Ofarnell Imusrsita ffiibratg 
 
 atljara, Kcm fork 
 
 LIBRARY OF 
 
 LEWIS BINGLEY WYNNE 
 
 A.B-.A.M.. COLUMBIAN COLLEGE. '71 . 73 
 WASHINGTON, D. C. 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 MRS. MARY A. WYNNE 
 
 AND 
 
 JOHN H. WYNNE 
 
 CORNELL '98 
 1922 
 
Cornell University Library 
 
 PR 5021.M45T3 1863a 
 
 Tales and sketches. 
 
 3 1924 013 525 369 
 
a Cornell University 
 P Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 3525369 
 
TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
iatks bg l^B mmt %vd\iax. 
 
 -»<)5*;o-.- 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS. 
 
 THE FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR. 
 
 THE CRUISE OF THE BETSEY. 
 
 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND AND ITS PEOPLE. 
 
 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
 
 MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS. 
 
 THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 
 
 SKETCH-BOOK OF POPULAR GEOLOGY. 
 
 ESSAYS, 
 
 HISTOEICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, POLITICAL, SOCIAL, 
 LITERAKY, AND SCIENTIFIC. 
 
TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 BT 
 
 HUGH MILLER, 
 
 AUTHOB OP 
 
 ' THE OLD RED SANDSTONE," " MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS,' 
 
 "the TESTIMONY OP THE ROOKS," ETC. 
 
 EDITED, WITH A PREFACE, 
 
 BY 
 
 MES. MILLER. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 GOULD AND LINCOLN, 
 
 69 WASUIZrOTON STBEET. 
 
 NEW YORK! SHELDON AND COMPANY. 
 CINCINNATI: GEORQE S. BLANCHABD. 
 
 1863. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following " Tales and Sketches " were written at an early 
 period of the author's career, during the first years of his married 
 life, before he had attempted to carry any part of the world on his 
 shoulders in the shape of a public newspaper, and found it by no 
 means a comfortable burden. Tet possibly the period earlier still, 
 when he produced his " Scenes and Legends," had been more favor- 
 able for a kind of writing which required in any measure the exer- 
 cise of the imagination. The change to him was very great, from a 
 life of constant employment in the open air, amid the sights and 
 sounds of nature, to " the teasing monotony of one which tasked his 
 intellectual powers without exercising them." Hence, partly, it may 
 be imagined, the intensity of his sympathy with the poet Ferguson. 
 ^ The greater number of these Tales were composed literally over the 
 midnight lamp, after returning late in the evening from a loflg day's 
 work over the ledger and the balance-sheet. Tired though he was, 
 
 his mind could not stagnate — he must virile. I do not mention these 
 1* 
 
VI P E E F A C B. 
 
 circumstances at all by way of apology. It has struck me, in- 
 deed, that the Tales are nearly all of a pensive or tragical cast, and 
 that in congenial circumstances they might have had a more joyous 
 and elastic tone, in keeping with a healthier condition of the ner- 
 vous system. Yet their defects must undoubtedly belong to the 
 jnind of their author. I am far from being under the delusion that 
 he was, or was ever destined to be, a Walter Scott or Charles 
 Dickens. The faculties of plot and drama, which find their scope 
 in the story and the novel, were among the weakest, instead of the 
 strongest, of his powers. Yet I am deceived if the lovers and stu- 
 dents of Hugh Miller's Works will not find in the " Tales and 
 Sketches " some matter of special interest. In the first three there 
 are, I think, glimpses into his own inner life, such as he, with most 
 men of reserved and dignified character, would choose rather to 
 personify in another than to make a parade of in their own person, 
 when coming forward avowedly to write of themselves. And, then, 
 if he could have held a conversation with Robert Burns, so that all 
 the world might hear, I think there are few who would not have 
 listened with some curiosity. In his " Recollections of Burns " we 
 have his own side of such conversation ; for it seems evident that it 
 is himself that he has set to travelling and talking in the person of 
 Mr. Lindsay. 
 
 But of Burns's share in the dialogue the reader is the best judge. 
 Some may hold that he is too like Hugh Miller himself, — too phil- 
 osophic in idea, and too pure in sentiment. In regard to this, we 
 
PREFACE. VII 
 
 can only remind such that Burns's prose was not like his poetry, 
 nor his ideal like his actual life. 
 
 Unquestionably my husband had a very strong sympathy with 
 many points in the character of Burns. His thorough integrity ; 
 his noble independence, which disdained to place his honest opinions 
 at the mercy of any man or set of men ; his refusEil to barter his 
 avowal of the worth and dignity of man for the smiles and patron- 
 age of the great, even after he had tasted the sweets of their society, 
 which is a very different matter from such avowal before that time, 
 if any one will fairly think of it, — all this, with the acknowledged 
 sovereignty of the greater genius, made an irresistible bond of broth- 
 erhood between Miller and Burns. But to the grosser traits of the 
 poet's character my husband's eyes were perfectly open ; and grieved 
 indeed should I be if it could for a moment be supposed that he lent 
 the weight of his own purer moral character to the failings, and 
 worse than failings, of the other. Over these he mourned, he 
 grieved. I believe he would at any time have given the life of his 
 body for the life of his brother's soul. Above all, he deplored that 
 the- all-prevailing power of Christian love was never brought to 
 bear on the heart of this greatest of Scotland's sons. If Thomas 
 Chalmers had been in the place of Bussell, who knows what might 
 have been ? But, doubtless, God in his providence had wise pur- 
 poses to serve. It is often by such instruments that he scourges and 
 purifies his church. For let us not forget, that scenes such as are 
 depicted in the " Holy Fair," however painful to our better feelings, 
 
VIII PREFACE. 
 
 ■were strictly and literally true. This I have myself heard from an 
 eye-witness, who could not have been swayed by any leanings to- 
 wards the anti-puritan side ; and, doubtless, many others are aware 
 of testimony on the same side of equal weight. 
 
 We may hope that the time is passing away when the more excep- 
 tionable parts of Burns's character and writings are capable of 
 working mischief, at least among the higher and middle classes. It 
 is cause of thankfulness that in regard to such, and with him as with 
 others, there is a sort of purifying process going on, which leaves the 
 higher and finer elements of genius to float buoyantly, and fulfil 
 their own destiny in the universal plan, while the grosser are left to 
 sink like lead in the mighty waters. Thus it is in those portions of 
 society already l-efined and elevated. But there is yet a portion of 
 the lower strata where midnight orgies continue to prevail, and 
 where every idea of pleasure is connected with libertinism and the 
 bottle ; and there the worst productions of Burns are no doubt still 
 rife, and working as a deadly poison. Even to a superior class of 
 working-men, who are halting between two opinions, there is danger 
 from the very mixture of good and evil in the character and writings 
 of the poet. They cannot forget that he who wrote 
 
 " The cock may craw, the day may daw, 
 Yet still we '11 taste the barley bree," 
 wrote likewise the immortal song, 
 
 "A man 's a man for a' that"; 
 and they determine, or are in danger of determining, to follow the ob- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 jeot of their worship with no halting step. Doubtless political creed 
 and the accidents of birth still color the individual estimate of Burns 
 and his writings. It is but of late that we have seen society torn, on 
 occasion of the centenary of the poet, by conflicting opinion as to 
 the propriety of observing it ; and many would fain have it supposed 
 that the religious and anti-religious world were ranged on opposite 
 sides. But it was not so. There were thoroughly good and religious 
 men, self-made, who could not forget that Burns had been the cham- 
 pion of their order, and had helped to win for them respect by the 
 power of his genius ; while there were others — religious men of old 
 family — who could remember nothing but his faults. I remember 
 spending one or two evenings about that time in the society of a 
 well-born, earnestly religious, and highly estimable gentleman, who 
 reprobated Bums, and scoffed at the idea that a man could be a 
 man for a' that. He might belong to a limited class ; for well I 
 know that among peers there are as ardent admirers of Burns as 
 among peasants. All I would say is, that even religious feelings 
 may take edge and bitterness from other causes. But to the other 
 class — those who from loyalty and gratitude are apt to follow Burns 
 too far — well I know that my husband would have said, " Receive 
 all genius as the gift of God, but never let it be to you as God. It 
 ought never to supersede the exercise of your own moral sense, 
 nor can it ever take the place of the only infallible guide, the Word 
 of God." 
 
 But I beg the reader's pardon for digressing thus, when I ought to 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 be pursuing the proper business of a preface, which is, to state any- 
 explanatory circumstances that may be necessary in connection with 
 the work in hand. 
 
 The " Recollections of Ferguson " are exquisitely painM — so 
 much so that I would fain have begun with something brighter ; but 
 these two contributions being the most important, and likewise the 
 first in order of a series, they seemed to fall into the beginning as 
 their natural place. I have gone over the Life of Ferguson, which 
 the reader may do for himself, to see whether there is any exagger- 
 ation in the " Recollections." I find them all perfectly faithful to 
 the facts. The neglected bard, the stone cell, the straw pallet, the 
 stone paid for by a brother bard out of his own straitened means 
 are not flattering to the " Embro' Gentry"; but amid a great deal 
 of flattery, a little truth is worth remembering. On the other hand 
 it rejoices one to think that Ferguson's death-bed, on the heaven- 
 ward side, was not dark. The returning reason, the comforts of the 
 Word of Life, are glimpses of God's providence and grace that show 
 gloriously amid the otherwise outer darkness of those depths. 
 
 The sort of literature of superstition revived or retained in " The 
 Lykewake," there are a great many good people who think the 
 world would be better without. 
 
 It chanced to me some three years ago, when residing in a sea- 
 bathing village, and sitting one day on a green turf-bank overlook- 
 ing the sea, to hear a conversation in which this point was brought 
 very prominently forward. A party consisting of a number of 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 young people, accompanied by their papa, a young French lady, 
 who was either governess or friend, and a gentleman in the garb of 
 a clergyman, either friend or tutor, seated themselves very near me ; 
 and it was proposed by the elder gentleman that a series of stories 
 should be told for the amusement and edification of the young people. 
 A set of stories and anecdotes were accordingly begun, and very 
 pleasingly told, chiefly by the clergyman, friend or tutor. Among 
 others was a fairy tale entitled " Green Sleeves," to which the name 
 of Hugh Miller was appended, and which evoked great applause 
 from the younger members of the party, but regarding which the 
 verdict of papa, very emphatically delivered, was, " / approve of 
 faries neither in green sleeves nor while sleeves. However, " — after 
 a pause, during which he seemed to be revolving in his mind any 
 possible use for the like absurdities, — " they may serve to show us 
 the blessings of the more enlightened times in which we live, when 
 schools for the young, and sciences for all ages, have banished such 
 things from the world." So, with this utilitarian view of the subject 
 let us rest satisfied, unless we are of those who, feeling that the hu- 
 man mind is a harp of many strings, believe that it is none the 
 worse for having the music of even its minor chords awakened at 
 times by a skilful hand. 
 
 I am unable to say whether " Bill Whyte " be a real story, ever 
 narrated by a bona fide tinker of the name, or no. I am rather 
 inclined to think that it is not, because I recognize in it several 
 incidents drawn from " Uncle Sandy's " Experiences in Egypt, such 
 
Xn PREFACE. 
 
 as the hovering of the flight of birds, scared and terrified, over the 
 smoke and noise of battle, the encampment in the midst of a host of 
 Turks' bones, etc. 
 
 With the " Young Surgeon " I was myself acquainted. It is a 
 sketch strictly true. 
 
 " The Story of the Scotch Merchant of the Eighteenth Century," 
 ■which also i^ a true story, was written originally at the request of 
 a near relative of Mr. Forsyth, for private circulation among a 
 few friends, and is now for the first time given to the public by the 
 kind consent of the surviving relatives. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Chapter I. — The Fbllow-Studeht 17 
 
 CHAPTBa n. — The Conn vial Pabtt 24 
 
 Chapter III. — Life's Shadowy Morkiho 30 
 
 Chapter IV. — A Surprise aud Joyful News 89 
 
 Chapter V. — Am Interior View 44 
 
 Chapter VI. — Gatherihg Clouds . 68 
 
 Chapter Vn. — The Ketreat . 59 
 
 Chapter Vm.— The FiHAL SoEHE 62 
 
 II. 
 
 RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 
 
 Chapter I. —The Congenial Strakger .... . . 67 
 
 Chapter II.— The Trio— A Scottish Scene 78 
 
 Chapter m.— Burns and Mary Campbell .... .86 
 
 2 
 
XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chaptee IV.— Thb Home and the Fatheb of Bcbks ... 94 
 
 Chaptek V. — Burns and the Chuech 103 
 
 Chapter VI. — Ah Evenino at Mossqiel 108 
 
 Chapter VU. — The Poet appears 116 
 
 Chapter Vni. —The Last Interview 321 
 
 III. 
 
 THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Fisherman, William Stewart, Lillias . 128 
 
 Chapter n. — The Sequel . .... 144 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Cavern Scene 166 
 
 Chapter n. — Helen's Vision 164 
 
 V. 
 
 THE LTKEWAKE. 
 
 Chapter I. — Introduction 176 
 
 Chapter n. — The Story op Elspat M'Cullooh . ... 179 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 Chapter III. — Story op Donald Gair 
 Chapter IV. — The Doomed Eidbk . 
 Chapter V. — Story of Fairbcrs's Ghost 
 Chapter VI. — The Land Factor 
 Chapter VII. — The Mealmonobr . 
 
 PAGE 
 
 185 
 
 191 
 
 196 
 
 . 201 
 
 VI. 
 
 BILL WHYTE. 
 
 Chapter I. — Early History, etc . 210 
 
 Chapter II. — The DBHOtrEMEHT 233 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE YOUNG SURGEON; 
 Or, The Power or Eelioion 244 
 
 VIII, 
 
 GEORGE ROSS, THE SCOTCH AGENT; 
 Or, The Fortunes op a Keforueb ........ 262 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 IX. 
 
 M'CULLOCH THE MECHANICIAN; 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Or, The Stoet of a Fakmee'b Boy 274 
 
 X. 
 
 THE SCOTCH MERCHANT OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Chapter I. — Early Advahtages 283 
 
 Chapter II. — Enteepeisb ahd Thkiet 289 
 
 Chapter m. — MAirKERa op the Times 297 
 
 Chapter IV. — State or Society 803 
 
 Chapter • V. — The Kelp-bcrhers 810 
 
 Chapter VI. — Shippiso aki> Sailors 317 
 
 Chapter VII. — PBRSOif al Traits 323 
 
 Chapter vm. — Schemes op iMPROVEMEirr 331 
 
 Chapter IX. — Sports and Jokes . 336 
 
 Chapter X.— Hospitality 342 
 
 Chapter XT.— Chauoes and Improvemekts 348 
 
 Chapter XII.— The Closiho Sobhes . .... 360 
 
TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 I. 
 
 KECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of Ferguson, the banld and slee. 
 
 Burns. 
 
 I HAVE, I believe, as little of the egotist in my compo- 
 sition as most men ; nor would I deem the story of my 
 life, though by no means unvaried by incident, of interest 
 enough to repay the trouble of either writing or perusing 
 it were it the story of my one life only ; but, though an 
 obscure man myself, I have been singularly fortunate in 
 my friends. The party-colored tissue of my recollec- 
 tions is strangely interwoven, if I may so speak, with 
 pieces of the domestic history of men whose names have 
 become as familiar to our ears as that of our country 
 itself; and I have been induced to struggle with the 
 delicacy which renders one unwilling to speak much of 
 one's self, and to overcome the dread of exertion natural 
 to a period of life greatly advanced, through a desire of 
 preserving to my countrymen a few notices, which would 
 otherwise be lost to them, of two of their greatest favor- 
 2* 
 
18 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ites. I could once reckon among my dearest and most 
 familiar friends, Robert Burns and Robert Ferguson. 
 
 It is now rather more than sixty years since I studied 
 for a few weeks at the University of St. Andrews. I was 
 the son of very poor parents, who resided in a seaport 
 town on the west coast of Scotland. My father was a 
 house-carpenter, — a quiet, serious man, of industrious 
 habits and great simplicity of character, but miserably 
 depressed in his circumstances through a sickly habit of 
 body. My mother was a warm-hearted, excellent woman, 
 endowed with no ordinary share of shrewd good sense 
 and sound feeling, and indefatigable in her exertions for 
 my father and the family. I was taught to read, at a very 
 early age, by an old woman in the neighborhood, — -such 
 a person as Sheuslone describes in his " Schoolmistress," 
 — and, being naturally of a reflective turn, I had begun, 
 long ere I had attained my tenth year, to derive almost 
 my sole amusement from books. I read incessantly; and, 
 after exhausting the shelves of all the neighbors, and 
 reading every variety of work that fell in my way, — from 
 the "Pilgrim's Progress'' of Bunyan, and the "Gospel 
 Sonnets" of Erskine, to a " Treatise on Fortification" by 
 Vauban, and the " History of the Heavens" by the Ahh6 
 Pluche, — I would have pined away for lack of my ac- 
 customed exercise, had not a benevolent baronet in the 
 neighborhood, for whom my father occasionally wrought, 
 taken a fancy to me, and thrown open to my perusal a 
 large and well-selected library. Nor did his kindness 
 terminate until, after having secured to me all of learning 
 that the parish afforded, he had settled me, now in my 
 seventeenth year, at the University. 
 
 Youth is the season of warm friendships and romantic 
 wishes and hopes. We say of the child in its first at- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 19 
 
 tempts to totter along the wall, or when it has first 
 learned to rise beside its mother's knee, that it is yet too 
 weak to stand alone ; and we may employ the same lan- 
 guage in describing a young, and ardent mind. It is, like 
 the child, too weak to stand alone, and anxiously seeks 
 out some kindred mind on which to lean. I had had my 
 intimates at school, who, though of no very superior cast, 
 had served me, if I may so speak, as resting-places when 
 wearied with my studies, or when I had exhausted my 
 lighter reading; and now, at St. Andrews, where I knew 
 no one, I began to experience the unhappiness of an un- 
 satisfied sociality. My school-fellows were mostly stiflf, 
 illiterate lads, who, with a little bad Latin and worse 
 Greek, plumed themselves mightily on their scholarship, 
 and I had little inducement to form any intimacies among 
 them ; for of all men the ignorant scholar is the least 
 amusing. Among the students of the upper classes, how- 
 ever, there was at least one individual with whom I 
 longed to be acquainted. He was apparently much about 
 my own age, rather below than above the middle size, 
 and rather delicately than robustly formed; but I have 
 rarely seen a more elegant figure or more interesting face. 
 His features were small, and there was what might per- 
 haps be deemed a too feminine delicacy in the whole 
 contour ; but there was a broad and very high expansion 
 of forehead, which, even in those days, when we were ac- 
 quainted with only the phrenology taught by Plato, might 
 be regarded as the index of a capacious and powerful 
 mind ; and the brilliant light of his large black eyes 
 seemed to give earnest of its activity. 
 
 " Who, in the name of wonder, is that ? " I inquired 
 of a class-fellow, as this interesting-looking young man 
 passed me for the first time. 
 
20 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " A clever but very unsettled fellow from Edinburgh," 
 replied the lad ; " a capital linguist, for he gained our 
 first bursary three years ago ; but our Professor says he 
 is certain he will never do any good. He cares nothing 
 for the company of scholars like himself, and employs 
 himself — though he excels, I believe, in English ^com- 
 position — in writing vulgar Scotch rhymes, like Allan 
 Ramsay. His name is Robert Ferguson." 
 
 I felt from this moment a strong desire to rank among 
 
 , the friends of one who cared nothing for the company of 
 
 such men as my class-fellow, and who, though acquainted 
 
 , with the literature of England and Rome, could dwell 
 
 with interest on the simple poetry of his native country. 
 
 There is no place in the neighborhood of St. Andrews 
 where a leisure hour may be spent more agreeably than 
 among the ruins of the cathedral. I was not slow in 
 discovering the eligibilities of the spot, and it soon be- 
 came one of my favorite haunts. One evening, a few 
 weeks after I had entered on my course at college, 1 had 
 seated myself among the ruins, in a little ivied nook 
 fronting the setting sun, and was deeply engaged with 
 the melancholy Jaques in the forest of Ardennes, when, 
 on hearing a light footstep, I looked up, and saw the Ed- 
 inburgh student, whose appearance had so interested me, 
 not four yards away. He was busied with his pencil and 
 his tablets, and muttering, as he went, in a half-audible 
 voice, what, from the inflection of the tones, seemed to be 
 verse. On seeing me, he started, and apologizing in a 
 few hurried but courteous words for what he termed the 
 involuntary intrusion, would have passed, but, on my 
 rising and stepping up to him, he stood. 
 
 " I am afraid, Mr. Ferguson," I said, 'tis I who owe you 
 an apology ; the ruins have long been yours, and I am but 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 21 
 
 an intruder. But you must pardon me ; I have often 
 heard of them in the west, where they are hallowed, even 
 more than they are here, from their connection with the 
 history of some of our noblest Reformers ; and, besides, 
 I see no place in the neighborhood where Shakspeare can 
 be read to more advantage." 
 
 "Ah," said he, taking the volume out of my hand, 
 "a reader of Shakspeare and an admirer of Knox! I 
 ■question whether the heresiarch and the poet had much 
 in common." 
 
 "Nay, now, Mr. Ferguson," I replied, "you are too 
 true a Scot to question that. They had much, very much, 
 in common. Knox was no rude Jack Cade, but a great 
 and powerful-minded man ; decidedly as much so as any 
 of the noble conceptions of the dramatist, his Ceesars, 
 Brutuses, or Othellos. Buchanan could have told you 
 that he had even much of the spirit of the poet in him, 
 and wanted only the art. And just remember how Milton 
 speaks of him in his ' Areopagitica.' Had the poet of 
 ' Paradise Lost ' thought regarding him as it has become 
 fashionable to think and speak now, he would hardly have 
 apostrophized him as Knox, the reformer of a nation, — 
 a great man animated hy the Spirit of GodP 
 
 " Pardon me,'' said the young man ; " I am little ac- 
 quainted with the prose writings of Milton, and have, 
 indeed, picked up most of my opinions of Knox at second- 
 hand. But I have read his merry account of the murder 
 of Beaton, and found nothing to alter my preconceived 
 notions of him from either the matter or manner of the 
 narrative. Now that I think of it, however, my opinion 
 of Bacon would be no very adequate one were it formed 
 solely from the extract of his history of Henry VH. given 
 
22 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 by Karnes in his late publication. Will you not extend 
 your walk ? " 
 
 We quitted the ruins together, and went sauntering 
 along the shore. There was a rich sunset glow on the 
 water, and the hills that rise on the opposite side of the 
 Frith stretched their undulating line of azure under a 
 gorgeous canopy of crimson and gold. My companion 
 pointed to the scene. "These glorious clouds," he said, 
 " are but wreaths of vapor, and these lovely hills accu- 
 mulations of earth arid stone. And it is thus with all the 
 past, — with the past of our own little histories, that 
 borrows so much of its golden beauty from the medium 
 through which we survey it ; with the past too of all 
 history. There is poetry in the remote ; the bleak hill 
 seems a darker firmament, and the chill wreath of vapor a 
 river of fire. And you, Sir, seem to have contemplated 
 the history of our stern Reformers through this poetical 
 medium, till you forget that the poetry was not in them, 
 but in that through which you surveyed them." 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Ferguson," I replied, " you must permit me 
 to make a distinction. I acquiesce fully in the justice of 
 your remark: the analogy, too, is nice and striking; but 
 I would fain curry it a little further. Every eye can see 
 the beauty of the remote ; but there is beauty in the near, 
 an interest at least, which every eye cannot see. Each 
 of the thousand little plants that spring up at our feet has 
 an interest and beauty to the botanist ; the mineralogist 
 would find something to engage him in every little stone. 
 And it is thus with the poetry of life ; all have a sense of 
 it in the remote and the distant, but it is only the men 
 who stand high in the art, its men of profound science, 
 that can discover it in the near. The mediocre poet shares 
 but the commoner gift, and so he seeks his themes in ages 
 
BECOLLBCTIONS OF FERGUSON. 23 
 
 or countries far removed from his own ; whilst the mnn of 
 nobler powers, knowing that all nature is instinct with 
 poetry, seeks and finds it in the men and scenes in his 
 immediate neighborhood. As to our Reformers" — 
 
 " Pardon me," said the young poet; "the remark strikes 
 me, and, ere we lose it in something else, I must furnish 
 you with an illustration. There is an acquaintance of 
 mine, a lad much about my own age, greatly addicted to 
 the study of poetry. He has been making verses all his 
 life-long : he began ere he had learned to write them even ; 
 and his judgment has been gradually overgrowing his 
 earlier compositions, as you see the advancing tide rising 
 on the beach, and obliterating the prints on the sand. 
 Now, I have observed that in all his earlier compositions 
 he went far from home ; he could not attempt a pastoral 
 without first transporting himself to the vales of Arcadia, 
 or an ode to Pity or Hope without losing the warm, living 
 sentiment in the dead, cold personification of the Greek. 
 The Hope and Pity he addressed were, not the undying 
 attendants of human nature, but the shadowy spectres of 
 a remote age. Now, however, I feel that a change has 
 come over me. I seek for poetry among the fields and 
 cottages of my own land. I — a — a — the friend of 
 whom I speak — But I interrupted your remark on the 
 Reformers." 
 
 " Nay," I replied, " if you go on so, I would much 
 rather listen than speak. I only meant to say that the 
 Knoxes and Melvilles of our country have been robbed of 
 the admiration and sympathy of many a kindred spirit, by 
 the strangely erroneous notions that have been abroad 
 regarding them for at least the last two ages. Knox, I 
 am convinced, would have been as great as Jeremy Taylor, 
 if not even greater." 
 
24 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 We sauntered along the shore till the evening had 
 darkened into night, lost in an agreeable interchange of 
 thought. "Ah!" at length exclaimed my companion, "I 
 had almost forgotten my engagement, Mr. Lindsay ; but 
 it must not part us. You are a stranger here, and I must 
 introduce you to some of my acquaintance. There are a 
 few of us — choice spirits, of course — who meet every 
 Saturday evening at John Hogg's; and I must just bring 
 you to see them. There may be much less wit than mirth 
 among us ; but you will find us all sober, when at the 
 gayest ; and old John will be quite a study for you." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Say, ye red gowns, that aften here 
 Hae toasted cakes to Katie's beer, 
 Gin e'er thir days hae had their peer, 
 
 Sae blythe, sae daft! 
 Ye'U ne'er again in life's career 
 
 Sit half sae saft. 
 
 Elegy on John Hogg. 
 
 We returned to town ; and, after threading a few of 
 the narrower lanes, entered by a low door into a long 
 dark room, dimly lighted by a fire. A tall thin woman 
 was employed in skinning a bundle of dried fish at a table 
 in a corner. 
 
 "Where's the gudeman, Kate ? " said my companion, 
 changing the sweet pure English in which he had hitherto 
 spoken for his mother tongue. 
 
 " John's ben in the spence," replied the woman. " Little 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 25 
 
 Andrew, the wratch, has been makin' a totum wi' his 
 faither's a'e razor; an' the puir man's trying to shave 
 himsel' yonder, an' girnan like a sheep's head on the 
 tangs." 
 
 " O the wratch ! the ill-deedie wratch ! " said John, 
 stalking into the room in a towering passion, his face 
 covered with suds and scratches, — "I might as weel 
 shave mysel' wi' a mussel shillet. Rob Ferguson, man, is 
 that you ? " 
 
 " Wearie warld, John," said the poet, "for a' oor phi- 
 losophy." 
 
 "Philosophy! — it's but a snare, Rab, — just vanity an' 
 vexation o' speerit, as Solomon says. An' isna it clear 
 heterodox besides? Ye study an' study till your brains 
 gang about like a whirligig; an' then, like bairns in a boat 
 that see the land sailin', ye think it's the solid yearth that's 
 turnin' roun'. An' this ye ca' philosophy ; as if David 
 hadna tauld us that the warld sits coshly on the waters, 
 an' canna be moved." 
 
 "Hoot, John," rejoined my companion; "it's no me, 
 but Jamie Brown, that differs wi' you on thae matters. 
 I'm a Hoggonian, ye ken. The auld Jews were, doubtless, 
 gran' Christians ; an' wherefore no gude philosophers too ? 
 But it was cruel o' you to unkennel me this mornin' afore 
 six, an' I up sae lang at my studies the nicht afore." 
 
 " Ah, Rob, Rob I " said John, — " studying in Tarn 
 DurCs kirk. Ye'll be a minister, like a' the lave." 
 
 "Mindin' fast, John," rejoined the poet. "I was in 
 your kirk on Sabbath last, hearing worthy Mr. Corkindale. 
 Whatever else he may hae to fear, he's in nae danger a' 
 '■thinking his ain thoughts^ honest man." 
 
 *'In oor kirk! " said John; "ye're dune, then, wi' pre- 
 centin' in yer ain ; an' troth, nae wonder. What could 
 3 
 
26 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 hae possessed ye to gie up the puir chield's name i' the 
 prayer, an' him sittin' at yer lug ? " 
 
 I was unacquainted with the circumstance to which he 
 alluded, and requested an explanation. '• Oh, ye see," said 
 John, "Rob, amang a' the ither gifts that he misguides, 
 has the gift o' a sweet voice ; an' naething less would ser* 
 some o' cor professors than to hae him for their precentor. 
 They micht as weel hae thocht o' an organ, — it wad be 
 just as devout ; but the soun's everything now, laddie, ye 
 ken, an' the heart naething. Weel, Rob, as ye may think, 
 was less than pleased wi' the job, an' tauld them he could 
 whistle better than sing ; but it wasna that they wanted, 
 and sae it behoved him to tak' his seat in the box. An' 
 lest the folk should be no pleased wi' a'e key to a'e tune, 
 he gied them, for the first twa or three days, a hale bunch 
 to each ; an' there was never sic singing in St. Andrews 
 afore. Weel, but for a' that, it behoved him still to pre- 
 cent, though he has got rid o' it at last ; for what did he 
 do twa Sabbaths agane, but put up drunken Tarn Mofiat's 
 name in the prayer, — the very chield that was sittin' at 
 his elbow, though the minister couldna see him. An' 
 when the puir stibbler was prayin' for the reprobate as 
 weel's he could, a'e half o' the kirk was needcessitated to 
 come oot, that they micht keep decent, an' the ither 
 half to swallow their pocket-napkins. But what think 
 ye" — 
 
 "Hoot, John, now leave oot the moral," said the poet. 
 " Here's a' the lads." 
 
 Half-a-dozen young students entered as he spoke ; and, 
 after a hearty greeting, and when he had introduced me 
 to them one by one, as a choice fellow of immense reading, 
 the door was barred, and we sat down to half-a-dozen of 
 home-brewed, and a huge platter of dried fish. There 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 27 
 
 was much mirth, and no little humor. Fersuson sat at 
 the head of the table, and old John Hogg at the foot. 
 I thought of Eastcheap, and the revels of Prince Henry ; 
 but our Falstaff was an old Scotch Seceder, and our 
 Prince a gifted young fellow, who owed all his influence 
 over his fellows to the force of his genius alone. 
 
 " Prythee, Hall," I said, " let us drink to Sir John." 
 
 " Why, yes," said the poet, " with all my heart. Not 
 quite so fine a fellow, though, 'bating his Scotch honesty. 
 Half Sir John's genius would have served for an epic 
 poet, — half his courage for a hero." 
 
 " His courage ! " exclaimed one of the lads. 
 
 " Yes, Willie, his courage, man. Do you think a 
 coward could have run away with half the coolness ? 
 With a tithe of the courage necessary for such a retreat, 
 a man would have stood and fought till he died. Sir 
 John must have been a fine fellow in his youth." 
 
 " In mony a droll way may a man fa' on the drap 
 drink," remarked John ; " an' meikle ill, dootless, does it 
 do in takin' aff the edge o' the speerit, — the mair if the 
 edge be a fine razor edge, an' no the edge o' a whittle. 
 I mind, about fifty years ago, when I was a slip o' a 
 callant," — 
 
 " Losh, John ! " exclaimed one of the lads, " hae ye been 
 fechtin wi' the cats ? Sic a scrapit face ! " 
 
 " Wheesht," said Ferguson ; " we owe the illustration 
 to that ; but dinna interrupt the story.'' 
 
 "Fifty years ago, when I was a slip o' a callant," con- 
 tinued John, " unco curious, an' fond o' kennin everything, 
 as callants will be," — 
 
 " Hoot, John," said one of the students, interrupting 
 him, " can ye no cut short, man ? Rob promised last 
 
28 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Saturday to gie us, ' Fie, let us a' to the Bridal,' an' ye see 
 the ale an' the nieht's baith wearin' dune.'' 
 
 " The song, Rob, the song ! " exclaimed half-a-dozen 
 voices at once ; and John's story was lost in the clamor. 
 
 " 'Nay, now," said the good-natured poet, " that's less 
 than kind ; the auld man's stories are aye worth the hear- 
 ing, an' he can relish the auld-warld fisher song wi' the 
 best o' ye. But we maun hae the story yet." 
 
 He struck up the old Scotch_ ditty, " Fie, let us a' to 
 the Bridal," which he sung with great power and bril- 
 liancy ; for his voice was a richly-modulated one, and 
 there was a fulness of meaning imparted to the words 
 which wonderfully heightened the eflfect. " How strange 
 it is," he remarked to me when he had finished, " that our 
 English neighbors deny us humor ! The songs of no 
 country equal our Scotch ones iu that quality. Are you 
 acquainted with 'The Gudewife of Auchtermuchty ? ' " 
 
 " Well," I replied ; " but so are not the English. It 
 strikes me that, with the exception of Smollett's novels, 
 all our Scotch humor is locked up in our native tongue. 
 Xo man can employ in works of humor any language of 
 which he is not a thorough master ; and few of our 
 Scotch writers, with all their elegance, have attained the 
 necessary command of that colloquial English which Ad- 
 dison and Swift employed when they were merry." 
 
 "A braw redd delivery,'' said John, addressing me. 
 " Are ye gaun to be a minister too ? " 
 
 " Xot quite sure yet," I replied. 
 
 "Ah," rejoined the old man, " 'twas better for the Kirk 
 when the minister just made himsel' ready for it, an' then 
 waited till he kent whether it wanted him. There's 
 young Rob Ferguson beside you," — 
 
 " Setting oot for the Kirk,'' said the young poet, inter- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 29 
 
 rupting him, " an' yet drinkin' ale on Saturday at e'en wi' 
 old John Hogg." 
 
 " Weel, weel, laddie, it's easier for the best o' us to find 
 fault wi' ithers than to mend oorsels. Ye have the head, 
 onyhow; but Jamie Brown tells me it's a doctor ye're 
 gaun to be, after a'." 
 
 " Nonsense, John Hogg ; I wonder how a man o' your 
 standing " — 
 
 "Nonsense, I grant you," said one of the students; 
 " but true enough for a' that, Bob. Ye see, John, Bob an' 
 I were at the King's Muirs last Saturday, and ca'ed at the 
 pendicle, in the passing, for a cup o' whey, when the gude- 
 wife tell't us there was ane o' the callants, who had 
 broken into the milk-house twa nichts afore, lying ill o' a 
 surfeit. ' Dangerous case,' said Bob ; ' but let me see him. 
 I have studied to small purpose if I know nothing o' med- 
 icine, my good woman.' Weel, the woman was just glad 
 enough to bring him to the bed-side ; an' no wonder : ye 
 never saw a wiser phiz in your lives, — Dr. Dumpie's was 
 naething till't ; an', after he had sucked the head o' his 
 stick for ten minutes, an' fand the loon's pulse, an' asked 
 raair questions than the gudewife liked to answer, he 
 prescribed. But, losh ! sic a prescription ! A day's fasting 
 an' twa ladles o' nettle kail was the gist o't ; but then 
 there went mair Latin to the tail o' that than oor neebour 
 the doctor ever had to lose." 
 
 But I dwell too long on the conversation of this even- 
 ing. I feel, however, a deep interest in recalling it to 
 memory. The education of Ferguson was of a twofold 
 character : he studied in the schools, and among the 
 people ; but it was in the latter tract alone that he ac^ 
 quired the materials of all his better poetry; and I, 
 if, for at least one brief evening, I was admitte^->^ ® priv- 
 3* 
 
so TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ileges of a class-fellow, and sat with him on the same form. 
 The company broke up a little after ten ; and I did not 
 again hoar of John Hogg till I read his elegy, about four 
 years after, among the poems of my friend. It is by no 
 means one of the happiest pieces in the volume, nor, it 
 strikes me, highly characteristic ; but I have often perused 
 it with interest very independent of its merits. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 But he is weak ; — both man and boy 
 Has been an idler in the land. 
 
 WORDSWOKTH. 
 
 I WAS attempting to listen, on the evening of the fol- 
 lowing Sunday, to a dull, listless discourse, — one of the 
 discourses so common at this period, in which there was 
 fine writing without genius, and fine religion without 
 Christianity, — when a person who had just taken his 
 place beside me tapped me on the shoulder, and thrust a 
 letter into my hand. It was my newly-acquired friend of 
 the previous evening ; and we shook hands heartily under 
 the pew. 
 
 " That letter has just been handed me by an acquaint- 
 ance from your part of the country," he whispered; "I 
 trust it contains nothing unpleasant." 
 
 I raised it to the light ; and, on ascertaining that it was 
 sealed and edged with black, rose and quitted the church, 
 ^"'owed by my friend. It intimated, in two brief lines, 
 that m^ Tiatron, the baronet, had been killed by a fall 
 
RBCOLLBCTIONS OF FERGUSON.. 31 
 
 from his horse a few evenings before ; and that, dying 
 intestate, the allowance which had hitherto enabled me to 
 prosecute my studies necessarily dropped. I crumpled up 
 the paper in my hand. 
 
 " You have learned something very unpleasant, " said 
 Ferguson. " Pardon me, I have no wish to intrude ; 
 but, if at all agreeable, I would fain spend the evening 
 with you." 
 
 My heart filled, and, gi-asping his hand, I briefly inti- 
 mated the purport of my communication ; and we walked 
 out together in the direction of the ruins. 
 
 " It is perhaps as hard, Mr. Ferguson," I said, " to fall 
 from one's hopes as from the place to which they pointed. 
 I was ambitious, — too ambitious it may be, — to rise from 
 that level on which man acts the part of a machine, 
 and tasks merely his body, to that higher level on which 
 he performs the part of a rational creature, and employs 
 only his mind. But that ambition need influence me no 
 longer. My poor mother, too, — I had trusted to be of 
 use to her." 
 
 " Ah ! my friend," said Ferguson, " I can tell you of a 
 case quite as hopeless as your own — perhaps more so. 
 But it will make you deem my sympathy the result of 
 mere selfishness. In scarce any respect do our circum- 
 stances differ." 
 
 We had reached the ruins. The evening was calm and 
 mild as when I had walked out on the preceding one ; 
 but the hour was earlier, and the sun hung higher over 
 the hill. A newly-formed grave occupied the level spot 
 in front of the little ivied corner. 
 
 " Let us seat ourselves here," said my companion, " and 
 I will tell you a story, — I am afraid a rather tame one ; 
 for there is nothing of adventure in it, and nothing of 
 
82 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 incident ; but it may at least show you that I am not un- 
 fitted to be your friend. It is now nearly two years since 
 I lost my father. He was no common man, — common nei- 
 ther in intellect nor in sentiment, — but, though he once 
 fondly hoped it should be otherwise, — for in early youth 
 he indulged in all the dreams of the poet, — he now fills a 
 grave as nameless as the one before us. He was a native 
 of Aberdeenshire, but held lately an inferior situation in 
 the office of the British Linen Company in Edinburgh, 
 where I was born. Ever since I remember him, he had 
 awakened too fully to the realities of life, and they 
 pressed too hard on his spirits to leave him space for the 
 indulgence of his earlier fancies ; but he could dream for 
 his childi'en, though not for himself; or, as I shou'ld per- 
 haps rather say, his children fell heir to all his more ju- 
 venile hopes of fortune and influence and space in the 
 world's eye ; and, for himself, he indulged in hopes of a 
 later growth and firmer texture, which pointed from the 
 present scene of things to the future. I have an only 
 brother, my senior by several years, a lad of much en- 
 ergy, both physical and mental ; in brief, one of those 
 mixtures of reflection and activity which seemed best 
 formed for rising in the world. My father deemed him 
 most fitted for commerce, and had influence enough to 
 get him introduced into the counting-house of a respect- 
 able Edinburgh merchant. I was always of a graver 
 turn, — in part, perhaps, the effect of less robust health, — 
 and me he intended for the church. I have been a 
 dreamer, Mr. Lindsay, from my earliest years, — prone to 
 melancholy, and fond of books and of solitude ; and the 
 peculiarities of this temperament the sanguine old man, 
 though no mean judge of character, had mistaken for a 
 serious and reflective disposition. You are acquainted 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 33 
 
 with literature, and know something, from books at least, 
 of the lives of literary men. Judge, then, of his prospect 
 of usefulness in any profession, who has lived ever since 
 he knew himself among the poets. My hopes from my 
 earliest years have been hopes of celebrity as a writer; 
 not of wealth, or of influence, or of accomplishing any 
 of the thousand aims which furnish the great bulk of man- 
 kind with motives. You will laugh at me. There is 
 something so emphatically shadowy and unreal in the 
 object of this ambition, that even the full attainment of it 
 provokes a smile. For who does not know 
 
 How Tain that second life in others' breath, 
 The estate which wits inherit after death ! 
 
 And what can be more fraught with the ludicrous than a 
 union of this shadowy ambition with mediocre parts and 
 attainments ? But I digress. 
 
 " It is now rather more than three years since I entered 
 the classes here. I competed for a bursary, and was for- 
 tunate enough to secure one. Believe me, Mr. Lindsay, I 
 am little ambitious of the fame of mere scholarship, and 
 yet I cannot express to you the triumph of that day. I 
 had seen my poor father laboring far, far beyond his 
 strength, for my brother and myself, — closely engaged 
 during the day with his duties in the bank, and copying 
 at night in a lawyer's office. I had seen, with a throbbing 
 heart, his tall wasted frame becoming tremulous and bent, 
 and the gray hair thinning on his temples ; and now I felt 
 that I could ease him of at least part of the burden. In 
 the excitement of the moment, I could hope that I was 
 destined to rise in the world, — to gain a name in it, and 
 something more. You know how a slight success grows 
 
34 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 in importance when we can deem it the earnest of future 
 good fortune. I met, too, with a kind and influential 
 friend in one of the professors, the late Dr. Wilkie, — alas ! 
 good, benevolent man ! you may see his tomb yonder 
 beside the wall ; and on my return from St. Andrews at 
 the close of the session, I found my father on his death- 
 bed. My brother Henry, who had been unfortunate, and, 
 I am afraid, something worse, had quitted the counting- 
 house, and entered aboard of a man-of-war as a common 
 sailor ; and the poor old man, whose heart had been bound 
 up in him, never held up his head after. 
 
 " On the evening of my father's funeral I could have 
 lain down and died. I never before felt how thoroughly 
 I am unfitted for the world, how totally I want strength. 
 My father, I have said, had intended me for the 
 church ; and in my progi-ess onward from class to class, 
 and from school to college, I had thought but little of 
 each particular step as it engaged me for the time, and 
 nothing of the ultimate objects to which it led. All my 
 more vigorous aspirations were directed to a remote fu- 
 ture and an unsubstantial shadow. But I had witnessed 
 beside my father's bed what had led me seriously to 
 reflect on the ostensible aim for which I lived and stud- 
 ied ; and the more carefully I weighed myself in the bal- 
 ance, the more did I find myself wanting. Tou have 
 heard of Mr. Brown of the Secession, the author of the 
 'Dictionary of the Bible.' He was an old acquaintance 
 of my father's, and, on hearing of his illness, had come all 
 the way from Haddington to see him. I felt, for the first 
 time, as, kneeling beside his bed, I heard my father's 
 breathings becoming every moment shorter and more 
 diflicult, and listened to the prayers of the clergyman, 
 that I had no business in the church. And thus I still 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 35 
 
 continue to feel. 'Tweve an easy matter to produce such 
 things as pass for sermons among us, and to go respecta- 
 bly enough through the mere routine of the profession ; 
 but I cannot help feeling that, though I might do all this 
 and more, my duty as a clergyman would be still left 
 undone. I want singleness of aim, — I want earnestness 
 of heart. I cannot teach men effectually how to live well ; 
 I cannot show them, with aught of confidence, how they 
 may die safe. I cannot enter the church without acting 
 the part of a hypocrite ; and the miserable part of a hyp- 
 ocrite it shall never be mine to act. Heaven help me ! 
 I am too little of a practical moralist myself to attempt 
 teaching morals to others. 
 
 " But I must conclude my story, if story it may be 
 called. I saw my poor mother and my little sister 
 deprived, by my father's death, of their sole stay, 
 and strove to exert myself in their behalf In the day- 
 time I copied in a lawyer's office ; my nights were spent 
 among the poets. You will deem it the very madness of 
 vanity, Mr. Lindsay, but I could not live without my 
 dreams of literary eminence. I felt that life would be a 
 blank waste without them; and I feel so still. Do not 
 laugh at my weakness, when I say I would rather live in 
 the memory of my country than enjoy her fairest lands, — 
 that I dread a nameless grave many times more than the 
 grave itself. But I am afraid the life of the literary aspi- 
 rant is rarely a happy one ; and I, alas 1 am one of the 
 weakest of the class. It is of importance that the means 
 of living be not disjoined from the end for which we live ; 
 and I feel that in my case the disunion is complete. The 
 wants and evils of life are around me ; but the energies 
 through which those should be provided for, and these 
 warded off, are otherwise employed. I am like a man 
 
36 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 pressing onward through a hot and bloody fight, his 
 breast open to every blow, and tremblingly alive to 
 the sense of injury and the feeling of pain, but totally 
 unprepared either to attack or defend. And then those . 
 miserable depressions of spirit, to which all men who 
 draw largely on their imagination are so subject, and that 
 wavering irregularity of effort which seems so unavoid- 
 ably the eiFeot of pursuing a distant and doubtful aim, 
 and which proves so hostile to the formation of every bet- 
 ter habit, — alas ! to a steady morality itself But I weary 
 you, Mr. Lindsay ; besides, my story is told. I am groping 
 onward, I know not whither ; and in a few months hence, 
 when my last session shall have closed, I shall be exactly 
 where you are at present." 
 
 He ceased speaking, and there was a pause of several 
 minutes. I felt soothed and gratified. There was a 
 sweet melancholy music in the tones of his voice that 
 sunk to my very heart ; and the confidence he reposed in 
 me flattered my pride. "How was it," I at length said, 
 " that you were the gayest in the party of last night ? " 
 
 "I do not know that I can better answer you," he re- 
 plied, "than by telling you a singular dream which I had 
 about the time of my father's death. I dreamed that I 
 had suddenly quitted the world, and was journeying, by a 
 long and dreary passage, to the place of final punishment. 
 A blue, dismal light glimmered along the lower wall of 
 the vault, and from the darkness above, where there 
 flickered a thousand undefined shapes, — things without 
 form or outline, — I could hear deeply-drawn sighs, and 
 long hollow groans, and convulsive sobbings, and the pro- 
 longed moanings of an unceasing anguish. I was aware, 
 however, though I know not how, that these were but the 
 expressions of a lesser misery, and that the seats of se- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 37 
 
 verer torment were still before me. I went on and on, and 
 the vault widened; and the light increased and the sounds 
 changed. There were loud laughters and low mutterings, 
 in the tone of ridicule ; and shouts of triumph and exulta- 
 tion ; and, in brief, all the thousand mingled tones of a 
 gay and joyous revel. Can these, I exclaimed, be the 
 sounds of misery when at the deepest ? ' Bethink thee,' 
 said a shadowy form beside me, — ' bethink thee if it be 
 so on earth.' And as I remembered that it was so, and 
 bethought me of the mad revels of shipwrecked seamen 
 and of plague-stricken cities, I awoke. But on this sub- 
 ject you must spare me." 
 
 "Forgive me," I said; "to-morrow I leave college, and 
 not with the less reluctance that I must part from you. 
 But I shall yet find you occupying a place among the 
 literati of our country, and shall remember with pride 
 that you were my friend." 
 
 He sighed deeply. " My hopes rise and fall with ray 
 spirits," he said ; " and to-night I am melancholy. Do 
 you ever go to buffets with yourself, Mr. Lindsay ? Do 
 you ever mock, in your sadder moods, the hopes which 
 render you happiest when you are gay ? Ah ! 'tis bitter 
 warfare when a man contends with Hope! — when he sees 
 her, with little aid from the personifying influence, as a 
 thing distinct from himself, — a lying spirit that comes to 
 flatter and deceive him. It is thus I see her to-night. 
 
 See'st thou that grave?. — does mortal know 
 Aught of the dust that lies below? 
 'Tis foul, 'tis damp, 'tis void of form, — 
 A bed where winds the loathsome worm ! 
 A little heap, mould'ring and brown, 
 Lilie that on flowerless meadow thrown 
 By mossy stream, when winter reigns 
 
 4 
 
38 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 O'er leafless woods and wasted plains ; 
 And yet, that brown, damp, formless heap 
 Once glowed with feelings keen and deep ; 
 Once eyed the light, once heard each sound 
 Of earth, air, wave, that marmurs round. 
 But now, ah! now, the name it bore — 
 Sex, age, or form — is known no more. 
 This, this alone, Hope! I know. 
 That once the dust that lies below 
 Was, like myself, of human race. 
 And made this world its dwelling-place. 
 Ah! this, when earth has swept away 
 The myriads of life's present day. 
 Though bright the visions raised by thee, 
 Will all my fame, my history be ! 
 
 We quitted the ruins, and returned to town. 
 
 " Have you yet formed," inquired my companion, " any 
 plan for the future ? " 
 
 " I quit St. Andrews," I replied, " to-morrow morning. 
 I have an uncle, the master of a "West Indiaman now in 
 the Clyde. Some years ago I had a fancy for the life of a 
 sailor, which has evaporated, however, with many of my 
 other boyish fancies and predilections ; but I am strong 
 and active, and it strikes me there is less competition on 
 sea at present than on land. A man of tolerable stead- 
 iness and intelligence has a better chance of rising as a 
 sailor than as a mechanic. I shall set out therefore with 
 my uncle on his first voyage." 
 
BECOLIiSCTIONS OF FERGUSON. . 39 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 At first I thought the swankie didna ill, — 
 
 Again I glowr'd, to hear him tetter still ; 
 
 Bauld, slee, an' sweet, his lines more glorious grew. 
 
 Glowed round the heart, an' glanced the soul out through. 
 
 Alexander Wilson. 
 
 I HAD seen both the Indies and traversed the wide Pa- 
 cific ere I again set foot on the eastern coast of Scotland. 
 My uncle, the shipmaster, was dead, and I was still a 
 common sailor ; but I was light-hearted and skilful in my 
 profession, and as much inclined to hope as ever. Be- 
 sides, I had begun to doubt — and there cannot be a 
 more consoling doubt when one is unfortunate — whether 
 a man may not enjoy as much happiness in the lower 
 walks of life as in the upper. In one of my later voyages, 
 the vessel in which I sailed had lain for several weeks in 
 Boston in North America, then a scene of those fierce and 
 angry contentions which eventually separated the colo- 
 nies from the mother country ; and when in this place, I 
 had become acquainted, by the merest accident in the 
 world, with the brother of my friend the poet. I was 
 passing through one of the meaner lanes, when I saw my 
 my old friend, as I thought, looking out at me from the 
 window of a crazy-looking building, — a sort of fencing 
 academy, much frequented, I was told, by the Federalists 
 of Boston. I crossed the lane in two huge strides. 
 
 "Mr. Ferguson," I said, — "Mr. Ferguson," — for he 
 was withdrawing his head, — "do you not remember me?" 
 
40 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " Not quite sure," he replied ; " I have met with many 
 sailors in my time ; but I must just see." 
 
 He liacT stepped down to the door ere I had discovered 
 my mistake. He was a taller and stronger-looking man 
 than my friend, and his senior, apparently, by six or eight 
 years ; but nothing could be more striking than the 
 resemblance which he bore to him, both in face and 
 figure. I apologized. 
 
 " But have you not a brother, a native of Edinburgh," I 
 inquired, " who studied at St. Andrews about four years 
 ago ? Never before, certainly, did I see so remarkable a 
 likeness.'' 
 
 " As that which I bear Robert ? " he said. " Happy 
 to hear it. Robert is a brother of whom a man may well 
 be proud, and !■ am glad to resemble him in any way. 
 But you must go in with me, and tell me all you know re- 
 garding him. He was a thin, pale slip of a boy when I 
 left Scotland, — a mighty reader, and fond of sauntering 
 into by-holes and corners ; I scarcely knew what to make 
 of him ; but he has made much of himself His name has 
 been blown far and wide within the last two years." 
 
 He showed me through a large waste apartment, fur- 
 nished with a few deal seats, and with here and there a 
 fencing foil leaning against the wall, into a sort of closet 
 at the upper end, separated from the main room by a par- 
 tition of undressed slabs. There was a charcoal stove in 
 one corner, rind a truckle-bed in the other. A few shelves 
 laden with books ran along the wall. There was a small 
 chest raised on a stool inmiediately below the window, to 
 serve as a writing-desk, and another stool standing be- 
 side it. A few cooking utensils, scattered round the room, 
 and a corner cupboard, completed the entire furniture of 
 the place. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 41 
 
 "There is a certain limited number born to be rich, 
 Jack," said my new companion, " and I just don't happen 
 to be among them ; but I have one stool for myself, you 
 see, and, now that I have unshipped my desk, another for 
 a visitor, and so get on well enough." 
 
 I related briefly the story of ray intimacy with his 
 brother, and we were soon on such terms as to be in a 
 fair way of emptying a bottle of rum together. 
 
 " Tou remind me of old times," said my new acquaint- 
 ance. " I am weary of these illiterate, boisterous, long- 
 sided Americans, who talk only of politics and dollars. 
 And yet there are first-rate men among them too. I met, 
 some years since, with a Philadelphia printer, whom I 
 cannot help regarding as one of the ablest, best-informed 
 men I ever conversed with. But there is nothing like 
 general knowledge among the average class, — a mighty 
 privilege of conceit, however." 
 
 "They are just in that stage," I remarked, "in which it 
 needs all the vigor of an able man to bring his mind into 
 anything like cultivation. There must be many more fa- 
 cilities of improvement ere the mediocritist can develop 
 himself. He is in the egg still in America, and must 
 sleep there till the next age. — But when last heard you 
 of your brother?" 
 
 " Why," he replied, " when all the world heard of him, 
 — with the last number of 'Ruddiman's Magazine.' 
 Where can you have been bottled up from literature of 
 late ? Why, man, Robert stands first among our Scotch 
 poets." 
 
 " Ah ! 'tis long since I have anticipated something like 
 that for him," I said ; " but for the last two years I have 
 seen only two books, — Shakspeare and the 'Spectator.' 
 Pray, do show me some of the magazines." 
 4* 
 
42 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 The magazines were produced ; and I heard for the first 
 time, in a foreign land, and from the recitation of the 
 poet's brother, some of the most national and most highly- 
 finished of his productions. My eyes filled, and my heart 
 •wandered to Scotland and her cottage homes, as, shutting 
 the book, he repeated to me, in a voice faltering with 
 emotion, stanza after stanza of the " Farmer's Ingle." 
 
 "Do you not see it? — do you not see it all?" ex- 
 claimed my companion ; " the wide smoky room, with the 
 bright turf-fire, the blackened rafters shining above, the 
 straw-wrought settle below, the farmer and the farmer's 
 wife, and auld grannie and the bairns. Never was there 
 truer painting; and oh, how it works on a Scotch heart! 
 But hear this other piece." 
 
 He read " Sandy and Willie." 
 
 " Far, far ahead of Ramsay," I exclaimed, — " more im- 
 agination, more spirit, more intellect, and as much truth 
 and nature. Robert has gained his end already. Hurrah 
 for poor old Scotland ! — these pieces must live for ever. 
 But do repeat to me the ' Farmer's Ingle' once more." 
 
 We read, one by one, all the poems in the Magazine, 
 dwelling on each stanza, and expatiating on every recol- 
 lection of home which the images awakened. My com- 
 panion was, like his brother, a kind, open-hearted man, of 
 superior intellect ; much less prone to despondency, how- 
 ever, and of a more equal temperament. Ere we parted, 
 which was not until next morning, he had communicated 
 to me all his plans for the future, and all his fondly-cher- 
 ished hopes of returning to Scotland with wealth enough 
 to be of use to his friends. He seemed to be one of those 
 universal geniuses who do a thousand things well, but 
 want steadiness enough to turn any of them to good 
 account. He showed me a treatise on the use of the 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 43 
 
 sword, which he had just prepared for the press, and a 
 series of letters on the Stamp Act, which had appeared 
 from time to time in one of the Boston newspapers, and in 
 which he had taken part with the Americans. 
 
 " I make a good many dollars in these stirring times," 
 he said. " All the Yankees seem to be of opinion that 
 they will be best heard across the water when they have 
 got arms in their hands, and have learned how to use 
 them; and I know a little of both the sword and the 
 musket. But the warlike spirit is frightfully thirsty, 
 somehow, and consumes a world of rum ; and so I have 
 not yet begun to make rich." 
 
 He shared with me his supper and bed for the night ; 
 and, after rising in the morning ere I awoke, and writing 
 a long letter for Robert, which he gave me in the hope I 
 might soon meet with him, he accompanied me to the 
 vessel, then on the eve of sailing, and we parted, as it 
 proved, for ever. I know nothing of his after-life, or how 
 or where it tenninated; but I have learned that, shortly 
 before the death of his gifted brother, his circumstances 
 enabled him to send his mother a small remittance for the 
 use of the family. He was evidently one of the kind- 
 hearted, improvident few who can share a very little, and 
 whose destiny it is to have only a very little to share. 
 
44 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 0, Ferguson ! thy glorious parts 
 111 suited law's dry, musty arts ! 
 My curse upon your whunstane hearts, 
 
 Ye Embrugh gentry ! 
 The tithe o' what ye waste at cartes 
 
 Wad stowed his pantry I 
 
 Burns. 
 
 I VISITED Edinburgh for the first time in the latter part 
 of the autumn of 1773, about two months after I had 
 sailed from Boston. It was on a fine calm morning, — 
 one of those clear sunshiny mornings of October when 
 the gossamer goes sailing about in long cottony threads, 
 so light and fleecy that they seem the skeleton remains of 
 extinct cloudlets, and when the distant hills, with their 
 covering of gray frost-rime, seem, through the clear close 
 atmosphere, as if chiselled in marble. The sun was rising 
 over the town through a deep blood-colored haze, — the 
 smoke of a thousand fires ; and the huge fantastic piles 
 of masonry that stretched along the ridge looked dim 
 and spectral through the cloud, like the ghosts of an army 
 of giants. I felt half a foot taller as I strode on towards 
 the town. It was Edinbui-gh I was approaching, — the 
 scene of so many proud associations to a lover of Scot- 
 land ; and I was going to meet, as an early friend, one 
 of the first of Scottish poets. I entered the town. There 
 was a book-stall in a corner of the street, and I turned 
 aside for half a minute to glance my eye over the books. 
 
 " Ferguson's Poems ! " I exclaimed, taking up a little 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 45 
 
 volume. " I was not aware they had appeared in a sep- 
 arate form. How do you sell this ? " 
 
 " Just like a' the ither booksellers," said the man who 
 kept the stall, — "that's nane o' the bulks that come doun 
 in a hurry, — just for the marked selling price." I threw 
 down the money. 
 
 " Could you tell me anything of the writer ? " I said. 
 " I have a letter for him from America." 
 
 "Oh, that'll be frae his brother Henry, I'll wad; a 
 clever chield too, but ower fond o' the drap drink, maybe, 
 like Rob himsel'. Baith o' them fine humane chields 
 though, without a grain o' pride. Rob takes a Stan' wi' 
 me sometimes o' half an hour at a time, an' we clatter 
 ower the buiks ; an', if I'm no mista'en, yon's him just 
 yonder, — the thin, pale slip o' a lad wi' the broad brow. 
 Ay, an' he's just comin' -this way." 
 
 " Anything new to-day, Thomas ? " said the young 
 man, coming up to the stall. " I want a cheap sec- 
 ond-hand copy of Ramsay's ' Evergreen ' ; and, like a 
 good man as you are, you must just try and find it for 
 me." 
 
 Though considerably altered, — for he was taller and 
 thinner than when at college, and his complexion had 
 assumed a deep sallow hue, — I recognized him at once, 
 and presented him with the letter. 
 
 " Ah, from brother Henry," he said, breaking it open, 
 and glancing his eye over the contents. " What ! old 
 college chum, Mr. Lindsay ! " he exclaimed, turning to 
 me. "Yes, sure enough; how happy I am we. should 
 have met ! Come this way ; — let us get out of the 
 streets." 
 
 "We passed hurriedly through the Canongate and along 
 the front of Holyrood House, and were soon in the 
 
46 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 King's Park, which seemed this morning as if left to 
 ourselves. 
 
 "Dear me, and this is you yourself! and we have again 
 met, Mr. Lindsay ! " said Ferguson : " I thought we were 
 never to meet more. Nothing, for a long time, has made 
 me half so glad. And so you have been a sailor for the 
 last four years. Do let us sit down here in the warm 
 sunshine, beside St. Anthony's Well ; and tell me all your 
 story, and how you happened to meet with brother 
 Henry." 
 
 We sat down, and I briefly related, at his bidding, all 
 that had befallen me since we had parted at St. Andrews, 
 and how I was still a common sailor ; but, in the main, 
 perhaps, not less happy than many who commanded a 
 fleet. 
 
 "Ah, you have been a fortunate fellow," he said; "you 
 have seen much and enjoyed much ; and I have been 
 rusting in unhappiness at home. Would that I had gone 
 to sea along with you ! " 
 
 " Nay, now, that won't do," I replied. " But you are 
 merely taking Bacon's method of blunting the edge of 
 envy. You have scarcely yet attained the years of 
 mature manhood, and yet your name has gone abroad 
 over the whole length and breadth of the land, and over 
 many other lands besides. I have cried over your poems 
 three thousand miles away, and felt all the prouder of my 
 country for the sake of my friend. And yet you would 
 fain persuade me that you wish the charm reversed, and 
 that you were just such an obscure salt-water man as 
 myself! " 
 
 " You remember," said my companion, " the story of 
 the half-man, half-marble prince of the Arabian tale. 
 One part was a living creature, one part a stone; but the 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 47 
 
 parts were incorporated, and the mixture was misery. I 
 am just such a poor unhappy creature as the enchanted 
 prince of the story." 
 
 " Tou surprise and distress me," I rejoined. " Have 
 you not accomplished all you so fondly puqjosed, — 
 realized even your warmest wishes ? And this, too, in 
 early life. Your most sanguine hopes pointed but to a 
 name, which you yourself perhaps was never to hear, 
 but which was to dwell on men's tongues when the grave 
 had closed over you. And now the name is gained, and 
 you live to enjoy it. I see the living part of your lot, 
 and it seems instinct with happiness ; but in what does 
 the dead, the stony part, consist ? " 
 
 He shook his head, and looked up mournfully into my 
 face. There was a pause of a few seconds. " Tou, Mr. 
 Lindsay," he at length replied, — " you, who are of an 
 equable, steady temperament, can know little from ex- 
 perience of the unhappiness of a man who lives only in 
 extremes, who is either madly gay or miserably de- 
 pressed. Try and realize the feelings of one whose mind 
 is like a broken harp, — all the medium tones gone, and 
 only the higher and lower left ; of one, too, whose 
 circumstances seem of a piece with his mind, who can 
 enjoy the exercise of his better powers, and yet can only 
 live by the monotonous drudgery of copying page after 
 page in a clerk's office ; of one who is continually either 
 groping his way amid a chill melancholy fog of nervous 
 depression, or carried headlong by a wild gayety to all 
 which his better judgment would instruct him to avoid; 
 of one who, when he indulges most in the pride of su- 
 perior intellect, cannot away with the thought that that 
 mtellect is on the eve of breaking up, and that he must 
 yet rate infinitely lower in the scale of rationality than 
 
48 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 any of the nameless thousands who carry on the ordinary 
 concerns of life around him." 
 
 I was grieved and astonished, and knew not what to 
 answer. " You are in a gloomy mood to-day," I at length 
 said ; " you are immersed in one of the fogs you de- 
 scribe, and all the surrounding objects take a tinge of 
 darkness from the medium through which you survey 
 them. Come, now, you must make an exertion, and 
 shake off your melancholy. I have told you all my story 
 as I best could, and you must tell me all yours in return." 
 
 " Well," he replied, " I shall, though it mayn't be the 
 best way in the world of dissipating my melancholy. I 
 think I must have told you, when at college, that I bad 
 a maternal uncle of considerable wealth, and, as the 
 world goes, respectability, who resided in Aberdeenshire. 
 fie was placed on what one may term the table-land 
 of society ; and my poor mother, whose recollections of 
 him were limited to a period when there is warmth in the 
 feelings of the most ordinary minds, had hoped that he 
 would willingly exert his influence in my behalf. Much, 
 doubtless, depends on one's setting out in life ; and it 
 would have been something to have been enabled to step 
 into it from a level like that occupied by my relative. I 
 paid him a visit shortly after leaving college, and met 
 with apparent kindness. But I can see beyond the 
 surface, Mr. Lindsay, and I soon saw that my uncle was 
 entirely a different man from the brother whom my 
 mother remembered. He had risen, by a course of slow 
 industry, from comparative poverty, and his feelings had 
 worn out by the process. The character was case-hard- 
 ened all over; and the polish it bore — for I have rarely 
 met a smoother man — seemed no improvement. He 
 was, in brief, one of the class content to dwell for ever 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 49 
 
 in mere decencies, with consciences made up of the con- 
 ventional moralities, who think by precedent, bow to 
 public opinion as their god, and estimate merit by its 
 weight in guineas." 
 
 " And so your visit," I said, " was a very brief one ? " 
 
 " You distress me," he replied. « It should have been 
 so; but it was not. But what could I do? Ever since 
 my father's death I had been taught to consider this man 
 as my natural guardian, and I was now unwilling to part 
 with my last hope. But this is not all. Under much 
 apparent activity, my friend, there is a substratum of 
 apathetical indolence in my disposition : I move rapidly 
 when in motion ; but when at rest, there is a dull inert- 
 ness in the character, which the will, when unassisted by 
 passion, is too feeble to overcome. Poor, weak creature 
 that I am ! I had set down by my uncle's fireside, and 
 felt unwilling to rise. Pity me, my friend, — I deserve 
 your pity ; but oh ! do not despise me ! " 
 
 " Forgive me, Mr. Ferguson," I said; "I have given you 
 pain, but surely most unwittingly." 
 
 " I am ever a fool," he continued. " But my story lags ; 
 and, surely, there is little in it on which it were pleasure 
 to dwell. I sat at this man's table for six months, and 
 saw, day after day, his manner towards me becoming 
 more constrained, and his politeness more cold ; and yet 
 I staid on, till at last my clothes were worn threadbare, 
 and he began to feel that the shabbiness of the nephew 
 affected the respectability of the uncle. His friend the 
 soap-boiler, and his friend the oil-merchant, and his friend 
 the manager of the hemp manufactory, with their wives 
 and daughters, — all people of high standing in the world, 
 — occasionally honored his table with their presence ; 
 and how could he be other than ashamed of mine ? It 
 5 
 
50 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 vexes me that I cannot even yet be cool on the subject: 
 it vexes me that a creature so sordid should have so much 
 power to move me; but I cannot, I cannot master my 
 feelings. He — he told me, — and with whom should 
 the blame rest, but with the weak, spiritless thing who 
 lingered on in mean, bitter dependence, to hear what he 
 had to tell ? — he told me that all his friends were respect- 
 able, and that my appearance was no longer that of a 
 person whom he could wish to see at his table, or intro- 
 duce to any one as his nephew. And I had staid to hear 
 all this ! 
 
 "T can hardly tell yon how I got home. I travelled, 
 stage after stage, along the rough dusty roads, with a 
 weak and feverish body, and almost despairing mind. 
 On meeting with my mother, I could have laid my head 
 on her bosom and cried like a child. I took to my bed 
 in a high fever, and trusted that all my troubles were soon 
 to terminate ; but when the die was cast, it turned up life. 
 I resumed my old miserable employments, — for what 
 could I else ? — and, that I might be less unhappy in the 
 prosecution of them, my old amusements too. I copied 
 during the day in a clerk's office that I might live, and 
 wrote. during the night that I might be known. And I 
 have in part, perhaps, attained my object. I have pursued 
 and caught hold of the shadow on which my heart had 
 been so long set ; and if it prove empty and intangible 
 and unsatisfactory, like every other shadow, the blame 
 surely must rest with the pursuer, not with the thing 
 pursued. I weary you, Mr. Lindsay; but one word more. 
 There are hours when the mind, weakened by exertion or 
 by the teasing monotony of an employment which tasks 
 without exercising it, can no longer exert its powers, and 
 when, feeling that sociality is a law of our nature, we 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 51 
 
 seek the society of our fellow-men. With a creature so 
 much the sport of impulse as I am, it is of these hours 
 of weakness that conscience takes most note. God help 
 me ! I have been told that life is short ; but it stretches 
 on and on and on ^efore me ; and I know not how it is 
 to be passed through.'' 
 
 My spirits had so sunk during this singular conversa- 
 tion that I had no heart to reply. 
 
 " Tou are silent, Mr. Lindsay," said the poet ; " I have 
 made you as melancholy as myself; but look around you, 
 and say if ever you have seen a lovelier spot. See how 
 richly the yellow sunshine slants along the green sides of 
 Arthur's Seat; and how the thin blue smoke, that has 
 come floating from the town, fills the bottom of yonder 
 grassy dell as if it were a little lake ! Mark, too, how 
 boldly the cliffs stand out along its sides, eacli with its 
 little patch of shadow. And here, beside us, is St. An- 
 thony's Well, so famous in song, coming gushing out to 
 the sunshine, and then gliding away through the grass 
 like a snake. Had the Deity purposed that man should 
 be miserable, he would surely never have placed him in so 
 fair a world. Perhaps much of our unhappiness origi- 
 nates in our mistaking our proper scope, and thus setting 
 out from the first with a false aim." 
 
 " Unquestionably," I replied. " There is no man who 
 has not some part to perform ; and if it be a great and 
 uncommon part, and the powers which fit him for it 
 proportionably great and uncommon, natui'e would be in 
 error could he slight it with impunity. See ! there is a 
 wild bee bending the flower beside you. Even that little 
 creature has a capacity of happiness and misery : it de- 
 rives its sense of pleasure from whatever runs in the line 
 of its instincts, its experience of unhappiness from 
 
62 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 whatever thwarts and opposes them ; and can it be sup- 
 posed that so wise a law should regulate the instincts of 
 only inferior creatures ? No, my friend ; it is surely a 
 law of our nature also." 
 
 " And have you not something else to infer ? " said the 
 poet. 
 
 " Yes," I replied ; " that you are occupied diiferently 
 from what the scope and constitution of your mind de- 
 mand, — differently both in your hours of enjoyment and 
 of relaxation. But do take heart ; you will yet find your 
 proper place, and all shall be well." 
 
 " Alas ! no, my friend," said he, rising from the sward. 
 "I could once entertain such a hope, but I cannot now. 
 My mind is no longer what it was to me in my hap- 
 pier days, a sort of terra incognita without bounds or 
 limits. I can see over and beyond it, and have fallen 
 from all my hopes regarding it. It is not so much the 
 gloom of present circumstances that disheartens me as 
 a depressing knowledge of myself, — an abiding convic- 
 tion that I am a weak dreamer, unfitted for every occu- 
 pation of life, and not less so for the greater employments 
 of literature than for any of the others. I feel that I am 
 a little man and a little poet, with barely vigor enough 
 to make one half-effort at a time, but wholly devoid of 
 the sustaining will — that highest faculty of the highest 
 order of minds — • which can direct a thousand vigorous 
 efforts to the accomplishment of one important object. 
 Would that I could exchange my half-celebrity — and 
 it can never be other than a half-celebrity — for a tem- 
 per as equable and a fortitude as unshrinking as yours! 
 But I weary you with my complaints : I am a very 
 coward ; and you will deem me as selfish as I am 
 weak." 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 53 
 
 We parted. The poet, sadly and unwillingly, went to 
 copy deeds iu the oflBce of the commissary-clerk ; and I, 
 almost reconciled to obscurity and hard labor, to assist in 
 unlading a Baltic trader in the harbor of Leith. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Speech without aim, and without end employ. 
 
 Ckaebe. 
 
 After the lapse of nine months, I again returned to 
 Edinburgh. During that period I had been so shut out 
 from literature and the world, that* I had heard nothing 
 of my friend the poet; and it was with a beating heart I 
 left the vessel, on my first leisure evening, to pay him a 
 visit. It was about the middle of July. The day had 
 been close and sultry, and the heavens overcharged with 
 gray ponderous clouds ; and as I passed hurriedly along 
 the walk which leads from Leith to Edinburgh, I could 
 hear the newly-awakened thunder, bellowing far in the 
 south, peal after peal, like the artillery of two hostile 
 armies. I reached the door of the poet's humble domicile, 
 and had raised my hand to the knocker, when I heard 
 some one singing from within, in a voice by far the most 
 touchingly mournful I had ever listened to. The tones 
 struck on my heart ; and a frightful suspicion crossed my 
 mind, as I set down the knocker, that the singer was no 
 other than my friend. But in what wretched circum- 
 stances ! what fearful state of mind ! I shuddered as I 
 listened, and heard the strain waxing louder and yet more 
 5» 
 
64 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 mournful, and could distinguish that the words were those 
 of a simple old ballad, — 
 
 0, Marti'mas wind ! when wilt thou hlaw. 
 An' shake the green leaves aff the tree? 
 
 O, gentle death! when wilt thou come, 
 An' tak a life that wearies me ? 
 
 I could listen no longer, but raised the latch and went 
 in. Tlie evening was gloomy, and the apartment ill- 
 lighted ; but I could see the singer, a spectral-looking fig- 
 ure, sitting on a bed in the corner, with the bed-clothes 
 wrapped round his shoulders, and a napkin deeply stained 
 with blood on his head. An elderly female, who stood 
 beside him, was striving to soothe him, and busied from 
 time to time in adjusting the clothes, which were ever 
 and anon falling off a^ he nodded his head in time to the 
 music. A young girl of great beauty sat weeping at the 
 bed-foot. 
 
 " 0, dearest Robert ! " said the woman, " you will de- 
 stroy your poor head ; and Margaret, your sister, whom 
 you used to love so much, will break her heart. Do lie 
 down, dearest, and take a little rest. Your head is fear- 
 fully gashed ; and if the bandages loose a second time, you 
 will bleed to death. Do, dearest Robert ! for your poor old 
 mother, to whom you were always so kind and dutiful a 
 son till now, — for your poor old mother's sake, do lie 
 down." 
 
 The song ceased for a moment, and the tears came 
 bursting from my eyes as the tune changed, and he again 
 sang, — 
 
 O, mither dear! make ye mj' bed. 
 
 For my heart it's flichterin' sair; 
 An' oh I gin I've vex'd ye, mither dear, 
 
 I'll never vex ye mair. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 65 
 
 I've staid ar'out the lang dark nicht, 
 
 I' the sleet and the plashy rain ; 
 But, mither dear, malie ye my bed. 
 
 An' I'll ne'er gang out again. 
 
 " Dearest, clearest Robert ! " continued the poor, heart- 
 broken woman, " do lie down, — for your poor old moth- 
 er's sake, do lie.down." 
 
 " No, no," he exclaimed, in a hurried voice, " not just 
 now, mother, not just now. Here is my friend Mr. Lindsay 
 come to see me, — my true friend, Mr. Lindsay the sailor, 
 who has sailed all round and round the world ; and I 
 have much, much to ask him. A chair, Mai-garet, for Mr. 
 Lindsay. I must be a preacher like John Knox, you 
 know, — like the great John Knox, the reformer of a 
 nation, — and Mr. Lindsay knows all about him. A chair, 
 Margaret, for Mr. Lindsay." 
 
 I am not ashamed to say it was with tears, and in a 
 voice faltering with emotion, that I apologized to the poor 
 woman for my intrusion at such a time. Were it other- 
 wise, I might well conclude my heart grown hard as a 
 piece of the nether millstone. 
 
 " I had known Robert at college," I said ; " had loved 
 and respected him ; and had now come to pay him a 
 visit, after an absence for sevei-al months, wholly unpre- 
 pared for finding him in his present condition." And 
 it would seem that my tears plead for me, and proved 
 to the poor afflicted woman and her daughter by far the 
 most efficient part of my apology. 
 
 " All my friends have left me now, Mr. Lindsay," said 
 the unfortunate poet, — " they have all left me now ; they 
 love this present world. We were all going down, down, 
 down ; there was the roll of a river behind us ; it came 
 bursting over the high rooks,- roaring, rolling, foaming, 
 
56 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 down upon us ; and, though the fog was thick and dark 
 below, — far below, in the place to ■which we were going, 
 — I could see the red fire shining through, — the red, hot, 
 unquenchable fire ; and we were all going down, down, 
 down. Mother, mother, tell Mr. Lindsay I am going to be 
 put on my trials to-morrow. Careless creature that I am! 
 life is short, and I have lost much time; but I am going 
 to be put on my trials to-morrow, and shall come forth a 
 preacher of the Word." 
 
