Chapter 35

And is the spirit of the inhabitation there worthy of the place inhabited? We are a Scotsman. And the great English Moralist has asked, where may a Scotsman be found who loves not the honour or the glory of his country better than truth? We are that Scotsman--though for our country would we die. Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour--if not the glory of our country; and had we a thousand lives, proudly would we lay them all down in the dust rather than give--or see given--one single stain

"Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear,"

on which as yet no stain appears save those glorious weather-stains, that have fallen on its folds from the clouds of war and the storms of battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our land, that she knows how to love, admire, and rival--not in vain--the spirit of high-hearted and heroic England. Long as we and that other noble Isle

"Set as an emerald in the casing sea,"

in triple union breathe as one,

"Then come against us the whole world in arms, And we will meet them!"

What is a people without pride? But let them know that its root rests on noble pillars; and in the whole range of strength and stateliness, what pillars are there stronger and statelier than those glorious two--Genius and Liberty? Here valour has fought--here philosophy has meditated--here poetry has sung. Are not our living yet as brave as our dead? All wisdom has not perished with the sages to whom we have built or are building monumental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe the pure mountain-air of Caledon. And have we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, whose name, without offence to that high-priest of nature, or his devoutest worshippers, may flow from our lips even when they utter that of SHAKESPEARE?

The Queen of the North has evaporated--and we again have a glimpse of the Highlands. But where's the Sun? We know not in what airt to look for him, for who knows but it may now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough for evening--and if it be not far on in the day, then we shall have thunder. What saith our repeater? One o'clock. Usually the brightest hour of all the twelve--but anything but bright at this moment. Can there be an eclipse going on--an earthquake at his toilette--or merely a brewing of storm? Let us consult our almanac. No eclipse set down for to-day--the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourhood of Comrie, and has never been known to journey thus far north--besides, he has for some years been bed-ridden; argal, there is about to be a storm. What a fool of a land-tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a mountain, when we might have taken our choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in them every other mile, and a village at the end of each with a comfortable Change-house! And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we crawled? Not this one--for it is as steep as a church--and we never in our life peeped over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister Merlin, 'tis wise of you to be flying home into your crevice--put your head below your wing, and do cease that cry.--Croak! croak! croak! Where is the sooty sinner? We hear he is on the wing--but he either sees or smells us, probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his throat is choked by some cloud. Surely that was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting within fifty yards of us--and, from his mode of folding his wings--an Eagle! This is too much--within fifty yards of an Eagle on his own mountain-top. Is he blind? Age darkens even an Eagle's eyes--but he is not old, for his plumage is perfect--and we see the glare of his far-keekers as he turns his head over his shoulder and regards his eyrie on the cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand a-year for life. Not old--how do we know that? Because he is a creature who is young at a hundred--so says Audubon--Swainson--our brother James--and all shepherds. Little suspects he who is lying so near him with his Crutch. Our snuffy suit is of a colour with the storm-stained granite--and if he walk this way he will get a buffet. And he _is_ walking this way--his head up, and his tail down,--not hopping like a filthy raven--but one foot before the other--like a man--like a King. We do not altogether like it--it is rather alarming--he may not be an Eagle after all--but something worse--"Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Christopher is upon you! take that, and that, and that"--all one tumbling scream, there he goes, Crutch and all, over the edge of the Cliff. Dashed to death--but impossible for us to get the body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! There he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder gloom. Is it electric matter in the atmosphere--or fear and wrath that illumine his wings?

We wish we were safe down. There is no wind here yet--none to speak of; but there is wind enough, to all appearance, in the region towards the west. The main body of the clouds is falling back on the reserve--and observing that movement the right wing deploys; as for the left, it is broken, and its retreat will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious--the whole army has fallen into irremediable disorder--has abandoned its commanding position--and in an hour will be self-driven into the sea. We call that a Panic.

Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. We see now the cause of that retrograde movement. In the north-west, "far off its coming shone," and "in numbers without number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! Thrown out in front, the beautiful rifle brigade comes fleetly on, extending in open order along the vast plain between the aerial Pine-mountains to yon Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches in masses--the space between the divisions now widening and now narrowing--and as sure as we are alive we hear the sound of trumpets. The routed army has rallied and reappears--and, hark, on the extreme left a cannonade. Never before had the Unholy Alliance a finer park of artillery--and now its fire opens from the great battery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far and wide over the whole field of battle.

But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch and be off--for there it is sticking--by-and-by the waters will be in flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go.

We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There, all was purple except what was green--and we were happy to be a heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf. Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate shingle from the bottom of our ---- oh dear! oh dear! but _this_ is painful--sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an inclined plane--feet foremost--accompanied with rattling debris--at railroad speed--every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we shudder to think of it, some behind--well somersetted over our head, thou Grey Wackè--but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch. Take care of yourself, O'Bronte!

Here we are--sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact. Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak, crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire. Hold your tongue--and you may sit there to all eternity if you choose--you cloud-ridden hag! No--there will be a blow-up some day--as there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology--from the tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our guide down to the Low Country.

Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all over the really moun_taineous_ region of the Highlands, every glen has its own indescribable kind of day--all vaguely comprehended under the One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, meeting in the evening after a long absence--having, perhaps, parted that morning--on comparing notes lose their temper, and have been even known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature.

Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he would have used the minnow--and in the huge hollow behind our friends to the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook--though it is not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf? Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot. Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot--an innocent. We remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago--and he was not young then--they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was terrified--for we are duly sensible of the _outre tout ensemble_ we must have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red eyes--he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it--our Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining--and moaning--and, good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in supplication--"Dinna kill me--dinna kill me--'am silly--'am silly--and folk say 'am auld--auld--auld." The harmless creature is convinced we are not going to kill him--takes from our hand what he calls his fishing-rod and tackle--and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat--ony meat--ony meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this--a drop of water on the brain will do it--so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of howl--and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!"

This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close. Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning youth.

'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits swimming in the distant clouds.

God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may lay our hands on it and bless it--and promise, as thou art growing up here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches--and whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven.

Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte would submit to be flayed alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw--take it without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty dear--won't thou, O'Bronte?--and scamper with thee up and down the knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen. Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile--laugh-- sing--as thou wert doing a minute ago--as thou hast done for many a morning--and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well--in the woods--on the braes--in the house,--often all by thyself when the old people are out of doors not far off--or when sometimes they have for a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words--and no evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,--and nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to hurt a hair on thy head.

My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is wild--kneeling down--to drink--no--no--at his lady's feet. The collie catched it--thou sayest--on the edge of the Auld wood--and by the time its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of this--and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human dwellings. What! it dances like a kid--does it--and sometimes you put a garland of wildflowers round its neck--and pursue it like a huntress, as it pretends to be making its escape into the forest?

Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts with a spring--so--and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush--that was a graceful curtsy. Keep the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what else you like; and now--you two, lead the way--try a race to the door--and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher--balancing it on his head--thus--ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it, and by a neck has beat Camilla.

We shall lunch ere we go--and lunch well too--for this is a poor man's, not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer--"give us this day our daily bread." Sweeter--richer bannocks of barley-meal never met the mouth of mortal man--nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir, for a friend in Glasgow--but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh--do oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no that bad, though I've kent it fatter--and, as you hae a lang walk afore you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o' speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his life--but we keep it for a cordial--and that bottle--to be sure it's a gey big ane--and would thole replenishing--has lasted us sin' Whitsuntide."

So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the gudewife's ain hand,"--and we suspect at that last wide bite we have smeared the corners of our mouth--but it will only be making matters worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a cunning look--purring on our knees--and though those glass een o' thine are blinking at the cream on the saucer--with which thou jalousest we intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,--we fear thou mak'st no bones of the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and have an instinctive liking to Warlocks.

And these two old people have survived all their children--sons and daughters! They have told us the story of their life--and as calmly as if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not always theirs--perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in affliction--but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there is in this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and sent from a region above the stars.

There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers, the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her movements out and in doors--though the guest of but an hour. They have told us that they had known what are called better days--and were once in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its serene and simple spirit--at once Lowland and Highland--to us a pleasant union, not without a certain charm of grace.

What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. We shall take care, our friends, that all the Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask--for

"Piety is sweet to infant minds;"

what they love they remember--for how easy--how happy--to get dear things by heart! Happiest of all--the things held holy on earth as in heaven--because appertaining here to Eternal Life.

TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD.

BY THE REV. DUNCAN GRANT, A.M., MINISTER OF FORRES.

"Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains, May our HERALD'S feet appear; Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains, May his voice be to our ear. Let the tenants of our rocks, Shepherds watching o'er their flocks, Village swain and peasant boy, Thee salute with songs of joy!

CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story Of Redemption's wondrous plan; 'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory, 'Tis His highest gift to man; Angels on their harps of gold, Love its glories to unfold; Heralds who its influence wield, Make the waste a fruitful field.

To the fount of mercy soaring, On the wings of faith and love; And the depths of grace exploring, By the light shed from above; Show us whence life's waters flow, And where trees of blessing grow, Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom, Breathing Eden's rich perfume.

Love to God and man expressing, In thy course of mercy speed; Lead to springs of joy and blessing, And with heavenly manna feed Scotland's children high and low, Till the Lord they truly know: As to us our fathers told, He was known by them of old.

To the young, in season vernal, Jesus in His grace disclose; As the tree of life eternal, 'Neath whose shade they may repose, Shielded from the noontide ray, And from ev'ning's tribes of prey; And refresh'd with fruits of love, And with music from above.

CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the blessing Of the Highest thee attend, That, this chiefest boon possessing, Thou may'st prove thy country's friend Tend to make our land assume Something of its former bloom, When the dews of heaven were seen Sparkling on its pastures green,

When the voice of warm devotion To the throne of God arose-- Mighty as the sound of ocean, Calm as nature in repose; Sweeter, than when Araby Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree, Rising 'bove the shining sphere, To Jehovah's list'ning ear."

It is time we were going--but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds, Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite goodness and mercy of God--but though thou hast committed in thy short life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures--how couldst thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you, Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock--she gives a clear warning--and three minutes from two by our watch--rather curious this coincidence to such a nicety--we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank thee, bonny wee Christian--in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch--but we fear you must take us for a sad glutton.

"Zickety, dickety, dock, The mouse ran up the nock; The nock struck one, Down the mouse ran, Zickety, dickety, dock."

Come closer, Christian--and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the hay-field--let us part--God bless you--Good-by--farewell!