Part 7 (1/2)

When harvest's h-- When, breeze-borne, with thy hoarser roar Ca sweet the reapers' cry

But now Ito the storh the leafless tree Loose on its spray the alder leaf Hangs wavering, tre, sear and brow And dark thy eddies whirl beneath, And white thy foa down

Thy banks ithered shrubs are spread; Thy fields confess stern winter's reign; And gleaed plain

Hark! ceaseless groans the leafless wood; Hark! ceaseless roars thy stream below Ben-Vaichard's peaks are dark with cloud Ben-Weavis' crest is white with snow

And yet, though red thy streah field be bare, and forest brown, And winter rule the waning year-- Unmoved I see each char flower and leafless spray Court all in vain the thoughtful sigh

Not that dull grief delights to see Vex'd Nature wear a kindred glooaily prank'd in suh Brahan's lonely woods to stray

Toray

But yet, though roll'd thy billows fair As e'er roll'd those of classic streareen thy woods, now dark and bare, Bask'd beauteous in the western beam; To mark a scene that childhood loved, The anxious eye was turned in vain; Nor could I find the friend approved, That shared ns: these hills no more Shall sternly bound my anxious view Soon, bentpath pursue

Fairer than _here_ gay sulow To me _there_ wintry storms shall seem Then blow, ye bitter breezes, blow, And lash the Conon'spulse, the languid li spirit's rise and fall-- We know that these were felt by him, For these are felt by all”--MONTGOMERY

The apprenticeshi+p ofseason of this year, when I was engaged at Conon-side; and he was now living in his , on the Ross-shi+re side of the Croerthe woods I crossed the Firth, however, and spent one happy day in his society, in a little, low-roofed dohened ravine on the one side, and a dark fir-wood on the other; and which, though picturesque and interesting as a cottage, must, I fear, have been a very uncomfortable ho beside the fire as I entered In all except expression he onderfully like my friend; and yet he was one of the most vapid men I ever knew--a man literally without an idea, and almost without a recollection or a fact And h she showed a certain kindliness of disposition which her husband wanted, was loquacious and weak Had orous-minded maniac of Ord, seen William and his parents, she would have triumphantly referred to them in evidence that Flavel and the School that souls are not ”derived through parental traduction”