 The thunder, which had hitherto been muttering at a 
 distance, — each peal, however, nearer and louder than 
 the preceding one, — now began to roll overhead, and the 
 lightning, as it passed the window, to illumine every 
 object within. The hapless poet stretched out his thin, 
 wasted arm, as if addressing a congregation from the 
 puljiit. 
 
 " There were the flashings of lightning," he said, " and 
 the roll of thunder ; and the trumpet waxed loj.ider and 
 louder. And around the summit of the mountain were 
 the foldings of thick clouds, and the shadow fell brown 
 and dark over the wide expanse of the desert. And the 
 wild beasts lay ti'embling in their dens. But, lo! where 
 the sun breaks through the opening of the cloud, there is 
 the glitter of tents, — the glitter often thousand tents, — 
 that rise over the sandy waste thick as waves of the sea. 
 And there, there is the voice of the dance, and of the 
 revel, and the winding of horns, and the clash of cymbals. 
 Oh, sit nearer me, dearest mother, for the room is growing 
 dark, dark ; and oh, my poor head ! 
 
 The lady sat on the castle wa', 
 Looked owre baith dale and down. 
 
 And then she spied Gil-Morice head 
 Come steering through the town. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 57 
 
 Do, dearest mother, put your cool hand on my brow, and 
 do hold it fast ere it part. How fearfully, oh, how fear- 
 fully it aches! — and oh, how it thunders!" He sunk 
 backward on the pillow, apparently exhausted. "Gone, 
 gone, gone," he muttered, — " my mind gone forever. 
 But God's will be done.'' 
 
 I Vose to leave the room ; for I could restrain my feel- 
 ings no longer. 
 
 " Stay, Mr. Lindsay," said the poet, in a feeble voice. 
 " I hear the rain dashing on the pavement ; you must not 
 go till it abates. Would that you could pray beside me ! 
 But no ; you are not like the dissolute ccynpanions who 
 have now all left me, but you are not. yet fitted for that ; 
 and, alas ! I cannot pray for myself. Mother, mother, see 
 that there be prayers at my lykewake ; for, — 
 
 Her lykewake, it was piously spent 
 
 In social prayer and praise, 
 Performed by judicious men, 
 
 Wlio stricken were in days ; 
 And many a heavy, heavy heart, 
 
 Was in that mournful place. 
 And many a weary, weary thought 
 
 On her who slept in peace. 
 
 They will come all to my lykewake, mother, won't they ? 
 Tes, all, though they have left me now. Yes, and they 
 will come far to see my grave. I was poor, very poor,, 
 you know, and they looked down upon me; and I was no 
 son or cousin of theirs, and so they could do nothing for 
 me. Oh, but they might have looked less coldly ! But 
 they will all come to my grave, mother ; they will come 
 all to my grave ; and they will say, ' Would he were liv- 
 ing now, to know how kind we are ! ' But they will look 
 as coldly as ever on the living poet beside them, — yes, till 
 
58 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 they have broken his heart ; and then they will go to his 
 grave too. O, dearest mother ! do lay your cool baud on 
 my brow." 
 
 He lay silent and exhausted, and in a few minutes I 
 could hope, from the hardness of his breathing, that he 
 bad fallen asleep. 
 
 " How long," I inquired of his sister, in a low whisper, 
 "has Mr. Ferguson been so unwell; and what has injured 
 bis head ? " 
 
 "Alas!" said the girl, "my brother has been unsettled 
 in mind for nearly the last six months. We iirst knew it 
 one evening ojj his coming home from the country, where 
 be bad been for a few days with a friend. He burnt a 
 large heap of papers that he had been employed on for 
 weeks before, — songs and poems that, his friends say, 
 were the finest things he ever wrote ; but he burnt them 
 all, for he was going to be a preacher of the Word, he 
 said, and it did not become a preacher of the Word to 
 be a writer of light rhymes. And O, sir ! bis mind 
 has been carried ever since ; but be has been always 
 gentle and affectionate, and his sole delight has lain in 
 reading the Bible. Good Dr. Erskine, of the Gray-friars, 
 often comes to our house, and sits with him for hours to- 
 gether: for there are times when his mind seems stronger 
 than ever ; and he sees Avonderful things, that seem to 
 hover, the minister says, between the extravagance natu- 
 ral to his present sad condition, and the higher flights of a 
 philosophic genius. And we had hoped that he was get- 
 ling better ; but O, sir ! our hopes have had a sad ending. 
 He went out, a few evenings ago, to call on an old ac- 
 quaintance ; and, in descending a stair, missed footing, and 
 fell to the bottom ; and bis head has been fearfully in- 
 jured by the stones. He has been just as you have seen 
 
EECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 69 
 
 him ever since ; and oh ! I much fear he cannot now re- 
 cover. Alas ! my poor brother! — never, never was there 
 a more affectionate heart." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A lowly muse I 
 She sings of reptiles yet in song untnown. 
 
 I EETUENED to the vGssel with a heavy heart ; and it 
 was nearly three months from this time ere I again set 
 foot in Edinburgh. Alas for my unfortunate friend ! He 
 was now an inmate of the asylum, and on the verge of 
 dissolution. I was thrown by accident, shortly after my 
 arrival at this time, into the company of one of his boon 
 companions. I had gone into a tavern with a brother 
 sailor, — a shrewd, honest skipper from the north coun- 
 try ; and, finding the place occupied by half-a-dozen young 
 fellows, who were growing noisy over their liquor, I 
 would have immediately gone out again, had I not 
 caught, in the passing, a few words regarding my friend. 
 And so, drawing to a side-table, I sat down. 
 
 "Believe me," said one of the topers, a dissolute-looking 
 young man, " it's all over with Bob Ferguson, — all over ; 
 and I knew it from the moment he grew religious. Had 
 old Brown tried to convert me, I would have broken his 
 face." 
 
 "What Brown ? " inquired one of his companions. 
 
 "Is that all you know?" rejoined the other. "Why, 
 John Brown, of Haddington, the Seceder. Bob was at 
 
60 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Haddington last year at the election ; and one morning, 
 when in the horrors, after holding a rum night of it, who 
 should he meet in the churchyard but old John Brown. 
 He writes, you know, a big book on the Bible. Well, he 
 lectured Bob at a pretty rate about election and the call, 
 I suppose ; and the poor fellow has been mad ever since. 
 Your health, Jamie. For my own part, I'm a freewill 
 man, and detest all cant and humbug." 
 
 " And what has come of Ferguson now ? " asked one of 
 the others. 
 
 "Oh, mad, sir, mad!" rejoined the toper, — "reading 
 the Bible all day, and cooped up in the asylum yonder. 
 'Twas I who brought him to it. But, lads, the glass has 
 been standing for the last half-hour. 'Twas I and Jack 
 Robinson who brought him to it, as I say. He was 
 getting wild ; and so we got a sedan for him, and 
 trumped a story of an invitation for tea from a lady, and 
 he came with us as quietly as a lamb. But if you could 
 have heard the shriek he gave when the chair stopped, 
 and he saw where we had brought him ! I never heard 
 anything half so horrible ; it rung in my ears for a week 
 after ; and then, how the mad people in the upper rooms 
 howled and gibbered in reply, till the very roof echoed! 
 People say he is getting better ; but when I last saw him 
 he was as relig^us as ever, and spoke so much about 
 heaven that it was uncomfortable to hear him. Great loss 
 to his friends, after all the expense they have been at with 
 his education.'' 
 
 " You seem to have been intimate with Mr. Ferguson," 
 I said. 
 
 " Oh, intimate with Bob ! " he rejoined ; " we were hand 
 and glove, man. I have sat with him in Lucky Middle- 
 mass's almost every evening for two years; and I have 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 61 
 
 given him hints for some of the best things in his book. 
 'Twas I who tumbled down the cage in the Meadows, and 
 began breaking the lamps. 
 
 Ye who oft finish care in Lethe's cup, — 
 "Who love to swear and roar, and keep it up, — 
 List to a brother's voice, whose sole delight 
 Is sleep all day, and riot all the night. 
 
 " There's spirit for you ! But Bob was never sound at 
 bottom ; and I have told him so. ' Bob,' I have said, — 
 ' Bob, you're but a hypocrite after all, man, — without 
 half the spunk you pretend to. Why don't you take 
 a pattern by me, who fear nothing, and believe only the 
 agreeable ? But, poor fellow, he had weak nerves, and a 
 church-going propensity that did him no good ; and you 
 see the effects. 'Twas all nonsense, Tom, of his throwing 
 the squib into the Glassite meeting-house. Between you 
 and I, that was a cut far beyond him in his best days, 
 poet as he was. 'Twas I who did it, man ; and never was 
 there a cleaner row in Auld Reekie." 
 
 "Heartless, contemptible puppy!" said my comrade 
 the sailor, as we left the room. " Your poor friend must 
 be ill indeed if he be but half as insane as his quondam 
 companion. But he cannot : there is no madness like that 
 of the heart. What could have induced a man of genius 
 to associate with a thing so thoroughly despicable ? " 
 
 " The same misery. Miller," I said, " that brings a man 
 acquainted with strange bed-fellows." 
 
 6 
 
62 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 11. 
 
 O, thou, my elder brother in misfortune ! — 
 By far my elder brother in the muses, — 
 With tears I pity thy unhappy fate ! 
 
 BUESS. 
 
 The asylum in which my unfortunate friepd was con- 
 fined — at this time the only one in Edinburgh — was 
 situated in an angle of the city wall. It was a disraal- 
 looking mansion, shut in on every side by the neighbor- 
 ing houses from the view of the surrounding country, 
 and so effectually covered up from the nearer street by 
 a large building in front that it seemed possible enough 
 to pass a lifetime in Edinburgh without coming to the 
 knowledge of its existence. I shuddered as I looked up 
 to its blackened walls, thinly sprinkled with miserable- 
 looking windows barred with iron, and thought of it 
 as a sort of burial-place of dead minds. But it was a 
 Golgotha which, with more than the horrors of the grave, 
 had neither its rest nor its silence. I was startled, as 
 I entered the cell of the hapless poet, by a shout of 
 laughter from a neighboring room, which was answered 
 from a dark recess behind me by a fearfully-prolonged 
 shriek and the clanking of chains. The mother and 
 sister of Ferguson were sitting beside his pallet, on a sort 
 of stone settle, which stood out from the wall ; and the 
 poet himself — weak and exhausted and worn to a 
 shadow, but apparently in his right mind — lay extended 
 on the straw. He made an attempt to rise as I entered ; 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF FERGUSON. 63 
 
 but the effort was above his strength, and, again lying 
 down, he extended his hand. 
 
 " This is kind, Mr. Lindsay," he said ; " it is ill for me 
 to be alone in these days; and yet I have few visitors 
 save my poor old mother and Margaret. But who cares 
 for the unhappy ? " 
 
 I sat down on the settle beside him, still retaining his 
 hand. " I have been at sea, and in foreign countries,'' I 
 said, "since I last saw you, Mr. Ferguson, and it was 
 only this morning I returned ; but, believe me, there are 
 many, many of your countrymen who sympathize sin- 
 cerely in your affliction, and take a warm interest in your 
 recovery." 
 
 He sighed deeply. " Ah," he replied, " I know too well 
 the nature of that sympathy. You never find it at the 
 bedside of the sufferer; it evaporates in a few barren 
 expressions of idle pity ! and yet, after all, it is but a 
 paying the poet in kind. He calls so often on the world 
 to sympathize over fictitious misfortune that the feeling 
 wears out, and becomes a mere mood of the imagination ; 
 and with this light, attenuated pity, of his own weaving, 
 it regards his own real sorrows. Dearest mother, the 
 . evening is damp and chill. Do gather the bed-clothes 
 around me, and sit on my feet : they are so very cold, and 
 so dead that they cannot be colder a week hence." 
 
 " O, Robert ! why do you speak so ? " said the poor 
 woman, as she gathered the clothes around him, and sat 
 on his feet. "You know you are coming home to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow ! " he said ; " if I see to-morrow, I shall 
 have completed my twenty-fourth year, — ^a small part, 
 surely, of the threescore and ten; but what matters it 
 when 'tis past?" 
 
64 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 "Tou were ever, my friend, of a melancholy tempera- 
 ment," I said, " and too little disposed to hope. Indulge 
 in brighter views of the future, and all shall yet be well." 
 
 "I can now hope that it shall," he said. "Yes, all 
 shall be well with me, and that very soon. But oh, 
 how this nature of ours shrinks from dissolution ! — yes, 
 and all the lower natures too. You remember, mother, 
 the poor starling that was killed in the room beside us? 
 Oh, how it struggled with its ruthless enemy, and filled 
 the whole place with its shrieks of terror and agony ! 
 And yet, poor little thing, it had been true, all life long, 
 to the laws of its nature, and had no sins to account for 
 and no Judge to meet. There is a shrinking of heart as 
 I look before me ; and yet I can hope that all shall yet 
 be well with me, and that very soon. Would that I had 
 been wise in time ! Would that I had thought more and 
 earlier of the things which pertain to my eternal peace ! — 
 more of a living soul, and less of a dying name ! But 
 oh ! 'tis a glorious provision, through which a way of 
 return is opened up, even at the eleventh hour." 
 
 We sat around him in silence. An indescribable feel- 
 ing of awe pervaded my whole mind ; and his sister was 
 affected to tears. 
 
 " Margaret," he said, in a feeble voice, — " Margaret, 
 you will find my Bible in yonder little recess : 'tis all I 
 have to leave you ; but keep it, dearest sister, and use it, 
 and in times of sorrow and suffering, that come to all, 
 you will know how to prize the legacy of your poor 
 brother. Many, many books do well enough for life ; but 
 there is only one of any value when we come to die. 
 
 " You have been a voyager of late, Mr. Lindsay," he 
 continued, " and I have been a voyager too. I have been 
 journeying in darkness and discomfort, amid strange un- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP FERGUSON. 65 
 
 earthly shapes of dread and horror, with no reason to 
 direct, and no will to govern. Oh, the unspeakable 
 unhappiness of thcs^ wanderings ! — these dreams of sus- 
 picion, and fear, and hatred, in which shadow and 
 substance, the true and the false, were so wrought up 
 and mingled together that they formed but one fantastic 
 and miserable whole. And oh, the unutterable horror of 
 every momentary return to a recollection of what I had 
 been once, and a sense of what I had become ! Oh, when 
 I awoke amid the terrors of the night ; when I turned 
 me on the rustling straw, and heard the wild wail, and 
 yet wilder laugh ; when I heard, and shuddered, and 
 then felt the demon in all his might coming over me, till 
 I laughed and wailed with the others, — oh, the misery ! 
 the utter misery ! But 'tis over, my friend, — 'tis all over. 
 A few, few tedious days — a few, few weary nights — 
 and all my sufferings shall be over." 
 
 I had covered my face with my hands, but the tears 
 came bursting through my fingers. The mother and 
 sister of the poet sobbed aloud. 
 
 " Why sorrow for me, sirs ? " he said ; " why grieve for 
 me ? I am well, quite well, and want for nothing. But 
 'tis cold, oh, 'tis very cold, and the blood seems freezing 
 at my heart. Ah, but there is neither pain nor cold 
 where I am going, and I trust it will be well with my 
 soul.^ Dearest, dearest mother, I always told you it would 
 come to this at last." 
 
 The keeper had entered, to intimate to us that the hour 
 for locking up the cells was already past; and we now- 
 rose to leave the place. I stretched out my hand to my 
 unfortunate friend. He took it in silence ; and his thin, 
 attenuated fingers felt cold within my grasp, like those of 
 a corpse. His mother stooped down to embrace him. 
 .6* 
 
66 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " Oh, do not go yet, mother,'' he said, — " do not go 
 yet, — do not leave me. But it must be so, and I only 
 distress you. Pray for me, dearest«mother, and oh, for- 
 give me. I have been a grief and a burden to you all life 
 long ; but I ever loved you, mother ; and oh, you have 
 been kind, kind and forgiving ; and now your task is over. 
 May God bless and reward you ! Margaret, dearest Mar- 
 garet, farewell ! 7 
 
 We parted, and, as it proved, forever. Robert Fer- 
 guson expired during the night ; and when the keeper 
 entered the cell next morning to prepare him for quitting 
 the asylum, all that remained of this most hapless of the 
 children of genius was a pallid and wasted corpse, that 
 lay stiffening on the straw. I am now a very old man, 
 and the feelings wear out ; but I find that my heart is 
 even yet susceptible of emotion, and that the source of 
 tears is not yet dried up. 
 
II. 
 
 KECOLLECTIONS OF BUENS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Wear we not graven on our hearts 
 The name of Robert Bums ? 
 
 American Poet. 
 
 The degrees shorten as we proceed from the lower to 
 the higher latitudes ; the years seem to shorten in a much 
 greater ratio as we pass onward through life. We are al- 
 most disposed to question whether the brief period of 
 storms and foul weather that floats over us with such 
 dream-like rapidity, and the transient season of flowers 
 and sunshine that seems almost too short for enjoyment, 
 be at all identical with the long summers and still longer 
 winters of our boyhood, when day after day, and week 
 after week, stretched away in dim perspective, till lost in 
 the obscurity of an almost inconceivable distance. Young 
 as I was, I had already passed the period of life when we 
 wonder how it is that the years should be described as 
 short and fleeting; and it seemed as if I had stood but 
 yesterday beside the deathbed of the unfortunate Fer- 
 guson, though the flowers of four summers and the snows 
 of four winters had been shed over his grave. 
 
68 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 My prospects in life had begun to brighten. 1 served 
 in the capacity of mate in a large West India trader, the 
 master of which, an elderly man of considerable wealth, 
 was on the eve of quitting the sea ; and the owners had 
 already determined that I should succeed him in the 
 charge. But fate had ordered it otherwise. Our seas 
 were infested at this period by American privateers, — 
 prime sailors and strongly armed; and, when homeward 
 bound from Jamaica with a valuable cargo, we were at- 
 tacked and captured, when within a day's sailing of Ire- 
 land, by one of the most formidable of the class. Vain 
 as resistance might have been deemed, — for the force of 
 the American was altogether overpowering, — and though 
 our master, poor old man ! and three of the crew, had 
 fallen by the first broadside, we had yet stood stiffly by our 
 guns, and were only overmastered when, after falling foul 
 of the enemy, we were boarded by a party of thrice our 
 strength and number. The Americans, irritated by our 
 resistance, proved on this occasion no generous enemies : 
 we were stripped and heavily ironed, and, two days after, 
 ■were set ashore on the wild shore of Connaught, without 
 a single change of dress, or a single sixpence to bear us 
 by the way. 
 
 I was sitting, on the following night, beside the turf- 
 fire of a hospitable Irish peasant, when a seafaring man, 
 whom I had sailed with about two years before, entered 
 the cabin. The meeting was equally unexpected on 
 either side. My acquaintance was the master of a smug- 
 gling lugger then on the coast ; and, on acquainting him 
 with the details of my disaster and the state of destitu- 
 tion to which it had reduced me, he kindly proposed that 
 I should accompany him on his voyage to the west coast 
 of Scotland, for which he was then on the eve of sailing. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 69 
 
 " You will run some little risk,'' he said, " as the compan- 
 ion of a man who has now been thrice outlawed for firing 
 on his Majesty's flag ; but I know your proud heart will 
 prefer the danger of bad company, at its worst, to the al- 
 ternative of begging your way home." He judged rightly. 
 Before daybreak we had lost sight of land, and in four 
 days more we could discern the precipitous shores of Car- 
 rick, stretching in a dark line along the horizon, and the 
 hills of the interior rising thin and blue behind, like a 
 volume of clouds. A considerable part of our cargo, 
 which consisted mostly of tea and spirits, was consigned to 
 an Ayr trader, who had several agents in the remote par- 
 ish of Kirkoswald, which at this period afforded more 
 facilities for carrying on the contraband trade than any 
 other on the western coast of Scotland, and in a rocky 
 bay of the parish we proposed unlading on the following 
 night. It was necessary, however, that the several agents, 
 who were yet ignorant of our arrival, should be prepared 
 to meet with us ; and, on volunteering my service for the 
 purpose, I was landed near the ruins of the ^ncientjjastle 
 of Turnberry, once the seat of Robert the Bruce. 
 
 I had~accorapTished--my object. It was evening, and a 
 party of countrymen were sauntering among the cliff's, 
 waiting for nightfall and the appearance of the lugger. 
 There are splendid caverns on the coast of Kirkoswald ; 
 and, to while away the time, I had descended to the shore 
 by a broken and precipitous path, with a view of explor- 
 ing what are termed the Caves of Colzean, by far the 
 finest in this part of Scotland. The evening was of great 
 beauty : the sea spread out from the cliffs to the far hori- 
 zon like the sea of gold and crystal described by the 
 prophet, and its warm orange hues so harmonized with 
 those of the sky that, passing over the dimly-defined line 
 
70 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of demarcation, the whole upper and nether expanse 
 seemed but one glorious firmament, with the dark Ailsa, 
 like a thunder-cloud, sleeping in the midst. The sun 
 was hastening to his setting, and threw his strong red 
 light on the wall of rock which, loftier and more imposing 
 than the walls of even the mighty Babylon, stretched on- 
 ward along the beach, headland after headland, till the 
 last sank abruptly in the far distance, and only the wide 
 ocean stretched beyond. I passed along the insulated 
 piles of cliff that rise thick along the bases of the preci- 
 pices — now in sunshine, now in shadow — ■ till I reached 
 the opening of one of the largest caves. The roof rose 
 more than fifty feet over my head ; a broad stream of 
 light, that seemed redder and more fiery from the sur- 
 rounding gloom, slanted inwards ; and, as I paused in the 
 opening, my shadow, lengthened and dark, fell across the 
 floor — a slim and narrow bar of black — till lost in the 
 gloom of the inner recess. There was a wild and uncom- 
 mon beauty in the scene that powerfully affected the 
 imagination ; and I stood admiring it, in that delicious 
 dreamy mood in which one can forget all but the present 
 enjoyment, when I was roused to a recollection of the 
 business of the evening by the sound of a footfall echoing 
 from within. It seemed approaching by a sort of cross 
 passage in the rock ; and, in a moment after, a young man 
 — one of the country people whom I had left among the 
 cliffs above — stood before me. He wore a broad Low- 
 land bonnet, and his plain homely suit of coarse russet 
 seemed to bespeak hira a peasant of perhaps the poorest 
 class; but as he emerged from the gloom, and the red 
 light fell full on his countenance, I saw an indesci-ibable 
 something in the expression that in an instant awakened 
 my curiosity. He was rather above the middle size, of a 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 71 
 
 frame the most muscular and compact I have almost ever 
 seen ; and there was a blended mixture of elasticity and 
 firmness in his "tread that, to one accustomed, as I had 
 been, to estimate the physical capabilities of men, gave 
 evidence of a union of immense personal strength with ac- 
 tivity. My first idea regarding the stranger — and I know 
 not how it should have struck me — was that of a very 
 powerful frame, animated by a double portion of vital- 
 ity. The red light shone full on his face, and gave a 
 ruddy tinge to the complexion, which I afterwards found 
 it wanted, for he was naturally of a darker hue than 
 common ; but there was no mistaking the expression of 
 the large flashing eyes, the features that seemed so thor- 
 oughly cast in the mould of thought, and the broad, full, 
 perpendicular forehead. Such, at least, was the impres- 
 sion on my mind, that I addressed him with more of the 
 courtesy which my earlier pursuits had rendered familiar 
 to me, than of the bluntness of my adopted profession. 
 "This sweet evening," I said, "is by far too fine for our 
 lugger ; I question whether, in these calms, we need ex- 
 pect her before midnight. But 'tis well, since wait we 
 must, that 'tis in a place where the hours may pass so 
 agreeably." The stranger good-humoredly acquiesced in 
 the remark ; and we sat down together on the dry, water- 
 worn pebbles, mixed with fragments of broken shells and 
 minute pieces of wreck, that strewed the opening of the 
 cave. 
 
 " Was there ever a lovelier evening ! " he exclaimed. 
 " The waters above the firmament seem all of a piece 
 with the waters below. And never, surely, was there a 
 scene of wilder beauty. Only look inwards, and see how 
 the stream of red light seems bounded by the extreme 
 darkness, like a river by its banks, and how the reflection 
 
72 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of the ripple goes waving in golden curls along the 
 roof!" 
 
 " I have been admiring the scene for the last half-hour," 
 I said. " Shakspeare speaks of a music that cannot be 
 heard ; and I have not yet seen a place where one might 
 better learn to comment on the passage." 
 
 Both the thought and the phrase seemed new to him. 
 
 "A music that cannot be heard !" he repeated; and 
 then, after a momentary pause, " You allude to the fact," 
 he continued, " that sweet music, and forms, such as these, 
 of silent beauty and grandeur, awaken in the mind emo- 
 tions of nearly the same class. There is something truly 
 exquisite in the concert of to-night." 
 
 I muttered a simple assent. 
 
 " See ! " he continued, "how finely these insulated piles 
 of rock, that rise in so many combinations of form along 
 the beach, break and diversify the red light ; and how the 
 glossy leaves of the ivy glisten in the hollows of the preci- 
 pices above ! And then, how the sea spreads away to 
 the far horizon, — a glorious pavement of crimson and 
 gold, — and how the dark Ailsa rises in the midst, like 
 the little cloud seen by the prophet ! The mind seems to 
 enlarge, the heart to expand, in the contemplation of so 
 much of beauty and grandeur. The soul asserts its due 
 supremacy. And oh, 'tis surely well that we can escape 
 from those little cares of life which fetter down our 
 thoughts, our hopes, our wishes to the wants and the en- 
 joyments of our animal existence, and that, amid the grand 
 and the sublime of nature, we may learn from the spirit 
 within us that we are better than the beasts that perish!" 
 
 I looked up to the animated countenance and flashing 
 eyes of my companion, and wondered what sort of a peas- 
 ant it was I had met with. " Wild and beautiful as the 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 73 
 
 scene is," I said, " you will find, even among those who 
 arrogate to themselves the praise of wisdom and learning, 
 men who regard such scenes as jDei;e_ errors of nature^ 
 Burnett wouTd^have TolS^ou that a Dutch landscape, with- 
 out hill, rock, or valley, must be the perfection of beauty, 
 seeing that Paradise itself could have furnished nothing 
 better." 
 
 " I hold Milton as higher authority on the subject," said 
 my companion, " than all the philosophers who ever wrote. 
 I Beauty is a tame, unvaried flat, where a man would know 
 his country only by the milestones ! A very Dutch para- 
 dise, truly ! " 
 
 " But would not some of your companions above," I 
 asked, " deem the scene as much an error of nature as 
 Burnet himself? They could pass over these stubborn 
 rocks neither j)lough nor harrow." 
 
 " True," he replied ; " there is a species of small wisdom 
 in the world that often constitutes the extremest of its 
 folly, — a wisdom that would change the entire nature of 
 good-, had it but the power, by vainly endeavoring to ren- 
 der that^ gofld univ ersal. It would convert the entire 
 earth into one vast corn-field, and then find that it had 
 ruined the species by its improvement." 
 
 " We of Scotland can hardly be ruined in that way for 
 an age to come," I said. "But I am not sure that I 
 understand you. Alter the very nature of good in the 
 attempt to render it universal ! How ? " 
 
 " I dare say you have seen a graduated scale," said my 
 companion, " exhibiting the various powers of the difierent 
 musical instruments, and observed how some of limited 
 scope cross only a few of the divisions, and how others 
 stretch nearly from side to side. 'Tis but a poor truism, 
 perhaps, to say that similar differences in scope and power 
 7 
 
74 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 obtain among men, — that there are minds who could not 
 join in the concert of to-night, — who could see neither 
 beauty nor grandeur amid these wild cliffs and caverns, or 
 in that glorious expanse of sea and sky ; and that, on the 
 other hand, there are minds so finely modulated — minds 
 that sweep so broadly across the scale of nature — that 
 there is no object, however minute, no breath of feeling, 
 however faint, that does not awaken their stveet vibrations: 
 the snow-flake falling in the stream, the daisy of the field, 
 the conies of the rock, the hyssop of the wall. Now, the 
 vast and various frame of nature is adapted, not to the 
 lesser, but to the larger mind. It spreads on and around 
 us in all its rich and magnificent variety, and finds the 
 full portraitui'e of its Proteus-like beauty in the mirror of 
 genius alone. Evident, however, as this may seem, we 
 find a sort of levelling principle in the inferior order of 
 minds, and which, in fact, constitutes one of their grand 
 characteristics, — a principle that would fain abridge the 
 scale to their own narrow capabilities, that would cut 
 down the vastness of nature to suit the littleness of their 
 own conceptions and desires, and convert it into one tame, 
 uniform mediocre good, which would be good but to them- 
 selves alone, and ultimately not even that." 
 
 "I think I can now understand you," I said. "Tou de- 
 scribe a sort of swinish wisdom, that would convert the 
 world into one vast stye. For my own part, I have trav- 
 elled far enough to know the value of a blue hill, and 
 would not willingly lose so much as one of these landmarks 
 of our mother land, by which kindly hearts in distant 
 countries love to remember it." 
 
 "I dare say we are getting fanciful," rejoined my com- 
 panion ; " but certainly, in man's schemes of improvement, 
 both physical and moral, there is commonly a littleness 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 75 
 
 and want of adaptation to the general good that almost 
 always defeats his aims. He sees and understands but a 
 minute portion ; it is always some partial good he would 
 introduce ; and thus he but destroys the just proportions 
 of a nicely-regulated system of things, by exaggerating one 
 of the parts. I passed of late through a richly-cultivated 
 district of country, in which the agricultural improver had 
 done his utmost. Never were there finer fields, more 
 convenient steadings, crops of richer promise, a better 
 regulated system of production. Corn and cattle had 
 mightily improved; but what had man, the lord of the soil, 
 become? Is not the body better than food, and life than 
 raiment ? If that decline for which all other things exist, 
 it_^surely matters little that all these other things prosper. 
 And here, thougE tEe corn, the cattle, the fields, the 
 steadings had improved, man had sunk. There are but 
 two classes in the district : a few cold-hearted specula- 
 tors, who united what is worst in the character of ihet 
 landed proprietor and the merchant, — these were young 
 gentleman farmers ; and a class of degraded helots, little 
 superior to the cattle they tended, — these were your 
 farm-servants. And for two such extreme classes — ne- 
 cessary result of such a state of thing — had this unfortu- 
 nate though highly eulogized district parted with a moral, 
 intelligent, high-minded peasantry, — the true boast and 
 true riches of their country." 
 
 "I have, I think, observed something like what you 
 describe," I said. 
 
 " I give," he replied, " but one instance of a thousand. 
 But mark how the sun's lower disk has just reached the 
 line of the horizon, and how the long level rule of light 
 stretches to the very innermost recess of the cave. It 
 darkens as the orb sinks. And see how the gauze-like 
 
76 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 shadows creep on from the sea, film after film ; and now 
 they have reached the ivy that mantles round the castle 
 of the Bruce. Are you acquainted with Barbour ? " 
 
 " Well," I said ; — "a spirited, fine old fellow, who 
 loved his country, and did much for it. I could once 
 repeat all his chosen passages. Do you remember how 
 he describes King Robert's rencounter with the English 
 knight ? " 
 
 My companion sat up erect, and, clenching his fist, 
 began repeating the passage, with a power and animation 
 that seemed to double its inherent energy and force. 
 
 " Glorious old Barbour ! " ejaculated he, when he had 
 finished the description; "many a heart has beat all the 
 higher, when the bale-fires were blazing, through the tu- 
 torage of thy noble verses ! Blind Harry, too, — what has 
 not his country owed to him ! " 
 
 "Ah, they have long since been banished from our pop- 
 ular literature," I said ; " and yet Blind Henry's 'Wallace,' 
 as Hailes tells us, was at one time the very Bible of the 
 Scotch. But love of country seems to be old-fashioned 
 among us ; and Ave have become philosophic enough to set 
 up for citizens of the world," 
 
 "All cold pretense," rejoined my companion, — "an 
 eifeet of that small wisdom we have just been decrying. 
 Cosmopolitism, as we are accustomed to define it, can he 
 no virtue of the present age, nor yet of the next, nor per- 
 haps for centuries to come. Even when it shall have at- 
 tained to its best, and when it may be most safely indulged 
 in, it is according t^ the nature of man that, instead of 
 running counter to the love of country, it should exist as 
 but a wider diffusion of the feeling, and form, as it were, a 
 wider circle round it. It is absurdity itself to oppose the 
 love of our country to that of our race." 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 77 
 
 " Do I rightly understand you ? " I said. " You look 
 forward to a time when the patriot may safely expand 
 into the citizen of the world ; but in the present age he 
 would do well, you think, to confine his energies within 
 the inner circle of the country." 
 
 " Decidedly," he rejoined. "Man should love his species 
 at all times ; but it is ill with him if, in times like the 
 present, he loves not his country more. The spirit of war 
 and aggression is yet abroad ; there are laws to be estab- 
 lished, rights to be defended, invaders to be repulsed, 
 tyrants to be deposed. And who but the patriot is equal 
 to these things ? We are not yet done with the Bruces, 
 the Wallaces, the Tells, the Washingtons, — yes, the 
 Washingtons, whether they fight for or against us, — we 
 are not yet done with them. The cosmopolite is but a 
 puny abortion, — a birth ere the natural time, — that at 
 once endangers the life and betrays the weakness of the 
 country that bears him. . Would that he were sleeping in 
 his elements till his proper time ! But we are getting 
 ashamed of our country, of our language, our manners, our 
 music, our literature ; nor shall we have enough of the old 
 spirit left us to assert our liberties or fight our battles. 
 Oh for some Barbour or Blind Harry of the present day, 
 to make us once more proud of our country ! " 
 
 I quoted the famous saying of Fletcher of Salton, — 
 " Allow me to make the songs of a country, and I will 
 allow you to make its laws." 
 
 " But here," I said, " is our lugger stealing round Turn- 
 berry Head. We shall soon part, perhaps for ever ; and 1 
 would fain know with whom I have spent an hour so 
 agreeably, and have some name to remember him by. My 
 own name is Matthew'Lindsay. I am a native of Irvine." 
 7* 
 
78 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 "And I," said the young man, rising and cordially 
 jrrasping the proffered. hand, "am a native of Ayr. My 
 name is Robert Burns." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 If friendless, low, we meet together, 
 
 Then, Sir, your hand, — my friend and brother. 
 
 Dedication to G. Hamilton. 
 
 A LIGHT breeze had risen as the sun sank, and our lug- 
 ger, with all her sails set, came sweeping along the shore. 
 She had nearly gained the little bay in front of the cave, 
 and the countrymen from above, to the number of perhaps 
 twenty, had descended to the beach, when, all of a sudden, 
 after a shrill Avhistle, and a brief half-minute of commotion 
 among the crew, she wore round and stood out to sea. I 
 turned to the south, and saw a square-rigged vessel shoot- 
 ing out from behind one of the rocky headlands, and then 
 bearing down in a long tack on the smuggler. "The 
 sharks are upon us," said one of the countrymen, whose 
 eyes had turned in the same direction ; " we shall have no 
 sport to-night." We stood lining the beach in anxious 
 curiosity. The breeze freshened as the evening fell; and 
 the lugger, as she lessened to our sight, went leaning 
 agaiilst the foam in a long bright furrow, that, catching 
 the last light of evening, shone like the milky-way amid 
 the blue. Occasion.ally we could see the flash and hear 
 the booming of a gun from the other vessel; but the 
 night fell thick and dark ; the waves, too, began to lash 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BXJRNS. 79 
 
 against the rocks, drowning every feebler sound in a con- 
 tinuous roaring, and every trace of both the chase and the 
 chaser disappeared. The party broke up, and I was left 
 standing alone on the beach, a little nearer home, but in ev- 
 ery other respect in quite the same circumstances as when 
 landed by my American friends on the wild coast of Con- 
 naught. "Another of Fortune's freaks!" I ejaculated; 
 "but 'tis well she can no longer surprise me." 
 
 A man stepped out in the darkness, as I spoke, from 
 beside one of the rocks. It was the peasant Burns, my 
 acquaintance of the earlier part of the evening. 
 
 " I have waited, Mr. Lindsay," he said, " to see whether 
 some of the country folks here, who have homes of their 
 own to invite you to, might not have brought you along 
 with them. But I am afraid you must just be content to 
 pass the night with me. I can give you a share of my 
 bed and my supper; though both, I am aware, need many 
 apologies." I made a suitable acknowledgment, and we 
 ascended the cliif together. " I live, when at home, with 
 my parents," said my companion, " in the inland parish 
 of Tarbolton ; but for the last two months I have attended 
 school here, and lodge with an old widow-woman in the 
 village. To-morrow, as harvest is fast approaching, I 
 return to my father." 
 
 "And I," I replied, "shall have the pleasure of accom- 
 panying you at least the early part of your journey, on 
 my way to Irvine, where my mother still lives." 
 
 We reached the village, and entered a little cottage, that 
 presented its gable to the street and its side to one of the 
 narrower lanes. 
 
 " I must introduce you to my landlady," said my com- 
 panion — " an excellent, kind-hearted old woman, with a 
 fund of honest Scotch pride and shrewd good sense in her 
 
80 TALES a:\'d sketches. 
 
 composition, and with the mother as strong in her heart 
 as ever, tliough she lost the last of her children more than 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 We found the good woman sitting beside a small but 
 very cheerful fire. The hearth was newly swept, and the 
 floor newly sanded ; and, directly fronting her, there was 
 an empty chair, which seemed to have been drawn to its 
 place in the expectation of some one to fill it. 
 
 " You are going to leave me, Robert, my bairn," said 
 the woman, " an' I kenna how I sail ever get on without 
 you. I have almost forgotten, sin' you came to live with 
 me that I have neither children nor husband." On 
 seeing me she stopped short. 
 
 " An acquaintance," said my companion, " whom I 
 have made bold to bring with me for the night ; but you 
 must not put yourself to any trouble, mother; he is, I 
 dare say, as much accustomed to plain fare as myself. 
 Only, however, we must get an additional pint of yiU 
 from the clachan ; you know this is my last evening with 
 you, and was to be a merry one, at any rate." The 
 woman looked me full in the face. 
 
 " Matthew Lindsay ! " she exclaimed, " can you have 
 forgotten your poor old aunt Margaret ! " I grasped her 
 hand. 
 
 "Dearest aunt, this is surely most unexpected! How 
 could I have so much as dreamed you were within a 
 hundred miles of me ? " Mutual congratulation ensued. 
 
 "This," she said, turning to my companion, "is the 
 nephew I have so Often told you about, and so often 
 wished to bring you acquainted with. He is, like yourself; 
 a great reader and a great thinker, and there is no need 
 that your proud, kindly heart should be jealous of him ; 
 for he has been ever quite as poor, and maybe the poorer 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 81 
 
 of the two." After still more of greeting abd congratu- 
 lation, the young man rose. 
 
 " The night is dark, mother," he said, " and the road 
 to the clachan a rough one. Besides, you and your 
 kinsman will have much to say to one another. I shall 
 just slip out to the clachan for you ; and you shall both 
 tell me, on my return, whether I am not a prime judge 
 of ale." 
 
 " The kindest heart, Matthew, that ever lived," said my 
 relative, as he left the house. "Ever since he came to 
 Kirkoswald he has been both son and daughter to me, 
 and I shall feel twice a widow when he goes away." 
 
 "I am mistaken, aunt," I said, "if he be not the 
 Btrongest-minded man I ever saw. Be assured he stands 
 high among the aristocracy of nature, whatever may be 
 thought of Elm in Kirkoswald. There is a robustness of 
 intellect, joined to an overmastering force of character, 
 about him,- which I have never yet seen equalled, though I 
 have been intimate with at least one very superior mind, 
 and with hundreds of the class who pass for men of 
 talent. I have been thinking, ever since I met with him, 
 of the William Tells and William Wallaces of history, men 
 who, in those times of trouble which unfix the foundations 
 of society, step out from their obscurity to rule the destiny/ 
 of nations." 
 
 " I was ill about a month ago," said my relative, — " so 
 very ill that I thought I was to have done with the world 
 altogether ; and Robert was both nurse and physician to 
 me. He kindled my fire, too, every morning, and sat up 
 beside me sometimes for the greater part of the night. 
 What wonder I should love him as my own child ? Had 
 your cousin Henry been spared to me, he would now have 
 been much about Robert's age." 
 
82 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 The conversation passed to other matters; and in about 
 half an hour my new friend entered the room, when we 
 sat down to a homely but cheerful repast. 
 
 " I have been engaged in argument for the last twenty 
 minutes with our parish schoolmaster,'' he said, — "a 
 shrewd, sensible man, and a prime scholar, but one of the 
 most determined Calvinists I ever knew. Now, there is 
 something, Mr. Lindsay, in abstract Calvinism that dis- 
 satisfies and distresses me ; and yet, I must confess, there 
 is so much of good in the working of the system, that I 
 would ill like to see it supplanted by any other. I am 
 convinced, for instance, there is nothing so efficient in 
 teaching the bulk of a people to think as a Calvinistic 
 church." 
 
 "Ah, Robert," said my aunt, "it does meikle mair nor 
 that. Look round you, my bairn, an' see if there be a 
 kirk in wliich puir sinful creatures have mair comfort in 
 their sufferings, or mair hope in their deaths." 
 
 " Dear mother," said my companion, " I like well 
 enough to dispute with the 'schoolmaster, but I must have 
 no dispute with you. I know the heart is everything in 
 these matters, and yours is much wiser than mine." 
 
 " There is something in abstract Calvinism," he con- 
 tinued, " that distresses me. In almost all our researches, 
 we arrive at an ultimate barrier which interposes its wall 
 of darkness between us and the last grand truth in the 
 series, which we had trusted was to prove a master-key to 
 the whole. We dwell in a sort of Goshen : there is light 
 in our immediate neighborhood, and a more than Egyp- 
 tian darkness all around ; and as every Hebrew must save 
 known that the hedge of cloud which he saw resting on 
 the landscape was a boundary, not to things themselves, 
 but merely to his view of things, — for beyond there 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BUKNS. 83 
 
 were cities and plains and oceans and continents, — so we 
 in like manner must know that the barriers of which I speak 
 exist only in relation to the faculties which we employ, not 
 to the objects on which we employ them. And yet, not- 
 withstanding this consciousness that we are necessarily and 
 irremediably the bound prisoners of ignorance, and that all 
 the great tniths. lie outside our prison, we can almost be 
 content that in most cases it should be so ; not, however, 
 with regard to those great unattainable truths which lie in 
 the track of Calvinism. They seem too important to be 
 wanted, and yet want them we must ; and we beat our 
 very heads against the cruel barrier which separates us 
 from them." 
 
 "I~am afraid I hardly understand you," I said. "Do 
 assist me by some instance or illustration." 
 
 " You are acquainted," he replied, " with the Scripture 
 doctrine of predestination ; and, in thinking over it in 
 connection with the destinies of man, it must have struck 
 you that, however much it may interfere with our fixed 
 notions of the goodness of Deity, it is thoroughly in 
 accordance with the actual condition of our race. As far 
 as we can know of ourselves and the things around us, 
 there seems, through the will of Deity, — for to what 
 else can we refer it ? — a fixed, invariable connection 
 between what we term cause and effect. Nor do we 
 demand of any class of mere effects, in the inanimate or 
 irrational world, that they should regulate themselves 
 otherwise than the causes which produce them have de- 
 termined. The roe and the tiger pursue, unquestioned, 
 the instincts of their several natures ; the cork rises, and 
 the stone sinks ; and no one thinks of calling either to 
 account for movements so opposite. But it is not so with 
 the family of man ; and yet our minds, our bodies, our 
 
84 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 circumstances are but combinations of effects, over the 
 causes of which we have no control. We did not choose 
 a country for ourselves, nor yet a condition in life ; nor 
 did we determine our modicum of intellect, or our amount 
 of passion ; we did not impart its gravity to the weightier 
 part of our nature, or. give expansion to the lighter ; 
 nor are our instincts of our own planting. How, then, 
 being thus as much the creatures of necessity as the 
 denizens of the wild and forest, — as thoroughly under 
 the agency of fixed, unalterable causes as the dead 
 matter around us, — why are we yet the sul4iects__of a 
 retributive system, and accountable for all_aiiCS.ctions ? " 
 
 " You quarrel with Calvinism," I said ; " and seem one 
 of the most thoroughgoing necessitarians I ever knew." 
 
 "Not so," he replied. "Though my judgment cannot 
 disprove these conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in 
 them ; though I see that I am as certainly the subject of 
 laws that exist and operate independent of my will as the 
 dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as 
 great, that I am a ,fr«e, accauntable ereaturei - It is accord- 
 , ing to the scope of my entire reason that I should deem 
 myself bound ; it is according to the constitution of my 
 whole nature that I should feel myself free. And in this 
 consists the great, the fearful problem, — a problem which 
 both reason and revelation propound ; but the truths which 
 can alone solve it seem to lie beyond the horizon of dark- 
 ness, and we vex ourselves in vain. 'Tis a sort of moral 
 asymptote ; but its lines, instead of approaching through all 
 space without meeting, seem receding through all space 
 and yet meet." 
 
 " Robert, my bairn," said my aunt, " I fear you are 
 wasting your strength on these mysteries, to your ain 
 hurt. Did ye no see, in the last storm, when ye staid 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 85 
 
 out among the caves till cock-crow, that the bigger and 
 stronger the wave, the mair was it broken against the 
 rocks ? It's just thus wi' the pride o' man's understand- 
 ing, when he measures it against the dark things o' God. 
 An' yet, it's sae ordered that the same wonderful truths 
 which perplex an' cast down the proud reason, should 
 delight an' comfort the humble heart. I am a lone, puir 
 woman, Robert. Bairns and husband have gone down to 
 the grave, one by one ; an' now, for twenty weary years, 
 I have been childless an' a widow. But trow ye that the 
 puir lone woman wanted a guard, an' a comforter, an' a 
 provider, through a' the lang mirk nichts and a' the cauld 
 scarce winters o' these twenty years ? No, my bairn ; I 
 kent that Himsel' was wi' me. I kent it by the provision 
 He made, an' the care He took, an' the joy He gave. An' 
 how, think you, did He comfort me maist ? Just by the 
 blessed assurance that a' ray trials an' a' my sorrows were 
 nae hasty chance matters, but dispensations for my gude 
 and the gude o' those He took, to Himsel' ; that, in the 
 perfect love and wisdom o' his nature, He had ordained 
 frae the beginning." 
 
 " Ah, mother," said my friend, after a pause, " you un- 
 derstand the doctrine fer better than I do. There are, I 
 find, no contradictions in the Calvinism of the heart." 
 8 
 
86 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ayr, gurgling, kissed Ms pebbled shore, 
 
 O'erhung with wild woods thick'ning green ; 
 The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar 
 
 Twined, amorous, round the raptured scene; 
 The flowers sprang wanton to be prest. 
 
 The birds sang lore on every spray, 
 Till too, too soon, the glowing west 
 
 Proclaimed the speed of winged day. 
 
 To Makt in Heaven. 
 
 Wb were early on the road together. The day, though 
 somewhat gloomy, was mild and pleasant ; and we walked 
 slowly onward, neither of us in the least disposed to 
 hasten our parting by hastening our journey. We had 
 discussed fifty difiFerent topics, and were prepared to enter 
 on fifty more, when we reached the ancient burgh of Ayr, 
 where our roads separated. 
 
 "I have taken an immense liking to you, Mr. Lindsay," 
 said my companion, as he seated himself on the parapet 
 of the old bridge, " and have just bethought me of a 
 scheme through which I may enjoy your company for at 
 least one night more. The Ayr is a lovely river, and you 
 tell me you have never explored it. We shall explore it 
 together this evening for about ten miles, when we shall 
 find ourselves at the farm-house of Lochlea. Tou may 
 depend on a hearty welcome from my father, whom, by 
 the way, I wish much to introduce to you, as a man worth 
 your knowing ; and as I have set my heart on the scheme. 
 
EECOLLECTIOKS OF BURNS. 87 
 
 you are surely too good-natured to disappoint me." Lit- 
 tle risk of that, I thought. I had, in fact, become thor- 
 oughly enamored of the warm-hearted benevolence and 
 fascinating conversation of my companion, and acquiesced 
 with the best good-will in the world. 
 
 We had threaded the course of the river for several 
 miles. It runs through a wild pastoral valley, roughened 
 by thickets of copsewood, and bounded on either hand by 
 a line of swelling, moory hills, with here and there a few 
 irregular patches of corn, and here and there some little 
 nest-like cottage peeping out from among the wood. The 
 clouds, which during the morning had obscured the entire 
 face of the heavens, were breaking up their array, and the 
 sun was looking down in twenty different places through 
 the openings, checkering the landscape with a fantastic 
 though lovely carpeting of light and shadow. Before us 
 there rose a thick wood, on a jutting promontory, that 
 looked blue and dark in the shade, as if it wore mourning; 
 while the sunlit stream beyond shone through the trunks 
 and branches like a river of fire. At length the clouds 
 seemed to have melted in the blue, — for there was not a 
 breath of wind to speed them away, — and the sun, now 
 hastening to the west, shone in unbroken effulgence over 
 the wide extent of the dell, lighting up stream and wood 
 and field and cottage in one continuous blaze of glory. 
 We had walked on in silence for the last half-hour; but I 
 could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he 
 went ; and when, in passing through a thicket of haw- 
 thorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet 
 that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear 
 him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, " Bonny, bonny 
 birdie ! why hasten frae me ? I wadna skaith a feather 
 
88 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 o' j'er wing." He turned round to me, and I could see 
 that his eyes were swimming in moisture. 
 
 "Can he be other," he said, " than a good and benevo- 
 lent God who gives us moments like these to enjoy ? 0, 
 my friend ! without these sabbaths of the soul, that come 
 to refresh and invigorate it, it would dry up within us ! 
 How exquisite," he continued, " how entire, the sympathy 
 which exists between all that is good and fair in external 
 nature and all of good and fair that dwells in our own ! 
 And oh, how the heart expands and lightens ! The 
 world is as a grave to it, a closely-covered grave ; and 
 it shrinks and deadens and contracts all its holier and 
 more joyous feelings under the cold, earth-like pressure. 
 But amid the grand and lovely of nature, — amid these 
 forms and colors of i-ichest beauty, — there is a disin- 
 terment, a resurrection, of sentiment; the pressure of our 
 earthly part seems removed ; and those senses of the 
 mind, if I may so speak, which serve to connect our spirits 
 with the invisible world around us, recover their proper 
 tone, and perform their proper office." 
 
 " Senses of the mind ! " I said, repeating the phrase ; 
 " the idea is new to me ; but I think I can catch your 
 meaning." 
 
 " Tes ; there are, there must be such," he continued, 
 with growing enthusiasm. " Man is essentially a reli- 
 gious creature, a looker beyond the grave, from the very 
 constitution of his mind ; and the sceptic who denies it is 
 untrue not merely to the Being who has made and who 
 preserves hira, but to the entire scope and bent of his 
 own nature besides. Wherever man is, — whether he be 
 a wanderer of the wild forest or still wilder desert, — a 
 dweller in some lone isle of the sea, or the tutored and 
 full-minded denizen of some blessed land like our own ; — 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 89 
 
 wherever man is, there is religion ; hopes that loolc for- 
 ward and upward ; the belief in an unending existence 
 and a land of separate souls." 
 
 I was carried away by the enthusiasm of my companion, 
 and felt for the time as if my mind had become the mirror 
 of his. There seems to obtain among men a species of 
 moral gravitation, analogous in its principles to that 
 which regulates and controls the movements of the 
 planetary system. The larger and more ponderous any 
 body, the greater its attractive force, and the more over- 
 powering its influence over the lesser bodies which 
 surround it. The earth we inhabit carries the moon 
 along with it in its course, and is itself subject to the 
 immensely more powerful influence of the sun. And 'it 
 is thus with character. It is a law of. our nature, as 
 certainly as of the system we inhabit, that the infe- 
 rior should yield to the superior, and the lesser owe its 
 guidance to the greater. I had hitherto wandered on 
 through life almost unconscious of the existence of this 
 law ; or, if occasionally rendered half aware of it, it was 
 only through a feeling that some secret influence was 
 operating favorably in my behalf on the common minds 
 around me. I now felt, however, for the first time, that 
 I had come in contact with a mind immeasurably more 
 powerful than my own. My thoughts seemed to cast 
 themselves into the very mould, my sentiments to mod- 
 ulate themselves by the very tone, of his. And yet 
 he was but a russet-clad peasant, — my junior by at 
 least eight years, — who was returning from school to 
 assist his father, an humble tacksman, in the labors of 
 the approaching harvest. But the law of cii-curastance, 
 so arbitrary in ruling the destinies of common men, 
 exerts but feeble control over the children of genius. 
 8* 
 
90 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 The prophet went forth commissioned by heaven to 
 anoint a king over Israel ; and the choice fell on a 
 shepherd-boy, who was tending his father's flocks in the 
 field. 
 
 We had reached a lovely bend of the stream. There 
 was a semicircular inflection in the steep bank, which 
 waved over us, from base to summit, with hawthorn and 
 hazel ; and while one half looked blue and dark in the 
 shade, the other was lighted up with gorgeous and fiery 
 splendor by the sun, now fast sinking in the west. The 
 eflTect seemed magical. A little glassy platform, that 
 stretched between the hanging wood and the stream, was 
 whitened over with clothes, that looked like snow-wreaths 
 in the hollow ; and a young . and beautiful girl watched 
 beside them. 
 
 "Mary Campbell!" exclaimed my companion; and in 
 a moment he was at her side, and bad grasped both 
 her hands in his. " How fortunate, how very fortunate 
 I am!" he said; "I could not have so much as hoped to 
 have seen you to-night, and yet here you are ! This, Mr. 
 Lindsay, is a loved friend of mine, whom I have known 
 and valued for years, — ever, indeed, since we herded our 
 sheep together under the cover of one plaid. Dearest 
 Mary, I have had sad forebodings regarding you for the 
 whole last month I was in Kirkoswald; and yet, after all 
 my foolish fears, here you are, ruddier and bonnier than 
 ever.'' 
 
 She was, in truth, a beautiful, sylph-like young woman, 
 — one whom I would have looked at with complacency 
 in any circumstances ; for who that admires the fair and 
 lovely in nature, whether it be the wide-spread beauty 
 of sky and earth, or beauty in its minuter modifications, 
 as we see in the flowers that spring up at our feet, or the 
 
KECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 91 
 
 butterfly that flutters over them, — who, I say, that ad- 
 mires the fair and lovely iu nature, can be indifierent to 
 the fairest and loveliest of all her productions ? As the 
 mistress, however, of by far the strongest-minded man I 
 ever knew, there was more of scrutiny in my glance than 
 usual, and I felt a deeper interest in her than mere beauty 
 could have awakened. She was perhaps rather below 
 than above the middle size, but formed in such admirable 
 proportion that it seemed out of place to think of size in 
 reference to her at all. "Who, in looking at the Venus de 
 Medicis, asks whether she be tall or short ? The bust and 
 neck were so exquisitely moulded that they reminded me of 
 Burke's fanciful remark, viz. that our ideas of beauty orig- 
 inate in our love of the sex, and that we deem every object 
 beautiful which is described by soft waving lines, resem- 
 bling those of the female neck and bosom. Her feet and 
 arms, which were both bare, had a statue-like symmetry 
 and marble-like whiteness. But it was on her expressive 
 and lovely countenance, now lighted up by the glow of 
 joyous feeling, that nature seemed to have exhausted her 
 utmost skill. There was a fascinating mixture in the ex- 
 pression of superior intelligence and child-like simplicity; 
 a soft, modest light dwelt in the blue eye ; and in the en- 
 tire contour and general form of the features there was a 
 nearer approach to that union of the straight and the 
 rounded — which is found in its perfection in only the 
 Grecian face — than is at all common, in our northern lat- 
 itudes, among the descendants of either the Celt or the 
 Saxon. I felt, however, as I gazed, that, when lovers meet, 
 the presence of a third person, however much the friend of 
 either, must always be less than agreeable. 
 
 "Mr. Burns," I said, "there is a beautiful eminence a 
 few hundred yards to the right, from which I am desirous 
 
92 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 to overlook the windings of the streani. Do pernait me to 
 leave you for a short half-hour, when I shall return ; or, 
 lest I weary you by my stay, 'twere better, perhaps, you 
 should join me there." My companion greeted the pro- 
 posal with a good-humored smile of intelligence ; and, 
 plunging into the wood, I left him with his Mary. The 
 sun had just set as he joined me. 
 
 " Have you ever been in love, Mr. Lindsay?" he said. 
 
 " No, never seriously," I replied. " I am perhaps not 
 naturally of the coolest temperament imaginable, but the 
 same fortune that has improved my mind in some little 
 degree, and given me 'high notions of the sex, has hitherto 
 thrown me among only its less superior specimens. I am 
 now in my eight-and-twentieth year, and I have not yet 
 met with a woman whom I could love." 
 
 "Then you are yet a stranger," he rejoined, "to the 
 greatest happiness of which our nature is capable. I have 
 enjoyed more heartfelt pleasure in the company of the 
 young woman I have just left, than from every other 
 source that has been opened to me from my childhood till 
 now. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the whole 
 law." 
 
 "Mary Campbell, did you not call her? " I said. " She 
 is, I think, the loveliest creature I have ever seen ; and I 
 am much mistaken in the expression of her beauty if her 
 mind be not as lovely as her person." 
 
 " It is, it is ! " he exclaimed, — " the intelligence of an 
 angel, with the simplicity of a child. Oh, the delight of 
 being thoroughly trusted, thoroughly beloved, by one of 
 the loveliest, best, purest-minded of all God's good crea- 
 tures ! to feel that heart beating against my own, and to 
 know that it beats for me only ! Never have I passed an 
 evening with ray Mary without returning to the world a 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF EXJRNS. 93 
 
 better, gentler, wiser man. Love, my friend, is the fulfil- 
 ling of the whole law. What are we without it ? — poor, 
 vile, selfish animals ; our very virtues themselves so exclu- 
 sively virtues on our own behalf as to be well-nigh as 
 hateful as our vices. Nothing so opens and improves the 
 heart ; nothing so widens the grasp of the affections ; 
 nothing half so effectually brings us out of our crust of 
 self, as a happy, well-regulated love for a pure-minded, 
 affectionate-hearted woman ! " 
 
 " There is another kind of love of which we sailors see 
 somewhat," I said, " which is not so easily associated with 
 good." 
 
 "Love ! " he replied. "No, Mr. Lindsay, that is not the 
 name. Kind associates with kind in all nature ; and love 
 — humanizing, heart-softening love — cannot be the com- 
 panion of whatever is low, mean, worthless, degrading, — 
 the associate of ruthless dishonor, cunning, treachery, and 
 violent death. Even independent of its amount of evil as 
 a crime, or the evils still greater than itself which necessa- 
 rily accompany it, there is nothing that so petrifies the 
 feeling as illicit connection." 
 
 " Do you seriously think so ? " I asked. 
 
 " Yes ; and I see clearly how it should be so. Neither 
 sex is complete of itself; each was made for the other, 
 that, like the two halves of a hinge, they may become an 
 entire whole when united. Only think of the Scriptural 
 phrase, '■^ one flesh" : it is of itself a system of philosophy. 
 Refinement and tenderness are of the woman ; strength 
 and dignity of the man. Only observe the effects of a 
 thorough separation, whetlier originating in accident . or 
 caprice. You will find the stronger sex lost in the rude- 
 nesses of partial barbarism ; the gentler wrapt np in some 
 pitiful round of trivial and unmeaning occupation, — dry- 
 
94 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 nursing puppies, or making pin-cushions for posterity. 
 But how much more pitiful are the eflfects when they meet 
 amiss ; when the humanizing friend and companion of 
 the man is converted into the light, degraded toy of an 
 idle hour, the object of a sordid appetite that lives but 
 for a moment, and then expires in loathing and disgust ! 
 The better feelings are iced over at their source, chilled 
 by the freezing and deadening contact, where there is noth- 
 ing to inspire confidence or solicit esteem ; and if these 
 pass not through the first, the inner circle, that circle 
 within which the social aifections are formed, and from 
 whence they emanate, — how can they possibly flow through 
 the circles which lie beyond ? But here, Mr. Lindsay, is the 
 farm of Lochlea; and yonder brown cottage, beside the 
 three elms, is the dwelling of my parents." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
 That makes her loved at home, revered abroad. 
 
 Cotter's Saturday Night. 
 
 There was a wide and cheerful circle this evening 
 round the hospitable hearth of Lochlea. The father of 
 my friend — a patriarchal-looking old man, with a counte- 
 nance the most expressive I have almost ever seen — sat 
 beside the w.ill, on a large oaken settle, which also 
 served to accommodate a young man, an occasional visitor 
 of the family, dressed in rather shabby black, whom I at 
 once set down as a probationer of divinity. I had my 
 
IIECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 96 
 
 own seat beside him. The bi-other of my friend — a lad 
 cast in nearly the same mould of form and feature, except 
 perhaps that his frame, though muscular and strongly set, 
 seemed in the main less formidably robust, and his coun- 
 tenance, though expressive, less decidedly intellectual — sat 
 at my side. My friend had drawn in his seat beside his 
 mother, — a well-formed, comely brunette, of about thirty- 
 eight, whom I might almost have mistaken for his older 
 sister, — and two or three younger members, of the family 
 were grouped behind her. The fire blazed cheerily within 
 the wide and open chimney, and, throwing its strong light 
 on the faces and limbs of the circle, sent our shadows 
 flickering across the rafters and the wall behind. The 
 conversation was animated and rational, and every one 
 contributed his share. But I was chiefly interested in the 
 remarks of the old man, for whom I already felt a growing 
 veneration, and in those of his wonderfully gifted son. 
 
 " Unquestionably, Mr. Burns," said the man in black, 
 addressing the farmer, " politeness is but a very shadow, 
 as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw to- 
 night, in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption 
 of the lack of that natural affection of which politeness is 
 but the portraiture and semblance, that, truly, I have been 
 grieved in my heart ever since." 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Murdoch," said the farmer, "there is ever 
 more hypocrisy in the world than in the church, and that, 
 too, among the class of fine- gentlemen and fine ladies who 
 deny it most. But the instance" — 
 
 " You know the family, my worthy friend," continued 
 Mr. Murdoch ; " it is a very pretty one, as we say vernac- 
 ularly, being numerous, and the sons highly genteel young 
 men — the daughters not less so. A neighbor of the 
 same very polite character, coming on a visit when I was 
 
96 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 among them, asked the father, in the course of the con- 
 versation to which I was privy, how he meant to dispose 
 of his sons; when the father replied that he had not yet 
 determined. The visitor said that, were he in his place, 
 seeing they were all well-educated young men, he would 
 send them abroad; to which the father objected the indu- 
 bitable fact that many young men lost their health in 
 foreign countries, and very many their lives. ' True,' did 
 the visitor rejoin ; 'but, as you have a number of sons, it 
 will be strange if some one of them does not live and 
 make a fortune.' Now, Mr. Burns, what will you, who 
 know the feelings of paternity, and the incalculable, and 
 assuredly I may say invaluable value of human souls, 
 think when I add, that the father commended the hint, as 
 showing the wisdom of a shrewd man of the world ! " 
 
 " Even the chief priests," said the old man, " pro- 
 nounced it unlawful to cast into the treasury the thirty 
 pieces of silver, seeing it was the price of blood ; but the 
 gentility of the present day is less scrupulous. There is a 
 laxity of principle among us, Mi-. Murdoch, that, if God re- 
 store us not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say 
 laxity of principle ; for there have ever been evil manners 
 among us, and waifs in no inconsiderable number broken 
 loose from the decencies of society, — more, perhaps, in 
 my early days than there are now. But our principles, 
 at least, were sound ; and not only was there thus a 
 restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what 
 was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like 
 that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the 
 good and the evil, — a gulf which, when it secured the 
 better class from contamination, interposed no barrier to 
 the reformation and return of even the most vile and 
 profligate, if repentant. But this gulf has disappeared, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP BURNS. 97 
 
 and we are standing unconcernedly over it, on a hollo-w- 
 and dangerous marsh of neutral ground, -which, in the end, 
 if God open not our eyes, must assuredly give way under 
 our feet." 
 
 " To -what, father," inquired my friend, who sat listen- 
 ing with the deepest and most respectful attention, " do 
 you attribute the change ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly," replied the old man, " there have been 
 many causes at work ; and though not impossible, it 
 would certainly be no easy task to trace them all to their 
 several e-ffects, and give to each its due place and impor- 
 tance. But there is a deadly evil among us, though you will 
 hear of it from neither press nor pulpit, which I am dis- 
 posed to rank first in the number, — the affectation of gen- 
 tility. It has a threefold influence anftng us : it confounds 
 the grand, eternal distinctions of right and wrong, by 
 erecting into a standard of conduct and opinion that hete- 
 rogeneous and artificial whole which constitutes the man- 
 ners and morals of the upper classes ; it severs those ties 
 of affection and good-will which should bind the middle to 
 the lowers orders, by disposing the one to regard what- 
 ever is below them with a too contemptuous indifference, 
 and by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural 
 jealousy in the other, for being so regarded ; and, finally, 
 by leading those who most entertain it into habits of ex- 
 pense, — torturing their means, if I may so spcnl:, on the 
 rack of false opinion, disposing them to think, in their 
 blindness, that to be genteel is a first consideration, and 
 to be honest merely a secondary one, — it has the effect of 
 so hardening their hearts that, like those Carthagenians of 
 whom we have been lately reading in the volume Mr. 
 Murdoch lent us, they offer up their very children, souls 
 9 
 
98 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 and bodies, to the unreal, phantom-like necessities of their 
 circumstances." 
 
 " Have 1 not heard you remark, father," said Gilbert, 
 " that the change you describe has been very marked 
 among the ministers of our church ? " 
 
 " Too marked and too striking," replied the old man ; 
 " and, in affecting the respectability and usefulness of so 
 important a class, it has educed a cause of deterioration 
 distinct from itself, and hardly less formidable. There is 
 an old proverb of our country, ' Better the head of the 
 commonalty than the tail of the gentry.' I have heard 
 you quote it, Robert, oftener than once, and admire its 
 homely wisdom. Now, it bears directly on what I have 
 to remark : the ministers of our church have moved but 
 one step during thS last sixty years ; but that step has 
 been an all-important one. It has been from the best 
 place in relation to the people, to the worst in relation to 
 the aristocracy." 
 
 " Undoubtedly, worthy Mr. Burns," said Mr. Murdoch. 
 "There is great truth, according to mine own experience, 
 in that which you affirm. I may state, I trust without 
 over-boasting or conceit, my respected friend, that ray 
 learning is not inferior to that of our neighbor the clergy- 
 man ; — it is not inferior in Latin, nor in Greek, nor yet 
 in French literature, Mr. Burns, and probable it is he 
 would not much court a competition ; and yet, when I 
 last waited at the Manse regarding a necessary and essen- 
 tial certificate, Mr. Burns, he did not as much as ask me 
 to sit down." 
 
 " Ah," said Gilbert, who seemed the wit of the family, 
 " he is a highly respectable man, Mr. Murdoch. He has a 
 fine house, fine furniture, fine carpets, — all that consti- 
 tutes respectability, you know ; and his family is on visit- 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 99 
 
 iug terms with that of the Laird. But his credit is not so 
 res[)ectable, I hear." 
 
 " Gilbert,'' said the old man, with much seriousness, " it 
 is ill with a people when they can speak lightly of their 
 clergymen. There is still much of sterling worth and se- 
 rious piety in the Church of Scotland ; and if the influ- 
 ence of its ministers be unfortunately less than it was 
 once, we must not cast the blame too exclusively on them- 
 selves. Other causes have been in operation. The 
 church eighty years ago was the sole guide of opinion, 
 and the only source of thought among us. There was, 
 indeed, but one way in which a man could learn to think. 
 His mind became the subject of some serious impression ; 
 he applied to his Bible ; and, in the contemplation of the 
 most important of all concerns, his newly-awakened facul- 
 ties received their first exercise. All of intelligence, all 
 of moral good in him, all that rendered him worthy of 
 the name of man, he owed to the ennobling influence of 
 his church ; and is it wonder that that influence should 
 be all-powerful from this circumstance alone ? But a 
 thorough change has taken place ; — new sources of intel- 
 ligence have been opened up ; we have our newspapers 
 and our magazines, and our volumes of miscellaneous 
 reading ; and it is now possible enough for the most culti- 
 vated mind in a parish to be the least moral and the least 
 religious ; and hence, necessarily, a diminished influence in 
 the church, independent of the character of its ministers." 
 
 I have dwelt too long, perhaps, on the conversation of the 
 elder Burns ; but I feel much pleasure in thus develop- 
 ing, as it were, my recollections of one whom his powerful- 
 minded son has described — and this after an acquaint- 
 ance with our Henry M'Kenzies, Adam Smiths, and Du- 
 gald Stewarts — as the man most thoroughly acquainted 
 
100 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 with the world he ever knew. Never, at least, have I met 
 with any one who exerted a more wholesome influence, 
 through the force of moral character, on those around 
 him. We sat down to a plain and homely supper. The 
 slave question had about this time begun to draw the at- 
 tention of a few of the more excellent and intelligent 
 among the people, and the elder Burns seemed deeply 
 interested in it. 
 
 " This is but horiiely fare, Mr. Lindsay," he said, point- 
 ing to the simple viands before us, " and the apologists of 
 slavery among us would tell you how inferior we are to 
 the poor negroes, who fare so much better. But surely 
 'man does not live by bread alone!' Our fathers who 
 died for Christ on the hill-side and the scaffold were 
 noble men, and never, never shall slavery produce such; 
 and yet they toiled as hard, and fared as meanly, as we 
 their children." 
 
 I could feel, in the cottage of such a peasant, and seated 
 beside such men as his two sons, the full force of the remark. 
 And yet I have heard the miserable sophism of unprinci- 
 pled power against which it is -directed — a sophism so 
 insulting to the dignity of honest poverty — a thousand 
 times repeated. 
 
 Supper over, the family circle widened round the 
 hearth ; and the old man, taking down a large clasped 
 Bible, seated himself beside the iron lamp which now 
 lighted the apartment. There was deep silence among us 
 as he turned over the leaves. Never shall I forget his 
 appearance. He was tall and thin, and, though his frame 
 was still vigorous, considerably bent. His features were 
 high and massy ; the complexion still retained much of 
 the freshness of youth, and the eye all its intelligence; 
 but his locks were waxing thin and gray round his high, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 101 
 
 tbougttfal forehead, and the upper part of the head, which 
 was elevated to an unusual height, was bald. There was 
 an expression of the deepest seriousness on the countenance 
 which the strong umbry shadows of the apartment served 
 to heighten ; and when, laying his hand on the page, he 
 half-turned his face to the circle, and said, " Let us wor- 
 ship God," I was impressed by a feeling of awe and rever- 
 ence to which I had, alas! been a stranger for years. I 
 was affected, too, almost to tears, as I joined in the psalm; 
 for a thousand half-forgotten associations came rushing 
 upon me ; and my heart seemed to swell and expand as, 
 kneeling beside him when he prayed, I listened to his sol- 
 emn and fervent petition that God might make manifest 
 his power and goodness in the salvation of man. Nor 
 was the poor solitary wanderer of the deep forgotten. 
 
 On rising from our devotions, the old man grasped me 
 by the hand. "I am happy," he said, "that we should 
 have met, Mr. Lindsay. I feel an interest in you, and 
 must take the friend and the old man's privilege of 
 giving you an advice. The sailor, of all men, stands most 
 in need of religion. His life is one of continued vicissi- 
 tude, of unexpected success or unlooked-for misfortune; 
 he is ever passing from danger to safety, and from safety 
 to danger ; his dependence is on the ever-varying winds, 
 his abode on the unstable waters. And the mind takes 
 a peculiar tone from what is peculiar in the circumstances. 
 With nothing stable in the real world around it on 
 which it may rest, it forms a resting-place for itself in 
 some wild code of belief. It peoples the elements with 
 strange occult powers of good and evil, and does them 
 homage, — addressing its prayers to the genius of the 
 winds and the spirits of the waters. And thus it begets 
 a religion for itself; for what else is the professional 
 9» 
 
102 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 etiperstition of the sailor ? Substitute, my friend, for this 
 — shall I call it unavoidable superstition ? — this natural 
 religion of the sea, the religion of the Bible. Since you 
 must be a believer in the supernatural, let your belief 
 be true ; let your trust be on Him who faileth not, your 
 anchor within the vail ; and all shall be well, be your 
 destiny for this world what it may." 
 
 We parted for the night, and I saw him no more. 
 
 Next morning Robert accompanied me for several miles 
 on my way. I saw, for the last half-hour, that he had 
 something to communicate, and yet knew not how to set 
 about it ; and so I made a full stop. 
 
 "You have something to tell me, Mr. Burns," I said. 
 " Need I assure you I am one you are in no danger from 
 trusting ? " He blushed deeply, and I saw him, for the 
 first time, hesitate and falter in his address. 
 
 " Forgive me," he at length said ; " believe me, Mr. 
 Lindsay, I would be the last in the world to hurt the 
 feelings of a friend, — a — a — but you have been left 
 among us penniless, and I have a very little money which 
 I have no use for, none in the least. Will you not favor 
 me by accepting it as a loan ? " 
 
 I felt the full and generous delicacy of the proposal, 
 and, with moistened eyes and a swelling heart, availed 
 myself of his kindness. The sum he tendered did not 
 much exceed a guinea ; but the yearly earnings of the 
 peasant Burns fell, at this period of his life, rather below 
 eight pounds. 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 103 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Corbies an' clergy are a shot right kittle. 
 
 Bbigs of Ayr. 
 
 The years passed, and I was again a dweller on the 
 sea; but the ill-fortune which had hitherto tracked me 
 like a bloodhound, seemed at length as if tired in the pur- 
 suit, and I was now the master of a West India trader, 
 and had begun to lay the foundation of that competency 
 which has secured to my declining years the quiet and 
 comfort which, for the latter part of my life, it has been 
 my happiness to enjoy. My vessel had arrived at Liver- 
 pool in the latter part of the year 1784; a nd I had taken 
 coach for Irvine, to visit my mother, whom I had not 
 seen for several years. There was a change of passengers 
 at every stage ; but I saw little in any of them to interest 
 me till within about a score of miles of my destination, 
 when I met with an old respectable townsman, a friend 
 of my father's. There was but another passenger in the 
 coach, a north-country gentleman from the West Indies. 
 I had many questions to ask my townsman, and many to 
 answer, and the time passed lightly away. 
 
 " Can you tell me aught of the Burnses of Lochlea ? " 
 I inquired, after learning that my mother and my other 
 relatives were well. " I met with the young man Robert 
 about five years ago, and have often since asked my- 
 self what special end Providence could have in view in 
 making such a man." 
 
104 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " I -was acquainted with old William Burns," said my 
 companion, " when he was gardener at Denholm, an' got 
 intimate wi' his son JRobert when he lived wi' us at Irvine 
 a twalmonth syne. The faither died shortly ago, sairly 
 straitened in his means, I'm fear'd, an' no very square wi' 
 the laird ; an' ilUwad he hae liked that, for an honester 
 man never breathed. Robert, puir chield, is no very easy 
 either." 
 
 " In his circumstances ? " I said. 
 
 "Ay, an waur. He gat entangled wi' the kirk on an 
 unlucky sculduddery business, an' has been writing bitter 
 wicked ballads on a' the gude ministers in the countiy 
 ever sinsyne. I'm vexed it's on them he suld hae fallen ; 
 an' yet they hae been to blame too." 
 
 " Robert Burns so entangled, so occupied ! " I ex- 
 claimed ; " you grieve and astonish me." 
 
 " We are puir creatures, Matthew," said the old man ; 
 " strength an' weakness are often next-door neighbors in 
 the best o' us; nay, what is our vera strength ta'en on the 
 a'e side, may be our vera weakness ta'en on the ither. 
 Never was there a stancher, firmer fallow than Robert 
 Burns ; an', now that he has ta'en a wrang step, puir 
 chield, that vera stanchness seems just a weak want o' 
 ability to yield. He has planted his foot where it lighted 
 by mishanter, and a' the gude an' ill in Scotland wadna 
 budge him frae the spot." 
 
 '' Dear me ! that so powerful a mind should be so friv- 
 olously engaged ! Making ballads, you say ? With what 
 success ? " 
 
 " Ah, Matthew, lad, when the strong man puts out his 
 strength," said my companion, " there's naething frivolous 
 in the matter, be his object what it may. Robert's ballads 
 are far, far aboon the best things ever seen in Scotland 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 105 
 
 afore. We auld folk dinna ken whether maist to blame 
 or praise them ; but they keep the young people laughing - 
 frae the a'e nuik o' the shire till the ither." 
 
 "But how," I inquired, "have the better clergy ren- 
 dered themselves obnoxious to Burns ? The laws he has 
 violated, if I rightly understand you, are indeed severe, 
 and somewhat questionable in their tendencies ; and even 
 good men often press them too far." 
 
