as he bounds with blood, the huge animal at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. Follow me, Flora!" the boy hunter cries and flinging down their plaids, they turn their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl-and Ranald, as he ever and anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and more heavily trampled as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off-now standing at bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly to him with my rifle—and shoot him through the heart!" his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! if you would not fear to stay here by yourself-under the protection of God, who surely will not forsake you soon will I go and come from the place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we may be able to outlive the hurricane-you wrapt up in them-and folded-O my dearest sister-in my arms!" "I will go with you down the glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast-but, weak as a day-old lamb, tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold-intense as if the air were ice-had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and it was manifest that here she must be for the night-to live or to die. And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow blasts from afar; and from the opposite quarter of the sky, an inland tempest was raging to meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all hands they were environed with death. "I will go-and, till I return, leave you with God."-" Go, Ranald!" and he went and came as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings! Up-up-up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy, maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion-till at last he struck the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air was spurned by the con- Miles away-and miles back had he flown vulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald-and an hour had not been with his going upon the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to the mountain tops. Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her and he is alone-nor knows it-he and the Red-deer-an enormous animal-fast stiffening in the frost of death. and his coming-but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had been hers! She feared that she was dying-that the cold snow-storm was killing her-and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus miserably to die. He came-and her whole being was changed. Folded up in both the plaids-she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me-kiss me, Ranald-for your love-great as it is-is not as my love. You must never forget me, Ranald when your poor Flora is dead." Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and faster-the flakes are almost as large as leaves -and overhead whence so suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where are you, Flora ?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off Religion with these two young creatures upon the snow! "Tis she-'tis she-and again was as clear as the light of the Sabbath-dayRanald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and the and their belief in heaven just the same as in heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-earth. The will of God they thought of just stirred fire. Shrill as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyry, he sends a shout down the glenand Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his side. Panting and speechless she stands and then dizzily sinks on his breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven-for the day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm. Bare is poor Flora's head, and sadly drenched her hair, that an hour or two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in as they thought of their parents' will-and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was to die-supported now by the presence of her brother-Flora was utterly resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms of her grateful wor ship. But all at once she closed her eyesceased breathing-and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she was dead. "Wretched sinner that I am!-my wicked madness brought her here to die of cold!" And he smote his breast-and tore his hairand feared to look up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm. All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms, and walked away up the glen-here almost narrowed into a pass. Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly remembered, were but a short way off-whether or not they had any roof, he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed a thought of salvation. There it was—a snow-drift at the opening that had once been a door-snow up the holes once windows-the wood of the roof had been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm. And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. All colour-all motion-all breath seemed to be gone-and yet something convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, but across an angle of the walls some pinebranches had been flung as a sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in cruel weather-some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place in which it seemed possible that she might revive-miserable as it was with miremixed snow-and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And she did revive-and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon-nightlike though it was-aud he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death away. "Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing in the snow!"-"Flora, fear not-God is with us." "Wild swans, they say, are come to LochPhoil-let us go, Ranald, and see them-but no rifle for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where they lay, bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight;-but there it still hung-though the drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me-and what noise is this in our house?"-" Fear not -fear not, Flora-God is with us."-" Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm! Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep-which soon becomes that of death. one snow-shroud. Many passions-though earth-born, heavenly all-pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last despair-had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the brave boy-who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a fever-with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and all its storms! Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco-and they were among the happiest of the humble happy, blessing this the birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran-and tender thoughts of her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own ghosts, and all its own ghostlike visitings, and they had seen their Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes, too, Love, who starts at shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left them in the morningnight had come, and he and Flora were not there-but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by bringing back to them Flora on her birthday--and strange though it afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay down in untroubled sleep. And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the inland storm had been seen brewing among the moun tains round King's House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buchael-Etive and the Black-Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength-and then away over the drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs scouring the loose snows-in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last he tasted blood. All "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds laughed at the storm-and hark! you hear the bag-pipe play-the music the Highlanders love both in war and in peace. "They think then of the ourie cattle, Night itself came-but Flora and Ranald knew it not-and both lay now motionless in and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, and Faith conducted the saving band alongand now they are at Glenco-and at the door of the Hut. Who were they-the solitary pair-all alone by themselves save a small image of her on whose breast it lay-whom-seven summers after-we came upon in our wanderings, before their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the foot of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hundred lochs? Who but Ranald and Flora! * Nay, dry up-Daughter of our Age, dry up thy tears! and we shall set a vision before thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light. -for the snow-storm will sweep her out of heaven-up the mountain and down the glen they go, marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at night-fall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into To life were brought the dead; and there at the depth where once stood the old Grove of midnight sat they up like ghosts. Strange Pines. Following the dogs, who know their seemed they-for a while-to each other's duties in their instinct, the band, without see-eyes-and at each other they looked as if they ing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why had forgotten how dearly once they loved. bark the sheep-dogs so-and why howls Fingal, Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each as if some spirit passed athwart the night? other's faces, thinking that they had awoke He scents the dead body of the boy who so together in heaven. "Flora!" said Ranaldoften had shouted him on in the forest, when and that sweet word, the first he had been the antlers went by! Not dead-nor dead she able to speak, reminded him of all that had who is on his bosom. Yet life in both is frozen passed, and he knew that the God in whom -and will the iced blood in their veins ever they had put their trust had sent them deliveragain be thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the ance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were rootless ruin-and the frightened sheep know on their knees-and she strove to rise up and not what is the terrible Shape that is howling kneel down beside them-but she was powerthere. But a man enters, and lifts up one of less as a broken reed-and when she thought the bodies, giving it into the arms of them at to join them in thanksgiving, her voice was the doorway-and then lifts up the other; and, gone. Still as death sat all the people in the by the flash of a rifle, they see that it is Ranald hut-and one or two who were fathers were Cameron and Flora Macdonald, seemingly not ashamed to weep. both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not there-and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their plaids-how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and wounded, they bore away the shattered body-yet living Oft before have those woods and watersof the youthful warrior, who had shown that those clouds and mountains-that sun and sky, of such a Clan he was worthy to be the Chief. held thy spirit in Elysium,-thy spirit, that then The storm was with them all the way down was disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glen-nor could they have heard each the glory of the elements. "Tis WINDERMERE other's voices had they spoke-but mutely they-WINDERMERE! Never canst thou have forshifted the burden from strong hand to hand-gotten those more than fortunate-those thricethinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of what blessed Isles! But when last we saw them would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind people walk through what to them is the night of crowded daystreets-unpausing turn round corners-unhesitatingly plunge down steep stairs-wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life -and reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. This saving band had no fear-and therefore there was no danger-on the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the mountains shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves did Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way, as if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges were-stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the blushing, the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and of shadow forming one creation. But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All leafless now the groves that girdled her as if shifting rainbows were in love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone now are her banks of emerald that carried our calm gazings with them, sloping away back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, shadowy in sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they now?-The cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine eye-and through it thy soul to that transcendent substitution, and deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the Lake hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the sunshine-no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, or bay-no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens the sleeping echoes. How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frostwork of our own spirits. Again both are gone from the outward world-and naught remains but a forbidden frown of the cold bleak snow. But imperishable in thy imagination will both sunsets be-and though it will sometimes retire into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to their depths yet mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one single silent thought, to which power has been yielding over that bright portion of the Past, will both of them sometimes reappear to thee in solitude-or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few tears will fall for sake of himthen no more seen-by whose side thou stoodest, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense of beauty, and made thee in thy father's eyes the sweetest-best-and brightest poetesswhose whole life is musical inspiration-ode, elegy, and hymn, sung not in words but in looks-sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in this world from grief. imagery, yet more steadfastly hanging there than ever hung the banks of summer! For all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of Glamoury in which that Lord of old beheld his Geraldine-is Windermere, the heaven-loving and the heaven-beloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her bays, from the silvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into a river-now chained too, the Leven, on his silvan course towards that perilous Estuary afar off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The frost came after the last fall of snow-and not a single flake ever touched that surface; and now that you no longer miss the green twinkling of the large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative in the strangeness of their apparelling of wild thoughts about the scenery of foreign climes, far away among the regions of the North, where Nature works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect Frost, during the absence of the sun, employs his night of months in building and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of any power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptred kings? All at once a So much, though but little, for the beautifulhundred houses, high up among the hills, seem with, perhaps, a tinge of the sublime. Are the on fire. The setting sun has smitten them, and two emotions different and distinct-thinkst the snow-tracts are illuminated by harmless thou, O metaphysical critic of the gruesome conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted countenance or modifications of one and the up by a lurid splendour, in its strong sudden- same? "Tis a puzzling question-and we, ness sublime. But look, look, we beseech you, Sphinx, might wait till doomsday, before you, at the sun-the sunset-the sunset region-dipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly a and all that kindred and corresponding heaven, Rose is one thing and Mount Etna is another effulgent, where a minute ago lay in its cold-an antelope and an elephant-an insect and glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows the laws of light and the perpetual miracle of their operation? God-not thou. The snowmountains are white no more, but gorgeous in their colouring as the clouds. Lo! Pavey-Ark -magnificent range of cliffs-seeming to come forward, while you gaze!