My friend hadseries of water-colour sketches of the old castles of the neighbourhood, and a very elaborate set of drawings of what are known as the Runic obelisks of Ross: he had h his draas, as usual, correct, there was a deadness and want of transparency about his colouring, which characterized all his after attempts in the same department, and which was, I suspect, the result of some such deficiency in his perceptions of the harmonies of colour as that which, in another department of sense, s of the obelisks were of singular interest Not only have the thirty years which have since elapsed exerted their dilapidating effect on all the originals from which he drew, but one of the nuroup at that time--has been since almost wholly destroyed; and so, what he was then able to do, there can be no such opportunity of doing again Further, his representations of the sculptured orna (what those of artists too often are) mere picturesque approximations, were true in every curve and line He toldout the involved ht lines--on which the intricate fretwork of one of the obelisks was fors of each coht of the entire stone And, looking with the eye of the stone-cutter at his prelire lilies that forround-work of some involved and difficult knot, to the elaborate knot itself, I saw that, with such a series of drawings before me, I rity of the coht My friend had fory represented by syarded as Runic, but now held to be rather of Celtic origin In the centre of each obelisk, on the ly relieved side, there always occurs a large cross, rather of the Greek than of the Roht into a fretwork, composed of myriads of snakes, raised in so apples In one of the Ross-shi+re obelisks--that of Shadwick, in the parish of Nigg--the cross is entirely composed of these apple-like, snake-covered protuberances; and it was the belief of inal idea of the whole, and, indeed, the fundamental idea of this school of sculpture, was exactly that so eument of his poem--man's fall syn of his restoration, by the cross But in order to indicate that to the divine Man, the Restorer, the cross itself was a consequence of the Fall, even it was covered over with symbols of the event, and, in one curious specimen, built up of them It was the snakes and apples that had reared, _ie_, rendered imperative, the cross My friend further reinated, which seemed more modern in some of its specily-relieved apples, but in which the twistings of the one, and the circular outlines of the others ht be distinctly traced; and that it seemed ultimately to have passed from a sylyphic pictures had passed into ns or characters I know not what ht of the theory of Williao, the ancient ruins of Iona, I marked, on the more ancient crosses, the snakes and apparent apples, and then sa the saures appeared as arded it as ht one than any of the others I have yet seen broached on the subject I dined withof water; nor were the potatoes by any ood ones; but they formed the only article of food in the household at the time He had now dined and breakfasted upon theh not very strengthening, they kept in the spark of life; and he had saved up h to carry hi, where he trusted to find e his thin consumptive blood on bad potatoes and water, and, at the sa the labours of our antiquarian societies by his elaborate and truthful drawings of an interesting class of national antiquities, arded as a eniuses there are in every age in which art is cultivated, and literature has its ad in their natures, the world rarely finds theh forthis winter in my books and walks, and in my uncle Jaer to lecture eneral, was a very pleasant place, where a great deal of sound remark and excellent infor in the neighbourhood in which I soround room, inhabited by a poor old woman, who had come to the town fro with her a h now turned of twenty, more resembled, save in his head and face, a boy of ten, and as so helpless a cripple, that he could not move from off his seat ”Poor la the hard measure dealt him by nature, an even-tereat favourite with the young people in the neighbourhood, especially with the hu hience, coupled with sympathies, that could write letters--used to find him employment, which he liked not a little, as a sort of aeneral in their affairs of the heart Richardson tells that he learned to write his Pa love-letters, when a very young lad, for half a score love-sick feh he bore on a skeleton body, wholly unfurnished with e size and activity, was not born to be a novelist; but he had the necessary h to all his other acquaintance, I, who cared not a great deal about the ht, I found, have aswhat they termed ”close-minded;” and Danie, satisfied, in some sort, that I deserved the character, seereat weight of confidence which, rather liberally, as would seem, for his comfort, had been laid upon his own It is recorded of hi in the secret of half the loves of the parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesues of half the Courts of Europe” And, writing to Dr Moore, he adds, that it ith difficulty” his pen was ”restrained froraphs on the love-adventures of his coe” I, on the other hand, bore h, and kept the myself as ht store up at pleasure the precious coe, it cumbered hih, I daresay, I could still fill raphs” with the love-affairs of toohters were courted and o, I feel no inclination whatever, after having kept their secrets so long, to begin blabbing them now Danie kept a draft-board, and used to take a pride in beating all his neighbours; but in a short tirin--to beat hi one besides, and not caring to look on the woe-begone expression that used to cloud the meek pale face of my poor acquaintance, every time he found his ave up drafts, the only ga, and in the course of a few years succeeded in unlearning pretty completely all the moves It appeared wonderful that the processes essential to life could have been carried on in so miserable a piece of framework as the person of poor Danie: it was simply a human skeleton bent double, and covered with a sallow skin But they were not carried on in it long About eighteen months after the first commencement of our acquaintance, when I was many miles away, he was seized by a sudden illness, and died in a few hours I have seen, in even our better works of fiction, less interesting characters portrayed than, poor gentle-spirited Danie, the love-depository of the young da or two in his school

It was not until after several weeks of the working season had passed, thatovercaain to seek work as a journeyth, however, a life of inactivity beca to his fores for himself, and a very snised as the readier and s of the more difficult kinds, I had soive him lessons in the art, froid in both reatly to profit We both returned to Conon-side, where there was a tall dome of heork to be erected over the ed during the previous year; and, as few of the workmen had yet asse ourselves as in the hay-loft, with its inferior accommodation, to the later coh slabs, and filled it with hay; placed our chests in front of it; and, as the rats mustered by thousands in the place, suspended our sack of oatmeal by a rope, froht over the floor And, having both pot and pitcher, our household econo walks, I had determined to conform also to every practice of the barrack; and as the workradually increased around us, and the place beca barrack-life of the north-country mason The rats were somewhat troublesome A comrade who slept in the bed ih one night as he lay asleep, and remarked, that he supposed it would be his weasand they would attack next tihtly plated jack-buttons to which my braces had been fastened had been fairly cut from off my trousers, and carried away, to form, I doubt not, a portion of some miser-hoard in the wall But even the rats themselves became a source of amusement to us, and inity of danger It was not likely that they would succeed in eating us all up, as they had done wicked Bishop Hatto of old; but it was at least soun to try