 " And in the case of Robert," said the old man, " our 
 clergy have been strict to the very letter. They're gude 
 men, an' faithfu' ministers ; but ane o' them at least, an' he 
 a leader, has a harsh, ill temper, an' mistakes sometimes 
 the corruption o' the auld man in him for the proper 
 zeal o' the new ane. Nor is there ony o' the ithers wha 
 kent what they had to deal wi' when Robert cam' afore 
 them. They saw but a proud, thrawart ploughman, that 
 stood uncow'ring under the glunsh o' a haill session ; and 
 so they opened on him the artillery o' the kirk, to bear 
 down his pride. Wha could hae tauld them that they 
 were but frushing their straw an' rotten wood against the 
 iron scales o' Leviathan ? An' now that they hae dune 
 their maist, the record o' Robert's mishanter is lying in 
 whity-brown ink yonder in a page o' the session-buik ; 
 while the ballads hae sunk deep, deep intil the very mind 
 o' the country, and may live there for bunders and 
 bunders o' years." 
 
 " You seem to contrast, in this business," I said, " our 
 better with what you must deem our inferior clergy. 
 Tou mean, do you not, the higher and lower parties in our 
 church ? How are they getting on now ? " 
 
 "Never worse," replied the old man; "an' oh, it's surely 
 ill when the ministers o' peace become the very leaders 
 o' contention ! But let the blame rest in the right place. 
 
106 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Peace is surely a blessing frae heaven, — no a gude wark 
 demanded frae man ; an' when it grows our duty to be in 
 war, it's an ill thing to be in peace. Our Evangelicals are 
 stan'in', puir folk, whar their faithers stood ; an' if they 
 maun either fight or be beaten frae their post, why, it's 
 just their duty to fight. But the Moderates are rinnin' 
 mad a'thegither amang us ; signing our auld Confession 
 just that they may get in til the kirk to preach against 
 it ; paring the New Testament doun to the vera standard 
 o' heathen Plawto ; and sinking a'e doctrine after anither, 
 till they leave ahint naething but Deism that might scunner 
 aa infi-del. Deed, Matthew, if there comena a change 
 amang them, an' that sune, they'll swamp the puir kirk 
 a'thegither. The cauld morality, that never made ony ane 
 mair moral, tak's nae baud o' the people ; an' patronage, 
 as meikle's they roose it, winna keep up either kirk or 
 manse o' itsel'. Sorry I am, sin' Robert has entered on 
 the quarrel at a', it suld hae been on the wrang side." 
 
 "One of my chief objections," I said, "to the religion 
 of the Moderate party, is, that it is of no use." 
 
 " A gey serious ane," rejoined the old man ; " but 
 maybe there's a waur still. I'm unco vexed for Robert, 
 baith on his worthy faither's account and his ain. He's 
 a fearsome fellow when ance angered, but an honest, 
 warm-hearted chield for a' that ; an' there's mair sense 
 in yon big head o'his than in ony ither twa in the 
 country." 
 
 " Can you tell me aught," said the north-country gen- 
 tleman, addressing my companion,, "of Mr. R , the 
 
 chapel minister in K ? I was once one of his pupils 
 
 in the far north ; but I have heard nothing of him since 
 he left Cromarty." 
 
 " Why," rejoined the old man, " he's just the man that, 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 107 
 
 mair nor a' the rest, has borne the brunt o' Robert's fear- 
 some waggery. Did ye ken him in Cromarty, say ye ? " 
 
 " He was parish schoolmaster there," said the gentle- 
 man, "for twelve years; and for six of these I attended 
 his school. I cannot help respecting him ; but no one 
 ever loved him. Never, surely, was there a man at once 
 so unequivocally honest and so thoroughly unamiable." 
 
 " You must have found hira a rigid disciplinarian," I said. 
 
 " He was the most so," he replied, " from the days of 
 Dionysius at least, that ever taught a school. I remember 
 there was a poor fisher-boy among us, named Skinner, 
 who, as is customary in Scottish schools, as you must know, 
 blew the horn for gathering the scholars, and kept the cat- 
 alogue and the key ; and who, in return, was educated by 
 the master, and received some little gratuity from the 
 scholars besides. On one occasion the key dropped out of 
 his pocket ; and when the school-time came, the irascible 
 dominie had to burst open the door with his foot. He 
 raged at the boy with a fury so insane, and beat him so 
 unmercifully, that the other boys, gathering heart in the 
 extremity of the case, had to rise en masse and tear him 
 out of his hands. But the curious part of the story is yet 
 to come. Skinner has been a fisherman for the last twelve 
 years ; but never has he been seen disengaged for a mo- 
 ment, from that time to this, without mechanically thrust- 
 ing his hand into the key-pocket. 
 
 Our companion furnished us with two or three other 
 
 anecdotes of Mr. R . He told us of a lady who was- 
 
 so overcome by sudden terror on unexpectedly seeing 
 him, many years after she had quitted his school, in one 
 of the pulpits of the south, that she fainted away ; and of 
 another of his scholars, named M'Glashan, a robust, daring 
 fellow of six feet, who, when returning to Cromarty from 
 
108 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 some of the colonies, solaced himself by the way with, 
 thoughts of the hearty drubbing with which he was to 
 clear off all his old scores with the dominie. 
 
 " Ere his return, however," continued the gentleman, 
 
 "Mr. R had quitted the parish; and, had it chanced 
 
 otherwise, it is questionable whether M'Glashan, with all 
 his strength and courage, would have gained anything in 
 an encounter with one of the boldest and most powerful 
 men in the country." 
 
 Such were some of the chance glimpses which I gained 
 at this time of by far the most powerful of the opponents 
 of Burns. He was a good, conscientious man, but unfor- 
 tunate in a harsh, violent temper, and in sometimes mis- 
 taking, as my old townsman remarked, the dictates of that 
 temper for those of duty. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 It's hardly in a body's pow'r 
 To keep at times frae being sour, 
 
 To see how things are shared, — 
 How best 'o chiels are whiles in want, 
 While coofs on countless thousands rant, 
 
 And kenna how to wair't. 
 
 Epistle to Datie. 
 
 I VISITED my friend, a few days after my arrival in 
 Irvine, at the farm-house of Mossgiel, to which, on the 
 death of his father, he had removed, with his brother Gil- 
 bert and his mother. I could not avoid observing that 
 his manners were considerably changed. My welcome 
 seemed less kind and hearty than I could have anticipated 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP BURNS. 109 
 
 from the warm-hearted peasant of five years ago ; and there 
 was a stern and almost superciliouselevafeion in his"beaMBg, 
 which at first pained and oflfended me. I had met with 
 him as he was returning from the fields after the labors of 
 the day. The dusk of twilight had fallen ; and, though I 
 had calculated on passing the evening with him at the 
 farm-house of Mossgiel, so displeased was I that after 
 our first greeting I had more than half changed my mind. 
 The recollection of his former kindness to me, however, 
 suspended the feeling, and I resolved on throwing myself 
 on his hospitality for the night, however cold the welcome. 
 . "I have come all the way from Irvine to see you, Mr. 
 Burns," I said. " For the last five years I have thought 
 more of my mother and you than of any other two per- 
 sons in the country. May I not calculate, as of old, on my 
 supper and a bed ? " 
 
 There was an instantaneous change in his expression. 
 
 " Pardon me, my friend," he said, grasping my hand ; 
 "I have, unwittingly, been doing you wrong. One may 
 surely be the master of an Indiaman, and in possession of 
 a heart too honest to be spoiled by prosperity ! " 
 
 The remark served to explain the haughty coolness of his 
 manner which had so displeased me, and which was but the 
 unwillingly assumed armor of a defensive pride. 
 
 " There, brother," he said, throwing down some plough- 
 irons which he carried ; " send wee Davoc with these to the 
 smithy, and bid him tell Rankin I won't be there to-night. 
 The moon is rising, Mr. Lindsay ; shall we not have a 
 stroll together through the coppice ? " 
 
 "That of all things," I replied; and, parting from Gil- 
 bert, we struck into the wood. 
 
 The evening, considering the lateness of the season, 
 for winter had set in, was mild and pleasant. The moon 
 10 
 
110 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 at full was rising over the Cumnock hills, and casting its 
 faint light on the trees that rose around us, in their wind- 
 ing-sheets of brown and yellow, like so many spectres, or 
 that, in the more exposed glades and openings of the 
 wood, stretched their long naked arms to the sky. A 
 light breeze went rustling through the withered grass ; and 
 I could see the faint twinkling of the falling leaves, as 
 they came showering down on every side of us. 
 
 " We meet in the midst of death and desolation," said 
 my companion ; " we parted when all around us was fresh 
 and beautiful. My father was with me then, and — and 
 Mary Campbell ; and now " — 
 
 " Mary ! your Mary ! " I exclaimed, " the young, the 
 beautiful, — alas ! is she also gone ? " 
 
 " She has left me," he said, — " left me. Mary is in her 
 grave ! " 
 
 I felt my heart swell as the image of that loveliest of 
 creatures came rising to my view in all her beauty, as I 
 had seen her by the river-side, and I knew not what to 
 reply. 
 
 " Yes," continued my friend, " she is in her grave. We 
 parted for a few days, to reunite, as we hoped, for ever ; 
 and ere those few days had passed she was in her grave. 
 But I was unworthy of her, — unworthy even then; and 
 now — But she is in her grave !" 
 
 I grasped his hand. "It is difficult," I said, "to bid 
 the heart submit to these dispensations ; and oh, how ut- 
 terly impossible to bring it to listen ! But life — your life, 
 my friend — must not be passed in useless sorrow. I am 
 convinced — and often have I thought of it since our last 
 meeting — that yours is no vulgar destiny, though I know 
 not to what it tends." 
 
 "Downwards! " he exclaimed, "it tends downwards ! I 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OP BURNS. Ill 
 
 see, I feel it. The anchor of my aflfection is gone, and I 
 drift shoreward on the rocks." 
 
 " 'Twere ruin," I exclaimed, " to think so ! " 
 "Not half an hour ere my father died," he continued, 
 "he expressed a wish to rise and sit once more in his 
 chair ; and we indulged him. But, alas ! the same feeling 
 of uneasiness which had prompted the \vish remained with 
 him still, and he sought to return again to his bed. ' It is 
 not by quitting the bed or the chair,' he said, ' that I need 
 seek for ease ; it is by quitting the body.' I am oppressed, 
 Mr. Lindsay, by a somewhat similar feeling of uneasiness, 
 and at times would fain cast the blame on the circumstan- 
 ces in which I am placed. But I may be as far mistaken 
 as my poor father. I would fain live at peace with all 
 mankind ; nay, more, I would fain love and do good to them 
 all; but the villain and the oppressor come to set their 
 feet on my very neck and crush me into the mire, and 
 must I not resist ? And when, in some luckless liour, I 
 yield to my passions, — to those fearful passions that must 
 one day overwhelm me, — when I yield, and my whole 
 mind is darkened by remorse, and I groan under the disci- 
 pline of conscience, then comes the odious, abominable hyp- 
 ocrite, the devourer of widows' liouses and the substance 
 of the orphan, and demands that my repentance be as pub- 
 lic as his own detestable prayers ! And can I do other 
 than resist and expose him ? My heart tells me it was 
 formed to bestow ; why else does every misery that I can- 
 not relieve render me wretched? It tells me, too, it was 
 formed not to receive ; why else does the proffered assis- 
 tance of even a friend fill my whole soul with indignation ? 
 But ill do my circumstances agree with my feelings. I feel 
 as if I were totally misplaced in some frolic of l^ature, and 
 wander onwards, in gloom and unhappiness, for my proper 
 
112 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 sphere. But, alas ! these efforts of uneasy misery are but 
 the blind gropings of Homer's Cyclops round the walls of 
 his cave." 
 
 I again began to experience, as on a former occasion, 
 the o'ermastering power of a mind larger beyond compar- 
 ison than my own; but I felt it my duty to resist the in- 
 fluence. " Yes, you are misplaced, my friend," I said, — 
 "perhaps more decidedly so than any other man I ever 
 knew ; but is not this characteristic, in some measure, of 
 the whole species? We are all misplaced; and it seems 
 a part of the scheme of Deity that we should work our- 
 selves up to our proper sphere. In what other respect 
 does man so diSer from the inferior animals as in those as- 
 pirations which lead him through all the progressions of 
 improvement, from the lowest to the highest level of his 
 nature '? " 
 
 " That may be philosophy, my friend," he replied, " but a 
 heart ill at ease finds little of comfort in it. You knew my 
 father, — need I say he was one of the excellent of the 
 earth, a man who held directly from God Almighty the 
 patent of his honors ? I saw that father sink broken- 
 hearted into the grave, the victim of legalized oppression : 
 yes, saw him overborne in the long contest which his high 
 spirit and his indomitable love of the right had incited 
 him to maintain, — overborne by a mean, despicable scoun- 
 drel, one of the creeping things of the earth. Heaven 
 knows I did my utmost to assist in the struggle. In my 
 fifteenth year, Mr. Lindsay, when a thin, loose-jointed boy, 
 I did the work of a man, and strained my unknit and 
 overtoiled sinews as if life and death depended on the is- 
 sue, till oft, in the middle of -the night, I have had to fling 
 myself from my bed to avoid instant suffocation, — an 
 effect of exertion so pi-olonged and so premature. Nor 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. IIB 
 
 has the man exerted himself less heartily than the boy. 
 In the roughest, severest labors of the field I have never 
 yet met a competitor. But my labors have been all in 
 vain. I have seen the evil bewailed by Solomon, the 
 righteous man falling down before the wicked." I could 
 answer only with a sigh. " You are in the right," he con- 
 tinued, after a pause, and in a more subdued tone : " man 
 is certainly misplaced ; the present scene of things is be- 
 low the dignity of both his moral and intellectual nature. 
 Look around you'' (we had reached the summit of a grassy 
 eminence, which rose over the wood and commanded a 
 pretty extensive view of the surrounding country) ; " see 
 yonder scattered cottages, that in the faint light rise dim 
 and black amid the stubble-fields. My heart warms as I 
 look on them, for I know how much of honest worth, and 
 sound, generous feeling shelters under these roof-trees. 
 But why_ so much of moral excellence united to a mere 
 machinery for ministering to the ease and luxury of a few 
 of perhaps the least worthy of our species — creatures so 
 spoiled by prosperity that the claim of a common nature 
 has no force to move them, and who seem as miserably 
 misplaced as the myriads whom they oppress? 
 
 If I'm designed yon lordling's slave, — 
 
 By nature's law designed, — 
 Why was an independent wish 
 
 E'er planted in my mind? 
 If not, why am I subject to 
 
 His cruelty and scorn ? 
 Or why has man the will and power 
 
 To make his fellow mourn? 
 
 " I would hardly know what to gay in return, my 
 friend," I rejoined, " did not you yourself furnish me with 
 the reply. You are groping on in darkness, and, it may 
 10* 
 
114 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 be, unhappiness, for your proper sphere ; but it is in obedi- 
 ence to a great though occult law of our nature, — a law 
 general, as it affects the species, in its course of onward 
 progression ; particular, and infinitely more irresistible, 
 as it operates on every truly superior intellect. There are 
 men born to wield the destinies of nations ; nay, more, to 
 stamp the impression of their thoughts and feelings on the 
 mind of the whole civilized world. And by what means 
 do we often find them roused to accomplish their appointed 
 work? At times hounded on by sorrow and suffering, and 
 this, in the design of Providence, that there may be less of 
 sorrow and suffering in the world ever after; at times 
 roused by cruel and maddening oppression, that the op- 
 pressor may perish in his guilt, and a whole country enjo)'' 
 the blessings of freedom. If Wallace had not suffered 
 from tyranny, Scotland would not have been free.'' 
 
 " But how appl_v the remark ? " said my compajiion. 
 
 " Robert Burns," I replied, again grasping his hand, 
 " yours, I am convinced, is no vulgar destiny. Your 
 griefs, your sufferings, your errors even, the oppressions you 
 have seen and felt, the thoughts which have arisen in your 
 mind, the feelings and sentiments of which it has been the 
 subject, are, I am convinced, of infinitely more importance 
 in their relation to your country than to yourself. You 
 are, wisely and benevolently, placed far below your level, 
 that thousands and ten thousands of your countrymen 
 may be the better enabled to attain to theirs. Assert the 
 dignity of manhood and of genius, and there will be less 
 of wrong and oppression in the world ever after." 
 
 I spent the remainder of the evening in the farm-house 
 of Mossgiel, and took the coach next morning for Liver- 
 pool. 
 
EBCOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 115 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 His is that language of the heart 
 
 Iq which the answering heart would speak, — 
 Thought, word, that hlds the warm tear start, 
 
 ©r the smile light up the cheek j 
 And his that music to whose tone 
 
 The common pulse of man keeps time, 
 In cot or castle's mirth or moan. 
 
 In cold or sunny clime. 
 
 American Pobt. 
 
 The love of literature, when once thoroughly awakened 
 in a reflective mind, can never after cease to influence it. 
 It first assimilates our intellectual part to those fine in- 
 tellects which live in the world of books, and then renders 
 our connection with them indispensable by laying hold 
 of that social principle of our nature which ever leads us 
 to the society of our fellows as our proper sphere of en- 
 joyment. My early habits, by heightening my tone of 
 thought and feeling, had tended considerably to narrow 
 my circle of companionship. My profession, too, had led 
 me to be much alone ; and now that I had been several 
 years the master of an Indiaman, I was quite as fond of 
 reading, and felt as deep an interest in whatever took 
 place in the literary woi'ld, as when a student at St. An- 
 drews. There was much in the literature of the period to 
 gratify my pride as a Scotchman. The despotism, both 
 political and religious, which had overUid the energies of 
 our country for more than a century, had long been re- 
 moved ; and the national mind had swelled and expanded 
 
116 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 under a better system of things till its influence had 
 become coextensive with civilized man. Hume had pro- 
 duced his inimitable history, and Adam Smith his won- 
 derful work which was to revolutionize and new-model 
 the economy of all the governments of the earth. And 
 there in my little library were the histories of Henry and 
 Robertson, the philosophy of Kames and Reid, the novels 
 of Smollett and M'Kenzie, and the poetry of Beattie and 
 Home. But if there was no lack of Scottish intellect in 
 the literature of the time, there was a decided lack of 
 Scottish manners ; and I knew too much of my humble 
 countrymen not to regret it. True, I had before me the 
 writings of Ramsay and my unfortunate friend Ferguson ; 
 but there was a radical meanness in the first that low- 
 ered the tone of his coloring far beneath the freshness 
 of truth ; and the second, whom I had seen perish, — too 
 soon, alas ! for literature and his country, — had given us 
 but a few specimens of his power when his hand was 
 arrested for ever. 
 
 My vessel, after a profitable though somewhat tedious 
 voyage, had again arrived at Liverpool. It was late in 
 December, 1786; and I was passing the long evening in 
 my cabin, engaged with a whole sheaf of pamphlets and 
 magazines which had been sent me from the shore. "The 
 Lounger" was at this time in course of jsublication. I had 
 ever been an admirer of the quiet elegance and exquisite 
 tenderness of M'Kenzie ; and though I might not be quite 
 disposed to think, with Johnson, that "the chief glory of 
 every people arises from its authors," I certainly felt all 
 the prouder of my country from the circumstance that so 
 accomplished a writer was one of my countrymen. I had 
 read this evening some of the more recent numbers, — half- 
 disposed to regret, however, amid all the pleasure they af- 
 
KECOLLECTIOiNS OF BOKNS. 117 
 
 forded me, that the Addison of Scotland had not done for 
 the manners of his country what his illustrious prototype 
 haddone for those of England, — when my eye fell on the 
 ninety-seventh number. I read the introductory senten- 
 ces, and admired their truth and elegance. I had felt, in 
 the contemplation of supereminent genius, the pleasure 
 which the writer describes, and my thoughts reverted to 
 my two friends, — the dead and the living. " In the view 
 of highly superior talents, as in that of great and stupen- 
 dous objects," says the essayist, " there is a sublimity which 
 fills the soul with wonder and delight, — which expands 
 it, as it were, beyond its usual bounds, — and which, in- 
 vesting our nature with extraordinary powers and extra- 
 ordinary honors, interests our curiosity and flatters our 
 pride." 
 
 I read on with increasing interest. It was evident, 
 from the tone of the introduction, that some new luminary 
 had arisen in the literary horizon ; and I felt something 
 like a schoolboy when, at his first play, he waits for the 
 drawing up of the curtain. And the curtain at length 
 rose. ^ " The person," continues the essayist, " to whom I 
 allude'' — and he alludes to him as a genius of no ordi- 
 nary class — "is Robert Burns, an Ayrshire ploughman." 
 The effect on my nerves seemed electrical. I clapped my 
 hands and sprung from my seat. " Was I not certain of 
 it ! Did I not foresee it ! " I exclaimed. " My noble- 
 minfJed friend, Robert Burns ! " I ran hastily over the 
 warm-hearted and generous critique, — so unlike the cold, 
 timid, equivocal notices with which the professional critic 
 has greeted, on their first appearance, so many works des- 
 tined to immortality. It was M'Kenzie, the discriminat- 
 ing, the classical, the elegant, who assured me that the 
 productions of this " heaven-taught ploughman were 
 
118 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 fraught with the high-toned feeling and the power and 
 energy of expression characteristic of the mind and voice 
 of a poet,'' with the solemn, the tender, the sublime ; 
 that they contained images of pastoral beauty which no 
 other writer had ever surpassed, and strains of wild hu- 
 mor which only the higher masters of the lyre had ever 
 equalled ; and that the genius displayed in them seemed 
 not less admirable in tracing the manners, than in painting 
 the passions, or in drawing the scenery of nature. I flung 
 down the essay, ascended to the deck in three huge strides, 
 leaped ashore, and reached my bookseller's as he was 
 shutting up for the night. 
 
 " Can you furnish me with a copy of ' Burns's Poems,' " 
 I said, " either for love or money ? " 
 
 " I have but one copy left," replied the man, " and here 
 it is." 
 
 I flung down a guinea. " The change," I said, " I shall 
 get when I am less in a hurry." 
 
 'Twas late that evening ere I remembered that 'tis cus- 
 tomary to spend at least part of the night in bed. I read 
 on and on with a still increasing astonishment and delight, 
 laughing and crying by turns. I was quite in a new world. 
 All was fresh and unsoiled, — the thoughts, the descrip- 
 tions, the images, — as if the volume I read were the first 
 that had ever been written ; and yet all was easy and nat- 
 ural, and appealed with a truth and force irresistible to 
 the recollections I cherished most fondly. Nature and 
 Scotland met me at every turn. I had admired the 
 polished compositions of Pope and Grey and Collins ; 
 though I could not sometimes help feeling that, with all 
 the exquisite art they displayed, there was a little addi- 
 tional art wanting still. In most cases the scafiblding 
 seemed incorporated with the structure which it had 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 119 
 
 served to veai-; and though certainly no scaffolding could 
 be raised on surer principles, I conld have wished that the 
 ingenuity which had been tasked to erect it had been ex- 
 erted a little further in taking it down. But the work 
 before me was evidently the production of a greater artist. 
 Not a fragment of the scaffolding remained, — not so much 
 as a mark to show how it had been constructed. The 
 whole seemed to have risen like an exhalation, and in this 
 respect reminded me of the structures of Shakspeare alone. 
 I read the inimitable " Twa Dogs." Here, I said, is the 
 full and perfect realization of what Swift and Dryden were 
 hardy enough to attempt, but lacked genius to accomplish. 
 Here are dogs — hona fide dogs — endowed, indeed, with 
 more than human sense and observation, but true to char- 
 acter, as the most honest and attached of quadrupeds, in 
 every line. And then those exquisite touches which the 
 poor man, inured to a life of toil and poverty, can alone 
 rightly understand ; and those deeply-based remarks on 
 character which only the philosopher can justly appreci- 
 ate ! This is the true catholic poetry, which addresses 
 itself, not to any little circle, walled in from the rest of the 
 species by some peculiarity of thought, prejudice, or con- 
 dition, but to the whole human family. I read on. "The 
 Holy Fair," " Hallowe'en," " The Vision," the « Address to 
 the Deil," engaged me by turns ; and then the strange, 
 uproarious, unequalled "Death and Doctor Hornbook." 
 This, I said, is something new in the literature of the 
 world. Shakspeare possessed above all men the power 
 of instant and yet natural transition, — from the lightly 
 gay to the deeply pathetic, from the wild to the humor- 
 ous, — but the opposite states of feeling which he induces, 
 however close the neighborhood, are ever distinct and 
 separate : the oil and the water, though contained in the 
 
120 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 same vessel, remain apart. Here, however, for the first 
 time, they mix and incorporate, and yet each retains its 
 whole nature and full effect. I need hardly remind the 
 reader that the feat has been repeated, and with even 
 more completeness, in the wonderful " Tarn o' Shanter." 
 I read on. "The Cotter's Saturday Night" filled my 
 whole soul : my heart throbbed, and my eyes moistened ; 
 and never before did I feel half so proud of my country, 
 or know half so well on what score it was I did best in 
 feeling proud. I had perused the entire volume, from be- 
 ginning to end, ere I remembered I had not taken supper, 
 and that it was more than time to go to bed. 
 
 But it is no part of my plan to furnish a critique on the 
 poems of my friend. I merely strive to recall the thoughts 
 and feelings which my first perusal of thern awakened, and 
 this only as a piece of mental history. Several months 
 elapsed from this evening ere I could hold them out from 
 me sufficiently at arras' length, as it were, to judge of their 
 more striking characteristics. At times the amazing amount 
 of thought, feeling, and imagery which they contained, — 
 their wonderful continuity of idea, without gap or inter- 
 stice,- — seemed to me most to distinguish them. At times 
 they reminded me, compared with the writings of smoother 
 poets, of a collection of medals, which, unlike the thin pol- 
 ished coin of the kingdom, retained all the significant and 
 pictorial roughnesses of the original die. But when, after 
 the lapse of weeks, months, years, I found them rising up 
 in my heart on e\'ery occasion, as naturally as if they had 
 been the original language of all my feelings and emotions ; 
 when I felt that, instead of remaining outside my mind, 
 as it were, like the writings of other poets, they had so 
 amalgamated themselves with my passions, my sentiments, 
 my ideas that they seemed to have become portions of my 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 121 
 
 very self, I was led to a final conclusion regarding them. 
 Their grand distinguishing chariicteristic is their unswerv- 
 ing and perfect truth. The poetry of Shakspeare is the i 
 mirror of life ; that of Burns the expressive and richly- 
 modulated voice of human nature. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Bums was a poor man from Ms birth, and an exciseman from necessity ; 
 but — I will say it'. — the sterling of his honest worth poverty could not 
 debase; and his independent British spirit oppression might bend, but 
 could not subdue. — Letter to Mr. Gkaham. 
 
 I HAVE been listening for. the last half-hour to the wild 
 music of an .iEolian harp. How exquisitely the tones rise 
 and fall! now sad, now solemn; now near, now distant. 
 The nerves thrill, the heart softens, the imagination awakes 
 as we listen. What if that delightful instrument be ani- 
 mated by a living soul, and these finely-modulated tones 
 be but the expression of its feelings ! What if these dy- 
 ing, melancholy cadences, which so melt and sink into the 
 heart, be — what we may so naturally interpret them — 
 the melodious sinkings of a deep-seated and hojaeless un- 
 happiness ! Nay, the fancy is too wild for even a dream. 
 But are there none of those fine analogies which run 
 through the whole of nature and the whole of art to sub- 
 lime it into truth ? Tes, there have been such living harps 
 among us, — beings the tones of whose sentiments, the 
 mielody of whose emotions, the cadences of whose sor- 
 rows, remain to thrill and delight and humanize our souls. 
 11 
 
122 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 They seem born for others, not for themselves. Alas for 
 the hnpless companion of my early youth ! Alas for him, 
 the pride of his country, the friend of my maturer man- 
 hood ! But my narrative lags in its progress. 
 
 My vessel lay in the Clyde for several weeks during the 
 summer of 1794, and I found time to indulge myself in a 
 brief tour alon^ the western coasts of the kingdom from 
 Glasgow to the borders. I entered Dumfries in a calm, 
 lovely evening, and passed along one of the principal 
 streets. The shadows of the houses on the western side 
 were stretched half-way across the pavement, while on the 
 side opposite the bright sunshine seemed sleeping on the 
 jutting irregular fronts and high antique gables. There 
 seemed a world of well-dressed company this evening in 
 town ; and I learned, on inquiry, that all the aristocracy of 
 the adjacent country, for twenty miles round, had come in 
 to attend a country ball. They went fluttering along the 
 sunny side of the street, gay as butterflies, group succeed- 
 ing group. On the opposite side, in the shade, a solitary 
 individual was passing slowly along the pavement. I knew 
 him at a glance. It was the first poet, perhaps the great- 
 est man, of his age and country. But why so solitary? It 
 liad been told me that he ranked among his friends and 
 associates many of the highest names in the kingdom, and 
 yet to-night not one of the hundreds who fluttered past 
 appeared inclined to recognize him. He seemed, too, — 
 but perhaps fancy misled me, — as if care-worn and de- 
 jected, — pained, perhaps, that not one among so many of 
 the great should have humility enough to notice a poor 
 exciseman. I stole up to him unobserved, and tapped him 
 on the shoulder. There was a decided fierceness in his 
 manner as he turned abruptly round ; but, as he recognized 
 me, his expressive countenance lighted up in a moment, 
 
EECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 123 
 
 and I shall never forget the heartiness with which he 
 grasped my hand. 
 
 We quitted the streets together for the neighboring 
 fields, and, after the natural interchange of mutual con- 
 gratulations, " How is it," I inquired, " that you do not 
 seem to have a single acquaintance among all the gay and 
 great of the country ? " 
 
 " I lie under quarantine," he replied, " tainted by the- 
 plague of Liberalism. There is not one of the hundreds 
 we passed to-night whom I could not once reckon among 
 my intimates." 
 
 The intelligence stunned and irritated me. " How in- 
 finitely absurd ! " I said. " Do they dream of sinking you 
 into a common man ? " 
 
 "Even so," he rejoined. "Do they not all know I have 
 been a ganger for the last five years ? " 
 
 The fact had both grieved and incensed me long before. 
 I knew, too, that Pye enjoyed his salary as poet laureate of 
 the time, and Dibdin, the song writer, his pension of two 
 hundred a year ; and I blushed for my country. 
 
 " Tes," he continued, — the ill-assumed coolness of his 
 manner giving way before his highly-excited feelings, — 
 " they have assigned me my place among the mean and the 
 degraded, as their best patronage; and only yesterday, 
 after an official threat of instant dismission, I was told that 
 it was my business to act, not to think. God help me ! 
 what have I done to provoke such bitter insult ? I have 
 ever discharged my miserable duty, — discharged it, Mr. 
 Lindsay, however repugnant to my feelings, as an honest 
 man ; and though there awaited me no promotion, I was 
 silent. The wives or sisters of those whom they advanced 
 
 over me had bastards to some of the family, and so 
 
 their influence was necessarily greater than mine. But 
 
124 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 now they crush me into the very dust. I take an interest 
 in the struggles of the slave for his freedom ; I express my 
 opinions as if I myself were a free man ; and they threaten 
 to starve me and my children if I dare so much as speak 
 or think." 
 
 I expressed my indignant sympathy in a few broken 
 sentences, and he went on with kindling animation. 
 
 " Yes, they would fain crush me into the very dust ! 
 They cannot forgive me, that, being born a man, I should 
 walk erect according to my nature. Mean-spirited and 
 despicable themselves, they can tolerate only the mean- 
 spirited and despicable ; and were I not so entirely in their 
 power, Mr. Lindsay, I could regard them with the proper 
 contempt. But the wretches can starve me and my chil- 
 dren, and they knoio it; nor does it mend the matter that 
 I know, in turn, what pitiful, miserable little creatures they 
 are. "What care I for the butterflies of to-night? They 
 passed me without the honor of their notice ; and I, in turn, 
 suffered them to pass without the honor of mine, and I am 
 more than quits. Do I not know that they and I are 
 going on to the fulfilment of our several destinies, — they 
 to sleep in the obscurity of their native insignificance, with 
 the pismires and grasshoppers of all the past; and I to be 
 whatever the millions of my unborn countrymen shall yet 
 decide ? Pitiful little insects of an hour ! What is their 
 notice to me ! But I bear a heart, Mr. Lindsay, that can 
 feel the pain of treatment so unworthy; and, I must con- 
 fess, it moves me. One cannot always live upon the future, 
 divorced from the sympathies of the present. One cannot 
 always solace one's self, under the grinding despotism that 
 would fetter one's very thoughts, with the conviction, how- 
 ever assured, that posterity will do justice both to the op- 
 pressor and the oppressed. I am sick at heart ; and, were 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 125 
 
 It not for the poor little things that depend so entirely on 
 my exertions, I could as cheerfully lay me down in the 
 grave as I ever did in bed after the fatigues of a long day's 
 labor. Heaven help me ! I am miserably unfitted to strug- 
 gle with even the natural evils of existence ; how much 
 more so when these are multiplied and exaggerated by the 
 proud, capricious inhumanity of man ! " 
 
 " There is a miserable lack of right principle and right 
 feeling," I said, " among our upper classes in the present 
 day ; but, alas for poor human nature ! it has ever been so, 
 and, I am afraid, ever will. And there is quite as much of 
 it in savage as in civilized life. I have seen the exclusive 
 aristocratic spirit, with its one-sided injustice, as rampant 
 in a wild isle of the Pacific as I ever saw it among our- 
 selves." 
 
 , " 'Tis slight comfort," said my friend, with a melancholy 
 smile, "to be assured, when one's heart bleeds from the 
 cruelty or injustice of our fellows, that man is naturally 
 cruel and unjust, and not less so as a savage than when 
 better taught. I knew you, Mr. Lindsay, when you were 
 younger and less fortunate ; but you have now reached 
 that middle term of life when man naturally takes up the 
 Tory, and lays down the Whig ; nor has there been aught 
 in your improving circumstances to retard the change; and 
 so you rest in the conclusion that, if the weak among us 
 sufier from the tyranny of the strong, 'tis because human 
 nature is so constituted ; and the case therefore cannot be 
 helped." 
 
 " Pardon me, Mr. Burns," I said ; " I am not quite so 
 finished a Tory as that amounts to." 
 
 " I am not one of those fanciful declaimers," he contin- 
 ued, " who set out on the assumption that man is free-born. 
 I am too well assured of the contrary. Man is not free- 
 11*. 
 
126 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 born. The earlier period of his existence, whether as a 
 puny child or the miserable denizen of an uninformed and 
 barbarous state, is one of vassalage and subserviency. He 
 is not born free; he is not born rational; he is not born 
 virtuous ; he is born to become all these. And woe to the 
 sophist who, with arguments drawn from the uncomfirmed 
 constitution of his childhood, would strive to render his 
 imperfect because immature state of pupilage a permanent 
 one ! We are yet far below the level of which our nature 
 is capable, and possess, in consequence, but a small portion 
 of the liberty which it is the destiny of our species to en- 
 joy. And 'tis time our masters should be taught so. You 
 will deem me a wild Jacobin, Mr. Lindsay ; but persecu- 
 tion has the effect of making a man extreme in these mat- 
 ters. Do help me to curse the scoundrels ! My business 
 to act, not to think ! " 
 
 We were silent for several minutes. 
 
 " I have not yet thanked you, Mr. Burns," I at length 
 said, " for the most exquisite pleasure I ever enjoyed. You 
 have been my companion for the last eight years." 
 
 His countenance brightened. 
 
 "Ah, here I am, boring you with my miseries and my ill- 
 nature," he replied ; " but you must come along with me, 
 and see the bairns and Jean, and some of the best songs I 
 ever wrote. It will go hard if we hold not care at the 
 staff's end for at least one evening. You have not yet seen 
 ray stone punch-bowl, nor my Tam o' Shanter, nor a hun- 
 dred other fine things besides. And yet, vile wretch that 
 I am, I am sometimes so unconscionable as to be unhappy 
 with them all. But come along." 
 
 We spent this evening together with as much of happi- 
 ness as it has ever been my lot to enjoy. Never was there 
 a Lmder father than Burns, a more attached husband, or a 
 
RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS. 127 
 
 warmer friend. There was an exuberance of love- in his 
 large heart that encircled in its flow relatives, friends, asso- 
 ciates, his country, the world ; and, in his kindlier moods, 
 the sympathetic influence which he exerted over the hearts 
 of others seemed magical. I laughed and cried this evening 
 by turns. I was conscious of a wider and a warmer expan- 
 sion of feeling than I had ever experienced before. My 
 very imagination seemed invigorated, by breathing, as it 
 were, in the same atmosphere with his. We parted early 
 next morning ; and when I again visited Dumfries, I went 
 and wept over his grave. Forty years have now passed 
 since his death ; and in that time, many poets have arisen 
 to achieve a rapid and brilliant celebrity ; but they seem 
 the meteors of a lower sky ; the flash passes hastily fi-om the 
 expanse, and we see but one great light looking steadily 
 upon us from above. It is Burns who is exclusively the 
 poet of his country. Other writers inscribe their names on 
 the plaster which covers for the time the outside structure 
 of society ; his is engraved, like that of the Egyptian 
 architect, on th« ever-during granite within. The fame of 
 the others rises and falls with the uncertain undulations 
 of the mode on which they have reared it ; his remains 
 fixed and permanent as the human nature on which it is 
 based. Or, to borrow the figure Johnson employs in illus- 
 trating the unfluctuating celebrity of a scarcely greater 
 poet, "The sand heaped by one flood is scattered by an- 
 other, but the rock always continues in its place ; the 
 stream of time which is continually washing the dissoluble 
 fabrics of other poets passes by, without injury, the ada- 
 mant of Shakspeare." 
 
III. 
 
 THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 And the fishers shall mourn and lament; 
 AH those that cast the hook on the river. 
 And those that spread nets on the face of the waters, 
 Shall languish. 
 
 Lowth's Translation of Isa. xix. 8. 
 
 In the autumn of 1759, the Bay of Udell, an arm of the 
 sea which intersects the soulhern shore of the Frith of 
 Croraarty, was occupied by two large salmon-wears, the 
 property of one Allan Thomson, a native of the province 
 of Moray, who had settled in this part of the country a 
 few months before. He was a thin, athletic, raw-boned 
 man, of about five feet ten, well-nigh in his thirtieth year, 
 but apparently younger ; erect and clean-limbed, with a 
 set of handsome features, bright, intelligent eyes, and a 
 profusion of light brown hair curling around an ample ex- 
 panse of forehead. For the first twenty years of his life 
 he had lived about a farm-house, tending cattle when a 
 boy, and guiding the plough when he had grown up. He 
 then travelled into England, where he wrought about seven 
 years as a common laborer. A novelist would scarcely 
 make choice of such a person for the hero of a tale ; but 
 men are to be estimated rather by the size and color of 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 129 
 
 their minds than the complexion of their circumstances ; 
 and this ploughman and laborer of the north was by no 
 means a very common man. For the latter half of his life 
 he had pursued, in all his undertakings, one main design. 
 He saw his brother rustics tied down by circumstance — 
 that destiny of vulgar minds — to a youth of toil and de- 
 pendence, and an old age of destitution and wretchedness ; 
 and, with a force of character which, had he been placed 
 at his outset on what may be termed the table-land of for- 
 tune, would have raised him to her higher pinnacles, he 
 persisted in adding shilling to shilling and pound to pound, 
 not in the sordid spirit of the miser, but in the hope that 
 his little hoard might yet serve him as a kind of stepping- 
 stone in rising to a more comfortable place in society. Nor 
 were his desires fixed very high ; for, convinced that inde- 
 pendence and the happiness which springs from situation 
 in life lie within the reach of the frugal farmer of sixty or 
 eighty years, he moulded his ambition on the conviction, 
 and scarcely looked beyond the period at which he antici- 
 pated his savings would enable him to take his place among 
 the humbler tenantry of the country. 
 
 Our friths and estuaries at this period abounded with 
 salmon, one of the earliest exports of the kingdom ; but 
 from the low state into which commerce had sunk in the 
 northern districts, and the irregularity of the communica- 
 tion kept up between them and the sister kingdom, by far 
 the greater part caught on our shores were consumed by 
 the inhabitants. And so little were they deemed a lux- 
 ury, that it was by no means uncommon, it is said, for ser- 
 vants to stipulate with their masters that they should not 
 have to diet on salmon oftener than thrice a week. Thom- 
 son, however, had seen quite enough, when in England, to 
 convince him that, meanly as they were esteemed by his 
 
130 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 country-folks, they might be rendered the staple of a prof- 
 itable trade ; and, removing to the vicinity of Cromarty, 
 for the facilities it afforded in trading to the capital, he 
 launched boldly into the speculation. He erected his two 
 wears with his own hands ; built himself a cottage of sods 
 on the gorge of a little ravine sprinkled over with bushes 
 of alder and hazel ; entered into correspondence with a 
 London merchant, whom he engaged as his agent ; and be- 
 gan to export his fish by two large sloops which plied at 
 this period between the neighboring port and the capital. 
 His fishings were abundant, and his agent an honest one ; 
 and he soon began to realize the sums he had expended in 
 establishing himself in the trade. 
 
 Could any one anticipate that a story of fondly-cherished 
 but hapless attachment — of one heart blighted forever, 
 and another fatally broken — was to follow such an intro- 
 duction ? 
 
 The first season of Thomson's speculation had come to a 
 close. Winter set in, and, with scarcely a single acquaint- 
 ance among the people in the neighborhood, and little to 
 employ him, he had to draw for amusement on his own re- 
 sources alone. He had formed, when a boy, a taste for 
 reading; and might now be found, in the long evenings, 
 hanging over a book beside the fire. By day he went 
 ■ sauntering among the fields, calculating on the advantages 
 of every agricultural improvement, or attended the fairs 
 and trysts of the country, to speculate on the profits of the 
 drover and cattle-feeder and make himself acquainted with 
 all the little mysteries of bargain-making. 
 
 There holds early in November a famous cattle-market 
 in the ancient barony of Ferintosh, and Thomson had set 
 out to attend it. The morning was clep^r and frosty, and 
 he felt buoyant of heart and limb, as, passing westwards 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OP UDOLL. 131 
 
 along the shore, he saw the hugs Ben Wevis towering 
 darker and more loftily over the Frith as he advanced, or 
 turned aside, from time to time, to explore some ancient 
 burying-ground or Danish encampment. There is not a 
 tract of country of equal extent *n the three kingdoms 
 where antiquities of this class lie thicker than in that 
 northern strip of the parish of Resolis which bounds on 
 the Cromarty Frith. The old castle of Craig House, a 
 venerable, time-shattered building, detained him, amid its 
 broken arches, for hours ; and he was only reminded of the 
 ultimate object of his journey when, on surveying the moor 
 from the upper bartizan, he saw that the groups of men and 
 cattle, which since mgrning had been mottling in succes- 
 sion the track leading to the fair, were all gone out of sight, 
 and that, far as the eye could reach, not a human figure 
 was to be seen. The whole population of the country 
 seemed to have gone to the fair. He quitted the ruins ; 
 and, after walking smartly over the heathy ridge to the 
 west, and through the long birch wood of Kinbeakie, he 
 reached, about mid-day, the little straggling village at 
 which the market holds. 
 
 Thomson had never before attended a thoroughly High- 
 land market, and the scene now presented was wholly new 
 to him. The area it occupied was an irregular opening in 
 the middle of the village, broken by ruts and dung-hills 
 and heaps of stone. In front of the little turf-houses, on 
 either side, there was a row of booths, constructed mostly 
 of poles and blankets, in which much whiskey, and a few of 
 the simpler articles of foreign merchandise, were sold. In 
 the middle of the open space there were carts and benches, 
 laden with the rude manufactures of the country : High- 
 land brogues and blankets ; bowls and platters of beech ; a 
 species of horse and cattle harness, formed of the twisted 
 
132 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 twigs of birch ; bundles of split fir, for lath and torches ; 
 and hair tackle and nets for fishermen. Nearly seven 
 thousand persons, male and female, thronged the area, 
 bustling and busy, and in continual motion, like the tides 
 and eddies of two rive»s at their confluence. There were 
 country-women, with their shaggy little horses laden with 
 cheese and butter; Highlanders from the far hills, with 
 droves of sheep and cattle ; shoemakers and weavers from 
 the neighboring villages, with bales of webs and wallets of 
 shoes ; farmers and fishermen, engaged, as it chanced, in 
 buying or selling ; bevies of bonny lasses, attired in their 
 gayest ; ploughmen and mechanics ; drovers, butchers, and 
 herd-boys. Whiskey flowed abundantly, whether bargain- 
 makers bought or sold, or friends met or parted ; and, 
 as the day wore later, the confusion and bustle of the 
 crowd increased. A Highland tryst, even in the present 
 age, rarely passes without witnessing a fray ; and the High- 
 landers seventy years ago were of more combative dispo- 
 sitions than they are now. But Thomson, who had neither 
 friend nor enemy among the thousands around him, neither 
 quarrelled himself, nor interfered in the quarrels of others. 
 He merely stood and looked on, as a European would 
 among the frays of one of the great fairs of Bagdad or 
 Astrakan. 
 
 He was passing through the crowd, towards evening, in 
 front of one of the dingier cottages, when a sudden burst 
 of oaths and exclamations rose from within, and the in- 
 mates came pouring out pell-mell at the door, to throttle 
 and pummel one another, in inextricable confusion. A 
 gray-headed old man, of great apparent strength, who 
 seemed by far the most formidable of the combatants, was 
 engaged in desperate battle with two young fellows from 
 the remote Highlands, while all the others were matched 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 133 
 
 man to man. Thomson, wh(^e residence in England had 
 taught him very different notions of fair play and the ring, 
 was on the eve of forgetting his caution and interfering, 
 but the interference proved unnecessary. Ere he had 
 stepped up to the combatants, the old man, with a vigor 
 little lessened by age, had shaken off both his opponents ; 
 and, though they stood glaring at him like tiger-cats, nei- 
 ther of them seemed in the least inclined to renew the 
 attack. 
 
 "Twa mean, pitiful kerns," exclaimed the old man, "to 
 tak odds against ane auld enough to be their faither ; and 
 that, too, after burning my loof wi' the het airn ! But I 
 hae noited their twa heads thegither! Sic a trick! — to 
 bid me stir up the fire after they had heated the wrang end 
 o' the poker ! Deil, but I hae a guid mind to gie them 
 baith mair o't yet ! " 
 
 Ere he could make good his threat, however, his daugh- 
 ter, a delicate-looking girl of nineteen, came rushing up to 
 him through the crowd. " Father ! " she exclaimed, " dear- 
 est father ! let us away. For my sake, if not your own, let 
 these wild men alone. They always carry knives ; 'and, be- 
 sides, you will bring all of their clan upon you that are at 
 the tryst, and you will be murdered." 
 
 " No muckle danger frae that, Lillias," said the old man. 
 "I hae little fear frae ony ane o' them ; an' if they come 
 by twasome, I hae my friends here too. The ill-deedy 
 wratches, to blister a' my loof wi' the poker ! But come 
 awa, lassie ; your advice is, I dare say, best after a'." 
 
 The old man quitted the place with his daughter, and 
 for the time Thomson saw no more of him. As the night 
 approached, the Highlanders became more noisy and tur- 
 bulent ; they drank, and disputed, and drove their very 
 bargains at the dirk's point; and as the salmon-fisher 
 12 
 
134 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 passed through the village ^r the last, time, he could see 
 the waving of bludgeons, and hear the formidable war-cry 
 of one of the clans, with the equally formidable " Hilloa ! 
 help for Cromarty ! " echoing on every side of him. He 
 keep coolly on his way, however, without waiting the re- 
 sult ; and, while yet several miles from the shores of Udoll, 
 daylight had departed, and the moon at full had risen, red 
 and huge in the frosty atmosphere, over the bleak hill of 
 Nigg. 
 
 He had reached the Burn of Newhall, — a small stream 
 which, after winding for several miles between its double 
 row of alders and its thickets of gorse and hazel, falls into 
 the upper part of the bay, — and was cautiously picking 
 his way, by the light of the moon, along a narrow pathway 
 which winds among the bushes. There are few places in 
 the country of worse repute among believers in the super- 
 natural than the Burn of ISTewhall ; and its character sev- 
 enty years ago was even worse than it is at present. Witch 
 meetings without number have been held on its banks, and 
 dead-lights have been seen hovering over its deeper pools ; 
 sportsmen have charged their fowling-pieces with silver 
 when crossing it in the night-time ; and I remember an old 
 man who never approached it after dark without fixing a 
 bayonet on the head of his staff./ Thomson,. however, was 
 but little influenced by the beliefs of the periodj3nd he 
 was passing under the shadow of the alders, with more of 
 this world than of the other in his thoughts, when the 
 silence was suddenly broken by a burst of threats and ex- 
 clamations, as if several men had fallen a-fighting, scarcely 
 fifty yards away, without any preliminary quarrel; and 
 with the gruffer voices there mingled the shrieks and 
 entreaties of a female. Thomson grasped his stick, and 
 sprang forward. He reached an opening among the bushes. 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 135 
 
 and saw in the imperfect light the old robust Lowlander 
 of the previous fray attacked by two men armed with\ 
 bludgeons, and defending himself manfully with his staff. 
 The old man's daughter, who had clung round the kneesy 
 of one of the ruffians, was already thrown to the ground, 
 and trampled under foot. An exclamation of wrath and 
 horror burst from the high-spirited fisherman, as, rushing 
 upon the fellow like a tiger from its jungle, he caught the 
 stroke aimed at him on his stick, and, with a side-long 
 blow on the temple, felled him to the ground. At the in- 
 stant he fell, a gigantic Highlander leaped from among the 
 bushes, and, raising his huge arm, discharged a tremendous 
 blow at the head of the fisherman, who, though taken un- 
 awares and at a disadvantage, succeeded, notwithstanding, 
 in transferring it to his left shoulder, where it fell broken 
 and weak. A desperate but brief combat ensued. The 
 ferocity and ponderous strength of the Celt found their 
 more than match in the cool, vigilant skill and leopard- 
 like agility of the Lowland Scot ; for the latter, after dis- 
 charging a storm of blows on the head, face, and shoulders 
 of the giant, until he staggered, at length struck his 
 bludgeon out of his hand, and prostrated his whole huge 
 length by dashing his stick end-long against his breast. 
 At nearly the same moment the burly old farmer, who had 
 grappled with his antagonist, had succeeded in flinging 
 him, stunned and senseless, against the gnarled root of an 
 alder ; and the three ruffians — for the first had not yet 
 recovered — lay stretched on the grass. Ere they could 
 secure them, however, a shrill whistle was heard echoing 
 from among the alders, scarcely a hundred yards away. 
 " We had better get home," said Thomson to the old man, 
 " ere these fellows are reinforced by their brother ruffians 
 in the wood." And, supporting the maiden with his one 
 
136 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 hand, and grasping his stick with the other, he phmgod 
 among the bushes in the direction of the path, and gaining 
 it, passed onward, lightly and hurriedly, with his charge : 
 the old man followed more heavily behind ; and in some- 
 what less than an hour after they were all seated beside 
 the hearth of the latter, in the farm-house of Meikle 
 Farness. 
 
 It is now more than forty years since the last stone of 
 the very foundation has disappeared ; but the little grassy 
 eminence on which the house stood may still be seen. 
 There is a deep wooded ravine behind, which, after wind- 
 ing through the table-land of the parish, like a huge 
 crooked furrow, the bed, evidently, of some antediluvian 
 stream, opens far below to the sea ; an undulating tract 
 of field and moor, with here and there a thicket of bushes 
 and here and there a heap of stone, spreads in front. 
 When I last looked on the scene, 'twas in the evening of 
 a pleasant day in June. One half the eminence was bathed 
 in the red light of the setting sun ; the other lay brown 
 and dark in the shadow. A flock of sheep were scattered 
 over the sunny side. The herd-boy sat ou the top, solacing 
 his leisure with a music famous in the pastoral history of 
 Scotland, but well-nigh exploded, that of the stoch and 
 horn ; and the air seemed filled with its echoes. I stood 
 picturing to myself the appearance of the place ere all the 
 inmates of this evening, young and old, had gone to the 
 churchyard, and left no successors behind them ; and, as I 
 sighed over the vanity of human hopes, I could almost 
 fancy I saw an apparition of the cottage rising on the 
 knoll. I could see the dark turf- walls; the little square 
 windows, bai'red below and glazed above ; the straw roof, 
 embossed with moss and stone-crop ; and, high over head,- 
 the row of venerable elms, with their gnarled trunks 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 18T 
 
 and twisted branches, that rose out of the garden-wall. 
 Fancy gives an interest to all her pictures, — yes, even 
 when the subject is but an humble cottage; and when 
 we think of human enjoyment, of the pride of strength 
 and the light of beauty, in connection with a few moul- 
 dering and nameless bones hidden deep from the sun, 
 there is a sad poetry in the contrast which rarely fails to 
 affect the heart. It is now two thousand years since 
 Horace sung of the security of the lowly, and the unfluc- 
 tuating nature of their enjoyments ;fand every year of the 
 two thousand has been adding proof to proof that the 
 poet, when he chose his theme, must have thrown aside 
 his philosophy. But the inmates of the farm-house thought 
 little this evening of coming misfortune. Nor would it 
 have been well if they had ; their sorrow was neither 
 heightened nor hastened by their joy. 
 
 Old William Stewart, the farmer, was one of a class 
 weU-nigh worn out in the southern Lowlands, even at 
 this period, but which still comprised, in the northern dis- 
 tricts, no inconsiderable portion of the people, and which 
 must always obtain in countries only partially civilized 
 and little amenable to the laws. Man is a fighting animal 
 from very instinct ; and his second nature, custom, mightily 
 improves the propensity. A person naturally courageous, 
 who has defended himself successfully in half a dozen dif- 
 ferent frays, will very probably begin the seventh himself; 
 and there are few who have fought often and well for 
 safety and the right who have not at length learned to love 
 fighting for its own sake. The old farmer had been a man 
 of war from his youth. He had fought at fairs and trysts 
 and weddings and funerals; and, without one ill-natured 
 or malignant element in his composition, had broken more 
 heads than any two men in the country-side. His late 
 12* 
 
138 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 quarrel at the tryst, and the much more serious afiaii 
 among the bushes, had arisen out of this disposition ; for 
 though well-nigh in his sixtieth year, he was still as war- 
 like in his habits as ever. Thomson sat fronting him be- 
 side the fire, admiring his muscular frame, huge limbs, and 
 immense structure of bone. Age had grizzled his hair 
 and furrowed his cheeks and forehead ; but all the great 
 strength, and well-nigh all the activity of his youth, it had 
 left him still! His wife, a sharp-featured little woman, 
 seemed little interested in either the details of his adven- 
 ture or his guest, whom he described as the " brave, hardy 
 chield, wha had beaten twasome at the cudgel, — the vera 
 littlest o' them as big as himsel'." 
 
 " Och, gudeman," was her concluding remark, " ye aye 
 stick to the auld trade, bad though it be ; an' I'm feared 
 that or ye mend ye maun be aulder yet. I'm sure ye 
 ne'er made your ain money o't." 
 
 " Nane o' yer nonsense," rejoined the farmer. " Bring 
 butt the bottle an' your best cheese.'' 
 
 " The gudewife an' I dinna aye agree,'' continued the 
 old man, turning to Thomson. " She's baith near-gaun an' 
 new-fangled ; an' I like aye to hae routh o' a' things, an' to 
 live just as my faithers did afore me. Why sould I bother 
 my head wi' imjjrovidments, as they ca' them? The coun- 
 try's gane clean gite wi' pride, Thomson ! Naething less 
 sairs folk noo, forsooth, than carts wi' wheels to them ; an' 
 it's no a fortnight syne sin' little Sandy Martin, the trifling 
 cat, jeered me for yoking my owson to the plough by the 
 tail. What ither did they get tails for? " 
 
 Thomson had not sufficiently studied the grand argu- 
 ment of design, in this special instance, to hazard a reply, 
 
 " The times hae gane clean oot o' joint," continued the 
 man. " The law has come a' the length o' Cromarty noo ; 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 139 
 
 an' for breaking the head o' an impudent fallow, ane runs 
 the risk o' being sent aff the plantations. Faith, I wish 
 cor Parliamenters had mair sense. What do they ken 
 aboot us or oor country ? Deil haet difference doo they 
 raak' atween the shire o' Cromarty an' the shire o' Lunnon ; 
 just as if we could be as quiet beside the red-wud Hielan- 
 man here, as they can be beside the queen. Na, na, — 
 naething like a guid cudgel ; little wad their law hae dune 
 for me at the Burn o' Newhall the nicht." 
 
 Thomson found the character of the old man quite a 
 study in its way ; and that of his wife — a very different, 
 and, in the main, inferior sort of person, for she was mean- 
 spirited and a niggard — quite a study too. But by far 
 the most interesting inmate of the cottage was the old 
 man's daughter, the child of a former marriage. She 
 was a pale, delicate, blue-eyed girl, who, without possess- 
 ing much positive beauty of feature, had that expression 
 of mingled thought and tenderness which attracts more 
 powerfully than beauty itself She spoke but little. That 
 little, however, was expressive of gratitude and kindness to 
 the deliverer of her father ; sentiments which, in the breast 
 of a girl so gentle, so timid, so disposed to shrink from 
 the roughnesses of active. courage, and yet so conscious of 
 her need of a protector, must have mingled with a feeling 
 of admiration at finding in the powerful champion of the 
 recent fray a modest, sensible young man, of manners 
 nearly as quiet and unobtrusive as her own. She dreamed 
 that night of Thomson; and her first thought, as she awak- 
 ened next morning, was, whether, as her father had urged, 
 he was to be a frequent visitor at Meikle Farness. But an 
 entire week passed away, and she saw no more of him. 
 
 He was sitting one evening in his cottage, poring over 
 a book. A huge fire of brushwood was blazing against the 
 
140 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 earthen wall, filling the upper part of the single rude cham- 
 ber of which the cottage consisted with a dense cloud of 
 smoke, and glancing brightly on the few rude implements 
 which occupied the lower, when the door suddenly opened, 
 and the farmer of Meikle Farness entered, accompanied by 
 his daughter." 
 
 " Ha ! Allan, man," he said, extending his large hand, 
 and grasping that of the fisherman ; " if you winna come 
 an' see us, we maun just come and see you. Lillias an' 
 mysel' were afraid the gudewife had frichtened you awa, 
 for she's a near-gaun sort o' body, an' maybe no owre kind- 
 spoken ; but ye maun just come an' see us whiles, an' no 
 mind her. Except at counting-time, I never mind her 
 mysel'." Thomson accommodated his visitors with seats. 
 " Yer life maun be a gay lonely ane here, in this eerie bit o' 
 a glen," remarked the old man, after they had conversed 
 for some time on different subjects; "but I see ye dinna 
 want company a'thegither, such as it is," — his eye glanc- 
 ing, as he spoke, over a set of deal shelves, occupied by 
 some sixty or seventy volumes. " Lillias there has a liking 
 for that kind o' company too, an' spends some days mair 
 o' her time amang her books than the gudewife or mysel' 
 would wish." 
 
 Lillias blushed at the charge, and hung down her head. 
 It gave, however, a new turn to the conversation ; and 
 Thomson was gratified to find that the quiet, gentle girl, 
 who seemed so much interested in him, and whose grati- 
 tude to him, expressed in a language less equivocal than 
 any spoken one, he felt to be so delicious a compliment, 
 possessed a cultivated mind and a superior understanding. 
 She had lived under the roof of her father in a little para- 
 dise of thoughts and imaginations, the spontaneous growth 
 ot her own mind ; and as she grew up to womanhood, she 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 141 
 
 had recourse to the companionship of books ; for in books 
 only could she find thoughts and imaginations of a kin- 
 dred character. 
 
 It is rarely that the female mind educates itself. The 
 genius of the sex is rather fine than robust ; it partakes 
 rather of the delicacy of the myrtle than the strength of 
 the oak ; and care and culture seem essential to its full de- 
 velopment. Who ever heard of a female Burns or Bloom- 
 field ? And yet there have been instances, though rare, of 
 women working their way from the lower levels of intel- 
 lect to well-nigh the highest, — not wholly unassisted, 'tis 
 true ; the age must be a cultivated one, and there must 
 be opportunities of observation ; but, if not wholly unas- 
 sisted, with helps so slender, that the second order of mas- 
 culine minds would find them wholly inefficient. There is 
 a quickness of perception and facility of adaptation in the 
 better class of female minds — an ability of catching the 
 tone of whatever is good from the sounding of a single 
 note, if I may so express myself — which we almost never 
 meet with in the mind of man. Lillias was a favorable 
 specimen of the better and more intellectual order of wo- 
 men ; but she' was yet very young, and the process of self- 
 cultivation carrying on in her mind was still incomplete ; 
 and Thomson found that the charm of her society arose 
 scarcely more from her partial knowledge than from her 
 partial ignorance. The following night saw him seated by 
 her side in the farm-house of Meikle Farness; and scarcely 
 a week passed during the winter in which he did not spend 
 at least one evening in her company. 
 
 Who is it that has not experienced the charm of female 
 conversation, — that poetry of feeling which develops all 
 of tenderness and all of imagination that lies hidden in our 
 
142 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 nature ? When following the ordinary concerns of life, or 
 engaged in its more active businesses, many of the better 
 faculties of our minds seem overlaid: there is little of feel- 
 ing, and nothing of fancy; and those sympathies which 
 should bind us to the good and fair of nature lie repressed 
 and inactive. But in the society of an intelligent and vir- 
 tuous female there is a charm that removes the pressure. 
 Through the force of sympathy, we throw our intellects for 
 the time into the female mould ; our tastes assimilate to the 
 tastes of our companion ; our feelings keep pace with hers ; 
 our sensibilities become nicer and our imaginations more 
 expansive ; and, though the powers of our mind may not 
 much excel, in kind or degree, those of the great bulk of 
 mankind, we are sensible that for the time we experience 
 some of the feelings of. genius. How many common men 
 have not female society and the fervor of youthful passion 
 sublimed into poets ? I am convinced the Greeks dis- 
 played as much sound philosophy as good taste in repre- 
 senting their muses as beautiful women. 
 
 Thomson had formerly been but an admirer of the poets. 
 He now became a poet. And had his fate been a kindlier 
 one, he might perhaps have attained a middle place among 
 at least the minor professors of the incommunicable art. 
 He was walking with Lillias one evening through the 
 wooded ravine. It was early in April, and the day had 
 combined the loveliest smiles of spring with the fiercer 
 blasts of winter. There was snow in the hollows ; but 
 where the sweeping sides of the dell reclined to the south, 
 the violet and the piimrose were opening to the sun. The 
 drops of a recent shower were still hanging on the half- 
 expanded buds, and the streamlet was yet red and turbid ; 
 but the sun, nigh at his setting, was streaming in golden 
 glory along the field, and a lark was carolling high in the 
 
THE SALMON-FISHBR OF UDOLL. 143 
 
 air as if its day were but begun. Lillias pointed to the 
 bird, diminished almost to a speck, but relieved by the red 
 light against a minute cloudlet. 
 
 " Happy little creature ! " she exclaimed ; " does it not 
 seem rather a thing of heaven than of earth? Does not its 
 song frae the clouds mind you of the hymn heard by the 
 shepherds ! The blast is but just owre, an' a few minutes 
 syne it lay cowering and chittering in its nest ; but its sor- 
 rows are a' gane, an' its heart rejoices in the bonny blink, 
 without a'e thought o' the storm that has passed or the 
 night that comes on. Were you a poet, Allan, like ony o' 
 your twa namesakes, — he o' 'The Seasons,' or he o' 
 ' The Gentle Shepherd,'. — I would ask you for a song on 
 that bonnie burdie." Next time the friends met, Thomson 
 produced the following verses : — . 
 
 TO THE LARK. 
 
 Sweet minstrel of the April clond, 
 
 Dweller the flowers among, 
 Would that my heart were formed like thine, 
 
 And tuned like thine my song! 
 Not to the earth, like earth's low gifts. 
 
 Thy soothing strain is given : 
 It comes a voice from middle sky, — 
 
 A solace breathed from heaven. 
 
 Thine is the mom; and when the sun 
 
 Sinks peaceful in the west. 
 The mild light of departing day 
 
 Purples thy happy breast. 
 And ah ! though all beneath that sun 
 
 Dire pains and sorrows dwell, 
 Earely they visit, short they stay. 
 
 Where thou hast built thy cell. 
 
 When wild winds rave, and snows descend. 
 
 And dark clouds gather fast. 
 And on the surf-encircled shore 
 
 The seaman's barque is cast. 
 
144 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Long human grief survives the storm; 
 
 But thou, thrice happy birdl 
 No sooner has it passed away, 
 
 Than, lo I thy voice is heard. 
 
 When ill is present, grief is thine ; 
 
 It flies, and thou art free ; 
 But ah I can aught achieve for man 
 
 What nature does for thee ? 
 Man grieves amid the bursting storm ; 
 
 When smiles the calm he grieves ; 
 Nor cease his woes, nor sinks his plaint. 
 
 Till dust his dust receives. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE SEQUEL. 
 
 As the latter month of spring came on the fisherman 
 again betook himself to his wears, and nearly a fortnight 
 passed in which he saw none of the inmates of the farm- 
 house. Nothing is so efficient as absence, whether self- 
 imposed or the result of circumstances, in convincing a 
 lover that he is truly such, and in teaching him how to es- 
 timate the strength of his attachment. Thomson had sat 
 night after night beside Lillias Stewart, delighted with the 
 delicacy of her taste and the originality and beauty of her 
 ideas ; delighted, too, to watch the still partially-developed 
 faculties of her mind shooting forth and expanding into bud 
 and blossom under the fostering influence of his own more 
 matured powers. But the pleasure which arises from the in- 
 terchange of ideas and the contemplation of mental beauty, 
 or the interest which every thinking mind must feel in mark- 
 ing the aspirations of a superior intellect towards its proper 
 destiny, is not love ; and it was only now that Thomson 
 ascertained the true scope and nature of his feelings. 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 145 
 
 « She is already my friend," thought he. " If my schemes 
 prosper, I shall be in a few years whrt her father is now ; 
 and may then ask her whether she will not be more. Till 
 then, however, she shall be my friend, and my friend only. 
 I find I love her too well to make her the wife of either a 
 poor unsettled speculator, or still poorer laborer." 
 
 He renewed his visits to the farm-house, and saw, with a 
 discernment quickened by his feelings, that his mistress 
 • had made a discovery with regard to her own affections 
 somewhat similar to his, and at a somewhat earlier period. 
 She herself could have perhaps fixed the date of it by re- 
 ferring to that of their acquaintance. He imparted to her 
 his scheme, and the uncertainties which attended it, with 
 his determination, were he unsuccessful in his designs, to 
 do battle with the evils of penury and dependence with- 
 out a companion ; and, though she felt that she could deem 
 it a happiness to make common cause with him even in 
 such a contest, she knew how to appreciate his motives, 
 and loved him all the more for them. Never, perhaps, in 
 the whole history of the passion, were there two lovers 
 happier in their hopes and each other. But there was a 
 cloud gathering over them. 
 
 Thomson had never been an especial favorite with the 
 step-mother of Lillias. She had formed plans of her own 
 for the settlement of her daughter with which the atten- 
 tions of the salmon-fisher threatened materially to inter- 
 fere ; and there was a total want of sympathy between 
 them besides. Even William, though he still retained a 
 sort of rough regard for him, had begun to look askance 
 on his intimacy with Lillias. His avowed love, too, for the 
 modern, gave no little offence. The farm of Meikle Farness 
 was obsolete enough in its usages and mode of tillage to / 
 have formed no uninteresting study to the antiquary. To-' 
 13 
 
146 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ■wards autumn, when the fields vary most in color, it re- 
 sembled a rudely-executed chart of some large island, — 
 so irregular were the patches which composed it, and so 
 broken on every side by a surrounding sea of moor that 
 here and there went winding into the interior in long river- 
 like strips, or expanded within into friths and lakes. In one 
 corner there stood a heap of stones, in another a thicket 
 of furze ; here a piece of bog, there a broken bank of 
 clay. The implements with which the old man labored in 
 his fields were as primitive in their appearance as the fields 
 themselves : there was the one-stilted plough, the wooden- 
 toothed harrow, and the basket-woven cart with its rollers 
 of wood. With these, too, there was the usual mispropor- 
 tion on the farm, to its extent, of lean, inefficient cattle, — 
 four half-starved animals performing with incredible effort 
 the work of one. Thomson would fain have induced the 
 old man, who was evidently sinking in the world, to have 
 recourse to a better system, but he gained wondrous little 
 by his advice. And there was another cause which ope- 
 rated still more decidedly against him. A wealthy young 
 farmer in the neighborhood had been for the last few 
 months not a little diligent in his attentions to Lillias. 
 He had lent the old man, at the preceding term, a consid- 
 erable sum of money ; and had ingratiated himself with 
 the step-mother by chiming in on all occasions with her 
 humor, and by a present or two besides. Under the aus- 
 pices of both parents, therefore, he had paid his addresses 
 to Lillias ; and, on meeting with a repulse, had stirred them 
 b )th up against Thomson. 
 
 The fisherman was engaged one evening in fishing his 
 nets. The ebb was that of a stream tide, and the bottom 
 of almost the entire bay lay exposed to the light of the 
 setting sun, save that a river-like strip of water wound 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 1-17 
 
 through the midst. He had brought his gun with him, in 
 the hope of finding a seal or otter asleep on the outer 
 banks ; but there were none this evening ; and, laying 
 down his piece against one of the poles of the wear, he 
 was employed in capturing a fine salmon, that went dart- 
 ing like a bird from side to side of the inner enclosure, 
 when he heard some one hailing him by name from out- 
 side the nets. He looked up, and saw three men — one of 
 whom he recognized as the young farmer who was paying 
 his addresses to Lillias — approaching from the opposite 
 side of the bay. They were apparently ranch in liquor, and 
 came staggering towards him in a zigzag track along the 
 sands. A suspicion, crossed his mind that he might find 
 them other than friendly ; and, coming out of the enclosure, 
 where, fi-om the narrowness of the space and the depth 
 of the water, he would have lain much at their mercy, 
 he employed himself in picking ofFthe patches of sea-weed 
 that adhered to the nets, when they came up to him, and 
 assailed him with a torrent of threats and reproaches. He 
 pursued his occupation with the utmost coolness, turning 
 round, from time to time, to repay their abuse by some 
 cutting repartee. His assailants discovered they were to 
 gain little in this sort of contest ; and Thomson found, in 
 turn, that they were much less disguised in liquor than 
 he at first supposed, or than they seemed desirous to make 
 it. appear. In reply to one of his more cutting sarcasms, 
 the tallest of the three, a ruffian-looking fellow, leaped 
 forward and struck him on the face ; and in a moment 
 he had returned the blow with such hearty good-will 
 that the fellow was dashed against one of the poles. The 
 other two rushed in to close with him. He seized his gun, 
 and, springing out from beside the nets to the open bank, 
 dealt the farmer, with the butt-end, a tremendous blow on 
 
148 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 the face, which prostrated him in an instant ; and then, 
 cocking the piece and presenting it, he commanded the 
 other two, on peril of their lives, to stand aloof. Odds of 
 weapons, when there is courage to avail one's se'lf of them, 
 forms a thorough counterbalance to odds of number. Af- 
 ter an engagement of a brief half-minute, Thomson's as- 
 sailants left him in quiet possession of the field ; and he 
 ibund, on his way home, that he could trace their route by 
 the blood of the young farmer. There went abroad an ex- 
 aggerated and very erroneous edition of the story, highly 
 unfavorable to the salmon-fisher ; and he received an inti- 
 mation shortly after that his visits at the farm-house were 
 no longer expected. But the intimation came not from 
 Lillias. 
 
 The second year of his speculation had well-nigh come 
 to a close, and, in calculating on the quantum of his ship- 
 ments and the state of the markets, he could deem it a 
 more successful one than even the first. But his agent 
 seemed to be assuming a new and worse character. He 
 rather substituted promises and apologies for his usual re- 
 mittances, or neglected writing altogether; and, as the fish- 
 erman was employed one day in dismantling his wears for 
 the season, his worst fears were realized by the astounding 
 intelligence that the embarrassments of the merchant had 
 at length terminated in a final suspension of payments! 
 
 " There," said he, with a coolness which partook in its 
 nature in no slight degree of that insensibility of pain and 
 injury which follows a violent blow, — " there go well-nigh 
 all my hard-earned savings of twelve years, and all my 
 hopes of happiness with Lillias ! " He gathered up his 
 utensils with an automaton-like carefulness, and, thixiwing 
 them over his shoulders, struck across the sands in the di- 
 rection of the cottage. " I must see her," he said, " once 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OP UDOLL. 149 
 
 more, and bid her farewell." His heart swelled to his 
 throat at the thought ; but, as if ashamed of his weakness, 
 he struck his foot firmly against the sand, and, proudly 
 raising himself to his full height, quickened his pace. He 
 reached the door, and, looking wistfully, as he raised the 
 latch, in the direction of the farm-house, his eye caught 
 a female figure coming towards the cottage through the 
 bushes of the ravine. " 'Tis poor Lillias ! " he exclaimed. 
 " Can she already have heard that I am unfortunate, and 
 that we must part ? " He went up to her, and, as he 
 pressed her hand between both his, she burst into tears. 
 
 It was a sad meeting. Meetings must ever be such when 
 the parties that compose them bring each a separate grief, 
 which becomes common when imparted. 
 
 " I cannot tell you," said Lillias to her lover, " how un- 
 happy I am. My step-mother has not much love to bestow 
 on any one ; and so, though it be in her power to deprive 
 me of the quiet I value so much, I care comparatively little 
 for her resentment. Why should I ? She is interested in 
 no one but herself As for Simpspn, I can despise without 
 hating him. Wasps sting just because it is their nature; 
 and some people seem born, in the same way, to be mfan- 
 spirited and despicable. But my poor father, who has been 
 so kind to me, and who has so much heart about him, 
 his displeasure has the bitterness of death to me. And 
 then he is so wildly and unjustly angry with you. Simp- 
 son has got him, by some means, into his power, I know 
 not how. My step-mother annoys him continually ; and 
 from the state of irritation in which he is kept, he is saying 
 and doing the most violent things imaginable, and making 
 me so unhappy by his threats." And she again burst into 
 tears. 
 
 Thomson had but little of comfort to impart to her. In- 
 13* 
 
150 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 deed, he could afterwards wonder at the indifference with 
 ■yyhich he beheld her tears, and the coolness with which he 
 coramunioated to her the story of his disaster. But he had 
 not yet recovered his natural tone of feeling. Who has 
 not observed that, while in men of an inferior and weaker 
 cast, any sudden and overwhelming misfortune unsettles 
 their whole minds, and all is storm and uproar, in minds 
 of a superior order, when subjected to the same ordeal, 
 there takes place a kind of freezing, hardening process, 
 under which they maintain at least apparent coolness and 
 self-possession ? Grief acts as a powerful solvent to the 
 one class ; to the other it is as the waters of a petrifying 
 spring. 
 
 "Alas, my Lillias!" said the fisherman, "we have not 
 been born for happiness and each other. We must part, 
 each of us to struggle with our respective evils. Call up 
 all your strength of mind, the much in your character 
 that has as yet lain unemployed, and so despicable a thing 
 as Simpson will not dare to annoy yon. You may yet 
 meet with a man worthy of you ; some one who will love 
 you as well as — as one who can at least appreciate your 
 valu£, and who will deserve you better.'' As he spoke, and 
 his mistress listened in silence and in tears, William Stew- 
 art burst in upon then through the bushes ; and, with a 
 countenance flushed, and a frame tremulous with passion, 
 assailed the fisherman with a torrent of threats and re- 
 proaches. He even raised his hand. The prudence ol 
 Thomson gave way under the provocation. Ere the blow 
 had descended, he had locked the farmer in his grasp, and, 
 with an exertion of strength which scarcely a giant would' 
 be capable of in a moment of less excitement, he raised him 
 from the earth, and forced him against the grassy side of 
 the ravine, where he held him despite of his efforts. A 
 
THE SALMON-FISHER OF UDOLL. 151 
 
 shriek from Lillias recalled him to the command ot himself. 
 " William Stewart," he said, quitting his hold and stepping 
 back, " you are an old man, and the father of Lillias." The 
 farmer rose slowly and collectedly, with a flushed clieek 
 but a quiet eye, as if all his anger had evaporated in the 
 struggle, and, turning to his daughter, — 
 
 " Come, Lillias, my lassie," he said, laying hold of her 
 arm, " I have been too hasty; I have been in the wrong." 
 And so they parted. 
 
 Winter came on, and Thomson was again left to the 
 solitude of his cottage, with only his books and his own 
 thoughts to employ him. He found little amusement or 
 comfort in either. He could think only of Lillias, that she 
 loved and yet was lost to him. 
 
 " Generous and affectionate and confiding," he has said, 
 when thinking of her, " I know she would willingly share 
 with me in my poverty ; but ill would I repay her kind- 
 ness in demanding of her such a sacrifice. Besides, how 
 could I endure to see her subjected to the privations of a 
 destiny so humble as mine ? The same heaven that seems 
 to have ordained me to labor, and to be unsuccessful, has 
 given me a mind not to be broken by either toil or diiji^r 
 pointment ; but keenly and bitterly would I feel the evils 
 of both were she to be equally exposed. I must strive to 
 forget her, or think of her only as my friend." And, in- 
 dulging in such thoughts as these, and repeating and re- 
 repeating similar resolutions, — only however to find them 
 unavailing, — winter, with its long, dreary nights, and its 
 days of languor and inactivity, passed heavily away. But 
 it passed. 
 
