Part 17 (1/2)

[15] Professor Pillans

[16] ”For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh”

CHAPTER XXIV

”Life is a drama of a few brief acts; The actors shi+ft, the scene is often changed, Pauses and revolutions intervene, The mind is set to many a varied tune

And jars and plays in harh e, to teach a few pupils, the united earnings of the household did not e a sum as I had used to think it a few years before; and so I set myself to try whether I could not turnfor the periodicals My old inability of pressing for work continued to be as ee kind, which presented itself to ht have failed in procuring the eht mechanic--the late Mr John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed--after inal place at the compositor's frame, to the editorshi+p of a provincial paper, started, in the beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of ”Border Tales,”

which, as he possessed the story-telling ability, met with considerable success He did not live, however, to complete the first yearly volume; the forty-ninth weekly number intimated his death; but as the publication had been a not unprofitable one, the publisher resolved on carrying it on; and it was stated in a brief notice, which eraphy, that, hisunexhausted, ”tales yet untold lay in reserve, to keep alive his memory” And in the name of Wilson the publication was kept up for, I believe, five years It reckoned a its contributors the two Bethunes, John and Alexander, and the late Professor Gillespie of St

Andreith several other writers, none of whoinal matter collected by its first editor; and I, who, at the publisher's request, wrote for it, during the first year of h to fill an ordinary volume, had certainly to provide all ht me about twenty-five pounds--a considerable addition to the previous hundred and odds of the household, but, for the work done, as inadequate a reot in the days of Grub Street My tales, however, though an English critic didone of them as the best in the hest order: it took a great deal of writing to earn the three guineas, which were the stipulated wages for filling a weekly nuh fellow in his way, one had no great encouragement to do one's very best, in order to ”keep alive histo Sir Walter Scott and the old proverb, ”every herring should hang by its own head”

I can shoever, that at least one of ain Wilson so out, in the dramatic forusson--I wrote for the ”Tales” a series of ”Recollections,” drawn ostensibly from the memory of one who had been personally acquainted with them both, but in reality based on my own conceptions of the s And in an elaborate life of Fergusson, lately published, I find a borrowed extract fro reference to the whole, coupled with a piece of information entirely new to rapher, ”are truly interesting and touching, _and were the result of various co researches I have had frequent occasion to verify in the course of my own” Alas, no! Poor Wilson wasthese ”Recollections” first struck the writer--a person to whom no communications on the subject were ever raphies of the poet--that in Chambers' ”Lives of Illustrious Scotsmen,”--wrote full two hundred miles from the scene of his sad and brief career The same individual who, in Mr Wilson's behalf, is so co research,” is, I find, very severe on one of Fergusson's previous biographers--the scholarly Dr Irving, author of the Life of Buchanan, and the Lives of the older Scottish Poets--a gentleman hatever his estimate of the poor poetthe various incidents which cohly treated, and a coence of the man of none But it is always thus with Faraced, and some with honours crown'd; Unlike successes equal ns

And, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains”

In the memoir of John Bethune by his brother Alexander, the reader is told that he was much depressed and disappointed, about a twelvemonth or so previous to his decease, by the rejection of several of his stories in succession, which were returned to him, ”with an editor's sentence of death passed upon them” I know not whether it was by the editor of the ”Tales of the Borders” that sentence in the case was passed; but I know he sentenced soh well-nigh equal, I thought, toto depression, like poor Bethune, I sihtway made an offer of my services to Mr

Robert Cha the two following years I occasionally contributed to his _Journal_, on greatly more liberal terms than those on which I had laboured for the other periodical, and with my name attached to my several articles I must be permitted to availthe kindness of Mr Chambers There is perhaps no other writer of the present day who has done so entleman I have for many years observed that publications, however obscure, in which he finds aught really praiseworthy, are secure always of getting, in his widely-circulated periodical, a kind approving word--that his criticisms invariably bear the stamp of a benevolent nature, which experiences nition of merit than in the detection of defect--that his kindness does not stop with these cheering notices, for he finds time, in the course of a very busy life, to write enises a spirit superior to their condition--and that the compositions of writers of this meritorious class, when submitted to him editorially, rarely fail, if really suitable for his journal, to find a place in it, or to be remunerated on a scale that invariably bears reference to the value of the communications--not to the circumstances of their authors

