away as their glimmering ghosts, with noble | impossible-let all the inconsistencies and effect, among the moonlight mists of the moun- violations of nature ever charged against it tains. The poetry of Ossian has, it is true, be acknowledged-let all its glaring plagiar since the days of Macpherson, in no way isms from poetry of modern date inspire what coloured the poetry of the island; and Mr. derision they may-and far worse the perpetual Wordsworth, who has written beautiful lines repetition of its own imbecilities and inanities, about the old Phantom, states that fact as an wearying one down even to disgust and anger; argument against its authenticity. He thinks yet, in spite of all, are we not made to feel, Ossian, as we now possess him, no poet; and not only that we are among the mountains, but alleges that if these compositions had been the to forget that there is any other world in exist good things so many people have thought ence, save that which glooms and glimmers, them, they would, in some way or other, have and wails and raves around us in mists and breathed their spirit over the poetical genius clouds, and storms, and snows-full of lakes of the land. Who knows that they may not and rivers, sea-intersected and sea-surrounded, do so yet? The time may not have come. with a sky as troublous as the earth-yet both But must all true poetry necessarily create imi- at times visited with a mournful beauty that tation, and a school of imitators? One sees sinks strangely into the soul-while the shano reason why it must. Besides, the life which dowy life depictured there eludes not our human the poetry of Ossian celebrates, has utterly sympathies; nor yet, aerial though they bepassed away; and the poetry itself, good, bad, so sweet and sad are their voices-do there or indifferent, is so very peculiar, that to imi- float by as unbeloved, unpitied, or unhonoured tate it at all, you must almost transcribe it. -single, or in bands-the ghosts of the brave That, for a good many years, was often done, and beautiful when the few stars are dim, and but naturally inspired any other feeling than the moon is felt, not seen, to be yielding what delight or admiration. But the simple question faint light there may be in the skies. is, Do the poems of Ossian delight greatly and The boat in a moment is a bagpipe; and not widely? We think they do. Nor can we be- only so, but all the mountains are bagpipes, lieve that they would not still delight such a and so are the clouds. All the bagpipes poet as Mr. Wordsworth. What dreariness in the world are here, and they fill heaven overspreads them all! What a melancholy and earth. "Tis no exaggeration-much less spirit shrouds all his heroes, passing before us a fiction-but the soul and body of truth. There on the cloud, after all their battles have been Hamish stands stately at the prow; and as the fought, and their tombs raised on the hill! The boat hangs by midships on the very point that very picture of the old blind Hero-bard him- commands all the echoes, he fills the whole self, often attended by the weeping virgins night with the "Campbells are coming," till the whom war has made desolate, is always touch-sky yells with the gathering as of all the Clans. ing, often sublime. The desert is peopled with His eyes are triumphantly fixed on ours to lamenting mortals, and the mists that wrap catch their emotions; his fingers cease their them with ghosts, whose remembrances of this twinkling; and still that wild gathering keeps life are all dirge and elegy. True, that the playing of itself among the mountains-faintimages are few and endlessly reiterated; but er and fainter, as it is flung from cliff to cliff, that, we suspect, is the case with all poetry till it dies away far-far off-as if in infinitude composed not in a philosophic age. The great-sweet even and soft in its evanescence as and constant appearances of nature suffice, in their simplicity, for all its purposes. The poet seeks not to vary their character, and his hearers are willing to be charmed over and over again by the same strains. We believe that the poetry of Ossian would be destroyed by any greater distinctness or variety of image-vesting with apparent woodiness what an hour ry. And if, indeed, Fingal lived and Ossian sung, we must believe that the old bard was blind; and we suspect that in such an age, such a man would, in his blindness, think dreamily indeed of the torrents, and lakes, and heaths, and clouds, and mountains, moons and stars, which he had leapt, swam, walked, climbed, and gazed on in the days of his rejoicing youth. Then has he no tendernessno pathos-no beauty. Alas for thousands of hearts and souls if it be even so! For then are many of their holiest dreams worthless all, and divinest melancholy a mere complaint of the understanding, which a bit of philosophical criticism will purge away, as the leech's phial does a disease of the blood. Macpherson's Ossian, is it not poetry? Wordsworth says it is not-but Christopher North says it is with all reverence for the King. Let its antiquity be given up--let such a state of society as is therein described be declared some lover's lute. We are now in the bay of Gleno. For though moonlight strangely alters the whole face of nature, confusing its most settled features, and with a gentle glamoury blending with the greensward what once was the gray granite, and in ago was the desolation of herbless cliffs-yet not all the changes that wondrous nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one night-longlong ago "In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!" we were visited by a dream-a dream that shadowed forth in its inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life-the gravesthe tombs where many we loved are now buried-that churchyard, where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest. But who shouts from the shore, Hamishand now, as if through his fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky! Ah, ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis the schoolmas ter of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat-kilted, we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat. and followed it himself like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties-my heroesthe wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the Lantern, twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent. In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might, "Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!", A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and the hollows of the rocks, that keep muttering, as their entrances feel the touch of the tide. But nothing beneath the moon can be more solemn,now that her aspect is so wan, and that some melancholy spirit has obscured the lustre of the stars. We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry were visiting our slumber. All is sad within us, yet why we know not; and the sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost foolish pastime, spent by a being who believes that he is immortal, and that this life is but the threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits of which the moral poet has sung, "The paths of glory lead but to the grave!" Methinks, now, as we are