 He was sitting beside his fire, one evening late in Feb- 
 ruary, when a gentle knock was heard at the door. He 
 
152 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 started up, and, drawing back the bar, William Stewart 
 
 entered the apartment. 
 
 " Allan," said the old man, " I have come to have some 
 
 conversation with you, and would have come sooner, but 
 
 pride and shame kept me back. I fear I have been much 
 
 to blame." 
 
 Thomson motioned him to a seat, and sat down beside 
 
 him. 
 
 " Farmer," he said, " since we cannot recall the past, we 
 
 had perhaps better forget it." 
 
 The old man bent forward his head till it rested almost 
 on his knee, and for a few moments remained silent. 
 
 " I fear, Allan, I have been much to blame," he at length 
 reiterated. "Ye maun come an' see Lillias. She is ill, 
 very ill, an' I fear no very like to get better. Thomson 
 was stunned by the intelligence, and answered he scarcely 
 knew what. " She has never been richt hersel '," continued 
 the old man, " sin' the unlucky day when you an' I met in 
 the burn here; but for the last month she has been little 
 out o' her bed. Since mornin' there has been a great 
 change on her, an' she wishes to see you. I fear we 
 havena meikle time to spare, an' had better gang." Thom- 
 son followed him in silence. 
 
 They reached the farm-house of Meikle Farness, and en- 
 tered the chamber where the maiden lay. A bright fire of 
 brushwood threw a flickering gloom on the floor .nnd raft- 
 ers; and their shadows, as they advanced, seemed dancing 
 on the walls. Close beside the bed there was a small ta- 
 ble, bearing a lighted candle, and with a Bible lying open 
 upon it at that chapter of Corinthians in which the apos- 
 tle assures us that the dead shall rise, and the mortal put 
 on immortality. Lillias half sat, half reclined, in the upper 
 part of the bed. Her thin and wasted features had already 
 
THK SALMON-FISHER OF DDOLL. 153 
 
 the Stiff rigidity of death ; her cheeks and lips were color- 
 less; and though the blaze seemed to dance and flicker on 
 her half-closed eyes, they served no longer to intimate to 
 the departing spirit the existence of external things. 
 
 " Ah, my Lillias ! " exclaimed Thomson, as he bent over 
 her, his heart swelling with an intense agony. " Alas ! has 
 it come to this ! " 
 
 His well-known voice served to recall her as from the 
 precincts of another world. A faint melancholy smile 
 passed over her features, and she held out her hand. 
 
 " I was afraid," she said, in a voice sweet and gentle as 
 ever, though scarcely audible, through extreme weakness, 
 — "I was afraid that I was never to see you more. Draw 
 nearer ; there is a darkness coming over me, and I hear 
 but imperfectly. I may now say with a propriety which 
 no one will challenge, what I durst not have said before. 
 liTeed I tell you that you were the dearest of all ray friends, 
 the only man I have ever loved, the man whose lot, 
 however low and unprosperous, I would have deemed it a 
 happiness to be invited to share ? I do not, however, I 
 cannot reproach you. I depart, and forever ; but oh ! let 
 not a single thought of me render you unhappy. My few 
 years of life have not been without their pleasures, and I go 
 to a better and brighter world. I am weak, and cannot say 
 more ; but let me hear you speak. Read to me the eighth 
 chapter of Romans." 
 
 Thomson, with a voice tremulous and faltering through 
 emotion, read the chapter. Ere he had made an end, the 
 maiden had again sunk into the state of apparent insensi- 
 bility out of which she had been so lately awakened ; though 
 occasionally a faint pressure of his hand, which she still re- 
 tained, showed him that she was not unconscious of his 
 presence. At length, however, there was a total relaxation 
 
154 a?ALBS AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of the grasp ; the cold damp of the stiffening pahn struck a 
 chill to his heart ; there was a fluttering of the pulse, a 
 glazing of the eye ; the breast ceased to heave, the heart to 
 beat ; the silver cord parted in twain, and the golden bowl 
 was broken. Thomson contemplated for a moment the 
 body of his mistress, and, striking his hand against hi3 
 forehead, rushed out of the apartment. 
 
 He attended her funeral ; he heard the earth falling 
 heavy and hollow on the cofBn-lid ; he saw the green sod 
 placed over her grave ; he witnessed the irrepressible an- 
 guish of her father, and the sad regret of her friends ; and 
 all this without shedding a tear. He was turning to de- 
 part, when some one thrust a letter into his hand. He 
 opened it almost mechanically. It contained a consider- 
 able sum of money, and a few lines from his agent, stating 
 that, in consequence of a favorable change in his circum- 
 stances, he had been enabled to satisfy all his creditors. 
 Thomson crumpled up the bills in his hand. He felt as if 
 his heart stood still in his breast ; a noise seemed ringing 
 in his ears ; a mist-cloud appeared, as if rising out of the 
 earth and darkening around him. He was caught, when 
 falling, by old William Stewart ; and, on awakening to 
 consciousness and the memory of the past, found himself 
 in his arms. He lived for about ten years after a laborious 
 and speculative man, ready to oblige, and successful in all 
 his designs ; and no one deemed him unhappy. It was 
 observed, however, that his dark brown hair was soon min- 
 gled with masses of gray, and that his tread became heavy 
 and his frame bent. It was remarked, too, that when 
 attacked by a lingering epidemic, which passed over well- 
 nigh the whole country, he of all the people was the only 
 one that sunk under it. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Oh, mony a shriek, that waefu' night. 
 
 Rose frae the stormy main ; 
 An' mony a bootless vow was made, 
 
 An' mony a prayer vain ; 
 An' mithers wept, an' widows mourned. 
 
 For mony a weary day; 
 An' maidens, ance o' blithest mood, 
 
 Grew sad, an' pined away." 
 
 The northern Sutor of Cromarty is of a bolder char- 
 acter than even the southern one, abrupt and stern and 
 precipitous as that is. It presents a loftier and more un- 
 broken wall of rock ; and, where it bounds on the Moray 
 Frith, there is a savage magnificence in its cliffs and caves, 
 and in the wild solitude of its beach, which we find no- 
 where equalled on the shores of the other. It is more ex- 
 posed, too, in the time of tempest. The waves often rise, 
 during the storms of winter, more than a hundred feet 
 against its precipices, festooning them, even at that height, 
 with wreaths of kelp and tangle ; and for miles within the 
 bay we may hear, at such seasons, the savage uproar that 
 maddens amid its cliffs and caverns, coming booming over 
 the lashings of the nearer waves like a roar of artillery. 
 There is a sublimity of desolation on its shores, the effects 
 
156 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of a conflict maintained for ages, and on a scale so gigan- 
 tic. The isolated spire-like crags that rise along its base 
 are so drilled and bored by the incessant lashings of the 
 surf, and ai'e ground down into shapes so fantastic, that 
 they seem but the wasted skeletons of their former selves ; 
 and we find almost every natural fissure in the solid rock 
 hollowed into an immense cavern, whose very ceiling, 
 though the head turns as we look up to it, owes, evidently, 
 its comparative smoothness to the action of the waves. 
 One of the most remarkable of these recesses occupies 
 what we may term the apex of a lofty promontory. The 
 entrance, unlike most of the others, is narrow and rug- 
 ged, though of great height ; but it widens within into a 
 shadowy chamber, perplexed, like the nave of a cathedral, 
 by uncertain cross-lights, that come glimmering into it 
 through two lesser openings which perforate the opposite 
 sides of the promontory. It is a strange, ghostly-looking 
 place. There is a sort of moonlight greenness in the twi- 
 light which forms its noon, and the denser shadows which 
 rest along its sides ; a blackness, so profound that it mocks 
 the eye, hangs over a lofty passage which leads from it, 
 like a corridor, still deeper into the bowels of the hill ; the 
 light falls on a sprinkling of half-buried bones, the remains 
 of animals that in the depth of winter have creeped into 
 it for shelter and to die ; and when the winds are up, and 
 the hoarse roar of the waves comes reverberated from its 
 inner recesses, or creeps howling along its roof, it needs 
 no over-active fancy to people its avenues with the shapes 
 of beings long since departed from every gayer and softer 
 scene, but which still rise uncalled to the imagination, 
 in those by-corners of nature which seem dedicated, like 
 this cavern, to the wild, the desolate, and the solitary. 
 There is a little rocky bay a few hundred yards to the 
 
THE WIDOW OP DUNSKAITH. 157 
 
 west, which has been known for ages to all the seafaring 
 men of the place as the Cova Green. It is such a place as 
 ■\ve are sometimes made acquiainted with in the narrative 
 of disastrous shipwrecks. First, there is a broad semi- 
 circular strip of beach, with a wilderness of insulated piles 
 of rock in front; and so steep and continuous is the wall 
 of precipices which rises behind, that, though we may see 
 directly over head tlie grassy slopes of the hill, with here 
 and there a few straggling firs, no human foot ever gained 
 the nearer edge. The bay of the Cova Green is a prison 
 to which the sea presents the only outlet ; and the numer- 
 ous caves which open along its sides, like the arches of 
 an amphitheatre, seem but its darker cells. It is in truth 
 a wild, impressive place, full of beauty ami terror, and 
 with none of the squalidness of the mere dungeon about 
 it. There is a puny littleness in our brick and lime recep- 
 tacles of misery and languor, which speaks as audibly of 
 the feebleness of man as of his crimes or his inhumanity; 
 but here all is great and magnificent, and thei-e is much, 
 too, that is pleasing. Many of the higher cliffs, which 
 rise beyond the influence of the spray, are tapcstvied with 
 ivy. We may see the heron watching on tl. ■ Ldges be- 
 side her bundle of withered twigs, or the blue hawk dart- 
 ing from her cell. There is life on every side of us ; life 
 in even the wild tumbling of the waves, and in the stream 
 of pure water which, rushing from the higher edge of the 
 precipice in a long white cord, gradually untwists itself 
 by the way, and spatters ceaselessly among the stones 
 over the entrance of one of the caves. Nor does the scene 
 want its old story to strengthen its hold on the imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 I am wretchedly uncertain in my dates ; but it must 
 
 have been some time late in the reign of Queen Anne, 
 14 
 
158 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 that a fishing yawl, after vainly laboring for hours to enter 
 the bay of Cromarty, during a strong gale from the west, 
 was forced at nightfall to relinquish the attempt, and take 
 shelter in the Cova Green. The crew consisted of but 
 two persons, — an old fisherman and his son. Both had 
 been thoroughly drenched by the spray, and chilled by the 
 piercing wind, which, accompanied by thick snow show- 
 ers, had blown all day through the opening from ofi" the 
 snowy top of Ben Wyvis ; and it was with no ordinary 
 satisfaction that, as they opened the little bay on their 
 last tack, they saw the red gleam of a fire flickering from 
 one of the caves, and a boat drawn upon the beach. 
 
 " It must be some of the Tarbet fishermen," said the old 
 man, " wind-bound, like ourselves, but wiser than us in 
 having made provision for it. I shall feel willing enough 
 to share their fire with them for the night.'' 
 
 " But see," remarked the younger, " that there be no 
 unwillingness on the other side. I am much mistaken if 
 that be not the boat of my cousins the Macinlas, who 
 would so fain have broken my head last Rhorichie Tryst. 
 But, hap what may, father, the night is getting worse, and 
 we have no choice of quarters. Hard up your helm, or 
 we shall barely clear the skerries. There, now ; every 
 nail an anchor." He leaped ashore, carrying with him 
 the small hawser attached to the stern, which he wound 
 securely round a jutting crag, and then stood for a few 
 seconds, until the old man, who moved but heavily along 
 the thwarts, had come up to him. All was comparatively 
 calm under the lee of the precipices ; but the wind was 
 roaring fearfully in the woods above, and whistling amid 
 the furze and ivy of the higher clifi"; and the two boat- 
 men, as they entered the cave, could see the flakes of 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 159 
 
 a thick snow shower, that had just begun to descend, 
 circling round and round in the eddy. 
 
 The place was occupied by three men, who were sitting 
 beside the fire on blocks of stone which had been rolled 
 from the beach. Two of them were young, and compara- 
 tively commonplace-looking persons ; the third was a gray- 
 headed old man, apparently of great muscular strength, 
 though long past his prime, and of a peculiarly sinister cast 
 of countenance. A keg of spirits, which was placed end 
 up in front of them, served as a table ; there were little 
 drinking measures of tin on it ; and the mask-like, stolid 
 expressions of the two younger men showed that they had 
 been indulging freely. The elder was apparently sober. 
 They all started to their feet on the entrance of the fisher- 
 man, and one of the younger, laying hold of the little cask, 
 pitched it hurriedy into a dark corner of the cave. 
 
 " His peace be here ! " was the simple greeting of the 
 elder fisherman as he came forward. " Eachen Macinla," 
 he continued, addressing the old man, " we have not met 
 for years before, — not, I believe, since the death o' my 
 puir sister, when we parted such ill friends ; but we are 
 short-lived creatures oursels, Eachen ; surely our anger 
 should be short-lived too ; and I have come to crave from 
 you a seat by your fire." 
 
 " William Beth," replied Eachen, " it was no wish of 
 mine we should ever meet ; but to a seat by the fire you 
 are welcome." 
 
 Old Macinla and his sons resumed their seats ; the two 
 fishermen took their places fronting them ; and for some 
 time neither party exchanged a word. 
 
 A fire, composed mostly of fragments of wreck and drift- 
 wood, threw up its broad, cheerful flame towards the roof; 
 but so spacious was the cavern, that, except where here 
 
160 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 and there a whiter mass of stalactites or bolder projection 
 of cliff stood out from the darkness, the light seemed lost 
 in it. A dense body of smoke, which stretched its blue 
 level surface from side to side, and concealed the roof, went 
 rolling outwards like an inverted river. 
 
 " This is but a gousty lodging-place," remarked the old 
 fisherman, as he looked round him ; " but I have seen a 
 worse. I wish the folk at harae kent we were half sae 
 snug; and then the fire, too, — I have always felt some- 
 thing companionable in a fire, something consolable, as it 
 were ; it appears, somehow, as if it were a creature like 
 ourselves, and had life in it." The remark seemed directed 
 to no one in particular, and there was no reply. In a 
 second attempt at conversation, the fisherman addressed 
 himself to the old man. 
 
 " It has vexed me," he said, " that our young folk should- 
 na, for my sister's sake, be on more friendly terms, Eachen. 
 They hae been quarrelling, an' I wish to see the quarrel 
 made up." The old man, without deigning a reply, knit 
 his gray, shaggy brows, and looked doggedly at the fire. 
 
 "Nay, now," continued the fisherman, " we are getting 
 auld men, Eachen, an' wauld better bury our hard thoughts 
 o' ane anither afore we come to be buried ourselves. What 
 if we were sent to the Cova Green the night, just that we 
 might part friends ! " 
 
 Eachen fixed his keen, scrutinizing glance on the speaker, 
 — it was but for a moment, — there was a tremulous 
 motion of the under lip as he withdrew it, and a setting of 
 the teeth, — the expression of mingled hatred and anger; 
 but the tone of his reply savored more of sullen indiffer- 
 ence than of passion. 
 
 " William Beth," he said, " ye hae tricked my boys out 
 o' the bit property that suld hae come to them by their 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 161 
 
 mother ; it's no lang since they barely escaped being mur- 
 dered by your son. What more want you ? But ye 
 perhaps think it better that the tiaie should be passed in 
 making hollow lip. professions of good-will, than that it suld 
 be employed in clearing off an old score." 
 
 "Ay," hickuped out the elder of the two sons.; "the 
 houses might come my way then ; an', besides, gin Helen 
 Henry were to lose her a'e jo, the ither might hae a better 
 chance. Rise, brither ! rise, man ! an' fight for me an' 
 your sweet-heart." The younger lad, who seemed verging 
 towards the last stage of intoxication, struck his clenched 
 fist against his palm, and attempted to rise. 
 
 " Look ye, uncle," exclaimed the younger fisherman, — 
 a powerful-looking and very handsome stripling, — as he 
 sprang to his feet ; " your threat might be spared. Our lit- 
 tle property was my grandfather's, and naturally descended 
 to his only son ; and as for the affair at Rhorichie, I dare 
 either of my cousins to say the quarrel was of my seeking. 
 I have no wish to raise my hand against the sons or the 
 husband of my aunt ; but if forced to it, you will find that 
 neither my father nor myself are wholly at your mercy." 
 
 " Whisht, Earnest," said the old fisherman, laying his 
 hand on the hand of the young man ; " sit down; your uncle 
 maun hae ither thoughts. It is now fifteen years, Eachen," 
 he continued, " since I was called to my sister's deathbed. 
 You yoursel' canna forget what passed there. There had 
 been grief an' cauld an' hunger beside that bed. I'll no 
 say you were willingly unkind, — few folk are that, but 
 when they hae some purpose to serve by it, an' you could 
 have none, — but you laid no restraint on a harsh temper, 
 and none on a craving habit that forgets everything but 
 itsel' ; and so my puir sister perished in the middle o' her 
 days, a wasted, heart-broken thing. It's no that I wish to 
 14* 
 
162 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 hui-t you. I mind how we passed our youth thegither 
 among the wild buccaneers. It was a bad scliool, Eacben ; 
 an' I owre often feel I havena unlearned a' my ain lessons, 
 to wonder that you sbouldna hae unlearned a' yours. But 
 we're getting old men Eachen, an' we have now, what 
 we hadua in our young days, the advantage o' the light. 
 Dinna let us die fools in the sight o' Plim who is so willing 
 to give us wisdom ; dinna let us die enemies. We have been 
 early friends, though maybe no for good, we have fought 
 afore now at the same gun ; we have been united by the 
 luve o' her that's now in the dust ; an' there are our boys, 
 — the nearest o' kin to ane anither that death has spared. 
 But what I feel as strongly as a' the rest, Eachen, we hae 
 done meikle ill thegither. I can hardly think o' a past sin 
 without thinking o' you, an' thinking, too, that if a crea- 
 ture like me may hope he has found pardon, you shouldna 
 despair. Eachen, we maun be friends." 
 
 The features of the stern old man relaxed. "You are 
 perhaps I'ight, William," he at length replied ; " but ye 
 were aye a luckier man than me, — luckier for this world, 
 I'm sure, an' maybe for the next. I had aye to seek, an' 
 aften without finding, the good that came in your gate o' 
 itsel'. Xow that age is coming upon us, ye get a snug 
 rental frae the little houses, an' I hae naething ; an' ye 
 hae character an' credit ; but wha would trust me, or cares 
 for me? Ye hae been made an elder o' the kirk, too, I 
 hear, an' I am still a reprobate ; but we were a' born to be 
 jubt what we are, an' sae maun submit. An' your son, too, 
 shai-es in your luck. Ho has heart an' hand, an' my whelps 
 hae neither; an' the girl Henry, that scouts that sot there, 
 likes him; but what wonder o' that? But you are right, 
 William ; we maun be friends. Pledge me." The little 
 oask was produced ; and, filling the measures, he nodded 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 163 
 
 to Earnest and his father. They pledged him, when, as if 
 seized by a sudden frenzy, he filled his measure thrice in 
 hasty succession, draining it each time to the bottom, and 
 then flung it down with a short, hoarse laugh. His sons, 
 who would fain have joined with him, he repulsed with a 
 firmness of manner which he had not before exhibited. 
 " No, whelps," he said ; " get sober as fast as ye can." 
 
 " We had better," whispered Earnest to his father, " not 
 sleep in the cave to-night." 
 
 " Let me hear now o' your quarrel. Earnest," said Ea- 
 chan ; " your father was a more prudent man than you ; 
 and, however much he wronged me, did it without quar- 
 relling." 
 
 " The quarrel was none of my seeking,'' replied Earnest. 
 " I was insulted by your sons, and would have borne it for 
 the sake of what they seemed to forget ; but there was 
 another whom they also insulted, and that I could not 
 bear." 
 " The girl Henry. And what then ? " 
 " Why, my cousins may tell the rest. They were mean 
 enough to take odds against me, and I just beat the two 
 spiritless fellows that did so." 
 
 But why record the quarrels of this unfortunate evening? 
 An hour or two passed away in disagreeable bickerings, 
 during which the patience of even the old fisherman was 
 worn out, and that of Earnest had failed him altogether. 
 They both quitted the cave, boisterous as the night was, — 
 and it was now stormier than ever, — and, heaving off their 
 boat till she rode at the full length of her swing from the 
 shore, sheltered themselves under the sail. The Macinlas 
 returned next evening to Tarbet ; but, though the wind 
 moderated during the day, the yawl of William Beth did 
 not enter the Bay of Cromarty. Weeks passed away. 
 
164 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 during which the clergyman of the place corresponded 
 regarding the missing fisherman with all the lower parts 
 of the Frith, but they had disappeared, as it seemed, for 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HELEN'S VISION. 
 
 Where the northern Sutor sinks into the low sandy 
 tract that nearly fronts the town of Cromarty, there is a 
 narrow grassy terrace raised but a few yards over the level 
 of the beach. It is sheltered behind by a steep, undulating 
 bank ; for, though the rock here and there juts out, it is too 
 rich in vegetation to be termed a precipice. It is a sweet 
 little spot, with its grassy slopes, that recline towards the 
 sun, partially covered with thickets of wild rose and honey- 
 suckle, and studded in their season with violets and daisies 
 and the delicate rock geranium. Towards its eastern ex- 
 tremity, with the bank rising immediately behind, and an 
 open sjjace in front, which seemed to have been cultivated 
 at one time as a garden, there stood a picturesque little 
 cottage. It was that of the widow of William Beth. Five 
 years had now elapsed since the disappearance of her son 
 and husband, and the cottage bore the marks of neglect 
 and decay. The door and window, bleached white by the 
 sea-winds, shook loosely to every breeze ; clusters of chick- 
 weed luxuriated in the hollows of the thatch, or mantled 
 over the eaves ; and a honeysuckle, that had twisted itself 
 round the chimney, lay withering in a tangled mass at the 
 foot of the wall. 
 
 But the progress of decay was more marked in the widow 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 165 
 
 herself than in her dwelling. She had had to contend with 
 grief and penury ; a grief not the less undermining in its 
 effects from the circumstance of its being sometimes sus- 
 pen<led by hope ; a penury so extreme that every succeed- 
 ing day seemed as if won by some providential interference 
 from absolute want. And she was now, to all appearance, 
 fast sinking in the struggle. The autumn was well-nigh 
 over. She had been weak and ailing for months before, 
 and had now become so feeble as to be confined for days 
 togetheB to her bed. But, happily, the poor solitary wo- 
 man had at least one attached friend in the daughter of a 
 farmer of the parish, a young and beautiful girl, who, 
 though naturally of no melancholy temperament, seemed 
 to derive almost all she enjoyed of pleasure from the soci- 
 ety of the widow. Helen Henry was in her twenty-first 
 year, but she seemed older in spirit than in years. She 
 was thin and pale, though exquisitely formed. There was 
 a drooping heaviness in her fine eyes, and a cast of pensive 
 thought on her forehead, that spoke of a longer experience 
 of grief than so brief a portion of life might be supposed 
 to have furnished. She had once lovers, but they had 
 gradually dropped away in the despair of moving her, and 
 awed by a deep and settled pensiveness, which, in the 
 gayest season of youth, her character had suddenly but 
 permanently assumed. Besides, they all knew her affec- 
 tions were already engaged, and had come to learn, though 
 late and unwillingly, that there are cases in which no rival 
 can be more formidable than a dead one. 
 
 Autumn, I have said, was near its close. The weather 
 had given indications of an early and severe winter ; and 
 the widow, whose worn-out and delicate frame was affected 
 by every change of atmosphere, had for a few days been 
 more than usually indisposed. It was now long past noon, 
 
166 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 and she had but just risen. The apartment, however, bore 
 witness that her young friend had paid her the accustomed 
 morning visit ; the fire was blazing on a clean, comfortable- 
 looking hearth, and every little piece of furniture it con- 
 tained was arranged with the most scrupulous care. Her 
 devotions were hardly over when the well-known tap was 
 again heard at the door. 
 
 " Come in, my lassie," said the widow ; and then lower- 
 ing her voice, as the light foot of her friend was heard on 
 the threshold, " God," she said, " has been ever* kind to 
 me ; far, very far, aboon my best deservings ; and oh, may 
 he bless and reward her who has done so nieikle, meikle 
 for me ! " The young girl entered and took her seat be- 
 side her. 
 
 " You told me, mother," she said, " that to-morrow is 
 Earnest's birthday. I have been thinking of it all last 
 night, and feel as if my heart were turning into stone. 
 But when I am alone it is always so. There is a cold, 
 death-like weight at my breast, that makes me unhappy; 
 though, when I come to you, and we speak together, the 
 feeling passes away, and I become cheerful." 
 
 " xVh, my bairn," replied the old woman, " I fear I'm no 
 your friend, meikle as I love you. We speak owre, owre 
 often o' the lost, for our foolish hearts find mair pleasure 
 in that than in anything else ; but ill does it fit us for being 
 alone. Weel do I ken your feeling, — a stone deadness o' 
 the heart, — a feeling there are no words to express, but 
 that seems as it were insensibility itself turning into pain; 
 and I ken, too, my lassie, that it is nursed by the very 
 means ye tak to flee from it. Ye maun learn to think mair 
 o' the living, and less o' the dead. Little, little does it 
 matter how a puir worn-out creature like me passes the 
 few broken days o' life that remains to her; but ye are 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 167 
 
 young, my Helen, an' the world is a' before you ; and ye 
 maun just ti-y an' live for it." 
 
 " To-morrow,'' rejoined Helen, " is Earnest's birthday. 
 Is it no strange that, when our minds make pictures o' the 
 dead, it is always as they looked best an' kindest an' maist 
 life-like; I have been seeing Earnest all night long, as 
 when I saw him on his last birthday ; an' oh, the sharp- 
 ness o' the pang, when, every now an' then, the back o' the 
 picture is turned to me, an' I see him as he is, — dust ! " 
 
 The widow grasped her young friend by the hand. 
 "Helen," she said, "you will get better when I am taken 
 from you ; but so long as we continue to meet, our thoughts 
 will aye be running .the one way. I had a strange dream 
 last night, an' must tell it to you. Tou see yon rock to 
 the east, in the middle o' the little bay, that now rises 
 through the back draught o' the sea, like the hull o' a ship, 
 an' is now buried in a mountain o' foam ? I dreamed I 
 was sitting on that rock, in what seemed a bonny summer's 
 morning. The sun was glancin' on the water, an' I could 
 see the white sand far down at the bottom, wi' the reflec- 
 tion o' the little wavies running o'er it in long curls o' 
 goud. But thei-e was no way o' leaving the rock, for the 
 deep waters were round an' round me; an' I saw the tide 
 covering one wee bittie after another, till at last the whole 
 was covered. An' yet I had but little fear ; for I remem- 
 bered that baith Earnest an' William were in the sea afore 
 me; an' I had the feeling that I could hae rest nowhere 
 but wi' them. The water at last closed o'er me, an' I 
 sank frae aff the rock to the sand at the bottom. But 
 death seemed to have no power given him to hurt me; 
 an' I walked as light as ever I hae done on a gowany brae, 
 through the green depths o' the sea. I saw the silvery 
 glitter o' the trout aiu' the salmon shining to the sun, far, 
 
168 ■ TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 far aboon me, like white pigeons in the lift; an' around 
 me there were crimson star-fish an' sea-flowers an' long 
 trailing plants, that waved in the tide like streamers; an' 
 at length I came to a steep rock, wi' a little cave like a 
 tomb in it. ' Here,' I said, ' is the end o' my jom-ney. 
 William is here, an' Earnest.' An', as I looked into the 
 cave, I saw there were bones in it, an' I prepared to take 
 ray place beside them. But, as I stooped to enter, some 
 one called me, an', on looking up, there was William. 
 'Lillias,' he said, 'it is not night yet, nor is that your bed; 
 you are to sleep, not with me, but with Earnest. Haste 
 you home, for he is waiting you.' ' Oh, take me to him ! ' 
 I said ; an' then all at once I found myself on the shore, 
 dizzied an' blinded wi' the bright sunshine ; for at the cave 
 there was a darkness like that o' a simmer's gloamin'; an' 
 when I looked up for William, it was Earnest that stood 
 before me, life-like an' handsome as ever; an' you were 
 beside him." 
 
 The day had been gloomy and lowering, and, though 
 there was little wind, a tremendous sea, that, as the evening 
 advanced, rose higher and higher against the neighboring 
 precipice, had been rolling ashore since morning. The 
 wind now began to blow in long hollow gusts among the 
 cliffs, and the rain to patter against the widow's casement. 
 
 " It will be a storm from the sea," she said ; " the soarts 
 an' gulls hae been flying landward sin' daybreak, an' I hae 
 never seen the ground-swell come home heavier against 
 the rocks. Wae's me for the puir sailors ! " 
 
 " In the lang storm 3^ nights," said Helen, " I canna sleep 
 for thinking o' them, though I have no one to bind me to 
 them now. Only look how the sea rages among the rocks, 
 as if it were a thing o' life an' passion ! That last wave 
 rose to the crane's nest. An' look, ydhder is a boat round- 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 169 
 
 ing the rock wi' only a'e man in it. It dances on the surf 
 as if it were a cork ; an' the wee bittie o' sail, sae black an' 
 weet, seems scarcely bigger than a napkin. Is it no bear- 
 ing in for the boat-haven below? " 
 
 " My poor old eyes," replied the widow, " are growing 
 dim, an' surely no wonder ; but yet I think I should ken 
 that boatman. Is it no Eachen Macinla o' Tarbet ? " 
 
 "Hard-hearted, cruel old man!" exclaimed the maiden; 
 " what can be takin' him here ? Look how his skiff shoots 
 in like an arrow on the long roll o' the surf! an' now she is 
 high on the beach. How unfeeling it was o' him to rob 
 you o' your little property in the very first o' your grief! ' 
 But see, he is so worn out that he can hardly walk over 
 the rough stones. Ah me ! he is down ; wretched old man, 
 I must run to his assistance. But no ; he has risen again. 
 See, he is coming straight to the house ; an' now he is at the 
 door." In a moment after, Eachen entered the cottage. 
 
 " I am perishing, Lillias," he said, " with cold an' hunger, 
 an' can gang nae further ; surely ye'll no shut your door on 
 me in a night like this." 
 
 The poor widow had been taught in a far different school. 
 She relinquished to the worn-out fisherman her seat by the 
 fire, now hurriedly heaped with fresh fuel, and hastened 
 to set before him the simple viands which her cottnge 
 afforded. 
 
 As the night darkened, the storm increased. The wind 
 roared among the rocks like the rattling of a thousand car- 
 riages over a paved street ; and there were times when, 
 after a sudden pause, the blast struck the cottage as if it 
 were a huge missile flung against it, and pressed on its roof 
 and walls till the very floor rocked, and the rafters strained 
 and shivered like the beams of a stranded vessel. There 
 was a ceaseless patter of mingled rain and snow, now 
 15 
 
170 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 lower, now louder ; and the fearful thunderings of the 
 waves, as they raged among the pointed crags, were min- 
 gled with the hoarse roll of the storm along the beach. 
 The old man sat beside the fire, fronting the widow and 
 her companion, with his head reclined nearly as low as his 
 knee, and his hands covering his face. There was no at- 
 tempt at conversation. He seemed to shudder every time 
 the blast yelled along the roof; and, as a fiercer gust burst 
 open the door, there was a half-muttered ejaculation. 
 
 " Heaven itsel' hae mercy on them ! for what can man 
 do in a night like this ? " 
 
 " It is black as pitch," exclaimed Helen, who had risen 
 to draw the bolt ; " an' the drift flies sae thick, that it feels 
 to the hand like a solid snaw wreath. An' oh, how it 
 lightens ! " 
 
 " Heaven itsel' hae mercy on them ! " again ejaculated 
 the old man. "My two boys," said he, addressing the 
 widow, " are at the far Frith ; an' how can an open boat 
 live in a night like this ? " 
 
 There seemed something magical in the communication, 
 — something that awakened all the sympathies of the poor 
 bereaved woman ; and she felt she could forgive him every 
 unkindness. 
 
 " Wae's me ! " she exclaimed ; " it was in such a night as 
 this, an' scarcely sae wild, that my Earnest perished." 
 
 The old man groaned and wrung his hands. 
 
 In one of the pauses of the hurricane there was a gun 
 heard from the sea, and shortly after a second. " Some 
 puir vessel in distress," said the widow ; " but, alas ! where 
 can succor come frae in sae terrible a night ? There is help 
 only in Ane. Wae's me ! would we no better light up a 
 blaze on the floor, an', dearest Helen, draw off the cover 
 frae the window ? My puir Earnest has told me that my 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 171 
 
 light has aften showed him his bearing frae the deadly bed 
 o' Dunskaith. That last gun," — for a third was now heard • 
 booming over the mingled roar of the sea and the wind, — 
 " that last gun cam' frae the very rock-edge. Wae's me, 
 wae's me ! maun they perish, an' sae near ! " Helen has- 
 tily lighted a bundle of more fir, that threw up its red sput- 
 tering blaze half way to the roof, and, dropping the cover- 
 ing, continued to wave it opposite the window. Guns were 
 still heard at measured intervals, but apparently from a 
 safer oflSng ; and at last, as it sounded faintly against the 
 wind, came evidently from the interior of the bay. 
 
 " She has escaped," said the old man. " It's a feeble 
 hand that canna do good when the heart is willing. But 
 what has mine been doin' a' life lang?" He looked at 
 the window, and shuddered. 
 
 Towards morning the wind fell, and the moon, in her 
 last quarter, rose red and glaring out of the Frith, lighting 
 the melancholy roll of the waves, that still rose like moun- 
 tains, and the broad white belt of surf that skirted the 
 shores. Tlie old fisherman- left the cottage, and sauntered 
 along the beach. It was heaped with huge wreaths of kelp 
 and tangle, uprooted by the storm ; and in the hollow of the 
 rocky bay lay the scattered fragments of a boat. Eachen 
 stooped to pick up a piece of the wreck, in the fearful ex- 
 pectation of finding some known mark by which to recog- 
 nize it, when the light fell full on the swollen face of a 
 corpse that seemed staring at him from out a wreath of 
 weed. It was that of his eldest son. The body of the 
 younger, fearfully gashed and mangled by the rocks, lay a 
 few yards further to the east. 
 
 The morning was as pleasant as the night had been 
 boisterous ; and except that the distant hills were covered 
 with snow, and that a swell still continued to roll in from 
 
172 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 the sea, there remained scarce any trace of the recent tem- 
 pest. Every hollow of the neighboring hill had its little 
 runnel, formed by the rains of the previous night, that now 
 splashed and glistened to the sun. The bushes round the 
 cottage were well-nigh divested of their leaves ; but their 
 red berries, hips and haws, and the juicy fruit of the honey-: 
 suckle, gleamed cheerfully to the light ; and a warm steam 
 of vapor, like that of a May morning, rose from the roof 
 and the little mossy platform in front. But the scene 
 seemed to have something more than merely its beauty to 
 recommend it to a young man, drawn apparently to the 
 spot, with many others, by the fate of the two unfortunate 
 fishermen, and who now stood gazing on the rocks and the 
 hills and the cottage, as a lover on the features of his mis- 
 tress. The bodies had been carried to an old store-house, 
 which may still be seen a short mile to the west ; and the 
 crowds that, during the early part of the morning, had been 
 perambulating the beach, gazing at the wreck, and discuss- 
 ing the various probabilities of the accident, had gradually 
 dispersed. But this solitary individual, whom no one 
 knew, remained behind. He was a tall and swarthy, 
 though very handsome man, of about five-and-twenty, with 
 a slight scar on his left cheek. His dress, which was plain 
 and neat, was distinguished from that of the common sea- 
 man by three narrow stripes of gold-lace on the upper part 
 of one of the sleeves. He had twice stepped towards the 
 cottage-door, and twice drawn back, as if influenced by 
 some unaccountable feeling, — timidity, perhaps, or bash- 
 fulness ; and yet the bearing of the man gave little indica- 
 tion of either. But at length, as if he had gathered heart, 
 he raised the latch and went in. 
 
 The widow, who had had many visitors that morning, 
 seemed to be scarcely aware of his entrance. She was 
 
THE WIDOW OF DUNSKAITH. 173 
 
 sitting on a low seat beside the fire, her face covered with 
 her hands ; while the tremulous rocking motion of her 
 body showed that she was still brooding over the distresses 
 of the previous night. Her companion, who had thrown 
 herself across the bed, was fast asleep. The stranger seated 
 himself beside the fire, which seemed dying amid its ashes ; 
 and, turning sedulously from the light of the window, laid 
 his hand gently on the widow's shoulder. She started, and 
 looked up. 
 
 "I have strange news for you," he said. "You have 
 long mourned for your husband and your son ; but, though 
 the old man has been dead for years, your son Earnest is 
 still alive, and is now in the harbor of Cromarty. He is 
 lieutenant of the vessel whose guns you must have heard 
 during the night." 
 
 The poor woman seemed to have lost all power of reply. 
 
 " I am a friend of Earnest's," continued the stranger, 
 " and have come to prepare you for meeting with him. It 
 is now five years since his father and he were blown off to 
 sea by a strong gale from the land. They drove before it 
 for four days, when they were picked up by an armed vessel 
 then cruising in the North Sea, and which soon after sailed 
 for the coast of Spanish America. The poor old man sank 
 under the fatigues he had undergone ; though Earnest, 
 better able, from his youth, to endure hardship, was little 
 affected by them. He accompanied us on our Spanish 
 expedition; indeed, he had no choice, for we touched at no 
 British port after meeting with him ; and, through good 
 fortune, and what his companions call merit, he has risen 
 to be the second man aboard, and has now brought home 
 with him gold enough from the Spaniards to make his old 
 mother comfortable. He saw your light yester-evening, 
 and steered by it to the roadstead, blessing you all the way. 
 15* 
 
174 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Tell me, for he anxiously wished me to inquire of you, 
 whether Helen Henry is yet unmarried." 
 
 "It is Earnest! it is Earnest himself!" exclaimed the 
 maiden, as she started from the widow's bed. In a moment 
 after, she was locked in his arms. But why dwell on a 
 scene which I feel myself unfitted to describe ? 
 
 It was ill before evening with old Eachen Macinla. The 
 fatigues of the pi-esent day, and the grief and horror of the 
 previous night, had prostrated his energies, bodily and men- 
 tal ; and he now lay tossing, in a waste apartment of the 
 storehouse, in the delirium of a fever. The bodies of liis two 
 sons occupied the floor below. He muttered unceasingly, 
 in his ravings, of William and Earnest Beth. They were 
 standing beside him, he said ; and every time he attempted 
 to pray for his poor boys and himself the stern old man laid 
 his cold swollen hand on his lips. 
 
 "Why trouble me?" he exclaimed. " Why stare with 
 your white dead eyes on me ? Away, old man ; the little 
 black shells are sticking in your gray hairs ; away to your 
 place ! Was it I who raised the wind on the sea? — was 
 it I ? — was it I ? TJh, u ! — -no — no ; you were asleep, — 
 you were fast asleep, — and could not see me cut the sunng ; 
 and, besides, it was only a piece of rope. Keep away; touch 
 me not ; I am a free man, and will plead for my life. 
 Please your honor, I did not murder these two men ; I 
 only cut the rope that fastened their boat to the land. Ha ! 
 ha! ha! he has ordered them away, and they have both 
 left me unskaithed." At this moment Earnest Beth entered 
 the apartment, and approached the bed. The miserable 
 old man raised himself on his elbow, and, regarding him 
 with a horrid stare, shrieked out, " Here is Earnest Beth, 
 come for me a second time ! " and, sinking back on the 
 pillow, instantly expired. 
 
V. 
 THE LYKEWAKE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Why start at Death ? Where is he ? 
 Death arrived, is past; not come or gone, he's never here. 
 
 Young. 
 
 I KNOW no place where one may be brought acquainted 
 with the more credulous beliefs of our forefathers at a 
 less expense of inquiry and exertion than in a country 
 lykewake. The house of mourning is naturally a place 
 of sombre thoughts and ghostly associations. There is 
 something, too, in the very presence and appearance of ' 
 death that leads one to think of the place and state of the 
 dead. Cowper has finely said that the man and the beast 
 ■who stand together side by side on the same hill-top, are, 
 notwithstanding their proximity, the denizens of very dif- 
 ferent worlds. And I have felt the remark to apply still 
 more strongly when sitting beside the dead. The world 
 of intellect and feeling in which we ourselves are, and of 
 which the lower propensities of our nature form a province, 
 may be regarded as including, in part at least, that world 
 of passion and instinct in which the brute lives ; and we 
 have but to analyze and abstract a little, to form for our- 
 selves ideas of this latter world from even our own experi- 
 
176 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ence. But by what process of thought can we bring ex- 
 perience to bear on the world of the dead ? It lies entirely 
 beyond us, a terra incognita of cloud and darkness ; and 
 yet the thing at our side — the thing over which we can 
 stretch our hand, the thing dead to us but living to it 
 — has entered upon it ; and, however uninformed or igno- 
 rant before, knows more of its dark, and to us inscrutable 
 mysteries, than all our philosophers and all our divines. Is 
 it wonder that we would fain put it to the question ; that 
 we would fain catechise it, if we could, regarding its newly- 
 acquired experience ; that we should fill up the gaps in 
 the dialogue, which its silence leaves to us, by imparting 
 to one another the little we know regarding its state and 
 its place ; or that we should send our thoughts roaming in 
 long excursions, to glean from the experience of the past 
 all that it tells us of the occasional visits of the dead, and 
 all that in their less taciturn and more social momenta 
 they have communicated to the living ? And hence, from 
 feelings so natural and a train of associations so obvi- 
 ous, the character of a country lykewake, and the cast 
 of its stories. I say a country lykewake ; for in at least 
 all our larger towns, where a cold and barren scepticism 
 has chilled the feelings and imaginations of the people, 
 without, I fear, much improving their judgments, the con- 
 versation on such occasions takes a lower and less inter- 
 esting range. 
 
 I once spent a night with a friend from the south -^ a 
 man of an inquiring and highly philosophic cast of mind — 
 at a lykew.ike in the upper part of the parish of Cromarty. 
 I had excited his curiosity by an incidental remark or two 
 of the kind I have just been dropping ; and, on his express- 
 ing a wish that I should introduce him, by way of illustra- 
 tion, to some such scene as I had been describing, we had 
 
THE LYKKWAKE. 177 
 
 set out together to the wake of an elderly female who had 
 died that morning. Her cottage, au humble erection of 
 stone and lime, was situated beside a thick fir-wood, on the 
 edge of the solitary MuUbuoy, one of the dreariest and most 
 extensive commons in Scotland. We had to pass in our 
 journey over several miles of desolate moor, sprinkled with 
 cairns and tumuli — the memorials of some forgotten con- 
 flict of the past ; we had to pass, too, through a thick, 
 dark wood, with here and there an intervening marsh, 
 whitened over with moss and lichens, and which, from this 
 circumstance, are known to the people of the country as 
 the white bogs. Nor was the more distant landscape of a 
 less gloomy character. On the one hand there opened an 
 interminable expanse of moor, that went stretching on- 
 wards mile beyond mile — bleak, dreary, uninhabited and 
 uninhabitable — till it merged into the far horizon. On the 
 other there rose a range of blue, solitary hills, towering, as 
 they receded, into loftier peaks and bolder acclivities, till 
 they terminated on the snow-streaked Ben Weavis. The 
 season, too, was in keeping with the scene. It was draw- 
 ing towards the close of autumn ; and, as we passed through 
 the wood, the falling leaves were eddying round us with 
 every wind, or lay in rustling heaps at our feet. 
 
 " I do not wonder," said my companion, " that the su- 
 perstitions of so wild a district as this should bear in their 
 character some marks of a corresponding wildness. Night 
 itself, in a populous and cultivated country, is attended 
 with less of the stern and the solemn than mid-day amid 
 solitudes like these. Is the custom of watching beside the 
 dead of remote antiquity in this part of the country? 
 
 "Far beyond the reach of history or tradition," I said. 
 "But it has gradually been changing its character, as the 
 people have been changing theirs, and is now a very dif- 
 
178 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ferent thing from what it was a century ago. It is not yet 
 ninety years since lykewakes in the neighboring Highlands 
 used to be celebrated with music and dancing ; and even 
 here, on the borders of the low country, they used invaria- 
 bly, like the funerals, to be the scenes of wild games and 
 amusements never introduced on any other occasion. You 
 remember how Sir Walter describes the funeral of Athel- 
 stane ? The Saxon ideas of condolence were the most 
 natural imaginable. If grief was hungry, they supplied it 
 with food ; if thirsty, they gave it drink. Our simple an- 
 cestors here seem to have reasoned by a similar process. 
 They made their seasons of deepest grief their times of 
 greatest merriment ; and the more they regretted the de- 
 ceased, the gayer were they at his wake and his funeral. 
 A friend of mine, now dead, a very old man, has told me 
 that he once danced at a lykewake in the Highlands of 
 Sutherland. It was that of an active and a very robust 
 man, taken away from his wife and family in the prime of 
 life ; and the poor widow, for the greater part of the even- 
 ing, sat disconsolate beside the fire, refusing every invita- 
 tion to join the dancers. She was at length, however, 
 brought out by the father of the deceased. ' Little, little 
 did he think,' he said, ' that we should be the last to dance 
 at poor Rory's lykewake.' " 
 
 We reached the cottage and went in. The apartment 
 in which the dead lay was occupied by two men and three 
 women. Every little piece of furniture it contained was 
 hung in white, and the floor had recently been swept and 
 sanded ; but it was on the bed where the body lay, and on 
 the body itself, that the greatest care had been lavished. 
 The curtains had been taken down, and their places sup- 
 plied by linen white as snow ; and on the sheet that served 
 as a counterpane the body was laid out in a dress of white. 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 179 
 
 fantastically crossed and re-crossed in every direction by 
 scalloped fringes, and fretted into a species of open work, 
 at least intended to represent alternate rows of roses and 
 tulips. A plate containing a little salt was placed over the 
 breast of the corpse. As we entered one of the women 
 rose, and, filling two glasses with spirits, presented them 
 to us on a salver. We tasted the liquor, and sat down on 
 chairs placed for us beside the fire. The conversation, 
 which had been interrupted by our entrance, began to flow 
 apace ; and an elderly female, who had lived under the same 
 roof with the deceased, began to relate, in answer to the 
 queries of one of the others, some of the particulars of her 
 last illness and death. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE STORY OF ELSPAT M'CDLLOCH. 
 
 " Elspat was aye," she said, " a retired body, wi' a cast 
 o' decent pride aboot her ; an', though bare and puirly aff 
 sometimes in her auld days, she had never been chargeable 
 to onybody. She had come o' decent, 'sponsible people, 
 though they were a' low enough the day; ay, an' they 
 were God-fearing people too, wha had gien plenty in their 
 time, an' bad aye plenty to gie. An' though they had 
 been a' langsyne laid in the kirkyard, — a' except hersel', 
 puir body, — she wouldna disgrace their gude name, she 
 said, by takin' an alms frae ony ane. Her sma means fell 
 oot o' her hands afore her last illness. Little had aye 
 dune her turn, but the little failed at last ; an' sair thocht 
 
180 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 did it gie her for a while what was to come o' her. I 
 could hear her, in the butt end o' the hoose, a'e momin' 
 mair earnest an' langer in her prayers than usual, though 
 she never neglected them, puir body ; an' a' the early part 
 o' that day she seemed to be no weel. She was aye up 
 and down ; an' I could ance or twice hear her gaunting 
 at the fireside ; but when I went ben to her, an' asked what 
 was the matter wi' her, she said she was just in her ordi- 
 nar'. She went oot for a wee ; an' what did I do, but gang 
 to her amry, for I jaloused a' wasna right there ; an' oh ! 
 it was a sair sicht to see, neebors ; for there was neither a 
 bit o' bread nor a grain of meal within its four corners, — 
 naething but the sealed up graybeard wi' the whiskey that 
 for twenty years an' niair she had been keepin' for her lyke- 
 wake ; an', ye ken, it was oot o' the question to think that 
 she would meddle wi' it. Weel did I scold her, when she 
 cam' in, for being sae jplose-minded. I asked her what 
 harm I had ever done to her, that she wad rather hae died 
 than hae trusted her wants to me ? But though she said 
 naething, I could see the tears in her e'e ; an' sae I stopped, 
 an' we took a late bi-eakfast thegither at my fireside. 
 
 " She tauld me that mornih' that she weel kent she 
 wouldna lang be a trouble to onybody. The day afore 
 had been Sabbath ; an' every Sabbath morning, for the 
 last ten years, her worthy neeboor the elder, whom they 
 had buried only four years afore, used to call on her, in the 
 passing on his way to the kirk. ' Come awa, Elspat,' he 
 woald say ; an' she used to be aye decent an' ready, for 
 she liked his conversation ; an' they aye'gaed thegither to 
 the kirk. She had been contracted, when a young lass, to 
 a brither o' the elder's, a stout, handsome lad ; but he had 
 been ca'ed suddenly awa atween the contract an' the mar- 
 riage, an' Elspat, though she had afterwards mony a gude 
 
THE LYKEWAKB. 181 
 
 offer, had lived single for his sake. Weel, on the very 
 mornin' afore, just sax days after the elder's death, an' four 
 after hiis burial, when Elspat was sitting dowie aside the 
 fire, thinkin' o' her gude auld neebor, the cry cam' to the 
 door just as it used to do ; but, though the voice was the 
 same, the words were a wee different. ' Elspat,' it said, 
 ' mak' ready, an' come awa.' She rose hastily to the win- 
 dow, an' there, sure enough, was the elder, turning the cor- 
 ner, in his Sunday's bonnet an' his Sunday's coat. An' weel 
 did she ken, she said, the meaning o' his call, an' kindly 
 did she tak' it. An' if it was but God's will that she suld 
 hae enough to put her decently under the ground, with- 
 out going into any debt to any one, she would be weel 
 content. She had already the linen for the dead-dress, she 
 said ; for she had spun it for the purpose afore her con- 
 tract wi' William ; an' she had the whiskey, too, for the 
 wake ; but she had naething anent the coffin an' the 
 bedral. 
 
 " Weel, we took our breakfast, an' I did my best to com- 
 fort the puir body ; but she looked very down-hearted for 
 a' that. About the middle o' the day, in cam' the minis- 
 ter's boy wi' a letter. It was directed to his master, he 
 said ; but it was a' for Elspat ; an' there was a five-pound 
 note in it. It was frae a man who had left the country 
 mony, mony a year afore, a good deal in her faither's debt. 
 You would hae thought the puir thing wad hae grat her 
 een out when she saw the money ; but never was money 
 mair thankfully received, or ta'en mair directly frae heaven. 
 It sent her aboon the warld, she said ; an' coming at the 
 time it did, an estate o' a thousand a year wadna be o' mair 
 use to her. Next morning she didna rise, for her strength 
 had failed her at once, though she felt nae meikle pain ; an', 
 she sent me to get the note changed, an' to leave twenty 
 16 
 
182 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 shillings o't wi' the wright for a decent coffin like her mith- 
 er's, an' five shillings mair wi' the bedral, an' to tak' in 
 necessaries for a sick-bed wi' some o' the lave. Weel, I 
 did that ; an' there's still twa pounds o' the note yonder in 
 the little cupboard. 
 
 " On the fifth morning after she had been taken sae ill, I 
 cam' in till ask after her ; for my neebor here had relieved 
 me o' that night's watchin', an' I had gotten to my bed. 
 The moment I opened the door I saw that the haill room 
 was hung in white, just as ye see it now ; an' I'm sure it 
 staid that way a minute or sae ; but when I winked it went 
 awa'. I kent there was a change no far off; and when I 
 went up to the bed, Elspat didna ken me. She was wirkin' 
 wi' her han' at the blankets, as if she were picking off the 
 little motes ; an' I could hear the beginning o' the dead- 
 rattle in her throat. I sat at her bedside for a while wi' my 
 neebor here ; an' when she spoke to us, it was to say that 
 the bed had grown hard an' uneasy, an' that she wished to 
 be brought out to the chair. Weel, we indulged her, though 
 we baith kent that it wasna in the bed the uneasiness 
 lay. Her mind, puir body, was carried at the time. She 
 just kent that there was to be a death an' a lykewake, but 
 no that the death and the lykewake were to be her ain ; 
 an' when she looked at the bed, she bade us tak' down the 
 black curtains an' put up the white ; an' tauld us where 
 the white were to be found. 
 
 "'But where is the coi-p ? ' she said; 'it's no there. 
 Where is the corp ? ' 
 
 " ' O, Elspat ! it will be there vera soon,' said my neebor; 
 an' that satisfied her. 
 
 " She cam' to hersel' an hour afore she departed. God 
 had been very gude to her, she said, a' her life lang, an' he 
 hadna forsaken her at the last. He had been gude to her 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 183 
 
 when he had gien her friens, an' gude to her when he took 
 them to himsel' ; an' she kent she was now going to baith 
 him an' them. There wasna such a difference, she said, 
 atween life an' death as folk were ready to think. She 
 was sure that, though William had been ca'ed awa sud- 
 denly, he hadna been ca'ed without being prepared ; an' 
 now that her turn had come, an' that she was goin' to meet 
 wi' him, it was maybe as weel that he had left her early ; 
 for, till she had lost him, she had been owre licht an' 
 thochtless ; an' had it been her lot to hae lived in happi- 
 ness wi' him, she micht hae remained light an' thochtless 
 still. She bade us baith fareweel, an' thanked an' blessed 
 us ; an' her last breath went awa' in a prayer no half an 
 hoar after. Puir, decent body ! But she's no puir now." 
 
 " A prettfr portrait," whispered my companion, " of one 
 of a class fast wearing away. Nothing more interests me 
 in the story than the woman's undoubting faith in the su- 
 pernatural. She does not even seem to know that what 
 she believes so firmly herself is so much as doubted by 
 others. Try whether you can't bring up, by some means, 
 a few other stories furnished with a similar machinery, — a 
 story of the second sight, for instance." 
 
 " The only way of accomplishing that," I replied, " is by 
 contributing a story of the kind myself." 
 
 " The vision of the room hung in white," I said, " re- 
 minds me of a story related, about a hundred and fifty 
 years ago, by a very learned and very ingenious country- 
 man of ours, George, first Earl of Cromarty. His lord- 
 ship, a steady Royalist, was engaged, shortly before the 
 Restoration (he was then, by the way, only Sir George 
 Mackenzie), in raising troops for the king on his lands on 
 the western coast of Ross-shire. There came on one of , 
 those days of rain and tempest so common in the district, 
 
184 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 and Sir George, with some of his friends, were storm-bound, 
 in a solitary cottage, somewhere on the shores of Loch- 
 broom. Towards evening one of the party went out to 
 look after their horses. He had been sitting beside Sir 
 George, and the chair he had occupied remained empty. 
 On Sir George's servant, an elderly Highlander, coming 
 in, he went up to his master, apparently much appalled, 
 and, tapping him on the shoulder, urged him to rise. 
 ' Rise ! ' he said, ' rise ! There's a dead man sitting on 
 the chair beside you.' The whole party immediately 
 started to their feet ; but they saw only the empty chair. 
 The dead man was visible to the Highlander alone. His 
 head was bound up, he said, and his face streaked with 
 blood, and one of bis arms hung broken by his side. Next 
 day, as a party of horsemen were passing along the steep 
 side of a hill in the neighborhood, one of the horses stum- 
 bled and threw its rider ; and the man, grievously injured 
 by the fall, was carried in a state of insensibility to the 
 cottage. His head was deeply gashed and one of his arms 
 was broken, — though he ultimately recovered, — and, on 
 being brought to the cottage, he was placed, in a death-like 
 swoon, in the identical chair which the Highlander had 
 seen occupied by the spectre. Sir George relates the story, 
 with many a similar story besides, in a letter to the cele- 
 brated Robert Boyle." 
 
 " I have perused it with much interest," said my friend, 
 "and wonder our booksellers should have suffered it to 
 become so scarce. Do you not remember the somewhat 
 similar story his lordship relates of the Highlander, who 
 saw the apparition of a troop of horse ride over the brow 
 of a hill and enter a field of oats, which, though it had 
 been sown only a few days before, the horsemen seemed 
 to cut down with their swords ? He states that, a few 
 
THE LYKEWAKB. 185 
 
 months after, a troop of cavalry actually entered the same 
 field, and carried away the produce for fodder to their 
 horses. He tells, too, if I remember aright, that on the 
 same expedition to which your story belongs, one of his 
 Highlanders, on entering a cottage, started back with hor- 
 ror. He had met in the passage, he said, a dead man in 
 his shroud, and saw people gathering for a funeral. And, 
 as his lordship relates, one of the inmates of the cottage, 
 who was in perfect health at the time of the vision, died 
 suddenly only two days after." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE STORY OF DONALD GAIR. 
 
 " The second sight," said an elderly man who sat be- 
 side me, and whose countenance had struck me as highly 
 expressive of serious thought, " is fast wearing out of this 
 part of the country. Nor should we much regret it per- 
 haps. It seemed, if I may so speak, as something outside 
 the ordinary dispositions of Providence, and, with all the 
 horror and unhappiness that attended it, served no ap- 
 parent good end. I have been a traveller in my youth, 
 masters. About thirty years ago, I served for some time 
 in the navy. I entered on the first breaking out of the 
 Revolutionary war, and was discharged during the short 
 peace of 1801. One of my chief companions on shipboard, 
 for the first few years, was a young man, a native of Suth- 
 erland, named Donald Gair. Donald, like most of his 
 16* 
 
186 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 countrymen, was a staid, decent lad, of a rather melancholy 
 cast ; and yet there were occasions when he could be gay 
 enough too. "We sailed together in the Bedford, under 
 Sir Thomas Baird ; and, after witnessing the mutiny at 
 the Nore, — neither of us did much more than witness it, 
 for in our case it merely transferred the command of the 
 vessel from a very excellent captain to a set of low Irish 
 doctor's-list men, — we joined Admiral Duncan, then on 
 the Dutch station. We were barely in time to take part 
 in the great action. Donald had been unusually gay all 
 the previous evening. We knew the Dutch had come out, 
 and that there was to be an engagement on the morrow ; 
 and, though I felt no fear, the thought that I might have to 
 stand in a few brief hours before my Maker and my Judge 
 had the effect of rendering me serious. But my com- 
 panion seemed to have lost all ('nmraand of himself He 
 sung and leaped and shouted, not like one intoxicated, — 
 there was nothing of intoxication about him, — but under 
 the influence of a wild, irrepressible flow of spirits. I took 
 him seriously to task, and reminded him that we might 
 both at that moment be standing on the verge of death 
 and judgment. But he seemed more impressed by my 
 remarking that, were his mother to see him, she would say 
 he was/ey. 
 
 " We had never been in action before with our captain 
 Sir Thomas. He was a grave, and, I believe, God-fearing 
 man, and much a favorite with at least all the better sea- 
 men. But we had not yet made up our minds on his 
 character, — indeed, no snilor ever docs with regard to his 
 officers till he knows liow they fight, — and we were all 
 curious to see how the parson, as we used to call him, 
 would behave himself among the shot. But truly we 
 might have had little fear for him. I have sailed with 
 
THE LYKEWAKB. 187 
 
 Nelson, and not Nelson himself ever showed more courage 
 or conduct than Sir Thomas in that action. He made us 
 all lie down beside our guns, and steered us, without firing 
 a shot, into the very thickest of the fight ; and when we 
 did open, masters, every broadside told with fearful effect. 
 I never saw a man issue his commands with more coolness 
 or self-possession. 
 
 " There are none of our continental neighbors who make 
 better seamen, or who fight more doggedly, than the 
 Dutch. We were in a blaze of flame for four hours. Our 
 rigging was slashed to pieces, and two of our ports were 
 actually knocked into one. There was one fierce, ill- 
 natured Dutchman, in particular, — a fellow as black as 
 night, without so much as a speck of paint or gilding 
 about him, save that he had a red lion on the prow, — that 
 fought us as long as he had a spar standing; and when he 
 struck at last, fully one half the crew lay either dead or 
 wounded on the decks, and all his scupper-holes were 
 running blood as freely as ever they had done water at a 
 deck-washing. The Bedford suffered nearly as severely. 
 It is not in the heat of action that we can reckon on the 
 loss we sustain. I saw my comrades falling around me, — ■ 
 falling by the terrible cannon-shot as they came crashing 
 in through our sides; I felt, too, that our gun wrought 
 more heavily as our numbers were thinning around it ; 
 and at times, when some sweeping chain-shot or fatal 
 splinter laid open before me those horrible mysteries of 
 the inner man which nature so sedulously conceals, I was 
 conscious of a momentary feeling of dread and horror. 
 But in the prevailing mood, an unthinking anger, a dire 
 thirsting after revenge, a dogged, unyielding firmness, 
 were the chief ingi;edients. I strained every muscle and 
 sinew; and, amid the smoke and the thunder and the 
 
188 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 frightful carnage, ^red and loaded, and fired and loaded, 
 and, with every discharge, sent out, as it were, the bitter- 
 ness of my whole soul against the enemy. But very dif- 
 ferent were my feelings when victory declared in our fa- 
 vor, and, exhausted and unstrung, I looked abroad among 
 the dead. As I crossed the deck my feet literally splashed 
 in blood ; and I saw the mangled fragments of human 
 bodies sticking in horrid patches to the sides and the 
 beams above. There was a fine little boy aboard with 
 whom I was an especial favorite. He had been engaged, 
 before the action, in the construction of a toy ship, which 
 he intended sending to his mother ; and I used sometimes 
 to assist him, and to lend him a few simple tools ; and, 
 just as we were bearing down on the enemy, he had come 
 running up to me with a knife which he had borrowed 
 from me a short time before. 
 
 " ' Alick, Alick,' he said, ' I have brought you your knife ; 
 we are going into action, you know, and I may be killed, 
 and then you would lose it.' 
 
 " Poor little fellow ! The first body I recognized was 
 his. Both hisarms had been fearfully shattered by a can- 
 non-shot, and the surgeon's tourniquets, which had been 
 fastened below the shoulders, were still there; but he had 
 expired ere the amputating knife had been applied. As I 
 stood beside the body, little in love with war, masters, a 
 comrade came up to me to say that my friend and country- 
 man, Donald Gair, lay mortally wounded in the cockpit. 
 I went instantly down to him. But never shall I forget, 
 though never may I attempt to describe, what I witnessed 
 that day in that frightful scene of death and suifering. 
 Donald lay in a low hammock, raised not a foot over the 
 deck ; and there was no one beside him, for the surgeons 
 had seen at a glance the hopelessness of his case, and were 
 
THE liYKEWAKE. 180 
 
 busied about others of whom they had hope. He lay on 
 his back, breathing very hard, but perfectly insensible ; and 
 in the middle of his forehead there was a round little hole 
 ■without so much as a speck of blood about it, where a mus- 
 ket-bullet had passed through his brain. He continued to 
 breathe for about two hours ; and when he expired I 
 wrapped the body decently up in a hammock, and saw it 
 committed to the deep. The years passed; and, after 
 looking death in the face in many a storm and many a 
 battle, peace was proclaimed, and I returned to my friends 
 and my country. 
 
 "A few weeks after my arrival, an elderly Highland 
 woman, who had travelled all the way from the further side 
 of Loch Shin to see me, came to our door. She was the 
 mother of Donald Gair, and had taken her melancholy 
 journey to hear from me all she might regarding the last 
 moments and death of her son. She had no English, and 
 I had not Gaelic enough to converse with her; but my 
 mother, who had received her with a sympathy all the 
 deeper from the thought that her own son might have 
 been now in Donald's place, served as our interpreter. 
 She was strangely inquisitive, though the little she heard 
 served only to increase her grief; and you may believe it 
 was not much I could find heart to tell her ; for what was 
 there in the circumstances of my comrade's death to afford 
 pleasure to his mother ? And so I waived her questions 
 regarding his wound and his burial as best I could. 
 
 " ' Ah,' said the poor woman to my mother, ' he need not 
 be afraid to tell me all. I know too, too well that my 
 Donald's b«dy was thrown into the sea ; I knew of it long 
 ere it happened ; and I have long tried to reconcile my 
 mind to it, tried when he was a boy even ; and so you 
 need not be afraid to tell me now.' 
 
190 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " ' And how,' asked my mother, whose curiosity was 
 excited, ' could you have thought of it so early ? ' 
 
 " ' I lived,' rejoined the woman, ' at the time of Donald's 
 birth, in a lonely shieling among the Sutherland hills, — a 
 full day's journey from the nearest church. It was a long, 
 weary road, over moors and mosses. It was in the winter 
 season, too, when the days are short ; and so, in bringing 
 Donald to be baptized, we had to remain a night by the 
 way in the house of a friend. We there found an old 
 woman of so peculiar an appearance that, when she asked 
 me for the child, I at first declined giving it, fearing she 
 was mad and might do it harm. The people of the house, 
 however, assured me she was incapable of hurting it, and 
 so I placed it on her lap. She took it up in her arms, and 
 began to sing to it ; but it was such a song as none of us 
 had ever heard before. 
 
 " ' Poor little stranger ! ' she said, ' thou hast come into 
 the world in an evil time. The mists are on the hills, 
 gloomy and dark, and the rain lies chill on the heather; 
 and thou, poor little thing, hast a long journey through the 
 sharp, biting winds, and thou art helpless and cold. Oh, 
 but thy long after-journey is as dreary and dark ! A wan- 
 derer shalt thou be, over the land and the ocean; and in 
 the ocean shalt thou lie at last. Poor little thing, I have 
 waited for thee long. I saw thee in thy wanderings, and 
 in thy shroud, ere thy mother brought thee to the door; 
 and the sounds of the sea and of the deadly guns are still 
 ringing in my ears. Go, poor little thing, to thy mother. 
 Bitterly shall she yet weep for thee, and no wonder ; but 
 no one shall ever weep over thy grave, or mark where thou 
 liest amid the deep green, with the shark and the seal.' 
 
 "'From that evening,' continued the mother of my 
 friend, ' I have tried to reconcile my mind to what was to 
 
THE LYKBWAKE. 191 
 
 happen Donald. But oh, the fond, foolish heart ! I loved 
 him more than any of his brothers, because I was to lose' 
 him soon ; and though when he left me I took farewell of 
 him for ever, — for I knew I was never, never to see him 
 more, — I felt, till the news reached me of his fall in battle, 
 as if he were living in his coiBn. But oh ! do tell me all 
 you know of his death. I am old and weak, but I have 
 travelled far, far to see you, that I might hear all; and 
 surely, for the regard you bore to Donald, you will not 
 suffer me to return as I came.' 
 
 " But I need not dwell longer on the story. I imparted 
 to the poor woman all the circumstances of her son's death 
 as I have done to you ; and, shocking as they may seem, I 
 found that she felt rather relieved than otherwise." • 
 
 " This is not quite the country of the second sight," said 
 my friend ; " it is too much on the borders of the Low- 
 lands. The gift seems restricted to the Highlands alone, 
 and it is now fast wearing out even there." 
 
 " And weel it is," said one of the men, " that it should 
 be sae. It is surely a miserable thing to ken o' coming 
 evil, if we just merely ken that it is coming, an' that come 
 it must, do what we may. Hae ye ever heard the story o' 
 the kelpie that wons in the Conon? " 
 
 My friend replied in the negative. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE STORY OF THE DOOMED EIDER. 
 
 " The Conon," continued the man, " is as bonny a river 
 as we hae in a' the north country. There's mony a sweet 
 
192 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 sunny spot on its banks ; an' mony a time an' aft hae I 
 waded through its shallows, when a boy, to set my little 
 scantling-line for the trouts an' the eels, or to gather the 
 big pearl-mussels that lie sae thick in the fords. But its 
 bonny wooded banks are places for enjoying the day in, 
 no for passing the nicht. I kenna how it is : it's nane o' 
 your wild streams, that wander desolate through desert 
 country, like the Avon, or that come rushing down in 
 foam and thunder, owre broken rocks, like the Foyers, or 
 that wallow in darkness, deep, deep in the bowels o' the 
 earth, like the fearfu' Auldgraunt ; an' yet no ane o' these 
 rivers has mair or frightfuler stories connected wi' it than 
 the Conon. Ane can hardly saunter owre half a mile in its 
 course frae where it leaves Contin till where it enters the 
 sea, without passing owre the scene o' some frightful auld 
 legend o' the kelpie or the water-wraith. And ane o' the 
 maist frightful-looking o' these places is to be found among 
 the woods o' Conon House. Ye enter a swampy meadow, 
 that waves wi' flags an' rushes like a cornfield in harvest, 
 an' see a hillock covered wi' willows rising like an island in 
 the midst. There are thick mirk woods on ilka side : the 
 river, dark an' awesome, an' whirling round and round in 
 mossy eddies, sweeps away behind it ; an' there is an auld 
 burying-ground, wi' the broken ruins o' an auld Papist kirk 
 on the tap. Ane can still see among the rougher stanes 
 the rose-wrought mullions of an arched window an' the 
 trough that ance held the holy water. About twa hunder 
 years ago, — a wee mair, maybe, or a wee less, for ane 
 canna be very sure o' the date o' thae auld stories, — the 
 building was entire ; an' a spot near it, where the wood 
 now grows thickest, was laid out in a cornfield. The 
 marks o' the furrows may still be seen amang the trees. 
 A party o' Highlanders were busily engaged a'e day in 
 
THE LYKBWAKE, 193 
 
 harvest in cutting down the corn o' that field; an' just 
 aboot noon, when the sun shone brightest, an' they were 
 busiest in the work, they heard a voice frae the river 
 exclaim, ' The hour, but not the man, has come.' Sure 
 enough, on looking round, there was tlie kelpie standin' in 
 what they ca' a fause ford, just foment the auld kirk. There 
 is a deep, black pool baith aboon an' below, but i' the ford 
 there's a bonny ripple, that shows, as ane might think, but 
 little depth o' water; an, just i' the middle o' that, in a 
 place where a horse might swim, stood the kelpie. An' it 
 again repeated its words, ' The hour, but not the. man, has 
 come ' ; an' then, flashing through the water like a drake, 
 it disappeared in the lower pool. When the folk stood 
 wondering what the creature might mean, they saw a man 
 on horseback come spurring down the hill in hot haste, 
 making straight for the fause ford. They could then un- 
 derstand her words at ance ; an' four o' the stoutest o' them 
 sprang oot frae amang the corn, to warn him o' his danger 
 an' keep him back. An' sae they tauld him what they had 
 seen an heard, an' urged him either to turn back an' tak' 
 anither road or stay for an hour or sae where he was. But 
 he just wadna hear them, for he was baith unbelieving an' 
 in haste, an' would hae ta'en the ford for a' they could say 
 hadna the Highlanders, determined on saving him whether 
 he would or no, gathered round him an' pulled him frae 
 his horse, an' then, to make sure o' him, locked him up in 
 the auld kirk. Weel, when the hour had gone by, — the 
 fatal hour o' the kelpie, — they flung open the door, an' 
 cried to him that he might noo gang on his journey. Ah ! 
 but there was nae answer, though ; an' sae they cried a 
 second time, an' there was nae answer still ; an' then they 
 went in, and found him lying stiff" an' cauld on the floor, 
 wi' his face buried in the water o' the very stane trough 
 17 
 
194 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 that we may still see amang the ruins. His hour had 
 come, an' he had fallen in a fit, as 'twould seem, head fore- 
 most amang the water o' the trough, where he had been 
 smothered ; an' sae, ye see, the prophecy o' the kelpie 
 availed nothing." 
 
 " The very story," exclaimed my friend, " to which Sir 
 Walter alludes, in one of the notes to ' The Heart of Mid- 
 Lothian.' The kelpie, you may remember, furnishes him 
 with a motto to the chapter in which he describes the 
 gathering of all Edinburgh to witness the execution of 
 Porteous, and their irrepressible wrath on ascertaining that 
 there was to be no execution, — ' The hour, but not the 
 man, is come.' " 
 
 "I remember making quite the same discovery,'' I re- 
 plied, " about twelve years ago, when I resided for several 
 months on the banks of the Conon, not half a mile from 
 the scene of the story. One might fill a little book with 
 legends of the Conon. The fords of the river are danger- 
 ous, especially in the winter season ; and about thirty years 
 ago, before the erection of the fine stone bridge below Co- 
 non House, scarcely a winter passed in which fatal acci- 
 dents did not occur ; and these were almost invariably 
 traced to the murderous malice of the water-wraith." 
 
 "But who or what is the water- wraith ? " said my friend. 
 " We heard just now of the kelpie, and it is the kelpie that 
 Sir Walter quotes." 
 
 "Ah," I replied, "but we must not confound the kelpie 
 and the water-wraith, as has become the custom in these 
 days of incredulity. No two spirits, though they wei'e 
 both spirits of the lake and the river, could be more dif- 
 ferent. The kelpie invariably appeared in the form of a 
 young horse ; the wnter-wraith in that of a very tall wo- 
 man, dressed in green, with a withered, meagre counte- 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 195 
 
 nance ever distorted by a malignant scowl. It is the wa- 
 ter-wraith, not the kelpie, whom Sir Walter should have 
 quoted ; and yet I could tell you curious stories of the 
 kelpie too." 
 
 " We must have them all," said my friend, " ere we part. 
 Meanwhile, I should like to hear some of your stories of the 
 Conon. 
 
 " As related by me," I replied, " you will find them rather 
 meagre in their details. In my evening walks along the 
 river, I have passed the ford a hundred times out of which, 
 only a twelvemonth before, as a traveller was entering it 
 on a moonlight night, the water-wraith started up, not four 
 yards in front of him, and pointed at him with her long 
 skinny fingers, as if in mockery. I have leaned against the 
 identical tree to which a poor Highlander clung when, on 
 fording the river by night, he was seized by the goblin. 
 A lad who accompanied him, and who had succeeded in 
 gaining the bank, strove to assist him, but in vain. The 
 poor man was dragged from his hold into the current, 
 where he perished. The spot has been pointed out to me, 
 too, in the opening of the river, where one of our Cromarty 
 fishermen, who had anchored his yawl for the night, was 
 laid hold of by the spectre when lying asleep on the beams, 
 and almost dragged over the gunwale into the water. Our 
 seafaring men still avoid dft>pping anchor, if they possibly 
 can, after the sun has set, in what they term the fresh ; 
 that is, in those upper parts of the frith where the waters 
 of the river predominate over those of the sea. 
 
 " The scene of what is deemed one of the best authenti- 
 cated stories of the water-wraith lies a few miles higher up 
 the river. It is a deep, broad ford, through which horse- 
 men coming from the south pass to Brahan Castle. A 
 thick wood hangs over it on the one side ; on the other it 
 
196 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 is skirted by a straggling line of alders and a bleak moor. 
 On a winter night, about twenty-five years ago, a servant 
 of the late Lord Seaforth had been drinking with some 
 companions till a late hour, in a small house in the upper 
 part of the moor ; and when the party broke up, he was 
 accompanied by two of them to the ford. The moon was 
 at full, and the river, though pretty deep in flood, seemed 
 noway formidable to the servant. He was a young, vigor- 
 ous man, and mounted on a powerful horse ; and he had 
 forded it, w^hen half a yard higher on the bank, twenty 
 times before. As he entered the ford, a thick cloud ob- 
 scured the moon ; but his companions could see him guid- 
 ing the animal. He rode in a slanting direction across the 
 stream until he had reached nearly the middle, when a 
 dark, tall figure seemed to start out of the water and lay 
 hold of him. There was a loud cry of distress and terror, 
 and a frightful snorting and plunging of the horse. A 
 moment passed, and the terrified animal was seen straining 
 towards the opposite bank, and the ill-fated rider struggling 
 in the stream. In a moment more he had disappeared." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE STORY OF FAIRBUEN'S GHOST. 
 
 " I SULD weel keen the Conon," said one of the women, 
 who had not yet joined in the conversation. " I was born 
 no a stane's-cast frae the side o't. My mitlier lived in her 
 last days beside the auld Tower o' Pairburn, that stands 
 sae like a ghaist aboon the river, an' looks down on a' its 
 
THE LYKEWAKB. 197 
 
 turns and windings frae Contin to the sea. My faither, 
 too, for a twelvemonth or sae afore his death, had a boat 
 on ane o' its ferries, for the .crossing, on weekdays, o' pas- 
 sengers, an' o' the kirkgoing folks on Sunday. ^ He had a 
 little bit farm beside the Con on, an' just got the boat by 
 way o' eiking out his means ; for we had aye eneugh to do 
 at rent-time, an' had maybe less than plenty through a' the 
 rest o' the year besides. Weel, for the first ten months or 
 sae the boat did brawly. The Castle o' Brahan is no half 
 a mile frae the ferry, an' there were aye a hantle o' gran' 
 folk comin' and gangin' frae the Mackenzie, an' my faither 
 had the crossin' o' them a'. An' besides, at Marti'mas, the 
 kirk-going people used to send him firlots o' bear an' pecks 
 o' oatmeal ; an' he soon began to find that the bit boat was 
 to do mair towards paying the rent o' the farm than the 
 farm itsel'. 
 
