holydays; and there is in their unwithered all the air, and the glen is noiseless, except hearts warm love enough for all that may join the party. We too-yes, gentle reader-we too shall be there-as we have often been during the last ten years-and you yourself will judge, from all you know of us, whether or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy such rare felicity.

with the uncertain murmur of the now unswollen waterfalls. That is the croak of the raven sitting on his cliff halfway up Ben-Oura; and hark, the last belling of the red-deer, as the herd lies down in the mist among the last ridge of heather, blending with the shrubless stones, rocks, and cliffs that girdle the upper regions of the vast mountain.

Within the dimness of that hut you hear greetings in the Gaelic tongue, in a female voice; and when the eye has by and by become able to endure the smoke, it discerns the household-the veteran's ancient dame-a young man that may be his son, or rather his grandson, but whom you soon know to be neither, with black matted locks, the keen eye, and the light limbs of the hunter-a young woman, his wife, suckling a child, and yet with a girlish look, as if but one year before her silken snood had been untied-and a lassie

and now sits timidly in a nook eyeing the stranger. The low growl of the huge, brindled stag-hound had been hushed by a word on your first entrance, and the noble animal watches his master's eye, which he obeys in his free

is taken out of an old worm-eaten chest, and spread over a strangely-carved table, that seems to have belonged once to a place of pride; and the hungry and thirsty stranger scarcely knows which most to admire, the broad bannocks of barley-meal and the huge roll of butter, or the giant bottle, whose mouth exhales the strong savour of conquering Glenlivet. The board is spread-why not fall to and eat? First be thanks given to the Lord God Almighty. The blind man holds up his hand and prays in a low chanting voice, and then breaks bread for the lips of the stranger. On such an occasion is felt the sanctity of the meal shared by human beings brought accidentally together-the salt is sacred-and the hearth an altar.

But let us be off to the mountains, and endeavour to interest our beloved reader in a Highland Cottage-in any one, taken at haphazard, from a hundred. You have been roaming all day among the mountains, and perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling distance. Probably you have wished not to see any house, but a ruined shieling-a deserted hut-or an unroofed and dilapidated shed for the outlying cattle of some remote farm. But now the sun has inflamed all the western heaven, and darkness will soon descend. There is now a muteness more stern and solemn than during unfaded daylight. List of ten years, who had brought home the goats, the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of the bagpipe! Some old soldier, probably, playing a gathering or a coronach. The narrow dell widens and widens into a great glen, in which you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. The martial music is more distinctly heard-dom throughout all the forest-chase. A napkin loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or within the Fairies' Knowe? At the door of a hut. His eyes were extinguished by ophthalmia, and there he sits, fronting the sunlight, stone-blind. Long silver hair flows down his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, when he rises, he will rear up a stately bulk. The music stops, and you hear the bleating of goats. There they come, prancing down the rocks, and stare upon the stranger. The old soldier turns himself towards the voice of the Sassenach, and, with the bold courtesy of the camp, bids him enter the hut. One minute's view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever on the memory-a hut whose turf-walls and roof are incorporated with the living mountain, and seem not the work of man's hand, but the No great travellers are we, yet have we seen casual architecture of some convulsion-the something of this habitable globe. The Hightumbling down of fragments from the mountain lands of Scotland is but a small region, nor is side by raging torrents, or a partial earthquake; its interior by any means so remote as the infor all the scenery about is torn to pieces-terior of Africa. Yet 'tis remote. The life of like the scattering of some wide ruin. The imagination dreams of the earliest days of our race, when men harboured, like the other creatures, in places provided by nature. But even here, there are visible traces of cultivation working in the spirit of a mountainous region -a few glades of the purest verdure opened out among the tall brackens, with a birch-tree or two dropped just where the eye of taste could have wished, had the painter planted the sapling, instead of the winds of heaven having wafted thither the seed-a small croft of barley, surrounded by a cairn-.ike wall, made up of stones cleared from the soil, and a patch of potatoe ground, neat almost as the garden that shows in a nook its fruit-bushes and a few flowers. All the blasts that ever blew must be unavailing against the briery rock that shelters the hut from the airt of storms; and the smoke may rise under its lee, unwavering on the windiest day. There is sweetness in

that very blind veteran might, in better hands than ours, make an interesting history. In his youth he had been a shepherd-a herdsmana hunter-something even of a poet. For thirty years he had been a soldier-in many climates and many conflicts. Since first he bloodied his bayonet, how many of his com rades had been buried in heaps! flung into trenches dug on the field of battle! How many famous captains had shone in the blaze of their fame-faded into the light of common day-died in obscurity, and been utterly for gotten! What fierce passions must have agi. tated the frame of that now calm old man! On what dreadful scenes, when forts and towns were taken by storm, must those eyes, now withered into nothing, have glared with all the fury of man's most wrathful soul! Now peace is with him for evermore. Nothing to speak of the din of battle, but his own pipes wailing or raging among the hollow of the mountains.

low, wide, solemn, and melancholy sound. Runlets, torrents, rivers, lochs, and seasreeds, heather, forests, caves, and cliffs, all are sound, sounding together a choral anthem.