The dwellers in the hay-loft had not been ades of the barrack, nor had they been required to share in all its toils and duties They had to provide their quota of wood for the fire, and of water for general household purposes: but they had not to take their turn of cooking and baking for the entire mess, but were permitted, as convenience served, to cook and bake for thee, with at times an occasional mess of brose or _brochan_, for only e that, in at least my earlier efforts, I had been rather unlucky as a cook, and not very fortunate as a baker My experience in the Cro and roasting potatoes, and in preparing shell-fish for the table, whetherto the encies of our wild life had never brought me fairly in contact with the cerealia; and I had now to spoil a e became palatable, or my cakes crisp, or my brose free and knotty, or my _brochan_ sufficiently srueneral disposition in the barrack to take part rather with his apprentice than with hiainst hie was at times, Irecipe in the barrack, that the cook should continue stirring themeal, until, from its first wild ebullitions in full boil, it became silent over the fire; and so I could show that I hadto rule And as forthat I had actually failed to satisfy, though I had made two kinds of it at once in the same pot I preferred this viand when of a thicker consistency than usual, whereas h to be drunk out of the bowl; but as it was I who had theof it, I used more instead of less meal than ordinary, and unluckily, in my first experiment, h-likeit into the pot, instead of incorporating with the boiling water, it sank in a solid cake to the bottom In vain I stirred, and manipulated, and kept up the fire The stubborn th burnt brown against the bottoruel-like fluid which floated over also assuht approaching to an average consistency for the whole, and hearing my master's foot at the door, I took the pot from off the fire, and dished up for supper a portion of the thinner mixture which it contained, and which, in at least colour and consistency, not a little resembled chocolate The poor man ladled the stuff in utter dismay ”Od, laddie,” he said, ”what ca' ye this? Ca' ye this _brochan_?” ”Onything ye like, master,” I replied; ”but there are two kinds in the pot, and it will go hard if none of them please you” I then dished hi in size and consistency a s, which he of course found wholly inedible, and becary

But this bad earth of ours ”is filled,” according to Cowper, ”rong and outrage;” and the barrack laughed and took part with the defaulter

Experience, however, that does so th became a tolerably fair plain cook, and not a very bad baker; and nohen the exigencies required that I should take my full share in the duties of the barrack, I was found adequate to their proper fulfile excellence; and ative happiness of escaping animadversion and comment

Soly nice in their eating, were great connoisseurs in porridge; and it was no easy matter to please them There existed unsettled differences--the results of a diversity of tastes--regarding the ti the proportion of salt that should be allotted to each individual, and as to whether the process of ”,” as it was termed, should be a slow or a hasty one, and, of course, as in all controversies of all kinds, the more the row in ie made at the same time in the same pot: there were, in especial, two of the workree-of-salt question, whose bickers were supplied froeneral preparation; and as these had usually opposite co, their objections served so coree told against the cook One e for both the controversialists, ly fresh as to be but little re with the preparation in this state the bicker of the salt-loving connoisseur, he then took a handful of salt, andit with the portion which remained in the pot, poured into the bicker of the fresh e very much akin to a pickle

Both entered the barrack sharply set for breakfast, and sat down each to his meal; and both at the first spoonful dropped their spoons ”A rae without salt!” ”A raiven e like brine!” ”You see, lads,” said the cook, stepping out into the middle of the floor, with the air of a much-injured orator--”you see, lads, what matters have come to at last: there is the very pot in which I e in both their bickers I don't think we should bear this any longer; we have all had our turn of it, though mine happens to be the worst; and I now move that these two fellows be raling, and a burning sense of injustice; but no single man in the barrack was match for half-a-dozen of the others The disputants, too, instead of ether, were prepared to assist in ra each the other; and so rath, when the details of the stratage for half an hour into the neighbouring wood, and concealing himself there, like some political exile under ban of the Govern the merited punishreater danger in our little cohers on his side I have said that I became a not very bad baker Still less and less sorely, as I i teeth of th they becaan to find thatserious effects upon the contents of his orous health, I was eating a great deal of bread; and, after a good deal of gruth laid it down as law that I should restrict reed; but the general barrack, to whose ears some of my master's remonstrances had found their as dissatisfied; and it would probably have overturned in conclave our agreeardly stringency of his terms, had I not craved, by way of special favour, to be per early in the week, when the old one out, I mixed up the better part of a peck of ether in the same plane, kneaded it out into an enormous cake, at least equal in area to an ordinary-sized Newcastle grindstone I then cut it up into about twenty pieces, and, for a vast semicircle of stones round the fire, raised the pieces to the heat in a continuous row, soth I had a”--half the barrack were engaged in the work--whenour e of meal which still ree proportions of the disparted bannock, and now at the cones, squares, rhombs, and trapeziums of cake that hardened to the heat in front of the fire, he abruptly asked--”What's this, laddie?--are ye baking for a wadding?”

