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diff --git a/30737.txt b/30737.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..666d2d8 --- /dev/null +++ b/30737.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18430 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Schools and Schoolmasters, by Hugh Miller + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: My Schools and Schoolmasters + or The Story of my Education. + +Author: Hugh Miller + +Release Date: December 22, 2009 [EBook #30737] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS *** + + + + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia, Eric Hutton, +Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive) + + + + + + +MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS. + + +_Morrison and Gibb, Edinburgh,_ +_Printers to Her Majesty's Stationery Office._ + + +[Illustration: Hugh Miller] + + +MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS +OR +THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. + + +BY HUGH MILLER, + +AUTHOR OF 'THE OLD RED SANDSTONE,' 'FOOTPRINTS OF THE CREATOR,' +ETC. ETC. + + +[Illustration: Logo] + + +EDINBURGH: +W. P. NIMMO, HAY, & MITCHELL. +1889. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + +CHAPTER I. + PAGE + +A sailor's early career--First marriage--Escape from +shipwreck--Second Love--Traits of character, 1 + + +CHAPTER II. + +Childhood and childish visions--A Father's death--Favourite +books--Sketch of two maternal uncles, 20 + + +CHAPTER III. + +Dawn of patriotism--Cromarty Grammar School--Prevalent +amusements--Old Francie--Earliest geological researches, 40 + + +CHAPTER IV. + +Uncle Sandy as a Naturalist--Important discovery--Cromarty Sutors +and their caves--Expedition to the 'Doocot'--Difficulties and +dangers--Sensation produced, 62 + + +CHAPTER V. + +A would-be patroness--Boyish games--First friendship--Visit to the +Highlands--Geologizing in the Gruids--Ossian-worship, 85 + + +CHAPTER VI. + +Cousin George and Cousin William--Excursion with Cousin +Walter--Painful accident--Family bereavements--Links between +the present and the past, 107 + + +CHAPTER VII. + +Subscription school--Vacation delights--Forays and fears--Quarrel +with the schoolmaster--Poetical revenge--Johnstone the forester, 129 + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +Choice of a calling--Disappointment to relatives--Old Red Sandstone +quarry--Depression and walking-sleep--Temptations of +toil--Friendship with William Ross, 151 + + +CHAPTER IX. + +Life in the bothie--Mad Bell--Mournful history--Singular +intimacy--Manners and customs of north-country masons, 173 + + +CHAPTER X. + +Evening walks--Lines on a sun-dial--A haunted stream--Insect +transformations--Jock Moghoal--Musings, 195 + + +CHAPTER XI. + +An antiquary in humble life--Poor Danie--Proficiency in +porridge-making--Depressed health--A good omen--Close of +apprenticeship, 219 + + +CHAPTER XII. + +Swimming the Conon--Click-Clack the carter--Loch Maree--Fitting +up a barrack--Highland characteristics, 245 + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +The Brothers Fraser--Flora of the Northern Hebrides--Diving in +the Gareloch--Sabbaths in Flowerdale woods--Causes of +Highland distress, 268 + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +A cragsman's death--Providential escape--Property in Leith--First +sight of Edinburgh--Peter M'Craw--Niddry Woods--Researches +among the Coal Measures, 296 + + +CHAPTER XV. + +A worthy Seceder--The hero of the squad--Apology for +fanaticism--Strikes--Recollections of the theatre, 321 + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +Great fires in Edinburgh--Dr. Colquhoun--Dr. M'Crie--Return to +the North--Stanzas written at sea--Geological dreams, 348 + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +Religious phases--True centre of Christianity--Bearing of geology +upon theological belief--Delicate health--A gipsy wedding, 373 + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +Convalescence--Pursuit of algeology--Jock Gordon--Theory of +idiocy--Mr. Stewart of Cromarty, 395 + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +Stone-cutting at Inverness--A jilted lover--The _Osars_--Death +of Uncle James--Farewell letter from William Ross, 416 + + +CHAPTER XX. + +Publication of poems--Newspaper criticisms--Walsh the +lecturer--Enlarged circle of friends--Miss Dunbar of Boath, 435 + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +Arenaceous formations--Antiquity of the earth--Tremendous +hurricane--_Loligo Vulgare_--Researches amid the +Lias--Interesting discoveries, 457 + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +Religious controversies--Ecclesiastical dispute--Cholera--Preventive +measures--Reform Bill, 474 + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +Visitors in the churchyard--The Ladies' Walk--First +interview--Friendship--Love--Second visit to Edinburgh--Linlithgow +Bank--Favourable reception of "Scenes and Legends"--Marriage, 497 + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +Married life at Cromarty--Ichthyolitic deposit of Old Red +Sandstone--Correspondence with Agassiz and Murchison--Happy +evenings--Death of eldest child, 522 + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +Voluntary principle--Position of the Establishment--Letter to +Lord Brougham--Invitation to Edinburgh--Editorship of the +_Witness_--Introduction to Dr. Chalmers--Visit from an old +friend--Removal to Edinburgh, 541 + + + + +TO THE READER. + + +It is now nearly a hundred years since Goldsmith remarked, in his little +educational treatise, that "few subjects have been more frequently +written upon than the education of youth." And during the century which +has well-nigh elapsed since he said so, there have been so many more +additional works given to the world on this fertile topic, that their +number has been at least doubled. Almost all the men who ever taught a +few pupils, with a great many more who never taught any, deem themselves +qualified to say something original on education; and perhaps few books +of the kind have yet appeared, however mediocre their general tone, in +which something worthy of being attended to has not actually been said. +And yet, though I have read not a few volumes on the subject, and have +dipped into a great many more, I never yet found in them the sort of +direction or encouragement which, in working out my own education, I +most needed. They insisted much on the various modes of teaching others, +but said nothing--or, what amounted to the same thing, nothing to the +purpose--on the best mode of teaching one's-self. And as my +circumstances and position, at the time when I had most occasion to +consult them, were those of by much the largest class of the people of +this and every other civilized country--for I was one of the many +millions who need to learn, and yet have no one to teach them--I could +not help deeming the omission a serious one. I have since come to think, +however, that a formal treatise on self-culture might fail to supply +the want. Curiosity must be awakened