FLIGHT FIRST.-GLEN-ETIVE. the mountain with telescope for sight of our | wrong with this planet of ours, and creation descending feet. Hark! signal-gun and bag- were falling back into chaos. But we love pipe hail our advent, and the Pyramid bright- scenes of beautiful repose too profoundly ever ens in its joy, independent of the sunlight, that to dream of "transferring them to canvas." has left but one streak in the sky. Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration--though we look with delight on the work when done by others-the picture without the process-the product of genius without thought of its mortal instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world, as well as the inner, is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry-we have proved that to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech you-how a little Loch seems to rise up with its tall he. ronry-a central isle-and all its silvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the floor of our Cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our crutch down the inclining greensward to the Bay of Waterlilies, and in that canoe be afloat among the Swans. All birches pines, on whose tops the large nests reposeand here and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for Roes! YES! all we have to do is to let down their lids to will that our eyes shall see-and, lo! there it is a creation! Day dawns, and for our delight in soft illumination from the dim obscure floats slowly up a visionary lochisland after island evolving itself into settled stateliness above its trembling shadow, till, from the overpowering beauty of the wide confusion of woods and waters, we seek relief, but find none, in gazing on the sky; for the east is in all the glory of sunrise, and the heads and the names of the mountains are uncertain-not any other kind of tree-except a few among the gorgeous colouring of the clouds. Would that we were a painter! Oh! how we should dash on the day and interlace it with night! That chasm should be filled with enduring gloom, thicker and thicker, nor the sun himself suffered to assuage the sullen spirit, now lowering and threatening there, as if portentous of earthquake. Danger and fear should be made to hang together for ever on those cliffs, and halfway up the precipice be fixed the restless cloud ascending from the abyss, so that in imagination you could not choose but hear the cataract. The Shadows should seem to be stalking away like evil spirits before angels of light-for at our bidding the Splendours should prevail against them, deploying from the gates of Heaven beneath the banners of morn. Yet the whole picture should be harmonious as a hymn-as a hymn at once sublime and sweet-serene and solemn-nor should it not be felt as even cheerful-and sometimes as if there were about to be merriment in Nature's heart-for the multitude of the isles should rejoice-and the new-woke waters look as if they were waiting for the breezes to enliven them into waves, and wearied of rest to be longing for the motion already beginning to rustle by fits along the silvan shores. Perhaps a deer or two-but we have opened a corner of the fringed curtains of our eyes-the idea is gone-and Turner or Thom-in son must transfer from our paper to his canvas the imperfect out-line-for it is no more -and make us a present of the finished pic ture. The great masters, were their eyes to fall on our idle words, might haply smile-not contemptuously-on our ignorance of artbut graciously on our knowledge of nature. All we have to do, then, is to learn the theory and practice of art and assuredly we should forthwith set about doing so, had we any reasonable prospect of living long enough to open an exhibition of pictures from our own easel. As it is, we must be contented with that Gallery, richer than the Louvre, which our imagination has furnished with masterpieces beyond all price or purchase-many of them touched with her own golden finger, the rest the work of high but not superior hands. Imagination, who limns in air, has none of those difficulties to contend with that always beset, and often baffle, artists in oils or waters. At a breath she can modify, alter, obliterate, or restore; at a breath she can colour vacuity with rainbow huescrown the cliff with its castle-swing the drawbridge over the gulf profound-through a night of woods roll the river along on its moonlit reach-by fragmentary cinctures of mist and cloud, so girdle one mountain that it has the power of a hundred-giant rising above giant, far and wide, as if the mighty multitude, magnificent and triumphant disorder, were indeed scaling heaven. To speak more prosaically, every true and accepted lover of nature regards her with a painter's as well as a poet's eye. He breaks Strange that with all our love of nature, and not down any scene