entering into a sabler mass of shadow, that the doctrine of eternal punishment of sins committed in time-but "Here's a health to all good lasses, Here's a health to all good lasses, Pledge it merrily, fill your glasses; Let the bumper toast go round, Let the bumper toast go round!" Rest on your oars, lads. Hamish! the quech! give each man a caulker, that his oar may send a bolder twang from its rollock, and our fishcoble walk the waves like a man-of-war's gig, with the captain on board, going ashore, after a long cruise, to meet his wife. Now she spins! and lo! lights at Kinloch-Etive, and beyond on the breast of the mountain, bright as Hesperus -the pole-star of our Tent! and state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to Glen-Etive. O'Bronte, "Like panting Time, toils after us in vain ;" and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, in the distant dark. ness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a capsize on Bachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the circle of greens ward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight horses, and that enormous ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could have made us think at this moment of London? and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing Certes, the association of ideas is a droll thing, in the Tent, among strange figures! Celebration of the nuptials of some Arab chief, in an oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia! Heavens! look at Tickler! How he hauls the Hizzies! There is no time to be lost-he and the Admiral must not have all the sport to themselves; and, by and by, spite of age and infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! Christopher is upon you-behold the Tenth Avatar incarnated in North. But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach? "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid So suddenly to see the Griesly King!" Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Glencreran or Glenco, kilted to the knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is Isufficient to bid "Begone dull care" for ever. One hand on a shoulder of each of the mountain-nymphs-sweet liberties-and then embraced by both, half in their arms, and half on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so pleasantly let down from triumphal car, on the soft surface of his mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. Down, dogs, down-nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated on one another's knees as before-we beseech you-we are but men like yourselves "Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh! what were man 3-a world without a sun!" Well, this is indeed the Londe of Faery! A car with a nag caparisoned at the water edge!-and On with the roe, and in with Christopher and the fish. Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons-alias the hair-tether-and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a weapon that might "Create a soul under the ribs of death." Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a fine natural causeway, like Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! Why, the very stars burn brighter-and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We foresee a night of danc ing and drinking-till the mountain-dew melt in the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death-and a glorious resur rection. Hurra! Hurra! THE MOORS FOR EVER! THE MOORS! Tax MOORS! HIGHLAND SNOW-STORM. WHAT do you mean by original genius? By | presence-if any mortal feeling be so-is that fine line in the Pleasures of Hope "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" Why-genius-one kind of it at least is ransfusion of self into all outward things. The genius that does that-naturally, but novelly is original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of Us. Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus-and lo! list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be seen sea. any more than if we were in the middle of the Yet a wan glare shows that the snowstorm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent cliffs; and though you cannot see, you hear the mountains. Rendings are going on, frequent, over your head-and all around the blind wilderness-the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the moaning, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rocking and tossing of old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate? "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft The angry spirit of the water shrieks," more fearful than at midnight in this nightlike day-whose meridian is a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, bloodlike, through the snow--and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible more and more terrible-as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan-erelong he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear thunder, though you know that cannot be-but sublimer than thunder is the nameless noise so like that of agonized life-that eddies far and wide around -high and huge above-fear all the while being at the bottom of your heart-an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose troubled sublime. Your imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourselffor the Hut in which you thus enjoy the storm, is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from its deepest and darkest foundations, and all that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderful, the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and pathetic, is now upturned in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which is heard, undergo alternate mutual at once substance, shadow, and soul-is felt transfiguration; and the blind Roaring Dayto be one with ourselves-the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive. We are in a Highland Hut-if we called it a Shieling we did so merely because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once brings to eye and ear-the rustling of leaves on a summer silvan bower, by simgrowth of nature, or the waving of fern on the ple art slightly changed from the form of the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journeylong glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk and cross-Luath his sole companion-his sole care the pasturing herds-the sole sounds he hears the croak of the 1aven on the cliff, or bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the sunny, moonlight, starry months,-the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her dying father gave into his arms-the old blind soldier-knowing that the boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been buried-now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird-the happiest of all living thingsher own Ronald's dark-haired Bride. We are in a Highland Hut among a High land Snow-storm-and all at once amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of Burns-the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound pathos are they charged! "List'ning the doors an' winnocks rattle; Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle, "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee? Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing "Ev'n you on murdering errands toil'd, The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cot spoil'd, While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats." How passing sweet is that other stanza heard like a low hymn amidst the noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it— "Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing, That, in the merry months o' spring, Delighted me to hear thee sing, What comes o' thee? Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, The whole earth is for a moment green again-trees whisper-streamlets murmurand the "merry month o' spring" is musical through all her groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those sweet singers are now dead-or that they "cow'r the chittering wing"-never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the e'e" that shall never more be reillumined with love, when the Season of Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with the survivors of some gentler climate. The poet's heart, humanized to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each syllable tells-each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these few simplest words Burns is our Lowland bard-but poetry is "My heart forgets, While pitiless the tempest wild Sore on you beats!" They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the silly sheep;" but who knows that they are not sent on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about to perish!-an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, that we felt that interference providential-as if we had indeed seen the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot it-but now while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday. One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco-the families of two brothers-seldom visiting each other on working-daysseldom meeting even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk—seldom coming together on rural festivals or holydays, for in the Highlands now these are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two dwellings togetheras the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to another, each with its own secret nest. And nestlike both dwellings were. That in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high "Brought from the dust the sound of liberty," while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyry the eagle's wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand in hand as is their wont when crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrath-heathered rock-lown in all storms-with ful inland or the more wrathful sea. greensward and garden on a slope down to a rivulet, the clearest of the clear, (oh! once wofully reddened!) and growing-so it seems stones that overshadow it-out of the earth and man's reason goes to the help of brute in- in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stinct. That in Glencreran, more conspicuous, on a land beauty? Insects unheard by them before knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway hummed and glittered in the air-from tree between mountain and mountain, so that the roots, where the snow was thin, little flowers, grove which shelters it, except when the sun or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were is shining high, is darkened by their meeting | seen looking out as if alive-the trees themshadows, and dark indeed even in the sunshine, selves seemed budding as if it were already for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oak- spring-and rare as in that rocky region are like pines. A little further down, and Glen- the birds of song, a faint trill for a moment creran is very silvan; but this dwelling is the touched their ears, and the flutter of a wing, highest up of all, the first you descend upon, telling them that somewhere near there was near the foot of that wild hanging staircase preparation for a nest. Deep down beneath between you and Glen-Etive; and except this the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills old oaklike grove of pines, there is not a tree, unreached by the frost-and merry, thought and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture they, was the music of these contented prisonor hay-field, though these are kept by many a ers. Not summer's self, in its deepest green, rill there mingling themselves into one stream, so beautiful had ever been to them before, as in a perpetual lustre, that seems to be as na- now the mild white of Winter; and as their tive to the grass as its light is to the glow-eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they worm. Such are the two Huts-for they are ever seen before a sky of such perfect blue, a huts and no more-and you may see them still, sun so gentle in its brightness, or altogether a if you know how to discover the beautiful week-day in any season so like a Sabbath in sights of nature from descriptions treasured in its stillness, so like a holyday in its joy! your heart-and if the spirit of change, now Lovers were they although as yet they nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its scarcely knew it; for from love only could most solitary places, have not swept from the have come such bliss as now was theirs, a scenes they beautified the humble but heredi-bliss that while it beautified was felt to come tary dwellings that ought to be allowed, in the from the skies. fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay. it has once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it breathes -a mournfulness brooding on the same note that is at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment-of which the singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears! Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the These Huts belonged to brothers--and each branches of storm-tossed trees when the subhad an only child-a son and a daughter-siding tempest is about to let them rest. Moborn on the same day-and now blooming on notonous music! but irresistible over the heart the verge of youth. A year ago, and they were but mere children-but what wondrous growth of frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins grown up before their parent's eyes, Flora Macdonald-a name hallowed of yore-the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the many precipitous passes to his parent's hut. It was the middle of February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place-a bank of birch-trees beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles. On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly inspired with joy How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea-tales which he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of blood! "The sun sat high in his meridian tower," but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they had met in the prime of the morn! The boy starts to his feet-and his keen eye looks along the ready rifle-for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion of the chase was hereditary in his blood. Lo! a deer from Dalness, hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away-away! The rifle-shot ringe dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering heavily along, the snow spotted |