ere it can be satisfied; nay, once +awakened, it never fails in the end fully to satisfy itself; and it has +occurred to me, that by simply laying before the working men of the +country the "Story of my Education," I may succeed in first exciting +their curiosity, and next, occasionally at least, in gratifying it also. +They will find that by far the best schools I ever attended are schools +open to them all--that the best teachers I ever had are (though severe +in their discipline) always easy of access--and that the special _form_ +at which I was, if I may say so, most successful as a pupil, was a form +to which I was drawn by a strong inclination, but at which I had less +assistance from my brother men, or even from books, than at any of the +others. There are few of the natural sciences which do not lie quite as +open to the working men of Britain and America as Geology did to me. + +My work, then, if I have not wholly failed in it, may be regarded as a +sort of educational treatise, thrown into the narrative form, and +addressed more especially to working men. They will find that a +considerable portion of the scenes and incidents which it records read +their lesson, whether of encouragement or warning, or throw their +occasional lights on peculiarities of character or curious natural +phenomena, to which their attention might be not unprofitably directed. +Should it be found to possess an interest to any other class, it will be +an interest chiefly derivable from the glimpses which it furnishes of +the inner life of the Scottish people, and its bearing on what has been +somewhat clumsily termed "the condition-of-the-country question." My +sketches will, I trust, be recognised as true to fact and nature. And as +I have never perused the autobiography of a working man of the more +observant type, without being indebted to it for new facts and ideas +respecting the circumstances and character of some portion of the people +with which I had been less perfectly acquainted before, I can hope that, +regarded simply as the memoir of a protracted journey through +_districts_ of society not yet very sedulously explored, and scenes +which few readers have had an opportunity of observing for themselves, +my story may be found to possess some of the interest which attaches to +the narratives of travellers who see what is not often seen, and know, +in consequence, what is not generally known. In a work cast into the +autobiographic form, the writer has always much to apologize for. With +himself for his subject, he usually tells not only more than he ought, +but also, in not a few instances, more than he intends. For, as has been +well remarked, whatever may be the character which a writer of his own +Memoirs is desirous of assuming, he rarely fails to betray the real one. +He has almost always his unintentional revelations, that exhibit +peculiarities of which he is not conscious, and weaknesses which he has +failed to recognise as such; and it will no doubt be seen that what is +so generally done in works similar to mine, I have not escaped doing. +But I cast myself full on the good-nature of the reader. My aims have, I +trust, been honest ones; and should I in any degree succeed in rousing +the humbler classes to the important work of self-culture and +self-government, and in convincing the higher that there are instances +in which working men have at least as legitimate a claim to their +respect as to their pity, I shall not deem the ordinary penalties of the +autobiographer a price too high for the accomplishment of ends so +important. + + + + +MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS +OR +THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + "Ye gentlemen of England, + Who live at home at ease, + Oh, little do ye think upon + The dangers of the seas."--OLD SONG. + + +Rather more than eighty years ago, a stout little boy, in his sixth or +seventh year, was despatched from an old-fashioned farm-house in the +upper part of the parish of Cromarty, to drown a litter of puppies in an +adjacent pond. The commission seemed to be not in the least congenial. +He sat down beside the pool, and began to cry over his charge; and +finally, after wasting much time in a paroxysm of indecision and sorrow, +instead of committing the puppies to the water, he tucked them up in his +little kilt, and set out by a blind pathway which went winding through +the stunted heath of the dreary Maolbuoy Common, in a direction opposite +to that of the farm-house--his home for the two previous twelvemonths. +After some doubtful wandering on the waste, he succeeded in reaching, +before nightfall, the neighbouring seaport town, and presented himself, +laden with his charge, at his mother's door. The poor woman--a sailor's +widow, in very humble circumstances--raised her hands in astonishment: +"Oh, my unlucky boy," she exclaimed, "what's this?--what brings you +here?" "The little doggies, mither," said the boy; "I couldna drown the +little doggies; and I took them to you." What afterwards befell the +"little doggies," I know not; but trivial as the incident may seem, it +exercised a marked influence on the circumstances and destiny of at +least two generations of creatures higher in the scale than themselves. +The boy, as he stubbornly refused to return to the farm-house, had to be +sent on shipboard, agreeably to his wish, as a cabin-boy; and the writer +of these chapters was born, in consequence, a sailor's son, and was +rendered, as early as his fifth year, mainly dependent for his support +on the sedulously plied but indifferently remunerated labours of his +only surviving parent, at the time a sailor's widow. + +The little boy of the farm-house we a descended from a long line of +seafaring men,--skilful and adventurous sailors,--some of whom had +coasted along the Scottish shores as early as the times of Sir Andrew +Wood and the "bold Bartons," and mayhap helped to man that "verrie +monstrous schippe the Great Michael," that "cumbered all Scotland to get +her to sea." They had taken as naturally to the water as the +Newfoundland dog or the duckling. That waste of life which is always so +great in the naval profession had been more than usually so in the +generation just passed away. Of the boy's two uncles, one had sailed +round the world with Anson, and assisted in burning Paita, and in +boarding the Manilla galleon; but on reaching the English coast he +mysteriously disappeared, and was never more heard of. The other uncle, +a remarkably handsome and powerful man,--or, to borrow the homely but +not inexpressive language in which I have heard him described, "as +_pretty_ a fellow as ever stepped in shoe-leather,"--perished at sea in +a storm; and several years after, the boy's father, when entering the +Firth of Cromarty, was struck overboard, during a sudden gust, by the +boom of his vessel, and, apparently stunned by the blow, never rose +again. Shortly after, in the hope of screening her son from what seemed +to be the hereditary fate, his mother had committed the boy to the +charge of a