rudely, and with "many of art, we never were a Painter. True that an oft-repeated stroke;" but unconsciously and in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at insensibly he transfigures into Wholes, and all a Lion or a Tiger-and sketches by us of such day long, from morn till dewy eve, he is pre cats springing or preparing to spring in keela- ceded, as he walks along, by landscapes retir vine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, ing in their perfection, one and all of them the might well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even birth of his own inspired spirit. All non-esyet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa at a savage sentials do of themselves drop off and disap scene, and our black-lead pencil heaps up con- pear-all the characteristics of the scenery fused shatterings of rocks, and flings a moun- range themselves round a centre recognised tainous region into convulsions, as if an earth- by the inner sense that cannot err-and thus quake heaved, in a way that is no canny, making it is that “beauty pitches her tents before him" people shudder as if something had gone-that sublimity companions the pilgrim in the AWFUL THRISSIL all the health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars. waste wilderness-and grandeur for his sake | Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the keeps slowly sailing or settling in the clouds. With such pictures has our Gallery been so thickly hung round for many years, that we have often thought there was not room for one other single frame; yet a vacant space has always been found for every new chef-d'œuvre that came to add itself to our collection-and the light from that cupola so distributes itself that it falls wherever it is wanted-wherever it is wanted not how tender the shadow! or how solemn the gloom! Why, we are now in Glen-Etive-and sitting with our sketch book at the mouth of our Tent. Our oft-repeated passionate prayer, "Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness!" has once more, after more than twenty years' absence, in this haunt of our fanciful youth and imaginative manhood, been granted, and Christopher, he thinks, could again bound along these cliffs like a deer. Ay, wellnigh quarter of a century has elapsed since we pitched this selfsame snow-white Tent amid the purple heather, by the Linn of Dee. How fleetly goes, winnowing on the air, even the weariest waving of Time's care-laden wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on the canvas-but the pole is yet sound-or call it rather mast-for we have hoisted our topgallant, And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear," languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, in the fitful morning breezes! Bold son, or bright daughter of England! hast thou ever seen a SCOTTISH THRISSIL? What height are you-Captain of the Grenadier Guards? "Six feet four on my stocking soles." Poo-a dwarf! Stand up with your back to that stalk. Your head does not reach above his waist-he hangs high over you"his radious croun of rubies." There's a Flower! dear to Lady Nature above all others, saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the Rose's husband-the Guardian Genii of the land consecrated the Union, and it has been blest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that will not suffer eclipse either from light or shadow-but burns proudly-fiercely-in its native lustre-storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in which it swings. See, it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it to do that would require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow-all alike dear to its spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast; in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by noonlight round the Symbol of old Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the The dawn is softly-slowly-stealing upon day; for the uprisen sun, though here the edge of his disc as yet be invisible, is diffusing abroad "the sweet hour of prime," and all the eastern region is tinged with crimson, faint and fine as that which sleeps within the wreaths of the sea-sounding shells. Hark the eagle's earliest cry, yet in his eyry. An other hour, and he and his giant mate will be seen spirally ascending the skies, in many a glorious gyration, tutoring their offspring to dally with the sunshine, that when their plumes are stronger, they may dally with the storm. O Forest of Dalness! how sweet is thy name! Hundreds of red-deer are now lying halfasleep among the fern and heather, with their antlers, could our eyes now behold them, motionless as the birch-tree branches with which they are blended in their lair. At the signal-belling of their king, a hero unconquered in a hundred fights, the whole herd rises at once like a grove, and with their