white hair, running after their mother! But killed him for not building a house of his own the large hazel eye of the she peaseweep, rest- in a country where there was no want of less even in the most utter solitude, soon sticks. But the kite or glead, as the same disspied us glowering at her, and her young ones, tinguished ornithologist rightly says, is prothrough our tears; and not for a moment verbial for the ease and gracefulness of its doubting-Heaven forgive her for the shrewd flight, which generally consists of large and but cruel suspicion!—that we were Lord Eg- sweeping circles, performed with a motionless linton's gamekeeper-with a sudden shrill cry wing, or at least with a slight and almost imthat thrilled to the marrow in our cold back- perceptible stroke of its pinions, and at very bone-flapped and fluttered herself away into distant intervals. In this manner, and directthe mist, while the little black bits of downing its course by its tail, which acts as a ruddisappeared, like devils, into the moss. The der, whose slightest motion produces effect, it croaking of the frogs grew terrible. And frequently soars to such a height as to become worse and worse, close at hand, seeking almost invisible to the human eye. Him we his lost cows through the mist, the bellow loved to slay, as a bird worthy of our barrel. of the notorious red bull! We began saying Him and her have we watched for days, like our prayers; and just then the sun forced a lynx, till we were led, almost as if by an himself out into the open day, and, like instinct, to their nest in the heart of the forest the sudden opening of the shutters of a room, a nest lined with wool, hair, and other soft the whole world was filled with light. The materials, in the fork of some large tree. frogs seemed to sink among the pow-heads- They will not, of course, utterly forsake their as for the red bull who had tossed the tinker, nest, when they have young, fire at them as he was cantering away, with his tail towards you will, though they become more wary, and us, to a lot of cows on the hill; and hark-a seem as if they heard a leaf fall, so suddenly long, a loud, an oft-repeated halloo! Rab Ro- will they start and soar to heaven. We reger, honest fellow, and Leezy Muir, honest member, from an ambuscade in a briery dell lass, from the manse, in search of our dead in the forest, shooting one flying overhead to body! Rab pulls our ears lightly, and Leezy its nest; and, on going up to him as he lay on kisses us from the one to the other-wrings his back, with clenched talons and fierce eyes, the rain out of our long yellow hair-(a pretty absolutely shrieking and yelling with fear, and contrast to the small gray sprig now on the rage, and pain, we intended to spare his life, crown of our pericranium, and the thin tail and only take him prisoner, when we beheld a-cock_behind)-and by and by stepping into beside him on the sod, a chicken from the Hazel-Deanhead for a drap and a "chitterin' brood of famous ginger piles, then, all but his piece," by the time we reach the manse we are small self, following the feet of their clucking as dry as a whistle-take our scold and our mother at the manse! With visage all inpawmies from the minister-and, by way of flamed, we gave him the butt on his double punishment and penance, after a little hot organ of destructiveness, then only known to whisky toddy, with brown sugar and a bit of us by the popular name of "back o' the head,” bun, are bundled off to bed in the daytime! exclaiming

Thus we grew up a Fowler, ere a loaded gun was in our hand-and often guided the city-fowler to the haunts of the curlew, the plover, the moorfowl, and the falcon. The falcon! yes-in the higher region of clouds and cliffs. For now we had shot up into a stripling-and how fast had we so shot up you may know, by taking notice of the schoolboy on the play-green, and two years afterwards discovering, perhaps, that he is that fine tall ensign carrying the colours among the light-bobs of the regiment, to the sound of clarion and flute, cymbal and great drum, marching into the city a thousand strong.

We used in early boyhood, deceived by some uncertainty in size, not to distinguish between a kite and a buzzard, which was very stupid, and unlike us-more like Poietes in Salmonia. The flight of the buzzard, as may be seen in Selby, is slow-and except during the season of incubation, when it often soars to a considerable height, it seldom remains long on the wing. It is indeed a heavy, inactive bird, both in disposition and appearance, and is generally seen perched upon some old and decayed tree, such being its favourite haunt. Him we soon thought little or nothing about-and the last one we shot, it was, we remember, just as he was coming out of the deserted nest of a crow, which he had taken possession of out of pure laziness; and we

"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas
Immolat".

