tude in the wood—and the lark soar up to hea- | difficulty from knoll to knof, pursued by the ven, afraid no more of a demon descending shrieking magpies, buffeted by the corby, and from the cloud. As for the imps in the eyry, let them die of rage and hunger-for there must always be pain in the world; and 'tis well when its endurance by the savage is the cause of pleasure to the sweet-when the goreyearning cry of the cruel is drowned in the song of the kind at feed or play-and the tribes of the peace-loving rejoice in the despair and death of the robbers and shedders of blood! Not one fowler of fifty thousand has in all his days shot an Eagle. That royal race seems nearly extinct in Scotland. Gaze as you will over the wide circumference of a Highland heaven, calm as the bride's dream of love, or disturbed as the shipwrecked sailor's vision of a storm, and all spring and summer long you may not chance to see the shadow of an Eagle in the sun. The old kings of the air are sometimes yet seen by the shepherds on cliff or beneath cloud; but their offspring are rarely allowed to get full fledged in spite of the rifle always lying loaded in the shieling. But in the days of our boyhood there were many glorious things on earth and air that now no more seem to exist, and among these were the Eagles. One pair had from time immemorial Duilt on the Echo-cliff, and you could see with a telescope the eyry, with the rim of its circumference, six feet in diameter, strewn with partridges, moorfowl, and leverets-their feathers and their skeletons. But the Echocliff was inaccessible. "Hither the rainbow comes, the cloud, No human eye ever saw the birds within a thousand feet of the lower earth; yet how often must they have stooped down on lamb and leveret, and struck the cushat in her very yew-tree in the centre of the wood! Perhaps they preyed at midnight, by the light of the waning moon-at mid-day, in the night of sun-hiding tempests-or afar off, in even more solitary wilds, carried thither on the whirlwind of their own wings, they swept off their prey from uninhabited isles, "Placed far amid the melancholy main," or vast inland glens, where not a summer shieling smiles beneath the region of eternal snows. But eagles are subject to diseases in flesh, and bone, and blood, just like the veriest poultry that die of croup and consumption on the dunghill before the byre-door. Sickness blinds the eye that God framed to pierce the eas, and weakens the wing that dallies with the tempest. Then the eagle feels how vain is the doctrine of the divine right of kings. He is hawked at by the mousing owl, whose instinct instructs him that these talons have lost their grasp, and these pinions their deathblow. The eagle lies for weeks famished in his eyry, and hunger-driven over the ledge, caves it to ascend no more. He is dethroned, and wasted to mere bones-a bunch of feathers -his flight is now slower than that of the buzzard-he floats himself along now with lying on his back, like a recreant, before the beak of the raven, who, a month ago, was ter rified to hop round the carcass till the king of the air was satiated, and gave his permission to croaking Sooty to dig into the bowels he himself had scorned. Yet he is a noble aim to the fowler still; you break a wing and a leg, but fear to touch him with your hand; Fro feels the iron-clutch of his talons constricted in the death-pang; and holding him up, you wonder that such an anatomy—for his weight is not more than three pounds-could drive his claws through that shaggy hide till blood sprung to the blow-inextricable but to yells of pain, and leaving gashes hard to heal, for virulent is the poison of rage in a dying bird of prey. 66 Sublime solitude of our boyhood! where each stone in the desert was sublime, unassociated though it was with dreams of memory, in its own simple native power over the human heart! Each sudden breath of wind passed by us like the voice of a spirit. There were strange meanings in the clouds-often so like human forms and faces threatening us off, or beckoning us on, with long black arms, back into the long-withdrawing wilderness of heaven. We wished then, with quaking bosoms, that we had not been all alone in the desertthat there had been another heart, whose beatings might have kept time with our own, that we might have gathered courage in the silent and sullen gloom from the light in a brother's eye-the smile on a brother's countenance. And often had we such a friend in these our far-off wanderings over moors and mountains, by the edge of lochs, and through the umbrage of the old pinewoods. A friend from whom back our own,"-such a friendship as the most we had received his heart, and given him fortunate and the most happy-and at that time we were both-are sometimes permitted by Providence, with all the passionate devotion of young and untamed imagination, to enjoy, during a bright dreamy world of which that friendship is as the Polar star. Emilius when we were but a child--when we were but Godfrey! for ever holy be the name! a boy a youth, a man. We felt stronger in the shadow of his arm-happier, bolder, better in the light of his countenance. He was the protector-the guardian of our moral being. In our pastimes we bounded with wilder glee-at our studies we sat with intenser earnestness, by his side. He it was that taught us how to feel all those glorious sunsets, and embued our young spirit with the love and worship of nature. He it was that taught us to feel that our evening prayer was no idle ceremony to be hastily gone through--that we might lay down our head on the pillow, then soon smoothed in sleep, but a command of God, which