-How it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers decked the precipice in that delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, methinks, are tinged with finest purple, and the thought of violets is with us as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the mountain's dearest to the setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps-all but yon stranger-the summit of some mountain belonging to another regionay-the Great Gabel-silent now as sleepwhen last we clomb his cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach of the setting sun he lours in his exclusion from the rejoicing light, and imagination, personifying his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn Giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his forehead. On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old loving eyes so like the "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty?" On the sunset in the heaven-or the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is-O Daughter of our Age!-that both sunsets are but visions a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun-a little nity and of eternal love, the ring, upon her fin- | turn with his ring, and with his horrid hair ger-with its encased star shining brightly now the comet-might be all less than nothings. that her eyes, once stars, are closed-would, me- Therefore beauty and sublimity are twin feelthinks, be sublime to all Christian hearts. In ings-one and the same birth-seldom insepacomparison with all these beautiful sublimities, rable;-if you still doubt it, become a fire-wor Mount Etna, the elephant, the man-of-war, shipper, and sing your morning and evening Leviathan swimming the ocean-stream, Sa- orisons to the rising and the setting sun. THE HOLY CHILD. visible and inaudible that you wonder to find that it is all vanished, and to see the old tree again standing in its own faint-green glossy bark, with its many million buds, which perhaps fancy suddenly expands into a power of umbrage impenetrable to the sun in Scorpio. THIS House of ours is a prison-this Study | cay, but often melts away into changes so inof ours a cell. Time has laid his fetters on our feet-fetters fine as the gossamer, but strong as Samson's ribs, silken-soft to wise submission, but to vain impatience galling as cankered wound that keeps ceaselessly eating into the bone. But while our bodily feet are thus bound by an inevitable and inexorable law, our mental wings are free as those of the lark, the dove, or the eagle-and they shall be expanded as of yore, in calm or tempest, now touching with their tips the bosom of this dearly beloved earth, and now aspiring heavenwards, beyond the realms of mist and cloud, even unto the very core of the still heart of that otherwise unapproachable sky which graciously opens to receive us on our flight, when, disencumbered of the burden of all grovelling thoughts, and strong in spirituality, we exult to soar "Beyond this visible diurnal sphere," nearing and nearing the native region of its own incomprehensible being. Now touching, we said, with their tips the bosom of this dearly beloved earth! How sweet that attraction to imagination's wings! How delightful in that lower flight to skim along the green ground, or as now along the soft-bosomed beauty of the virgin snow! We were asleep all night long-sound asleep as children-while the flakes were falling, "and soft as snow on snow" were all the descendings of our untroubled dreams. The moon and all her stars were willing that their lustre should be veiled by that peaceful shower; and now the sun, pleased with the purity of the morning earth, all white as innocence, looks down from heaven with a meek unmelting light, and still leaves undissolved the stainless splendour. There is frost in the air-but he "does his spiriting gently," studding the ground-snow thickly with diamonds, and shaping the tree-snow according to the peculiar and characteristic beauty of the leaves and sprays, on which it has alighted almost as gently as the dews of spring. You know every kind of tree still by its own spirit showing itself through that fairy veil-momentarily disguised from recognition -but admired the more in the sweet surprise with which again your heart salutes its familiar branches, all fancifully ornamented with their snow foliage, that murmurs not like the green leaves of summer, that like the yellow leaves of autumn strews not the earth with de A sudden burst of sunshine! bringing back the pensive spirit from the past to the present, and kindling it, till it dances like light reflected from a burning mirror. A cheerful Sun-scene, though almost destitute of life. An undulating Landscape, hillocky and hilly, but not moun tainous, and buried under the weight of a day and night's incessant and continuous snow-fall The weather has not been windy—and now that the flakes have ceased falling, there is not a cloud to be seen, except some delicate braidings here and there along the calm of the Great Blue Sea of Heaven. Most luminous is the sun, yet you can look straight on his face, almost with unwinking eyes, so mild and mellow is his large light as it overflows the day. All enclosures have disappeared, and you indistinctly ken the greater landmarks, such as a grove, a wood, a hall, a castle, a spire, a village, a town-the faint haze of a far off and smokeless city. Most intense is the silence; for all the streams are dumb, and the great river lies like a dead serpent in the strath. Not dead—for, lo! yonder one of his folds glitters-and in the glitter you see him movingwhile all the rest of his sullen length is palsied by frost, and looks livid and more livid at every distant and more distant winding. What blackens on that tower of snow? Crows roosting innumerous on a huge tree--but they caw not in their hunger. Neither sheep nor cattle are to be seen or heard-but they are cared for;-the folds and the farm-yards are all full of life-and the ungathered stragglers are safe in their instincts. There has been a deep fall-but no storm-and the silence, though partly that of suffering, is not that of death. Therefore, to the imagination, unsaddened by the heart, the repose is beautiful. The almost unbroken uniformity of the scene-its simple and grand monotony-lulls all the thoughts and feelings into a calm, over which is breathed the gentle excitation of a novel charm, inspiring many fancies, all of a quiet character. Their range, perhaps, is not very extensive, but they all regard the homefelt and domestic charities of life.. And the heart burns as here |