stately heads lifted aloft on the weather-gleam, snuff the sweet scent of the morning air, far and wide surcharged with the honey-dew yet unmelting on the heather, and eye with the looks of liberty the glad daylight that mantles the Black Mount with a many-coloured garment. Ha! the first plunge of the salmon in the Rowan-tree Pool. There again he shoots into the air, white as silver, fresh run from the sea! For Loch-Etive, you must know, is One of the many million arms of Ocean, and bright now are rolling in the billows of the far-heaving tide. Music meet for such a morn and such mountains. Straight stretches the glen for leagues, and then bending through the blue gloom, seems to wind away with one sweep into infinitude. The Great Glen of Scotland-Glen-More itself-is not grander. But the Great Glen of Scotland is yet a living forest. Glen-Etive has few woods or noneand the want of them is sublime. For centuries ago pines and oaks in the course of nature all perished; and they exist now but in tradition wavering on the tongues of old bards, or deep down in the mosses show their black trunks to the light, when the torrents join the river in spate, and the moor divulges its secrets as in an earthquake. Sweetly sung, thou small, brown, moorland bird, though thy song be but a twitter! And true to thy timeeven to a balmy minute-art thou, with thy velvet tunic of black striped with yellow, as thou windest thy small but not sullen hornby us called in our pride HUMBLE BEE-but not, methinks, so very humble, while booming high in air in oft-repeated circles, wondering at our Tent, and at the flag that now unfolds its gaudy length like a burnished serpent, as if the smell of some far-off darling heather-bed had touched thy finest instinct, away thou fliest straight southward to that rich flowerstore, unerringly as the carrier-pigeon wafting to distant lands some love-message on its wings. Yet humble after all thou art; for all day long, making thy industry thy delight, thou returnest at shut of day, cheerful even in thy wearine 3s, to thy ground-cell within the knoll, where as Fancy dreams the Fairies dwell -a Silent People in the Land of Peace. And why hast thou, wild singing spirit of the Highland Glenorchy, that cheerest the longwithdrawing vale from Inveruren to Dalmally, and from Dalmally Church-tower to the Old Castle of Kilchurn, round whose mouldering turrets thou sweepest with more pensive murmur, till thy name and existence are lost in that noble loch-why hast thou never had thy Bard? "A hundred bards have I had in bygone ages," is thy reply; "but the Sassenach understands not the traditionary strains, and the music of the Gaelic poetry is wasted on his ear." Songs of war and of love are yet awakened by the shepherds among these lonely braes; and often when the moon rises over Ben Cruachan, and counts her attendant stars in soft reflection beneath the still waters of that long inland sea, she hears the echoes of harps chiming through the silence of departed years. Tradition tells, that on no other banks did the fairies so love to thread the mazes of their mystic dance, as on the heathy, and brackeny, and oaken banks of the Orchy, during the long summer nights when the thick-falling dews perceptibly swelled the stream, and lent a livelier music to every waterfall. There it was, on a little river island, that once, whether sleeping or waking we know not, we saw celebrated a Fairy's Funeral. First we heard small pipes playing, as if no bigger than hollow rushes that whisper to the night winds; and more piteous than aught that trills from earthly instrument was the scarce audible dirge! It seemed to float over the stream, every foam-bell emitting a plaintive note, till the airy anthem came floating over our couch, and then alighted without footsteps among the heather. The pattering of little feet was then heard, as if living creatures were arranging themselves in order, and then there was nothing but a more ordered hymn. The harmony was like the melting of musical dewdrops, and sang, without words, of sorrow and death. We opened our eyes, or rather sight came to them when closed, and dream was vision! Hundreds of creatures, no taller than the crest of the lapwing, and all hanging down their veiled heads, stood in a circle on a green plat among the rocks; and in the midst was a bier, framed as it seemed of flowers unknown to the Highland hills; and on the bier a Fairy, lying with uncovered face, pale as the lily, and motionless as the snow. The dirge grew fainter and fainter, and then died quite away; when two of the creatures came from the circle, and took their station, one at the head and the other at the foot of the bier. They sang alternate measures, not louder than the twittering of the awakened wood-lark before it goes up the dewy air, but dolorous and full of the desolation of death. The