 " The Tower o' Fairburn is aboot a mile and a half aboon 
 the ferry. It stands by itsel' on the tap o' a heathery hill, 
 an' there are twa higher hills behind it. Beyond there 
 spreads a black, dreary desert, where ane micht wander a 
 lang simmer's day withoot seeing the face o' a human crea- 
 ture, or the kindly smoke o' a lum. I dare say nane o' you 
 hae heard hoo the Mackenzies o' Fairburn an' the Chis- 
 holms o' Strathglass parted that bit o' kintra atween them. 
 Nane o' them could tell where the lands o' the ane ended 
 or the ither began, an' they were that way for generations, 
 till they at last thocht them o' a plan o' division. Each o' 
 them gat an auld wife o' seventy-five, an' they set them aff 
 a'e Monday at the same time, the ane frae Erchless Castle 
 an' the ither frae the. Tower, warning them aforehand that 
 the braidness o' their maisters' lands depended on their 
 speed ; for where the twa would meet amang the hills, there 
 would be the boundary. 
 17* 
 
1D8 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 "You may be sure that neither o' them lingered by 
 the way that morning. They kent there was raony an e'e 
 on them, an' that their names would be spoken o' in the 
 kintra-side lang after themsels were dead an' gane ; but it 
 sae happened that Fairburn's carline, wha had been his 
 nurse, was ane o' the slampest women in a' the north of 
 Scotland, young or auld ; an', though the. ither did weel, 
 she did sae meikle better that she had got owre twenty 
 lang Highland miles or the ither had got owre fifteen. 
 They say it was a droll sicht to see them at the meeting, 
 — they were baith tired almost to fainting ; but no sooner 
 did they come in sicht o' ane anither, at the distance o' a 
 mile or sae, than they began to run. An' they ran, an' bet- 
 ter ran, till they met at a little burnie ; an' there wad they 
 hae focht, though they had ne'er sec a ane anither atween 
 the een afore, had they had strength eneugh left them ; 
 but they had neither pith for fechtin' nor breath for scoldin', 
 an' sae they just sat down an' girned at ane anither across 
 the stripe. The Tower o' Falrburn is naething noo but a 
 dismal ruin o' five broken stories, the ane aboon the ither, 
 an' the lands hae gane oot o' the auld family ; but the story 
 o' the twa auld wives is a weel-kent story still. 
 
 " The laird o' Fairburn, in my faither's time, was as fine 
 an open-hearted gentleman as was in the haill country. 
 Pie w.as just particular gude to the puir; but the family 
 had ever been that; ay, in their roughest days, even whan 
 the Tower had neither door nor window in the lower story, 
 an' only a whecn shot-holes in the story aboon. There 
 wasna a puir thing in the kintra but had reason to bless 
 the laird; aa' at a'e time he had nae fewer than twelve 
 puir orphans living about his house at ance. Nor was he 
 in the least a proud, haughty man. He wad chat for hours 
 thegither wi' ane o' his puirest tenants ; an' ilka time he 
 
THE LYKBWAKE. 199 
 
 crossed the ferry, he wad tak' my faither wi' him, for com- 
 pany just, maybe half a mile on his way out or hame. . 
 Weel, it was a'e nicht about the end o' May, — a bonny 
 nicht, an hour or sae after sundown, — an' my faither was 
 mooring his boat, afore going to bed, to an auld oak tree, 
 whan wha does he see but the laird o' Faiiburn coming 
 down the bank ? Od, thocht he, what can be takin' the 
 laird frae hame sae late as this ? I thocht he had been no 
 weel. The laird cam' steppin' into the boat, but, instead 
 o' speakin' frankly, as he used to do, he just waved his 
 hand, as the proudest gentleman in the kintra micht, an' 
 pointed to the ither side. My faither rowed him across ; 
 but, oh ! the boat felt unco dead an' heavy, an' the water 
 stuck around the oars as gin it had been tar; an' he had 
 just eneugh ado, though there was but little tide in the 
 river, to mak' oot the ither side. The laird stepped oot, 
 an' then stood, as he used to do, on the bank, to gie my 
 faither time to fasten his boat, an' come alang wi' him ; an' 
 were it no for that, the puir man wadna hae thocht o' going 
 wi' him that nicht ; but as it was, he just moored his boat 
 an' went. At first he thocht the laird must hae got some 
 bad news that made him sae dull, an' sae he spoke on to 
 amuse him, aboot the weather an' the markets ; but he 
 found he could get very little to say, an' he felt as arc an' 
 eerie in passin' through the woods as gin he had been 
 passin' alane through a kirkyard. He noticed, too, that 
 there was a fearsome flichtering an' shriekin' amang the 
 birds that lodged in the tree-taps aboon them ; an' that, 
 as they passed the Talisoe, there was a collie on the tap o' 
 a hillock, that set up the awfulest yowling he had ever 
 heard. He stood for a while in sheer consternation, but 
 the laird beckoned him on, just as he had done at the river- 
 side, an' sae he gaed a bittie further alang the wild, rocky 
 
200 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 glen that opens into the deer-park. But oh, the fright 
 that was amang the deer ! They had been lyin' asleep on 
 the knolls, by sixes an' sevens ; an' up they a' started at 
 ance, and gaed driving aff to the far end o' the park as if 
 they couldna be far eneugh frae my faither an' the laird. 
 Weel, my faither stood again, an' the laird beckoned an' 
 beckoned as afore ; but, Gude tak' us a' in keeping ! whan 
 my faither looked up in his face, he saw it was the face o' 
 a corp : it was white an' stiff, an' the nose was thin an' 
 sharp, an' there was nae winking wi' the wide-open een. 
 Gude preserve us ! my faither didna ken where he was 
 stan'in, — didna ken what he was doin' ; an', though he 
 kept his feet, he was just in a kind o' swarf like. The laird 
 spoke twa or three words to him, — something about the 
 orphans, he thocht ; but he was in such a state that he 
 couldna tell what ; an' when he cam' to himsel' the appa- 
 rition was awa'. It was a bonny clear nicht when they 
 had crossed the Conon; but there had been a gatherin' o' 
 black cluds i' the lift as they gaed, an' there noo cam' on, 
 in the clap o' a han', ane o' the fearsomest storms o' thun- 
 der an' lightning that was ever seen in the country. There 
 was a thick gurly aik smashed to shivers owre my faither's 
 head, though nane o' the splinters steered him; an' whan 
 he reached the river, it wus roaring fi-ae bank to brao like 
 a little ocean ; for a water-spout had broken amang the 
 hills, an' the trees it had torn doun wi' it were darting 
 alang the current like arrows. He crossed in nae little 
 danger, an' took to his bed ; an', tliough he raise an' went 
 aboot his wark for twa or three months after, he was never, 
 never his ain man again. It was found that the laird had 
 departed no five minutes afore his apparition had come to 
 the ferry; an' the very last words he had spoken — but 
 his mind was carried at the time — was something aboot 
 my faither." 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 201 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 THE STORY OF THE LAND FACTOE. 
 
 " Theee mann hae been something that weighed on his 
 mind," remarked one of the women, " though your faither 
 had nae power to get it frae him. I mind that, when I 
 was a lassie, there happened something o' the same kind. 
 My faither had been a tacksman on the estate o' Blackball ; 
 an' as the land was sour an' wat, an' the seasons for a while 
 backward, he aye contrived — for he was a hard-working, 
 carefu' man — to keep us a' in meat and claith, and to 
 meet wi' the factor. But, waes me ! he was sune ta'en 
 frae us. In the middle o' the seed-time there cam' a bad 
 fever intil the country ; an' the very first that died o't was 
 my puir faither. My mither did her best to keep the farm, 
 an' baud us a' thegither. She got a carefu', decent lad to 
 manage for her, an' her ain e'e was on everything ; an' had 
 it no been for the cruel, cruel factor, she micht hae dune 
 gey weel. But never had the puir tenant a waur friend 
 than Ranald Keilly. He was a toun writer, an' had made 
 a sort o' living, afore he got the factorship, just as toun 
 writers do in ordinar'. He used to be gettiu' the baud o' 
 auld wives' posies when they died ; an' there were aye 
 some litigeous, troublesome folk in the place, too, that kept 
 him doing a little in the way o' troublin' their neebors ; an' 
 sometimes. When some daft, gowked man, o' mair means 
 than sense, couldna mismanage his ain affairs eneugh, he 
 got Keilly to mismanage them for him. An' sae he had 
 
202 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 picked up a bare livin' in this way ; but the factorship 
 made him just a gentleman. But, oh, an ill use did he 
 mak' o' the power that it gied him owre puir, honest folk ! 
 Ye maun ken that, gin they were puir, he liked them a' the 
 waur for being honest ; but, I dare say, that was natural 
 eneugh for the like o' him. He contrived to be baith 
 writer an' factor, ye see ; an' it wad just seem that his chief 
 aim in a'e the capacity was to find employment for himsel' 
 in the ither. If a puir tenant was but a day behind-hand 
 wi' his rent, he had creatures o' his ain that used to gang 
 half-an'-half wi' him in their fees* °n' them he wad send 
 affto poind him; an' then, if the expenses o' the poinding 
 werena forthcoming, as weel as what was owing to the 
 master, he wad hae a roup o' the stocking twa or three 
 days after, an' anither account, as a man o' business, for 
 that. An' when things were going dog-cheap, — as he 
 took care that they should sometimes gang, — he used to 
 buy them in for himsel,' an' part wi' them again for maybe 
 twice the money. The laird was a quiet, silly, good-na- 
 tured man ; an', though he was tauld weel o' the factor at 
 times, ay, an' believed- it too, he just used to sny: 'Oh, 
 puir Keilly, what wad he do gin I were to part wi' him ? 
 He wad just starve.' An' oh, sirs, his pity for him was 
 bitter cruelty to mony, mony a puir tenant, an' to my 
 mither araang the lave. 
 
 " The year after my faither's death was oauld an' wat, an' 
 oor stuff remained sae lang green that we just thocht we 
 wouldna get it cut ava. An' when we did get it cut, the 
 stacks, for the first whille, were aye heatin' wi' us ; an' when 
 Marti'mas came, the grain was still saft an' milkj^, an' no fit 
 for the market. The term cam' round, an' there was little 
 to gie the factor in the shape o' money, though there was 
 baith corn and cattle; an' a' that we wanted was just a 
 
THE LYKB-WAKB. 203 
 
 little time. Ab, but we had fa'en into the hands o' ane 
 that never kent pity. My mither hadna the money gin, as 
 it were, the day, an' on the morn the messengers came to 
 poind. The roup was no a week after ; an' oh; it was a 
 grievous sicht to see how the crop an' the cattle went for 
 just naething. The farmers were a' puirly aff with the late 
 ha'rst, an' had nae money to spare ; an' sae the factor 
 knocked in ilka thing to himsel', wi' hardly a bid against 
 him. He was a rough-faced little man, wi' a red, hooked 
 nose, a gude deal gi'en to whiskey, an' very wild an' des- 
 perate when he had ta'en a glass or twa aboon ordinar' ; 
 an' on the day o' the roup he raged like a perfect madman. 
 My mither spoke to him again an' again, wi' the tear in her 
 e'e, an' implored him, for the sake o' the orphan an' the 
 widow, no to hurry hersel' an' her bairns; but he just 
 cursed an' swore a' the mair, an' knocked down the stacks 
 an' the kye a' the faster; an' whan she spoke to him o' 
 the Ane aboon a', he said that Providence gied lang credit 
 an' reckoned on a lang day, an' that he wald tak' him intil 
 his ain hands. Weel, the roup cam' to an end, an' the 
 sum o' the whole didna come to meikle mair nor the rent 
 an' clear the factor's lang, lang account for expenses ; an' 
 at nicht my mither was a ruined woman. The factor staid 
 up late an' lang, drinkin' wi' some creatures o' his ain ; an' 
 the last words he said on going to his bed was, that he 
 hadna made a better day's wark for a twelvemonth. But, 
 Gude tak' us a' in keeping ! in the morning he was a corp, 
 — a cauld lifeless corp, wi' a face as black as my bonnet. 
 
 " Weel, he was buried, an' there was a grand character 
 o' him putten in the newspapers, an' we a' thocht we were 
 to hear nae mair about him. My mither got a wee bittie 
 o' a house on the farm o' a neebor, and there we lived 
 dowie eneugh ; but she was aye an eident, workin' woman 
 
204 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 an' she now span late an' early for some o' her auld friends, 
 the farmers' wives ; an' her sair-won penny, wi' what we 
 got fi-ae kindly folk wha minded us in better times, kept 
 us a' alive. Meanwhile, strange stories o' the dead factor 
 began to gang aboot the kintra. First, his servants, it 
 was said, were hearing are, curious noises in his counting- 
 office. The door was baith locked an' sealed, waiting till 
 his friends would cast up, for there were some doots aboot 
 them ; but, locked an' sealed as it was, they could hear it 
 opening an' shutting every nicht, an' hear a rustlin' among 
 the papers, as gin there had been half a dozen writers 
 scribblin' amang them at ance. An' then, Gude preserve 
 us a' ! they could hear Keilly himsel', as if he were dictat- 
 ing to his clerk. An', last o' a', they could see him in the 
 gloamin', nicht an mornin', ganging aboot his house wring- 
 ing his hands, an' aye, aye muttering to himsel' aboot roups 
 and poindings. The servant girls left the place to himsel' ; 
 an' the twa lads that wrought his farm an' slept in a hay- 
 loft, were sae disturbed nicht after nicht, that they had just 
 to leave it to himsel' too. 
 
 "My mither was a'e nicht wi' some a' her spinnin' at a 
 neeborin' farmer's, — a worthy. God-fearing man, an' an 
 elder o' the kirk. It was in the simmer time, an' the nicht 
 was bricht an' bonny ; but, in her backcoming, she had to 
 pass the empty house o' the dead factor, an' the elder said 
 that he would take a step hame wi' her, for fear she 
 michtna be that easy in her mind. An' the honest man 
 did sae. Naething happened them in the passin', except 
 that a dun cow, ance a great favorite o' my mither's, cam' 
 lowing up to them, puir beast, as gin she would hae better 
 liked to be gaun hame wi' my mother than stay where she 
 was. But the elder didna get aff sae easy in the back- 
 coming. He was passin' beside a thick hedge, whan what 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 205 
 
 does he see, but a man inside the hedge, takin' step for 
 step wi' him as he gaed ! The man wore a dun coat, an 
 had a hunting-whip under his arm, an' walked, as the elder 
 thocht, very like what the dead factor used to do when he 
 had gotten a glass or twa aboon ordinar. Weel, they cam' 
 to a slap in the hedge, an' out cam' the man at the slap ; 
 an' Gude tak' us a' in keeping ! it was sure enough the 
 dead factor himsel'. There were his hook nose, an' his 
 rough, red face, — though it was maybe bluer noo than 
 red, — an' there were the boots an' the dun coat he had 
 worn at my mither's roup, an' the very whip he had lashed 
 a puir gangrel woman wi' no a week before his death. He 
 was mutterin' something to himsel' ; but the elder could 
 only hear a wordie noo an' then. 'Poind an' roup, ' he 
 would say, — ' poind an' roup' ; an' then there would come 
 out a blatter o' curses. — ' Hell, hell ! an' damn, damn ! 
 The elder was a wee fear-stricken at first, — as wha wadna ? 
 — but then the ill words an' the way they were said made 
 him angry, — for he could never bear ill words without 
 checking them, — an' sae he turned round wi' a stern brow, 
 an' asked the appearance what it wanted, an' why it should 
 hae come to disturb the peace o' the kintra, and to disturb 
 him ? It stood still at that, an' said, wi' an awsome grane, 
 that it couldna be quiet in the grave till there was some 
 justice done to Widow Stuart. It then tauld him tliat 
 there were forty gowd guineas in a secret drawer in his 
 desk, that hadna been found, an' tauld him where to get 
 them, an' that he wad need gang wi' the laird an' the min- 
 ister to the drawer, an' gie them a' to the widow. It 
 couldna hae rest till then, it said, nor wad the kintra hae 
 rest either. It willed that the lave o' the gear should be 
 gien to the poor o' the parish ; for nane o' the twa folk 
 
 that laid claim to it had the shadow o' a right. An' wi' 
 
 18 
 
206 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 that the appearance left him. It just went back through 
 the slap in the hedge ; an' as it stepped owre the ditch, 
 vanished in a puff o' smoke. 
 
 " Weel, — but to cut short a lang story, — the laird and 
 the minister were at first gay slow o' belief; no that they 
 misdoubted the elder, but they thocht that he must hae 
 been deceived by a sort o' wakin' dream. But they soon 
 changed their minds, for, sure enough, they found the forty 
 guineas in a secret drawer. An' the news they got frae 
 the south about Keilly was just as the appearance had said; 
 no ane mair nor anither had a richt to his gear, for he had 
 been a foundlin', an' had nae friends. An' sae my mither 
 got the guineas, an' the parish got the rest, an' there was 
 nae mair heard o' the apparition. We didna get back oor 
 auld farm ; but the laird gae us a bittie that served oor 
 turn as weel ; an' or my mither was ca'ed awa frae us, we 
 were a' settled in the warld, an' doin' for oorsels." 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE MEALMONGER. 
 
 " It is wonderful," remarked the decent-looking, elderly 
 man who had contributed the story of. Donald Gair, — " it 
 is wonderful how long a recollection of that kind may live 
 in the memory -nithout one's knowing it is there. There 
 is no possibility of one taking an inventory of one's recol- 
 lections. They live unnoted and asleep, till roused by 
 some likeness of themselves, and then up they start, and 
 
THE LYKEWAKE. 207 
 
 answer to it, as ' face answereth to face in a glass.' There 
 comes a story into my mind, much like the last, that has 
 lain there all unknown to me for the last thirty years, nor 
 have I heard any one mention it since ; and yet when I 
 was a boy no story could be better known. You have all 
 heard of the dear years that followed the harvest of '40, 
 and how fearfully they bore on the poor. The scarcity, 
 doubtless, came mainly from the hand of Providence, and 
 yet man had his share in it too. There were forestall- 
 ers of the market, who gathered their miserable gains by 
 heightening the already enormous price of victuals, thus 
 adding starvation to hunger; and among the best known 
 and most execrated of these was one M'Kechan, a resi- 
 denter in the neighboring parish. He was a hard-hearted 
 foul-spoken man ; and often what he said exasperated the 
 people as much against him as what he did. When, on 
 one occasion, he bought up all the victuals in a market, 
 there was a wringing of hands among the women, and they 
 cursed him to his face ; but when he added insult to injury, 
 and told them, in his pride, that he had not left them an 
 ounce to foul their teeth, they would that instant have 
 taken his life, had not his horse carried him through. He 
 was a mean, too, as well as a hard-hearted man, and used 
 small measures and light weights. But he made money, 
 and deemed himself in a fair way of gaining a character 
 on the strength of that alone, when he was seized by a 
 fever, and died after a few days' illness. Solomon tells us, 
 that when the wicked perish there is shouting; there was 
 little grief in the sheriffdom when M'Kechan died ; but his 
 relatives buried him decently ; and, in the course of the 
 next fortnight, the meal fell twopence the peck. You know 
 the burying-ground of St. Bennet's : the chapel has long 
 since been ruinous, and a row of wasted elms, with white 
 
208 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 skeleton-looking tops, run around the enclosure and look 
 over the fields that surround it on every side. It lies 
 out of the way of any thoroughfare, and months may some- 
 times pass, when burials are unfrequent, in which no one 
 goes near it. It was in St. Bennet's that M'Kechan was 
 buried ; and the people about the farm-house that lies 
 nearest it were surprised, for the first month after his 
 death, to see the figure of a man, evening and morning, 
 just a few minutes before the sun had risen and a few 
 after it had set, walking round the yard under the elms 
 three times, and always disappearing when it had taken the 
 last turn beside an old tomb near the gate. It was of course 
 always clear daylight when they saw the figure ; and the 
 month passed ere they could bring themselves to suppose 
 that it was other than a thing of flesh and blood, like them- 
 selves. The strange regularity of its visits, however, at 
 length bred suspicion ; and the farmer himself, a plain, de- 
 cent man, of more true courage than men of twice the pre- 
 tence, determined one evening on watching it. He took 
 his place outside the wall a little before sunset ; and no 
 sooner had the red light died away on the elm-tops, than 
 up started the figure from among the ruins on the opposite 
 side of the burying-ground, and came onward in its round, 
 muttering incessantly as it came, ' Oh, for mercy sake, 
 for mercy sake, a handful of meal ! I am starving, I am 
 starving: a handful of meal ! ' And then, changing its tone 
 into one still more doleful, ' Oh,' it exclaimed, ' alas for 
 the little lippie and the little peck ! alas for the little lippie 
 and the little peck ! ' As it passed, the farmer started up 
 from his seat ; and there, sure enough, was M'Kechan, the 
 corn-factor, in his ordinary dress, and, except that he was 
 thinner and paler than usual, like a man sufierino- from 
 hunger, presenting nearly his ordinary appearance. The 
 
THE LYKEWAKB. 209 
 
 figure passed with a slow, gliding sort of motion ; and, turn- 
 ing the further corner of the burying-ground, canae onward 
 in its second round ; but the farmer, though he had felt 
 rather curious than afraid as it went by, found his heart fail 
 him as it approached the second time, and, without waiting 
 its coming up, set off homeward through the corn. The 
 apparition continued to take its rounds evening and morn- 
 ing for about two months after, and then disappeared for 
 ever. Mealmongers had to forget the story, and to grow a 
 little less afraid, ere they could cheat with their accustomed 
 coolness. Believe me, such beliefs, whatever may be 
 thought of them in the present day, have not been without 
 their use in the past." 
 
 As the old man concluded his story, one of the women 
 rose to a table in the little room and replenished our glasses. 
 We all drank in silence. 
 
 " It is within an hour of midnight," said one of the men, 
 looking at his watch. " We had better recruit the fire, and 
 draw in our chairs. The air aye feels chill at a lykewake 
 or a burial. At this time to-morrow we will be lifting the 
 corpse." 
 
 There was no reply. We all drew in our chairs nearer 
 the fire, and for several minutes there was a pause in the 
 conversation ; but there were more stories to be told, and 
 before the morning many a spirit was evoked from the 
 grave, the vast deep, and the Highland stream. 
 18* 
 
VI. 
 
 BILL WHYTE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 'T is the Mind tliat malces the Body quick; 
 
 And as the Sun breaks through the darkest clouds, 
 
 So Honor peereth in the meanest habit. 
 
 Shakspeakb. 
 
 I HAD occasion, about three years ago, to visit the an- 
 cient burgh of Fortrose. It was early in winter; the days 
 were brief, though pleasant, and the nights long and dark; 
 and, as there is much in Fortrose which the curious trav- 
 eller deems interesting, I had lingered amid its burying- 
 grounds and its broken and mouldering tenements till the 
 twilight had fairly set in. I had explored the dilapidated 
 ruins of the Chanonry of Ross ; seen the tomb of old Ab- 
 bot Boniface and the bell blessed by the Pope ; run over 
 the complicated tracery of the Runic obelisk, which had 
 been dug up, about sixteen years before, from under the 
 foundations of the old parish church ; and visited the low, 
 long house, with its upper windows buried in the thatch, in 
 which the far-famed Sir James Mackintosh had received 
 the first rudiments of his education. And in all this I had 
 been accompanied by a benevolent old man of the place, 
 a mighty chronicler of the past, who, when a boy, had sat 
 
BILL WHYTE. 211 
 
 on the same form with Sir James, and who on this occasion 
 had seemed quite as delighted in meeting with a patient 
 and interested listener as I had been in finding so intelli- 
 gent and enthusiastic a storyist. There was little wonder, 
 then, that twilight should have overtaken me in such a 
 place, and in such company. 
 
 There are two roads which run between Cromarty and 
 Fortrose, — the one the king's highway, the other a nar- 
 row footpath that goes winding for several miles under the 
 immense wall of cliffs which overhangs the northern shores 
 of the Moray Frith, and then ascends to the top by narrow 
 and doubtful traverses along the face of an immense prec- 
 ipice termed the Scarf's Crag. The latter route is by far 
 the more direct and more pleasant of the two to the day- 
 traveller; but the man should think twice who proposes 
 taking it by night. The Scarf's Crag has been a scene of 
 frightful accidents for the last two centuries. It is not yet 
 more than twelve years since a young and very active man 
 was precipitated from one of its higher ledges to the very 
 beach, — a sheer descent of nearly two hundred feet; and 
 a multitude of little cairns which mottle the sandy platform 
 below bear witness to the not unfrequent occurrence of 
 such casualties in the remote past. With the knowledge 
 of all this, however, I had determined on taking the more 
 pei-ilous road. It is fully two miles shorter than the other; 
 and, besides, in a life of undisturbed security a slight ad- 
 mixture of that feeling which the sense of danger awakens 
 is a luxury which I have always deemed worth one's while 
 running some little risk to procure. The night fell thick 
 and dark while I was yet hurrying along the footway 
 which leads under the cliffs; and, on reaching the Scarf's 
 Crag, I could no longer distinguish the path, nor even 
 catch the huge outline of the precipice between me and 
 
212 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 the sky. I knew that the moon rose a little after nine, 
 but it was still early in the evening; and, deeming it too 
 long to wait its rising, I set myself to grope for the path, 
 when, on turning an abrupt angle, I was dazzled by a sud- 
 den blaze of light from an opening in the rock. A large 
 fire of furze and brushwood blazed merrily from the inte- 
 rior of a low-browed but spacious cave, bronzing with dusky 
 yellow the huge volume of smoke which went rolling out- 
 wards along the roof, and falling red and strong on the 
 face and hands of a thick-set, determined-looking man, 
 well-nigh in his sixtieth year, who was seated before it on 
 a block of stone. I knew him at once, as an intelligent, 
 and, in the main, rather respectable gipsy, whom I had 
 once met with about ten years before, and who had seen 
 some service as a soldier, it was said, in the first British 
 expedition to Egypt. The sight of his fire determined me 
 at once. I resolved on passing the evening with him till 
 the rising of the moon ; and, after a brief explanation, and 
 a blunt, though by no means unkind invitation to a place 
 beside his fire, I took my seat, fronting him, on a block of 
 granite which had been rolled from the neighboring beach. 
 In less than half an hour wc were on as easy terms as if 
 we had been comrades for years ; and, after beating over 
 fifty different topics, he told me the story of his life, and 
 found an attentive and interested auditor. 
 
 AVho of all ray readers is unacquainted with Goldsmith's 
 admirable stories of the sailor with the wooden leg and 
 the poor half-starved merry-andrew ? Independently of 
 the exquisite humor of the writer, they are suited to in- 
 terest us from the sort of cross vistas which they open into 
 scenes of life wliere every thought and aim and incident 
 has at once all the freshness of novelty and all the truth 
 of nature to recommend it. And I felt nearly the same 
 
BILL WHYTE. 213 
 
 kind of interest in listening to the narrative of the gipsy. 
 It was much longer than either of Goldsmith's stories, and 
 perhaps less characteristic ; but it presented a rather curi- 
 ous picture of a superior nature rising to its proper level 
 through circumstances the most adverse ; and, in the main, 
 pleased me so well, that I think I cannot do better than 
 present it to the reader. 
 
 " I was born, master," said the gipsy, " in this very cave, 
 some sixty years ago, and so am a Scotchman like yourself 
 My mother, however, belonged to the Debatable-land ; 
 my father was an Englishman ; and of my five sisters, one 
 first saw the light in Jersey, another in Guernsey, a third 
 in Wales, a fourth in Ireland, and the fifth in the Isle of 
 Man. But this is a trifle, master, to what occurs in some 
 families. It can't be much less thau fifty years since my 
 mother left us, one bright sunny day, on the English side 
 of Kelso, and staid away about a week. We thought we 
 had lost her altogether ; but back she came at last ; and 
 when she did come, she brought with her a small sprig of 
 a lad of about three summers or thereby. Father grum- 
 bled a little. We had got small fry enough already, he said, 
 and bare enough and hungry enough they were at times ; 
 but mother showed him a pouch of yellow pieces, and 
 there was no more grumbling. And so we called the little 
 fellow Bill Whyte, as if he had been one of ourselves ; and 
 he grew up among us, as pretty a fellow as e'er the sun 
 looked upon. I was a few years his senior ; but he soon 
 contrived to get half a foot ahead of me ; and when we 
 quarrelled, as boys will at times, master, I always came oflf 
 second best. I never knew a fellow of a higher spirit. He 
 would rather starve than beg, a hundred times over, and 
 never stole in his life ; but then for gin-setting, and deer- 
 stalking, and black-fishing, not a poacher in the country 
 
214 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 got beyond him ; and when there was a smuggler in the 
 Solway, who more active than Bill ? He was barely nine- 
 teen, poor fellow, when he made the country too hot to 
 hold him. I remember the night as well as if it were yes- 
 terday. -The Cat-maran lugger was in the Frith, d'ye see, 
 a little below Caerlaverock ; and father and Bill, and some 
 lialf-dozen more of our men, were busy in bumping the 
 kegs ashore, and hiding them in the sand. It was a thick, 
 smuggy night : we could hardly see fifty yards around us ; 
 and on our last trip, master, when we were down in the 
 water to the gunwale, who should come upon us, in the 
 turning of a handspike, but the revenue lads from Kirk- 
 cudbright ! They hailed us to strike, in the devil's name. 
 Bill swore he wouldn't. Flash went a musket, and the 
 ball whistled through his bonnet. Well, he called on them 
 to row up, and up they came ; but no sooner were they 
 within half-oar's length, than, taking up a keg, and raising 
 it just as he used to do the putting-stone, he made it spin 
 through their bottom as if the planks were of window 
 glass, and down went their cutter in half a jiffy. They 
 had wet powder that night, and fired no more bullets. 
 Well, when they were gathering themselves up as they 
 best could, — and, goodness be praised ! there were no 
 drownings amongst them, — we bumped our kegs ashore, 
 hiding them with the others, and then fled up the country. 
 We knew there would be news of our night's work ; and 
 so there was ; for before next evening there were adver- 
 tisements on every post for the apprehension of Bill, with 
 an offered reward of twenty pounds. 
 
 " Bill was a bit of a scholar, — so am I, for that matter, 
 — and the papers stared him on every side. 
 
 " ' Jack,' he said to me, — ' Jack Whyte, this will never 
 do : the law's too strong for us now ; and if I don't make 
 
BILL WHYTE. 215 
 
 away with myself, they'll either have me tucked up or 
 sent over the seas to slave for life. I'll tell you what I'll 
 do. I stand six feet in my stocking-soles, and good men 
 were never more wanted than at present. I'll cross the 
 country this very night, and away to Edinburgh, where 
 there are troops raising for foreign service. Better a 
 musket than the gallows ! ' 
 
 " ' Well, Bill,' I said, ' I don't care though I go with you. 
 I'm a good enough man for my inches, though I ain't so 
 tall as you, and I'm woundily tired of spoon-making.' 
 
 "And so off we set across the country that very minute, 
 travelling by night only, and passing our days in any hid- 
 ing hole we could find, till we reached Edinburgh, and 
 there we took the bounty. Bill made as pretty a soldier 
 as one could have seen in a regiment; and, men being 
 scarce, I wasn't rejected neither ; and after just three 
 weeks' drilling, — and plaguey weeks they were, — we 
 were shipped* off, fully finished, for the south. Bonaparte 
 had gone to Egypt, and we were sent after him to fen-et 
 him out ; though we weren't told so at the time. And it 
 was our good luck, master, to be put aboard of the same 
 tra,nsport. 
 
 " Nothing like seeing the world for making a man smart. 
 We had all sorts of people in our regiment, from the 
 broken-down gentleman to the broken-down lamplighter ; 
 and Bill was catching from the best of them all he could. 
 He knew he wasn't a gipsy, and had always an eye to get- 
 ting on in the world ; and as the voyage was a woundy 
 long one, and we had the regimental schoolmaster aboard, 
 Bill was a smarter fellow at the end of it than he had been 
 at the beginning. Well, we reached Aboukir Bay at last. 
 You have never been in Egypt, master; but just look 
 across the Moray Frith here, on a sunshiny day, and you 
 
216 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 will see a picture of it, if you but strike off the blue High- 
 land hills, that rise behind, from the long range of low- 
 sandy hillocks that stretches away along the coast between 
 Findhorn and Nairn. I don't think it was worth all the 
 trouble it cost us ; but the king surely knew best. Bill 
 and I were in the first detachment, and we had to clear 
 the way for the rest. The French were drawn up on the 
 shore, as thick as flies on a dead snake, and the bullets 
 rattled round us like a shower of May hail. It was a glo- 
 rious sight, master, for a bold heart. The entire line of 
 sandy coast seemed one unbroken streak of fire and smoke ; 
 and we could see the old tower of Aboukir rising like a 
 fiery dragon at the one end, and the straggling village of 
 Rosetta, half-cloud half-flame, stretching away on the other. 
 There was a line of launches and gunboats behind us, that 
 kept up an incessant fire on the enemy, and shot and shell 
 went booming over our heads. We rowed shorewards, 
 under a canopy of smoke and flame : the watfer was broken 
 by ten thousand oars; and never, master, have you heard 
 such cheering ; it drowned the roar of the very cannon. 
 Bill and I pulled at the same oar ; but he bade me cheer, 
 and leave the pulling to him. 
 
 " ' Cheer, Jack,' he said, ' cheer ! I am strong enough to 
 pull ten oars, and your cheering does my heart good.' 
 
 " I could see, in the smoke and the confusion, that there 
 was a boat stove by a shell just beside us, and the man 
 immediately behind me was shot through the head. But 
 we just cheered and pulled all the harder; and the mo- 
 ment our keel touched the shore we leaped out into the 
 water, middle deep, and, after one well-directed volley, 
 charged up the beach with our bayonets fixed. I missed 
 footing in the hurry, just as we closed, and a big-whiskered 
 fellow in blue would have pinned me to the sand had not 
 
BILL WHYTB. 217 
 
 Bill struck him through the wind-pipe, and down he fell 
 above me ; but when I strove to rise from under him, he 
 grappled with me in his death agony, and the blood and 
 breath came rushing through his wound in my face. Ere 
 I had thrown him off my comrades had broken the enemy 
 and were charging up the side of a sand-hill, where there 
 were two field-pieces stationed that had sadly annoyed us 
 in the landing. There came a shower of grape-shot whist- 
 ling round me, that carried away my canteen and turned 
 me half round ; and when I looked up, I saw, through the 
 smoke, that half my comrades were swept away by the 
 discharge, and that the survivors were fighting desperately 
 over the two guns, hand-to-hand with the enemy. Ere I 
 got up to them, however, — and, trust me, master, I didn't 
 linger, — the guns were our own. Bill stood beside one 
 of them, all grim and bloody, with his bayonet dripping 
 like an eaves-spout in a shower. He had struck down five 
 of the French, besides the one he had levelled over me ; 
 and now, all of his own accord, — for our sergeant had been 
 killed, — he had shotted the two pieces and turned them 
 on the enemy. They all scampered down the hill, master, 
 on the first discharge, — all save one brave, obstinate fel- 
 low, who stood firing upon us, not fifty yards away, half 
 under cover of a sand-bank. I saw him load thrice ere I 
 could hit him, and one of his balls whisked through my 
 hat ; but I catched him at last, and down he fell. My 
 bullet went right through his forehead. We had no more 
 fighting that day. The French fell back on Alexandria, 
 and our troops advanced about three miles into the coun- 
 try, over a dreary waste of sand, and then lay for the night 
 on their arms. 
 
 "In the morning, when we were engaged in cooking our 
 breakfasts, master, making what fires we could with the 
 19 
 
218 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 withered leaves of the date-tree, our colonel and two 
 officers came up to us. The colonel was an Englishman, as 
 brave a gentleman as ever lived, aye, and as kind an officer 
 too. He was a fine-looking old man, as tall as Bill, and as 
 well built too ; but his health was much broken. It was 
 said he had entered the army out of break-heart on losing 
 his wife. Well, he came up to us, I say, arid shook Bill by 
 the band as cordially as if he had been a colonel like him- 
 self. He was a brave, good soldier, he said, and, to show 
 him how much he valued good men, he had come to make 
 him a sergeant, in room of the one be had lost. He had 
 heard he was a scholar, he said, and he trusted his conduct 
 would not disgrace the halberd. Bill, you may be sure, 
 thanked the colonel, and thanked him, master, very like a 
 gentleman ; and that very day he swaggered scarlet and a 
 sword, as pretty a sergeant as the army could boast of; 
 aye, and for that matter, though his experience was little, 
 as fit for his place. 
 
 "For the first fortnight we didn't eat the king's biscuit 
 for nothing. "We had terrible hard fighting on the 13th ; 
 and, had not our ammunition failed us, we would have 
 beaten the enemy all to rags ; but for the last two hours 
 we hadn't a shot, and stood just like so many targets set 
 up to be fired at. I was never more fixed in my life than 
 when I saw my comrades falling around me, and all for 
 nothing. ISTot only could I see them falling, but, in the 
 absence of every other noise, — for we had ceased to cheer, 
 and stood as silent and as hard as foxes, — I could hear 
 the dull, hollow sound of the shot as it pierced them 
 through. Sometimes the bullets struck the sand, and then 
 rose and went rolling over the level, raising clouds of dust 
 at every skip. At times we could see them coming through 
 the air like little clouds, and singing all the way as they 
 
BILL WHYTE. 219 
 
 came. But it was the frightful smoking shot that annoyed 
 us most — these horrid shells. Sometimes they broke over 
 our heads in the air as if a cannon charged with grape had 
 been fired at us from out the clouds. At times they sank 
 into the sand at our feet, and then burst up like so many 
 Vesuviuses, giving at once death and burial to hundreds. 
 But we stood our ground, and the day passed. I remem- 
 ber we got, towards evening, into a snug hollow between 
 two sand-hills, where the shot skimmed over us, not two 
 feet above our heads; but two feet is just as good as 
 twenty, master ; and I began to think, for the first time, 
 that I hadn't got a smoke all day. I snapped my musket 
 and lighted my pipe ; and Bill, whom I hadn't seen since 
 the day after the landing, came up to share with me. 
 
 " ' Bad day's work. Jack,' he said ; ' but we have at least 
 taught the enemy what British soldiers can endure, and 
 ere long we shall teach them something more. But here 
 comes a shell ! Nay, do not move,' he said ; ' it will fall 
 just ten yards short.' And down it came, roaring like a 
 tempest, sure enough, about ten yards away, and sank into 
 the sand. ' There now, fairly lodged,' said Bill ; ' lie down, 
 lads, lie down.' We threw ourselves flat on our faces ; 
 the earth heaved under us like a wave of the sea ; and in 
 a moment Bill and I were covered with half a ton of sand. 
 But the pieces whizzed over us ; and, save that the man 
 who was across me had an ammunition-bag carried away, 
 not one of us more than h«ard them. On getting our- 
 selves disinterred, and our pipes re-lighted. Bill, with a 
 twitch on the elbow — so — said he wished to speak with 
 me a little apart ; and we went out together into a hol- 
 low in front. 
 
 " ' You will think it strange. Jack,' he said, ' that all this 
 day, when the enemy's bullets were hopping around us like 
 
220 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 hail, there was but just one idea that filled my mind, and I 
 could find room for no other. Ever since I saw Colonel 
 Westhope, it has been forced upon me, through a newly- 
 awakened, dream-like recollection, that he is the gentleman 
 with whom I lived ere I was taken away by your people ; 
 for taken away I must have been. Your mother used to 
 tell me that my father was a Cumberland gipsy, who met 
 with some bad accident from the law ; but I am now con- 
 vinced she must have deceived me, and that my father was 
 no such sort of man. You will think it strange, but when 
 putting on my coat this morning, my eye caught the silver 
 bar on the sleeve, and there leaped into my mind a vivid 
 recollection of having worn a scarlet dress before, — scar- 
 let bound with silver, — and that it was in the house of a 
 gentleman and lady whom I had just learned to.call papa 
 and mamma. And every time I see the colonel, as I say, 
 I am reminded of the gentleman. Now, for heaven's sake, 
 Jack, tell me all you know about me. You are a few years 
 my senior, and must remember better than I can myself 
 under what circumstances I joined your tribe.' 
 
 " ' Why, Bill,' I said, ' I know little of the matter, and 
 'twere no great wonder though these bullets should con- 
 fuse me somewhat in recalling what I do know. Most 
 certainly we never thought you a gipsy like ourselves ; but 
 then I am sure mother never stole you ; she had family 
 enough of her own ; and, besides, she brought with her 
 for your board, she said, a purse with more gold in it than 
 I have seen at one time before or since. I remember it 
 kept us all comfortably in the creature for a whole twelve- 
 month ; and it wasn't a trifle, Bill, that could do that. 
 You were at first like to die among us. You hadn't been 
 accustomed to sleeping out, or to food such as ours. And, 
 dear me ! how the rags you were dressed in used to annoy 
 
BILL WHYTE. 221 
 
 you ; but you soon got over all, Bill, and became the har- 
 diest little fellow among us. I once heard my mother say 
 that you were a love-begot, and that your father, who was 
 an English gentleman, had to part from both you and your 
 mother on taking a wife. And no more can I tell you. 
 Bill, for the life of me.' 
 
 "We slept that night on the sand, master, and found in 
 the morning that the enemy had fallen back some miles 
 nearer Alexandria. Next evening there was a party of us 
 despatched on some secret service across the desert. Bill 
 was with us ; but the officer under whose special charge 
 we were placed was a Captain Turpic, a nephew of Colonel 
 Westhope, and his heir. But he heired few of his good 
 qualities. He was the son of a pettifogging lawyer^ and 
 was as heartily hated by the soldiers as the colonel was be- 
 loved. Towards sunset the party reached a hollow valley 
 in the waste, and there rested, preparatory, as we all in- 
 tended, for passing the night. Some of us were engaged 
 in erecting temporary huts of branches, some in providing 
 the necessary materials ; and we had just formed a snug 
 little camp, and were preparing to light our fires for supper, 
 when we heard a shot not two furlongs away. Bill, who 
 was by far the most active among us, sprang up one of the 
 tallest date trees to reconnoitre. But he soon came down 
 again. 
 
 "' We have lost our pains this time,' he said; 'there is 
 a party of French, of fully five times our number, not half 
 a mile away.' The captain, on the news, wasn't slow, as 
 you may think, in ordering us off; and, hastily gathering 
 up our blankets and the contents of our knapsacks, we 
 struck across the sand just as the sun was setting. There 
 is scarce any twilight in Egypt, master; it is pitch dark 
 twenty minutes after sunset, The first part of the evening, 
 19* 
 
222 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 too, is infinitely disagreeable. The days are burning hot, 
 and not a cloud can be seen in the sky; but no sooner has 
 the sun gone down than there comes on a thick white fog 
 that covers the whole country, so that one can't see fifty 
 yards around ; ami so icy cold is it, that it strikes a chill 
 to the very heart. It is with these fogs that the dews 
 descend ; and deadly things they are. Well, the mist and 
 the darkness came upon us at once ; we lost all reckoning, 
 and, after floundering on for an hour or so among the sand- 
 hills, our captain called a halt, and bade us burrow as we 
 best might among the hollows. Hungry as we were we 
 were fain to leave our supper to begin the morning with, 
 and huddled all together into what seemed a deep, dry 
 ditcte We were at first surprised, master, to find an im- 
 mense heap of stone under us, — we couldn't have lain 
 harder had we lain on a Scotch cairn, — and that, d'ye see, 
 is unusual in Egypt, where all the sand has been blown by 
 the hot winds from the desert, hundreds of miles away, 
 and where, in the course of a few days' journey, one 
 mayn't see a pebble larger than a pigeon's egg. There 
 were hard, round, bullet-like masses under us, and others 
 of a more oblong shape, like pieces of wood that had been 
 cut for fuel ; and, tired as we were, their sharp points, pro- 
 truding through the sand, kept most of us from sleep. But 
 that was little, master, to what we felt afterwards. As we 
 began to take heat together, there broke out among us a 
 most disagreeable stench, — bad at first, but unlike any- 
 thing I had felt before, but at last altogether overpowering. 
 Some of us became dead sick, and some, to show how 
 much bolder they were than the rest, began to sing. One 
 half the party stole away, one by one, and lay down out- 
 side. For my own part, master, I thought it was the 
 plague that was breaking out upon us from below, and lay 
 
BILL WHYTB. 223 
 
 Still in despair of escaping it. I was wretchedly tired too ; 
 and, despite of my fears and the stench, I fell asleep, and 
 slept till daylight. But ' never before, master, did I see 
 such a sight as when I awoke. We had been sleeping on, 
 the carcasses of ten thousand Turks, whom Bonaparte had 
 massacred about a twelvemonth befojre. There were eye- 
 less skulls, grinning at us by hundreds from the side of the 
 ditch, and black, withered hands and feet sticking out, 
 with the white bones glittering between the shrunken 
 sinews. The very sand, for roods around, had a brown fer- 
 ruginous tinge, and seemed baked into a half-solid mass 
 resembling clay. It was no place to loiter in, and you 
 may trust me, master, we breakfasted elsewhere. Bill kept 
 close to our captain all that morning. He didn't much like 
 him, even so early in their acquaintance as this, — no one 
 did, in fact, — but he was anxious to learn from him all he 
 could regarding the colonel. He told him, too, something 
 about his own early recollections ; but he would better 
 have kept them to himself. From that hour, master, Cap- 
 tain Turpic never gave him a pleasant look, and sought 
 evei'y means to ruin him. 
 
 " We joined the army again on the evening of the 20th 
 March. You know, master, what awaited us next morning. 
 I had been marching, on the day of our arrival, for twelve 
 hours under a very hot sun, and was fatigued enough to 
 sleep soundly. But the dead might have awakened next 
 morning. The enemy broke in upon us about three o'clock. 
 It was pitch dark. I had been dreaming, at the moment, 
 that I was busily engaged in the landing, fighting in the 
 front rank beside Bill ; and I awoke to hear the enemy 
 outside the tent struggling in fierce conflict with such of 
 my comrades as, half-naked and half-armed, had been 
 roused by the first alarm, and had rushed out to oppose 
 
224 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 them. Tou will not think that I was long in joining them, 
 master, when I tell you that Bill himself was hardly two 
 steps ahead of me. Colonel Westhope was everywhere at 
 once that morning, bringing his men, in the darkness and 
 the confusion, into something like order, — threatening, 
 encouraging, applauding, issuing orders, all in a breath.. 
 Just as we got out, the French broke through beside our 
 tent, and we saw him struck down in the throng. Bill 
 gave a tremendous cry of 'Our colonel! our colonel!' and 
 struck his pike up to the cross into the breast of the fel- 
 low who had given the blow. And hardly had that one 
 fallen than he sent it crashing through the face of the next 
 foremost, till it lay buried in the brain. The enemy gave 
 back for a moment ; and as he was striking down a third 
 the colonel got up, badly wounded in the shoulder ; but 
 he kept the field all day. He knew Bill the moment he 
 rose, and leant on him till he had somewhat recovered. 
 ' I shall not forget, Bill,' he said, ' that you have saved 
 your colonel's life.' We had a fierce struggle, master, ere 
 we beat out the French ; but, broken and half-naked as 
 ^\■e were, we did beat them out, and the battle became 
 general. 
 
 " At fii-st the flare of the artillery, as the batteries blazed 
 out in the darkness, dazzled and blinded me; but I loaded 
 and fired incessantly ; and the thicker the bullets went 
 whistling past me, the faster I loaded and fired. A spent 
 shot, that had struck through a sand-bank, came rolling on 
 like a bowl, and, leaping up from a hillock in front, struck 
 me on the breast. It was such -a blow, master, as a man 
 might have given with his fist; but it knocked me down, 
 and ere I got up, the company was a few paces in advance. 
 The bonnet of the soldier who had taken my place came 
 rolling to my feet ere I could join them. But" alas ! it was 
 
BILL WHYTE. 225 
 
 full of blood and brains; and I found that the spent shot 
 had come just in time to save my life. Meanwhile, the 
 battle vaged with redoubled fury on the left, and we in the 
 centre had a short respite. And some of us needed it. 
 For my own part, I had fired about a hundred rounds; and 
 my right shoulder was as blue as your waistcoat. 
 
 " You will wonder, master, how I should notice such a 
 thing in the heat of an engagement ; but I remember 
 nothing better than that there was a flock of little birds 
 shrieking and fluttering over our heads for the greater 
 part of the morning. The poor little things seemed as if 
 robbed of their very instinct by the incessant discharges 
 on every side of them; and, instead of pursuing a direct 
 course, which would soon have carried them clear of us, 
 they iept fluttering in helpless terror in one little spot. 
 About mid-day, an aide-de-camp went riding by us to the 
 right. 
 
 " ' How goes it ? how goes it ? ' asked one of our officers. 
 
 " ' It is just who will,' replied the aide-de-camp, and 
 passed by like lightning. Another followed hard after. 
 
 " '. How goes it now ? ' inquired the officer. 
 
 " ' Never better, boy ! ' said the second rider. 'The forty- 
 second have cut Bonaparte's invincibles to pieces, and all 
 the rest of the enemy are falling back ! ' 
 
 " We came more into action a little after. The enemy 
 opened a heavy fire upon us, and seemed advancing to the 
 charge. I had felt so fatigued, master, during the previous 
 pause, that I could scarcely raise my hand to my head ; 
 but, now that we were to.be engaged again, all my fatigue 
 left me, and I found myself grown fresh as ever. There 
 were two field pieces to our left that had done noble exe- 
 cution during the day ; and Captain Turpic's company, in- 
 cluding Bill and me, were ordered to stand by them in the 
 
226 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 expected charge. They were wrought mostly by seamen 
 from the vessels, — brave, tight fellows who, like Nelson, 
 never saw fear ; but they had been so busy that they had 
 shot away most of their ammunition ; and, as we came up 
 to them, they were about despatching a party to the rear 
 for more. 
 
 " ' Right,' said Captain Turpic ; ' I don't care though I 
 lend you a hand, and go with you.' 
 
 "'On your peril, sir !' said Bill Whyte. 'What! leave 
 your company in the moment of the expected charge ! I 
 shall assuredly report you for cowardice and desertion of 
 quarters if you do.' 
 
 " ' And I shall have you broke for mutiny,' said the cap- 
 tain. ' How can these fellows know how to choose their 
 ammunition without some one to direct them ? ' 
 
 " And so off he went to the rear with the sailors ; but, 
 though they returned, poor fellows, in ten minutes or so, 
 we saw no more of the captain till evening. On came 
 the French in their last charge. Ere they could close 
 with us the sailors had fired their field-pieces thrice, and 
 we could see wide avenues opened among them with each 
 discharge. But on they came. Our bayonets crossed and 
 clashed with theirs for one half-minute, and in the next 
 they were hurled headlong down the declivity, and we 
 were fighting among them pell-mell. There are few troops 
 superior to the French, master, in a first attack; but 
 they want the bottom of the British ; and, now that we 
 had broken them in the moment of their onset, they had 
 no chance with us, and we pitched our bayonets into them 
 as if they had been so many sheaves in harvest. They lay 
 in some places three and four tiers deep ; for our blood 
 was up, master ; just as they advanced on us we had heard 
 of the death of our general, and they neither asked for 
 
BILL WHYTE. 227 
 
 quarter nor got it. Ah, the good and gallant Sir Ralph ! 
 We all felt as if we had lost a father ; but he died as the 
 brave best love to die. The field was all our own ; and 
 not a Frenchman remained who was not dead or dying. 
 That action, master, fairly broke the neck of their power 
 in Egypt. 
 
 " Our colonel was severely wounded, as I have told you, 
 early in the morning; but, though often enough urged to 
 retire, he had held out all day, and had issued his orders 
 with all the coolness and decision for which he was so re- 
 markable ; but now that the excitement of the fight was 
 over his strength failed him at once, and he had to be 
 carried to his tent. He called for Bill to assist in bearing 
 him ofi! I believe it was merely that he might have 
 the opportunity of speaking to him. He told him that, 
 whether he died or lived, he would take care that he should 
 be provided for. He gave Captain Turpic charge, too, that 
 he should keep a warm side to Bill. I overheard our 
 major say to the captain, as we left the tent, ' Good heav- 
 ens! did you ever see two men liker one another than the 
 colonel and our new sergeant ? ' But the captain care- 
 lessly remarked that the resemblance didn't strike hira. 
 
 " We met outside with a comrade. He had had a cousin 
 in the forty-second, he said, who had been killed that 
 morning, and he was anxious to see the body decently 
 buried, and wished us to go along with him. And so we 
 both went. It is nothing, master, to see men struck down 
 in warm blood, and when one's own blood is up ; but oh, 
 'tis a grievous thing, after one has cooled down to one's 
 ordinary mood, to go out among the dead and the dying ! 
 We passed through what had been the thick of the battle. 
 The slain lay in hundreds and thousands, — like the ware 
 and tangle on the shore below us, — horribly broken, some 
 
228 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of them, by the shot ; and blood and brains lay spattered 
 on the sand. But it was a worse sight to see, when some 
 poor wretch, who had no chance of living an hour longer, 
 opened his eyes as we passed and cried out for water. 
 We soon emptied our canteens, and then had to pass on. 
 In no place did the dead lie thicker than where the forty- 
 second had engaged the invincibles ; and never were there 
 finer fellows. They Lay piled in heaps, — the best men of 
 Scotland over the best men of France, — and their wounds 
 and their number and the postures in which they lay 
 showed how tremendous the struggle had been. I saw one 
 gigantic corpse with the head and neck cloven through 
 the steel cap to the very brisket. It was that of a French- 
 man; but the hand that had drawn the blow lay cold and 
 stiff not a yard away, with the broadsword still firm in its 
 grasp. A little further on we found the body we sought. 
 It was that of a fair young man. The features were-as com- 
 posed as if he were asleep; there was even a smile on the 
 lips ; but a cruel cannon-shot had torn the very heart out of 
 the breast. Evening was falling. There was a little dog 
 whining and whimpering over the body, aware, it would 
 seem, that some great ill had befallen its master, but yet 
 tugging from time to time at his clothes, that he might rise 
 and come away. 
 
 'I ' Ochon, ochon ! poor Evan M'Donald ! ' exclaimed our 
 comrade ; ' what would Christy Ross or your good old 
 mother say to see you lying here ! ' 
 
 '' Bill burst out a-crying as if he had been a child ; and 
 I couldn't keep dry-eyed neither, master. But grief and 
 pity are weaknesses of the bravest natures. We scooped 
 out a hole in the sand with our bayonets and our hands, and 
 burying the body, came away. 
 
 "The battle of the 21st broke — as I have said — the 
 
BILL WHYTE. 229 
 
 Strength of the French in Egypt ; for though they didn't 
 surrender to us until about five months after, they kept 
 snug behind their walls, and vro saw little more of them. 
 Our colonel had gone aboard of the frigate desperntely ill 
 of his wounds ; so ill that it was several times reported he 
 was dead ; and most of our men were suffering sadly from 
 sore eyes ashore. But such of us as escaped had little to 
 do, and we contrived to while away the time agreeably 
 enough. Strange country, Egypt, master. You know our 
 people have come from there ; but, trust me, I could find 
 none of my cousins among either the Turks or the Arabs. 
 The Arabs, master, are quite the gipsies of Egypt ; and 
 Bill and I — but he paid dearly for them afterwards, poor 
 fellow — used frequently to visit such of their straggling 
 tribes as came to the neighborhood of our camp. You and 
 the like of you, master, are curious to see our people, and 
 how we get on ; and no wonder; and we were just as cu- 
 rious to see the Arabs. Towards evening they used to 
 come in from the shore or the desert in parties of ten or 
 twelve. And wild-looking fellows they were ; tall, but 
 not very tall, thin and skinny and dark, and an amaz- 
 ing proportion of them blind of an eye, — an effect, I sup- 
 pose, of the disease from which our comrades were suffering 
 so much. In a party of ten or twelve — and their parties 
 rarely exceeded a dozen — we found that every one of 
 them had some special office to perform. One carried a 
 fishing-net, like a herring have ; one, perhaps, a basket of 
 fish, newly caught ; one a sheaf of wheat ; one a large cop- 
 per basin, or rather platter; one a bundle of the dead 
 boughs and leaves of the date-tree ; one the implements 
 for lighting a fire ; and so on. The first thing they always 
 did, after squatting down in a circle, was to strike a light ; 
 the next to dig a round pot-like hole in the sand, in 
 20 
 
230 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 which they kindle their fire. When the sand had become 
 sufficiently hot, they threw out the embers, and placing 
 the fish, just as they had eaught them, in the bottom of 
 the hole, heaped the hot sand over them, and the fire over 
 that. The sheaf of wheat was next untied, and each taking 
 a handful, hold it over the flame till it was sufficiently 
 scorched, and then rubbed out the grain between their 
 hands into the copper plate. The fire was then drawn off 
 a second time, and the fish dug out ; and, after rubbing off 
 the sand and taking out the bowels, they sat down to sup- 
 per. And such, master, was the ordinary economy of the 
 poorer tribes, that seemed drawn to the camp merely by 
 curiosity. Some of the others brought fruit and vegetables 
 to our market, and were much encouraged by our officers. 
 But a set of greater rascals never breathed. At first several 
 of our men got flogged through them. They had a trick of 
 raising a hideous outcry in the market-place for every trifle, 
 certain, d'ye see, of attracting the notice of some of our 
 officers, who were all sure to take part with them. The 
 market, master, had to be encouraged at all events ; and it 
 was some time ere the tricks of the rascals were understood 
 in the proper quarter. But, to make short. Bill and I went 
 out one morning to our walk. We had just heard — and 
 heavy news it was to the whole regiment — that our col- 
 onel was despaired of, and had no chance of seeing oat the 
 day. Bill was in miserably low spirits. Captain Turpio 
 had insulted him most grossly tliat morning. So long as 
 the colonel had been expected to recover, he had shown 
 him some degree of civility ; but he now took every op- 
 portunity of picking a quarrel with him. There was no 
 comparison in battle, master, between Bill and the captain, 
 for the captain, I suspect, was little better than a coward ; 
 but then there was just as little on parade the other way ; 
 
BILL WHYTE. 231 
 
 for Bill, yon know, couldn't know a great dea,l, and the cap- 
 tain was a perfect martinet. He had called him vagrant 
 and beggar, master, for omitting some little piece of duty. 
 Now he couldn't help having been with us, you know; and 
 as for beggary, he had never begged in his life. Well, we 
 had walked out towards the market, as I say. 
 
 " ' It's all nonsense, Jack,' says he, ' to be so dull on the 
 matter ; I'll e'en treat you to some fruit. I have a Sicilian 
 dollar here. See that lazy fellow with the spade lying in 
 front, and the burning mountain smoking behind him. We 
 must see if he can't dig out for us a few prans' worth of 
 dates.' 
 
 " Well, master, up he went to a tall, thin, rascally-look- 
 ing Arab, with one eye, and bought as much fruit from him 
 as might come to one tenth of the dollar which he gave him, 
 and then.held out his hand for the change. But there was 
 no change forthcoming. Bill wasn't a man to be done out 
 of his cash in that silly way, and so he stormed at the ras- 
 cal ; but he, in turn, stormed as furiously, in his own lingo, 
 at him, till at last Bill's blood got up, and, seizing him by 
 the breast, he twisted him over his knee as one might a 
 boy of ten years or so. The fellow raised a hideous outcry, 
 as if Bill were robbing and murdering him. Two officers, 
 who chanced to be in the market at the time, came running 
 up at the noise. One of them was the scoundrel Turpic ; 
 and Bill was laid hold of, and sent off under guard to"the 
 camp. Poor fellow, he got scant justice there. Turpic 
 had procured a man-of-war's-man, who swore, as well 
 he might, indeed, that Bill was the smuggler who had 
 swamped the Kirkcudbright custom-house boat. There 
 was another brought forward who swore that both of us 
 were gipsies, and told a blasted rigmarole story, without 
 one word of truth in it, about the stealing of a silver spoon. 
 
232 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 The Ainb had his story, too, in his own lingo ; and they re- 
 ceived every word ; for my evidence went for nothing. I 
 was of a race who never spoke the truth, they said, as if I 
 weren't as good as a Mohammedan Arab. To crown all, in 
 came Turpic's story about what he called Bill's mutinous 
 spirit in the action of the 21st. You may guess the rest, 
 master. The poor fellow was broke that morning, and 
 told that, were it not in consideration of his bravery, he 
 would have got a flogging into the bargain. 
 
 " I spent the evening of that day with Bill outside the 
 camp, and we ate the dates together that in the morning 
 had cost him so dear. The report had gone abroad, — ■ 
 luckily a false one, — that our colonel was dead ; and that 
 put an end to all hope with the poor fellow of having his 
 case righted. We spoke together for I am sure two hours ; 
 spoke of Bill's early recollections, and of the hardship of 
 his fate all along. And it was now worse with him, he 
 said, than it had ever been before. He spoke of the strange, 
 unaccountable hostility of Turpic ; and I saw his brow 
 grow dark, and the veins of his neck swell almost to burst- 
 ing. He trusted they might yet meet, he said, where there 
 would be none to note who was the ofiicer and who the 
 private soldier. I did my best, master, to console the poor 
 fellow, and we parted. The first thing I saw, as I opened 
 the tent-door next morning, was Captain Turpic, brought 
 into the camp by the soldier whose cousin Bill and I had 
 assisted to bury. The captain was leaning on his shoulder, 
 somewhat less than half alive, as it seemed, with four of 
 his front teeth struck out, and a stream of blood all along 
 his vest and small clothes. He had been met with by Bill, 
 who had attacked him, he said, and, after breaking his 
 sword, would have killed him, had not the soldier come 
 up and interfered. But that, master, was the captain's 
 
BILL WHYTE. 233 
 
 Story. The soldier told me afterwards that he saw the 
 captain draw his sword ere Bill" lifted hand at all ; and 
 that, when the poor fellow did strike, he gave him only one 
 knock-down blow on the mouth, that laid him insensible 
 at his feet; and that, when down, though he might have 
 killed him twenty times over, he didn't so much as crook 
 a finger on him. Nay, more. Bill offered to deliver him- 
 self up to the soldier, had not the latter assured him that 
 he would to a certainty be shot, and advised him to make 
 off. There was a party despatched in quest of him, master, 
 the moment Turpic had told his story; but he was lucky 
 enough, poor fellow, to elude them ; and they returned in 
 the evening just as they had gone out. And I saw no 
 more of Bill in Egypt, master. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE DENOUEMENT. 
 
 " After all our fears and regrets, master, our colonel 
 recovered, and one morning about four months after the 
 action, came ashore to see us. We were sadly pestered 
 with flies, master. They buzzed all night by millions 
 round our noses, and many a plan did we think of to get 
 rid of them; but after destroying hosts on hosts, they 
 still seemed as thick as before. I had fallen on a new 
 scheme this morning. I placed some sugar on a board, 
 and surrounded it with gunpowder ; and when the flies 
 had settled by thousands on the sugar, I fired the gun- 
 powder by means of a train, and the whole fell dead on 
 the floor of the tent. I had just got a capital shot, when 
 up came the colonel and sat down beside me. 
 20* 
 
284 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 " ' I wish to know,' he said, ' all you can tell me about 
 Bill Whyte. You were his chief friend and companion, I 
 have heard, and are acquainted with his early history. 
 Can you tell me aught of his parentage ? ' 
 
 "'Nothing of that. Colonel,' I said; 'and yet I have 
 known IVill almost ever since he knew himself.' 
 
 " And so, master, I told him all that I knew: how Bill 
 had been first taken to us by my mother ; of the purse of 
 gold she had brought with her, which had kept us all so 
 merry ; and of the noble spirit he had shown among us 
 when he grew up. I told him, too, of some of Bill's early 
 recollections ; of the scarlet dress trimmed with silver, 
 whicli had been brought to his mind by the sergeant's coat 
 the first day he wore it ; of the gentleman and lady, too, 
 whom he remembered to have lived with; and of the sup- 
 posed resemblance he had found between the former and 
 the colonel. The colonel, as I went on, was strangely 
 agitated, master. He held an open letter in his hand, and 
 seemed every now and then to be comparing particulars; 
 and when I mentioned Bill's supposed recognition of him, 
 he actually started from off his seat. 
 
 " ' Good heavens ! ' he exclaimed, ' why was I not brought 
 acquainted with this before?' 
 
 " I explained the why, master, and told him all about 
 Cijptain Turpic ; and he left me with, you may be sure, 
 no very favorable opinion of the captain* But I must now 
 tell you, master, a part of my story, which I had but from 
 honrsay. *, 
 
 " The colonel had been getting over the worse effects of 
 his wound, when he received a letter from a friend in Eng- 
 land informing him that his brother-in-law, the father of 
 Captain Turpic, had died suddenly, and that his sister, 
 who to all appearance was fast following, had been makino- 
 
BILL WHTTE. 235 
 
 strange discoveries regarding an only son of the colonel's, 
 who was supposed to have been drowned about seventeen 
 years before. The colonel had lost both his lady and child 
 by a frightful accident. His estate lay near Olney, on the 
 banks of the Ouse ; and the lady one day, during the ab- 
 sence of the colonel, who was in London, was taking an 
 airing in the carriage with her son, a boy of three years 
 or so, ^^■hen the horses took fright, and, throwing the 
 coachman, who was killed on the spot, rushed into the 
 river. The Ouse is a deep, sluggish stream, dark and 
 muddy in some of the more dangerous pools, and mantled 
 over with weeds. It was into one of these the carriage 
 was overturned. Assistance came late, and the unfortunate 
 lady was brought out a corpse ; but the body of the child 
 was nowhere to be found. It now came out, however, 
 from the letter, that the child had been picked up unhurt 
 by the colonel's brother-in-law, who, after concealing it for 
 nearly a week during the very frenzy of the colonel's dis- 
 tress, had then given it to a gipsy. The rascal's only 
 motive — he was a lawyer, master — was, that his own son, 
 the captain, who was then a boy of twelve years or so, and 
 not wholly ignorant of the circumstance, might succeed to 
 the colonel's estate. The writer of the letter added that, 
 on coming to the knowledge of this singular confession, he 
 had made instant search after the gipsy to whom the child 
 had been given, and had been fortunate enough to find 
 her, after tracing her over half the kingdom, in a cave near 
 Fortrose, in the north of Scotland. She had confessed 
 ;ill ; stating, however, that the lad, who had borne among 
 the tribe the name of Bill Whyte, and had turned out a 
 line fellow, had been outlawed for some smuggling feat, 
 about eighteen months before, and had enlisted with a 
 young man, her son, into a regiment bound for Egypt. 
 
236 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 You see, master, there couldn't be a sbado-w of doubt that 
 my comrade Bill Whyte was just Henry Westhope, the 
 colonel's son and heir. But the grand matter was where 
 to find him. Search as we might, all search was in vain. 
 We could trace him no further than outside the camp to 
 where he had met with Captain Turpic. I should tell you, 
 by the way, that the captain was now sent to Coventry by 
 every one, and that not an oflScer in the regiment would 
 return his salute. 
 
 " Well, master, the months passed, and at length the 
 French surrendered ; and, having no more to do in Egypt, 
 we all re-embarked, and sailed for England. The short 
 peace had been ratified before our arrival ; and I, who had 
 become heartily tired of the life of a soldier now that I had 
 no one to associate with, was fortunate enough to obtain 
 my discharge. The colonel retired from the service at the 
 same time. He was as kind to me as if he had been ray 
 father, and ofiTered to make me his forester if I would but 
 come and live beside him. But I was too fond of a wan- 
 dering life for that. He was con-esponding, he told me, 
 with c-very British consul within fifteen hundred miles of 
 the Nile ; but he had heard nothing of Bill, master. Well, 
 after seeing the colonel's estate, I parted from him, and 
 came north to find out my people, which I soon did; and, 
 for a year or so, I Jived with them just as I have been 
 doing since. I was led in the course of my wanderings to 
 Leith, and was standing one morning on the pier among a 
 crowd of people, who had gathered round to see a fine 
 vessel from the Levant that was coming in at the time, 
 when my eye caught among the sailors a man exceedingly 
 like Bill. He was as tall, and even more robust, and he 
 wrought with all Bill's activity ; but for some time I could 
 not catch a glimpse of his face. At length, however, he 
 
BILL WHYTE. 2§7 
 
 turned round, and there, sure enough, was Bill himself. I 
 was afraid to hail him, master, not knowing who among 
 the crowd might also know him, and know him also as a 
 deserter or an outlaw ; but you may be sure I wasn't long 
 in leaping aboard and making up to him. And we were 
 soon as happy, master, in one of the cellars of the Coal 
 Hill, as we h.ad been all our lives before. 
 
 " Bill told me his history since our parting. He had left 
 the captain lying at his feet, and struck across the sand in 
 the direction of the Nile, one of the mouths of which he 
 reached next day. He there found some Greek sailors, 
 who were employed in watering ; and, assisting them in 
 their work, he was brought aboard their vessel, and engaged 
 as a seaman by the master, who had lost some of his crew 
 by the plague. As you may think, master, he soon became 
 a prime sailor, and continued with the Greeks, trading 
 among the islands of the Archipelago for about eighteen 
 months, when, growing tired of the service, and meeting 
 with an English vessel, he had taken a passage home. I 
 told him how much ado we had all had about him after he 
 had left us, and how we were to call him Bill Whyte no 
 longer. And so, in short, master, we set out together for 
 Colonel Westhope's. 
 
 " In our journey we met with some of our people on a 
 wild moor of Cumberland, and were invited to pass the 
 night with them. They were of the Curlit family ; but 
 you will hardly know them by that. Two of them had 
 been with us when Bill swamped the custom-house boat. 
 They were fierce, desperate fellows, and not much to be 
 trusted, by their friends even ; and I was afraid that 
 they might have somehow come to guess that Bill had 
 brought some clinkers home with him. And so, master, I 
 would fain have dissuaded him from making any stay with 
 
288 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 them in the night-time ; for I did not know, you see, in 
 what case we might find our weasands in the morning. But 
 Bill had no fears of any kind, and was, beside, desirous to 
 spend one last night with the gipsies ; and so he staid. 
 The party had taken up their quarters in a waste house on 
 the moor, with no other human dwelling within four miles 
 of it. There was a low, stunted wood on the one side, 
 master, and a rough, sweeping stream on the other. The 
 night, too, was wild and boisterous ; and, what between 
 suspicion and discomfort, I felt well-nigh as drearily as I 
 did when lying among the dead men in Egypt. We were 
 nobly treated, however, and the whiskey flowed like water. 
 But we drank no more than- was good for us. Indeed, BUI 
 was never a great drinker ; and I kept on my guard, and 
 refused the liquor on the plea of a bad head. I should 
 have told you that there were but three of the Curlits — 
 all of them raw-boned fellows, however, and all of them of 
 such stamp that the three have since been hung. I saw 
 they were sounding Bill ; but he seemed aware of them. 
 
 " ' Aye, aye,' says he, ' I have made something by my voy- 
 aging, lads, though, mayhap, not a great deal. What think 
 you of that there now, for instance?' — drawing, as he 
 spoke, a silver-mounted pistol out of each pocket. ' These 
 are pretty pops, and as good as they are pretty. The worst 
 of them sends a bullet through an inch-board at twenty 
 yards.' 
 
 " ' Are they loaded, Bill ? ' asked Tom Curlit. 
 
 " ' To be sure,' said Bill, returning them again each to 
 its own pouch. ' What is the use of an empty pistol?' 
 
 " ' Ah,' replied Tom, ' I smell a rat, Bill. You have given 
 over making war on the king's account, and have taken 
 the road to make war on your own. Bold enough, to be 
 sure.' 
 
BILL WHTTE. 239 
 
 " From the momeijt they saw the pistols, the brothers 
 seemed to have changed their plan regarding us; for some 
 plan I am certain they had. They would now fain have 
 taken us into partnership with them ; but their trade was 
 a woundy bad one, master, with a world more of risk than 
 profit. 
 
 " ' Why, lads,' said Tom Curlit to Bill and me, ' hadn't 
 you better stay with us altogether? The road won't do 
 in these days at all. No, no ; the law is a vast deal over- 
 strong for that, and you will be tucked up like dogs for 
 your very first affair. But if you stay with us, you will 
 get on in a much quieter way on this wild moor here. 
 Plenty of game, Bill ; and sometimes, when the nights ai-e 
 long, we contrive to take a purse with as little trouble as 
 may be. We had an old peddler only three weeks ago that 
 brought us sixty good pounds. By the way, brothers, we 
 must throw a few more sods over him, for I nosed him this 
 morning as I went by. And, lads, we have something in 
 hand just now, that, with, to be sure, a little more risk, will 
 pay better still. Two hundred yellow boys in hand, and 
 five hundred more when our work is done. Better that, 
 Bill, than standing to be shot at for a shilling per day.' 
 
 " ' Two hundred in hand and five hundred more when 
 you have done your work ! ' exclaimed Bill. ' Why, that 
 is sure enough princely pay, unless the work be very bad 
 indeed. But come, tell us what you propose. Tou can't 
 expect us to make it a leap-in-the-dark matter.' 
 
 " ' The work is certainly a little dangerous,' said Tom, 
 'and we of ourselves are rather few ; but if you both join 
 with us there would be a vast deal less of danger indeed. 
 The matter is just this. A young fellow, like ourselves, 
 has a rich old uncle, who has made his will in his favor ; 
 but then he threatens to make another will that won't be 
 
240 TALES AND SKETCHKS. 
 
 SO favorable to him by half; and you see the drawing across 
 of a knife — so — would keep the first one in force. And 
 that is all we have to do before pocketing the blunt. But 
 then the old fellow is as brave as a lion, and there are two 
 servants with him, worn-out soldiers like himself, that 
 would, I am sure, be rough customers. With your help, 
 however, we shall get on primely. The old boy's house 
 stands much alone, and we shall be five to three.' 
 
 " ' Well, well,' said Bill ; ' we shall give j'our proposal a 
 night's thought, and tell you w^hat we think of it in the 
 morning. But remember, no tricks, Tom ! If we engage 
 in the work, we must go share and share alike in the 
 booty.' 
 
 " ' To be sure,' said Tom ; and so the conversation 
 closed. 
 
 " About eight o'clock or so, master, I stepped out to the 
 door. The night was dark and boisterous as ever, and 
 there had come on a heavy rain. But I could see that, 
 dark and boisterous as it was, some one was approaching 
 the house with a dark lantern. I lost no time in telling 
 the Curlits so. 
 
 "'It must be the captain,' said they, 'though it seems 
 strange that he should come here to-night. You must 
 away. Jack and Bill, to the loft, for it mayn't do for the 
 captain to find you here ; but you can lend us a hand after- 
 wards, should need require it.' 
 
 " There was no time for asking explanations, master, 
 and so up we climbed to the loft, and had got snugly con- 
 coaled among some old hay, when in came the captain. 
 But what captain, think you ? Why, just our old acquaint- 
 ance Captain Turpic ! 
 
 " ' Lads,' he said to the Curlits, ' make yourselves ready; 
 get your pistols. Our old scheme is blown, for the colonel 
 
BILL WHTTE. 241 
 
 has left his house at Olney on a journey to Scotland ; but 
 he passes here to-night, and you must find means to stop 
 him, — now or never ! ' 
 
 " ' What force and what arms has he with him, captain?' 
 asked Tom. 
 
 " ' The coachman, his body servant, and himself' said the 
 captain ; ' but only the servant and himself are armed. 
 The stream outside is high to-night ; you must take them 
 just as they are crossing it, and thinking of only the water; 
 and whatever else you may mind, make sure of the colonel.' 
 
 " ' Sure as I live,' said Bill to me, in a low whisper, ' 'tis 
 a plan to murder Colonel Westhope ! And, good heav- 
 ens ! ' he continued, pointing through an opening in the 
 gable, ' yonder is his carriage not a mile away. You may 
 see the lantern, like two fiery eyes, coming sweeping along 
 the moor. We have no time to lose. Let us slide down 
 through the opening and meet with it.' 
 
 " As soon done as said, master. We slid down along the 
 turf gable; crossed the stream, which had risen high on its 
 banks, by a plank bridge for foot-passengers ; and then 
 dashed along the broken road in the direction of the car- 
 riage. We came up to it as it was slowly crossing an open 
 drain. 
 
 " ' Colonel Westhope ! ' I cried, ' Colonel Westhope ! — 
 stop ! — stop ! — turn back ! You are waylaid by a party 
 of ruffians, who will murder you if you go on.' 
 
 The door opened, and the colonel stepped out, with his 
 sword under his left arm, and a cocked pistol in his hand. 
 
 " ' Is not that Jack Whyte? ' he asked. 
 
 " ' The same, noble colonel,' I said ; ' and here is Henry, 
 your son.' 
 
 " It was no place or time, master, for long explanations ; 
 there was one hearty congratulation, and one hurried em- 
 21 
 
242 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 brace ; and the colonel, after learning from Bill the num- 
 ber of the assailants and the plan of the attack, ordered the 
 carriage to drive on slowly before, and followed, with us 
 and his servant, on foot, behind. 
 
 " ' The rascals,' he said, ' will be so dazzled with the flare 
 of the lanterns in front, that we will escape notice till they 
 have fired, and then we shall have them for the picking 
 down.' 
 