I can scarce speak ofany part of my education I acquired, in their composition, a somewhat readier command of the pen than before; but they, of course, tended rather to the dissipation of previous stores than to the accuher faculties of mind which I deemed it most my interest to cultivate My real education at the ti initiated behind the bank-counter, as my experience of the business of the district extended; and that which I contrived to pick up inthe shores A rich ichthyolitic deposit of the Old Red Sandstone lies, as I have already said, within less than half a ued with htful relaxation to lay open its fish by scores, and to study their peculiarities as exhibited in their various states of keeping, until I at length becaenera and species froments The number of ichthyolites which that deposit of itself furnished--a patch little ether astonishi+ng: it supplied ether; nor, though, after I left Croic tourists, and by a few cultivators of science in the place, was it wholly exhausted for ten years e of vertebrate existence ated as thickly upon that spot in the tis ever do now, in their season, on the best fishi+ng-banks of Caithness or the Moray Firth I was for soreatly puzzled in my attempts to restore these ancient fishes, by the peculiarities of their organization It was in vain I exaht by the fisher-fish and the skate to the herring and the mackerel I could find in our recent fishes no such scales of enamelled bone as those which had covered the _Dipterians_ and the _Celacanths_; and no such plate-encased animals as the various species of _Coccosteus_ or _Pterichthys_ On the other hand, with the exception of a double line of vertebral processes in the _Coccosteus_, I could find in the ancient fishes no internal skeleton: they had apparently worn all their bones outside, where the crustaceans wear their shells, and were furnished inside with but frae, too, that the geologists who occasionally came my way--some of them men of eminence--seemed to know even less about my Old Red fishes and their peculiarities of structure, than I did myself I had represented the various species of the deposit simply by numerals, which not a few of the specimens of my collection still retain on their faded labels; and waited on until soh to substitute for nate theth caeological field, the greater portion of whose organise They had no representatives a the vocables

I foranoidal fishes in 1836, from a perusal of the late Dr Hibbert's paper on the deposit of Burdiehouse, which I owed to the kindness of Mr George Anderson Dr

Hibbert, in illustrating the fishes of the Coal Measures, figured and briefly described the Lepidosteus of the A fish of the early type; but his description of the anih suppleewater Treatise, carried enera--_Osteolepis_ and _Diplopterus_--resembled the American fish externally It will be seen that the first-mentioned of these ancient ichthyolites bears a nah, in the reverse order, of exactly the same words But while I found the skeleton of the Lepidosteus described as remarkably hard and solid, I could detect in the _Osteolepis_ and its kindred genus no trace of internal skeleton at all The Cephalaspean genera, too--_Coccosteus_ and _Pterichthys_--greatly puzzled ues for them; and so, in my often-repeated attempts at restoration, I had to build them up plate by plate, as a child sets up its dissected map or picture bit by bit--every new speci a key for soth, after many an abortive effort, the creatures rose up before e, unwonted proportions, as they had lived, untold ages before, in the primaeval seas The extraordinary form of _Pterichthys_ filled me with astonishment; and with its arched carpace and flat plastron restored before me, I leaped to the conclusion, that as the recent Lepidosteus, with its ancient representatives of the Old Red Sandstone, were sauroid fishes--strange connecting links between fishes and alligators--so the _Pterichthys_ was a Chelonian fish--a connecting link between the fish and the tortoise A gurnard--insinuated so far through the shell of a small tortoise as to suffer its head to protrude fro, furnished with oar-like paddles instead of pectoral fins, and with its caudal fin clipped to a point--would, I found, forest of fishes And when, so it to the notice of Agassiz, I found that, with all his world-wide experience of its class, it was as much an object of wonder to him as it had been to reat work, ”to see aught enus: the sa the Plesiosaurus, I myself experienced, when Mr H Miller, the first discoverer of these fossils, showed me the specimens which he had detected in the Old Red Sandstone of Cromarty” And there were peculiarities about the _Coccosteus_ that scarce less excited eneral form of the _Pterichthys_, and which, when I first ventured to describe they as mere blunders on the part of the observer I have, however, since succeeded in dereatly doubt, for Nature makes very few--it was Nature herself that was in error, not the observer In this strange _Coccostean_ genus, Nature _did_ place a group of opposing teeth in each ramus of the lower jaw, just in the line of the syement unique, so far as is yet known, in the vertebrate division of creation, and which must have rendered the mouth of these creatures an extraordinary combination of the horizontal mouth proper to the vertebrata, and of the vertical mouth proper to the crustaceans It was favourable to the integrity offor ht anting, or plates turned up whose places I was unable to determine, I could lay aside my self-imposed task for the time, and only resume it when some new-found speci it on