In relation to his campaigning career, his present life is as the life of another state. The pageantry of war has all rolled off and away for ever; all its actions but phantoms now of a dimly-remembered dream. He thinks of his former self, as sergeant in the Black Watch, and almost imagines he beholds another man. In his long, long blindness, he has created another world to himself out of new voices-the voices of new generations, and of torrents thundering all year long round about his hut. Almost all the savage has been tamed within him, and an awful religion falls deeper and deeper upon him, as he knows how he is nearing the grave. Often his whole mind is dim, for he is exceed-morning, noon, and night. But go by youringly old, and then he sees only fragments of his youthful life-the last forty years are as if they had never been-and he hears shouts and huzzas, that half a century ago rent the air with victory. He can still chant, in a hoarse broken voice, battle-hymns and dirges; and thus, strangely forgetful and strangely tenacious of the past, linked to this life by ties that only the mountaineer can know, and yet feeling himself on the brink of the next, Old Blind Donald Roy, the Giant of the Hut of the Three Torrents, will not scruple to quaff the "strong waters," till his mind is awakened-brightened-dimmed-darkened-and seemingly extinguished-till the sunrise again smites him, as he lies in a heap among the heather; and then he lifts up, unashamed and remorseless, that head, which, with its long quiet hairs, a painter might choose for the image of a saint about to become a martyr.

We leave old Donald asleep, and go with his son-in-law, Lewis of the light-foot, and Maida the stag-hound, surnamed the Throttler, "Where the hunter of deer and the warrior trod,

To his hills that encircle the sea."

We have been ascending mountain-range after mountain-range, before sunrise; and lo! night is gone, and nature rejoices in the day through all her solitudes. Still as death, yet as life cheerful-and unspeakable grandeur in the sudden revelation. Where is the wild-deer herd-where, ask the keen eyes of Maida, is the forest of antlers!-Lewis of the light-foot bounds before, with his long gun pointing towards the mists now gathered up to the summits of Benevis.

Nightfall-and we are once more at the Hut of the Three Torrents. Small Amy is grown familiar now, and, almost without being asked, sings us the choicest of her Gaelic airs-a few 100 of Lowland melody: all merry, yet all sad -if in smiles begun, ending in a shower-or at least a tender mist of tears. Heard'st thou ever such a syren as this Celtic child? Did we not always tell you that fairies were indeed realities of the twilight or moonlight world? And she is their Queen. Hark! what thunders of applause! The waterfall at the head of the great Corrie thunders encore with a hundred echoes. But the songs are over, and the small singer gone to her heather-bed. There is a Highland moon! The shield of an unfallen arch-angel. There are not many stars-but those two-ay, that One, is sufficient to sustain the glory of the night. Be not alarmed at that

Gracious heavens! what mistakes people have fallen into when writing about Solitude! A man leaves a town for a few months, and goes with his wife and family, and a travelling library, into some solitary glen. Friends are perpetually visiting him from afar, or the neighbouring gentry leaving their cards, while his servant-boy rides daily to the post-village for his letters and newspapers. And call you that solitude? The whole world is with you, self, without book or friend, and live a month in this hut at the head of Glenevis. Go at dawn among the cliffs of yonder pine-forest, and wait there till night hangs her moon-lamp in heaven. Commune with your own soul, and be still. Let the images of departed years rise, phantom-like, of their own awful accord from the darkness of your memory, and pass away into the wood-gloom or the mountainmist. Will conscience dread such spectres? Will you quake before them, and bow down your head on the mossy root of some old oak, and sob in the stern silence of the haunted place? Thoughts, feelings, passions, spectral deeds, will come rushing around your lair, as with the sound of the wings of innumerous birds-ay, many of them like birds of prey, to gnaw your very heart. How many duties undischarged! How many opportunities neglected! How many pleasures devoured! How many sins hugged! How many wickednesses perpetrated! The desert looks more grimthe heaven lowers-and the sun, like God's own eye, stares in upon your conscience!