a response from nature summoned the humble heart to obey. He it was who for ever had at command wit for the sportive, wisdom for the se rious hour. Fun and frolic flowed in the merry music of his lips-they lightened from the gay glancing of his eyes-and then, all at once, when the one changed its measures, and the the sky. With him we first followed the Falcon in her flight-he showed us on the Echocliff the Eagle's eyry. To the thicket he led us where lay couched the iovely-spotted Doe. or showed us the mild-eyed creature browsing on the glade with her two fawns at her side. But for him we should not then have seen the antlers of the red-deer, for the Forest was indeed a most savage place, and hauntedsuch was the superstition at which they who scorned it trembled-haunted by the ghost of a huntsman whom a jealous rival had mur. dered as he stooped, after the chase, at a little mountain well that ever since oozed out blood. What converse passed between us two in all those still shadowy solitudes! Into what depths of human nature did he teach our won. dering eyes to look down! Oh! what was to become of us, we sometimes thought in sadness that all at once made our spirits sinklike a lark falling suddenly to earth, struck by the fear of some unwonted shadow from above other gatnerea, as it were, a mist or a cloud, an answering sympathy chained our own tongue, and darkened our own countenance, in intercommunion of spirit felt to be indeed divine! It seemed as if we knew but the words of language-that he was a scholar who saw into their very essence. The books we read together were, every page, and every sentence of every page, all covered over with light. Where his eye fell not as we read, all was dim or dark, unintelligible or with imperfect meanings. Whether we perused with him a volume writ by a nature like our own, or the volume of the earth and the sky, or the volume revealed from Heaven, next day we always knew and felt that something had been added to our being. Thus imperceptibly we grew up in our intellectual stature, breathing a purer moral and religious air, with all our finer affections towards other human beings, all our kindred and our kind, touched with a dearer domestic tenderness, or with a sweet benevolence that seemed to our ardent fancy to em--what was to become of us when the manbrace the dwellers in the uttermost regions of the earth. No secret of pleasure or pain-of joy or grief-of fear or hope-had our heart to withhold or conceal from Emilius Godfrey. He saw it as it beat within our bosom, with all its imperfections-may we venture to say, with all its virtues. A repented folly-a confessed fault-a sin for which we were truly contrite -a vice flung from us with loathing and with shame-in such moods as these, happier were we to see his serious and his solemn smile, than when in mirth and merriment we sat by his side in the social hour on a knoll in the open sunshine, and the whole school were in ecstasies to hear tales and stories from his genius, even like a flock of birds chirping in their joy all newly-alighted in a vernal land. In spite of that difference in our years-or oh! say rather because that very difference did touch the one heart with tenderness and the other with reverence, how often did we two wander, like elder and younger brother, in the sunlight and the moonlight solitudes! Woods -into whose inmost recesses we should have quaked alone to penetrate, in his company were glad as gardens, through their most awful umbrage; and there was beauty in the shadows of the old oaks. Cataracts-in whose lonesome thunder, as it pealed into those pitchy pools, we durst not by ourselves have faced the spray-in his presence, dinn'd with a merry music in the desert, and cheerful was the thin mist they cast sparkling up into the air. Too severe for our uncompanioned spirit, then easily overcome with awe, was the solitude of those remote inland lochs. But as we walked with him along the winding shores, how passing sweet the calm of both blue depths-how magnificent the white-crested Oh! blame not boys for so soon forgetting waves tumbling beneath the black thunder- one another-in absence or in death. Yet forcloud! More beautiful, because our eyes gazed getting is not just the very word; call it rather on it along with his, at the beginning or the a reconcilement to doom and destiny-in thus ending of some sudden storm, the Apparition obeying a benign law of nature that soon of the Rainbow! Grander in its wildness, streams sunshine over the shadows of the that seemed to sweep at once all the swinging and stooping woods, to our ear, because his too listened, the concerto by winds and waves played at midnight, when not one star was in date should arrive for him to leave the Manse for ever, and sail away in a ship to India never more to return! Ever as that dreaded day drew nearer, more frequent was the haze in our eyes; and in our blindness, we knew not that such tears ought to have been far more rueful still, for that he then lay under orders for a longer and more lamentable voyage-a voyage over a narrow streight to the eternal shore. All-all at once he drooped; on one fatal morning the dread decay began-with no forewarning, the springs on which his being had so lightly-so proudly-so grandly moved, gave way. Between one Sabbath and another his bright eyes darkened-and while all the people were assembled at the sacrament, the soul of Emilius Godfrey soared up to Heaven. It was indeed a dreadful death, serene and sainted though it were-and not a hall-not a house-not a hut-not a shieling within all the circle of those wide mountains, that did not on that night mourn