And so the restorations which I cohest authorities in 1848, after they had been set aside for nearly six years, to be essentially the true ones after all I see, however, that one of the most fanciful and iven to the world--that made by Mr Joseph dinkel in 1844 for the late Dr Mantell, and published in the ”Medals of Creation,” has been reproduced in the recent illustrated edition of the ”Vestiges of Creation” But the ingenious author of that work could scarce act prudently were he to stake the soundness of his hypothesis on the integrity of the restoration For my own part, I consent, if it can be shown that the _Pterichthys_ which once lived and lobe of ours ever either rose or sunk into the _Pterichthys_ of Mr dinkel, freely and fully to confess, not only the possibility, but also the _actuality_, of the transenera I am first, however, prepared to deists in the world, that not a single plate or scale of Mr

dinkel's restoration represents those of the fish which he professed to restore; that the sament applies equally to his restoration of _Coccosteus_; and that, instead of reproducing in his figures the true foriven, instead, the likeness of things that never were ”in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth”

The place in the geologic scale, as certainly as the forms and characters, of these ancient fishes, had to be detere Anderson had informed me, as early as 1834, that some of them were identical with the ichthyolites of the Gamrie deposit; but then the place of the Gamrie deposit was still to fix It had been recently referred to the saical horizon as the Carboniferous Li unconformable to the Old Red Sandstone of the district in which it occurs; but, wholly dissatisfied with the evidence adduced, I continued h the process was a slow one, saw the position of the Cro towards determination It was not, however, until the autuot them fairly fixed down to the Old Red Sandstone, and not until the winter of 1839 that I was able conclusively to demonstrate their place in the base of the system, little hty feet, above the upper strata of the Great Conglo my explorations, to be able to extendcounties, in order to determine whether I could not possess myself, at a distance, of the evidence which, for a tiehbourhood; and I found myself somewhat in the circumstances of a tolerably lively beetle stuck on a pin, that, though able, with a little exertion, to spin round its centre, is yet wholly unable to quit it I acquired, however, at the close of 1837, in the late Dr John Malcolmson of Madras, a noble auxiliary, who could expatiate freely over the regions virtually barred against me He had been led to visit Croy, rather picturesque than scientific, which had appeared in endary volume; and after I had introduced him to its ichthyolitic beds on both sides of the Hill and at Eathie, and acquainted hianis deposits of the neighbouring shi+res of Banff, Moray, and Nairn And in little ht he had detected the ichthyolites in numerous localities all over an Old Red Sandstone tract, which extends from the primary districts of Banff to near the field of Culloden The Old Red Sandstone of the north, hitherto deemed so poor in fossils, he found--with the Croanic reland and the Continent, and introduced soassiz, and so their place in the scale, to Mr

(now Sir Roderick) Murchison And I had the honour, in consequence, of corresponding with both these distinguished , that by both, the fruit of my labours was deemed important I observe that Huassiz on the extraordinary character of the new zoological link hich I had furnished hireat work on the Silurian Systeraphical fact After referring to the previously formed opinion that the Gamrie deposit, with its ichthyolites, was not an Old Red one, he goes on to say--”On the other hand, I have recently been informed by Dr Malcolhly interesting discoveries near that place) pointed out to hi sihly-inclined strata, which are interpolated in, and coreat mass of Old Red Sandstone of Ross and Cromarty This important observation will, I trust, be soon cothens the inference of M

Agassiz respecting the epoch during which the _Cheiracanthus_ and _Cheirolepis_ lived” All this will, I am afraid, appear tolerably weak to the reader, and somewhat more than tolerably tedious Let him remember, however, that the only merit to which I lay claim in the case is that of patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or surpass htly directed, may lead to enius itself What I had been slowly deciphering were the _ideas_ of God as developed in the e of vertebrate existence; and one portion of my inquiries determined the date of these ideas, and another their character

Many of the best sections of the Sutors and the adjacent hills, with their associated deposits, cannot be exaht little yawl, furnished with mast and sail, and that rowed four oars, to enable me to carry out my explorations It made ht 's excursion to the deep-sea caves and skerries, and the picturesque surf-wasted stacks of the granitic wall of rock which runs in the Ben Nevis line of elevation, fro on the west I know not a richer tract for the geologist

Independently of the interest that attaches to its sorely-contorted granitic gneiss--which seems, as Murchison shrewdly reh the sedimentary deposits in a solid state, as a fractured bone is so the range three several deposits of the Old Red ichthyolites, and three several deposits of the Lias, besides the sub-aqueous ones, with two insulated skerries, which I aard as outliers of the Oolite These last occur in the forerous to the mariner, which lie a full half-mile from the shore, and can be visited with safety only at loater during dead cal in from the sea I have set out as early as two o'clock in a fine su several hours upon them, have been seated at the bank desk before ten; but these wereSaturday afternoons that were my favourite seasons of explorations; and when the weather was fine, my ould often accompany me in these excursions; and we not unfrequently anchored our skiff in so bank, and, provided with rods and lines, caught, ere our return, a basket of rock-cod or coal-fish for supper, that always seemed of finer flavour than the fish supplied us in the market These were happy holidays Shelley predicates of a day of exquisite beauty, that it would continue to ”live like joy in s spent in led with a well-reery of blue seas and purple hills, and a sun-lit town in the distance, and tall wood-crested precipices nearer at hand, which flung lengthened shadows across shore and sea--that not merely represent enjoyments which have been, but that, in certain moods of the mind, take the form of enjoyment still They are favoured spots in the chequered retrospect of the past, on which the sunshi+ne of htly than on most of the others