But such is not the solitude of our beautfiul young shepherd-girl of the Hut of the Three Torrents. Her soul is as clear, as calm as the pool pictured at times by the floating clouds that let fall their shadows through among the overhanging birch-trees. What harm could she ever do? What harm could she ever think. She may have wept-for there is sorrow without sin; may have wept even at her prayersfor there is penitence free from guilt, and innocence itself often kneels in contrition. Down the long glen she accompanies the stream to the house of God-sings her psalms-and returns wearied to her heather-bed. She is, indeed, a solitary child; the eagle, and the raven, and the red-deer see that she is so-and echo knows it when from her airy cliff she repeats the happy creature's song. Her world is within this one glen. In this one glen she may live all her days-be wooed, won, wedded, buried. Buried-said we? Oh, why think of burial when gazing on that resplendent head? Interminable tracts of the shining day await her, the lonely darling of nature; nor dare Time ever eclipse the lustre of those wild-beaming eyes! Her beauty shall be immortal, like that of her country's fairies. So, Flower of the Wilderness, we wave towards thee a joyful-though an everlasting farewell.

Where are we now? There is not on this round green earth a lovelier Loch than Achrav. About a mile above Loch Vennachar and as

we approach the Brigg of Turk, we arrive at of oaten reed, in a lovelier nook than where the summit of an eminence, whence we descry yonder cottage stands, shaded, but scarcely the sudden and wide prospect of the windings sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth of the river that issues from Loch Achray- not a cottage-but a very SHIRLING, part of and the Loch itself reposing-sleeping-dream- the knoll adhering to the side of the mountain. ing on its pastoral, its silvan bed. Achray, Not another dwelling-even as small as itself— being interpreted, signifies the "Level Field," within a mile in any direction. Those goats and gives its name to a delightful farm at the that seem to walk where there is no footing west end. On "that happy, rural seat of va- along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to rious view," could we lie all day long; and as be milked at evening to a house beyond the all the beauty tends towards the west, each hill, without any barking dog to set them home. afternoon hour deepens and also brightens it There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, exinto mellower splendour. Not to keep con- cept one leading through the coppice-wood to stantly seeing the lovely Loch is indeed im- the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs possible yet its still waters soothe the soul, those shallows, and the heron has them to himwithout holding it away from the woods and self, watching often with motionless neck all cliffs, that forming of themselves a perfect pic-day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and ture, are yet all united with the mountainous region of the setting sun. Many long years have elapsed-at our time of life ten are many -since we passed one delightful evening in the hospitable house that stands near the wooden bridge over the Teith, just wheeling into Loch Achray. What a wilderness of wooded rocks, containing a thousand little mossy glens, each large enough for a fairy's kingdom! Between and Loch Katrine is the Place of Roes-nor need the angler try to penetrate the underwood; for every shallow, every linn, every pool is overshaded by its own canopy, and the living fly and moth alone ever dip their wings in the chequered waters. Safe there are all the little singing birds, from hawk or glead-and it is indeed an Aviary in the wild. Pine-groves stand here and there amid the natural woods-and among their tall gloom the cushat sits crooning in beloved solitude, rarely startled by human footstep, and bearing at his own pleasure through the forest the sound of his flapping wings.

has been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a little smoke hovers over it-very faint if it be smoke at all—and nothing else tells that within is life.

It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature, without any extraordi nary bereavements, she outlived all the household, except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human being-the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the But let us arise from the greensward, and be- widow and her son were in that shieling as fore we pace along the sweet shores of Loch happy as any family in the parish. He worked Achray, for its nearest murmur is yet more at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinthan a mile off, turn away up from the Brigg ning from morning to night within-a constant of Turk into Glenfinglas. A strong mountain-occupation, soothing to one before whose mind torrent, in which a painter, even with the soul past times might otherwise have come too often, of Salvator Rosa, might find studies inexhaust-and that creates contentment by its undisturbed ible for years, tumbles on the left of a ravine, in which a small band of warriors might stop the march of a numerous host. With what a loud voice it brawls through the silence, freshening the hazels, the birches, and the oaks, that in that perpetual spray need not the dew's refreshment. But the savage scene softens as you advance, and you come out of that silvan prison into a plain of meadows and corn-fields, alive with the peaceful dwellings of industrious men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are without neather-a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows. Glenfinglas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi.

A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did Sicilian shepperds of old ever pipe to each other for prize

sameness and invisible progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept, too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains were on-for then he found some ingenious employment within the shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor was she averse to partake the socialty of the other huts, and sat sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence.