flower-bier stirred; for the spot on which it lay sank slowly down, and in a few moments the greensward was smooth as ever the very dews glittering above the buried Fairy. A cloud passed over the moon; and, with a choral lament, the funeral troop sailed duskily away, heard afar off, so still was the midnight solitude of the glen. Then the dis enthralled Orchy began to rejoice as before through all her streams and falls; and at the sudden leaping of the waters and outbursting of the moon, we awoke. Age is the season of Imagination, youth of Passion; and having been long young, shall we repine that we are now old? They alone are rich who are full of years-the Lords of Time's Treasury are all on the staff of Wisdom; their commissions are enclosed in furrows on their foreheads, and secured to them for life. Fearless of fate, and far above for tune, they hold their heritage by the great charter of nature for behoof of all her children who have not, like impatient heirs, to wait for their decease; for every hour dispenses their wealth, and their bounty is not a late bequest but a perpetual benefaction. Death but sanctifies their gifts to gratitude; and their worth is more clearly seen and profoundly felt within the solemn gloom of the grave. And said we truly that Age is the season of Imagination? That Youth is the season of Passion your own beating and bounding hearts now tell you-your own boiling blood. Intensity is its characteristic; and it burns like a flame of fire, too often but to consume. Expansion of the soul is ours, with all its feelings and all its "thoughts, that wander through eternity;" nor needeth then the spirit to have wings, for power is given her, beyond the dove's or the eagle's, and no weariness can touch her on that heavenward flight. Yet we are all of" the earth earthy," and young and old alike, must we love and honour our home. Your eyes are bright-ours are dim; but "it is the soul that sees," and "this diurnal sphere" is visible through the mist of tears. In that light how more than beautiful-how holy-appears even this world! All sadness, save of sin, is then most sacred; and sin itself loses its terrors in repentance, which alas! is seldom perfect but in the near prospect of dissolution. For temptation may intercept her within a few feet of her expected rest, nay, dash the dust from her hand that she has gathered from the burial-place to strew on her head; but Youth sees flowery fields and shining rivers far-stretching before her path, and cannot imagine for a moment that among life's golden mountains there is many a Place of Tombs! But let us speak only of this earth-this world-this life-and is not Age the season of Imagination? Imagination is Memory imbued by joy or sorrow with creative power over the past, till it becomes the present, and then, on that vision "far off the coming shines" of the future, till all the spiritual realm overflows with light. Therefore was it that, in illumined Greece, Memory was called the Mother of the Muses; and how divinely indeed they sang around her as she lay in the pensive shade! You know the words of Milton "Till old experience doth attain To something like prophetic strain ;" and you know, while reading them, that Expe rience is consummate Memory, Imagination wide as the world, another name for Wisdom, all one with Genius, and in its "prophetic strain”—Inspiration. are almost stern even in their beauty, and in their sublimity overawing; look at yon preci pice that dwindles into pebbles the granite blocks that choke up the shore! Now all this, and a million times more than all this, have we too done in our Youth, and yet 'tis all nothing to what we do whenever we will it in our Age. For almost all that is passion; spiritual passion indeed-and as all emotions are akin, they all work with, and into one another's hands, and, however remotely related, recognise and welcome one another, like Highland cousins, whenever they meet. Imagination is not the Faculty to stand aloof from the rest, but gives the ore hand to Fancy and the other to Feeling, and sets to Passion, who is often so swallowed up in himself as to seem blind to their vis-a-vis, till all at once he hugs all the Three, as if he were demented, and as suddenly sporting dos-a-dos-is off on a gallopade by himself right slick away over the mountain-tops. We would fain lower our tone-and on this theme speak like what we are, one of the humblest children of Mother Earth. We cannot leap now twenty-three feet on level ground, (our utmost might be twenty-three inches,) nevertheless, we could "put a girdle round the globe in forty minutes,"-ay, in half an hour, were we not unwilling to dispirit Ariel. What are feats done in the flesh and by the muscle? At first-worms though we be-we cannot even crawl;-disdainful next of that acquirement, we creep, and are distanced by the earwig-pretty