Quivered every feather, from beak to tail and
talon, in his last convulsion,

"Vitaque cum gemitu fugit indignata sub umbras!" In the season of love what combats have we been witness to-Umpire-between birds of prey! The Female Falcon, she sat aloof like a sultana, in her soft, sleek, glossy plumes, the iris in her eye of wilder, more piercing, fiery, cruel, fascinating, and maddening lustre, than ever lit the face of the haughtiest human queen, adored by princes on her throne of diamonds. And now her whole plumage shivers

and is ruffled-for her own Gentle Peregrine appears, and they two will enjoy their dalliance on the edge of the cliff-chasm-and the Bride shall become a wife in that stormy sunshine on the loftiest precipice of all these our Alps. But a sudden sugh sweeps down from heaven, and a rival Hawk comes rushing in his rage from his widowed eyry, and will win and wear this his second selected bride-for her sake, tearing, or to be torn, to pieces. Both struck down from heaven, fall a hundred fathom to the heather, talon-locked, in the mutual gripe of death. Fair play, gentlemen, and attend to the Umpire. It is, we understand, to be an up-and-down fight. Allow us to disen tangle you-and without giving advantage to

either-elbow-room to both. Neither of you | bers, from all the impulses that come to them ever saw a human face so near before-nor in solitude gaining more, far more than they ever were captive in a human hand. Both have lost! When we are awake, or half fasten their momentarily frightened eyes on awake, or almost sunk into a sleep, they are us, and, holding back their heads, emit a wild ceaselessly gathering materials for the thinkringing cry. But now they catch sight of each ing and feeling soul-and it is hers, in a deep other, and in an instant are one bunch of delight formed of memory and imagination, to torn, bloody plumes. Perhaps their wings are put them together by a divine plastic power, broken, and they can soar no more-so up we in which she is almost, as it were, a very crefling them both into the air-and wheeling ator, till she exult to look on beauty and on each within a short circle, clash again go both grandeur such as this earth and these heavens birds together, and the talons keep tearing never saw, products of her own immortal and throats till they die. Let them die, then, for immaterial energies, and BEING once, to BE for both are for ever disabled to enjoy their lady-ever, when the universe, with all its suns and love. She, like some peerless flower in the systems, is no more! days of chivalry at a fatal tournament, seeing her rival lovers dying for her sake, nor ever to wear her glove or scarf in the front of battle, rising to leave her canopy in tears of grief and pride-even like such Angelica, the Fal-themselves, when the old birds are hunting, con unfolds her wings, and flies slowly away from her dying ravishers, to bewail her virginity on the mountains. "O Frailty! thy name is woman!" A third Lover is already on the wing, more fortunate than his preceding peers-and Angelica is won, woo'd, and sitting, about to lay an egg in an old eyry, soon repaired and furbished up for the honeyweek, with a number of small birds lying on the edge of the hymeneal couch, with which, when wearied with love, and yawp with hunger, Angelica may cram her maw till she be ready to burst, by her bridegroom's breast.

But oftener we and our shadows glided along the gloom at the foot of the cliffs, ear-led by the incessant cry of the young hawks in their nest, ever hungry except when asleep. Left to