But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her only son was laid prostrate by fever—and, when it left his body, he survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and intelligent, were now fixed

in idiocy, or rolled about unobserving of all | land maidens that danced on the greenswards objects living or dead. To him all weather among the blooming heather on the mountains seemed the same, and if suffered, he would of Glenetive-who so fair as Flora, the only have lain down like a creature void of under- daughter of the King's Forester, and grandstanding, in rain or on snow, nor been able to child to the Bard famous for his songs of Faifind his way back for many paces from the hut. ries in the Hill of Peace, and the MermaidAs all thought and feeling had left him, so had Queen in her Palace of Emerald floating far speech, all but a moaning as of pain or wo, down beneath the foam-waves of the sea? which none but a mother could bear to hear And who, among all the Highland youth that without shuddering-but she heard it during went abroad to the bloody wars from the base night as well as day, and only sometimes lifted of Benevis, to compare with Ranald of the Redup her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer was Cliff, whose sires had been soldiers for centumade to send him to a place where the afflicted ries, in the days of the dagger and Lochaber were taken care of; but she beseeched charity axe-stately in his strength amid the battle as for the first time for such alms as would enable the oak in a storm, but gentle in peace as the her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to birch-tree, that whispers with all its leaves to keep her son in the shieling; and the means the slightest summer-breath? If their love was were given her from many quarters to do so great when often fed at the light of each other's decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes, what was it when Ranald was far off eyes observed, but of which the poor object him- among the sands of Egypt, and Flora left an self was insensible and unconscious. Hence- orphan to pine away in her native glen? Beforth, it may almost be said, she never more neath the shadow of the Pyramids he dreamt saw the sun, nor heard the torrents roar. She of Dalness and the deer forest, that was the went not to the kirk, but kept her Sabbath dwelling of his love-and she, as she stood by where the paralytic lay-and there she sung the murmurs of that sea-loch, longed for the the lonely psalm, and said the lonely prayer, wings of the osprey, that she might flee away unheard in Heaven as many repining spirits to the war-tents beyond the ocean, and be at would have thought-but it was not so; for in rest! two years there came a meaning to his eyes, and he found a few words of imperfect speech, among which was that of "Mother." Oh! how her heart burned within her, to know that her face was at last recognised! To feel that her kiss was returned, and to see the first tear that trickled from eyes that long had ceased to weep! Day after day, the darkness that covered his brain grew less and less deep-to her that bewilderment gave the blessedness of hope; for her son now knew that he had an immortal soul, and in the evening joined faintly and feebly and erringly in prayer. For weeks afterwards he remembered only events and scenes long past and distant-and believed that his father, and all his brothers and sisters, were yet alive. He called upon them by their names to come and kiss him-on them, who had all long been buried in the dust. But his soul struggled itself into reason and remembrance-and he at last said, "Mother! did some accident befall me yesterday at my work down the glen?—I feel weak, and about to die!" The shadows of death were indeed around him; but he lived to be told much of what had happened and rendered up a perfectly unclouded spirit into the mercy of his Saviour. His mother felt that all her prayers had been granted in that one boon-and, when the coffin was borne away from the shieling, she remained in it with a friend, assured that in this world there could for her be no more grief. And there in that same shieling, now that years have gone by, she still lingers, visited as often as she wishes by her poor neighbours-for to the poor sorrow is a sacred thing-who, by turns, send one of their daughters to stay with her, and cheer a life that cannot be long, but that, end when it may, will be laid down without one impious misgiving, and in the humility of a Christian's faith.

The scene shifts of itself, and we are at the head of Glenetive. Who among all the High

But years-a few years-long and lingering as they might seem to loving hearts separated by the roar of seas-yet all too, too short when 'tis thought how small a number lead from the cradle to the grave-brought Ranald and Flora once more into each other's arms. Alas! for the poor soldier! for never more was he to behold that face from which he kissed the trickling tears. Like many another gallant youth, he had lost his eyesight from the sharp burning sand-and was led to the shieling of his love like a wandering mendicant who obeys the hand of a child. Nor did his face bear that smile of resignation usually so affecting on the calm countenances of the blind. Seldom did he speak-and his sighs were deeper, longer, and more disturbed than those which almost any sorrow ever wrings from the young. Could it be that he groaned in

remorse over some secret crime?

Happy-completely happy, would Flora have been to have tended him like a sister all his dark life long, or, like a daughter, to have sat beside the bed of one whose hair was getting fast gray, long before its time. Almost all her relations were dead, and almost all her friends away to other glens. But he had returned, and blindness, for which there was no hope, must bind his steps for ever within little room. But they had been betrothed almost from her childhood, and would she-if he desired itfear to become his wife now, shrouded as he was, now and for ever in the helpless dark? From his lips, however, her maidenly modesty required that the words should come; nor could she sometimes help wondering, in halfupbraiding sorrow, that Ranald joyed not in his great affliction to claim her for his wife. Poor were they to be sure-yet not so poor as to leave life without its comforts; and in every glen of her native Highlands, were there not worthy families far poorer than they? But weeks, months, passed on, and Ranald re

mained in a neighbouring hut, shunning the sunshine, and moaning, it was said, when he thought none were near, both night and day. Sometimes he had been overheard muttering to himself lamentable words-and, blind as his eyes were to all the objects of the real world, it was rumoured up and down the glen, that he saw visions of woful events about to befall one whom he loved.

same vision yawned before him-an open grave in the corner of the hill burial-ground without any kirk.