as if it had lost a son. Ali the vast parish attended his funeral-Lowlanders and Highlanders in their own garb of grief. And have time and tempest now blackened the white marble of that monument-is that inscription now hard to be read-the name of Emilius Godfrey in green obliteration-nor haply one surviving who ever saw the light of the countenance of him there interred! Forgotten as if he had never been! for few were that glorious orphan's kindred-and they lived in a foreign land-forgotten but by one heart, faithful through all the chances and changes of this restless world! And therein enshrined among all its holiest remembrances, shall be the image of Emilius Godfrey, till it too, like his, shall be but dust and ashes! grave. Not otherwise could all the ongoings of this world be continued. The nascent spirit outgrows much in which it once found all delight; and thoughts delightful still, thoughts of the faces and the voices of the dead, perish nor did our old master and minister frownnot, lying sometimes in slumber-sometimes for he grudged not to the boy he loved the in sleep. It belongs not to the blessed season remnant of the dream about to be rolled away and genius of youth, to hug to its heart useless like the dawn's rosy clouds. We demanded and unavailing griefs. Images of the well- with our eye-not with our voice-one long beloved, when they themselves are in the holyday, throughout that our last autumn, on mould, come and go, no unfrequent visitants, to the pale farewell blossoms of the Christ. through the meditative hush of solitude. But mas rose. With our rod we went earlier to our main business-our prime joys and our the loch or river; but we had not known tho prime sorrows-ought to be-must be with the roughly our own soul-for now we angled less living. Duty demands it; and Love, who passionately-less perseveringly than was our would pine to death over the bones of the dead, wont of yore-sitting in a pensive-a melansoon fastens upon other objects with eyes and choly-a miserable dream, by the dashing voices to smile and whisper an answer to all waterfall or the murmuring wave. With our his vows. So was it with us. Ere the mid- gun we plunged earlier in the morning into summer sun had withered the flowers that the forest, and we returned later at eve-but spring had sprinkled over our Godfrey's grave, less earnest-less eager were we to hear the youth vindicated its own right to happiness; cushat's moan from his yew-tree-to see the and we felt that we did wrong to visit too often hawk's shadow on the glade, as he hung aloft that corner in the kirkyard. No fears had we on the sky. A thousand dead thoughts came of any too oblivious tendencies; in our dreams to life again in the gloom of the woods-and we saw him-most often all alive as ever- we sometimes did wring our hands in an sometimes a phantom away from that grave! agony of grief, to know that our eyes should If the morning light was frequently hard to be not behold the birch-tree brightening there endured, bursting suddenly upon us along with with another spring. the feeling that he was dead, it more frequent- Then every visit we paid to cottage or to ly cheered and gladdened us with resignation, shieling was felt to be a farewell; there was and sent us forth a fit playmate to the dawn something mournful in the smiles on the swee. that rang with all sounds of joy. Again we faces of the ruddy rustics, with their silken found ourselves angling down the river, or snoods, to whom we used to whisper harmless along the loch-once more following the flight love-meanings, in which there was no evil of the Falcon along the woods-eying the guile; we regarded the solemn toil-and-careEagle on the Echo-Cliff. Days passed by, with- worn countenances of the old with a profounder out so much as one thought of Emilius God-emotion than had ever touched our hearts in frey-pursuing our pastime with all our passion, reading our books intently-just as if he had never been! But often and often, too, we thought we saw his figure coming down the hill straight towards us-his very figure-we could not be deceived-but the love-raised ghost disappeared on a sudden-the griefwoven spectre melted into the mist. The strength, that formerly had come from his counsels, now began to grow up of itself within our own unassisted being. The world of nature became more our own, moulded and modified by all our own feelings and fancies; and with a bolder and more original eye we saw the smoke from the sprinkled cottages, and read the faces of the mountaineers on their way to their work, or coming and going to the house of God. Then this was to be our last year in the parish-now dear to us as our birth-place; nay, itself our very birth-place-for in it from the darkness of infancy had our soul been born. Once gone and away from the region of cloud and mountain, we felt that most probably never more should we return. For others, who thought they knew us better than we did ourselves, had chalked out a future .ife for young Christopher North-a life that was sure to lead to honour, and riches, and a splendid name. Therefore we determined with a strong, resolute, insatiate spirit of passion, to make the most-the best-of the few months that remained to us, of that our wild, free, and romantic existence, as yet untrammelled by those inexorable laws, which, once launched into the world, all alike-young and old-must obey. Our books were flung aside the hour of our more thoughtless joy; and the whole life of those dwellers among the woods, and the moors, and the mountains, seemed to us far more affecting now that we saw deeper into it, in the light of a melancholy