sister, married to a farmer of the parish, and now the +mistress of the farm-house of Ardavell; but the family death was not to +be so avoided; and the arrangement terminated, as has been seen, in the +transaction beside the pond. + +In course of time the sailor boy, despite of hardship and rough usage, +grew up into a singularly robust and active man, not above the middle +size,--for his height never exceeded five feet eight inches,--but +broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-limbed, and so compact of bone +and muscle, that in a ship of the line, in which he afterwards sailed, +there was not, among five hundred able-bodied seamen, a man who could +lift so great a weight, or grapple with him on equal terms. His +education had been but indifferently cared for at home: he had, however, +been taught to read by a female cousin, a niece of his mother's, who, +like her too, was both the daughter and the widow of a sailor; and for +his cousin's only child, a girl somewhat younger than himself, he had +contracted a boyish affection, which in a stronger form continued to +retain possession of him after he grew up. In the leisure thrown on +his-hands in long Indian and Chinese voyages, he learned to write; and +profited so much by the instructions of a comrade, an intelligent and +warm-hearted though reckless Irishman, that he became skilful enough to +keep a log-book, and to take a reckoning with the necessary +correctness,--accomplishments far from common at the time among ordinary +sailors. He formed, too, a taste for reading. The recollection of his +cousin's daughter may have influenced him, but he commenced life with a +determination to rise in it,--made his first money by storing up instead +of drinking his grog,--and, as was common in those times, drove a little +trade with the natives of foreign parts in articles of curiosity and +vertu, for which, I suspect, the custom-house dues were not always paid. +With all his Scotch prudence, however, and with much kindliness of +heart and placidity of temper there was some wild blood in his veins, +derived, mayhap, from one or two buccaneering ancestors, that, when +excited beyond the endurance point, became sufficiently formidable; and +which, on at least one occasion, interfered very considerably with his +plans and prospects. + +On a protracted and tedious voyage in a large East Indiaman, he had, +with the rest of the crew, been subjected to harsh usage by a stern, +capricious captain; but, secure of relief on reaching port, he had borne +uncomplainingly with it all. His comrade and quondam teacher, the +Irishman, was, however, less patient; and for remonstrating with the +tyrant, as one of a deputation of the seamen, in what was deemed a +mutinous spirit, he was laid hold of, and was in the course of being +ironed down to the deck under a tropical sun, when his quieter comrade, +with his blood now heated to the boiling point, stepped aft, and with +apparent calmness re-stated the grievance. The captain drew a loaded +pistol from his belt; the sailor struck up his hand; and, as the bullet +whistled through the rigging above, he grappled with him, and disarmed +him in a trice. The crew rose, and in a few minutes the ship was all +their own. But having failed to calculate on such a result, they knew +not what to do with their charge; and, acting under the advice of their +new leader, who felt to the full the embarrassing nature of the +position, they were content simply to demand the redress of their +grievances as their terms of surrender; when, untowardly for their +claims, a ship of war hove in sight, much in want of men, and, bearing +down on the Indiaman, the mutiny was at once suppressed, and the leading +mutineers sent aboard the armed vessel, accompanied by a grave charge, +and the worst possible of characters. Luckily for them, however, and +especially luckily for the Irishman and his friend, the war-ship was so +weakened by scurvy, at that time the untamed pest of the navy, that +scarce two dozen of her crew could do duty aloft A fierce tropical +tempest, too, which broke out not long after, pleaded powerfully in +their favour; and the affair terminated in the ultimate promotion of the +Irishman to the office of ship-schoolmaster, and of his Scotch comrade +to the captaincy of the foretop. + +My narrative abides with the latter. He remained for several years +aboard a man-of-war, and, though not much in love with the service, did +his duty in both storm and battle. He served in the action off the +Dogger-Bank,--one of the last naval engagements fought ere the +manoeuvre of breaking the line gave to British valour its due +superiority, by rendering all our great sea-battles decisive; and a +comrade who sailed in the same vessel, and from whom, when a boy, I have +received kindness for my father's sake, has told me that, their ship +being but indifferently manned at the time, and the extraordinary +personal strength and activity of his friend well known, he had a +station assigned him at his gun against two of the crew, and that during +the action he actually outwrought them both. At length, however, the +enemy drifted to leeward to refit; and when set to repair the gashed and +severed rigging, such was his state of exhaustion, in consequence of the +previous overstrain on every nerve and muscle, that he had scarce vigour +enough left to raise the marlingspike employed in the work to the level +of his face. Suddenly, when in this condition, a signal passed along the +line, that the Dutch fleet, already refitted, was bearing down to renew +the engagement. A thrill like that of an electric shock passed through +the frame of the exhausted sailor; his fatigue at once left him; and, +vigorous and strong as when the action first began, he found himself +able, as before, to run out against his two comrades the one side of a +four-and-twenty pounder. The instance is a curious one of the influence +of that "spirit" which, according to the Wise King, enables a man to +"sustain his infirmity." + +It may be well not to inquire too curiously regarding the mode in which +this effective sailor quitted the navy. The country had borrowed his +services without consulting his will; and he, I suspect, reclaimed them +on his own behalf without first asking leave. I have been told by my +mother that he found the navy very intolerable;--the mutiny at the Nore +had not yet meliorated the service to the common sailor. Among other +hardships, he had been oftener than once under not only very harsh, but +also very incompetent officers; and on one occasion, after toiling on +the foreyard in a violent night-squall, with some of the best seamen +aboard, in fruitless attempts to furl up the sail, he had to descend, +cap in hand, at the risk of a flogging, and humbly implore the +boy-lieutenant in charge that he should order the vessel's head to be +laid in a certain direction. Luckily for him, the advice was taken by +the young gentleman, and in a few minutes the sail was furled. He left +his ship one fine morning, attired in his best, and having on his