an hour's want of food is felt to be famine, and you hear the cry of the callow creatures, angry with one another, and it may be, fighting with soft beak and pointless claws, till a living lump of down tumbles over the rock-ledge, soon to be picked to the bone by insects, who likewise all live upon prey; for example, Ants of carrion. Get you behind that briery bield, that wild-rose hanging rock, far and wide scenting the wilderness with a faint perfume; or into that cell, almost a parlour, with a Gothic roof formed by large stones leaning one against the other and so arrested, as they tumbled from Forgotten all human dwellings, and all the the frost-riven breast of the precipice. Wait thoughts and feelings that abide by firesides, there, though it should be for hours-but it and doorways, and rooms, and roofs-delight- will not be for hours; for both the old hawks ful was it, during the long, long midsummer are circling the sky, one over the marsh and holyday, to lie all alone, on the green-sward one over the wood. She comes-she comesof some moor-surrounded mount, not far from the female Sparrowhawk, twice the size of her the foot of some range of cliffs, and with our mate; and while he is plain in his dress, as a face up to the sky, wait, unwearying, till a cunning and cruel Quaker, she is gay and speck was seen to cross the blue cloudless gaudy as a Demirep dressed for the pit of the lift, and steadying itself after a minute's qui- Opera-deep and broad her bosom, with an vering into motionless rest, as if hung sus-air of luxury in her eyes that glitter like a pended there by the counteracting attraction serpent's. But now she is a mother, and plays of heaven and earth, known to be a Falcon! a mother's part-greedier, even than for herBalanced far above its prey, and, soon as the self, for her greedy young. The lightning right moment came, ready to pounce down, flashes from the cave-mouth, and she comes and fly away with the treasure in its talons to tumbling, and dashing, and rattling through its crying eyry! If no such speck were for the dwarf bushes on the cliff-face, perpendicuhours visible in the ether, doubtless dream lar and plumb-down, within three yards of her upon dream, rising unbidden, and all of their murderer. Her husband will not visit his nest own wild accord, congenial with the wilder- this day-no-nor all night long; for a father's ness, did, like phantasmagoria, pass to and is not as a mother's love. Your only chance fro, backwards and forwards, along the dark- of killing him, too, is to take a lynx-eyed cirened curtain of our imagination, all the lights cuit round about all the moors within half a of reason being extinguished or removed! In league; and possibly you may see him sitting that trance, not unheard, although scarcely on some cairn, or stone, or tree-stump, afraid noticed, was the cry of the curlew, the murmur to fly either hither or thither, perplexed by the of the little moorland burn, or the din, almost sudden death he saw appearing among the unlike dashing, of the far-off loch. 'Twas thus accountable smoke, scenting it yet with his that the senses, in their most languid state, fine nostrils, so as to be unwary of your apministered to the fancy, and fed her for a fu- proach. Hazard a long shot-for you are right ture day, when all the imagery then received behind him—and a slug may hit him on the so imperfectly, and in broken fragments, into head, and, following the feathers, split his her mysterious keeping, was to arise in order- skull-cap and scatter his brains. "Tis donely array, and to form a world more lovely and and the eyry is orphan'd. Let the small brown more romantic even than the reality, which moorland birds twitter Io Pean, as they hang then lay hushed or whispering, glittering or balanced on the bulrushes-let the stone-chat gloomy, in the outward air. For the senses glance less fearfully within shelter of the old hear and see all things in their seeming slum-gray cairn-let the cushat coo his joyous grati

other gathered, as it were, a mist or a cloud, | the sky. With him we first followed the Falan answering sympathy chained our own con in her flight-he showed us on the Echotongue, and darkened our own countenance, in cliff the Eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led intercommunion of spirit felt to be indeed us where lay couched the lovely-spotted Doe, divine! It seemed as if we knew but the or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing words of language-that he was a scholar who on the glade with her two fawns at her side. saw into their very essence. The books we But for him we should not then have seen the read together were, every page, and every sen- antlers of the red-deer, for the Forest was tence of every page, all covered over with indeed a most savage place, and hauntedlight. Where his eye fell not as we read, all such was the superstition at which they who was dim or dark, unintelligible or with imper- scorned it trembled-haunted by the ghost of fect meanings. Whether we perused with him a huntsman whom a jealous rival had mur. a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the dered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little volume of the earth and the sky, or the volume mountain well that ever since oozed out blood. revealed from Heaven, next day we always What converse passed between us two in all knew and felt that something had been added those still shadowy solitudes! Into what to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew depths of human nature did he teach our wonup in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer dering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to moral and religious air, with all our finer become of us, we sometimes thought in sadaffections towards other human beings, all our ness that all at once made our spirits sinkkindred and our kind, touched with a dearer like a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevo- the fear of some unwonted shadow from above lence that seemed to our ardent fancy to em--what was to become of us when the manbrace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain-of joy or grief-of fear or hope-had our heart to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfections-may we venture to say, with all its virtues. A repented folly-a confessed fault-a sin for which we were truly contrite -a vice flung from us with loathing and with shame-in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal land. In spite of that difference in our years-or oh! say rather because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and the moonlight solitudes! Woods -into whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts-in whose lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by ourselves have faced the spray-in his presence, dinn'd with a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was | the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm of both blue depths-how magnificent the white-crested Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting waves tumbling beneath the black thunder- one another-in absence or in death. Yet forcloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed getting is not just the very word; call it rather on it along with his, at the beginning or the a reconcilement to doom and destiny-in thus ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition | obeying a benign law of nature that soon of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, streams sunshine over the shadows of the that seemed to sweep at once all the swinging grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings and stooping woods, to our ear, because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at midnight, when not one star was in