sprung from the conviction that the time was close at hand when we should mingle with it no more. The thoughts that possessed our most secret bosom failed not by the least observant to be discovered in our open eyes. They who had liked us before, now loved us; our faults, our follies, the insolencies of our reckless boyhood, were all forgotten; whatever had been our sins, pride towards the poor was never among the number; we had shunned not stooping our head beneath the humblest lintel; our mite had been given to the widow who had lost her own; quarrelsome with the young we might sometimes have been, for boyblood is soon heated, and boils before a defying eye; but in one thing at least we were Spartans, we revered the head of old age. And many at least were the kind-some the sad farewells, ere long whispered by us at gloaming among the glens. Let them rest for ever silent amidst that music in the memory which is felt, not heard-its blessing mute though breathing, like an inarticulate prayer! But to Thee-O palest Phantom-clothed in white raiment, not like unto a ghost risen with its grave-clothes to appal, but like a seraph descending from the skies to bless-unto Thee will we dare to speak, as through the mist of years back comes thy yet unfaded beauty, charming us, while we cannot choose but weep with the selfsame vision that often glided before us long ago in the wilderness, and at the sound of our voice would pause for a little while, and | then pass by, like a white bird from the sea, floating unscared close by the shepherd's head, or alighting to trim its plumes on a knoll far up an inland glen! Death seems not to have touched that face, pale though it be-lifelike is the waving of those gentle hands-and the soft, sweet, low music which now we hear, steals not sure from lips hushed by the burial mould! Restored by the power of love, she stands before us as she stood of yore. Not one of all the hairs of her golden head was singed by the lightning that shivered the tree under which the child had run for shelter from the flashing sky. But in a moment the blue light in her dewy eyes was dimmed-and never again did she behold either flower or star. Yet all the images of all the things she had loved remained in her memory, clear and distinct as the things themselves before unextinguished eyes-and ere three summers had flown over her head, which, like the blossom of some fair perennial flower, in heaven's gracious dew and sunshine each season lifted its loveliness higher and higher in the light— she could trip her singing way through the wide wilderness, all by her joyful self, led, as all believed, nor erred they in so believing, by an angel's hand! When the primroses peeped through the reviving grass upon the vernal braes, they seemed to give themselves into her fingers; and 'twas thought they hung longer unfaded round her neck or forehead than if they had been left to drink the dew on their native bed. The linnets ceased not their lays, though her garment touched the broom-stalk on which they sang. The cushat, as she thrid her way through the wood, continued to croon in her darksome tree-and the lark, although just dropped from the cloud, was cheered by her presence into a new passion of song, and mounted over her head, as if it were his first matin hymn. All the creatures of the earth and air manifestly loved the Wanderer of the Wilderness and as for human beings, she was named, in their pity, their wonder, and their delight, the Blind Beauty of the Moor! She was an only child, and her mother had died in giving her birth. And now her father, stricken by one of the many cruel diseases that shorten the lives of shepherds on the hills, was bed-ridden-and he was poor. Of all words ever syllabled by human lips, the most blessed is-Charity. No manna now in the wilderness is rained from heaven-for the mouths of the hungry need it not in this our Christian land. A few goats feeding among the rocks gave them milk, and there was bread for them in each neighbour's house-neighbour though miles afar-as the sacred duty came round-and the unrepining poor sent the grateful child away with their prayers. One evening, returning to the hut with her asual song, she danced up to her father's face on his rushy bed, and it was cold in death. If she shrieked-if she fainted-there was but ne Ear that heard, one Eye that saw her in her swoon. Not now floating light like a small moving cloud unwilling to leave the flowery braes, though it be to melt in heaven, but driven along like a shroud of flying mist before the tempest, she came upon us in the Yet sometimes to a more desperate passion than had ever before driven us over the wilds, did we deliver up ourselves entire, and pursue our pastime like one doomed to be a wild huntsman under some spell of magic. Let us, ere we go away from these high haunts and be no more seen-let us away far up the Great Glen, beyond the Echo-Cliff, and with our rifle 'twas once the rifle of Emilius Godfrey-let us stalk the red-deer. In that chase or forest the antlers lay not thick as now they lie on the Athole Braes; they were still a rare sightand often and often had Godfrey and we gone up and down the Glen, without a single glimpse of buck or doe rising up from among the heather. But as the true angler will try every cast on the river, miles up and down, if he has reason to know that but one single fish has run up from the sea-so we, a true hunter, neither grudged nor wearied to stand for hours, still as the heron by the stream, hardly in hope, but satisfied with the possibility, that a deer might pass by us in the desert. Steadiest and strong est is self-fed passion