 " And so it was, master. Just as the carriage was enter- 
 ing the stream, the coachman was pulled down by Tom 
 Curlit; at the same instant, three bullets went whizzing 
 through the glasses, and two fellows came leaping out from 
 behind some furae to the carriage door. A third, whom I 
 knew to be the captain, lagged behind. I marked him, 
 however ; and when the colonel and Bill were disposing of 
 the other two, — and they took them so sadly by surprise, 
 master, that they had but little difficulty in throwing them 
 down and binding them, — I was lucky enough to send a 
 piece of lead through the captain. He ran about twenty 
 yards, and then dropped down stone dead. Tom escaped 
 us ; but he cut a throat some months after, and suffered for 
 it at Carlisle. And his two brothers, after making a clean 
 breast, and confessing all, were transported for life. But 
 they found means to return in a few years after, and were 
 both hung on the gallows on which Tom had suffered 
 before them. 
 
 "I have not a great deal more to tell yon, master. The 
 colonel has been dead for the last twelve years, and his son 
 has succeeded him in his estate. There is not a completer 
 gentleman in England than Henry Westhope, master, nor 
 a finer fellow. I call on him every time I go round, and 
 never miss a hearty welcome; though, by the by, I am 
 quite as sure of a hearty scold. He still keeps a snug little 
 
BILL WHYTE. 243 
 
 house empty for me, and offei-s to settle on me fifty pounds 
 a year, whenever I choose to give up my wandering life 
 and go and live with him. But what's bred in the bone 
 won't come out of the flesh, master, and I have not yet 
 closed with his offer. And really, to tell you my mind, I 
 don't think it quite respectable. Here I am, at present, a 
 free, independent tinker, — no man more respectable than a 
 tinker,, master, all allow that, — whereas, if I go and live 
 with Bill, on an unwrought-for fifty pounds a year, I will 
 be hardly better than a mere master-tailor or shoemaker. 
 No, no, that would never do ! Nothing like respectability, 
 master, let a man fare as hard as he may." 
 
 I thanked the gipsy for his story, and told him I thought 
 it almost worth while putting into print. He thanked me, 
 in turn, for liking it so well, and assured me I was quite at 
 liberty to put it in print as soon as I chose. And so I took 
 him at his word. 
 
 « But yonder," said he, " is the moon rising, red and huge, 
 over the three tops of Belrinnes, and throwing, as it bright- 
 ens, its long strip of fire across the frith. Take care of 
 your footing just as you reach the top of the crag ; there 
 is an awkward gap there, on the rock edge, that reminds 
 me of an Indian trap ; but as for the rest of the path, you 
 will find it quite as safe as by day. Good-bye." 
 
 I left him, and made the best of my way home, where, 
 while the facts were fresh in my mind, I committed to paper 
 the gipsy's story. 
 
VII. 
 THE YOUNG SURGEON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It's no' in books, it's no' in lear. 
 To make us truly blest, 
 If Happiness has not her seat 
 And centre in the breast. 
 
 BUKNS. 
 
 There is a little runnel in the neighborhood of the 
 
 town of , which, rising amid the swamps of a mossy 
 
 hollow, pursues its downward way along the bottom of a 
 deep-wooded ravine ; and so winding and circuitous is the 
 course which, in the lapse of ages, it has worn for itself 
 through a subsoil of stiff diluvial clay, that, ere a late pro- 
 prietor lined its sides with garden-flowers and pathways 
 covered with gravel, and then willed that it should be 
 named the " Ladies' Walk," it was known to the towns- 
 people as the Crook Burn. It is a place of abrupt angles 
 and sudden turns. We see that when the little stream 
 first leaped from its urn it must have had many a difficulty 
 to encounter, and many an obstacle to overcome ; but they 
 have all been long since surmounted ; and when in the heat 
 of summer we hear it tinkling through the pebbles, with a 
 sound so feeble that it hardly provokes the chirp of the 
 
THE YODNG SURGEON. 245 
 
 robin, and see that, even where it spreads widest to the 
 light, it pi'fesents a too narrow space for the gambols of the 
 water-spider, we marvel how it could ever have scooped 
 out for itself so capacious a bed. But what will not cen- 
 turies of perseverance accomplish ! The tallest trees that 
 rise beside it — and there are few taller in the country — 
 scarcely overtop its banks ; and, as it approaches the parish 
 burying-ground, — for it passes close beside the wall, — we 
 may look down from the fields above on the topmost 
 branches, and see the magpie sitting on her nest. This 
 little stream, so attenuated and thread-like during the 
 droughts of July and August, and which after every heavier 
 shower comes brawling from its recesses, reddened by a 
 few handfiils of clay, has swept to the sea, in the long 
 unreckoned succession of ages, a mass mighty enough to 
 have furnished the materials of an Egyptian jiyramid. 
 
 In even the "loneliest windings of the Crook Burn we find 
 something to remind us of the world. Every smoother 
 trunk bears its inscription of dates and initials; and to one 
 who has resided in the neighboring town, and mingled 
 freely with the inhabitants, there is scarcely a little cluster 
 of characters he meets with that has not its story. Human 
 nature is a wonderful thing, and interesting in even its 
 humblest appearances to the creatures who partake of it; 
 nor can the point from which one observes it be too near, 
 or the observations themselves too minute. It is perhaps 
 best, however, when we have collected our materials, to 
 combine and arrange them <at some little distance. We 
 are always something more than mere observers, — we pos- 
 sess that which we contemplate, with all its predilections 
 and all its antipathies, — and there is dimness or distortion 
 in the mirror on which we catch the features of our neigh- 
 bors, if the breath of passion has passed over it. Do we 
 21* 
 
246 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 not see that the little stream beside us gives us a faithful 
 picture of what surrounds it only when it is at rest? And 
 it is well, if we desire to think correctly, and in the spirit of 
 charity, of our brother men, that we should be at rest too. 
 For our own part, we love best to think of the dead when 
 their graves are at our feet, and our feelings are chastened 
 by the conviction that we ourselves are very soon to take 
 our place beside them. We love to think of the living, not 
 amid the hum and bustle of the world, when the thoughts 
 are hurried, and perhaps the sterner passions aroused, but 
 in the solitude of some green i-etreat, by the side of some 
 unfrequented stream, when drinking largely of the beauty 
 and splendor of external things, and feeling that we our- 
 selves are man, — in nature and destiny the being whom we 
 contemplate. There is nought of contempt in the smile to 
 which we are provoked by the eccentricities of a creature 
 80 strange and wilful, nor of bitterness in the sorrow with 
 wjiich we regard his crimes. 
 
 In passing one of the trees, a smooth-rinded ash, w^ see a 
 few chiiracters engraved on it, which at the first glance we 
 deem Hebrew, but which we find, on examination, to be- 
 long to some less known alphabet of the East. There hangs 
 a story of these obscure characters, which, though little 
 checkered by incident, has something very interesting in it. 
 It is of no distant date ; — the characters, in all their mi- 
 nuter strokes, are still unfilled ; but the hand that traced 
 them, and the eye that softened in expression as it marked 
 the progress of the work, — for they record the name of 
 a lady-love, — are now mingled with the clods of the valley. 
 
 Early in an autumn of the present century, — and we 
 need not be more explicit, for names and dates are no way 
 essential to what we have 'to relate, — a small tender en- 
 tered the bay of , and cast anchor in the roadstead, 
 
THE YO0NG SURGEON. 247 
 
 where she remained for nearly two months. Our country 
 had been at peace with all the world for years before, and 
 the arts which accompany peace had extended their soft- 
 ening influence to our seamen, a class of men not much 
 marked in the past, as a body at least, — though it had pro- 
 duced a Dampier and a Falconer, — for aught approaching 
 to literary acquirement, or the refinement of their manners. 
 And the ofiicers of this little vessel were no unfavorable 
 specimens of the more cultivated class. They were in gen- 
 eral well read ; and possessing, with the attainments, the 
 manners of gentlemen, were soon on terms of intimacy 
 with some of the more intelligent inhabitants of the place. 
 There was one among them, however, whose society was 
 little courted. He was a young and strikingly handsome 
 man, with bright, speaking eyes, and a fine development of 
 forehead ; but the higher parts of his nature seemed more 
 than balanced by the lower ; and, though proud-spirited and 
 honorable, he was evidently sinking into a hopeless degra- 
 dation, — the slave of habits which strengthen with indulg- 
 ence, and which already seemed too strong to be overcome. 
 He accompanied, on two or three occasions, some of his 
 brother ofiicers when engaged in calling on their several 
 acquaintances of the place. The grosser traits of his char- 
 acter had become pretty generally known, and report had, 
 as usual, rather aggravated than lessened them. There 
 was something whispered of a low intrigue in which he was 
 said to have been engaged ; something, too, of those dis- 
 reputable habits of solitary indulgence in which the stimu- 
 lating agent is recklessly and despairingly employed to 
 satisfy for the moment the ever-recurring cravings of a 
 depraved appetite, and which are regarded as precluding 
 the hope of reform ; and he seemed as if shunned by every 
 one. His high spirit, however, though it felt neglect, could 
 
248 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 support him under it. He was a keen satirist, too, like 
 almost all men of talent, who, thinking and feeling more 
 correctly than they live, wreak on their neighbors the un- 
 happiness of their own remorse ; and he could thus neu- 
 tralize the bitterness of his feelings by the bitterness of his 
 thoughts. But with every such help one cannot wholly 
 dispense with the respect of others, unless one be possessed 
 of one's own ; and when a lady of the place, who on one 
 occasion saw and pitied his chagrin, invited him to pass 
 an evening at her house with a small party of friends, the 
 feeling awakened by her kindness served to convince him 
 that he was less indifferent than he could have wished to 
 the coldness of the others. His spirits rose in the company 
 to which he was thus introduced ; he exerted his powers of 
 pleasing, — and they were of no ordinary description, for, 
 to an imagination of much liveliness, he added warm feel- 
 ings and an exquisite taste, — and, on rising to take his 
 leave for the evening, his hostess, whose interest in him was 
 heightened by pity, and whose years and character secured 
 her from the fear of having her motives misconstrued, 
 kindly urged him to repeat his visit every time he thought 
 he could not better employ himself, or when he found it 
 irksome or dangerous to be alone. And her invitation was 
 accepted in the spirit in which it was given. 
 
 She soon became acquainted with his story. He had 
 lost his mother when very young, and had been bred up 
 under the care of an elder brother, with an eye to the 
 church ; but his inclinations interfering as he grew up, the 
 destination was altered, and he applied himself to the 
 study of medicine. He had passed through college in a 
 way creditable to his talents, and on quitting it he seemed 
 admirably fitted to rise in the profession which he had 
 made choice of; for, to very superior acquirements, and 
 
THE YOUNG SURGEON. 249 
 
 much readiness of resource, he added a pleasing address 
 and a soft, winning manner. There seemed, however, to 
 be something of a neutralizing quality in the moral con- 
 stitution of the man. He was honest, and high-spirited, 
 and ready to oblige ; but there was a morbid restlessn^s 
 in his feelings which, languishing after excitement as its 
 proper element, rendered him too indifferent to those or- 
 dinary concerns of life which seem so tame and little when 
 regarded singly, but which prove of such mighty impor- 
 tance in the aggregate. There was, besides, an unhappy 
 egotism in the character, which led him to regard himself 
 as extraordinary, the circumstances in which he was placed 
 as common, and therefore unsuited, and which, instead of 
 exciting him to the course of legitimate exertion througli 
 which men of talent rise to their proper sphere, spent itself 
 in making out ingenious cases of sorrow and apologies for 
 unhappiness, from very ordinary events, and a condition 
 of life in which thousands attain to contentment. One 
 might almost suppose that that sense of the ludicrous — 
 bestowed on the species undoubtedly for wise ends — 
 which finds its proper vocation in detecting and exposing 
 incongruities of this kind, could not be better employed 
 than in setting such a man right. It would have failed in 
 its object, however ; and certain it is, that geniuses of the 
 very first order, who could have rendered us back our rid- 
 icule with fearful interest, have been of nearly the same 
 disposition with the poor surgeon, — creatures made up of 
 idiosyncrasies and eccentricities. A similar turn was at- 
 tended with unhappiness in Byron and Rousseau ; and 
 such is the power of true genius over the public mind, 
 however fantastic its vagaries, that they had all Europe to 
 sympathize with them. 
 
 The poor surgeon experienced no such sympathy. The 
 
250 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 circumstances, too, in which he had been reared were well- 
 nigh as unfavorable as his disposition ; nor had' they at all 
 improved as he grew up. The love of a mother might have 
 nursed the feelings of so delicate a mind, and fitted them 
 for the world; for, as in dispositions of a romantic cast 
 the affections are apt to wander after the unreal and the 
 illusive, and to become chilled and crippled in the pursuit, 
 it is well that they should be prepared for resting on real 
 objects by the thousand kindlinesses of this first felt and 
 tenderest relation. But his mother he had lost in infancy. 
 His brother, though substantially kind, had a way of saying 
 bitter things, — not unprovoked, perhaps, — which, once 
 heard, were never forgotten. He was now living among 
 strangers, — who, to a man of his temper, were likely to 
 remain such, — without friends or patron, and apparently 
 out of the reach of promotion. And, to sum up the whole, 
 he was a tender and elegant poet, for he had become skil- 
 ful in the uncommunicable art, and had learned to give 
 body to his emotions and color to his thoughts ; but, 
 though exquisitely alive to the sweets of fame, he was of 
 all poets the most obscure and nameless. With a disposi- 
 tion so unfortunate in its peculiarities, with, a groundwork, 
 too, of strong animal passion in the character, he strove to 
 escape from himself by means revolting to his better na- 
 ture, and which ultimately more than doubled his unhap- 
 piness. To a too active dislike of his brother men, — for 
 he was infinitely more successful in finding enemies than 
 friends, — there was now added a sickening disgust of him- 
 self. Habit produced its usual effects ; and he found he 
 had raised to his assistance a demon which he could not 
 lay, and which threatened to destroy him. 
 
 We insert a finished little poem, the composition of this 
 stage, in which he portrays his feelings, and which may 
 
THE YOUNG SURGEON. 251 
 
 serve to show, were any such proof needed, that gross 
 habits and an elegant taste are by no means incompatible. 
 
 Fain would I seek in scenes more gay 
 
 That pleasure others find. 
 And strive to drown in revelry 
 
 The anguish of the mind. 
 
 But still, where'er I go, I bear 
 
 The marks of inward pain ; 
 The lines of misery and care 
 
 Are written in my brain. 
 
 I cannot raise the cheerful song. 
 
 Nor frolic with the free, 
 Nor mingle in the dance among 
 
 The sons of mirth and glee. 
 
 For there's a spell upon my soul, 
 
 A secret anguish there, 
 A grief which I cannot control, 
 
 A deep, corroding care. 
 
 And do not ask me why I sigh, — 
 
 Draw not the veil aside; 
 Though dark, 'tis fairer to the eye 
 
 Than that which it would hide. 
 
 The downward progress of the young surgeon, ere it re- 
 ceived the ultimate check which restored him to more than 
 the vantage-ground of his earliest years, was partially ar- 
 rested by a circumstance more efficient in suspending the 
 influence of the grosser habits than any other which occurs 
 in the ordinary course of things. When in some of the 
 southern ports of England, he had formed an attachment 
 for a young and beautiful lady, of great delicacy of senti- 
 ment and a highly cultivated mind, and succeeded in in- 
 spiring her with a corresponding regard. Who is not ac- 
 quainted with Dryden's story of Cymon ? It may be a 
 
252 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 harder matter, indeed, to unfix deeply-rooted habits than 
 merely to polish the manners ; but we are the creatures of 
 motive ; and there is no appetite, however unconquerable 
 it may appear when opposed by only the dictates of judg- 
 ment or conscience, but what yields to the influence of a 
 passion more powerful than itself. To the young surgeon 
 his attachment for this lady proved for a time the guiding 
 motive and the governing passion ; the effect was a tem- 
 porary reform, a kind of minor conversion, which, though 
 the work of no undying spirit, seemed to renovate his 
 whole moral nature ; and had he resided in the neighbor- 
 hood of his lady-love, it is probable that, during at least the 
 term of his courtship, all his grosser appetites would have 
 slept. But absence, though it rather strengthens than 
 diminishes a true attachment, frequently lessons its moral 
 efficiency, by forming, as it were, a craving void in the 
 heart which old habits are usually called upon to fill. 
 The philospher of Rosseau solaced himself with his bottle 
 when absent from his mistress ; the poor fellow whose story 
 I attempt to relate returned in a similar way to most of 
 his earlier indulgences when separated from his. And yet 
 never was there lover more thoroughly attached, or whose 
 aifection had less of earth in it. His love seemed rather 
 an abstraction of the poet than based on the passions of 
 the man ; and, colored by the taste and delicacy of his intel- 
 lectual nature, it might be conceived of as a sort of religion 
 exquisitely fervent in its worship, and abounding in gor- 
 geous visions, the phantoms of a vigorous fancy, conjured 
 up by a too credulous hope. Nor did it lack its dedicatory 
 inscriptions or its hymns. Almost the only cheerful verses 
 he ever wrote were his love ones ; the others were filled 
 with a kind of metaphysical grief — shall we call it? — 
 common to our literature since the days of Byron and 
 
THE YOUNG SURGEON. 263 
 
 Shelley, but which seems to have been unknown to either 
 Burns ov Shakspeare. The surgeon, however, was no mere 
 imitator — no mere copyist of unfelt and impossible sor- 
 row. His pieces, like all the productions of the school to 
 which they belonged, included nearly the usual amount of 
 false thought and sentiment ; but the feeling which had dic- 
 tated them was not a false one. Had he lived better, he 
 would have wiitten more cheerfully. It is with the mind 
 often as with the body. It is not always in the main seat 
 of disease that the symptoms proper to the disease are ex- 
 hibited ; nor does it need any very extensive acquaintance 
 with our nature to know that real remorse often forms the 
 groundwork of an apparently fictitious sorrow. 
 
 Another poem, of somewhat the same stamp as the for- 
 mer, we may insert here. It is in the handwriting of the 
 young surgeon, among a collection of his pieces, but is 
 marked " Anonymous." We have never met with it else- 
 where ; and as it bears upon it the impress of this singu- 
 lar young man's mind, and is powerfully expressive of the 
 gloom in which he loved to enshroud himself and of the 
 deep bitterness which is the only legitimate fruit of a life 
 of sinful pleasure, we may shrewdly guess that it can be 
 the production of no one else. It is entitled 
 
 THE MOURNER. 
 
 I do not sigh 
 That I catch not the glance of woman's eye : 
 I am weary of woman. I know too well 
 How the pleasant smiles of the love-merchant sell 
 To waste one serious thought on her. 
 Though I've been, like others, a worshipper. 
 I do not sigh for the silken creature ; 
 The tinge of good in her milky blood 
 Marks not her worth, but her feebler nature. 
 22 
 
264 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 I do not pine 
 That the treasures of India are not mine: 
 I have feasted on all that gold could buy, 
 I have drained the fount men call pleasure dry, 
 And I feel the after scorch of pain 
 On a lip that would not drink again. 
 Oh ! wealth on me were only wasted ; 
 I am far above the usurer's love. 
 And all other love on earth I've tasted. 
 
 I do not weep 
 That apart from the noble my walk I keep ; 
 That the name I bear shall never be set 
 'Mid the gems of Fame's sparkling coronet; 
 That I shall slink, with the meanest clay, 
 To a hasty grave as mean as they. 
 Oh ! the choice of a sepulchre does not grieve me : 
 I have that within a name might win 
 And a tomb, if such things could deceive me. 
 
 I do not groan 
 That I life's poison-plant have known ; 
 That in my spirit's drunkenness 
 I ate of its fruit of bitterness. 
 Nor knew, until it was too late. 
 The ills that on such banquet wait. 
 'Tis not for this I cherish sadness : 
 I've taught my heart to endure the smart 
 Produced by my youth's madness. 
 
 But I do sigh. 
 And deeply, darkly pine, weep, groan, — and why? 
 Because with unclouded eye I see 
 Each turn in human destiny. 
 The knowledge of which will not depart. 
 But lingers and rankles in my heart; 
 Because it is my chance to know 
 That good and ill, that weal and woe. 
 Are words that Nothing mean below; 
 Because all earth can't buy a morrow, 
 Or draw from breath, or the vital breath, 
 Aaght but uncertainty and sorrow. 
 
THE YOUNS SURGEON. 255 
 
 This strange poem he read to his elderly friend, with the 
 evident purpose of eliciting some criticism. While admit- 
 ting its power, she protested against its false philosophy, — 
 the result of a distorted vision, in its turn the result of 
 a perverted life. By way of attempting to strike out a 
 healthier vein of sentiment, she begged him to furnish her 
 with an answer. "With this request he complied ; but the 
 production, although with glimpses of true poetry, and with 
 the same power over rhythm, has, as might be expected, 
 the air of something made to order. It is as follows : — 
 
 ANSWER TO THE MOURNER. 
 
 I daily sigh 
 That I meet not the glance of my lady's eye. 
 I am weary of absence: I know too well 
 How lonely and tiresome the dull hours tell 
 Not to wish every moment to be with her 
 Of whom I have long been the worshipper. 
 Oh, how I long for the lovely creature ! 
 The olive-bud, at the general Flood, 
 To the patriarch sailor was not sweeter. 
 
 I often pine 
 That the gifts of fortune are not mine, 
 Tet covet not wealth from the wish to taste 
 The enervating sweets of thoughtless waste. 
 The slave of pleasure I scorn to be. 
 And the usurer's love has no charms for me. 
 I wish but an easy competence, 
 With a pound to lend to an needy friend, 
 But I care not for splendid affluence. 
 
 I sometimes weep 
 That I with the lowly my walk must keep : 
 I would that my humble name were set 
 In the centre of Fame's bright coronet ; 
 That my tomb might be decked with a gorgeous stone, 
 
256 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 And the tears of the virtuous shed thereon. 
 Oh! the thoughts of death should never grieve me, 
 Could I stamp my name with a spotless fame, 
 And a garland of deathless roses weave me. 
 
 I deeply groan 
 When I think on the follies my youth has known, - 
 When the still small voice of conscience brings 
 Before me the memory of bygone things. 
 And its softest whisper appalls me more ^ 
 Than the earthquake's crash or the thunder's roar; 
 And my sorrow is deeper, because I know 
 That neither from chance nor from ignorance. 
 But with open eyes, I have wandered so. 
 
 I murmur not 
 That the volume of fate to man is shut, — 
 That he is forbidden with daring eye 
 Into its mysteries to pry. 
 Content with the knowledge God has given, 
 I seek not to fathom the plans of heaven; 
 I believe that good may be found below. 
 And that evil is tasted, alas ! I know; 
 Tet I trust there's a balm for every woe, — 
 That the saddest night will have a morrow; 
 And I hope through faith to live after death, 
 In a world that knows nor sin nor sorrow. 
 
 The truest answer to the mourner was, however, yet to 
 come. 
 
 It is not the least faulty among men that are most suc- 
 cessful in interesting us in their welfare. A ruin often 
 awakens deeper emotions than the edifice, however noble, 
 could have elicited when entire ; and there is something in 
 a broken and ruined character, if we can trace in it the 
 lineaments of original beauty and power, that inspires us 
 with similar feelings. The friend of the young surgeon 
 felt thus. He was in truth a goodly ruin, in which she saw 
 
THE ¥OUNG SURGEON. 257 
 
 much to admire and much to regret ; and, impressed by a 
 serious and long-cherished belief in the restorative efficacy 
 of religion, her pity for him was not unmixed with hope. 
 She had treated him on every occasion with the kindness 
 of a mother ; and now, with the affection and freedom 
 proper to the character, she pressed on his consideration 
 the important truths which she knew concerned him most 
 deeply. He_ listened with a submissive and respectful at- 
 tention, — the effect, doubtless, of those feelings with which 
 he must have regarded one so disinterestedly his friend ; 
 for the subject could not have been introduced to his notice 
 under circumstances more favorable. The sense of obliga- 
 tion had softened his heart ; the respectful deference which 
 he naturally paid to the sex and character of his friend 
 prepared him rather to receive than to challenge the truths 
 which she urged on his acceptance ; the conviction that a 
 heartfelt interest in his welfare furnished her only motive, 
 checked that noiseless though fatal under-current of objec- 
 tion which can defeat in so many cases an end incontrovert- 
 ibly good, by fixing on it the imputation of sinister design ; 
 and, above all, there was a plain earnestness in her manner, 
 the result of a deep-seated belief, which, disdaining the 
 niceties of metaphysical speculation, spoke more powerfully 
 to his conscience than it could have done had it armed 
 itself with half the arguments of the schools. Rarely does 
 mere argument bring conviction to an ingenious mind, fer- 
 tile in doubts and objections. Conscience sleeps when the 
 rationative faculty contends for victory, — a thing it is 
 seldom indifferent to ; and a few perhaps ingenious sophisms 
 prove the only fruits of the contest. 
 
 The little vessel lay in , as I have said, for about two 
 
 months, when she received orders to sail for the south of 
 England. A storm arose, and she was forced by stress of 
 22* 
 
268 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 weather into Aberdeen. From this place the surgeon first 
 wrote to his friend. His epistolary style, like his poetry, 
 was characterized by an easy elegance ; and there was no 
 incident which he related, however trifling in itself which 
 did not borrow some degree of interest from his pen. He 
 relates, in one of his earlier letters, that, in a solitary ramble 
 in the neighborhood of Aberdeen, be came to a pictur- 
 esque little bridge on the river Don. He had rarely seen 
 a prettier spot. There were rocks and trees, and a deep, 
 dark stream ; and he stood admiring it till there passed a 
 poor old beggar, of whom he inquired the name of the 
 bridge. " It is called," said the mendicant, " the brig of 
 Don ; but in my young days it was better known as the 
 brig of Balgownie ; and if you be a Scotchman perhaps 
 you have heard of it, for there are many prophecies about 
 it by Thomas the Rhymer." " Ah," exclaimed the surgeon, 
 " ' Balgownie brig's black wa ! ' And so I have been ad- 
 miring, for its own sake, the far-famed scone of Byron's 
 boyhood. I cannot tell you," he adds, " what I felt on the 
 occasion. It was perhaps lucky for me that I had not 
 much money in ray pocket, but the little that I had made 
 the old man happy." 
 
 Our story hastens abruptly to its conclusion. During 
 the following winter and the early part of spring, tlie little 
 tender was employed in cruising in the English Channel 
 and the neighborhood of .Jersey ; and from the latter place 
 most of the surgeon's letters to his friends were addressed. 
 They relate the progress of an interesting and highly-im- 
 portant change in a mind of no ordinary character. There 
 was an alteration effected in the very tone of his intellect; 
 it seemed, if I may so express myself, as if strung less 
 sharply than before, and more in accordance with the real- 
 ities of life. Even his love appeared as if changed into a 
 
THE YOUNG SUKGEON. 259 
 
 less romantic but tenderer passion, that sought the wel- 
 fare of its object even more than the object itself. But it 
 was in his moral nature — in those sentiments of the man 
 which look forward and upward — that the metamorpho- 
 sis seemed most complete. When a powerful mind first 
 becomes the subject of serious impressions, there is some- 
 thing in Christianity suited to take it by surprise. When 
 viewed at a distance, and with that slight degree of atten- 
 tion which the great bulk of mankind are contented to 
 bestow on that religion which God revealed, there seems a 
 complex obscurity in its peculiar doctrines which contrasts 
 strongly with the simplicity of its morals. It seems to lie 
 as unconformaMy (if we may employ the metaphor) as 
 some of the deductions of the higher sciences to what is 
 termed the common sense of mankind. It seems at first 
 sight, for instance, no very rational inference that the 
 whiteness of light is the effect of a harmonious mixture of 
 color, or that the earth is confined to its orbit by the op- 
 erations of the same law which impels a falling pebble 
 towards the ground. And to the careless, because uninter- 
 ested observer, such doctrines as the doctrine of the fall 
 and the atonement appear rational in as slight a degree. 
 But when Deity himself interposes, when the heart is seri- 
 ously affected, when the divine law holds up its mirror 
 to the conscience, and we begin to examine the pecu- 
 liar doctrines in a clearer light and from a nearer point of 
 observation, they at once seem to change their charac- 
 ter, — to assume so stupendous a massiveness of aspect, to 
 discover a profundity so far beyond every depth of a 
 merely human philosophy, to appear so wonderfully fit- 
 ted to the nature and to the wants of man, that we are 
 at once convinced their author can be no other than 
 the adorable Being who gave light and gravitation to 
 
260 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 the universe livhich he willed to exist. The young sur- 
 geon had a mind capacious enough to be impressed by this 
 feeling of surprise. He began to see, and to wonder he 
 had missed seeing it before, that Ch)-istianity is in keep- 
 ing, if we may so speak, with the other productions of its 
 Author; that to a creature solely influenced by motive, no 
 moral code, however perfect, can be efficient in directing 
 or restraining, except through its connection with some 
 heart-influencing belief; that it is essential to his nature 
 as man that he meet with a corresponding nature in Deity, 
 a human nature like his own, and that he must be con- 
 scious of owing to Him more than either his first origin 
 or his subsequent support, or any of the minor gifts which 
 he shares in common with the inferior animals, and which 
 cost the Giver a less price than was paid on Calvary. It 
 is unnecessary to expatiate on the new or altered feelings 
 which accompanied the change, or to record the process 
 of a state of mind described by so many. The surgeon, in 
 his last letter to his friend, dwelt on these with an earnest, 
 yet half-bashful delight, that, while it showed how much 
 they engrossed him, showed also how new it was to him 
 either to experience or describe them. 
 
 The next she received regarding him recorded his death. 
 It was written at his dying request by a clergyman of Jer- 
 sey. He had passed a day, early in April, in the cabin 
 of the little vessel, engaged with his books and his pen ; 
 towards evening he went on deck ; and, stepping on the 
 quay, missed his footing and fell backwards. The spine 
 sustained a mortal injury in the fall. He was carried by 
 the unskilful hands of sailors to lodgings in the town of 
 St. Helier's, a distance of five miles. During this long and 
 painful transport, he was, as he afterwards said, conscious 
 although speechless, and aware that, if he had been placed 
 
THE YOUNG SURGEON. 261 
 
 in an easier position, with his head better supported, he 
 might have a chance of recovery. Yet he never gave ex- 
 pression to a single murmur. Besides the clergyman, ho 
 was fortunate enough to be assiduously attended by some 
 excellent fi-ieuds whom he had made on occasion of a for- 
 mer visit of his vessel to the same port. These he kept 
 employed in reading the Scriptures aloud by night and by 
 day. As he had formerly drunk deeply of the fount men 
 call pleasure, he now drank insatiably at the pure Fount 
 of Inspiration. " It is necessary to stop," one of his kind 
 attendants would say ; " your fever is rising." " It is only," 
 he would reply with a smile, " the loss of a little blood 
 after you leave." He lingered thus for about four weeks 
 in hopeless suffering, but in the full possession of all his 
 mental faculties, till death came to his relief, and he de- 
 parted ftiU of the hope of a happy immortality. The last 
 tie that bound him to the world was his attachment to the 
 lady whose name, so obscurely recorded, has introduced 
 his story to the reader. But as death ueared, and the 
 world receded, he became reconciled to the necessity of 
 parting from even her. His last request to the clergyman 
 who attended him was, that, after his decease, he should 
 
 write to his friend in , and say, " that if, as he trusted, 
 
 he entered, a sinner saved, into glory, he would have to 
 bless her, as being, under God, the honored instrument of 
 mercy." 
 
VIII. 
 GEORGE ROSS, THE SCOTCH AGENT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Men resemble the gods in nothing so much as in doing good to 
 their fellow-creatures. — Ciceko. 
 
 In the letter in whicli Junius accuses the Duke of Grafton 
 of having sold a patent-place in the collection of customs 
 to one Mr. Hine, he informs the reader that the person 
 employed by his grace in negotiating the business " was 
 George Ross, the Scotch Agent, and worthy confidant of 
 Lord Mansfield. And no sale by the candle," he adds, 
 " was ever conducted with greater formaUty." Now, slight 
 as this notice is, there is something in it suiBciently tangi- 
 ble for the imagination to lay hold of. If the reader thinks 
 of the Scotch Agent at all, he probably thinks of him as 
 one of those convenient creatures so necessary to the prac- 
 tical statesman, whose merit does not consist more in their 
 being ingenious in a great degree, than in their being 
 honest in a very small one. So mixed a thing is poor hu- 
 man nature, however, that, though the statement of Junius 
 has never yet been fairly controverted, no possible esti- 
 mate of character could be more unjust. The Scotch 
 
GEORGE BOSS, THE SCOTCH AGENT. 263 
 
 Agent, whatever the nature of his services to the Duke of 
 Grafton, was in reality a high-minded, and, what is more, 
 a truly patriotic man ; so good a person, indeed, that, in 
 a period of political heats and animosities, his story, fairly 
 told, might teach us a lesson of charity and moderation. 
 I wish I could transport the reader to where his portrait 
 hangs, side by side with that of his friend the Lord Chief 
 Justice, in the drawing-room of Cromarty House. The air 
 of dignified benevolence impressed on the features of the 
 handsome old man, with his gray hair curling round his 
 temples, would secure a fair hearing for him from even the 
 sturdiest of the class who hate their neighbors for the good 
 of their country. Besides, the very presence of the noble- 
 looking lawyer, so much more like the Murray eulogized 
 by Pope and Lyttleton than the Mansfield denounced by 
 Junius, would of itself serve as a sort of guarantee for the 
 honor of his friend. 
 
 Greorge Ross was the son of a petty proprietor of Easter- 
 Ross, and succeeded, on the death of his father, to the 
 few barren acres on which, for a century or two before, 
 the family bad been ingenious enough to live. But he 
 possessed, besides, what was more valuable than twenty 
 such patrimonies, an untiring energy of disposition, based 
 on a substratum of the soundest good sense ; and, what 
 was scarcely less important than either, ambition enough 
 to turn his capacity of employment to the best account. 
 Ross-shire a century ago was no place for such a man ; and 
 as the only road to preferment at this period was the road 
 that led south, George Ross, when very young, left his 
 mother's cottage for England, where he spent nearly fifty 
 years amongst statesmen and courtiers, and in the enjoy- 
 ment of the friendship of such men as President Forbes 
 and Lord Mansfield. At length he returned, when an old, 
 
264 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 gray-headed man, to rank among the greatest capitalists 
 and proprietors of the county, and purchased, with other 
 lesser properties in the neighborhood, the whole estate of 
 Cromarty. Perhaps he had come to rest him ere he died. 
 But there seems to be no such thing as changing one's nat- 
 ural bent, when confirmed by the habits of half a lifetime; 
 and the energies of the Scotch Agent, now that they had 
 gained him fortune and influence, were as little disposed to 
 fall asleep as they had been forty years before. As it was 
 no longer necessary, however, that they should be em- 
 ployed on his own account, he gave them full scope in 
 behalf of his poorer neighbors. The country around him 
 lay dead. There were no manufactories, no trade, no 
 knowledge of agriculture, no consciousness that matters 
 were ill, and, consequently, no desire of making them bet- 
 ter ; and the herculean task imposed upon himself by the 
 Scotch Agent, now considerably turned of sixty, was to 
 animate and revolutionize the whole. And such was his 
 statesman-like sagacity in developing the hitherto undis- 
 covered resources of the country, joined to a high-minded 
 zeal that could sow liberally in the hope of a late harvest 
 for others to reap, that he fully succeeded. 
 
 He first established in the town an extensive manufac- 
 tory of hempen cloth, which has ever since employed about 
 two hundred persons within its walls, and fully twice that 
 number without. He next built an ale brewery, which, at 
 the time of its erection, was by far the largest in the north 
 of Scotland. He then furnished the town, at a great ex- 
 pense, with an excellent harbor, and set on foot a trade 
 in pork which for the last thirty years has been carried 
 on by the people of the place to an extent of from about 
 fifteen to twenty thousand pounds annually. He set him- 
 self, too, to initiate his tenantry in the art of rearing wheat ; 
 
GEORGE ROSS, THE SCOTCH AGENT. 265 
 
 and finding them wofully unwilling to become wiser on the 
 subject, he tried the force of example, by taking an ex- 
 tensive farm under hia own management and conducting 
 it on the most approved principles of modern agriculture. 
 He established a nail and spade manufactory ; brought 
 women from England to instruct the young girls in the art 
 of working lace ; pTO\4dedJiouscsJbr the poor ; presented 
 the town with a neat, substantial building, the upper part 
 of which serves for a council-room and the lower as a 
 prison ; and built for the accommodation of the poor High- 
 landers, who came thronging into the town to work on his 
 land and in his manufactories, a handsome Gaelic chapel. 
 He built for his own residence an elegant house of hewn 
 stone ; surrounded it with pleasure-grounds, designed in 
 the best style of the art ; planted many hundred acres of 
 the less improvable parts of his property ; and laid open 
 the hitherto scarcely accessible beauties of the hill of Cro- 
 marty by crossing and re-crossing it with well-nigh as many 
 walks as there are veins in the human body. He was 
 proud of his exquisite landscapes, and of his own skill in 
 heightening their beauty, and fully determined, he said, if 
 he but lived long enough, to make Cromarty worth an 
 Englishman's while coming all the way from London to 
 see it. -^ 
 
 When Oscar fell asleep, says the old Irish bard, it was 
 impossible to awaken him before his time except by cut- 
 ting off one of his fingers or flinging a rock at his head ; 
 and woe to the poor man who disturbed him ! The Agent 
 found it every whit as diflScult to awaken a sleeping coun- 
 try, and in some respects almost as unsafe. I am afraid 
 human jiature is nearly the same thing in the people that 
 it is in their rulers, and that both are alike disposed to 
 pijefer the man who flatters them to the man who merely 
 23 
 
266 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 does them good. George Ross was by no means the most 
 popular of proprietors. He disturbed old prejudices, and 
 unfixed old habits. The farmers thought it hard that they 
 should have to break up their irregular map-like patches 
 of land, divided from each other by little strips and cor- 
 ners not yet reclaimed from the waste, into awkward- 
 looking rectangular fields, and that they durst no longer 
 fasten their horses to the plough by the tail, — a piece of 
 natural harness evidently formed for the express purpose. 
 The townspeople deemed the hempen manufactory un- 
 wholesome ; and found that the English lace-women, who 
 to a certainty were tea-drinkers, and even not very hostile, 
 it was said, to gin, were in a fair way of teaching their 
 pupils something more than the mere weaving of lace. 
 What could be more heathenish, too, than the little temple 
 covered with cockle-shell which the laird had just reared 
 on a solitary corner of the hill, but which they soon sent 
 spinning over the cliff into the sea, a downward journey 
 of a hundred yards ? And then his odious pork trade ! 
 There was no prevailing on the people to rear pigs for 
 him ; and so he had to build a range of oflices, in an out- 
 of-the-way nook of his lands, which he stocked with hordes 
 of these animals, that he might rear them for himself 
 The herds increased in size and number, and, voracious 
 beyond calculation, almost occasioned a famine. Even the 
 great wealth of the spcculatist proved insufficient to sup- 
 ply them with food, and the very keepers were in danger 
 of being eaten alive. The poor animals seemed departing 
 from their very nature ; for they became long and lank, 
 and bony as the griflins of heraldry, until they looked more 
 like race-horses than pigs; and as they descended with 
 every ebb in huge droves to browse on the sea-weed, or 
 delve for shell-fish among the pebbles, there was no lack 
 
THE SCOTCH AGENT. 267 
 
 of music befitting their condition when the large rock-crab 
 revenged with his nippers on their lips the injuries inflicted 
 on him with their teeth. Now, all this formed a fine sub- 
 ject for joking to people who indulged in a half-Jewish 
 dislike of the pig, and who could not guess that the pork 
 trade was one day to pay the rents of half the widows' 
 cottages in the country. But no one could lie more open 
 than George Ross to that species of ridicule which the men 
 who see further than their neighbors, and look more to the 
 advantage of others than to their own, cannot fail to en- 
 coimter. He was a worker in the dark, and at no slight 
 expense ; for, though all his many projects were ultimately 
 found to be benefits conferred on his country, not one of 
 them proved remunerative to himself. But he seems to 
 have known mankind too well to have expected a great 
 deal from their gratitude, though on one occasion at least 
 his patience gave way. 
 
 The town in the course of years had so entirely marched 
 to the west, that the town's cross came at length to be 
 fairly left behind, with a hawthorn hedge on the one side 
 and a garden fence on the other ; and when the Agent had 
 completed the house which was to serve as council-room 
 and prison to the place, the cross was taken down from its 
 stand of more than two centuries, and placed in front of 
 the new building. That people might the better remem- 
 ber the circumstance, there was a showy procession got 
 up ; healths were drunk beside the cross in the Agent's 
 best wine, and not a little of his best crystal broken against 
 it ; and the evening terminated in a ball. It so happened, 
 however, through some cross chance, that, though all the 
 gentility of the place were to be invited, three young men, 
 who deemed themselves quite as genteel as the best of 
 their neighbors, were passed over. The dignified manager 
 
268 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 of the hemp manufactory had received no invitation, nor 
 the clever superintendent of the nail- work, nor yet the 
 spruce clerk of the brewery ; and as they were all men of 
 spirit, it so happened that during the very next night the 
 cross was taken down from its new pedestal, broken into 
 three pieces, and carried still further to the west, to an 
 open space where four lanes met ; and there it was found 
 in the morning, the pieces piled over each other, and sur- 
 rounded by a profusion of broken ale bottles. The Agent 
 was amazingly angry, — angrier, indeed, than his acquaint- 
 ance had deemed him capable of becoming ; and in the 
 course of the day the town's crier went through the streets 
 proclaiming a reward of ten pounds in hand, and a free 
 room in Mr. Ross's new buildings for life, to any one who 
 would give such information as might lead to the convic- 
 tion of the offenders. 
 
 In one of his walks a few days after, the Agent met with 
 a poor, miserable-looking Highland woman, who had been 
 picking a few withered sticks out of one of his hedges, 
 and whose hands and clothes seemed torn by the thorns. 
 " Poor old creature," he said, as she dropped her courtesy in 
 passing, " you must go to my manager, and tell him I have 
 •ordered you a barrel of coals. And stay, — you are hun- 
 gry : call at my house, in passing, and the servants will find 
 you something to bring home with you." The poor wo- 
 man blessed him, and looked up« hesitatingly in his face. 
 She had never betrayed any one, she said ; but his honor 
 was so good a gentleman, — so very good a gentleman ; 
 and so she thought she had best tell him all she knew 
 about the breaking of the cross. She lived in a little gar- 
 ret over the room of Jamie Banks, the nailer ; and having 
 slept scarcely any all the night in which the cross was 
 taken down, — for the weather was bitterly cold, and her 
 
269 
 
 bed-clothes very thin, — she could hear weighty footsteps 
 traversing the streets till near morning, when the house- 
 door opened, and in came Jamie, with a tottering, unequal 
 step, and disturbed the whole family by stumbling over a 
 stool into his wife's washing-tub. Besides, she had next 
 day overheard his wife rating him for staying out to so un- 
 timeous an hour, and his remark, in reply, that she would 
 do well to keep quiet, unless she wished to see him hanged. 
 This was the sort of clue the affair required ; and, in fol- 
 lowing it up, the unlucky nailer was appi'ehended and ex- 
 amined ; but it was found that, through a singular lapse of 
 memory, he had forgotten every circumstance connected 
 with the night in question, except that he had been in the 
 very best company, and one of the happiest men in the 
 world. 
 
 Jamie Banks was decidedly the most eccentric man of 
 his day, in at least one parish, — full of small wit and 
 small roguery, and famous for a faculty of invention fertile 
 enough to have served a poet. On one occasion, when the 
 gill of whiskey had risen to three halfpence in Cromarty, 
 and could still be bought for a penny in Avoch, he had 
 prevailed on a party of his acquaintance to accompany him 
 to the latter place, that they might drink themselves rich 
 on the strength of the old proverb ; and as they actually 
 effected a saving of two shillings in spending six, it was 
 clear, he said, that, had not their money failed them, they 
 would have made fortunes apiece. Alas for the littleness 
 of that great passion, the love of fame ! I have ob- 
 served that the tradespeople among whom one meets with 
 most instances of eccentricity, are those whose shops, being 
 places of general resort, furnish them with space enough 
 on which to achieve a humble notoriety, by rendering 
 themselves unlike everybody else. To secure to Jamie 
 23* 
 
270 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 • 
 
 Banks due leisure for recollection, he was committed to 
 jail. 
 
 He was sitting one evening beside the prison fire, with 
 one of his neighbors and the jailer, and had risen to ex- 
 clude the chill night air by drawing a curtain over the 
 open-barred window of the apartment, when a man sud- 
 denly started from behind the wall outside, and discharged 
 a large stone with tremendous force at his head. The 
 missile almost brushed his ear as it sung past, and, re- 
 bounding from the opposite wall, rolled along the floor. 
 "That maun be Rob. Williamson," exclaimed Jamie, "want- 
 ing to keep me quiet. Out, neebor Jonathan, an' after 
 him." Neebor Jonathan, an active young fellow, sprung to 
 the door, caught the sounds of retreating footsteps as he 
 turned the gate, and, dashing after like a greyhound, suc- 
 ceeded in laying hold of the coat-skirts of Rob William- 
 son, as he strained onwards through the gate of the hemp 
 manufactory. He was immediately secured, and lodged 
 in another apartment of the prison ; and in the morning 
 Jamie Banks was found to have recovered his memory. 
 
 He had finished working, he said, on the evening after 
 the ball, and was just putting on his coat preparatory to 
 leaving the shop, when the superintendent called him into 
 his writing-room, where he found three persons sitting at 
 a table half covered with bottles. Rob Williamson, the 
 weaver, was one of these ; the other two were the clerk of 
 the brewery and the manager of the hemp manufactory ; 
 and they were all arguing together on some point of divin- 
 ity. The manager cleared a seat for him beside himsel:^ 
 and filled his glass thrice in succession, by way of making 
 up for the time he had lost. Nothing could be more un- 
 true than that the manager was proud. They then all be- 
 gan to speak about morals and Mr. Ross. The clerk was 
 
GEORGE BOSS, THE SCOTCH AGENT. 271 
 
 certain that, with his harbor, and his piggery, and hia 
 heathen temples, and his lace-women, he would not leave 
 a ray of morality in the place ; and Rob was quite as sure 
 he was no friend to the gospel. He a builder of Gaelic 
 kirks, forsooth ! Had he not yesterday put up a popish 
 dagon of a cross, and made the silly mason bodies worship 
 it for the sake o' a dram ? And then, how common ale- 
 drinking had become in the place ! — in his young days 
 they drank nothing but gin, — and what would their 
 gi'andfathers have said to a whiffmaleerie o' a ball ! " I 
 sipped and listened," continued Jamie, " and thought that 
 the time could not have been better spent at an elders' 
 meeting in the kirk ; and as the night wore later the con- 
 versation became still more edifying, until at length all the 
 bottles were emptied, when we sallied out in a body, to 
 imitate the old Reformers by breaking the cross. ' We 
 may suffer, Jamie, for what we have done,' said Rob to me 
 as we parted for the night ; ' but, remember, it was duty, 
 Jamie, it was duty ; we have been testifying wi' our hands, 
 an' when the hour o' trial comes we mauna be slow in tes- 
 tifying wi' our tongues too.' He wasna slack, the deceitfu' 
 body!" concluded Jamie, "in trying to stop mine." And 
 thus closed the evidence. The Agent was no vindictive 
 man. He dismissed his two managers and the clerk, to 
 find for themselves a more indulgent master ; but the ser- 
 vices of Jamie Banks he still retained; and the first em- 
 ployment which he found for him after his release was the 
 fashioning of four iron bars for the repair of the cross. 
 
 The Agent, in the closing scene of his life, was destined 
 to experience the unhappiness of blighted hope. He had 
 an only son, a weak and very obstinate young man, who, 
 without intellect enough to appreciate his well-calculated 
 schemes, and yet conceit enough to sit in judgment on 
 
272 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 them, was ever showing his spirit by opposing a sort of 
 selfish nonsense, that aped the semblance of common sense, 
 to the expansive and benevolent philosophy of his father. 
 But the old man bore patiently with his conceit and folly. 
 Like the great bulk of the class who attain to wealth and 
 influence through their own exertions, he was anxiously 
 ambitious to live in his posterity, and be the founder of a 
 family ; and he knew it was quite as much according to 
 the nature of things that a fool might be the father, as 
 that he should be the son, of a wise man. He secured, 
 therefore, his lands to his posterity by the law of entail ; 
 did all that education and example could do for the young 
 man ; and succeeded in getting him married to a sweet, 
 amiable English woman, the daughter of a bishop. But, 
 alas! his precautions, and the hopes in which he indulged, 
 proved equally vain. The young man, only a few months 
 after his marriage, was piqued, when at table, by some re- 
 mark of his father regarding his mode of carving, — some 
 slight allusion, it is said, to the maxim that little men can- 
 not afford to neglect little matters, — and rising, with much 
 apparent coolness, from beside his wife, he stepped into an 
 adjoining room, and there blew out his brains with a pistol. 
 The stain of his blood may still be seen in two large 
 brownish-colored blotches on the floor. 
 
 George Ross survived his son for several years ; and he 
 continued, though a sadder and a graver man, to busy him- 
 self with all his various speculations as before. It was ob- 
 served, however, that he seemed to care less than formerly 
 for whatever was exclusively his own, for his fine house 
 and his beautiful lands, and that he chiefly employed him- 
 self in maturing his several projects for the good of his 
 country-folks. Time at length began to set its seal on his 
 labors, by discovering their value ; though not until death 
 
273 
 
 had first affixed his to the character of the wise and be- 
 nevolent projector. He died full of years and honor, 
 mourned by the poor, and regretted by every one ; and 
 even those who had opposed his innovations with the 
 warmest zeal were content to remember him, with all the 
 others, as " the good laird." 
 
IX. 
 
 M'CULLOCH THE MECHANICIAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Anything may become nature to man ; the rare thing is to find 
 a nature that is truly natural. — Anon. 
 
 In the " Scots Magazine" for May 1789, there is a report 
 by Captain Philip d'Auvergne, of the Narcissus frigate, on 
 the practical utility of Kenneth M'Culloch''s sea-compasses. 
 The captain, after an eighteen months' trial of their merits, 
 compared with those of all the other kinds in use at the 
 time, describes them as immensely superior, and earnestly 
 recommends to the admiralty their general introduction 
 into the navy. In passing, on one occasion, through the 
 Race of Alderney in the winter of 1787, there broke out a 
 frightful storm ; and so violent was the opposition of the 
 wind and tide, that while his vessel was sailing at the rate 
 of eleven miles on the surface, she was making scarce any 
 headway by the land. The sea rose tremendously, at 
 once short, high, and irregular; and the motions of the 
 vessel were so fearfully abrupt and violent that scarce a 
 seaman aboard could stand on deck. At a time so critical, 
 when none of the compasses supplied from his majesty's 
 
m'culloch the mechanician. 275 
 
 stores would stand, but vacillated more than three points 
 on each side of the pole, " it commanded," says the captain, 
 "the admiration of the whole crew, winning the confidence 
 of even the most timorous, to see how quickly and readily 
 M'Culloch's steering compass recovered the vacillations 
 communicated to it 'by the motion of the ship and the 
 shocks of the sea, and how truly, in every brief interval of 
 rest, it pointed to the pole." It is further added, that on 
 the captain's recommendation these compasses were tried 
 on board the Andromeda, commanded at the time by 
 Prince William Henry, our late king ; and so satisfied was 
 the prince of the utility of the invention, that he, too, be- 
 came a strenuous advocate for their general introduction, 
 and testified his regard for the ingenious inventor by ap- 
 pointing him his compass-maker. M'Culloch, however, did 
 not long survive the honor, dying a few years after ; and 
 we have been unable to trace with any degree of certainty 
 the further history of his improved compass. But, though 
 only imperfectly informed regarding his various inventions, 
 — and they are said to have been many, and singularly 
 practical, — we are tolerably well acquainted with the story 
 of his early life ; and, as it furnishes a striking illustration 
 of that instinct of genius, if we may so express ourselves, 
 which leads the possessor to exactly the place in which his 
 services may be of most value to the community, by ren- 
 dering him useless and unhappy in every other, we think 
 we cannot do better than communicate it to the reader. 
 
 There stood, about forty years ago, on the northern side 
 of the parish of Cromarty, an old farm-house, — one of those 
 low, long, dark-looking erections of turf and stone which 
 still survive in the remoter districts of Scotland, as if to 
 show how little man may sometimes improve, in even a 
 civilized country, on the first rude shelter, which his ne- 
 
276 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 cessities owed to bis ingenuity. A -worn-out barrel, fixed 
 slantwise in the ridge, served as a chimney for the better 
 apartment, — the spare room of the domicile, — which was 
 furnished also with a glazed window ; but the smoke was 
 suifered to escape from the others, and the light to enter 
 them, as chance or accident might direct. The eaves, over- 
 hung by stonecrop and bunches of the houseleek, drooped 
 •heavily over the small blind windows and low door; and 
 a row of ancient elms, which rose from out the fence of a 
 neglected garden, spread their gnarled and ponderous 
 arms over the roof Such was the farm-house of Wood- 
 side, in which Kenneth M'Culloch, the son of the farmer, 
 was born, some time in the early half of the last century. 
 The family from which he sprang — a race of honest, plod- 
 ding tacksmen — had held the place from the proprietor 
 of Cromarty for more than a hundred years ; and it was 
 deemed quite a matter of course that Kenneth, the eldest 
 son, should succeed his father in the farm. Never was 
 there a time, in at least this part of the country, in which 
 agriculture stood more in need of the services of original 
 and inventive minds. There was not a wheeled cart in the 
 parish, nor a plough constructed on the modern principle. 
 There was no changing of seed to suit the varieties of soil, 
 no green cropping, no rotatory system of production ; and 
 it seemed as if the main object of the farmer had been to 
 raise the least possible amount of grain at the greatest pos- 
 sible expense of labor. The farm of Woodside was prim- 
 itive enough in its usages and modes of tillage to have 
 formed a study to the antiquary. Towards autumn, when 
 the fields vary most in color, it resembled a rudely-executed 
 chart of some large island, so irregular were the patches 
 which composed it, and so broken on every side by a sur- 
 rounding sea of brown, sterile moor, that here and there 
 
M'CULLOCH THE MECHANICIAN. 277 
 
 went winding into the interior in long river-like strips, 
 or expanded within into friths and lakes. In one corner 
 there stood a heap of stones, in another a thicket of furze, 
 here a piece of bog, there a broken bank of clay. The 
 implements, too, with which the fields were labored were 
 quite as uncouth in their appearance as the fields them- 
 selves. There was the single-stilted plough, that did little 
 more than scratch the surface ; the wooden-toothed har- 
 row, that did hardly so much ; the cumbrous sledge, — no 
 inconsiderable load of itself, — for carrying home the corn 
 in harvest ; and the basket-woven conical cart, with its 
 rollers of wood, for bearing out the manure in spring. 
 With these, too, there was the usual misproportion to the 
 extent and produce of the farm of lean, inefficient cattle, — 
 four half-starved animals performing with incredible labor 
 the work of one. And yet, now that a singularly inven- 
 tive mind had come into existence on this very farm, and 
 though its attentions had been directed, as far as external 
 influence could direct them, on the various employments 
 of the farmer, the interests of husbandry were to be in no 
 degree improved by the circumstance. Nature, in the midst 
 of her wisdom, seems to cherish a dash of the eccentric. 
 The ingenuity of the farmer's son was to be employed, not 
 in facilitating the labors of the farmer, but in inventing 
 binnacle-lamps which would yield an undiminished light 
 amid the agitations of a tempest, and in constructing mar- 
 iners' compasses on a new principle. There are instances 
 of a similar character furnished by the experience of almost 
 every one. In passing some years since over a dreary 
 ^moor in the interior of the country, our curiosity was ex-, 
 cited by a miniature mast, furnished, like that of a ship, 
 with shrouds and yards, bearing a-top a gaudy pinnet, 
 which we saw beside a little Highland cottage ; and on 
 24 
 
278 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 inquiring regarding it at the door, we were informed that 
 it was the work of the cottager's son, a lad who, though he 
 had scarcely ever seen the sea, had taken a strange fancy 
 to the life of a sailor, and who had left his father only a 
 few weeks before to serve aboard a man-of-war. 
 
 Kenneth's first employment was the tending of a flock of 
 sheep, the property of his father ; and wretchedly did he 
 acquit himself of the charge. The farm is bounded on the 
 eastern side by a deep, bosky ravine, through the bottom 
 of which a scanty runnel rather trickles than flows ; and 
 when it was discovered on any occasion that Kenneth's 
 flock had been left to take care of themselves, and of his 
 father's corn to boot, — and such occasions were wofully 
 frequent, — Kenneth himself was almost invariably to be 
 found in this ravine. He would sit for hours among the 
 bushes, engaged with his knife in carving uncouth faces 
 on the heads of walking-sticks, or in constructing little 
 water-mills, or in making Lilliputian pumps of the dried 
 stalks of the larger hemlock, and in raising the waters of 
 the runnel to basins dug in the sides of the hollow. Some- 
 times he quitted his charge altogether, and set out for a 
 meal-mill about a quarter of a mile from the farm, where 
 he would linger for half a day at a time watching the mo- 
 tion of the wheels. His father complained that he could 
 make nothing of him ; " the boy," he said, " seemed to 
 have nearly as much sense as other boys of his years, and 
 yet for any one useful purpose he was nothing better than 
 an idiot." Plis mother, as is common with mothers, and 
 who was naturally an easy, kind-hearted woman, had bet- 
 ter hopes of him. Kenneth, she affirmed, was only a little 
 peculiar, and would turn out well after all. He was grow- 
 ing up, however, without improving in the slightest; and 
 when he became tall enough for the plough, he made a 
 
M'CULLOCH THE MECHANICIAN. 279 
 
 dead stand. He would go and be a tradesman, he said, a 
 mason or smith or house-carpenter, — anything his friends 
 chose to make him, — but a farmer he would not be. His 
 father, after a fruitless struggle to overcome his obstinacy, 
 carried him with him to an acquaintance in Cromarty, an 
 ingenious cabinet-maker, named Donald Sandison ; and, 
 after candidly confessing that he was of no manner of use 
 at home, and would, he was afraid, be of little use any- 
 where, he bound him by indenture to the mechanic for 
 four years. 
 
 Kenneth's new master — a shrewd, sagacious man, who 
 had been actively engaged, it was said, in the Porteous 
 mob about twenty years before — was one of the best work- 
 men in his profession in the north of Scotland. His scru- 
 toires and wardrobes were in repute up to the close of the 
 last century ; and in the ancient art of wainscot carving he 
 had no equal in the country. He was an intelligent man, 
 too, as well as a superior mechanic. He was a general 
 reader, as a little old-fashioned library in the possession of 
 his grandson still remains to testify ; and he had studied 
 Paladio, in the antique translation of Godfrey Rich:ir<ls, 
 and knew a little of Euclid. With all his general intelli- 
 gence, however, and all his skill, he failed to discover the 
 latent capabilities of his apprentice. Kenneth was dull 
 and absent, and had no heart to his work ; and though he 
 seemed to understand the principles on which his master's 
 various tools were used, and the articles of his trade con- 
 structed, as well at least as any workman in the shop, there 
 were none among them who used the tools bo awkwardly, 
 or constructed the articles so ill. An old botching carpen- 
 ter who wrought in a little shop at the other end of the 
 town was known to the boys of the place by the humorous 
 ■ appellation of " Spull [». e. spoil] the Wood," and a lean- 
 
280 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 sided, ill-conditioned boat which he had built, as " the 
 Wilful Murder." Kenneth came to be regarded as a sort 
 of second " Spull the Wood," — as a fashioner of rickety- 
 tables, ill-fitted drawers, and chairs that, when sat upon, 
 creaked like badly-tuned organs ; and the boys, who were 
 beginning to regard him as fair game, sometimes took the 
 liberty of asking him whether he, too, was not going to 
 build a boat? Such, in short, were his deficiencies as a 
 mechanic, that in the third year of his apprenticeship his 
 master advised his father to take him home with him and 
 set him to the plough ; an advice, however, on which the 
 farmer, warned by his previous experience, sturdily refused 
 to act. 
 
 It was remarked that Kenneth acquired more in the last 
 year of his apprenticeship than in all the others. His skill 
 as a workman still ranked a little below the average abil- 
 ity ; but then it was only a little below it. He seemed, 
 too, to enjoy more, and become less bashful and awkward. 
 His master on one occasion took him aboard a vessel in the 
 harbor to repair some injury which her bulwarks had sus- 
 tained in a storm ; and Kenneth, for the first time in his 
 life, was introduced to the mariner's compass. The master, 
 in after days, when his apprentice had become a great man, 
 used to relate the circumstance with much complacency, 
 und compare him, as he bent over the instrument in 
 wonder and admiration, to a negro of the Kanga tribe 
 worshipping the elephant's tooth. On the close of his ap- 
 prenticeship he left this part of the country for London, 
 accompanied by his master's eldest son, a lad of rather 
 thoughtless disposition, but, like his father, a first-rate 
 workman. 
 
 Kenneth soon began to experience the straits and hard- 
 ships of the inferior mechanic. His companion found little 
 
M'CULLOCH THE MECHANICIAN. 281 
 
 difficulty in procuring employment, and none at all in re- 
 taining it when once procured. Kenneth, on the contrary, 
 was tossed about from shop to shop, and from one estab- 
 lishment to another ; and for a full twelvemonth, during 
 the half of which he was wholly unemployed, he did not 
 work for more than, a fortnight together with any one 
 master. It would have fared worse with him than it did 
 had it not been for his companion, Willie Sandison, who 
 generously shared his earnings with him every time he 
 stood in need of his assistance. In about a year after they 
 had gone to London, however, Willie, an honest and warm- 
 hearted, but thoughtless lad, was inveigled into a bad, dis- 
 reputable marriage, and lost, in consequence, his wonted 
 ability to assist his companion. We have seen one of 
 Kenneth's letters to his old master, written about this time, 
 in which he bewails Willie's mishap, and dwells gloomily 
 on his own prospects. How these first began to brighten we 
 are unable to say, for there occurs about this period a wide 
 gap in his story, which all our inquiries regarding him 
 have not enabled us to fill ; but in a second letter to his 
 mother, now before us, which bears date 1772, just ten 
 years after the other, there are the proofs of a surprising 
 improvement in his circumstances and condition. 
 
 He writes in high spirits. Just before sitting down to 
 his desk, he had heard from his old friend Willie, who had 
 gone out to one of the colonies, where he was thriving, in 
 spite of his wife. He had heard, too, by the same post, 
 from his mother, who had been so kind to him during his 
 luckless boyhood ; and the old woman -was well. He had, 
 besides, been enabled to remove froni his former lodging 
 to a fine, airy house in Duke's Court, opposite St. Martin's 
 Church, for which he had engaged, he said, to pay a rent of 
 forty-two pounds per annum — a very considerable sum 
 24* 
 
282 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 sixty-eight years ago ; and he had entered into an advan- 
 tageous contract with Catherine of Russia, for furnishing 
 all the philosophical instruments of a new college then 
 erecting in St. Petersburg, a contract which promised to 
 secure about two years' profitable employment to himself 
 and seven workmen. In the ten years which had inter- 
 vened between the dates of his two letters, Kenneth M'Cul- 
 loch had become one of the most skilful and inventive 
 mechanics in London, perhaps in the world. He rose 
 gradually into affluence and celebrity, and for a considera- 
 ble period before his death his gains were estimated at 
 about a thousand a year. His story, however, illustrates 
 rather the wisdom of nature than that of Kenneth M'Cul- 
 loch. We think all the more highly of Franklin for being 
 so excellent a jirinter, and of Burns for excelling all his 
 companions in the labors of the field ; nor did the skill or 
 vigor with which they pursued their ordinary employments 
 hinder the one from taking his place among the first phil- 
 osophers and first statesmen of the age, nor prevent the 
 other from achieving his wide-spread celebrity as at once 
 the most original and most popular of modern poets. Be 
 it remembered, however, that there is a narrow and lim- 
 ited cast of genius, unlike that of either Burns or Franklin, 
 which, though of incalculable value in its own sphere, is of 
 no use whatever in any other; and to precipitate it on its 
 proper object by the pressure of external circumstances, 
 and the general inaptitude of its possessor for other pur- 
 suits, seems to be part of the wise economy of Providence. 
 Had Kenneth M'Culloch betaken himself to the plough, 
 like his father and grandfather, he would have been, like 
 them, the tacksman of Woodside, and nothing more ; had 
 he found his proper vocation in cabinet-making, he would 
 have made tables and chairs for life, like his ingenious 
 master Donald Sandison. 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT 
 
 OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Custom forms us all. Our thoughts, our morals, our most fixed 
 beliefs, are consequences of our place of birth. — Hill. 
 
 It is according to the fixed economy of human affairs 
 that individuals should lead, and that masses should follow ; 
 for the adorable Being who wills that the lower order of 
 minds should exist by myriads, and produces the higher so 
 rarely, has willed, also, by inevitable consequence, that the 
 many should be guided by the few. On the other hand, it 
 is not less in accordance with the dictates of His immuta- 
 ble justice, that the interests of the few should be subor- 
 dinate to the more extended interests of the many. The 
 leading minds are to be regarded rather as formed for the 
 masses, than the masses for them. True it is, that, while 
 the one principle acts with all the undeviating certainty 
 of a natural law, the other operates partially and inter- 
 ruptedly, with all the doubtful efficiency of a moral one ; 
 and hence those long catalogues of crimes committed 
 against the species by their natural leaders which so fill 
 the pages of history. We see man as the creature of des- 
 
284 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 tiny conforming unresistingly to the one law; as a free 
 agent, accountable for all liis actions, yielding an imper- 
 fect and occasional obedience to the other. And yet his 
 duty and his true interest, were he but wise enough to be 
 convinced of it, are in every case the same. The following 
 chapters, as they contain the history of a mind of the 
 higher order, that, in doing good to others, conferi-ed solid 
 benefits on itself, may serve siiSpTy to illustrate this impor- 
 tant truth. They may serve, too, to show the numerous 
 class whose better feelings are suffered to evaporate in idle 
 longings for some merely conceivable field of exertion, that 
 wide spheres of usefulness may be furnished by situa- 
 tions comparatively unpromising. They may afford, be- 
 sides, occasional glimpses of the beliefs, manners, and opin- 
 ions of an age by no means remote from our own, but in 
 many respects essentially different from it in spirit and 
 character. 
 
 The Lowlanders of the north of Scotland were beginning, 
 about the year 1700, gradually to recover the effects of 
 that state of miserable depression into which they had been 
 plunged for the greater part of the previous century. There 
 was a slow awakening of the commercial spirit among the 
 more enterprising class of minds, whose destiny it is to 
 move in the van of society as the guides and pioneers of 
 the rest. The unfortunate expedition of Darien had dissi- 
 pated well-nigh the entire capital of the country only a few 
 years before, and ruined almost all the greater merchants 
 of the large towns. But the energies of the people, now 
 that they were no longer borne down by the wretched 
 despotism of the Stuarts, were not to be repressed by a 
 single blow. Almost every seaport and larger town had 
 its beginnings of trade. Tounger sons of good family, who 
 M'ould have gone, only half a century before, to serve as 
 
TBE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 285 
 
 mercenaries in the armies of the Continent, were learning 
 to employ themselves as merchants at home. And almost 
 every small town had its shopkeeper, who, after passing 
 the early part of his life as a farmer or mechanic, had set 
 himself, in the altered state of the country, to acquii'e the 
 h.abits of his new profession, and employed his former 
 savings in trade. 
 
 Among these last was James Forsyth, a native of the 
 province of Moray. He had spent the first thirty years of 
 his life as a mason and builder. His profession was a 
 wandering one, and he had received from nature the abil- 
 ity of profiting by the opportunities of observation which 
 it afibrded- He had marked the gradual introduction 
 among the people of new tastes for the various articles of 
 foreign produce and manufacture which were beginning to 
 flow into the kingdom, and had seen how large a propor- 
 tion the profits of the trader bore — as they always do in 
 the infancy of trade — to the amount of capital employed. 
 Resigning, therefore, Ms old profession, he opened a small 
 shop in the town of Ci'omarty, whose lucr.ative herring- 
 fishery rendered it at this period one of the busiest little 
 places in the north of Scotland. And as he was at once 
 steady and enterprising, rigidly just in his dealings, and 
 possessed of shrewd good sense, he had acquired, ere the 
 year 1722, when his eldest son, William, the subject of the 
 following memoir, was born to him, what at that period 
 was deemed considerable wealth. His marriage had taken 
 place, somewhat late in life, little more than a twelvemonth 
 before. 
 
 William received from nature, what nature only can 
 bestow, great force of character, and great kindliness of 
 heart. The town of Cromarty at the time was singularly 
 fortunate in its schoolmaater, Mr. David M'Culloch, a gen- 
 
286 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 tleinan who terminated a long and very useful life, many 
 years after, as the minister of a wild Highland parish in 
 Perthshire ; and "William, who in infancy even had begun 
 to manifest that restless curiosity which almost always 
 characterizes the dawn of a superior intellect, was placed 
 at a very early age under his care. The school — one of 
 Knox's strongholds of the Reformation — was situated in 
 a retired wooden corner behind the houses, with the win- 
 dows, which were half-buried in the thatch, opening to the 
 old, time-worn Castle of Cromarty. There could not be a 
 more formidable spectre of the past than the old tower. 
 It had been from time immemorial the seat of the heredi- 
 tary sheriffs of the district, whose powers at this period 
 still remained entire ; and its tall, narrow front of blind 
 wall, its embattled turrets and hanging bartizans, seemed 
 associated with the tyranny and violence of more than a 
 thousand years. But the low, mean-looking building at 
 the foot of the hill was a masked battery raised against its 
 authority, which was to burst open its dungeon-door, and 
 to beat down its gallows. There is a class — the true 
 aristocracy of nature — which have but to arise from 
 among the people that the people may be free ; and the 
 humble old school did its part in separating its due pro- 
 portion of these from the mass. Of two of the boys who 
 sat at the same form with William Forsyth, one, the son 
 of the town-clerk, afterwards represented the county in 
 Parliament ; and the other, of still humbler parentage, at- 
 tracted, many years after, when librarian of the University 
 of Edinburgh and Professor of Oriental Languages, the 
 notice of the far-known Dr. Samuel Johnson. 
 
 The scheme of tuition established in our Scotch schools 
 of this period was exactly that which had been laid down 
 by Knox and Craig, in the Book of Discipline, rather more 
 
THE SCOTCH MEUCHANT. 287 
 
 than a century and a half before. Times had altered, how- 
 ever; and, though still the best possible, perhaps, for minds 
 of a superior order, it was no longer the best for intellects 
 of the commoner class. The scheme drawn up by our 
 first reformers was stamped by the liberality of men who 
 had learned from experience that tyranny and superstition 
 derive their chief support from ignorance. Almost all the 
 knowledge which books could supply at the time was locked 
 up in the learned languages. It was appointed, therefore, 
 " that young men who purposed to travill in some handi- 
 craft or other profitable exercise for the good of the com- 
 monwealth, should first devote ane certain time to grammar 
 and the Latin tongue, and ane certain time to the other 
 tongues and the study of philosophy." But what may 
 have been a wise and considerate act on the part of the 
 ancestor, may degenerate into merely a foolish custom on 
 the part of the descendant. Ere the times of Mr. M'Cul- 
 loch, we had got a literature of our own ; and if useful 
 knowledge be learning, men might have become learned 
 through an acquaintance with English reading alone. Our 
 fathers, however, pursued the course which circumstances 
 had rendered imperative in the days of their great-grand- 
 fathers, merely because their great-grandfathers had pur- 
 sued it ; and the few years which were spent in school by 
 the poorer pupils of ordinary capacity, were absurdly frit- 
 tered away in acquiring a little bad Latin and a very little 
 worse Greek. So strange did the half-learning of our 
 common people, derived in this way, appear to our south- 
 ern neighbors, that there are writers of the last century 
 who, in describing a Scotch footman or mechanic, rarely 
 omit making his knowledge of the classics an essential part 
 of the character. The barber in " Roderick Random " 
 quotes Horace in the original ; and Foote, in one of his 
 
288 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 farces, introduces a Scotch valet, who, when some one 
 inquires of him. whether he be a Latinist, indignantly ex- 
 claims, " Hoot awa, man ! a Scotchman and no understand 
 Latin ! " 
 
 The school of Cromarty, like the other schools of the 
 kingdom, produced its Latinists who caught fish and made 
 shoes ; and it is not much more than twenty years since 
 the race became finally extinct. I have heard stories of 
 an old house-painter of the place, who, having survived 
 most of his school-fellows and contemporaries, used to re- 
 gret, among his other vanished pleasures, the pleasure he 
 could once derive from an inexhaustible fund of Latin quo- 
 tation, which the ignorance of a younger generation had 
 rendered of little more value to him than the paper-money 
 of an insolvent bank ; and I remember an old cabinet- 
 maker who was in the practice, when his sight began to 
 fail him, of can-ying his Latin New Testament with him to 
 church, as it chanced to be printed in a clearer type than 
 any of his English ones. It is said, too, of a learned fisher- 
 man of the reign of Queen Anne, that, when employed one 
 day among his tackle, he was accosted in Latin by the pro- 
 prietor of Cromarty, who, accompanied by two gentlemen 
 from England, was sauntering along the shore, and that, to 
 the surprise of the strangers, he replied with considerable 
 fluency in the same language. William Forsyth was a 
 Latinist, like most of his school-fellows ; but the natural 
 tone of his mind, and the extent of his information, were in 
 keeping with the acquirement ; and while there must have 
 been something sufficiently grotesque and incongruous, as 
 the satirists show us, in the association of a classic litera- 
 ture with humble employments and very ordinary modes of 
 thought and expression, nothing, on the other hand, could 
 have seemed less so than that an enterprising and liberal- 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 289 
 
 minded merchant should have added to the manners and 
 sentiments of the gentleman the tastes and attainments of 
 the scholar. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them; Sloth 
 and Folly shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazard, and make the 
 impossibility they fear. — EowB. 
 
 "William Fokstth in his sixteenth year quitted school, 
 and was placed by his father in a counting-house in Lon- 
 don, where he formed his first acquaintance with trade. 
 Circumstances, however, rendered the initiatory course a 
 very brief one. His father, James Forsyth, died suddenly 
 in the following year, 1759 ; and, leaving London at the 
 request of his widowed mother, whose family now consisted 
 of two other sons and two daughters, — all of them, of course, 
 younger than himself, — he entered on his father's business 
 at the early age of seventeen. In one interesting instance 
 I have found the recollection of his short stay in London 
 incidentally connected with the high estimate of his char- 
 acter and acquirements formed by one of the shrewdest 
 and most extensively informed of his mercantile acquaint- 
 ance. "I know," says a lady who has furnished me with 
 some of the materials of these chapters, " that Mr. Forsyth 
 must have spent some time in a London counting-house, 
 from often having heard my father repeat, as a remark of 
 the late Henry Davidson of Tulloch, that ' had the Cro- 
 marty merchant remained in the place where he received 
 25 
 
290 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 his first introduction to business, he would have been, 
 what no Scotchman ever was, lord mayor of London.' " I 
 need hardly add that the remark is at least half a century 
 old. 
 
 The town of Cromarty, at the time of Mr. Forsyth's set- 
 tlement in it, was no longer the scene of busy trade which 
 it had been twenty years before. The hemng-fishery of 
 the place, at one time the most lucrative on the eastern 
 coast of Scotland, had totally failed, and the great bulk of 
 the inhabitants, who had owed to it their chief means of 
 subsistence, had fallen into abject poverty. They seemed 
 fast sinking, too, into that first state of society in which 
 thei-e is scarce any division of labor. The mechanics in the 
 town caught their own fish, raised their own corn, tanned 
 their own leather, and wore clothes which had employed 
 no other manufacturers than their own families and their 
 neighbor the weaver. There was scarce any money in 
 the district. Even the neighboring proprietors paid their 
 tradesmen in kind ; and a few bolls of malt or barley, or a 
 few stones of flax or wool, settled the yearly account. 
 There could not, therefore, be a worse or more hopeless 
 scene for the shopkeeper; and had William Forsyth re- 
 stricted himself to the trade of his father, he must inevitably 
 have sunk with the sinking fortunes of the place. Young 
 as he was, however, he had sagacity enough to perceive 
 that Cromarty, though a bad field for the retail trader, 
 might prove a very excellent one for the merchant. . Its 
 valuable, though at this time neglected harbor, seemed 
 suited to render it, what it afterwards became, the key 
 of the adjacent country. The neighboring friths, too, — 
 those of Dingwall, Dornoch, and Beauly, which wind far 
 into the Highlands of Ross and Sutherland, — formed so 
 many broad pathways leading into districts which had no 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 291 
 
 other roads at that period ; and the towns of Tain, Dor- 
 noch, Dingwall, Campbelton, and Fortrose, with the seats 
 of numerous proprietors, are situated on their shores. The 
 bold and original plan of the young trader, therefore, was 
 to render Cromarty a sort of depot for the whole ; to fur- 
 nish the shopkeepers of the several towns with the com- 
 modities in which they dealt, and to bring to the very 
 doors of the proprietors the various foreign articles of com- 
 fort and luxury with which commerce could alone supply 
 them. And, launching boldly into the speculation at a 
 time when the whole country seemed asleep around him, 
 he purchased a freighting-boat for the navigation of the 
 three friths, and hired a large sloop for trading with Hol- 
 land and the commercial towns of the south. 
 