Flora knew that his days were indeed numbered; for when had he ever been afraid of death-and could his spirit have quailed thus under a mere common dream? Soon was she to be all alone in this world; yet when Ranald should die, she felt that her own days would not be many, and there was sudden and strong comfort in the belief that they would be buried

One midnight he found his way, unguided, like a man walking in his sleep-but although in a hideous trance, he was yet broad awake-in one grave. to the hut where Flora dwelt, and called on her, in a dirge-like voice, to speak a few words with him ere he died. They sat down together among the heather, on the very spot where the farewell embrace had been given the morning he went away to the wars; and Flora's heart died within her, when he told her that the Curse under which his forefathers had suffered, had fallen upon him; and that he had seen his wraith pass by in a shroud, and heard a voice whisper the very day he was to die.

And was it Ranald of the Red-Cliff, the bravest of the brave, that thus shuddered in the fear of death like a felon at the tolling of the great prison-bell? Ay, death is dreadful when foreseen by a ghastly superstition. He felt the shroud already bound round his limbs and body with gentle folds, beyond the power of a giant to burst; and day and night the

Such were her words to the dying man; and all at once he took her in his arms, and asked her "If she had no fears of the narrow house?" His whole nature seemed to undergo a change under the calm voice of her reply; and he said, "Dost thou fear not then, my Flora, to hear the words of doom?" "Blessed will they be, if in death we be not disunited." "Thou too, my wife-for my wife thou now art on earth, and mayest be so in heaven-thou too, Flora, wert seen shrouded in that apparition." It was a gentle and gracious summer nightso clear, that the shepherds on the hills were scarcely sensible of the morning's dawn. And there, at earliest daylight, were Ranald and Flora found, on the greensward, among the tall heather, lying side by side, with their calm faces up to heaven, and never more to smile or weep in this mortal world.

AN HOUR'S TALK ABOUT POETRY.

OURS is a poetical age; but has it produced |--hold up the product of his loom between one Great Poem? Not one.

the regal purple. But did the Boroughmonger ever produce a Great Poem? You might as well ask if he built St. Paul's.

your eye and the light, and it glows and glimJust look at them for a moment. There is mers like the peacock's back or the breast of the Pleasures of Memory-an elegant, grace- the rainbow. Sometimes it seems to be but ful, beautiful, pensive, and pathetic poem, of the "hodden gray;" when sunbeam or which it does one's eyes good to gaze on-shadow smites it, and lo! it is burnished like one's ears good to listen to-one's very fingers good to touch, so smooth is the versification and the wire-wove paper. Never will the Pleasures of Memory be forgotten till the world is in its dotage. But is it a Great Poem ? About as much so as an ant-hill, prettily grass-grown and leaf-strewn, is a mountain purple with heather and golden with woods. It is a symmetrical erection-in the shape of a cone--and the apex points heavenwards; but 'tis not a sky-piercer. You take it at a nop-and pursue your journey. Yet it endures. For the rains and the dews, and the airs, and the sunshine, love the fairy knoll, and there it greens and blossoms delicately and delightfully; you hardly know whether a work of art or a work of nature.

Then, there is the poetry of Crabbe. We hear it is not very popular. If so, then neither is human life. For of all our poets, he has most skilfully woven the web and woven the woof of all his compositions with the materials of human life-homespun indeed; but though often coarse, always strong-and though set to plain patterns, yet not unfrequently exceeding fine is the old weaver's workmanship. Ay

Breathes not the man with a more poetical temperament than Bowles. No wonder that his old eyes are still so lustrous; for they possess the sacred gift of beautifying creation, by shedding over it the charm of melancholy. "Pleasant but mournful to the soul is the memory of joys that are past"--is the text we should choose were we about to preach on his genius. No vain repinings, no idle regrets, does his spirit, now breathe over the still receding Past. But time-sanctified are all the shows that arise before his pensive imagina tion; and the common light of day, once gone, in his poetry seems to shine as if it had all been dying sunset or moonlight, or the newborn dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his Sonnets have been dear to poets--having in them "more than meets the ear"-spiritual reathings that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all