head a +three-cornered hat, with tufts of lace at the corners, which I well +remember, from the circumstance that it had long after to perform an +important part in certain boyish masquerades at Christmas and the New +Year; and as he had taken effective precautions for being reported +missing in the evening, he got clear off. + +Of some of the after-events of his life I retain such mere fragmentary +recollections, dissociated from date and locality, as might be most +readily seized on by the imagination of a child. At one time, when +engaged in one of his Indian voyages, he was stationed during the night, +accompanied by but a single comrade, in a small open boat, near one of +the minor mouths of the Ganges; and he had just fallen asleep on the +beams, when he was suddenly awakened by a violent motion, as if his +skiff were capsizing. Starting up, he saw in the imperfect light a huge +tiger, that had swam, apparently, from the neighbouring jungle, in the +act of boarding the boat. So much was he taken aback, that though a +loaded musket lay beside him, it was one of the loose beams, or +_foot-spars_, used as fulcrums for the feet in rowing, that he laid hold +of as a weapon; but such was the blow he dealt to the paws of the +creature, as they rested on the gunwale, that it dropped off with a +tremendous snarl, and he saw it no more. On another occasion, he was one +of three men sent with despatches to some Indian port in a boat, which, +oversetting in the open sea in a squall, left them for the greater part +of three days only its upturned bottom for their resting-place. And so +thickly during that time did the sharks congregate around them, that +though a keg of rum, part of the boat's stores, floated for the first +two days within a few yards of them, and they had neither meat nor +drink, none of them, though they all swam well, dared attempt regaining +it. They were at length relieved by a Spanish vessel, and treated with +such kindness, that the subject of my narrative used ever after to speak +well of the Spaniards, as a generous people, destined ultimately to +rise. He was at one time so reduced by scurvy, in a vessel half of whose +crew had been carried off by the disease, that, though still able to do +duty on the tops, the pressure of his finger left for several seconds a +dent in his thigh, as if the muscular flesh had become of the +consistency of dough. At another time, when overtaken in a small vessel +by a protracted tempest, in which "for many days neither sun nor moon +appeared," he continued to retain his hold of the helm for twelve hours +after every other man aboard was utterly prostrated and down, and +succeeded, in consequence, in weathering the storm for them all. And +after his death, a nephew of my mother's, a young man who had served his +apprenticeship under him, was treated with great kindness on the Spanish +Main, for his sake, by a West Indian captain, whose ship and crew he had +saved, as the captain told the lad, by boarding them in a storm, at +imminent risk to himself, and working their vessel into port, when, in +circumstances of similar exhaustion, they were drifting full upon an +iron-bound shore. Many of my other recollections of this manly sailor +are equally fragmentary in their character; but there is a distinct bit +of picture in them all, that strongly impressed the boyish fancy. + +When not much turned of thirty, the sailor returned to his native town, +with money enough, hardly earned, and carefully kept, to buy a fine +large sloop, with which he engaged in the coasting trade; and shortly +after he married his cousin's daughter. He found his cousin, who had +supported herself in her widowhood by teaching a school, residing in a +dingy, old-fashioned house, three rooms in length, but with the windows +of its second story half-buried in the eaves, that had been left her by +their mutual grandfather, old John Feddes, one of the last of the +buccaneers. It had been built, I have every reason to believe, with +Spanish gold; not, however, with a great deal of it, for, +notwithstanding its six rooms, it was a rather humble erection, and had +now fallen greatly into disrepair. It was fitted up with some of the +sailor's money, and, after his marriage, became his home,--a home +rendered all the happier by the presence of his cousin, now rising in +years, and who, during her long widowhood, had sought and found +consolation, amid her troubles and privations, where it was surest to be +found. She was a meek-spirited, sincerely pious woman; and the sailor, +during his more distant voyages,--for he sometimes traded with ports of +the Baltic on the one hand, and with those of Ireland and the south of +England on the other,--had the comfort of knowing that his wife, who had +fallen into a state of health chronically delicate, was sedulously +tended and cared for by a devoted mother. The happiness which he would +have otherwise enjoyed was, however, marred in some degree by his wife's +great delicacy of constitution, and ultimately blighted by two unhappy +accidents. + +He had not lost the nature which had been evinced at an early age beside +the pond: for a man who had often looked death in the face, he had +remained nicely tender of human life, and had often hazarded his own in +preserving that of others; and when accompanied, on one occasion, by his +wife and her mother to his vessel, just previous to sailing, he had +unfortunately to exert himself in her presence, in behalf of one of his +seamen, in a way that gave her constitution a shock from which it never +recovered. A clear frosty moonlight evening had set in; the pier-head +was glistening with new-formed ice; and one of the sailors, when engaged +in casting over a haulser which he had just loosed, missed footing on +the treacherous margin, and fell into the sea. The master knew his man +could not swim; a powerful seaward tide sweeps past the place with the +first hours of ebb; there was not a moment to be lost; and, hastily +throwing off his heavy greatcoat, he plunged after him, and in an +instant the strong current swept them both out of sight. He succeeded, +however, in laying hold of the half-drowned man, and, striking with him +from out the perilous tideway into an eddy, with a Herculean effort he +regained the quay. On reaching it, his wife lay insensible in the arms +of her mother; and as she was at the time in the delicate condition +incidental to married women, the natural consequence followed, and she +never recovered the shock, but lingered for more than a twelve-mouth, +the mere shadow of her former self; when a second event, as untoward as +the first, too violently shook the fast ebbing sands, and precipitated +her dissolution. + +A prolonged tempest from the stormy north-east had swept the Moray Firth +of its shipping, and congregated the stormbound vessels by scores in the +noble harbour of Cromarty, when the wind chopped suddenly round, and +they all set out to sea,--the sloop of the master among the rest. The +other vessels kept the open Firth; but the master, thoroughly acquainted +with its navigation, and in the belief that the change of wind was but +temporary, went on hugging the land on the weather side, till, as he had +anticipated, the breeze set full into the old quarter, and increased +into a gale. And then, when all the rest of the fleet had no other +choice left them than just to scud back again, he struck out into the +Firth in a long tack, and, doubling Kinnaird's Head and the dreaded +Buchan Ness, succeeded in making good his voyage south. Next morning the +wind-bound vessels were crowding the harbour of refuge as before, and +only his sloop was amissing. The first war of the French Revolution had +broken out at the time; it was known there were several French +privateers hovering on the coast; and the report went abroad that the +missing sloop had been captured by the French. There was a +weather-brained tailor in the neighbourhood, who used to do very odd +things, especially, it was said, when the moon was at the full, and whom +the writer remembers from the circumstance that he fabricated for him +his first jacket, and that, though he succeeded in sewing on one sleeve +to the hole at the shoulder, where it ought to be, he committed the +slight mistake of sewing on the other sleeve to one of the pocket-holes. +Poor Andrew Fern had heard that his townsman's sloop had been captured +by a privateer, and, fidgety with impatience till he had communicated +the intelligence where he thought it would tell most effectively, he +called on the master's wife, to ask whether she had not heard that all +the wind-bound vessels had got back again save the master's, and to +wonder no one had yet told her that, if _his_ had not got back, it was +simply because it had been taken by the French. The tailor's +communication told more powerfully than he could have anticipated: in +less than a week after, the master's wife was dead; and long ere her +husband's return she was lying in the quiet family burying-place, in +which--so heavy were the drafts made by accident and violent death on +the family--the remains of none of the male members had been deposited +for more than a hundred years. + +The mother, now left, by the death of her daughter, to a dreary +solitude, sought to relieve its tedium, during the absence of her +son-in-law when on his frequent voyages, by keeping, as she had done ere +his return from foreign parts, a humble school. It was attended by two +little girls, the children of a distant relation but very dear friend, +the wife of a tradesman of the place,--a woman, like herself, of sincere +though unpretending piety. Their similarity of character in this respect +could hardly be traced to their common ancestor. He was the last curate +of the neighbouring parish of Nigg; and, though not one of those +intolerant Episcopalian ministers that succeeded in rendering their +Church thoroughly hateful to the Scottish people,--for he was a simple, +easy man, of much good nature,--he was, if tradition speak true, as +little religious as any of them. In one of the earlier replies to that +curious work, "Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed," I find a +nonsensical passage from one of the curate's sermons, given as a set-off +against the Presbyterian nonsense adduced by the other side. "Mr. James +M'Kenzie, curate of Nigg in Ross," says the writer, "describing eternity +to his parishioners, told them that in that state they would be +immortalized, so that nothing could hurt them: a slash of a broadsword +could not hurt you, saith he; nay, a cannon-ball would play but _baff_ +on you." Most of the curate's descendants were stanch Presbyterians, and +animated by a greatly stronger spirit than his; and there were none of +them stancher in their Presbyterianism than the two elderly women who +counted kin from him in the fourth degree, and who, on the basis of a +common faith, had become attached friends. The little girls were great +favourites with the schoolmistress; and when, as she rose in years, her +health began to fail, the elder of the two removed from her mother's +house, to live with, and take care of her; and the younger, who was now +shooting up into a pretty young woman, used, as before, to pass much of +her time with her sister and her old mistress. + +Meanwhile the shipmaster was thriving. He purchased a site for a house +beside that of his buccaneering grandfather, and built for himself and +his aged relative a respectable dwelling, which cost him about four +hundred pounds, and entitled his son, the writer, to exercise the +franchise, on the passing, considerably more than thirty years after, of +the Reform Bill. The new house was, however, never to be inhabited by +its builder; for, ere it was fully finished, he was overtaken by a sad +calamity, that, to a man of less energy and determination, would have +been ruin, and in consequence of which he had to content himself with +the old house as before, and almost to begin the world anew. I have now +reached a point in my narrative at which, from my connexion with the two +little girls,--both of whom still live in the somewhat altered character +of women far advanced in life,--I can be as minute in its details as I +please; and the details of the misadventure which stripped the +shipmaster of the earnings of long years of carefulness and toil, +blended as they are with what an old critic might term a curious +_machinery_ of the supernatural, seem not unworthy of being given +unabridged. + +Early in November 1797, two vessels--the one a smack in the London and +Inverness trade, the other the master's square-rigged sloop--lay +wind-bound for a few days on their passage north, in the port of +Peterhead. The weather, which had been stormy and unsettled, moderated +towards the evening of the fifth day of their detention; and the wind +chopping suddenly into the east, both vessels loosed from their +moorings, and, as a rather gloomy day was passing into still gloomier +night, they bore out to sea. The breeze soon freshened into a gale; the +gale swelled into a hurricane, accompanied by a thick snow-storm: and +when, early next morning, the smack opened the Firth, she was staggering +under her storm-jib, and a mainsail reefed to the cross. Whatever wind +may blow, there is always shelter within the Sutors; and she was soon +riding at anchor in the roadstead; but she had entered the bay alone; +and when day broke, and for a brief interval the driving snow-rack +cleared up towards the east, no second sail appeared in the offing. +"Poor Miller!" exclaimed the master of the smack; "if he does not enter +the Firth ere an hour, he will never enter it at all. Good sound vessel, +and better sailor never stepped between stem and stern; but last night +has, I fear, been too much for him. He should have been here long ere +now." The hour passed; the day itself wore heavily away in gloom and +tempest; and as not only the master, but also all the crew of the sloop, +were natives of the place, groups of the town's-folk might be seen, so +long as the daylight lasted, looking out into the storm from the salient +points of the old coast-line that, rising immediately behind the houses, +commands the Firth. But the sloop came not, and before they had retired +to their homes, a second night had fallen, dark and tempestuous as the +first. + +Ere morning the weather moderated: a keen frost bound up the wind in its +icy fetters; and during the following day, though a heavy swell +continued to roll shorewards between the Sutors, and sent up its white +foam high against the cliffs, the surface of the sea had become glassy +and smooth. But the day wore on, and evening again fell; and even the +most sanguine relinquished all hope of ever again seeing the sloop or +her crew. There was grief in the master's dwelling,--grief in no degree +the less poignant from the circumstance that it was the tearless, +uncomplaining grief of rigid old age. Her two youthful friends and their +mother watched with the widow, now, as it seemed, left alone in the +world. The town-clock had struck the hour of midnight, and still she +remained as if fixed to her seat, absorbed in silent, stupifying sorrow, +when a heavy foot was heard pacing along the now silent street. It +passed, and anon returned; ceased for a moment nearly opposite the +window; then approached the door, where there was a second pause; and +then there succeeded a faltering knock, that struck on the very hearts +of the inmates within. One of the girls sprang up, and on undoing the +bolt, shrieked out, as the door fell open, "O mistress, here is Jack +Grant the mate!" Jack, a tall, powerful seaman, but apparently in a +state of utter exhaustion, staggered, rather than walked in, and flung +himself into a chair. "Jack," exclaimed the old woman, seizing him +convulsively by both his hands, "where's my cousin?--where's Hugh?" "The +master's safe and well," said Jack; "but the poor _Friendship_ lies in +_spales_ on the bar of Findhorn." "God be praised!" ejaculated the +widow. "Let the gear go!" + +I have often heard Jack's story related in Jack's own words, at a period +of life when repetition never tires; but I am not sure that I can do it +the necessary justice now. "We left Peterhead," he said, "with about +half a cargo of coal,--for we had lightened ship a day or two +before,--and the gale freshened as the night came on. We made all tight, +however; and though the snow-drift was so blinding in the thick of the +shower that I could scarce see my hand before me, and though it soon +began to blow great guns, we had given the land a good offing, and the +hurricane blew the right way. Just as we were loosening from the quay, a +poor young woman, much knocked up, with a child in her arms, had come to +the vessel's side, and begged hard of master to take her aboard. She was +a soldier's wife, and was travelling to join her husband at Fort-George; +but she was already worn out and penniless, she said; and now, as a +snow-storm threatened to block up the roads, she could neither stay +where she was, nor pursue her journey. Her infant, too,--she was sure, +if she tried to force her way through the hills, it would perish in the +snow. The master, though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such +weather, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature, to +take her aboard. And she was now with her child, all alone, below in the +cabin I was stationed a-head on the out-look beside the foresail +_horse_: the night had grown pitch dark; and the lamp in the binnacle +threw just light enough through the grey of the shower to show me the +master at the helm. He looked more anxious, I thought, than I had almost +ever seen him before, though I have been with him, mistress, in bad +weather; and all at once I saw he had got company, and strange company +too, for such a night: there was a woman moving round him, with a child +in her arms. I could see her as distinctly as ever I saw anything,--now +on the one side, now on the other,--at one time full in the light, at +another half lost in the darkness. That, I said to myself, must be the +soldier's wife and her child; but how in the name of wonder can the +master allow a woman to come on deck in such a night as this, when we +ourselves have just enough ado to keep footing? He takes no notice of +her neither, but keeps looking on, quite in his wont, at the binnacle. +'Master,' I said, stepping up to him, 'the woman had surely better go +below.' 'What woman, Jack?' said he; 'our passenger, you may be sure, is +nowhere else.' I looked round, mistress, and found he was quite alone, +and that the companion-head was hasped down. There came a cold sweat all +over me. 'Jack,' said the master, 'the night is getting worse, and the +roll of the waves heightening every moment. I'm convinced, too, our +cargo is shifting: as the last sea struck us, I could hear the coals +rattle below; and see how stiffly we heel to the larboard. Say nothing, +however, to the men, but have all your wits about you; and look, +meanwhile, to the boat-tackle and the oars. I have seen a boat live in +as bad a night as this.' As he spoke, a blue light from above glimmered +on the deck. We looked up, and saw a dead-fire sticking to the +cross-trees. 'It's all over with us now, master,' said I. 'Nay, man,' +replied the master, in his easy, humorous way, which I always like well +enough except in bad weather, and then I see his humour is served out +like his extra grog, to keep up hearts that have cause enough to get +low,--'Nay, man,' he said, 'we can't afford to let your grandmother +board us to-night. If you will insure _me_ against the shifting coal, +I'll be your guarantee against the dead-light. Why, it's as much a +natural appearance, man, as a flash of lightning. Away to your berth, +and keep up a good heart: we can't be far from Covesea now, where, when +once past the Skerries, the swell will take off; and then, in two short +hours, we may be snug within the Sutors.' I had scarcely reached my +berth a-head, mistress, when a heavy sea struck us on the starboard +quarter, almost throwing us on our beam-ends. I could hear the rushing +of the coals below, as they settled on the larboard side; and though the +master set us full before the wind, and gave instant orders to lighten +every stitch of sail,--and it was but little sail we had at the time to +lighten,--still the vessel did not rise, but lay unmanageable as a log, +with her gunwale in the water. On we drifted, however, along the south +coast, with little expectation save that every sea would send us to the +bottom; until, in the first grey of the morning, we found ourselves +among the breakers of the terrible bar of Findhorn. And shortly after, +the poor _Friendship_ took the ground right on the edge of the +quicksands, for she would neither stay nor wear; and as she beat hard +against the bottom, the surf came rolling over half-mast high. + +"Just as we struck," continued Jack, "the master made a desperate effort +to get into the cabin. The vessel couldn't miss, we saw, to break up and +fill; and though there was little hope of any of us ever setting foot +ashore, he wished to give the poor woman below a chance with the rest. +All of us but himself, mistress, had got up into the shrouds, and so we +could see round us a bit; and he had just laid his hand on the +companion-hasp to undo the door, when I saw a tremendous sea coming +rolling towards us, like a moving wall, and shouted on him to hold fast. +He sprang to the weather back-stay, and laid hold. The sea came tumbling +on, and, breaking full twenty feet over his head, buried him for a +minute's space in the foam. We thought we should never see him more; but +when it cleared away, there was he still, with his iron grip on the +stay, though the fearful wave had water-logged the _Friendship_ from bow +to stem, and swept her companion-head as cleanly off by the deck as if +it had been cut with a saw. No human aid could avail the poor woman and +her baby. Master could hear the terrible choking noise of her dying +agony right under his feet, with but a two-inch plank between; and the +sounds have haunted him ever since. But even had he succeeded in getting +her on deck, she could not possibly have survived, mistress. For five +long hours we clung to the rigging, with the seas riding over us all the +time like wild horses; and though we could see, through the snow-drift +and the spray, crowds on the shore, and boats lying thick beside the +pier, none dared venture out to assist us, till near the close of the +day, when the wind fell with the falling tide, and we were brought +ashore, more dead than alive, by a volunteer crew from the harbour. The +unlucky _Friendship_ began to break up under us ere mid-day, and we saw +the corpse of the drowned woman, with the dead infant still in its arms, +come floating out through a hole in the side. But the surf soon tore +mother and child asunder, and we lost sight of them as they drifted away +to the west. Master would have crossed the Firth himself this morning to +relieve your mind, but being less worn out than any of us, he thought it +best to remain in charge of the wreck." + +Such, in effect, was the narrative of Jack Grant, the mate. The master, +as I have said, had well-nigh to commence the world anew, and was on the +eve of selling his new house at a disadvantage, in order to make up the +sum necessary for providing himself with a new vessel, when a friend +interposed, and advanced him the balance required. He was assisted, too, +by a sister in Leith, who was in tolerably comfortable circumstances; +and so he got a new sloop, which, though not quite equal in size to the +one he had lost, was built wholly of oak, every plank and beam of which +he had superintended in the laying down, and a prime sailer to boot; and +so, though he had to satisfy himself with the accommodation of the old +domicile, with its little rooms and its small windows, and to let the +other house to a tenant, he began to thrive again as before. Meanwhile +his aged cousin was gradually sinking. The master was absent on one of +his longer voyages, and she too truly felt that she could not survive +till his return. She called to her bedside her two young friends, the +sisters, who had been unwearied in their attentions to her, and poured +out her blessing on them; first on the elder, and then on the younger. +"But as for you, Harriet," she added, addressing the latter, "there +waits for you one of the best blessings of this world also--the +blessings of a good husband: you will be a gainer in the end, even in +this life, through your kindness to the poor childless widow." The +prophecy was a true one: the old woman had shrewdly marked where the +eyes of her cousin had been falling of late; and in about a twelvemonth +after her death her young friend and pupil had become the master's wife. +There was a very considerable disparity between their ages,--the master +was forty-four, and his wife only eighteen,--but never was there a +happier marriage. The young wife was simple, confiding, and +affectionate; and the master of a soft and genial nature, with a large +amount of buoyant humour about him, and so equable of temper, that, +during six years of wedded life, his wife never saw him angry but once. +I have heard her speak of the exceptional instance, however, as too +terrible to be readily forgotten. + +She had accompanied him on ship-board, during their first year of +married life, to the upper parts of the Cromarty Firth, where his sloop +was taking in a cargo of grain, and lay quietly embayed within two +hundred yards of the southern shore. His mate had gone away for the +night to the opposite side of the bay, to visit his parents, who resided +in that neighbourhood; and the remaining crew consisted of but two +seamen, both young and somewhat reckless men, and the ship-boy. Taking +the boy with them to keep the ship's boat afloat, and wait their return, +the two sailors went ashore, and, setting out for a distant +public-house, remained there drinking till a late hour. There was a +bright moon overhead, but the evening was chilly and frosty; and the +boy, cold, tired, and half-overcome by sleep, after waiting on till past +midnight, shoved off the boat, and, making his way to the vessel, got +straightway into his hammock and fell asleep. Shortly after, the two men +came to the shore much the worse of liquor; and, failing to make +themselves heard by the boy, they stripped off their clothes, and chilly +as the night was, swam aboard. The master and his wife had been for +hours snug in their bed, when they were awakened by the screams of the +boy: the drunken men were unmercifully bastinading him with a rope's end +apiece. The master, hastily rising, had to interfere in his behalf, and +with the air of a man who knew that remonstrance in the circumstances +would be of little avail, he sent them both off to their hammocks. +Scarcely, however, had he again got into bed, when he was a second time +aroused by the cries of the boy, uttered on this occasion in the shrill +tones of agony and terror; and, promptly springing up, now followed by +his wife, he found the two sailors again belabouring the boy, and that +one of them, in his blind fury, had laid hold of a rope-end, armed, as +is common on shipboard, with an iron thimble or ring, and that every +blow produced a wound. The poor boy was streaming over with blood. The +master, in the extremity of his indignation, lost command of himself. +Rushing in, the two men were in a moment dashed against the deck;--they +seemed powerless in his hands as children; and had not his wife, +although very unfit at the time for mingling in a fray, run in and laid +hold of him,--a movement which calmed him at once,--it was her serious +impression that, unarmed as he was, he would have killed them both upon +the spot. There are, I believe, few things more formidable than the +unwonted anger of a good-natured man. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + + "Three stormy nights and stormy days + We tossed upon the raging main; + And long we strove our barque to save, + But all our striving was in vain."