date should arrive for him to leave the Manse
for ever, and sail away in a ship to India never
more to return! Ever as that dreaded day
drew nearer, more frequent was the haze in
our eyes; and in our blindness, we knew not
that such tears ought to have been far more
rueful still, for that he then lay under orders
for a longer and more lamentable voyage—a
voyage over a narrow streight to the eternal
shore. All-all at once he drooped; on one
fatal morning the dread decay began-with no
forewarning, the springs on which his being
had so lightly-so proudly—so grandly moved,
gave way. Between one Sabbath and another
his bright eyes darkened-and while all the
people were assembled at the sacrament, the
soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven.
It was indeed a dreadful death, serene and
sainted though it were-and not a hall--not a
house-not a hut-not a shieling within all the
circle of those wide mountains, that did not on
that night mourn as if it had lost a son.
the vast parish attended his funeral-Low-
landers and Highlanders in their own garb of
grief. And have time and tempest now black-
ened the white marble of that monument-is
that inscription now hard to be read—the name
of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration-nor
haply one surviving who ever saw the light
of the countenance of him there interred!
Forgotten as if he had never been! for few
were that glorious orphan's kindred-and they
lived in a foreign land-forgotten but by one
heart, faithful through all the chances and
changes of this restless world! And therein
enshrined among all its holiest remembrances,
shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it.
too, like his, shall be but dust and ashes!

Ali

of this world be continued. The nascent spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts delightful still, thoughts

of the faces and the voices of the dead, perish | nor did our old master and minister frownnot, lying sometimes in slumber-sometimes for he grudged not to the boy he loved the in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season remnant of the dream about to be rolled away and genius of youth, to hug to its heart useless like the dawn's rosy clouds. We demanded and unavailing griefs. Images of the well- with our eye-not with our voice-one long beloved, when they themselves are in the holyday, throughout that our last autumn, on mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, to the pale farewell blossoms of the Christthrough the meditative hush of solitude. But mas rose. With our rod we went earlier to our main business-our prime joys and our the loch or river; but we had not known thoprime sorrows-ought to be-must be with the roughly our own soul-for now we angled less living. Duty demands it; and Love, who passionately-less perseveringly than was our would pine to death over the bones of the dead, wont of yore-sitting in a pensive-a melansoon fastens upon other objects with eyes and choly-a miserable dream, by the dashing voices to smile and whisper an answer to all waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our his vows. So was it with us. Ere the mid- gun we plunged earlier in the morning into summer sun had withered the flowers that the forest, and we returned later at eve-but spring had sprinkled over our Godfrey's grave, less earnest-less eager were we to hear the youth vindicated its own right to happiness; cushat's moan from his yew-tree-to see the and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft that corner in the kirkyard. No fears had we on the sky. A thousand dead thoughts came of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams to life again in the gloom of the woods-and we saw him-most often all alive as ever- we sometimes did wring our hands in an sometimes a phantom away from that grave! | agony of grief, to know that our eyes should If the morning light was frequently hard to be not behold the birch-tree brightening there endured, bursting suddenly upon us along with with another spring. the feeling that he was dead, it more frequently cheered and gladdened us with resignation, and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we found ourselves angling down the river, or along the loch-once more following the flight of the Falcon along the woods-eying the Eagle on the Echo-Cliff. Days passed by, without so much as one thought of Emilius Godfrey-pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our books intently-just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards us-his very figure-we could not be deceived-but the love-raised ghost disappeared on a sudden-the griefwoven spectre melted into the mist. The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God.

Then every visit we paid to cottage or to shieling was felt to be a farewell; there was something mournful in the smiles on the sweet faces of the ruddy rustics, with their silken snoods, to whom we used to whisper harmless love-meanings, in which there was no evil guile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-careworn countenances of the old with a profounder emotion than had ever touched our hearts in the hour of our more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the insolencies of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young we might sometimes have been, for boyblood is soon heated, and boils before a defying eye; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we revered the head of old age.

Then this was to be our last year in the parish-now dear to us as our birth-place; nay, itself our very birth-place—for in it from the darkness of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region And many at least were the kind—some the of cloud and mountain, we felt that most pro- sad farewells, ere long whispered by us at bably never more should we return. For gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for others, who thought they knew us better than ever silent amidst that music in the memory we did ourselves, had chalked out a future which is felt, not heard-its blessing mute life for young Christopher North-a life that though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a But to Thee-Ō palest Phantom-clothed in splendid name. Therefore we determined white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of pas- its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph sion, to make the most-the best--of the few descending from the skies to bless-unto Thee months that remained to us, of that our wild, will we dare to speak, as through the mist of free, and romantic existence, as yet untram-years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, melled by those inexorable laws, which, once charming us, while we cannot choose but weep launched into the world, all alike-young and with the selfsame vision that often glided before old-must obey. Our books were flung aside- us long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound