded from all the stir that disturbed the shore, carries back our dreams to the olden time, and we awake from our reveries of "sorrows suffered long ago," to enjoy the apparent happiness of the living world.

silvan haunts, by us beloved of yore, when | its sweet repose. The dim-seen ruins of castle every day was a dream, and every dream filled to overflowing with poetic visions that swarmed on every bough, on every bent, on every heather-bell, in every dewdrop, in every mote o' the sun, in every line of gossamer, all over greenwood and greensward, gray cliff, purple heath, blue loch, "wine-faced sea,"

"with locks divinely spreading, Like sullen hyacinths in vernal hue." and all over the sky, seeming then a glorious infinitude, where light, and joy, and beauty had their dwelling in calm and storm alike for

evermore.

Heaven bless thee-with all her sun, moon, and stars! there thou art, dearest to us of all the lochs of Scotland—and they are all dear mountain-crowned, cliff-guarded, isle-zoned, grove-girdled, wide-winding and far-stretching, with thy many-bayed banks and braes of brushwood, fern, broom, and heather, rejoicing in their huts and shielings, thou glory of Argyleshire, rill-and-river-fed, sea-arm-like, floating in thy majesty, magnificent Loch Awe!

Loch Lomond is a sea! Along its shores might you voyage in your swift schooner, with shifting breezes, all a summer's day, nor at sunset, when you dropped anchor, have seen half the beautiful wonders. It is many-isled; and some of them are in themselves little worlds, with woods and hills. Houses are seen looking out from among old trees, and children playing on the greensward that slopes safely into deep water, where in rushy havens are drawn up the boats of fishermen, or of woodcutters who go to their work on the mainland. You might live all your life on one of those islands, and yet be no hermit. Hundreds of small bays indent the shores, and some of a majestic character take a fine bold sweep with their towering groves, enclosing the mansion Comparisons, so far from being odious, are of a Colquhoun or a Campbell at enmity no always suggested to our hearts by the spirit of more, or the turreted castle of the rich alien, love. We behold Four Lochs-Loch Awe, who there finds himself as much at home as before our bodily eyes, which sometimes sleep in his hereditary hall, Sassenach and Gaël -Loch-Lomond, Windermere, Killarney, be- now living in gentle friendship. What a prosfore those other eyes of ours that are waking pect from the Point of Firkin. The loch in ever. The longest is Loch Awe, which, from its whole length and breadth-the magnificent that bend below Sonnachan to distant Edder- expanse unbroken, though bedropped, with line, looks like a river. But cut off, with the unnumbered isles-and the shores diversified soft scythe or sickle of fancy, twenty miles of with jutting cape and far-shooting peninsula, the length of the mottled snake, who never enclosing sweet separate seclusions, each in coils himself up except in misty weather, and itself a loch. Ships might be sailing here, the who is now lying outstretched in the sunshine, | largest ships of war; and there is anchorage and the upper part, the head and shoulders, for fleets. But the clear course of the lovely are of themselves a Loch. Pleasant are his Leven is rock-crossed and intercepted with many hills, and magnificent his one mountain. gravelly shallows, and guards Loch-Lomond For you see but Cruachan. He is the master- from the white-winged roamers that from all spirit. Call him the noblest of Scotland's seas come crowding into the Firth of Clyde, Kings. His subjects are princes; and glori- and carry their streaming flags above the ously they range around him, stretching high, woods of Ardgowan. And there stands Ben. wide, and far away, yet all owing visible alle- What cares he for all the multitude of other giance to him their sole and undisputed sove- lochs his gaze commands-what cares he even reign. The setting and the rising sun do him for the salt-sea foam tumbling far away off homage. Peace loves-as now-to dwell with- into the ocean? All-sufficient for his love is in his shadow; but high among the precipices his own loch at his feet. How serenely looks are the halls of the storms. Green are the down the Giant! Is there not something very shores as emerald. But the dark heather with sweet in his sunny smile? Yet were you to its purple bloom sleeps in sombre shadow see him frown-as we have seen him-your over wide regions of dusk, and there is an heart would sink; and what would become of austere character in the cliffs. Moors and you-if all alone by your own single self, mosses intervene between holms and meadows, wandering over the wide moor that glooms in and those black spots are stacks of last year's utter houselessness between his corries and peats—not huts, as you might think-but those Glenfalloch-what if you were to hear the other specks are huts, somewhat browner- strange mutterings we have heard, as if moanfew roofed with straw, almost all with heathering from an earthquake among quagmires, till -though the better houses are slated-nor is there in the world to be found slate of a more beautiful pale green colour than in the quarries of Ballahulish. The scene is vast and wild; yet so much beauty is interfused, that at such an hour as this, its character is almost that of loveliness; the rude and rugged is felt to be rural, and no more; and the eye gliding from the cottage gardens on its banks, to the islands on the bosom of the Loch, loses sight of the mighty masses heaved up to the heavens, while the heart forgets that they are there, in

you felt that the sound came from the sky, and all at once from the heart of night that had strangled day burst a shattering peal that might waken the dead-for Benlomond was in wrath, and vented it in thunder?

Perennially enjoying the blessing of a milder clime, and repaying the bounty of nature by beauty that bespeaks perpetual gratitudemerry as May, rich as June, shady as July, lustrous as August, and serene as September, for in her meet the characteristic charms of every season, all delightfully mingled by the

happy genius of the place commissioned to | but suddenly tipt with fire shone out the goldpervade the whole from heaven, most lovely en pinnacles of the Eagle's Nest; and as again yet most majestic, we breathed the music of they were tamed by cloud-shadow, the glow thy name, and start in this sterner solitude at of Purple Mountain for a while enchained our the sweet syllabling of Windermere, Winder- vision, and then left it free to feast on the mere! Translucent thy waters as diamond forests of Glena, till, wandering at the capriwithout a flaw. Unstained from source to sea cious will of fancy, it floated in delight over are all the streams soft issuing from their sil- the woods of .Mucruss, and long lost among ver springs among those beautiful mountains. the trembling imagery of the water, found lastPure are they all as dew-and purer look the ing repose on the steadfast beauty of the silwhite clouds within their breast. These are van isle of Inisfallen. indeed the Fortunate Groves! Happy is every tree. Blest the "Golden Oak," which seems to shine in lustre of his own, unborrowed from the sun. Fairer far the flower-tangled grass of those wood-encircled pastures than any meads of Asphodel. Thou need'st no isles on thy heavenly bosom, for in the sweet confusion of thy shores are seen the images of many isles, fragments that one might dream had been gently loosened from the land, and had floated away into the lake till they had lost themselves in the fairy wilderness. But though thou need'st them not, yet hast thou, O Windermere! thine own steadfast and enduring isles-her called the Beautiful-and islets not far apart that seem born of her; for theirs the same expression of countenance-that of celestial calm-and, holiest of the sisterhood, one that still retains the ruins of an oratory, and bears the name of the Virgin Mother Mild, to whom prays the mariner when sailing, in the moonlight, along Sicilian seas.

Killarney! From the village of Cloghereen issued an uncouth figure, who called himself the "Man of the Mountain ;" and pleased with Pan, we permitted him to blow his horn before us up to the top of Mangerton, where the Devil, 'tis believed, scooped out the sward beneath the cliffs into a Punch-bowl. No doubt he did, and the Old Potter wrought with fire. 'Tis the crater of an extinct volcano. Charles Fox, Weld says, and Wright doubts, swam the Pool. Why not? "Tis not so cold as the Polar Sea. We swam across it-as Mulcocky, were he alive, but he is dead, could vouch; and felt braced like a drum. What a panorama! Our first feeling was one of grief that we were not an Irishman. We knew not where to fix our gaze. Surrounded by the dazzling bewilderment of all that multitudinous magnificence, the eye, as if afraid to grapple with the near glory-for such another day never shone from heaven-sought relief in the remote distance, and slid along the beautiful river Kenmare, insinuating itself among the recesses of the mountains, till it rested on the green glimmer of the far-off sea. The grandeur was felt, far off as it was, of that iron-bound coast. Coming round with an easy sweep, as the eyes of an eagle may do, when hanging motionless aloft he but turns his head, our eyes took in all the mighty range of the Reeks, and rested in awe on Carran Tual. Wild yet gentle was the blue aerial haze over the glimpses of the Upper Lake, where soft and sweet, in a girdle of rocks, seemed to be hanging, now in air and now in water-for all was strangely indistinct in the dim confusion-masses of green light that might be islands with their lovely trees;

But now for the black mass of rapid waters that, murmuring from loch to river, rush roaring through that rainbow-arch, and bathe the green woods in freshening spray-mist through a loveliest landscape, that steals along with its meadow-sprinkling trees close to the very shore of Loch-Etive, binding the two lochs together with a silvan band/her whose calmer spirit never knows the ebb or flow of tide, and her who fluctuates even when the skies are still with the swelling and subsiding tumult duly sent up into and recalled down from the silence of her inland solitude. And now for one pool in that river, called by eminence the Salmon Pool, whose gravelly depths are sometimes paved with the blue backs of the silverscaled shiners, all strong as sunbeams, for a while reposing there, till the river shall blacken in its glee to the floods falling in GlenScrae and Glenorchy, and then will they shoot through the cataract—for 'tis all one fall between the lochs-passionate of the sweet fresh waters in which the Abbey-Isle reflects her one ruined tower, or Kilchurn, at all times dim or dark in the shadow of Cruachan, see his grim turrets, momentarily less grim, imaged in the tremblings of the casual sunshine. Sometimes they lie like stones, nor unless you stir them up with a long pole, will they stir in the gleam, more than if they were shadows breathed from trees when all winds are dead. But at other times, they are on feed; and then no sooner does the fly drop on the water in its blue and yellow gaudiness, (and oh! but the brown mallard wing is bloody-bloody!) than some snout sucks it in

some snout of some swine-necked shoulderbender; and instantly-as by dexterously dropping your elbow you give him the butt, and strike the barb through his tongue-down the long reach of the river vista'd along that straight oak-avenue-but with clear space of greensward between wood and water-shoots the giant steel-stung in his fear, bounding blue-white into the air, and then down into the liquid element with a plunge as of a man, or rather a horse, till your heart leaps to your mouth, or, as the Greeks we believe used to say, to your nose, and you are seen galloping along the banks, by spectators in search of the picturesque, and ignorant of angling, supposed in the act of making your escape, with an incomprehensible weapon in both hands, from some rural madhouse.

Eh? eh? not in our hat-not in our waistcoat-not in our jacket-not in our breeches! By the ghost of Autolycus some pickpocket, while we were moralizing, has abstracted our Lascelles! we may as well tie a stone to each of our feet, and sink away from all sense of