lambs, we then totter to the terror of our deep-bosomed dames-till the welkin rings with admiration to behold, sans leading-strings, the weanlings walk;-like wildfire then we run-for we have found the use of our feet;-like wild-geese then we fly -for we may not doubt we have wings;-in car, ship, balloon, the lords of earth, sea, and sky, and universal nature. The car runs on a post-the ship on a rock-the "air hath bubbles as the water hath"-the balloon is one of them, and bursts like a bladder-and we become the prey of sharks, surgeons, or sextons. Where, pray, in all this is there a single symptom or particle of Imagination? It is of Pas--and the parish-moorland though it besion "all compact." True, this is not a finished picture-'tis but a slight sketch of the season of Youth; but paint it as you will, as if faithful to nature you will find Passion in plenty, and a dearth of Imagination. Nor is the season of Youth therefore to be pitied-for Passion respires and expires in bliss ineffable, and so far from being eloquent as the unwise lecture, it is mute as a fish, and merely gasps. In Youth we are the creatures-the slaves of the senses. But the bondage is borne exultingly in spite of its severity; for erelong we come to discern through the dust of our own raising, the pinnacles of towers and temples serenely ascending into the skies, high and holy places for rule, for rest, or for religion, where as kings we may reign, as priests minister, as saints adore. We do not deny, excellent youth, that to your eyes and ears beautiful and sublime are the sights and sounds of Nature-and of Art her Angel. Enjoy thy pupilage, as we enjoyed ours, and deliver thyself up withouten dread, or with a holy dread, to the gloom of woods, where night for ever dwells to the glory of skies, where morn seems enthroned for ever. Coming and going a thousand and a thousand times, yet, in its familiar beauty, ever new as a dream-let thy soul span the heavens with the rainbow. Ask thy heart in the wilderness if that "thunder, heard remote," be from cloud or cataract; and ere it can reply, it may shudder at the shuddering moor, and your flesh creep upon your bones, as the heather seems to creep on the bent, with the awe of a passing earthquake. Let the sea-mew be the guide up the glen, if thy delight be in peace profounder than ever sat with her on the lull of summer waves! For the inland loch seems but a vale overflowing with wondrous lightand realities they all look-these trees and pastures, and rocks and hills, and clouds-not softened images, as they are, of realities that To the senses of a schoolboy a green sour crab is as a golden pippin, more delicious than any pine-apple-the tree which he climbs to pluck it seems to grow in the garden of Eden over which he is let loose to play-Paradise. It is barely possible there may be such a substance as matter, but all its qualities worth having are given it by mind. By a necessity of nature, then, we are all poets. We all make the food we feed on; nor is jealousy, the greeneyed monster, the only wretch who discolours and deforms. Every evil thought does doevery good thought gives fresh lustre to the grass-to the flowers-to the stars. And as the faculties of sense, after becoming finer and more fine, do then, because that they are earthly, gradually lose their power, the faculties of the soul, because that they are heavenly, become then more and more and more independent of such ministrations, and continue tc deal with images, and with ideas which are diviner than images, nor care for either partial or total eclipse of the daylight, conversant as they are, and familiar with a more resplendent -a spiritual universe. You still look incredulous and unconvinced of the truth of our position-but it was es tablished in our first three paragraphs; and the rest, though proofs too, are intended merely for illustrations. Age alone understands the language of old Mother Earth-for Age alone, from his own experience, can imagine its meanings in trouble or in rest-often mysteri ous enough even to him in all consciencebut intelligible though inarticulate--nor always inarticulate; for though sobs and sighs are rife, and whispers and murmurs, and groans and gurgling, yea, sometimes yells and cries, as if the old Earth were undergoing a violent death-yet many a time and oft, within these few years, have we heard her slowly syllabling words out of the Bible, and as in listening we looked up to the sky, the fixed stars responded to their truth, and, like Mercy visiting Despair, the Moon bore it into the heart of the stormy clouds. And are there not now-have there never been young Poets? Many; for Passion, sa "Her arms tossed as to leave, perhaps to give, the sufferer | through all the hours, each in itself a spring. power to reflect on his ecstasy, grows poetical season, till the figurative