 The failure of the herring trade of the place had been oc- 
 casioned by the disappearance of the herrings, which, after 
 frequenting the Frith in immense shoals for a long series 
 of years, had totally deserted it. It is quite according to 
 the nature of the fish, however, to resume their visits as 
 suddenly and unexpectedly as they have broken them off, 
 though not until after the lapse of so many seasons, per- 
 haps, that the fishermen have ceased to watch for their 
 appearance in their old haunts, or provide the tackle neces- 
 sary for their capture ; and in this way a number of yeai"S 
 are sometimes suffered to pass, after the return of the fish, 
 ere the old trade is re-established. To guard against any 
 such waste of opportunity on the part of his townspeople 
 was the first care of William Forsyth, after creating, as it 
 were, a new and busy trade for himself; and, representing 
 the case to the more intelligent gentlemen of the district, 
 and some of the wealthier merchants of Inverness, he suc- 
 ceeded in forming them into a society for the encourage- 
 ment of the herring-fishery, which provided a yearly pre- 
 
292 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 mium of twenty marks Scots for the first barrel of herrings 
 caught every season in the Moray Frith. The sum was 
 small ; but as money at the time was very valuable, it 
 proved a suificient inducement to the fishermen and trades- 
 people of the place to fit out a few boats, about the begin- 
 ning of autumn every year, to sweep over the various fish- 
 ing-banks for the herrings ; and there were few seasons in 
 which some one crew or other did not catch enough to 
 entitle them to the premium. At length, however, their 
 tackle wore out ; and Mr. Forsyth, in pursuance of his 
 scheme, provided himself, at some little expense, with a 
 complete drift of nets, which were carried to sea each sea- 
 son by his boatmen, and the search kept up. His exer- 
 tions, however, could only merit success, without securing 
 it. The fish returned for a few seasons in considerable 
 bodies, and several thousand barrels were caught ; but 
 they soon deserted the Frith as entirely as before ; and 
 more than a century elapsed from their first disappearance 
 ere they revisited their old haunts with such regularity 
 and in such numbers as to render the trade remunerative 
 to either the curers or the fishermen. 
 
 Unlike the herring speculation, however, the general 
 trade of William Forsyth was eminently successful. It 
 was of a miscellaneous character, as became the st.ate of a 
 country so poor and so thinly peopled, and in which, as 
 there was scarce any division of labor, one merchant had 
 to perform the work of many. He supplied the proprietors 
 with tens and wines and spiceries, with broadcloths, glass, 
 delft-ware, Flemish tiles, and pieces of japanned cabinet- 
 work ; he furnished the blacksmith with iron from Sweden, 
 the carpenter with tar and spars from Norway, and the 
 farmer with flaxseed from Holland. He found, too, in 
 other countries markets for the produce of our own. The 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 293 
 
 exports of the north of Scotland at this period were mostly 
 malt, wool, and salmon. Almost all rents were paid in 
 kind or in labor; the proprietors retaining in tht'ir own 
 hands a portion of their estates, termed demesnes or mrans, 
 which was cultivated mostly by their tacksmen and feuars, 
 as part of their proper service. Each proprietor, too, had his 
 storehouse or girnel, — a tall, narrow building, the strong- 
 box of the time, which at the Martinmas of every year was 
 filled from gable to gable with the grain-rents paid to him 
 by his tenants, and the produce of his own farm. His sur- 
 plus cattle found their way south, under charge of the dro- 
 vers of the period ; but it proved a more difficult matter 
 to dispose to advantage of his surplus corn, mostly barley, 
 until some one, more skilful in speculation than the others, 
 originated the scheme of converting it into malt, and ex- 
 porting it into England and- Flanders. And to so great 
 an extent was this trade carried on about the middle of the 
 last century, that, in the town of Inverness, the English 
 under Cumberland, in the long-remembered year of CuUo- 
 den, found almost every second building a malt-barn. 
 
 The town of Cromarty suffered much at this period, in 
 at least the severer winters, from scarcity of fuel. The 
 mosses of the district were just exhausted ; and as our 
 proprietors had not yet betaken themselves to planting, 
 there were no woods, except in some of the remoter re- 
 cesses of the country, where the remains of some of the 
 ancient forests were still suffered to survive. Peats were 
 occasionally brought to the town in boats from the oppo- 
 site side of the Frith ; but the supply was precarious and 
 insufficient, and the inhabitants were content at times to 
 purchase the heath of the neighboring hill, in patches of 
 an hundred square yards, and at times even to use for fuel 
 the dried dung of their cattle. "A Cromarty fire" was a 
 25* 
 
294 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 term vised over the country to designate a fire just gone 
 out ; and some humorist of the period has represented a 
 Cromarty farmer, in a phrase which became proverbial, as 
 giving his daughter the key of the peat-chest, and bidding 
 her take out a peat and a half that she might put on a 
 good fire. It was the part of Mr. Forsyth to divest the 
 proverb of its edge, by opening up a trade with the north- 
 ern ports of England, and introducing to the acquaintance 
 of his townspeople the "black stones" of Newcastle, which 
 have been used ever since as the staple fuel of the place. 
 To those who know how very dependent the inhabitants 
 are on this useful fossil, there seems an intangible sort of 
 strangeness in the fact that it is not yet a full century 
 since Mr. Forsyth's sloop entered the bay with the first 
 cargo of coal ever brought into it. One almost expects to 
 hear next of the man who first taught them to rear corn, 
 or to break in, from their state of original wildness, the 
 sheep and the cow. 
 
 Mr. Forsyth had entered upon his twenty-fourth year, 
 and had been rather m'ore than six years engaged in busi- 
 ness, when the rebellion broke out. There was an end to 
 all security for the time, and of course an end to trade ; but 
 even the least busy found enough to employ them in the 
 j)erilous state of the country. Bands of marauders, the 
 very refuse of the Highlands, — for its better men had 
 gone to the south with the rebel army, — went prowling 
 over the Lowlands, making war with all alike, whether 
 Jacobites or Hanoverians, who were rich enough to be 
 robbed. Mr. Forsyth's sloop, in one of her coasting voy- 
 ages of this period, when laden with a cargo of government 
 stores, was forced by stress of weather into the Dornoch 
 Frith, where she was seized by a party of Highlanders, 
 who held her for three days, in the name of the prince. 
 
THE SCOTCH MBKCHANT. , 295 
 
 They did little else, however, than consume the master's 
 sea-stock, and joke with the ship-boy, a young but very in- 
 telligent lad, who, for many years after, when Mr. Forsyth 
 had himself become a ship-owner, was the master of his 
 vessel. He was named Robertson ; and as there were sev- 
 eral of the Robertsons of Struan among the party, he was 
 soon on very excellent terms with them. On one occasion, 
 however, when rallying some of the Struans on their under- 
 taking, he spoke of their leader as " the Pretender." " Be- 
 ware, my boy," said an elderly Highlander, " and do not 
 again repeat that word. There are men in the ship who, if 
 they heard you, would perhaps take your life for it ; for 
 remember, we are not all Robertsons." Another party of 
 the marauders took possession of the town of Cromarty for 
 a short time, and dealt after the same manner with the 
 stores of townspeople, whether of food or clothing, as the 
 other had done with the stores of the shipmaster. But 
 they were rather mischievous thieves than dangerous ene- 
 mies ; and except that they robbed a few of the women of 
 their webs and yarn, and a ^w of the men of their shoes 
 and bonnets, they left them no very grave cause to regret 
 their visit. 
 
 It so chanced, however, that Mr. Forsyth was brought 
 more seriously into contact with the rebels than any of his 
 townsmen. The army of the prince, after the failure of 
 the attempt on England, fell back on the Highlands ; and 
 a body of sixteen hundred king's troops, which had occu- 
 pied Inverness, had retreated northwards, on their approach 
 into the county of Sutherland. They had crossed by the 
 Ferry of Cromarty in the boats of the town's fishermen ; 
 and these, on landing on the northern side, they had bro- 
 ken up to prevent the pursuit of the rebels. Scarcely had 
 they been gone a day, however, when an agent of govern- 
 
296 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ment, charged with a large sum of money, the arrears of 
 their pay, arrived at Cromarty. He had reached Inverness 
 only to find it in possession of the rebels ; and after a per- 
 ilous journey over a tract of country where almost every 
 second man had declared for the prince, he found at Cro- 
 marty his further progress northward arrested by the 
 Frith. In this dilemma, with the sea before him and the 
 rebels behind, he applied to "William Forsyth, and, commu- 
 nicating to him the nature and importance of his charge, 
 solicited his assistance and advice. Fortunately Mr. For- 
 syth's boat had been on one of her coasting voyages at the 
 time the king's troops had broken up the others, and her 
 return was now hourly expected. Refreshments were has- 
 tily set before the half-exhausted agent ; and then hurry- 
 ing him to the feet of the precipices which guard the en- 
 trance of the Frith, Mr. Forsyth watched with him among 
 the clifis until the boat came sweeping round the nearer 
 headland. The merchant hailed her in the passing, saw 
 the agent and his charge safely embarked, and, after in- 
 structing the crew that thej* should proceed northwards, 
 keeping as much , as possible in the middle of the Frith 
 until they had either come abreast of Sutherland or fallen 
 in with a sloop-of-war then stationed near the mouth of the 
 S]iey, he returned home. In the middle of the following 
 night he was roused by a party of rebels, who, after inter- 
 3-ogating him strictly regarding the agent and his charge, 
 and ransacking his house and shop, carried him with them 
 a prisoner to Inverness. They soon found, however, that 
 the treasure was irrecoverably beyond their reach, and that 
 nothing was to be gained by the further detention of Mr. 
 Forsyth. He was liberated, therefore, after a day and 
 night's imprisonment, just as the rebels had learned that 
 the army of Cumberland had reached the Spey; and he 
 
THB SCOTCH MERCHANT. 297 
 
 returned to Cromarty in time enough to witness from the 
 neighboring hill the smoke of Culloden. In after-life he 
 used sometimes to amuse his friends by a humorous detail 
 of his sufferings in the cause of the king. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 So spake the Fiend; and with necessity 
 The tyrant's plea excused his devilish deeds. 
 
 Milton. 
 
 By far the most important event of the last century to 
 the people of Scotland was the rebellion of 1745. To use 
 an illustration somewhat the worse for the wear, it resem- 
 bled one of those violent hurricanes of the tropics which 
 overturn trees and houses and strew the shores with wreck, 
 but which more than compensate for the mischiefs they 
 occasion by dissipating the deadly vapors of plague and 
 pestilence, and restoring the community to health. Previ- 
 ous to its suppression the people possessed only a nominal 
 freedom. The church for which they had done and suf- 
 fered so much had now been re-established among them for 
 nearly sixty years ; and they were called, as elders, to take 
 a part in its worship, and to deliberate in its courts. The 
 laws, too, especially those passed since the union, recog- 
 nized them as free. More depends, however, on the ad- 
 ministration of law than on even the framing of it. The 
 old hereditary jurisdictions still remained entire ; and the 
 meanest sheriff or baron of Scotland, after holding a c6urt 
 composed of only himself and his clerk, might consign the 
 
298 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 freest of his vassals to his dungeon, or hang him up at his 
 castle-door. But the rebellion showed that more might 
 be involved in this despotism of the chiefs and proprietors 
 of the country than the oppression of individuals, and 
 that the power which they possessed, through its means 
 of calling out their vassals on their own behalf, to-day, 
 might be employed in precipitating them against the gov- 
 ernment on the morrow. In the year 1747, therefore, he- 
 reditary jurisdictions were abolished all over Scotland, and 
 the power of judging in matters of life and death restricted 
 to judges appointed and paid by the crown. To decide 
 on such matters of minor importance as are furnished by 
 every locality, justices were appointed; and Mr. Forsyth's 
 \ name was placed on the commission of the peace ; a small 
 matter, it may be thought, in the present day, but by no 
 means an unimportant one ninety years ago, to either his 
 townspeople or himself 
 
 Justices of the peace had been instituted about a century 
 and a half before. But the hereditary jurisdictions of the 
 kingdom leaving them scarce any room for the exercise of 
 their limited authority, the order fell into desuetude ; and 
 previous to its re-appointment, on the suppression of the 
 rebellion, the administration of the law seems to have 
 been divided, in at least the remoter provinces, between 
 the hereditary judges and the church. The session rec- 
 ords of Cromarty during the establishment of Episcopacy 
 are still extant, and they curiously exemplify the class of 
 offences specially cognizable by the ecclesiastical courts. 
 They serve, too, to illustrate, in a manner sufficiently strik- 
 ing, the low tone of morals which obtained among the peo- 
 ple. Our great-great-grandfathers were not a whit wiser 
 nor" better nor happier than ourselves ; and . our great- 
 great-grandmothers seem to have had quite the same pas- 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 299 
 
 sions as their descendants, with rather less ability to con- 
 trol them. There were ladies of Cromarty, in the reign of 
 Charles II., " maist horrible cussers," who accused one 
 another of being " witches and witch getts, with all their 
 folk afore them," for generations untold; gentlemen who 
 had to " stand at the pillar " for unlading the boats of 
 a smuggler at ten o'clock on a Sabbath night ; " maist 
 scandalous reprobates" who got drunk on Sundays, "and 
 abused decent folk ganging till the kirk ;'' and " ill-con- 
 ditioned royit loons who raisit disturbances and faught i' 
 the scholars' loft" in the time of divine service. Hus- 
 bands and their wives do penance in the church in this 
 reign for their domestic quarrels ; boys are whipped by the 
 beadle for returning from a journey on the Sabbath; men 
 are set in th^jougs for charging elders of rather doubtful 
 character with being drunk ; boatmen are fined for cross- 
 ing the ferry with passengers " during church time ; " and 
 Presbyterian farmers are fined still more heavily for absent- 
 ing themselves from church. Meanwhile, when the ses- 
 sion was thus employed, the sheriff was amusing himself 
 in cutting ofi" men's ears, starving them in his dungeon, or 
 hanging them up by the neck on his gallows. A few dark 
 traditions, illustrative of the intolerable tyranny of the 
 period, still survive ; and it is not yet more than nine years 
 since a quantity of human bones, found in digging on an 
 eminence a little above the harbor, which in the reign of 
 Chai-les is said to have been a frequent scene of executions, 
 served as an attestation to their general truth. It is said 
 that the last person sentenced to death on the gallows-hill 
 of Cromarty was a poor Highlander who had insulted the 
 sheriff, and that, when in the act of mounting the ladder, 
 he was pardoned at the request of the sheriff's lady. 
 I There is much of interest in catching occasional glimpses 
 
300 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 ~'of a bygone state of society through the chance vistas of 
 tradition. They serve to show us, in the expressive lan- 
 guage of Scripture, " the rock whence we were hewn, and 
 the hole of the pit whence we were dug." They serve, 
 too, to dissipate those dreamy imaginings of the good and 
 happiness of the past in which it seems an instinct of our 
 nature to indulge, and enable us to correct the exaggera- 
 ted estimates of that school of philosophy which sees most 
 to admire in society the further it recedes from civilization. 
 I am enabled to furnish the reader with one of these 
 chance glimpses. 
 
 An old man who died about ten years ago, has told me 
 that, when a boy, he was sent on one occasion to the manse 
 of a neighboring parish to bring back the horse of an 
 elderly gentleman of the place, a retired officer, who had 
 gone to visit the minister with the intention of remaining 
 with him for a few days. The officer was a silver-headed, 
 erect old man, who had served as an ensign at the battle 
 of Blenheim, and who, when he had retired on half pay 
 about forty years after, was still a poor lieutenant. His 
 riding days were well-nigh over ; and the boy overtook 
 him long ere he had reached the manse, and just as he was 
 joined by Mr. Forsyth, who had come riding up by across- 
 road, and then slackened bridle to keep him company. 
 They entered into conversation. Mr. Forsyth was curious 
 in his inquiries, the old gentleman communicative, and the 
 boy a good listener. The old man spoke much of the 
 allied army under Marlborough. By far the strongest man 
 in it, he said, was a gentleman from Ross-shire, Munro of 
 Newmore. He had seen him raise a piece of ordnance to 
 his breast which Mackenzie of Fairburn, another proprie- 
 tor of the same district, had succeeded in raising to his 
 knee, but which no other man among more than eighty 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 301 
 
 thousand could lift from off the ground. Newmore was con- 
 siderably advanced in life at the time, — perhaps turned of 
 fifty ; for he had arrived at mature manhood about the 
 middle of the reign of Charles U. ; and, being a singularly 
 daring as well as an immensely powerful man, he had signal- 
 ized himself in early life in the feuds of his native district. 
 Some of his lands bordered on those of Black Andrew 
 Munro, the last Baron of Newtarbat, one of the most de- 
 testable wretches that ever abused the power of pit and 
 gallows. But as at least their nominal politics were the 
 same, and as the baron, though by far the less powerful 
 man, was in perhaps a corresponding degree the more 
 powerful proprietor, they had never come to an open rup- 
 ture. Newmore, however, by venturing at times to screen 
 some of the baron's vassals from his fury, — at times by 
 taking part against him in the quarrel of some of the petty 
 landholders, whom the tyrant never missed an occasion to 
 oppress, — was by no means one of his favorites. All the 
 labors of the baron's demesnes were of course performed 
 by his vassals as part of their proper service. A late, wet 
 harvest came on, and they were employed in cutting down 
 his crops when their own lay rotting on the ground. It 
 is natural that in such circumstances they should have 
 labored unwillingly. All their dread of the baron even, 
 who remained among them in the fields, indulging in every 
 caprice of a fierce and cruel temper, aggravated by irre- 
 sponsible power, proved scarcely sufficient to keep them at 
 work ; and, to inspire them with deeper terror, an elderly 
 female, who had been engaged during the night in reaping 
 a little field of her own, and had come somewhat late in 
 the morning, was actually stripped naked by the savage, 
 and sent home again. In the evening he was visited by 
 Munro of Newmore, who came, accompanied by only a 
 26 
 
302 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 single servant, to expostulate with him on an act so atro- 
 cious and disgraceful. Newmore was welcomed with a 
 show of hospitality ; the baron heard him patiently, and, 
 calling for wine, they sat down and drank together. It 
 was only a few weeks before, however, that one of the 
 neighboring lairds, who had been treated with a similar 
 show of kindness by the baron, had been stripped half 
 naked at his table, when in a state of intoxication, and 
 sent home with his legs tied under his horse's belly. New- 
 more, therefore, kept warily on his guard. He had left his 
 horse ready saddled at the gate, ^nd drank no more than 
 he could master, which was quite as much, however, as 
 would have overcome most men. One after one the 
 baron's retainei-s began to drop into the room, each on a 
 separate pretence; and, as the fifth entered, Newmore, who 
 had seemed as if yielding to the influence of the liquor, 
 aiFected to fall asleep. The retainers came clustering 
 round him. Two seized him by the arms, and two more 
 essayed to fasten him to his chair ; when up he sprang, 
 dashed his four assailants from him as if they had been 
 boys of ten summers, and, raising the fifth from ofi" the 
 floor, hurled him headlong against the baron, who fell 
 prostrate before the weight and momentum of so unusual 
 a missile. In a minute after, ZSTewmore had reached the 
 gate, and, mounting his horse, rode away. The baron 
 died during the night, a victim to apoplexy, induced, it is 
 said, by the fierce and vindictive passions awakened on 
 this occasion ; and a Gaelic proverb, still current in the 
 Highlands of Ross-shire, shows with what feelings his poor 
 vassals must have regarded the event. Even to the pres- 
 ent day, a Highlander will remark, when overborne by 
 oppression, that " the same God still lives who killed 
 Black Andrew Munro of Newtarbat." 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 303 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Are we not brothers ? 
 
 So man and man should be ; 
 
 But day and clay differs in dignity, 
 
 Whose dust is both alike. 
 
 Sftakbpeabe. 
 
 It was no nniinportant change to the people of Cro- 
 marty, which transferred them from the jurisdiction of 
 hereditary judges to the charge of a justice such as Mr. 
 Forsyth. For more than thirty years after his appoint- 
 ment he was the only acting magistrate in the place ; and 
 such was the confidence of the townspeople in his judg- 
 ment and integrity, that during all that time there was not 
 in a single instance an appeal from his decisions. In office 
 and character he seems to have closely resembled one of 
 the old landammans of the Swiss cantons. The nge was a 
 rude one. Man is a fighting animal from very instinct, and 
 his second nature, custom, mightily improves the propen- 
 sity ; and nine tenths of the cases brought before Mr. For- 
 syth were cases of quarrels. With the more desperate 
 class of brawlers he could deal at times with proper sever- 
 ity. In most instances, however, a quarrel cost him a few 
 glasses of his best Hollands, and cost no one else anything. 
 The disputants were generally shown that neither of them 
 had been quite in the right ; that one had been too hasty, , 
 and the other too ready to take oSence ; that the first blow 
 had been decidedly a wrong, and the second unquestion- 
 ably a misdemeanor ; and then, after drinking one another's 
 
304 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 health, they parted, wonderfully pleased with the decision 
 of Mr. Forsyth, and resolved to have no more fighting till 
 their next difference. He was much a favorite, too, with 
 the townsboys. On one occasion, a party of them were 
 brought before him on a charge of stealing green peas out 
 of a field. Mr. Forsyth addressed them in his sternest 
 manner. There was nothing, he said, which he so abhorred 
 as the stealing of green peas ; it was positively theft. He 
 even questioned whether their parents did right in provid- 
 ing them with pockets. Were they again to be brought 
 before him for a similar offence, they might depend, every 
 one of them, on being locked up in the Tolbooth for a fort- 
 night. Meanwhile, to keep them honest, he had resolved 
 on sowing a field of peas himself, to which he would make 
 them all heartily welcome. Accordingly, next season the 
 field was sown, and there could not be a more exposed 
 locality. Such, however, was the spirit of the little men 
 of the place, all of whom had come to a perfect under- 
 standing of the decision, that not one pod of Mr. Forsyth's 
 peas was carried away. 
 
 Before the close of 1752, when he completed his thirtieth 
 year, Mr. Forsyth had succeeded in settling his two broth- 
 ers in business, the one as a shopkeeper in Dingwall, the 
 other as a merchant in Newcastle. Both gained for them- 
 selves, in their respective circles of acquaintance, the char- 
 acter of worthy and intelligent men ; and their descend- 
 ants still occupy respectable places in society. They had 
 acquired their education and formed their habits of busi- 
 ness under the eye of William ; and now, in the autumn 
 of this year, after he had thus honorably acquitted himself 
 of the charge devolved upon him by the death of his father, 
 he found himself at liberty to gratify an attachment formed 
 several years before, by marrying a young lady of great 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 805 
 
 worth and beauty, Miss Margaret Russell, a native of 
 Morayshire. She was the daughter of Mr. Kussell of 
 Earlsmill, chamberlain to the Earl of Moray. 
 
 I shall indulge, with leave of the reader, in a brief view 
 of the society to which Mr. Forsyth introduced his young 
 wife. The feudal superior of the town, and proprietor of 
 the neighboring lands, formed, of course, its natural and 
 proper head. But the proprietor of this period, a Captain 
 William Urquhart of Meldrum, had thrown himself so 
 fairly beyond its pale, that on his own estate, and in his 
 own village, there were none to court favor or friendship 
 at his hands. He was a gentleman of good family, and had 
 done gallant service to the Spaniards of South America 
 against the buccaneers. He was, however, a stanch Catho- 
 lic, and he had joined issue with the townspeople, headed 
 by Mr. Forsyth, in a vexatious and expensive lawsuit, in 
 which he had contended, as patron of the parish, for the 
 privilege of presenting them with a useless, time-serving 
 clergyman, a friend of his own. And so it was, that the 
 zeal, so characteristic at the time of the people of Scotland, 
 — a zeal for religion and the interests of the kirk, — had 
 more than neutralized in the minds of the townspeople 
 their scarcely less characteristic feelings of respect for the 
 laird. His place, therefore, in the society of the town was 
 occupied by persons of somewhat less influence than him- 
 self. There was a little circle of gentility in it, rich in 
 blood but poor in fortune, which furnished a sort of repos- 
 ing place for the old prejudices of the people in favor of 
 high descent, of ladies who were " real ladies," and gentle- 
 men with coats of arms. Whenever there was aught to 
 be done or resisted, however, the whole looked up to Mr. 
 Forsyth as their man of thought and action. 
 26*' 
 
306 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 At the head of this little community there was a dowa- 
 ger lady, the many virtues of whose character have found 
 a warm encomiast in the judicious and sober-minded Dod- 
 dridge. The good Lady Ardoch has been dead for the 
 last seventy years, and yet her name is scarcely less famil- 
 iar in the present day, to at least the more staid towns- 
 people, than it was half a century ago. She was a daugh- 
 ter of the Fowlis family, one of the most ancient and 
 honorable in Scotland ; the ninth baron of Fowlis was slain 
 fighting under the Bruce at Bannockburn. Her three 
 brothers — men whose heroism of character and high relig- 
 ious principle have drawn forth the very opposite sympa- 
 thies of Philip Doddridge and Sir Walter Scott — she had 
 lost in the late rebellion. The eldest, Sir Robert Munro, 
 the chief of his clan, died, with his youngest brother, at 
 the battle of Falkirk ; the third was shot about nine 
 months after by an assassin, who had mistaken him for 
 another by whom he had been deeply injured, and whose 
 sorrow and remorse on discovering that he had unwittingly 
 killed one of the best of his countrymen, are well described 
 by Sir Walter in his " Tales of a Grandfather." N'ext in 
 place to the good Lady Ardoch was the good Lady Scots- 
 burn, — the widow of a Ross-shire proprietor, — who de- 
 rived her descent from that Archibald, Marquis of Argyle, 
 who acted so conspicuous a part during the troubles of the 
 times of Charles I., and perished on the scaffold on the 
 accession of Charles II. In excellence of character and the 
 respect with which she was regarded, she very much resem- 
 bled her contemporary Lady Ardoch. There were, besides, 
 a family of ladies in the place, the daughters of Urquhart of 
 Greenhill, a merchant of the times of the herring drove, and 
 a scion of the old Urquharts,of Cromarty, — and another 
 much-respected family, the descendants of one of the old 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 307 
 
 clergymen of the place, a Mr. Gordon. A few ladies more, 
 of rather lower pretensions, whom the kindness of relatives 
 in the south enabled to be hospitable and genteel, some on 
 fifty pounds a year and some on thirty, and a few retired 
 half-pay ensigns and lieutenants, one of whom, as we have 
 seen, had fought in the wars of Marlborough, completed 
 what was deemed the better society of the place. They had 
 their occasional tea-parties, at which they all met ; for Mr. 
 Forsyth's trade with Holland had introduced, ere now, 
 about eight teakettles into the place. They had, too, what 
 was more characteristic of the age, their regular prayer- 
 meetings; and at these — for Christianity, as the equalizing 
 religion of free men, has ever been a breaker-down of casts 
 and fictitious distinctions — the whole graver people of 
 the town met. The parlor of Lady Ardoch was open once 
 a fortnight to the poorer inhabitants of the place ; and the 
 good lady of thirty descents knelt in her silks at the same 
 form with the good fisherwoman in her curch and toy. 
 
 It is not, however, by notices such as these that adequate 
 notions of the changes which have taken place within the 
 last century in the very framework of Scottish society can 
 "be conveyed to the reader. " The state of things is so fast 
 changing in Scotland," says Dr. Johnson, in one of his let- 
 ters to Boswell, " that a Scotchman can hardly realize the 
 times of his grandfather." " 
 
 Society was in a transition state at the time. The old ad- 
 ventitious bonds which had held it together in the past still 
 existed ; but opinion was employed in forging others of a 
 more natural and less destructible character. Among these 
 older ties, the pride of family — a pride wliich must liave 
 owed its general diflusion o^er Scotland to the clans and 
 sects of the feudal system — held by far the most impor- 
 tant place. There was scarce an individual, in at least the 
 
308 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 northern counties, whose claim to self-respect was not in- 
 volved in the honor of some noble family. There ran 
 through his humble genealogy some silver thread of high 
 descent; some great-great-grandfather or grandmother con- 
 nected him with the aristocracy of the country ; and it 
 was his pride and honor, not that he was an independent 
 man, but that he was in some sort a dependent gentle- 
 man. Hence that assumption of gentility on the part of 
 the Scotch so often and so unmercifully lashed by the Eng- 
 lish satirists of the last century. Hence, too, in no small 
 measure, the entire lack of political whiggism among the 
 people. Under the influence of the feelings described, a 
 great family might be compared to one of those fig-trees 
 of the East which shoot their pendulous branches into the 
 soil, and, deriving their stability from a thousand separate 
 roots, defy the tornado and the hurricane. Be it remem- 
 bered, too, that great families included in this way the 
 whole of Scottish society, from its upper to its lower ex- 
 treme. 
 
 Now, one of the objections to this kind of bond was the 
 very unequal measure of justice and protection which it 
 secured to the two grand classes which it united. It de-' 
 pressed the people in the one scale in the proportion in 
 which it raised the aristocracy in the other. It did much 
 for Juggernaut, but little for Juggernaut's worshippers. 
 Though well-nigh as powerful at this time in the north of 
 Scotland as it had been at any previous period, it was 
 fast losing its influence in the southern districts. The per- 
 secutions of the former age had done much to lessen its 
 eflELcacy, by setting the aristocracy, who, in most instances, 
 held by the court politics and the court religion, in direct 
 and hostile opposition to the people. And the growing 
 commerce of the larger towns had done still more to lower 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 309 
 
 it, by raising up from among the people that independent 
 middle class, the creators and conservators of popular lib- 
 erty, without which the population of any country can 
 consist of only slaves and their masters. Even in the 
 northern districts there were causes coming into operation 
 which were eventually to annihilate the sentiment in at 
 least its more mischievous tendencies. The state of mat- 
 ters in the town of Cromarty at this time, where a zealous 
 Catholic was struggling to obtrude a minister of his own 
 choosing on a Protestant people, furnishes no bad illustra- 
 tion of the nature of some of these, and of their mode of 
 working. The absurd and mischievous law of patronage 
 was doing in part for the Lowland districts of the north 
 what the persecutions of the Stuarts had done for those of 
 the south an age before, and what the large sheep-farm 
 system, and the consequent ejection of the old occupants 
 of the soil, has done for the Highlands an age after. And 
 the first two were causes admirably suited to awaken a 
 people who had derived their notions of rational liberty 
 solely through the medium of religious belief. Their 
 whiggism was a whiggism not of this world, but of the 
 other ; and as the privilege of preparing themselves for 
 heaven in what they believed to be exclusively the right 
 way was the only privilege they deemed worth while con- 
 tending for, their first struggle for liberty was a struggle 
 that their consciences might be free. The existence, too, of 
 such men among them as Mr. Forsyth, men who had risen 
 from their own level, had a twofold influence on the con- 
 test. They formed a sort of aristocracy of the people that 
 served to divide the old feelings of respect which had 
 been so long exclusively paid to the higher aristocracy; 
 and they were enabled, through their superior intelligence. 
 
SlO TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 to give a weight and respectability to the popular party 
 which it could not otherwise have possessed. 
 
 William Forsyth was singularly unfortunate in his mar- 
 riage. Towards the close of the first year, when but learn- 
 ing fully to appreciate the comforts of a state to which so 
 many of the better sentiments of our nature bear reference, 
 and to estimate more completely the worth of his partner, 
 she was suddenly removed from him by death, at a time 
 when he looked with most hope for a further accession to 
 his happiness. She died in childbed, and the fruit of her 
 womb died with her. Her husband, during the long after- 
 course of his life, never forgot her, and for eleven years 
 posterior to the event he remained a widower for her sake. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 There is a certain lively gratitude whicli not only acquits us of the obli- 
 gations we have received, but, by paying what we owe them, makes our 
 friends indebted to us. — La KocHEFAuCAnLD. 
 
 Among the school-fellows of William Forsyth there was 
 a poor orphan boy named Hossack, a native of the land- 
 ward part of the parish. He had lost both his parents 
 when an infant, and owed his first knowledge of letters to 
 the charity of the schoolmaster. His nearer relatives were 
 all dead, and he was dependent for a precarious subsistence 
 on the charity of a few distant connections, not a great 
 deal richer than himself; among the rest, on a poor widow, 
 a namesake of his own, who earned a scanty subsistence by 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 311 
 
 her wheel, but who had heart enough to impart a portion 
 of her little to the destitute scholar. The boy was studious 
 and thoughtful, and surpassed most of his school-fellows ; 
 and, after passing with singular rapidity through the course 
 pursued at school, he succeeded in putting himself to col- 
 lege. The struggle was arduous and protracted. Some- 
 times he wrought as a common laborer, sometimes he ran 
 errands, sometimes he taught a school. He deemed no 
 honest employment too mean or too laborious, that for- 
 warded his scheme ; and thus he at length passed through 
 college. His townspeople then lost sight of him for nearly 
 twenty years. It was understood, meanwhile, that some 
 nameless friend in the south had settled a comfortable an- 
 nuity on poor old widow Hossack, and that a Cromarty 
 sailor, who had been attacked by a dangerous illness when 
 at London, had owed his life to the gratuitous attentions 
 of a famous physician of the place, who had recognized 
 him as a townsman. No one, however, thought of the 
 poor scholar ; and it was not until his carriage drove up 
 one day through the main street of the town, and stopped 
 at the door of William Forsyth, that he was identified with 
 "the great doctor" who had attended the seaman, and 
 with the benefactor of the poor widow. On entering the 
 cottage of the latter, he found her preparing gi'uel for sup- 
 per, and was asked, with the anxiety of a gi-atitude that 
 would fain render him some return, " O, sir, will ye no tak' 
 brochan ? " He is said to have been a truly excellent and 
 benevolent man, — the Abercromby of a former age ; and 
 the ingenious and pious Moses Browne (a clergyman who, 
 to the disgrace of the English Church, was suffered to lan- 
 guish through life in a curacy of fifty pounds per annum) 
 thus addresses him in one of his larger poems, written im 
 
312 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 mediately after the recovery of the author from a long and 
 dangerous illness. 
 
 The God I trust, with timeliest kind relief. 
 
 Sent the beloved physician to my aid 
 
 (Generous, humanest, affable of soul, 
 
 Thee, dearest Hossack — oh, long known, long loved, 
 
 Long proved; in oft-found tenderest watching cares. 
 
 The Christian friend, the man of feeling heart) ; 
 
 And in his skilful, heaven-directed hand. 
 
 Put his best pleasing, only fee, my cure. 
 
 Sunday THonoHTS, Part IV. 
 
 To this gentleman Mr. Forsyth owed a very useful hint, 
 which he did not fail to improve. They were walking to- 
 gether at low ebb along the extensive tract of beach which 
 skirts, on the south, the entrance of the Frith of Cromarty. 
 The shore everywhere in this tract jjresents a hard bottom 
 of boulder stones and rolled pebbles, thickly covered with 
 marine plants ; and the doctor remarked that the brown 
 tangled forests before them might be profitably employed 
 in the manufacture of kelp, and, at the request of Mr. 
 Forsyth, described the process. To the enterprising and 
 vigorous-minded merchant the remark served to throw open 
 a new field of exertion. He immediately engaged in the 
 kelp trade ; and, for more than forty years after, it enabled 
 him to employ from ten to twelve persons during the sum- 
 mer and autumn of each year, and proved remunerative to 
 himself. 
 
 There is a story of two of Mr. Forsyth's kelp-burners, 
 which, as it forms a rather curious illustration of some of 
 the wilder beliefs of the period, I shall venture on intro- 
 ducing to the reader. The Sutors of Cromarty were known 
 all over the country as resorts of the hawk, the eagle, and 
 the raven, and of all the other builders among dizzy and 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 313 
 
 inaccessible cliffs ; and a gentleman of Moray, a sportsman 
 of the old school, having applied to a friend in this part of 
 the country to procure for him a pair of young hawks, of a 
 species prized by the falconer, Tarn Poison, an unsettled, 
 eccentric being, remarkable chiefly for his practical jokes, 
 and his constant companion Jock Watson, a person of 
 nearly similar character, were entrusted with the commis- 
 sion, and a promise of five pounds Scots, no inconsiderable 
 sum in those days, held out to them as the reward of their 
 success ia the execution of it. They soon discovered a 
 nest, but it was perched near the top of a lofty cliff, inac- 
 cessible to the climber ; and there was a serious objection 
 against descending to it by means of a rope, seeing that 
 the rope could not be held securely by fewer than three or 
 four persons, who would naturally claim a share of the re- 
 ward. It was suggested, however, by Tam, that by fasten- 
 ing the rope to a stake, even one person might prove suf- 
 ficient to manage it when the Other warped himself down ; 
 and so, providing themselves with the stay-rope of one of 
 their boats, and the tether-stake of one of their cattle, — 
 for, like most of the townspeople, they were both boatmen 
 and croft-renters, — they set out for the cliff early on a 
 Monday morning, ere the other members of the kelp party 
 with whom they wrought were astir. The stake was driven 
 into the stiff diluvial clay on the summit of the' cliff; and 
 Tam's companion, who was the lighter man of the two, 
 cautiously creeping to the edge, swung himself over, and 
 began to descend ; but, on reaching the end of the sta,y- 
 rope, he found he was still a few feet short of the ' nest ; 
 and, anxious only to secure the birds, he called on his com- 
 panion to raise the stake, and fix it a little nearer the brink. 
 The stake was accordingly raised ; but the strength of one 
 man being insufficient to hold it on such broken ground, 
 27 
 
314 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 and far less than sufficient to fasten it down as before, Tam, 
 in spite of his exertions, staggered step after step towards 
 the edge of the precipice. " O Jock ! O Jock ! O Jock ! " 
 he exclaimed, straining meanwhile every nerve in an agony 
 of exertion, " ye'll be o'er like a pock o' weet fish.'' " Gae 
 a wee bittie down yet," answered the other. "Down! 
 down ! deil gae down wi' ye, for I can gae nae further," 
 rejoined Tam; and, throwing off the rope, — for he now 
 stood on the uttermost brink, — a loud scream, and, after 
 a fearful pause of half a minute, a deep hollow sound from 
 the bottom told all the rest. " Willawins for poor Jock 
 Watson," exclaimed Tam Poison ; " win the gude five 
 pounds wha like, they'll no be won, it seems, by either him 
 or me." 
 
 The party of kelp-burners were proceeding this morning 
 to the scene of their labors, through a heavy fog ; and as 
 they reached the furnace one by one, they sat down fi-ont- 
 ing it, to rest them after their walk, and wait the coming 
 up of the others. Tam Poison had already taken his place 
 among the rest; and there were but two amissing, the 
 man whose dead body now lay at the foot of the cliff, and 
 a serious elderly person, one of his neighbors, whose com- 
 pany he sometimes courted. At length they were both 
 seen as if issuing out of a dense cloud of mist. 
 
 " Yonder they come," said one of the kelp-burners ; 
 "but gudesake ! only look how little Jock Watson looms 
 through the fog as mickle's a giant." 
 
 " Jock Watson ! " exclaimed Poison, starting to his feet, 
 and )-aising his hands to his eyes, with a wild expression 
 of bewilderment and terror, "aye, murdered Jock Watson, 
 as sure as death ! " 
 
 The figure shrank into the mist as he spoke, and the old 
 man was seen approaching alone. 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 315 
 
 " What hae ye done to Jock Watson, Donald? " was the 
 eager query put to him, on his coming up, by half a dozen 
 voices at once. 
 
 " Ask Tam Poison there," said the old man. " I tapped 
 at Jock's window as I passed, and found he had set out wi' 
 Tam half an hour afore daybreak." 
 
 " Oh," said Tam, " it was poor murdered Jock Watson's 
 ghaist we saw ; it was Jock's ghaist." And so he divulged 
 the whole story. 
 
 The British Linen Company had been established in Ed- 
 inburgh about the year 1746, chiefly with a view, as the 
 name implies, of forwarding the interests of the linen trade; 
 and in a few years after, Mr. Forsyth, whose character as 
 an active and successful man of business was beginning to 
 be appreciated in more than the north of Scotland, was 
 chosen as the Company's agent for that extensive tract of 
 country which intervenes between the Pentland Frith and 
 the Frith of Beauly. The linen trade was better suited at 
 this time to the state of the country and the previously- 
 acquired habits of the people than any other could have 
 been. All the linens worn in Scotland, with the exception, 
 perhaps, of some French cambrics, were of home manufac- 
 ture. Every female was skilled in spinning, and every 
 little hamlet had its weaver, who, if less a master of his 
 profession than some of the weavers of our manufacturing 
 towns in the present day, was as decidedly superior to our 
 provincial weavers. A knowledge of what may be termed 
 the higher departments of the craft was spread more equally 
 over the country than now ; and, as is always the case be- 
 fore the minuter subdivisions of labor take place, if less 
 could be produced by the trade as a body, the average 
 ability ranked higher in individuals. In establishing the 
 linen trade, therefore, as the skill essential to carrying it on 
 
316 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 already existed, it was but necessary that motives should 
 be held out sufficiently powerful to awaken the industry 
 of the people ; and these were furnished by Mr. Forsyth, 
 in the form of remunerative prices for their labor. The 
 town of Cromarty, from its central situation and excellent 
 harbor, was chosen as the depot of the establishment. 
 The flax was brought in vessels from Holland, prepared 
 for the spinners in Cromarty, and then distributed by the 
 boats of Mr. Forsyth along the shores of the Friths of Dor- 
 noch, Dingwall, and Beauly, and northwards as far as Wick 
 and Thurso. At the commencement of the trade the distaff 
 and spindle was in extensive use all over the north of Scot- 
 land, and the spinning-wheel only partially introduced into 
 some of the towns; but the more primitive implement 
 was comparatively slow and inefficient^ and Mr. Forsyth, 
 the more effectually to supplant it by the better machine, 
 made it an express condition with all whom he employed 
 for a second year, that at least one wheel should be intro- 
 duced into every family. He, besides, hired skilful spin- 
 ners to go about the country teaching its use ; and so 
 effectual were his measures that, in about ten years after 
 the commencement of the trade, the distaff and spindle 
 had almost entirely disappeared. There are parts of the 
 remote Highlands, however, in which it is still in use ; and 
 the writer, when residing in a wild district of western 
 Ross, which borders on the Atlantic, has repeatedly seen 
 the Highland women, as they passed to and from the shore, 
 at once bending under the weight of the creel with which 
 they manured their lands, and ceaselessly twirling the 
 spindle as it hung beneath the staff. 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 317 
 
 CHAPTER- VI. 
 
 The less we know as to things that can be done, the less scepti- 
 cal are we as to things that cannot. — Colton. 
 
 About five years after the establishment of the linen 
 trade, Mr. Forsyth became a shipowner; and as he had 
 made it a rule never to provide himself from other coun- 
 tries with what could be produced by the workmen of his 
 own, his first vessel, a fine large sloop, was built at Fort- 
 rose. There had been ship-builders established at Cro- 
 marty at a much earlier period. Among the designations 
 attached to names, which we find in the older records of 
 the place, there is none of more frequent occurrence than 
 that of ship-carpenter. There are curious stories, too, con- 
 nected with ship-launches, which serve to mark the remote 
 period at which these must have occurred. An occasion 
 of this kind, at a time when the knowledge of mechanics 
 was more imperfect and much less general than at present, 
 was always one of great uncertainty. Accidents were con- 
 tinually occurring ; and superstition found room to mingle 
 her mysterious horrors with the doubts and fears with 
 which it was naturally attended. Witches and the Evil 
 Eye were peculiarly dreaded by the carpenter on the day 
 of a launch ; and it is said of one of the early Cromarty 
 launches that, the vessel having stopped short in the middle 
 of her course, the master-carpenter was so irritated with a 
 reputed witch among the spectators, to whom he attributed 
 27* 
 
318 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 the accident, that he threw her down and broke her arm. 
 A single anecdote, though of a lighter cast, preserves the 
 recollection of Mr. Forsyth's ship-building at Fortrose. 
 The vessel was nearly finished ; and a half-witted knave, 
 named Tam Reid, who had the knack of tricking every- 
 body, — even himself at times, — was despatched by Mr. 
 Forsyth with a bottle of turpentine to the painters. Tam, 
 however, who had never more than heard of wi)ie, and 
 who seems to have taken it for granted that the bottle he 
 carried contained nothing worse, contrived to drink the 
 better half of it by the way, and was drugged almost to 
 death for his pains. When afterwards humorously charged 
 by Mr. Forsyth with breach of trust, and urged to confess, 
 truly, whether he had actually drunk the whole of the 
 missing turpentine, he is said to have replied, in great 
 wrath, that he " widna gie a'e glass o' whiskey for a' the 
 wine i' the warld." 
 
 Mr. Forsyth's vessels were at first employed almost ex- 
 clusively in the Dutch trade ; but the commerce of the 
 country gradually shifted its old channels, and in his latter 
 days they were engaged mostly in trading between the 
 north of Scotland and the ports of Leith, London, and 
 Newcastle. There are curious traditionary anecdotes of 
 his sailors still afloat among the people, which illustrate 
 the credulous and imaginative character of the age. Sto- 
 ries of this class may be regarded as the fossils of history ; 
 they show the nature and place of the formation in which 
 they occur. The Scotch sailors of ninety years ago were 
 in many respects a very diiferent sort of persons from the 
 sailors of the present day. They formed one of the most 
 religious classes of the community. There were even found- 
 ers of sects among them. The too famous John Gibb was 
 a sailor of Borrowstounness ; and the worthy Scotchman 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 319 
 
 who remarked to Peter Walker that " the ill of Scotland 
 he found everywhere, but the good of Scotland nowhere 
 save at home," was a ;Sailor too. Mr. Forsyth was much 
 attached to the seamen of this old and venerable class, and 
 a last remnant of them might }^ found in his vessels when 
 they had become extin,ct everywhere else. On the break- 
 ing out of the revolutionary war, his sloop, the Elizabeth, 
 was boarded when lying ^t anchor in one of our Highland 
 lochs by a press-gang fi-om a king's vessel, and the crew, 
 who chanced to be all under hatches at the time, were 
 summoned on deck. First appeared the ancient weather- 
 beaten master, a person in his grand climacteric ; then 
 came Saunders M'lver, the mate, a man who had twice 
 sailed round the world about h^lf a century before ; then 
 came decent Thomas Grant, who had been an, elder of the 
 kirk for more than forty years ; and last of all came old, 
 gray-headed Robert Hossack, a still older man than any 
 of the others. " Good heavens ! " exclaimed the ofScer 
 who commanded the party, " here, lads, are the four sailors 
 who manned the ark alive still." I need hardly add, that 
 on this occasion he left all her crew to the Elizabeth. 
 
 Some of the stories of Mr. Forsyth's sailors may serve to 
 enliven my narrative. The master of the Elizabeth, in one 
 of his Dutch voyages, when on the eve of sailing for Scot- 
 land, had gone into a tavei-n with the merchant from whom 
 he had purchased his cargo, and was shown by mistake 
 into a room in which there lay an old woman ill of a ma- 
 lignant fever. The woman regarded him with a long and 
 ghastly stare, which haunted him all the evening after; 
 and during the night he was seized by the fever. He sent 
 for a physician of the place. His vessel was bound for sea 
 he said, and the crew would be wholly unable to bring her 
 home without him. Had he no medicine potent enough 
 
320 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 to arrest the progress of the disease for about a week? 
 The physician replied in the affirmative, and prescribed 
 with apparent confidence. The master quitted his bed on 
 the strength of the prescription, and the vessel sailed for 
 Cromarty. A storm arose, and there was not a seaman 
 aboard who outwrought or outwatched the master. He 
 began to droop, however, as the weather moderated, and 
 his strength had so failed him on reaching Cromarty, that 
 his sailors had to carry him home in a litter. The fever 
 had returned, and more than six weeks elapsed after his 
 arrival ere he had so far recovered from it as to be able to 
 leave his bed. The story is, I believe, strictly true ; but 
 in accounting, in the present day, for the main fact which 
 it supplies, we would perhaps be inclined to attribute less 
 than our fathers did to the skill of the physician, and 
 more to the force of imagination and to those invigorating 
 energies which a sense of danger awakens. 
 
 Old Saunders M'lver, the mate of the Elizabeth, was one 
 of the most devout and excellent men of the place. There 
 was in some degree, too, a sort of poetical interest attached 
 to him, from the dangers which he had encountered and 
 the strange sights which he had seen. He had seen smoke 
 and flame bursting out of the sea in the far Pacific, and 
 had twice visited those remote parts of the world which 
 lie directly under our feet, — a fact which all his townsmen 
 credited, for Saunders himself had said it, but which few 
 of them could understand. In one of his long voyages, 
 the crew with whom he sailed were massacred by some of 
 the wild natives of the Indian Archipelago, and he alone 
 escaped by secreting himself in the rigging, and from 
 thence slipping unobserved into one of the boats, and then 
 cutting her loose. But he was furnished with neither oars 
 nor sail; and it was not until he had been tossed at the 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 321 
 
 mercy of the tides and winds of the Indian Ocean for 
 nearly a week, that he was at length picked up by a Euro- 
 pean vessel. So powerfully was he impressed on this oc- 
 casion, that it is said he was never lafter seen to smile. He, 
 was a grave and somewhat hard-favored man, powerful in 
 bone and muscle even after he had considerably turned his 
 sixtieth year, and much respected for his inflexible integ- 
 rity and the depth of his religious feelings. Both Saunders 
 and his wife — a person of equal worth with himself — were 
 especial favorites with Mr. Porteous of Kilmuir, ' — a min- 
 ister of the same class with the Pedens, Renwicks, and 
 Cargills of a former age, — and on one occasion, when the 
 sacrament was held in his parish, and Saunders was absent 
 on one of his Dutch voyages, Mrs. M'lver was an inmate 
 of the manse. A tremendous storm burst out in the night- 
 time ; and the poor woman lay awake, listening in utter 
 terror to the fearful roarings of the wind, as it howled in 
 the chimneys and shook the casements and the door. At 
 length, when she could lie still no longer, she arose, and, 
 creeping along the passage to the door of the minister's 
 chamber, " O Mr. Porteous ! " she said, " Mr. Porteous, 
 do ye no hear that, and poor Saunders on his way back 
 fra Holland ! Oh, rise, rise, and ask the strong help o' your 
 Master!" The minister accordingly rose, and entered his 
 closet. The Elizabeth, at this critical moment, was driv- 
 ing onwards, through the spray and darkness, along the 
 northern shore of the Moray Frith. The fearful skerries 
 of Shandwick, where so many gallant vessels have per- 
 ished, were close at hand, and the increasing roll of the 
 sea showed the gradual shallowing of the water. M'lver 
 and his old townsman Robert Hossack stood together at 
 the binnacle. An immense wave came rolling befiind, and 
 they had but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold 
 
822 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 when it broke over them half-mast high, sweeping spars, 
 bulwarks, cordage, all before it in its course. It passed, 
 but the vessel rose not. Her deck remained buried in a 
 sheet of foam, and she seemed settling down by the head. 
 There was a frightful pause. First, however, the bowsprit 
 and the beams of the windlass began to emerge ; next the 
 forecastle, — the vessel seemed as if shaking herself from 
 the load, — and then the whole deck appeared, as she 
 went tilting over the next wave. " There are still more 
 mercies in store for us,'' said M'lver, addressing his com- 
 panion ; " she floats still." "O Saunders! Saunders!" ex- 
 claimed Robert, " there was surely some God's soul at 
 work for us, or she would never have cowed yon." 
 
 There is a somewhat similar story told of two of Mr. 
 Forsyth's boatmen. They were brothers, and of a much 
 lighter character than Saunders and his companion ; but 
 their mother, who was old and bed-ridden, was a person 
 of singular piety. They had left her, when setting out on 
 one of their Caithness voyages, in so low a state that they 
 could scarce entertain any hope of again seeing her in life. 
 On their return they were wrecked on the rocky coast of 
 Tarbat, and it was with much difficulty that they suc- 
 ceeded in saving their lives. " O brother, lad ! " said the 
 one to the other, on reaching the shore, "our poor old 
 mither is gone at last, or yon widna have happened us. 
 We maun just be learning to pray for ourselves." And 
 the inference, says the story, was correct ; for the good old 
 woman had died about half an hour before the accident 
 occurred. 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 323 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Soft as the memory of buried love, 
 Pure as the prayer which childhood wafts above, 
 Was she. 
 
 Bykon. 
 
 TJnmaekied men of warm affections and social habits 
 begin often, after turning their fortieth year, to feel them- 
 selves too much alone in the world for happiness, and to 
 look forward with more of fear than of desire to a solitary 
 and friendless old age. William Forsyth, a man of the 
 kindliest feelings, on completing his forty-first year was 
 still a widower. His mother had declined into the vale of 
 life ; his two brothers had settled down, as has been al- 
 ready related, in distant parts of the country. There were 
 occasional gaps, too, occurring in the circle in which he 
 moved. Disease, decay, and accident kept up the continual 
 draught of death ; friends and familiar faces were drop- 
 ping away and disappearing ; and he began to find that 
 he was growing too solitary for his own peace. The 
 wound, however, which his affections had sustained, rather 
 more than ten years before, had been gradually closing 
 under the softening influence, of time. The warmth of his 
 affections and the placidity of his temper fitted him in a 
 peculiar manner for domestic happiness; and it was his 
 great good fortune to meet, about this period, with a lady 
 through whom, all unwittingly on her own part, he was 
 taught to regard himself as no longer solitary in the 
 
824 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 present, nor devoid of hope for the future. He was happy 
 in his attachment, and early in 1764 she became his wife. 
 
 Miss Elizabeth Grant, daughter of the Rev. Patrick 
 Grant of Duthel, in Strathspey, and of Isabella Kerr of 
 Ruthven Manse, was born in Duthel in the year 1742, and 
 removed to Nigg, in Ross-shire, about twelve years after, 
 on the induction of her father into that parish. Her char- 
 acter was as little a common one as that of Mr. Forsyth 
 himself. Seldom indeed does nature produce a finer in- 
 tellect, never a warmer or more compassionate heart. It 
 is rarely that, the female mind educates itself. The genius 
 of the sex is rather fine than robust ; it partakes rather of 
 the delicacy of the myrtle than the strength of the oak, 
 and care ahd culture seem essential to its full develop- 
 ment. There have been instances, however, though rare, 
 of women working their almost unassisted way from the 
 lower to the higher levels of intelligence ; and the history 
 of this lady, had she devoted her time more to the regis- 
 tration of her thoughts than to the duties of her station, 
 would have furnished one of these. She was, in the best 
 sense of the term, an original thinker; one of the few whose 
 innate vigor of mind carry them in search of truth beyond 
 the barriers of the conventional modes of thought. "But 
 strong good sense, rising almost to the dignity of philoso- 
 phy, a lively imagination, and a just and delicate taste, 
 united to very extensive knowledge and nice discernment, 
 though these rendered her conversation the delight of the 
 circle in which she moved, formed but the subordinate 
 excellences of her character. She was one of the truly 
 good, the friend of her species and of her God. A diary, 
 found among her papers after her death, and now in the 
 possession of her friends, shows that the transcript of duty 
 which her life aflfbrded was carefully collated every day 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 326 
 
 with the perfect copy with which Revelation supplied her, 
 and her every thought, word, and action, laid open to the 
 eye of Omniscience. In the expressive language of Scrip- 
 ture, she was one of those " who walk with God." There 
 was nought, however, of harshness or austerity in her 
 religion. It formed the graceful and appropriate garb of a 
 tender-hearted and beautiful woman of engaging manners 
 and high talent. With this lady Mr. Forsyth enjoyed all 
 of good and happiness that the married state can afford, 
 for the long period of thirty-six years. 
 
 His life was a busy one ; his very pleasures were all of 
 the active kind ; and yet, notwithstanding his numerous 
 engagements, it was remarked that there were few men 
 who contrived to find more spare time than Mr. Forsyth, 
 or who could devote half a day more readily to the service 
 of a friend or neighbor. But his leisure hours were hardly 
 and fairly earned. He rose regularly, winter and summer, 
 between five and six o'clock, lighted his office-fire, if the 
 weather was cold, wrote out his letters for the day, and 
 brought up his books to the latest period. Ere the family- 
 was summoned to breakfast he was generally well nigh the 
 conclusion of his mercantile labors. The family then 
 met -for morning prayer; for, like the Cotter in Burns, 
 Mr. Forsyth was the priest of his household, and led in 
 their devotions morning and evening. An hour or two 
 more spent in his office set him free for the remainder of 
 the day from labor on his own behalf; the rest he devoted 
 to the good of others and his own amusement. Once a 
 month he held a regular Justice of Peace Court, in which 
 he was occasionally assisted by some of the neighboring 
 proprietors, whose names, like his own, were on the com- 
 mission of the peace. But the age was a rude one ; and 
 differences were so frequently occurring among the people 
 28 
 
326 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 that there were few days in which his time was not occu- 
 pied from twelve till two in his honored capacity of 
 peace-maker for the place. The evening was more his own. 
 Sometimes he superintended the lading or imlading of his 
 vessels ; sometimes he walked out into the country to visit 
 his humble friends in the landward part of the parish, and 
 see how they were getting on with their spinning. There 
 was not a good old man or woman within six miles of Cro- 
 marty, however depressed by poverty, that Mr. Forsyth 
 did not reckon among the number of his acquaintance. 
 
 Of all his humble friends, however, one of the most re- 
 spected, and most frequently visited by him, was a pious, 
 though somewhat eccentric, old woman, who lived all 
 alone in a little solitary cottage beside the sea, rather more 
 than two miles to the west of the town, and who was 
 known to the people of the place as Meggie o' the Shore. 
 Meggie was one of the truly excellent, — a person in whom 
 the Durhams and Rutherfords of a former age would have 
 delighted. There was no doubt somewhat of harshness 
 in her opinions, and of credulity in her beliefs ; but never 
 were there opinions or beliefs more conscientiously held ; 
 and the general benevolence of her disposition served won- 
 derfully to soften in practice all her theoretical asperities. 
 She was ailing and poor; and as she was advancing in 
 yeais, and her health became more broken, her little earn- 
 ings — for she was one of Mr. Forsyth's spinners — were 
 still growing less. Meggie, however, had "come of decent 
 people," though their heads had all been laid low in the 
 churchyard long ere now; and though she was by far too 
 orthodox to believe, with the son of Sirach, that it "is 
 better to die than to beg," it was not a thing to be thought 
 of that she should do dishonor to the memory of the 
 departed by owing a single meal to the charity of the 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 327 
 
 parish. She toiled on, therefore, as she best could, content 
 with the merest pittance, and complained to no one. Mr. 
 Forsyth, who thoroughly understood the character, and 
 appreciated its value, and who knew, withal, how wretch- 
 edly inadequate Meggie's earnings were to her support, 
 contrived on one occasion to visit her early, and to stay 
 late, in the hope of being invited to eat with her ; for 
 in her more prosperous days there were few of her vis- 
 itors suffered to leave her cottage until, as she herself 
 used to express it, they had first broken bread. At this 
 time, however, there was no sign of the expected invita- 
 tion ; and it was not until Mr. Forsyth had at length risen 
 to come away that Meggie asked him hesitatingly whether 
 he would " no tak' some refreshment afore he went ?" 
 
 "I have just been waiting to say yes," said the mer- 
 chant, sitting down again. Meggie placed before him a 
 half-cake of barley-bread and a jug of water. 
 
 " It was the feast of the promise," she said ; " ' thy bread 
 shall be given thee, and thy water shall be sure.' " 
 
 The merchant saw that, in her effort to be hospitable, 
 she had exhausted her larder ; and, without remarking that 
 the portion was rather a scanty one, partook with appar- 
 ent relish of his share of the half-cake. But he took 
 especial care from that time forward till the death of Meg- 
 gie, which did not take place till about eight years after, 
 that her feasts should not be so barely and literally feasts 
 of the promise. 
 
 Mr. Forsyth, in the midst of his numerous engagements, 
 found leisure for a few days every year to visit his rela- 
 tives in Moray. The family of his paternal grandfather, 
 a farmer of Elginshire, had been a numerous one ; and he 
 had an uncle settled in Elgin as a merchant and general 
 dealer who was not a great many years older than him- 
 
328 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 self. For the judgment of this gentleman Mr. Forsyth 
 entertained the highest respect, and he rarely engaged in 
 any new undertaking without first consulting him. In- 
 deed, a general massiveness of intellect and force of 
 character seemed characteristic of the family, and these 
 qualities the well-known work of this gentleman's sou, 
 " Forsyth's Italy," serves happily to illustrate. There is 
 perhaps no book of travels in the language in which the 
 thoughts lie so closely, or in the perusal of which the 
 reader, after running over the first few chapters, gives 
 himself up so entirely to the judgment of the author. The 
 work is now in its fourth edition ; and a biographical me. 
 moir of the writer, appended to it by his younger brother, 
 Mr. Isaac Forsyth of Elgin, shows how well and pleasingly 
 the latter gentleman could have written had he employed 
 in literature those talents which have rendered him, like 
 his father and his cousin, eminently successful in business. 
 When on one of his yearly visits, Mr. Forsyth inquired 
 of his uncle whether he could not point out to him, among 
 his juvenile acquaintance in Elgin, some steady young lad, 
 of good parts, whom he might engage as an assistant in 
 his business at Cromarty. Its more mechanical details, 
 he said, were such as he himself could perhaps easily 
 master ; but then, occupying his time as they did, without 
 employing his mind, they formed a sort of drudgery of 
 the profession, for which he thought it might prove in the 
 end a piece of economy to pay. His uncle acquiesced in 
 the remark, and recommended to his notice an ingenious 
 young lad who had just left school, after distinguishing 
 himself by his attainments as a scholar, and who was now 
 living unemployed with some friends at Elgin. The lad 
 was accordingly introduced to Mr. Forsyth, who was 
 much pleased with his appearance and the simple ingenu- 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 329 
 
 ousness of his manners, and on his return he brought him 
 with him to Cromarty. 
 
 Charles Grant, for so the young man was called, soon 
 became much a favorite with Mr. Forsyth and his family, 
 and was treated by them rather as a son than a dependant. 
 He had a taste for reading, and Mr. Forsyth furnished him 
 with books. He introduced him, too, to all his more in- 
 telligent and more influential friends, and was alike liberal 
 in assisting him, as the case chanced to require, with his 
 purse and his advice. The young man proved himself em- 
 inently worthy of the kindness he received. He possessed 
 a mind singularly well balanced in all its faculties, moral 
 and intellectual. He added great quickness to great perse- 
 verance ; much warmth and kindliness of feeling to an un- 
 yielding rectitude of principle ; and strong good sense to 
 the poetical temperament. He reraainec^with Mr. Foi-syth 
 for about five years, and then parted from him for some 
 better appointment in London, which he owed to his 
 friendship. It would be no unprofitable or uninteresting 
 task to trace his after course ; but the outlines of his his- 
 tory are already known to most of my readers. His ex- 
 tensive knowledge and very superior talents rendered his 
 services eminently useful; his known integrity pi-ocured 
 him respect and confidence ; the goodness of his disposition 
 endeared him to an extensive and ever-widening circle 
 of friends. He rose gradually through a series of employ- 
 ments, each, in progression, more important and honorable 
 than the one which had preceded it. He filled for many 
 years the chair of the honorable East India Company's 
 Court of Directors, and represented the county of Inver- 
 ness in several successive parliaments ; and of two of his 
 sons, one has had the dignity of knighthood conferred 
 upon him for his public services, and the other occupies aq 
 28* 
 
330 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 honorable, because well-earned, place among the British 
 peerage. Mr. Grant continued through life to cherish the 
 memory of his benefactor, and to show even in old age 
 the most marked and assiduous attentions to the surviving 
 members of his family. He procured writerships for two 
 of his sons, John and Patrick Forsyth; and, at a time 
 when his acquaintance extended over all the greater mer- 
 chants of Europe, he used to speak of him as a man whose 
 judgment and probity, joined to his singularly liberal views 
 and truly generous sentiments, would have conferred honor 
 on the magisterial chair of the first commercial city of 
 the world. It was when residii^ in the family of Wil- 
 liam Forsyth that Mr. Grant first received those serious 
 impressions of the vital importance of religion which so 
 influenced his conduct through life, and to which he is 
 said to have gi^en expression, when on the verge of 
 another world, in one of the finest hymns in the language. 
 Need I apologize to the reader for introducing it here ? 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 With years oppressjd^with sorrows worn. 
 Dejected, harassed, sick, forlorn, 
 
 To thee, God I I pray ; 
 To thee these withered hands arise; 
 To thee I lift these failing eyes; — 
 
 Oh, cast me not away. 
 
 Thy mercy heard my infant prayer; 
 Thy love, with all a mother's care. 
 
 Sustained my childish days; 
 Thy goodness watched my ripening youth, 
 And formed my soul to love thy truth, 
 
 And filled my heart with praise. 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 331 
 
 O! Saviour, has thy grace declined? 
 Can years affect the Eternal Mind, 
 
 Or time its love decay ? 
 A thousand ages pass thy sight, 
 And all their long and weary flight 
 
 Is gone like yesterday. 
 
 Then, even in age and grief, thy name 
 Shall still my languid heart inflame. 
 
 And how my faltering knee. 
 O, yet this bosom feels the fire. 
 This trembling hand and drooping lyre 
 
 Have yet a strain for thee. 
 
 Yes, broken, tuneless, still, Lord ! 
 This voice, transported, shall record 
 
 Thy bounty, tried so long; 
 Till, sinking slow, with calm decay, 
 Its feeble murmurs melt away 
 
 Into seraphic song. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Good is no good but if it be spend; 
 God giveth good for none other end. 
 
 Spenser. 
 
 Thb year 1772 was a highly important one to the people 
 of Cromarty. By far the greater part of the parish is oc- 
 cupied by one large and very valuable property, which, 
 after remaining in the possession of one family for nearly 
 a thousand years, had passed in little more than a century 
 through a full half-dozen. It was purchased in the latter 
 
332 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 part of this year by George Ross, a native of Ross-shire, 
 who had realized an immense fortune in England as an 
 army agent. He was one of those benefactors of the 
 species who can sow liberally in the hope of a late harvest 
 for others to reap ; and the townspeople, even the poorest 
 and least active, were soon made to see that they had got 
 a neighbor who would suffer them to be idle or wretched 
 no longer. 
 
 He found in William Forsyth a man after his own heart ; 
 one with whom to concert and advise, and who entered 
 warmly into all his well-laid schemes for awakening the 
 energies and developing the yet untried resources of the 
 country. The people seemed more than half asleep around 
 them. The mechanic spent well-nigh two thirds of his 
 time in catching fish and cultivating his little croft ; the 
 farmer raised from his shapeless party-colored patches, of 
 an acre or two apiece, the same sort of half crops that had 
 satisfied his grandfather. The only trade in the country 
 was originated and carried on by Mr. Forsyth, and its only 
 manufacture the linen one which he superintended. In 
 this state of things, it was the part assigned to himself 
 by the benevolent and patriotic Agent, now turned of 
 seventy, to revolutionize and give a new spirit to the 
 whole ; and such was his untiring zeal and statesman-like 
 sagacity that he fully succeeded. 
 
 One of his first gifts to the place was a large and commo- 
 dious pier for the accommodation of trading vessels. He 
 then built an extensive brewery, partly with the view to 
 check the trade in smuggling, which prevailed at this time 
 in the north of Scotland to an enormous extent, and partly 
 to open a new market to the farmers for the staple grain of 
 the country. The project succeeded ; and the Agent's ex- 
 cellent ale supplanted in no small measure, from Aberdeen 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 333 
 
 to John O'Groat's, the gins and brandies of the Continent. 
 He then established a hempen manufactory, which has 
 ever since employed about two hundred people within its 
 walls, and fully twice that number without ; and set on 
 foot a trade in pork, which has paid the rents of half the 
 widows' cottages in the country for the last forty years, 
 and is still carried on by the traders of the place to an ex- 
 tent of from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds annually. 
 He established a nail and spade manufactory ; brought 
 women from England to instruct the young girls in the art 
 of working lace; provided houses for the poor; presented 
 the town with a neat, substantial building, the upper part 
 of which serves as a council-room, and the lower as a prison ; 
 and built for the accommodation of the poor Highlanders, 
 who came thronging into the town to w.ork on his lands or 
 in his manufactories, a handsome Gaelic chapel. He set 
 himselj^ too, to initiate his tenantry in the art of rearing 
 wheat ; and finding them wofuUy unwilling to become 
 wiser on the subject, he tried the force of example, by tak- 
 ing an extensive farm under his own management, and 
 conducting it on the most approved principles of modern 
 agriculture. It is truly wonderful how much may be 
 effected by the well-directed energies of one benevolent 
 and vigorous mind. It is to individuals, not masses, that 
 the species owe their advancement in the scale of civiliza- 
 tion and rationality. George Ross was a man far advanced 
 in life when he purchased the lands of Cromarty, and he 
 held them for but fourteen years, for he died in 1786, at 
 the great age of eighty-five ; and yet in these few years, 
 which might be regarded as but the fag-end of a busy life, 
 he did more for the north of Scotland than had been ac- 
 complished by all its other proprietors put together since 
 the death of President Forbes. 
 
S84 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Mr. Forsyth was ever ready to second the benevolent 
 and well-laid schemes of the Agent. He purchased shares 
 in his hempen manufactory, — for Mr. Ross, the more 
 widely to extend its interests, had organized a company to 
 carry it on — and took a fine snug farm in the neighborhood 
 of the town into his own hands, to put into practice all he 
 had learned of the new system of farming. Agriculture 
 was decidedly one of the most interesting studies of the 
 period. It was still a field of experiment and discovery ; 
 new principles, little dreamed of by our ancestors, were 
 elicited every year ; and though there were hundreds of 
 intelligent minds busy in exploring it, much remained a 
 sort of terra incognita notwithstanding. Mr. Forsyth 
 soon became a zealous and successful farmer, and spent 
 nearly as much of his evenings in his fields as he did of his 
 mornings in his counting-house. The farmers around him 
 were wedded to their old prejudices, but the merchant 
 had nothing to unlearn ; and though his neighbors smiled 
 at first to see hira rearing green crops of comparatively 
 little value from lands for which he paid a high rent, or, 
 more inexplicable still, paying the rent and suffering the 
 lands to lie fallow, they could not avoid being convinced 
 at last that he was actually raising more corn than any 
 of themselves. Though essentially a practical man, and 
 singularly sober and judicious in all his enterprises, his 
 theoretical speculations were frequently of a bolder char- 
 acter ; and he had delighted in reasoning on the causes 
 of the various phenomena with which his new study pre- 
 sented him. The exhaustive properties of some kinds 
 of crop ; the restorative qualities of others ; the mys- 
 teries of the vegetative pabulum ; its well-marked distinct- 
 ness from the soil which contains it ; how, after one variety 
 of grain has appropriated its proper nourishment, and then 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 335 
 
 languished for lack of sustenance, another variety continues 
 to draw its food from the same tract, and after that, per- 
 haps, yet another variety more ; how, at length, the pro- 
 ductive matter is so exhausted that all is barrenness, until, 
 after the lapse of years, it is found to have accumulated 
 again, — all these, with the other mysteries of vegetation, 
 furnished him with interesting subjects of thought and 
 inquiry. One of the best and largest of his fields was situ- 
 ated on the edge of that extensive tract of tahle-land which 
 rises immediately above the town, and commands so pleas- 
 ing a prospect of the bay and the opposite shore; and from 
 time immemorial the footpath which skirts its lower edge, 
 and overlooks the sea, had been a favorite promenade of 
 the inhabitants. What, however, was merely a footpath in 
 the early part of each season, grew broad enough for a car- 
 riage-road before autumn ; and much of Mr. Forsyth's best 
 braird was trampled down and destroyed every year. His 
 ploughman would fain have excluded the walkers, and 
 hinted at the various uses of traps and spring-guns ; at any 
 rate, he said, he was determined to build up the slap ; but 
 the merchant, though he commended his zeal, negatived 
 the proposal ; and so the slap was suffered to remain un- 
 built. On sometimes meeting with parties of the more 
 juvenile saunterers, he has gravely cautioned them to avoid 
 his ploughman Donald M'Candie. Donald, he would say, 
 was a cross-grained old man, as they all knew, and might 
 both frighten them and hurt himself in running after them. 
 Mr. Forsyth retained the farm until his death ; and it 
 shows in some little degree the estimation in which he was 
 held by the people, that his largest field, though it has 
 repeatedly changed its tenant since then, still retains the 
 name of Mr. Forsyth's Park. 
 
 Shortly after he had engaged with the farm, Mr. For- 
 
336 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 syth built for himself a neat and very commodious house, 
 which, at the time of its erection, was beyond comparison 
 the best in the place, and planted a large and very fine 
 garden. Both serve to show how completely this mer- 
 chant of the eighteenth century had anticipated the im- 
 provements of the nineteenth. There are not loftier nor 
 better-proportioned rooms in the place, larger windows, nor 
 easier stairs ; and his garden is such a one as would satisfy 
 an Englishman of the present day. These are perhaps but 
 little matters. They serve, however, to show the taste and 
 judgment of the man. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 'Tis not that rural sports alone invite, 
 But all the grateful country breathes delight; 
 Here blooming Health exerts her gentle reign, 
 And strings the sinews of the industrious swain. 
 
 Gat. 
 
 I AM not of opinion that the people of the north of Scot- 
 land are less happy in the present age than in the age or 
 two which immediately preceded it ; but I am certain they 
 are not half so merry. We may not have less to amuse us 
 than our fathers had ; but our amusements somehow seem 
 less hearty, and are a great deal less noisy, and, instead of 
 interesting the entire community, are confined to insulated 
 parties and single individuals. A whole hecatcomb of wild 
 games have been sacrificed to the genius of trade and the 
 wars of the French Revolution. The age of holidays is 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 387 
 
 clean gone by ; the practical joke has been extinct for the 
 last fifty years ; and we have to smuggle the much amuse- 
 ment which we still contrive to elicit from out the eccen- 
 tricities of our neighbors, as secretly as if it were the 
 subject of a tax. 
 
 In the early and more active days of Mr. Forsyth, the 
 national and manly exercise of golf was the favorite amuse- 
 ment of the gentlemen ; and Cromarty, whose links fur- 
 nished a fitting scene for the sport, was the meeting-place 
 of one of the most respectable golf-clubs in the country. 
 Sir Charles Ross of Balnagown, Sheriff M'Leod of Geanis, 
 Mr. Forsyth and the Lairds of Newhall, Pointzfield, and 
 Braelanguil were -among its members. Both the sheriif 
 and Sir Charles were very powerful men, and good players. 
 It was remarked, however, that neither of them dealt a more 
 skilful or more vigorous blow than Mr. Forsyth, whose 
 frame, though not much above the middle size, was sin- 
 gularly compact and muscular. He excelled, too, in his 
 younger days, in all the other athletic games of the coun- 
 try. Few men threw a longer bowl, or pitched the stone 
 or the bar further beyond the ordinary bound. Every 
 meeting of the golf-players cost him a dinner and a dozen 
 or two of his best wine ; for, invariably, when they had 
 finished their sport for the day, they adjourned to his hos- 
 pitable board, and the evening passed in mirth and jollity. 
 Some of the anecdotes which furnished part of their laugh- 
 ter on these occasions still survive ; and, with the assistance 
 of the wine, they must have served the purpose wonderfully 
 well. All the various casks and boxes used by Mr. For- 
 syth in his trade were marked with his initials W. F., that 
 he might be the better able to identify them. They were 
 sometimes suffered so to accumulate in tber outhouses of 
 the neighboring proprietors, that they met the eye at every 
 29 
 
338 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 turning ; and at no place was this more the case than at 
 Pointzfield. On one occasion a swarm of Mr. Forsyth's 
 bees took flight in the same direction. They flew due west 
 along the shore, followed by a servant, and .turned to the 
 south at the Pointzfield woods, where the pursuer lost 
 sight of them. In about half an hour after, however, a 
 swarm of bees were discovered in the proprietor's garden, 
 and the servant came to claim them in the name of his 
 master. 
 
 " On what pretence ? " demanded the proprietor. 
 
 " Simply," said the man, " because my master lost a 
 swarm to-day, which I continued to follow to the begin- 
 ning of the avenue yonder ; and these cannot be other 
 than his." 
 
 " Nonsense,'' replied the proprietor. " Had they belonged 
 to your master they would have been marked by the W. P., 
 every one of them." 
 
 Eventually, however, Mr. Forsyth got his bees ; but 
 there were few golf-meetings at which the story was not 
 cited against him by way of proof that there were occa- 
 sions when even he, with all his characteristic forethought, 
 could be as careless as other men. 
 