When thus employed, there broke out very unexpectedly, a second ith the Liberal Moderates of the town, in which, unwillingly rather than otherwise, I had ultie The sacrament of the Supper is celebrated in most of the parish churches of the north of Scotland only once a year; and, as ations worshi+p at that time in the open air, the summer and autumn seasons are usually selected for the ”occasion,” as best fitted for open-air s As, however, the celebration is preceded and followed by week-day preachings, and as on one of these week-days--the Thursday preceding the Sacramental Sabbath--no work is done, kirk-sessions usually avoid fixing their sacrament in a busy time, such as the ti-fishi+ng in the seaport towns; and as the parish of Cro one, the kirk-session of the place have to avoid both periods And so the early part of July, ere the herring-fishi+ng or the harvest comes on, is the time usually fixed upon for the Cromarty sacrament In this year, however (1838), it so chanced that the day appointed for the Queen's coronation proved coincident with the sacraed upon the Session that the preparations for the sacras for the coronation We had not been s of the kind in the north since the good old tientle's birthday, in order to dee IV and William IV had passed off as quietly as Sabbaths; and the Session, holding that itQueen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got holorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooh essentially in the right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case ainst theed hiive way to the Liberals, and have his preparation-day changed froh to act on the suggestion; nay, he had made a similar one, he toldin the precedents of centuries, had declined to subordinate the religious services of the Kirk to the wassail and merriment sanctioned by the State And so they deter their day of sacramental preparation on the Thursday, as their fathers had done Meanwhile, the Liberals held as very properly terh the public had failed to attend it, the public had been quite at liberty to do so, nay, had even been specially invited; and there appeared in the provincial newspapers a long report of its proceedings, including five speeches--all written by a legal gentle of the inhabitants of the town and parish of Cromarty The resolutions were, of course, of the most enthusiastically loyal character There was not aas not prepared to spend upon himself the last drop of his bottle of port in her Majesty's behalf Thursday came--the Thursday of the sacrament and of the coronation; and, with ninety-nine hundredths of the church-going portion of my townsfolk, I went to church as usual The parochial resolutioners, a in all to ten, were, I can honestly avouch, scarce at all ation of nearly as many hundreds About mid-day, however, we could hear the muffled report of their carronades; and, shortly after the service was over, and we had returned to our horoup of individuals, that looked exceedingly like a press-gang, but was in reality intended for a procession Though joined by a proprietor froh, a s officer, and two half-pay Episcopalian officers besides, the nu boys, did not exceed twenty-five persons; and of these, as I have said, only ten were parishi+oners The processionists had a noble dinner in the head inn of the place--merrier than even dinners of celebration usually are, as it was, of course, loyalty and public spirit to ignore the special clai evening saw a splendid bonfire blazing from the brae-head And the Liberal newspapers south and north taking part with the processionists, in raph and short leader, represented their frolic--for such it was, and a very foolish one--as a splendid triuotry and clerical domination Nay, so bad did the case of my minister and his Session appear, thus placed in opposition to at once the people and the Queen, that the papers on the other side failed to take it up A ritten letter on the subject by my wife, which fairly stated the facts, was refused admission into even the ecclesiastico-Conservative journal, specially patronized, at the time, by the Scottish Church; and my minister's friends and brethren in the south could do little else than marvel at what they deemed his wondrous imprudence

I had anticipated, from the first, that his position was to be a bad one; but I ill liked to see hih I had determined, on the rejection of my counsel, to take no part in the quarrel, I now resolved to try whether I could not render it evident that he was really not at issue with his people, but withthem, who had never liked him; and that it was n, simply because he had held his preparation services on the day of her coronation In order to iving the names in full, in a letter which appeared in our northern newspapers, of every individual alked in the procession, and represented theed the addition of even a single naood the second, I fairly succeeded, as there were not a few cohers on ry, and wrote not very bright letters, which appeared as advertisements in the newspapers, and paid duty to norant young shoemaker in the place, named Chaucer, a native of the south of Scotland, who represented hirandson of the old poet of the days of Edward III, and wrote particularly wretched doggrel toa quarrel with the kirk-session, in a certain delicate department, he had joined the processionists, and celebrated their achievements in a ballad entirely worthy of thenised leader of the band pronounced Chaucer the younger a greatly better poet than me