words of Milton have because creative, and loves to express itself been fulfilledin "prose or numerous verse," at once its nutriment and relief. Nay, Nature sometimes gifts her children with an imaginative spirit, inat, from slight experiences of passion, rejoices to idealize intentions, and incidents, and characters all coloured by it, or subject to its sway; and these are Poets, not with old heads on young shoulders, but with old hearts in young bosoms; yet such premature genius seldom escapes blight, the very springs of life are troubled, and its possessor sinks, pines, fades, and dies. So was it with Chatterton and Keates. It may be, after all, that we have only proved Age to be the strongest season of Imagination; and if so, we have proved all we wish, for we seek not to deny, but to vindicate. Know ledge is power to the poet as it is power to all men-and indeed without Art and Science what is Poetry? Without cultivation the faculty divine can have but imperfect vision. The inner eye is dependent on the outward eye long familiar with material objects-a finer sense, cognisant of spiritualities, but acquired by the soul from constant communion with shadows-innate the capacity, but awakened into power by gracious intercourse with Nature. Thus Milton saw-after he became blind. Branching so broad and long, that in the ground cia generis Humani," is dead. The best of all But alas! for the Odontist! He, the "Deli alone remains for the next edition of the cele But know that Age is not made up of a multi-brated treatise "De Rebus Deperditis," a suitable tude of years-though that be the vulgar reckoning-but of a multitude of experiences; and that a man at thirty, if good for much, must be old. How long he may continue in the prime of Age, God decrees; many men of the most magnificent minds-for example, Michael Angelo-have been all-glorious in power and majesty at fourscore and upwards; but one drop of water on the brain can at any hour make it barren as dust. So can great griefs. Yestreen we had rather a hard bout of it in the Tent-the Glenlivet was pithy-and our Tail sustained a total overthrow. They are snoring as if it still were midnight. And is it thus that we sportsmen spend our time on the Moors? Yet while "so many of our poorest subjects are yet asleep," let us repoint the nib of our pen, and in the eye of the sweet-breath'd morning-moralize. Wellnigh quarter a century, we said, is over and gone since by the Linn of Dee we pitched -on that famous excursion-THE TENT. Then was the genesis of that white witch Maga. "Like sane tall Palm her noiseless fabric grew!" Nay, not noiseless--for the deafest wight that ever strove to hear with his mouth wide open, might have sworn that he heard the sound of ten thousand hammers. Neither grew she like a Palm-but like a Banyan-tree. Ever as she threw forth branches from her great unexhausted stem, they were borne down by the weight of their own beauty to the soil-the deep, black rich soil in which she grew, originally sown there by a bird of Paradise, that dropt the seed from her beak as she sailed along in the sunshiny ether—and every limberest spray there again taking root, reascended a stately scien, and so on ceaselessly and a welcome frontispiece, transferred thither by the engraver's cunning from the first of those Eight Tomes that might make the Throne threatens to put down the Globe, by the least tremble, laid on the shoulders of Atlas who judicious and the most unmerciful of editors that ever imposed upon the light living the heavy dead-John Johnson, late of Birmingham, Fellow of the Royal Society, and of the Royal College of Physicians, whose practice is duller than that of all Death's doctors, and his prescriptions in that preface unchristianly severe. O'Doherty, likewise, has been gathered to his fathers. The Standard-bearer has lowered his colours before the foe who alone is invincible. The Ensign, let us not fear, has been advanced to a company without purchase, in the Celestials; the Adjutant has got a Staff appointment. Tims was lately rumoured to be in a galloping consumption; but the very terms of the report, about one so sedentary were sufficient to give it the lie. Though puny, he is far from being unwell; and still engaged in polishing tea-spoons and other plated artido horn. Prince Leopold is now King of the cles, at a rate cheaper than travelling gipsies Belgians—but we must put an end in the Tent to that portentous snore. "Arise, awake, or be for ever fallen!" Ho-ho! gentlemen-so you have had the precaution to sleep in your clothes. The sun, like Maga, is mounting higher and higher in heaven; so let us, we beseech you, to break. fast, and then off to the Moors. "Substantial breakfast!" by Dugald Dhu, and by Donald Roy, and by Hamish Bhanheaped up like icebergs round the pole. How nobly stands in the centre that ten-gallon Cask |