 It was chiefly in his capacity of magistrate, however, 
 that Mr. Forsyth was brought acquainted with the wilder 
 humors of the place. Some of the best jokes of the towns- 
 men were exceedingly akin to felonies ; and as the injured 
 persons were in every case all the angrier for being laughed 
 at, they generally applied for redress to their magistrate. 
 There is a transition stage in society, — a stage between 
 barbarism and civilization, — in which, through one of the 
 unerring instincts of our nature, men employ their sense of 
 the ludicrousiin laughing one another into propriety ; and 
 such was the stage at which society had arrived in the 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 339 
 
 north of Scotland in at least the earlier part of Mr. For- 
 syth's career. Cromarty was, in consequence, a merry little 
 place, though the merriment was much on the one side, and 
 of a wofully selfish character. The young, like those hunt- 
 ing parties of Norway that band together for the purpose 
 of ridding their forests of the bears, used in the long winter 
 evenings to go prowling about the streets in quest of some- 
 thing that might be teased and laughed at ; the old, though 
 less active in the pursuit, — for they kept to their houses, 
 — resembled the huntsmen of the same country who lie in 
 wait for the passing animal on the tops of trees. Their 
 passion for the ludicrous more than rivalled the Athenian 
 rage for the new ; and while each one laughed at his neigh- 
 bor, he took all care to avoid being laughed at in turn. 
 
 The poor fishermen of the place, from circumstances con- 
 nected with their profession, were several degrees lower in 
 the scale of civilization than most of their neighbors. The 
 herring-fishery had not yet taught them to speculate, nor 
 were there Sabbath schools to impart to them the elements 
 of learning and good manners ; and though there might 
 be, perhaps, one of fifty among them possessed of a smat- 
 tering of Latin, it was well if a tithe of the remaining 
 forty-nine had learned to read. . They were, however, a 
 simple, inoffensive race of people, whose quarrels, like their 
 marriages — for they quarrelled often, though at a small 
 expense — were restricted to their own class, and who, 
 though perhaps little acquainted with the higher standards 
 of right, had a code of foolish superstitions, which, strange 
 as it may seem, served almost the same end. They re- 
 spected an oath, in the belief that no one had ever per- 
 jured himself and thriven ; regarded the murderer as ex- 
 posed to the terrible visitations of his victim, and the thief 
 as a person doomed to a down look ; reverenced the Bible 
 
340 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 as a protection from witchcraft, and baptism as a charm 
 against the fairies. Their simplicity, their ignorance, their 
 superstition, laid them open to a thousand petty annoy- 
 ances from the wags of the town. They had a belief, long 
 since extinct, that if, when setting out for the fishing, one 
 should interrogate them regarding their voyage, there was 
 little chance of their getting on with it without meeting 
 with some disaster ; and it was a common trick with the 
 youngsters to run down to the water's edge, just as they, 
 were betaking themselves to their oars, and shout out, 
 " Men, men, where are you going ? " They used, too, to 
 hover about their houses after dark, and play all manner of 
 tricks, such as blocking up their chimney with turf and 
 stealthily filling their water-stoups with salt-water just as 
 they were about setting on their brochan. One of the best 
 jokes of the period seems almost too good to be forgotten. 
 The fairies were in ill repute at the time, and long be- 
 fore, for an ill practice of kidnapping children and annoy- 
 ing women in the straw ; and no class of people could 
 dread them more than fishers. But they were at length 
 cured of their terrors by being laughed at. One evening, 
 when all the men werp setting out for sea, and all the wo- 
 men engaged at the water's edge in handing them their 
 tackle or launching their boats, a party of young fellows, 
 who had watched the opportunity, stole into their cottages, 
 and, disfurnishing the cradleg of all their little tenants, 
 transposed the children of the entire village, leaving a child 
 in the cradle of every mother, but taking care that it should 
 not be her own child. They then hid themselves, amid the 
 ruins of a deserted hovel, to wait the result. Up came the 
 women from the shore ; and, alarmed by the crying of the 
 children and the strangeness of their voices, they went 
 to their cradles and found a changeling in each. The 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 341 
 
 scene that followed baffles description. They shrieked and 
 screamed and clapped their hands ; and, rushing out to 
 the lanes like so many mad creatures, were only unhinged 
 the more to find the calamity so universal. Down came the 
 women of the place, to make inquiries and give advices ; 
 some recommending them to have recourse to the minis- 
 ter, some to procure baskets and suspend the changelings 
 over the fire, — some one thing, some another ; but the 
 poor mothers were regardless of them all. They tossed 
 their arms and shrieked and hallooed ; and the children, 
 who were well-nigh as ill at ease as themselves, added, by 
 their cries, to the confusion and the uproar. A thought 
 struck one of the townswomen. " I suspect, neighbors," 
 she said, " that the loons are at the bottom of this. Let's 
 bring all the little ones into one place, and see whether 
 every mother cannot find her own among them." No 
 sooner said than done ; and peace was restored in a few 
 minutes. Mischievous as the trick was, it had this one 
 efiect, that the fairies were in less repute in Cromarty ever 
 after, and were never more charged with the stealing of 
 children. A popular belief is in no small danger when 
 those who cherished learn to laugh at it, be the laugh 
 raised as it may. 
 
 29* 
 
342 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Blest be that spot, where cheerful guests retire 
 To pause from toil and trim their evening fire; 
 Blest that abode, where want and pain repair. 
 And every stranger finds a ready chair. 
 
 Goldsmith. 
 
 There were two classes of men who had no particular 
 cause of gratitude to Mr. Forsyth. Lawyers, notwithstand- 
 ing his respect for the profession, he contrived to exclude 
 from the place, for no case of dispute or difference ever 
 passed himself, nor was there ever an appeal from his 
 decisions ; and inn-keepers found themselves both robbed 
 of their guests by his hospitality, and in danger of losing 
 their licenses for the slightest irregularity that affected the 
 morals of their neighbors. For at least the last twenty 
 years of his life, his house, from the number of guests which 
 his hospitality had drawn to it, often resembled a crowded 
 inn. Did he meet with a young man of promising talent, 
 however poor, who belonged in any degree to the aristoc- 
 racy of nature, and bade fair to rise above his present level, 
 he was sure of being invited to his table. Did he come in 
 contact with some unfortunate aspirant who had seen bet- 
 ter days, but who in his fall had preserved his character, he 
 was certain of being invited too. Was there a wind-bound 
 vessel in the port, Mr. Forsytli was sure to bring the pas- 
 sengers home with him. Had travellers come to visit the 
 place, Mr. Forsyth could best tell them all what deserved 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 343 
 
 their notice; and nowhere could he tell it half so well as at 
 his own table. Never was there a man who, through the 
 mere indulgence of the kindlier feelings of our nature, con- 
 trived to make himself more friends. The chance visitor 
 spent perhaps a single day under his roof, and never after 
 ceased to esteem the good and benevolent owner. His 
 benevolence, like that of John of Calais in the old romance, 
 extended to even the bodies of the dead ; an interesting 
 instance of which I am enabled to present to the reader. 
 
 Some time in the summer of 1773 or 1774, a pleasure- 
 yacht, the property of that Lord Byron who immediately 
 preceded the poet, cast anchor in the bay of Cromarty, 
 having, according to report, a dying lady on board. A 
 salmon-fisher of the place, named Hossack, a man of singu- 
 lar daring and itnmense personal strength, rowed his little 
 skiff alongside in the course of the day, bringing with him 
 two fine salmon for sale. The crew, however, seemed wild 
 and reckless as that of a privateer or pirate ; and he had no 
 sooner touched the side, than a fellow who stood in the 
 gangway dealt his light skiff so heavy a blow with a boat- 
 hook that he split one of the planks. Hossack seized hold 
 of the pole, wrenched it out of the fellow's grasp, and was 
 in the act of raising it to strike him down, when the master 
 of the yacht, a native of Orkney, came running to the gun- 
 wale, and, apologizing for the offered violence, invited the 
 fisherman aboard. He accordingly climbed the vessel's 
 side, and disposed of his fish. 
 
 Lord Byron, a good-looking man, but rather shabbily 
 dressed, was pacing the quarter-deck. Two proprietors of 
 the country, who had known him in early life, and had come 
 aboard to pay him their respects, were seated on chairs near 
 the stern. But the party seemed an unsocial one. His lord- 
 ship continued to pace the deck, regarding his visitors from 
 
344 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 time to time with an expression singularly repulsive, while 
 the latter had the blank look of men who, expecting a kind 
 reception, are chilled by one freezingly cold. The fisher- 
 man was told by the master, by way of explanation, that 
 his lordship, who had been when at the soundest a re- 
 served man, of very eccentric habits, was now unsettled in 
 mind, and had been so from the time he had killed a gen- 
 tleman in a duel ; and that his madness seemed to be of a 
 kind which, instead of changing, deepens the shades of the 
 natural character. He was informed further, that the sick 
 lady, a Miss Mudie, haS expired that morning; that she 
 was no connection whatever of his lordship, but was 
 merely an acquaintance of the master's, and a native of 
 Orkney, who, having gone to Inverness for the benefit of 
 her health, and becoming worse, had taken the opportunity, 
 in the absence of any more eligible conveyance, of return- 
 ing by Lord Byron's yacht. The master, who seemed to be 
 a plain, warm-hearted sailor, expressed much solicitude re- 
 garding the body. The unfortunate lady had been most 
 respectable herself and most respectably connected, and 
 was anxious that the funeral should be of a kind befitting 
 her character and station ; but then, he had scarce any- 
 thing in his own power, and his lordship would listen to 
 nothing on the subject. "Ah," replied Hossack, "but I 
 know a gentleman who would listen to you, and do some- 
 thing more. I shall go ashore this moment, and tell Mr. 
 Forsyth." 
 
 The fisherman did so, and found he had calculated aright. 
 Mr. Forsyth sent townswomen aboard to dress the corpse, 
 who used to astonish the children of the place for years 
 after by their descriptions of the cabin in which it lay. 
 The days of steamboats had not yet come on, to render 
 such things familiar; and the idea of a room panelled with 
 
THE SCOTCH MEKCHANT. 345 
 
 mirrors, and embossed with flowers of gold, was well suited 
 to fill the young imagination. The body was taken ashore ; 
 and, contrary to one of the best established canons of super- 
 stition, was brought to the house of Mr. Forsyth, from 
 which, on the following day, when he had invited inhab- 
 tants of the place to attend the funeral, it was carried to 
 his own burying-ground, and there interred. And such 
 was the beginning of a friendship between the benevolent 
 merchant and the relatives of the deceased which termina- 
 ted only with the life of the former. Two of his visitors, 
 during the summer of 1795, were a "Major and Mrs. Mudie 
 from Orkney. 
 
 I may mention, in the passing, a somewhat curious 
 circumstance connected with Lord Byron's yacht. She 
 actually sat deep in the water at the 'time with a cargo of 
 contraband goods, most of which were afterwards unloaded 
 near Sinclair's Bay, in Caithness. Hossack, ere he parted 
 from the master, closed a bargain with him for a consider- 
 able quantity of Hollands, and, on being brought astern to 
 the vessel's peak on -the evening she sailed from Cromarty, 
 he found the place filled with kegs, bound together by 
 pairs, and heavy weights attached to facilitate their sink- 
 ing, in the event of their being thrown overboard. It is a 
 curious, but, I believe, well-authenticated fact, that one of 
 the most successful smuggling vessels of the period, on at 
 least the eastern coast of Scotland, was a revenue-cutter 
 provided by government for the suppression of the trade. 
 
 Besides the chance visitors entertained at the hospitable 
 board of the merchant, there were parties of his friends 
 and relatives who spent, almost every summer, a few 
 weeks in his family. The two daughters of his brother, 
 who had removed to England so long before, with the son 
 and daughter of the other brother, who had settled in 
 
346 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Dingwall ; the brother of his first wife, a Major Russell, 
 with the brother and sisters of his second ; his relatives 
 from Elgin ; a nephew who had married into a family of 
 rank in England, and some of his English partners in the 
 hempen manufactory, were among the number of his an- 
 nual visitors. His parties were often such as the most 
 fastidious would have deemed it an honor to have been 
 permitted to join. He has repeatedly entertained at his 
 table his old townsman Duncan Davidson, member of 
 Parliament at the time for the shire of Cromarty, the late 
 Lord Seaforth, Sir James Mackintosh, and his old protege 
 Charles Grant, with the sons of the latter, Charles and 
 Robert. The merchant, when Mr. Grant had quitted Cro- 
 marty for London, was a powerful and active man, in the 
 undiminished vigor of middle life. When he returned, after 
 his long residence in India, he found him far advanced in 
 years, indeed considerably turned of seventy, and, in at 
 least his bodily powers, the mere wreck of his former self. 
 And so affected was the warm-hearted director by the 
 contrast, that, on grasping his hand, he burst into tears. 
 Mr. Forsyth himself, however, saw nothing to regret in 
 the change. He was still enjoying much in his friends 
 and his family ; for his affections remained warm as ever, 
 and he had still enough of activity left to do much good. 
 His judgment as a magistrate was still sound. He had 
 more time, too, than before to devote to the concerns of 
 his neighbors ; for, with the coming on of old age, he had 
 been gradually abridging his business, retaining just enough 
 to keep up his accustomed round of occupation. Had a 
 townsman died in any of the colonies, or in the army or 
 navy, after saving some little money, it was the part of the 
 merchant to recover it for the relatives of the deceased. 
 "Was the son or nephew of some of his humble neighbors 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 347 
 
 trepanned by a recruiting party, — and there were strange 
 arts used for the purpose fifty years ago, — the case was 
 a difficult one indeed if Mr. Forsyth did not succeed in 
 restoring him to his friends. He acted as a sort of general 
 agent for the district, and in every instance acted without 
 fee or reward. The -i-espect in which he was held by the 
 people was shown by the simple title by which he was on 
 every occasion designated. They all spoke of him as " the 
 Maister." " Is the Maister at home ? " or, « Can I see the 
 Maister?" were the queries put to his servants by the 
 townspeople perhaps ten times a day. Masters were be- 
 coming somewhat common in the country at the time, and 
 esquires not a great deal less so ; but the " Maister " was 
 the designation of but one gentleman only, and the people 
 who used the term never forgot what it meant. 
 
 In all his many acts of kindness the merchant was well 
 seconded by his wife, whose singularly compassionate dis- 
 position accorded well with his own. She had among the 
 more deserving poor a certain number to whom she dealt 
 a regular weekly allowance, and who were known to the 
 townspeople as " Mrs. Forsyth's pensioners." Besides, 
 rarely did she suffer a day to pass without the performance 
 of some act of charity in behalf of the others who were 
 without the pale ; and when sickness or distress visited a 
 poor family, she was sure to visit it too. Physicians were 
 by no means so common in the country at the time as 
 they have since become ; and, that she might be the more 
 useful, Mrs. Forsyth, shortly after her marriage, had de- 
 voted herself, like the ladies of an earlier period, to the 
 study of medicine. Her excellent sense more than com- 
 pensated for the irregularity of her training ; and there 
 were few professors of the art of healing in the district 
 whose prescriptions were more implicitly or more success- 
 
348 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 fully followed, or whose medicine-chest was oftener emp- 
 tied and replenished. Mr. Forsyth was by no means a 
 very wealthy man, — his hand had been ever too open for 
 that, — and, besides, as money had been rapidly sinking in 
 value during the whole course of his career as a trader, the 
 gains of his earlier years had to be measured by a grow- 
 ing and therefore depreciating standard. It is a comfort- 
 able fact, however, that no man or family was ever ruined 
 by doing good under the influence of right motives. Mr. 
 Forsyth's little fortune proved quite sufficient for all his 
 charities and all his hospitality. It wore well, like the 
 honest admiral's; and the great bulk of it, though he has 
 been nearly forty years dead, is still in the hands of his 
 descendants. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Good and evil, we know, in the field of this world grow up 
 together almost inseparably. — Milton. 
 
 There are few things more interesting, in either biogra- 
 phy or history, than those chance tide-marks, if I may so 
 express myself, which show us the ebbs and flows of opin- 
 ion, and how very sudden its growth when it sets in on 
 the popular side. Mr. Forsyth was extensively engaged 
 in business when the old hereditary jurisdictions were 
 abolished ; not in compliance with any wish expressed by 
 the people, but by an unsolicited act on the part of the 
 government. Years passed, and he possessed entire all 
 his earlier energies, when he witnessed from one of the 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 349 
 
 windows of his house in Cromarty the procession of a 
 Liberty and Equality Club. The processionists were after- 
 wards put down by the gentlemen of the county, and 
 their leader, a young man of more wit than judgment, sent 
 to the jail of Tain ; but the merchant took no part either 
 for or against them. He merely remarked to one of his 
 friends, that there is as certainly a despotism of the people 
 as of their rulers, and that it is from the better and wiser, 
 not from the lower and more unsettled order of minds, 
 that society need look for whatever is suited to benefit or 
 adorn it. He had heard of the Dundees and Dalziels of a 
 former age, but he had heard also of its Jack Cades and 
 Massaniellos ; and after outliving the atrocities of Robes- 
 pierre and Danton, he found no reason to regard the 
 tyranny of the many with any higher respect than that 
 which he had all along entertained for the tyranny of the 
 few. 
 
 The conversation of Mr. Forsyth was* rather solid than 
 sparkling. He was rather a wise than a witty man. Such, 
 however, was the character of his remarks, that it was the 
 shrewdest and best informed who listened to them with 
 most attention and respect. His powers of observation 
 and reflection were of no ordinary kind. His-life, like old 
 Nestor's, was extended through two whole generations 
 and the greater part of the third, and this, too, in a cen- 
 tury which witnessed more changes in the economy and 
 character of the people of Scotland than any three centu- 
 ries which had gone before. It may not be uninteresting 
 to the reader rapidly to enumerate a few of the more im- 
 portant of these, with their mixed good and evil. A brief 
 summary may serve to show us that, while we should 
 never despair of the improvement of society on the one 
 hand, seeing how vast the difierence which obtains be- 
 30 
 
350 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 tween the opposite states of barbarism and civilization, 
 there is little wisdom in indulging, on the other, in dreams 
 of a theoretical perfection, at which it is too probable our 
 nature cannot arrive. Few great changes take place in 
 the economy of a country without removing some of the 
 older evils which oppressed it; few also without intro- 
 ducing into it evils that are new. 
 
 It was in the latter days of Mr. Forsyth that the modern 
 system of agriculture had begun to effect those changes in 
 the appearance of the country and the character of the 
 jjeople by which the one has been so mightily improved 
 and the other so considerably lowered. The clumsy, 
 inefficient system which it supplanted was fraught with 
 physical evil. There was an immense waste of labor. A 
 large amount of the scanty produce of the country was 
 consumed by a disproportionably numerous agricultural 
 population ; and, from the inartificial methods pursued, 
 the harvest, in every more backward season, was thrown 
 far into the winter ; and years of scarcity, amounting al- 
 most to famine, inflicted from time to time their miseries 
 on the poorer classes of the people. It was as impossible, 
 too, in the nature of things, that the system should have 
 remained unaltered after science had introduced her in- 
 numerable improvements into every other department of 
 industry, as that night should continue in all its gloom in 
 one of the central provinces of a country after the day had 
 arisen in all the provinces which surrounded it. Nor 
 could the landed interests have maintained their natural 
 and proper place had the case been otherwise. There 
 were but two alternatives, advance in the general rush of 
 improvement, or a standing still to be trampled under 
 foot. With the more enlightened mode of agriculture the 
 large-farm system is naturally, perhaps inevitably, con- 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 361 
 
 nected ; at least, in no branch of industry do we find the 
 efficient adoption of scientific improvement dissevered from 
 the extensive employment of capital. And it is this sys- 
 tem which, within the last forty years, has so materially 
 deteriorated the character of the people. It has broken 
 down the population of the agricultural districts into two 
 extreme classes. It has annihilated the moral and reli- 
 gious race of small farmers, who in the last age were so 
 peculiarly the glory of Scotland, and of whom the Davie 
 Deans of the noveUst, and the Cotter of Burns, may be 
 regarded as the fitting representatives ; and has given us 
 mere gentlemen-farmers and farm-servants in their stead. 
 The change was in every respect unavoidable ; and we 
 can only regret that its physical good should be so inevi- 
 tably accompanied by what must be regarded as its moral 
 and political evil. 
 
 It was during the long career of Mr. Forsyth, and in no 
 small degree under his influence and example, that the 
 various branches of trade still f)ursued in the north of 
 Scotland were first originated. He witnessed the awaken- 
 ing of the people from the indolent stupor in which ex- 
 treme poverty and an acquiescent subjection to the higher 
 classes were deemed unavoidable consequences of their 
 condition, to a state of comparative comfort and indepen- 
 dence. He saw what bad been deemed the luxuries of his 
 younger days, placed, by the introduction of habits of in- 
 dustry, and a judicious division of labor, within the reach 
 of almost the poorest. He saw, too, the first establishment 
 of branch-banks in the north of Scotland, and the new life 
 infused, through their influence, into every department of 
 trade. They conferred a new ability of exertion on the 
 people, by rendering their available capital equal to the 
 resources of their trade, and gave to character a money- 
 
352 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 value which even the most profligate were compelled to 
 recoguize and respect. Each of these items of improve- 
 ment, however, had its own peculiar drawback. Under 
 the influence of the commercial spirit, neighbors have be- 
 come less kind, and the people in general less hospitable. 
 The comparative independence of the poorer classes has 
 separated them more widely from the upper than they had 
 ever been separated before ; and mutual jealousies and 
 heartburnings mark, in consequence, the more ameliorated 
 condition. The number of traders and shopkeepers has 
 become disproportionably large ; and while a few succeed 
 and make money, and a few more barely maintain their 
 ground at an immense expense of care and exertion, there 
 is a considerable portion of the class who have to struggle 
 on for years, perhaps in^■olved in a labyrinth of shifts and 
 expedients that prove alike unfavorable to their own 
 character and to the security of trade in general, and then 
 end in insolvency at last. The large command of money, 
 too, furnished at times by imprudent bank accommodation, 
 has in some instances awakened a spirit of speculation 
 among the people, which seems but too much akin to that 
 of the gambler, and which has materially lowered the tone 
 of public morals in at least the creditor and debtor rela- 
 tion. Bankruptcy, in consequence, is regarded with very 
 diflFerent feelings in the present day from what it was sixty 
 years ago. It has lost much of the old infamy which used 
 to pass downwards from a man to his children, and is now 
 too often looked upon as merely the natural close of an 
 unlucky speculation, or, worse still, as a sort of speculation 
 in itself. 
 
 There is one branch of trade, in particular, which has 
 been suffered to increase by far too much for the weal of 
 the country. More than two thousand pounds are squan- 
 
THE SCOTCH MBECHANT. 353 
 
 dered yearly in the town of Cromarty in spirituous liquors 
 alone, — a larger sum than that expended in tea, sugar, 
 coffee, soap, and candles, put together. The evil is one of 
 enormous magnitude, and unmixed in its character ; nor 
 is there any part of the country, and, indeed, few families, 
 in which its influence is not felt. And yet in some of the 
 many causes which have led to it we may trace the work- 
 ings of misdirected good, natural and political. A weak 
 compassion on the part of those whose duty it is to grant 
 or withhold the license without which intoxicating liquors 
 cannot be sold, has more than quadrupled the necessary 
 number of public houses. Has an honest man in the lower 
 ranks proved unfortunate in business ; has a laborer or 
 farm-servant of good character met with some accident 
 which incapacitates him from pursuing his ordinary labors ; 
 has a respectable, decent woman lost her husband, — all 
 apply for the license as their last resource, and all are suc- 
 cessful in their application. Each of their houses attracts 
 its round of customers, who pass through the downward 
 stages of a degradation to which the keepers themselves 
 are equally exposed ; and after they have in this way irre- 
 mediably injured the character of their neighbors, their 
 own, in at least nine cases out of ten, at last gives way ; 
 and the fatal house is shut up, to make way for another of 
 the same class, which, after performing its work of mis- 
 chief on a new circle, is to be shut up in turn. Another 
 great cause of the intemperance of the age is conq.ected 
 with the clubs and societies of modern times. Many of 
 these institutions are admirably suited to preserve a spirit 
 of independence and self-reliance among the people ex- 
 actly the reverse of that sordid spirit of pauperism which 
 has so overlaid the energies of the sister kingdom ; and 
 there are few of them which do not lead to a general 
 30* 
 
354 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 knowledge of at least the simpler practices of business, 
 and to that spread of intelligence which naturally arises 
 from an intercourse of mind in which each has somewhat 
 to impart and somewhat to acquire. But they lead also, 
 in too many instances, to the formation of intemperate 
 habits among the leading members. There is the procession 
 and the ball, with their necessary accompaniments; the 
 meeting begun with business ends too often in convivial- 
 ity; and there are few acquainted with such institutions 
 who cannot assign to each its own train of victims. 
 
 Another grand cause of this gigantic evil of intemper- 
 ance, — a cause which fortunately exists no longer, save 
 in its effects, — was of a political nature. On the break- 
 ing out of the revolutionary war, almost every man in the 
 kingdom fit to bear arms became a soldier. Every district 
 had its embodied yeomanry or local militia, every town 
 its volunteers. Boys who had just shot up to their full 
 height were at once metamorphosed into heroes, and re- 
 ceived their monthly pay ; and, under an exaggerated as- 
 sumption of the military character, added to an unwonted 
 command of pocket-money, there were habits of reckless 
 intemperance formed by thousands and tens of thousands 
 among the people, which have now held by them for more 
 than a quarter of a century after the original cause has 
 been removed, and which are passing downwards, through 
 the influence of example, to add to the amount of crime 
 and wretchedness in other generations. 
 
 In no respect does the last age differ more from the 
 present than in the amount of general intelligence pos- 
 sessed by the people. It is. not yet seventy years since 
 Burke estimated the reading public of Great Britain and 
 Ireland at about eighty thousand. There is a single 
 Scotch periodical of the present day that finds as many 
 
THE SCOTOH MERCHANT. 365 
 
 purchasers, and on the lowest estimate twice as many 
 readers, in Scotland alone. There is a total change, too, 
 in the sources of popular intelligence. The press has sup- 
 planted the church ; the newspaper and magazine occupy 
 the place once occupied by the Bible and the Confession 
 of Faith. Formerly, when there were comparatively few 
 books and no periodicals in this part of the country, 
 there was but one way in which a man could learn to 
 think. His mind became the subject of some serious 
 impression. He applied earnestly to his Bible and the 
 standards of the church ; and in the contemplation of the 
 most important of all concerns, his newly-awakened facul- 
 ties received their first exercise. And hence the nature 
 of his influence in the humble sphere in which he moved ; 
 an influence which the constitution of his church, from 
 her admission of lay members to deliberate in her courts 
 and to direct her discipline, tended powerfully to increase. 
 It was not more intellectual than moral, nor moral than 
 intellectual. He was respected not only as one of the 
 best, but also as one of the most intelligent men in his 
 parish, and impressed the tone of bis own character on 
 that of his contemporaries. Popular intelligence in the 
 present age is less influential, and by far less respectable, 
 in single individuals ; and, though of a humanizing ten- 
 dency in general, its moral effects are less decided. But 
 it is all-potent in the mass of the people, and secures to 
 them a political power which they never possessed ^efore, 
 and which must prove for the future their effectual guard 
 against tyranny in the rulers ; unless, indeed, they should 
 first by their own act break down those natural barriers 
 which protect the various classes of society, by becom- 
 ing tyrants themselves. There is a medium-point beyond 
 which liberty becomes license, and license hastens to a 
 
356 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 despotism wMch may, indeed, be exercised for a short 
 tim^e by the many, but whose inevitable tendency it is to 
 pass into the hands of the few^. 
 
 A few of the causes which have tended to shut up to so 
 great an extent the older sources of intelligence may be 
 briefly enumerated. Some of them have originated within, 
 and some without the church. 
 
 The benefits conferred on Scotland by the Presbyterian 
 Church, during at least the two centuries which immedi- 
 ately succeeded the Reformation, were incalculably great. 
 Somewhat of despotism there might, nay, must have been, 
 in the framework of our ecclesiastical institutions. The 
 age was inevitably despotic. The church in which the 
 Reformers had spent the earlier -portion of their lives was 
 essentially and constitutionally so. Be it remembered, too, 
 that the principles of true toleration have been as much 
 the discovery of later ages as those principles on which we 
 construct our steam-engines. But whatever the frame- 
 work of the constitutions of our church, the soul which 
 animated them was essentially that spirit " wherewith 
 Christ maketh his people free." Nay, their very intoler- 
 ance was of a kind which delighted to arm its vassals with 
 a power before which all tyranny, civil or ecclesiastical, 
 must eventually be overthrown. It compelled them to 
 quit the lower levels of our nature for the higher. It de- 
 manded of them that they should be no longer immoral or 
 illiterate. It enacted that the ignorant baron should send 
 his children to school, that they, too, might not grow up 
 in ignorance ; and provided that the children of the poor 
 should be educated at the expense of the state. A strange 
 despotism truly, which, by adding to the knowledge and 
 the virtue of the people among whom it was established, 
 gave them at once that taste and capacity for freedom 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 357 
 
 ■without which men cannot be other than slaves, he the 
 form of government under which they live what it may. 
 
 Be it remembered too, that, whatever we of the present 
 age may think of our church, our fathers thought much of 
 it. It was for two whole centuries the most popular of all 
 establishments, and stamped its own character on that of 
 the people. The law of patronage, as re-established by 
 Oxford and Bolingbroke, first lowered its efficiency; not 
 altogether so suddenly, but quite as surely, as these states- 
 men had intended. From being a guide and leader of the 
 people, it sunk, in no small degree, into a follower and de- 
 pendant on the government and the aristocracy. The old 
 Evangelical party dwindled into a minority, and in the ma- 
 jority of its Church of Scotland became essentially unpopu- 
 lar and uninfluential. More than one half our church stood 
 on exactly the same ground which had been occupied by 
 the curates of half a century before ; and the pike and 
 musket were again employed in the settlement of ministers, 
 who professed to preach the gospel of peace. A second 
 change for the worse took place about fifty years ago, when 
 the modern system of agriculture was first introduced, and 
 the rage for experimental farming seemed to pervade all 
 classes, — ministers of the church among the rest. Many 
 of these took large farm's, and engaged in the engrossing 
 details of business. Some were successful and made money, 
 some were unfortunate and became bankrupt. Years of 
 scarcity came on ; the price of grain rose beyond all prece- 
 dent ; and there were thousands among the sufiering poor 
 who could look no higher in the chain of causes than to the 
 great farmers, clerical and lay, who were thriving on their 
 miseries. It is a fact which stands in need of no comment, 
 that the person in the north of Scotland who first raised 
 the price of oatmeal to three pounds per boll was a clergy- 
 
358 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 man of the established church. A third change which has 
 militated against the clergy is,connected with that general 
 revolution in manners, dress, and modes of thinking which, 
 during the last forty years, has transferred the great bulk 
 of our middle classes from the highest place among the 
 people to the lowest among the aristocracy ; the clergymen 
 of our church, with their families, among the rest. And a 
 fourth change, not less disastrous than even the worst of 
 the others, may be traced to that recent extension of the 
 political franchise which has had the effect of involving so 
 many otherwise respectable ministers in the essentially 
 irreligious turmoil of party. There is still, however, much 
 of its original vigor in the Church of Scotland ; a self-reform- 
 ing energy which no radically corrupt church ever did or 
 can possess ; and her late efforts in shaking herself loose 
 from some of the evils which have long oppressed her give 
 earnest that her career of usefulness is not hastening to its 
 close. 
 
 There is certainly much to employ the honest and en- 
 lightened among her members in the present age. At no 
 time did that gulf which separates the higher from the 
 lower classes present so perilous a breadth, at no time did 
 it threaten the commonwealth more ; and if it be not in 
 the power of the equalizing influence of Christianity to 
 bridge it over, there is no other power that can. It seetus 
 quite as certain that the spread of political power shall ac- 
 company -the spread of intelligence, as that the heat of the 
 sun shall accompany its light. It is quite as idle to afiirm 
 that the case should be otherwise, and that this power 
 should not be extended to the people, as to challenge the 
 law of gravitation, or any of the other great laws which 
 regulate the government of the universe. The progress 
 of mind cannot be arrested ; the power which necessarily 
 
THE SCOTCH MEBCHANT. 859 
 
 accompanies it cannot be lessened. Hence the imminent 
 danger of those suspicions and dislikes that the opposite 
 classes entertain each of the other, and which are in so 
 many instances the effect of mistake and misconception. 
 The classes are so divided that they never meet to com- 
 pare notes, or to recognize in one another the same com- 
 mon nature. In the space which separates them, the eaves- 
 dropper and the tale-bearer find their proper provincp ; and 
 thus there are heart-burnings produced, and jealousies 
 fostered, which even in the present age destroy the better 
 charities of society, and which, should the evil remain un- 
 corrected, must inevitably produce still sadder effects in 
 the future. Hence it is, too, that the mere malignancy of 
 opposition has become so popular, and that noisy dema- 
 gogues, whose sole merit consists in their hatred of the 
 higher classes, receive so often the support of better men 
 than themselves. It is truly wonderful how many defects, 
 moral and intellectual, may be covered by what Dryden 
 happily terms the " all-atoping name of patriot," — how 
 creatures utterly broken in character and means, pitiful 
 little tyrants in fields and families, the very stuff out of 
 which spies and informers are made, are supported and 
 cheered on in their course of political agitation by sober- 
 minded men, who would never once dream of entrusting 
 them with their private concerns. We may look for the 
 cause in the perilous disunion of the upper and lower 
 classes, and the widely-diffused bitterness of feeling which 
 that disunion occasions. 
 
360 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Death is the crown of life : 
 Were death denied, poor men ■would live in vain ; 
 Were death denied, to live woulJ not be life. 
 
 Young. 
 
 Me. Foestth was for about forty years an elder of the 
 church, and never was the office more conscientiously or 
 more consistently held. It was observed, however, that, 
 though not less orthodox in bis belief than any of his 
 brother elders, and certainly not less scrupulously strict in 
 his morals, he was much less severe in his judgments on 
 offenders, and ]e§s ready in sanctioning, except in extreme 
 cases, the employment of the sterner discipline of the church. 
 On one occasion, when distributing the poor's funds, he set 
 apart a few shillings for a poor creature, of rather equivocal 
 character, who had lately been visited by the displeasure 
 of the session, and who, though in wretched poverty, felt 
 too much ashamed at the time to come forward to claim 
 her customary allowance. 
 
 " Hold, Mr. Forsyth," said one of the elders, a severe and 
 rigid Presbyterian of the old school, — " hold ; the woman 
 is a bad woman, and doesn't deserve that." 
 
 " Ah," replied the merchant, in the very vein of Hamlet, 
 " if we get barely according to our deservings, Donald, who 
 of us all shall escape whipping? We shall just give the 
 poor thing these few shillings which she does not deserve, 
 in consideration of the much we ourselves enjoy which we 
 deserve, I am afraid, nearly as little." 
 
THE SCOTCH MBKCHANT. 861 
 
 " You are a wiser man than I am, Mr. Forsyth," said the 
 elder, and sat down rebuked. 
 
 No course in life so invariably Bmooth and prosperous in 
 its tenor that the consolations of religion — even regard- 
 ing religion as a matter of this world alone — can be well 
 dispensed with. There are griefs which come to all ; and 
 the more aifectionate th# heart, and the greater its capacity 
 of happiness, the more keienly are these felt. Of nine chil- 
 dren which his wife bore to him, "William Forsyth survived 
 six. Four died in childhood ; not so early, however, but 
 that they had first engaged the affections and awakened 
 the hopes of their parents. A fifth reached the more ma- 
 ture age at which the intellect begins to open, and the dis- 
 positions to show what they are eventually to become, and 
 then fell a victim to that insidious disease which so often 
 holds out to the last its promises of recovery, and with 
 which hope struggles so long and so painfully, to be over- 
 borne by disappointment in the end. And a sixth, a young 
 man of vigorous talent and kindly feelings, after obtaining 
 a writership in India through the influence of his father's 
 old protege, Mr. Charles Grant, fell a victim to the climate 
 in his twentieth year. Mr. Forsyth bore his various sor- 
 rows, not as a philosopher, but as a Christian ; not as if pos- 
 sessed of strength enough in his own mind to bear up under 
 each succeeding bereavement, but as one deriving comfort 
 from conviction that the adorable Being who cared for both 
 him and his children does not afflict his creatures willingly, 
 and that the scene of existence which he saw closing upon 
 them, and which was one day to close upon himself, is to 
 be succeeded by another and a better scene, where God 
 himself wipeth away all tears from all eyes. His only sur- 
 viving son, John, the last of four, left him, as he himself had 
 left his father more than fifty years before, for a house of 
 31 
 
362 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 business in London, which he afterwards quitted for India, 
 on receiving an appointment there through the kindness 
 of Mr. Grant. Mr. Forsyth accompanied him to the beach, 
 where a boat manned by six fishermen was in waiting to 
 carry him to a vessel in the offing. He knew too surely 
 that he was parting from him for ever ; but he bore up 
 under the conviction until the fin^ adieu, and then, wholly 
 overpowered by his feelings, he burst into tears. Nor was 
 the young man less affected. It was interesting to see the 
 effects of this scene on the rude boatmen. They had never 
 seen "the Maister" so affected before; and as they bent 
 them to their oars, there was not a dry eye among them. 
 
 Age brought with it its various infirmities, and there 
 were whole weeks in which Mr. Forsyth could no longer 
 see his friends as usual ; nor even when in better health — 
 in at least what must often pass for health at seventy-seven 
 — could he quit his bedroom before the middle of the day. 
 He now experienced how surely an affectionate disposition 
 draws to itself, by a natural sympathy, the affection of oth- 
 ers. His wife, who was still but in middle life, and his two 
 surviving daughters, Catherine and Isabella, were unwea- 
 ried in their attentions to him, anticipating every wish, and 
 securing to him every little comfort which his situation 
 required, with that anxious ingenuity of affection so char- 
 acteristic of the better order of female minds. His sight 
 had so much failed him that he could no longer apply to 
 his favorite authors as before ; but one of his daughters 
 used to sit beside him and read a few pages at a time, for 
 his mind was less capable than formerly of pursuing, unfa- 
 tigued, long trains of thought. At no previous period, 
 however, did he relish his books more. The st.ate of gen- 
 eral debility which marked his decline resembled that which 
 characterizes the first stage of convalescence in lingering 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. §63 
 
 disorders. If his vigor of thought was lessened, his feel- 
 ings of enjoyment seemed in proportion more exquisitely 
 keen. His temper, always smooth and placid, had soft- 
 ened with his advance in years, and every new act of atten- 
 tion or kindness which he experienced seemed too much 
 for his feelings. He was singularly grateful; grateful to 
 his wife and daughters, and to the friends who from time< 
 to time came to sit beside his chair and communicated to 
 him any little piece of good news ; above all, grateful to 
 the great Being who had been caring for him all life long, 
 and who now, amid the infirmities of old age, was still 
 giving him so much ^o enjoy. In the prime of life, when 
 his judgment was soundest and most discriminative, he had 
 given the full assent of his vigorous understanding to those 
 peculiar doctrines of Christianity on which its morals are 
 founded. He had believed in Jesus Christ as the sole 
 mediator between God and man ; and the truth which had 
 received the sanction of his understanding then, served to 
 occupy the whole of his affections now. Christ was all with 
 him, and himself was nothing. The reader will perhaps 
 pardon my embodying a few simple thoughts on this im- 
 portant subject, which I offer with all the more diffidence 
 that they have not come to me through the medium of any 
 other mind. 
 
 It will be found that all the false religions, of past or of 
 present times, which have abused the credulity or flattered 
 the judgments of men, may be divided into two grand 
 classes, — the natural and the artificial. The latter are ex- 
 clusively the work of the human reason, prompted by those 
 uneradicable feelings of our nature which constitute man a 
 religious creature. The religions of Socrates and Plato, of 
 the old philosophers in general, with perhaps the exception 
 of the sceptics, and a few others, — of Lord Herbert of 
 
364 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 Cherbmy, Algernon Sidney, and Dr. Channing, of all the 
 better Deists, of the Unitarians too, and the Socinians of 
 modern times, — belong to this highly rational but unpopu- 
 lar and totally inefficient class. The God of these religions 
 is a mere abstract idea; an incomprehensible essence of 
 goodness, power, and wisdom. The understanding cannot 
 conceive of him, except as a great First Cause, — as the in- 
 comprehensible source and originator of all things ; and it 
 is surely according to reason that he should be thus re- 
 moved from that lower sphere of conception which even 
 finite intelligences can occupy to the full. But in thus 
 rendering him intangible to the understanding he is ren- 
 dered intangible to the affections also. Who ever loved an 
 abstract idea? or what sympathy can exist between human 
 minds and an intelligent essence infinitely diffused ? And 
 hence the cold and barren inefficiency of artificial religions. 
 They want the vitality of life. They want the grand prin- 
 ciple oi motive ; for they can lay no hold on those affections 
 to which this prime mover in all human affairs can alpne 
 address itself. They may look well in a discourse or an 
 essay, for, like all human inventions, they may be easily 
 understood and rationally defended ; but they are totally 
 unsuited to the nature and the wants of man. 
 
 The natural religions are of an entirely different char- 
 acter. They are wild and extravagant ; and the enlight- 
 ened reason, when unbiassed by the influences of early 
 prejudice, rejects them as monstrous and profane. But, 
 unlike the others, they have a strong hold on human na- 
 ture, and exert a powerful control over its hopes and its 
 fears. Men may build up an artificial religion as they 
 build up a house, and the same age may see it begun and 
 completed. Natural religions, on the contrary, are, like 
 the oak and the chestnut, the slow growth of centuries ; 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 365 
 
 their first beginnings are lost in the uncertainty of the fab- 
 ulous ages ; and every addition they receive is fitted to 
 the credulity of the popular mind ere it can assimilate 
 itself to the mass. The grand cause of their popularity, 
 however, consists in the decidedly human character of 
 their gods ; for it is according to the nature of man as a 
 religious creature that he meets with an answering nature 
 in Deity. The gods of the Greek and Roman were human 
 beings like themselves, and influenced by a merely human 
 favoritism. The devotion of their worshippers was but a 
 mere reverential species of friendship ; and there are per- 
 haps few men of warm imaginations who have become 
 acquainted in early life with the ^neid of Virgil, or the 
 Telemaque of Fenelon, who are not enabled to conceive, 
 in part at least, how such a friendship could be enter- 
 tained. The Scandinavian mythology, with the equally 
 barbarous mythologies of the East, however different in 
 other respects, agree in this main principle of popularity, 
 the human character of their gods. The Virgin Mother 
 and the many saints of the Romish Church, with its tangi- 
 bilities of pictures and images, form an indispensable com- 
 pensation for its lack of the evangelical principle ; and it 
 is undoubtedly to the well-defined and easily-conceived 
 character of Mohammed that Allah owes the homage of 
 the unreckoned millions of the East. 
 
 Now, it is according to reason and analogy that the true 
 religion should be formed, if I may so express myself, on 
 a popular principle ; that it should be adapted, with all the 
 fitness which constitutes the argument of design, to that 
 human nature which must be regarded as the production 
 of the common author of both. It is indispensable that 
 the religion which God reveals should be suited to the hu- 
 man nature which God has made. 'Artificial religions, with 
 31* 
 
366 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 all their minute rationalities, are not suited to it at all, and 
 therefore take no hold on the popular mind ; natural reli- 
 gions, with all their immense popularity, are not suited to 
 improve it. It is Christianity alone which unites the pop- 
 ularity of the one class with the rationality, and more than 
 the purity, of the other ; that gives to the Deity, as man, 
 his strong hold on the human affections, and restores to 
 him, in his abstract character as the father of all, the 
 homage of the understanding. 
 
 The change which must come to all was fast coming on 
 William Forsyth. There was a gradual sinking of his 
 powers, bodily and intellectual ; a thorough prostration of 
 strength and energy; and yet, amid the general wreck of 
 the man, the affections remained entire and unbroken; 
 and the idea that the present scene is to be succeeded by 
 another was continually present with him. Weeks passed 
 in which he could no longer quit his bed. On the day he 
 died, however, he expressed a wish to be brought to a 
 chair which stood fronting a window, and the wish was 
 complied with. The window commands a full view of 
 the main street of the place ; but though his face was 
 turned in that direction, his attendants could not suppose 
 that he took note any longer of the objects before him ; 
 the eyes were open, but the sense seemed shut. The case, 
 however, was otherwise. A poor old woman passed by, 
 and the dying man recognized her at once. "Ah, yonder," 
 he said, addressing one of his daughters who stood by him, 
 " is poor old Widow Watson, whom I have not seen now 
 for many weeks. Take a shilling for her out of my purse, 
 and tell her it is the last she will ever get from me." And 
 so it was ; and such was the closing act of a long and 
 singularly useful life ; for his death, unaccompanied appar- 
 ently by aught of suffering, took place in the course of the 
 
THE SCOTCH MEHCHANT. 367 
 
 evening, only a few hours after. He had completed his 
 seventy-eighth year. All the men of the place attended 
 his funeral, and many from the neighboring country ; 
 and there were few among the assembled hundreds who 
 crowded round his grave to catch a last glimpse of the 
 coffin, who did not feel that they had lost a friend. He 
 was one of nature's noblemen ; and the sincere homage 
 of the better feelings is an honor reserved exclusively to 
 the order to which he belonged. 
 
 Mrs. Forsyth survived her husband for eight years. 
 And after living in the continued exercise of similar vir- 
 tues, she died in the full hope of the same blessed immor- 
 tality, leaving all who knew her to regret her loss, though 
 it was the poor that mourned her most. Their three sur- 
 viving children proved themselves the worthy descendants 
 of such parents. There is a time coming when families of 
 twenty descents may be regarded as less noble, and as 
 possessing in a much less degree the advantages of birth ; 
 for, partly, it would seem, through that often marked 
 though inexplicable effect of the organization of matter 
 on the faculties of mind, which transmits the same charac- 
 ter in the same line from generation to generation, and 
 partly, doubtless, from the influence of early example, 
 they all inherited in no slight or equivocal degree the vir- 
 tues of their father and mother. A general massiveness 
 and force of intellect, with a nice and unbending rectitude 
 of principle, and great benevolence of disposition, were 
 the more marked characteristics. Catherine, the eldest 
 of the three, was married in 1801 to her cousin Isaac For- 
 syth, banker, Elgin, the brother and biographer of the 
 well-known tourist ; and, after enjoying in a singular de- 
 gree the affection of her husband and family, and the 
 respect of a wide circle of acquaintance, she died in the 
 
868 TALES AND SKETCHES. 
 
 autumn of 1826, in her fifty-seventh year. Isabella contin- 
 ued to reside in her father's house at Cromarty, which 
 maintained in no small degree its former character, and 
 there cannot well be higher praise. None of Mrs. Forsyth's 
 old pensioners were suffered to want by her daughter; 
 and as they dropped off, one by one, their places were sup- 
 plied by others. She was the effective and active patron- 
 ess, too, of every scheme of benevolence originated in the 
 place, whether for the benefit of the poor or of the young. 
 She was married in 1811 to Captain Alexander M'Kenzie, 
 R. M., of the Scatwell family, and died in the spring of 
 1838, in her sixty-eighth year, bequeathing by will three 
 hundred pounds to be laid out at interest for the behalf 
 of three poor widows of the place. John, the youngest 
 of the family, quitted his father's house for India, as has 
 been already related, in 1792. He rose by the usual steps 
 of promotion as resident at various stations, became a 
 senior merchant, and was appointed to the important 
 charge of keeper of the Company's warehouse at Calcutta, 
 ■with the near prospect of being advanced to the Board of 
 Trade. His long residence in India, however, had been 
 gradually undermining a constitution originally vigorous, 
 and he fell a victim to the climate in 1823, in the forty- 
 fifth year of his age. He had married an English lady 
 in Calcutta, Miss Mary Ann Farmer, a few years before, 
 and had an only daughter by her, Mary Elizabeth Forsyth, 
 who now inherits her grandfather's property in Cromarty. 
 His character was that of the family. For the last fifteen 
 years of his life he regularly remitted fifty pounds annually 
 for the poor of Cromarty, and left them a thousand pounds 
 at his death. The family burying-ground fronts the parish 
 church. It contains a simple tablet of Portland stone, 
 surmounted by a vase of white marble, and bearing the 
 
THE SCOTCH MERCHANT. 869 
 
 following epitaph, whose rare merit it is to be at once 
 highly eulogistic and strictly true : — 
 
 SSilliam J^orsgtlj, Csquia, 
 
 DIBD 
 
 the 30th January, 1800, in the 78th year of his age; 
 
 A Man loved for his benevolence, 
 
 honored for his integrity, and 
 
 revered for his piety. 
 
 He was religious without gloom; 
 
 cheerful without levity ; 
 
 bountiful without ostentation 
 
 Rigid in the discharge of his own duties, he was 
 
 charitable and lenient in his judgment of otliers. 
 
 His kindness and hospitality were unbounded; 
 
 and in him the Destitute found a Friend, 
 
 the Oppressed a Protector. 
 
 On the 7th August, 1808, aged sixty-six, died 
 
 His beloved Wife, 
 
 in obedience to whose last desire 
 
 this Tablet is inscribed to his Memory, 
 
 which she ever cherished with tender affection, 
 
 and adorned by the practice of similar virtues. 
 
 With characteristic humility 
 
 she wished that mereiy her Death should be recorded 
 
 on this stone; 
 
 and to those who knew her no other memorial was wanting, 
 
 nor is it necessary, even if it were possible, 
 
 to delineate to the passing stranger 
 
 the beauty of her deportment, 
 
 the strength of her understanding, 
 
 and the benignity of her heart; 
 
 but rather 
 
 to admonish him, from such bright examples, 
 
 that the paths of godliness and virtue lead 
 
 to happiness on earth, 
 and the assurance of joys beyond the grave. 
 
 Of their children, they survived Patrick, who died at the age of 20 in the 
 
 East Indies; and James, Isabella, Maroaret, William, and Elizabeth, 
 
 who, with their parents, were buried in this place. 
 
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 f an <^ every description will be sure toreod withaBXLiSH. (26) 
 
IMPORTANT WORKS. 
 
 A TREATISE OTT THE COMPABAH^IVE ANATOMT OF THE 
 ANIMAL KING-DOM. By Profs. C. ''.'b. Vos Siebold and H. Stannids. 
 Traoslated from the German, with Notes, Additi:-63, &c. By Waldo I. Bornett. M. D., 
 Boston. One elegant octavo vuliune, cloth, $3.00. 
 
 Thie isbeliev&d to be incomparably the best and most complete work on the subject extent | 
 and its appearance in an English dress, with the additions of the American Tranalator, is every* 
 where welcomed b/ men of science in this country. 
 
 UNITED STATES EXPLORING EXPEDITION; during the year* 
 1838, 1839, 1810, 1811, 1842, under Chakles "Wilkes, U. S. N. Vol. xii. . 
 
 MOLLUSCA AND SHELLS. By AUGUSTUS A. GooLD, M. D. Elegant quarto volume, cloth, 
 $6.00. 
 
 THE LANDING AT CAPE ANNE ; or, The Charter of the First Perma- 
 nent Colony on the Tebritort of the Massachusetts Company. Now discovered, 
 and first published from the original manuscript, with an inquiry into its authority, 
 and a History of the Colony, 1624 — 1628, Roper Conant, Governor, By J. Win- 
 gate TnoRNTON. 8vo, cloth, $1.50. 
 
 B^* *' A rare contribution to the early history of New England." — JferconftTa Journal. 
 
 LAKE SUPERIOR ; Its Physical Character, Vegetation, and Animals. By L. 
 Agassiz and others. One volume octavo, elegantly Illustrated, cloth, $3 50. 
 
 THE HALLIG; or, the Shbepfold in the "Waters. A Tale of Humble Life on 
 the Coast of Schleswig. Translated from the German of Biernatski, by Mrs. Qeorgb P. 
 Marsh. With a Biographical Sketch of the Author. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 As a revelation of an entire new phase in human society, this work strongly reminds the reader 
 ftf Miss Bremer's tales, In originality and brilliancy of imagination, it is not inferior to those ; — 
 its aim is far higlier. 
 
 THE CRUISE OP THE NORTH STAR; A Narrative of the Excursion 
 made by Mr. Vanderbilt'a Party in the Steam Yacht, in her Voyage to England, Russia, 
 Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Malta, Turkey, Madeira, &c. By Rev. John Ovbrtok 
 Choules, D. D. With elegant Illustrationa, he. 12mo, cloth, gilt backs and sides, $1.50 j 
 cloth, gilt, $2.00 ; Turkey, gilt, $3.00. 
 
 'ILGRIMAGE TO EGYPT; embracing a Diary of Explorations on the Nile, 
 with Observations Illustrative of the Manners, Customs, and Institutions of the People, 
 and of the present condition of the Antiquities and Ruins. By Hon. J. V. C. Smith, late 
 Mayor of the City of Boston. With numerous elegant Engravings. 12mo, cloth, $1.25. 
 
 COMPLETE POETICAL "WTORKS OF WILLIAM: COWPER; 
 
 with a Life and Critical Notices of his Writings. Elegant Illustrations. 16mo, cloth, 
 $1.00. 
 
 POETICAL "WORKS OP SIR "WALTER SCOTT. Life and niu»tir». 
 
 tions. 16mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 MILTON'S POETICAL WORKS. With a Life and elegant Illustrations. 
 16mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 Offl- The above Poetical Works, by standard authors, arc all of uniform size and style, printed 
 oa fine paper from clear, distinct type, with new and elegant illustnitions, richly bound in full #Ut, 
 Mltd plain. (2T) 
 
IMPORTANT NEW WORKS. 
 
 OYCIiOP^DIA OF ANECDOTES OF LITEBATUKE AWD 
 THE FXNE ARTS, ContuiQing a copious and choice Selection of Anecdotea 
 of the -Karious forms of Literature, of the Arts, of Architecture, Engravings, Music, 
 Poetry, Painting, and Sculpture, and of the most celebrated Litemry Chanicters and 
 Artists of different Countries and Ages, &c. By Kazlitt Abvisr, A. M., author of 
 "Cyclopaedia of Moral and Religious Anecdotes." With numerous lilusti-atiooa. 725 pp. 
 octavo. Cloth, $3.00 ; sheep, $3.50 } cloth, gUt, $4.00 ; half calf, $4.00, 
 
 This is unquestionably the choiceat collection of Anecdotes ever published. Tt contolnB threa 
 thottsand mid forty Anecdotes : and such is the wonderful variety, thtt it will be found on olmoet 
 Inexhaustible fund of interest for every class of readers. The elaborate clasaification and Indexes 
 must commend it especially to public speakers, to the various classes of literary and sci<sHt\fic men, 
 to artists, mechanics^ and ot/iers, as a DiCTiO^Anv for refertynr^n, in relation to fucta on the num- 
 berless subjects and characters introduced. There arc also more than one hundred and fifty fine 
 Illustrations. 
 
 THE LIFE OF JOHN" MILTON, Narrated in Connection with the Political, 
 JEccLES[ASTiCAL, and Literary History of his Time. By David Masson, M.A., Professor 
 of English Literature, University College, Loudon. "Vol. i., embracing the period from 
 1608 to 1639. With Portraits, and specimens of his handwriting at different periods. 
 Royal octavo, cloth, $0.00. 
 
 This important work will embrace three royal octavo volumes. By special arrangement with 
 Prof. Maason, the author, G. & L. are permitted to print from advance sheets furniBhed them, as 
 the authorized American publishers of this magnificent and eagerly looked for work. Volumes tuny 
 and tAree will follow in due time ; but, as each volume covers a definite period of time, and also 
 embtaces distinct topics ef discussion or history, they will be published and sold independent of 
 each other, or fUroisbed in sets when the three volumes are completed. 
 
 THE G-REYSON LETTERS. Selections from the Correspondence of K. E. H. 
 Grstson, Esq. Edited by Hrhry Rogers, author of "Eclipse of lalth." 12mo, cloth, 
 $1.26. 
 
 " Mr. Greyson and Mr. Rogers ore one and tho same person. The whole work is from his pen, 
 find every letter is radiant with the genius of the author. It discusses a wide range of subjects, in 
 the moat attractive manner. It abounds in the keenest wit and humor, satire and logic. It fairly 
 entitles Mr. Rogers to rank with Sydney Smith and Charles Lamb as a wit and humorist, and with 
 Bishop Butler as a reasoner. Mr. Rogers' name will share with those of Butler and Pascal, in tlie 
 gratitude and veneration of posterity." — London Quarterly. 
 
 " A book not for one hour, but for all hours ; not for one mood, but for every mood { to think 
 over, to dream over, to laugh over." — Boston Journal. 
 
 " The Letters are intellectual gema, radiant with beauty, happily intermingling the grave and 
 the gay. — Christian Observer, 
 
 ESSAYS nST BIOGRAPHY AND CRITICISM. By Peter Batse, M. 
 
 A., author of "The Christian Life, Social and Individual." Arranged in two Series, or 
 
 Parts. 12mo, cloth, each, $1.25. 
 
 These volumes Iwve been prepared by the author exclusively for his American publishcra, and 
 are now published in uniform style. They include nineteen articles, viz. : 
 
 First Series :- Thomas De Quincy. — Tennyson and his Teachers.— Mrs. Barrett Brown- 
 ing.— Recent Aspects of British Art. —John Ruskin.- Hugh Miller. — The Modem Novell 
 Dickens, &c. — Ellis, Acton, and Currcr Bell. 
 
 Second Series :-CharleB Kingaley.-S. T. Coleridge.- T. B. Macaulny. - Alison, -- "Wel- 
 lington, —Napoleon. — Plato. — Characteristics of Christian CLvilizatlon. - The Modern University. 
 " The Pulpit and tlie Press. —Testimony of the Rocks : a Defence. 
 
 VISITS TO ETTROPEATSr CELEBRITIES. By the Rev. Williak B. 
 
 Sphague, B. D. 12mo, cloth, $1.00 } cloth, gilt, $1-50. 
 
 A series of graphic and life-like Personal Sketches of many of the most diatinguished men and 
 women of Europe, portrayed as the Author saw them in their own homes, and under the most 
 fidvantngcous circumstances. Besides these " pen and ink " sketches, the work contaiqfl the novel 
 attraction of a/ac-si/nifc q/" tM signature of each of the persons introduced. (2 8) 
 
CHAMBERS^ WORKS. 
 
 CHAMBERS' CYCLOPEDIA OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. A 
 
 Selectiou of the choicest productions of English Authors, from the earliest to the present 
 time. Connected by a Critical and Biographical History. Forming two large imperial 
 octavo volumes of 700 pages each, double column letter press 5 with upwards of 300 
 elegant Illustrations. Edited by Robert Chambei^s. Cloth, $5.00 j sheep, $6.00 ; fall 
 gilt, $7.60 ; half calf, $7.50 ; full calf, $10.00. 
 
 This work embraces about one thousand Authors, chronologically arranged, and classed as 
 poets, historians, dramatists, philosophers, metaphysicians, divines, etc., -with choice selectioni 
 from their writings, connected by a Biographical, HiBtonoal, and Critical Narrative ; thus present- 
 ing a complete view of English Literature from the earliest to the present time. Let the reader 
 open where he will, he cannot fail to find matter for profit and delight. The selections are gems ™ 
 infinite riches in a little room ; in the language of another, "A Whole English Libeahy yusED 
 Dowx INTO ONE Cheap Book 1" 
 
 tX^ The Amehicam" edition of this valuable work is enriched by the addition of fine steel and 
 mezzotint engravings of the heads of Siiakspeare, Addison, Byron ; a full-length portrait of 
 Dn. Johnson ; and a beautiful scenic representation of Oliver Goldsmith and Dr. Johnsoh". 
 These important and elegant additions, together with superior paper and binding, and other 
 improvements, render the American far superior to the English edition. 
 
 W. n. Prescott, the Histobian, soys, "Readers cannot fail to profit largely by the laboii 
 of the critic who has the talent and taste to separate what is really beautiful ond worthy of their 
 study from what is superfluous." 
 
 " I concur in the foregoing opinion of Mr. Prescott." — Edward Everett. 
 
 " A popular work, indispensable to the library of a student of English literature." — Dk. "Wat- 
 land. 
 
 *' We hail with peculiar pleasure the appearance of this work." — North American Review. 
 
 CHAMBERS' MISCELLAIJY OF USEFUL AND ENTERTAIIST- 
 IWG- KUO^WLEDGE. Edited by William Chambers. With elegant Illustra- 
 tive Engravings. Ten volumes. Cloth, $7.50 ; cloth, gilt, $10.00 ; library sheep, $10.00. 
 
 " It would be difficult to find any miscellany superior or even equal to it. It richly deserves the 
 epithets 'useful and entertaining,' and I would recommend it very strongly, as extremely well 
 adapted to form parts of a library for the young, or of a social or circulating library in town ot 
 country." — Geo. B. Emerson, Esq. — Chairman Boston School Book Committee. 
 
 CHAMBERS* HOME BOOK; or, Pccket Miscellany, containing a Choice 
 
 Selection of Interesting and Instructive Reading, for the Old and Young. SL\ Tolumes, 
 
 16mo, cloth, $3.00 ; library sheep, $4.00 } half calf, $6.00. 
 
 This is considered fully equal, and in some respects superior, to either of the other works of the 
 Chambers in interest j containing a vast fund of valuable information. It is admirably adapted to 
 the School or Family Library, furnishing ample variety for every class of readers. 
 
 *' The Chambers arc confessedly the best caterers for popular and useful reading in the world.' 
 w- Willis' I-Iome Journal. 
 
 "Avery entertaining, instructive, and popular work." — .\. Y. Commercial. 
 
 "Wo do not know how it is possible to publish so much good reading matter at such a low 
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 people will introduce it into all their families, in order to drive away the miserable flashy-trashy 
 •tuff 60 often found in the hands of our young people of both ecxcb." ~ Scientific American. 
 
 " Both an entertaining and instructive work, as it is certainly n very cheap one." — Ptfri/an if*- 
 eorder. 
 
 " If any person wishes to read for amusement or profit, to kill time or improve it, get ' Cham- 
 bers' Home Book.'"— Chicago Times. 
 
 CHAMBERS' BEPOSITORT OF INSTRUCTIVE AWD AMUS- 
 Tlsra PAPERS. With Illustrations. A New Series, containmg Original Articles. 
 Two volumes. IBmo, cloth, $1.76. 
 
 Ihe Pamb Work, two volimies in one, cloth, glit back, $1.50. C29j 
 
GUYOT'S WORKS. VALUABLE MAPS. 
 
 THE EAKTH AITD MAN; LectureB on Compabativb Physical Geographt, 
 in its relation to the History of Mankind. By Arxold Gcyut. With lilustrationaL 
 12mo, cloth, $1.25. 
 
 Prof. Louis Agassiz, of Harvard Univcrfllty, aaje : "It will not only render the study of 
 geography more attractive, but actually show it in its true light." 
 
 Hon. Gbdrge S. Hillard says; "The work is marked by learning, ability, and taste. JBa 
 bold and comprehensive generalizations rest upon a careful foundation of facts." 
 
 *' Those who have been aucustumed to regard Geugmphy us u merely descriptive branch of learn- 
 ing, drie'r than tlie remainder biscuit after a voyage, will be delighted to find this hitherto uuat- 
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 clusive." — North American Bevitw. 
 
 " The grand idea of the work is happily expressed by the author, where he calls it the geographi- 
 cal march of history. Sometimes we feel as if we were studying a treatise on the exact sciences ; at 
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 " The work is oue of high merit, exhibiting a wide range of knowledge, great research, and a 
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 COMFAEATIVE PHYSICAL AND HISTORICAL GEOGRA- 
 PHY" ; or, the Study of the Earth and Inhabitants. A Series of Graduated Coursea, 
 for the use of Schools. By Arnold Guyot. In preparation. 
 
 GUTOT'S MTTBAL MAPS. A series of elegant Colored Maps, projected on a 
 large scale for the Recitation Room, consisting of a Map of the World, North and SoutU 
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 By Professor Arnold Guyot, viz., 
 
 Map of the World, mounted^ $10.00. 
 
 Map ok North America, mounted^ $9.00. 
 
 Map of South America, mounted^ $9.00. 
 
 Map op Geographical Elements, mounted^ $9.00. 
 
 QE^ These elegant and entirely original Mural Maps are projected on a large scale, so that when 
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 GEOLOGICAL MAP OF THE UnSTITED STATES AND BRIT- 
 ISH PROVINCES OP NORTH AMERICA. With an Explanatory 
 Text, Geological Sections, and Plates of the Fossils which characterize the Fonnatioqs. 
 By Jules iMarcou. Two volumes. Octavo, cloth, $3.00. 
 
 IK3- The Map i& elegantly colored, and done up with linen cloth back, and folded in octavo form, 
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 " The moat complete Geological Map of the United States which baa yet appeared. It is a work 
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 embcllislicd with a number of beautiful plates of the fossils which characterize the formations, thus 
 making, with the map, a very complete, clear, and distinct outline of the geology of our country."— 
 Mnmg Magazine, N. Y. 
 
 HALL'S GEOLOGICAL CHART; Giving an Ideal Section of the Successive 
 Geologiciil Formations, with an Actual Section from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceana. 
 By Prof. James Hall, of Albany. Mounted^ $9.00. 
 
 A KEY TO GEOLOGICAL CHART, By Prof. Jambs Hall. 18mo,25oti!. 
 
 (31) 
 
VALUABLE TEXT-BOOKS. 
 
 THE LECTUBES OF SIB ^SSTIIiLIAM HAMILTON. BAIlT.,laU 
 
 Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, University of Eaiuburghj embrjwiug the Metaphysi, 
 CiL and Logical CoUKSEd ; with Notes, from Original Materials, aa-i an Appendix, con- 
 taining tlie Autlior's L:itest Development of his New Logical Theory. Edited by Rev. 
 BiiKiiY LoSGDEviLLB Mansel, B. D., Prof. of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy in 
 Magdalen College, Oxford, and John Veitch, M. A., of Edinburgh. In two royal octavo 
 volumes, viz., 
 
 L Metaphysical Lectures (now ready), Koyal octavO; cloth. 
 
 II. Logical Lectures {in preparation). 
 
 iB3~ G. & L., by u special arrangement with the family of the late Sir WiUiain Hamilton, arc 
 thu Authorized Amui'icaa I'ublishera of this distinguished author's matchless Lectukes os M£T< 
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 MEWTAL PHILOSOPHY; Including the Intellect, the Sensibilities, and the 
 "Will. By Joseph Haten, Prof, of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Amherst College. 
 Royal 12mo, cloth, embossed, $1 50. 
 
 It ie believed this work will be found pre-eminently distingiaished. 
 
 1. The Completeness with which it presents the whole subject. Text-books generally treat 
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 remarkable condensation of thought. 
 
 Prof. Park, of Andover, says : "It is distinguished for its clearness of style, perspicuity of 
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 The work, though so recently published, has met with most remarkable success ; having becB 
 already lu^oduced intu a large number of the leading colleges and schools in various parts of tho 
 countrj", and uids fair to take the place of cvury other work on tlie subject now before the public. 
 
 THESAURUS OF ENGLISH "WORDS AISTD PHRASES, so classl. 
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 tion. New and Improved Edition. By Peter Mark Koget, late Secretary of the Royal 
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 lish, and other additions, by Barnas Sears, D. D., President of Brown University. A 
 New American Edition, with Additions and Improvements. 12mo, cloth, $1.50. 
 
 This edition is based on the London edition, recently issued. The first American Edition hav- 
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 termed "vulgar," incorporated in the original work, were omitted. These expurgated portions have, 
 in the present edition, been restored, but by such an arrangement of the matter as not to inteis. 
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 PALEY'S STATURAL THEOLOGY. Illustrated by forty Platea, with 
 Selections from the Notes of Dr. Paxton, and Additional Notes, Original and Selected, 
 with a Vocabulary of Scientiflc Terms. Edited by John TVarf;, M. D. Improved edition, 
 with elegant newly engraved plates. 12mo, cloth, embossed, $1.25. 
 
 This work Is very penerally introduced into our best Schools and Colleges throughout the coun* 
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 oilier improvements, render It th« best and most complete work of the kind extant. 
 
 (32) 
 
VALUABLE TEXT-BOOKS. 
 
 PBIlNrCIPIiES OF ZOOLOGT; Touching the Structm-e, Development, Dls. 
 triljuUo:!^ and Natural Ari-augement, of the iUcBs of Animals, living and extinct 
 with uuuaeruus Illustrations, ij'or the use of Schools and Colkges. f.ut I. Com» 
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 PKIWOIPLES OF ZOd)LOGY, PART II. Systematic Zoology. /« 
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 THE EliEMEIsTTS OF GEOLOGY ; adapted to Schools and Colleges. With 
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 12mo, cloth, 75 cts. 
 
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 ELEMEHTS OP MORAL SCIEI^OE. By Fbancis Wayland, D. D., lat« 
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 MORAL SGIEKOE ABRIDGED, and adapted to the use of Schools aud 
 
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 The same, Cheap School Edition, boards, 25 cts. 
 
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 POLITICAL ECOWOMY ABRIDGED, and adapted to the use of School* 
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VALUABLE. WORKS. 
 
 THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT EXAKHSTED. By 
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 THE PKOGBESS OF BAPTIST PRINCIPLES LN" THE LAST 
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 THOUGHTS OInT THE PRESENT COLLEGIATE SYSTEM in tho 
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 SACRED RHETORIC ; or, Composition and Delivery of Sermons. By H. J. 
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 THE EIGHTEEN CHRISTIAN CENTURIES. By the Rev. James 
 
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 UiK and fine soholaiflhijjs (36) 
 
VALUABLE WORKS 
 
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 THE CHE-ISTIAW LIFE ; Social and Indivibdal. By Petbr Bathe, M. A. 
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 *' The narrative is given with thrilling vividness, and pathos, and beauty. Marking, as we pro^ 
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 OF A KiMPis, by Dr. Ullmonn. (1 3) 
 
VALUABLE BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 EXTKACT3 FKOM THK DIABT AND COKRESPOITDEM'CE: 
 
 OF THE LATJij AMOS LAWKEM"CE. AVith a brief account of soma 
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 This work gives an account of a remarkable man, and of a remarkable movemert in the mlddls 
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 oLoliy, it is a necessary book. 
 
 lilFlE OF JAMES MOWTGOMERT. By Mrs. H. C. Knight, author of 
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 on steel. 12aio, cloth, $1.25. 
 
 This is an original biography, prepared frQm the abundant but ill-digested materials contained 
 in the seven octavo volumes of the London edition. The Christian public in America will wel- 
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 household. 
 
 3VDEMOJH OF ROGER "WlLtlAMS, Fmnder of the State of Rhode Island. 
 By Prof. William Gammell, A. M. 16mo, cloth, 75 eta. 
 
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 MEMOKIES OP A QKAWDMOTHEK. By » Lady of Massachusetts 
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 THE TEACHER'S LAST LESSON. A Memoir of M.™ Wm™, late 
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WOEKS FOE BIBLE STUDENTS. 
 
 KITTO'S POPULAR OTCLOP^DIA OF BIBLIOAL LITEBA 
 
 TUBE. Condensed from the larger work. By the Author, John Kitt.0, D. D. As- 
 sisted by James Taylok, D. D., of Glasgow. With over five hundred Illustrations. One 
 volums, octavo, -812 pp. Cloth, $3.00 j sheep, $3.60} cloth, gilt, $4.00 i half ciUf, $4.00. 
 
 A DicTioxAHY OF THE BiBLK. Serving, also, as a Commentary, embodying the products of 
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 by the contributions of writers of distinguished eminence in the various deportments of sacred liter* 
 nturc, has been, by universal consent, pronounced the best work of its class extant, and the one best 
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 science. It is not only intended for ministers and theological students, but it is also particular^ 
 adapted to parents, Sabbath-school teachers, and the great body of the religious pubjic. 
 
 THE HISTOBY OP PALESTII^^, from the Patriarchal Age to the Present 
 Time i with Chapters on the Geography and Natural History of the Country, the CuS" 
 toms and Institutions of the Hebrews. By John Kitto, D. D. With upwards of two 
 hundred Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.25. 
 
 xser A work admirably adapted to the Family, the Sabbath, and the week-day School Library. 
 
 ATTALXTICAIi COWCOEBAWCB TO THE HOLY SCBIP- 
 
 TtJBES ; or, the Bible presented under Distinct and Classified Heads or Topics. By 
 John Eadie, D. D., LL D., Author of " Biblical Cyclopaedia," " Ecclesiastical Cyclopas- 
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 $3.50-, cloth, gilt, $4.00 } half Turkey morocco, $4.00. 
 
 The object of this Concordnncr jg to present the ScitiPTUBES EN'TiKE, under certain claasifled 
 and exhaustive heads. It differs from an ordinary Concordance, in that its arrangement depends 
 not on woKDS, but on subjects, and the verses are printed in full. Its plan docs not bring it at 
 all into competition with such limited works as those of Gaston and Warden ; for they select doo 
 trzncd topics principally, and do not profess to comprehend as this the entire Bible. The work 
 also contains a Synoptical Table of Contents of the whole work, presenting in brief a system of 
 biblical antiquities and theology, witli a very copious and accurate indei. 
 
 The value of this work to ministers and Sabbath-school teachers can hardly be over-estimated i 
 and it needs only to be examined, to secure the approval and patronage of every Bible student. 
 
 CKTTDEWS CONDENSED COISTCOBDANCE. A Complete Concord, 
 ance to the Holy Scriptures. By Alexander Crudbn. llevised and Re-edited by tho 
 Rev. David King, LL. J). Octavo, cloth backs, $1.25 •, sheep, $1.50. 
 
 The condensation of the qi-otations of Scripture, arranged under the most obvious heads, whUe 
 it diminishes the hulh of the work, greatly facilitates the finding of any required passage. 
 
 " Wc have in this edition of Cruden the be^^t made Utter. That is, the present is better adapted 
 to the purposes of a Concordance, by the erasure of superfluous references, the omission of unne. 
 cessary explanations, and the contraction of quotations, &c. It is better as a manual, and i3 better 
 adapted by its price to the means of many who need and ought to possess such a work, than the 
 fonner large and expensive edition." — Furitan Jiccorder. 
 
 A COMMEKTTAHY ON THE OEIGIBTAL TEST OF TEE ACT3 
 OF THE APOSTLES. By IIobatio B. Hackett, D. D., Prof, of Biblical Liter- 
 ature and Interpretation, in the Newton Tbecl. Inst. CT A new, revised, and enlarged 
 edition. Royal octavo, cloth, $2.25. 
 
 e^-Thi.most important and very popular work has been thoroughly revised 1 large porlionj 
 ,n^v re-written, ^^Ih the addition of riwre thnn one hundred pa^c of new matter ; the re.ul of 
 toeru^^.co"t1nuedJ.borio„sinve.tigati„„.andtraveU,,incethepuMicationofthetatc^^^^ 
 
GOULB AND LINCOLN, 
 
 69 WASHINGTON ESTEEET, BOSTON, 
 
 "Would call particular attention to the following valuable works described 
 in their Catalogue of Puhlications, viz. . 
 
 Hugh. Miller's Works. 
 
 Bayne'8 Works. Walker's Works. MiaU's Works. Eungener'a Work. 
 
 Animal of Scientific Discovery. Knight's Knowledge is Power. 
 
 Krumma Cher's Siiffering Saviour, 
 
 Banvard'a American Histories. The Aimwell Stories. 
 
 Newcomb's Works. Tweedie'a Works. Chambers's Works. Harris' Works. 
 
 Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature. 
 
 Mrs. Knight's Life of Montgomery. Kitto's History of Palestine. 
 
 Whewell'B Work. Wayland's Works. Agassiz's Works, 
 
 ^^estimony of RocW ^*^ ■-^•muim 
 
 ■>ATio.otSdcDt.I)uL,„lBr Hugh Miller. 
 
 m C.mp«a«., ^.X.% C^Tfe, ,.,. 
 Sk Moll""' and Si,u, Vl', A«„,„ ™'>''i'- \ 
 
 t\Cjdop.orEiiB.Lli,„l.,\& Hob,- „ '-"; 
 
 \'Amljl.Ci>oo. otEiilo, 
 "oral Scienoa 
 
 ■vTbo Great Te«b.r;^ 
 
 CbPB' 
 
 Bt\a» ^ 
 
 itlo. _ CruJoQ. 
 ■Eidje. - WiJIiams. 
 
 VA John Hkn-is. 
 K\ Pot«r BajQa. 
 
 
 A^'J-zv/'/xxd - 
 
 Williams' Works. Guyot's Works. 
 
 Thompson's Better Land. Kimball's Heaven. Valuable Works on MisBiona. 
 
 Haven's TIrntal Philosophy. Buchanan's Modern Atheism. 
 
 Cruden's Condensed Concordance. Eadie's Analytical Concordance, 
 
 The Psalmist : a Collection of Hymns. 
 
 Valuable School Books. Works for Sabbath Schools. 
 
 Memoir of Amos Lawrence. 
 
 Poetical Works of Milton, Cowper, Scott. Elegant Miniature Volumes. 
 
 Arvine'a Cyolopoidia of Anecdotes, 
 
 Ripley's Notes on G-ospols, Acts, and Komans. 
 
 fiprague's European Celebrities. Marsh's Camel and the Ealllg, 
 
 E-oget's Thesaurus of English Words. 
 
 Haokett's Notes on Acta. M'V/horter's Yahveh Christ. 
 
 Slebold and Stannius's Comparative Anatomy. Marcou's Geological Map, U. B^ 
 
 Eeligious and Miscellaneous Works. 
 
 Works in the various Departments of Literature, Science and Art.