springing in spite of cir When blows the warm showery cumstance. south-west wind, the trouts turn up their yellow sides at every dropping of the fly upon the curl ing water-and the angler is soon sated with the perpetual play. But once-twice-thrice during a long blustering day-the sullen plunge of a salmon is sufficient for that day's joy. Still, therefore, still as a cairn that stands for ever on the hill, or rather as the shadow on a dial, that though it moves is never seen to move, day after day were we on our station in the Great Glen. A 'oud, wild, wrathful, and | wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing the savage cry from some huge animal, made our ptarmigan, now in their variegated summer heart leap to our mouth, and bathed our fore-dress, seen even among the unmelted nows. head in sweat. We looked up-and a red- The scene shifts-and high up on the heath deer-a stag of ten-the king of the forest-above the Linn of Dee, in the Forest of Braestood with all his antlers, snuffing the wind, mar, the Thane-God bless him-has stalked but yet blind to our figure overshadowed by a the red-deer to his lair, and now lays his unrock. The rifle-ball pierced his heart-and erring rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's leaping up far higher than our head, he tum- Oak. Never shall Eld deaden our sympathies bled in terrific death, and lay stone-still before with the pastimes of our fellow men any more our starting eyes amid the rustling of the than with their highest raptures, their prostrong-bented heather! There we stood sur-foundest grief. Blessings on the head of every veying him for a long triumphing hour. Ghastly were his glazed eyes-and ghastlier his long bloody tongue, bitten through at the very root in agony. The branches of his antlers pierced the sward like swords. His bulk seemed mightier in death even than when it was crowned with that kingly head, snuffing the north wind. In other two hours we were down at Moor-edge and up again, with an eager train, to the head of the Great Glen, coming and going a distance of a dozen long miles. A hay-wagon forced its way through the bogs and over the braes-and on our return into the inhabited country, we were met by shoals of peasants, men, women, and children, huzzaing over the Prey; for not for many years -never since the funeral of the old lord-had the antlers of a red-deer been seen by them trailing along the heather. Fifty years and more-and oh! my weary soul! half a century took a long long time to die away, in gloom and in glory, in pain and pleasure, in storms through which were afraid to fly even the spirit's most eagle-winged raptures, in calms that rocked all her feelings like azure-plumed halcyons to rest-though now to look back upon it, what seems it all but a transitory dream of toil and trouble, of which the smiles, the sighs, the tears, the groans, were all alike vain as the forgotten sunbeams and the clouds! Fifty years and more are gone-and this is the Twelfth of August, Eighteen hundred and twenty-eight; and all the Highland mountains have since dawn been astir, and thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's joys! Our spirit burns within us, but our limbs are palsied, and our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how beautifully these fast-travelling pointers do their work on that black mountain's breast! intersecting it into parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now all astoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up among the rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a stripling, whose ambition | it is to strike the sky with his forehead, and true sportsman on flood, or field, or fell; nor shall we take it at all amiss should any one of them, in return for the pleasure he may have enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky cabin during a rainy day, to the peatreek flavour of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, by the Inverness coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid conveyance, a basket of game, red, black, or brown, or peradventure a haunch of the red-deer. Reader! be thou a male, bold as the Tercel Gentle-or a female, fair as the Falcon-a male, stern as an old Stag-or a female, soft as a young Doe-we entreat thee to think kindly of Us and of our Article-and to look in love or in friendship on Christopher in his Sporting Jacket, now come to the close of his Three Fyttes, into which he had fallen-out of one into another-and from which he has now been revived by the application of a little salt to his mouth, and then a caulker. Nor think that, rambling as we have been, somewhat after the style of thinking common in sleep there has been no method in our madness, no lucidus ordo in our dream. All the pages are instinct with one spirit-our thoughts and our feelings have all followed one another, according to the most approved principles of association-and a fine proportion has been unconsciously preserved. The article may be likened to some noble tree, which-although here and there a branch have somewhat overgrown its brother above or below it, an arm stretched itself out into further gloom on this side than on that, so that there are irregularities in the umbrage-is still disfigured not by those sports and freaks of nature working on a great scale, and stands, magnificent object! equal to an old castle, on the cliff above the cataract. Wo and shame to the sacrilegious hand that would lop away one budding bough! Undisturbed let the tame and wild creatures of the region, in storm or sunshine, find shelter or shade under the calm circumference of its green old age. |