”Just baking one of the two cakes, master,” I replied; ”I don't think we'll need the other one before Saturday night” A roar of laughter frohter, after an eood sense to join And during the rest of the season I baked as often and as much as I pleased

It is, I believe, Golds happily addressed, than fronancy,” and that ”a jest calculated to spread at a ga table, may be received with perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat”

On Goldsmith's principle, the joke of as ter bannock wi' the Malison,” could have perhaps succeeded in only a masons' barrack; but never there at least could joke have been more successful

As I had not yet ascertained that the Old Red Sandstone of the north of Scotland is richly fossiliferous, Conon-side and its neighbourhood furnished ic exploration It enabled lomerate base of the system, which forhlands, extending between the valleys of the Conon and the Peffer, and which--remarkable for its picturesque cliffs, abrupt eminences, and narrow steep-sided dells--bears in its centre a pretty wood-skirted loch, into which the old Celtic prophet Kenneth Ore, when, like Prospero, he relinquished his art, buried ”deep beyond pluic stone in which he ont to see both the distant and the future Irounds of Brahan, the rock forardener would make, if he could--cliffs with their rude proht over every square foot of surface, and furnishi+ng footing, by their innureen tuft ofthe deep woods, there stand up enorments of the sae from the precipices above, and which, mossy and hoar, and many of them ivy-bound, resemble artificial ruins--obnoxious, however, to none of the disparaging associations which the make-believe ruin is sure always to awaken It was inexpressibly pleasant to spend a quiet evening hour aine a tiainst their bases; but though their enclosed pebbles evidently owed their rounded forination see up a still earlier time, when these solid rocks existed as but loose sand and pebbles, tossed by waves or scattered by currents; and when, for hundreds and thousands of square miles, the wild tract around existed as an ancient ocean, skirted by unknown lands I had not yet collected enough of geologic fact to enable rapple with the difficulties of a restoration of the more ancient time There was a later period, also, represented in the ihbourhood by a thick deposit of stratified sand, of which I knew as little as of the conglo-mill, for about ten feet, but came to no bottom; and I could see that it formed the subsoil of the valley all around the policies of Conon-side, and underlay most of its fields and woods It hite and pure, as if it had been washed by the sea only a feeeks previous; but in vain did I search its beds and layers for a frage I can noever, entertain little doubt that it belonged to the boulder clay period of subence, and that the fauna hich it was associated bore the ordinary sub-arctic character When this stratified sand was deposited, the waves lomerate precipices of Brahan, and the sea have occupied, as firths and sounds, the deep Highland valleys of the interior And on such of the hills of the country as had their heads above water at the tire Alpine Flora her mountain summits

Once every six weeks I was permitted to visit Cromarty, and pass a Sabbath there; but as my master usually acco and weary to press upon his failing strength and stiffening limbs, we had to restrict ourselves to the beaten road, and saw but little On, however, one occasion this season, I journeyed alone, and spent so happy a day in findingthe rocky shores of the Croh brown, lonely moors, mottled with Danish encarounds, and the broken walls of deserted churches--that its memory still lives freshly in my mind, as one of the happiest of house--a grey fantastic rag of a castle, consisting of four heavily-arched stories of ti a-top its stone roof and its ornate turrets and bartizans--

”A ghastly prison, that eternally Hangs its blind visage out to the one sea”