--LOWE. + + +I was born, the first child of this marriage, on the 10th day of October +1802, in the low, long house built by my great-grandfather the +buccaneer. My memory awoke early. I have recollections which date +several months ere the completion of my third year; but, like those of +the golden age of the world, they are chiefly of a mythologic character. +I remember, for instance, getting out unobserved one day to my father's +little garden, and seeing there a minute duckling covered with soft +yellow hair, growing out of the soil by its feet, and beside it a plant +that bore as its flowers a crop of little mussel shells of a deep red +colour. I know not what prodigy of the vegetable kingdom produced the +little duckling; but the plant with the shells must, I think, have been +a scarlet runner, and the shells themselves the papilionaceous blossoms. +I have a distinct recollection, too,--but it belongs to a later +period,--of seeing my ancestor, old John Feddes the buccaneer, though he +must have been dead at the time considerably more than half a century. I +had learned to take an interest in his story, as preserved and told in +the antique dwelling which he had built more than a hundred years +before. To forget a love disappointment, he had set out early in life +for the Spanish Main, where, after giving and receiving some hard blows, +he succeeded in filling a little bag with dollars and doubloons; and +then coming home, he found his old sweetheart a widow, and so much +inclined to listen to reason, that she ultimately became his wife. There +were some little circumstances in his history which must have laid hold +of my imagination; for I used over and over to demand its repetition; +and one of my first attempts at a work of art was to scrabble his +initials with my fingers, in red paint, on the house-door. One day, when +playing all alone at the stair-foot--for the inmates of the house had +gone out--something extraordinary had caught my eye on the landing-place +above; and looking up, there stood John Feddes--for I somehow +instinctively divined that it was none other than he--in the form of a +large, tall, very old man, attired in a light-blue greatcoat He seemed +to be steadfastly regarding me with apparent complacency; but I was +sadly frightened; and for years after, when passing through the dingy, +ill-lighted room out of which I inferred he had come, I used to feel not +at all sure that I might not tilt against old John in the dark. + +I retain vivid recollections of the joy which used to light up the +household on my father's arrival; and I remember that I learned to +distinguish for myself his sloop when in the offing, by the two slim +stripes of white which ran along her sides, and her two square topsails. +I have my golden memories, too, of splendid toys that he used to bring +home with him,--among the rest, of a magnificent four-wheeled waggon of +painted tin, drawn by four wooden horses and a string; and of getting it +into a quiet corner, immediately on its being delivered over to me, and +there breaking up every wheel and horse, and the vehicle itself, into +their original bits, until not two of the pieces were left sticking +together. Further, I still remember my disappointment at not finding +something curious within at least the horses and the wheels; and as +unquestionably the main enjoyment derivable from such things is to be +had in the breaking of them, I sometimes wonder that our ingenious +toymen do not fall upon the way of at once extending their trade, and +adding to its philosophy, by putting some of their most brilliant things +where nature puts the nut-kernel,--inside. I shall advert to but one +other recollection of this period. I have a dreamlike memory of a busy +time, when men with gold lace on their breasts, and at least one +gentleman with golden epaulets on his shoulders, used to call at my +father's house, and fill my newly acquired pockets with coppers; and how +they wanted, it was said, to bring my father along with them, to help +them to sail their great vessel; but he preferred remaining, it was +added, with his own little one. A ship of war, under the guidance of an +unskilful pilot, had run aground on a shallow flat on the opposite side +of the Firth, known as the _Inches_; and as the flood of a stream tide +was at its height at the time, and straightway began to fall off, it was +found, after lightening her of her guns and the greater part of her +stores, that she still stuck fast. My father, whose sloop had been +pressed into the service, and was loaded to the gunwale with the +ordnance, had betrayed an unexpected knowledge of the points of a large +war-vessel; and the commander, entering into conversation with him, was +so impressed by his skill, that he placed his ship under his charge, and +had his confidence repaid by seeing her hauled off into deep water in a +single tide. Knowing the nature of the bottom,--a soft arenaceous mud, +which if beat for some time by the foot or hand, resolved itself into a +sort of quicksand, half-sludge, half-water, which, when covered by a +competent depth of sea, could offer no effectual resistance to a ship's +keel,--the master had set half the crew to run in a body from side to +side, till, by the motion generated in this way, the portion of the bank +immediately beneath was beaten soft; and then the other moiety of the +men, tugging hard on kedge and haulser, drew the vessel off a few feet +at a time, till at length, after not a few repetitions of the process, +she floated free. Of course, on a harder bottom the expedient would not +have availed; but so struck was the commander by its efficacy and +originality, and by the extent of the master's professional resources, +that he strongly recommended him to part with his sloop, and enter the +navy, where he thought he had influence enough, he said, to get him +placed in a proper position. But as the master's previous experience of +the service had been of a very disagreeable kind, and as his position, +as at once master and owner of the vessel he sailed, was at least an +independent one, he declined acting on the advice. + +Such are some of my earlier recollections. But there was a time of +sterner memories at hand. The kelp trade had not yet attained to the +importance which it afterwards acquired, ere it fell before the first +approaches of Free Trade; and my father, in collecting a supply for the +Leith Glass Works, for which he occasionally acted both as agent and +shipmaster, used sometimes to spend whole months amid the Hebrides, +sailing from station to station, and purchasing here a few tons and +there a few hundredweights, until he had completed his cargo. In his +last kelp voyage he had been detained in this way from the close of +August till the end of October; and at length, deeply laden, he had +threaded his way round Cape Wrath, and through the Pentland and across +the Moray Firths, when a severe gale compelled him to seek shelter in +the harbour of Peterhead. From that port, on the 9th of November 1807, +he wrote my mother the last letter she ever received from him; for on +the day after he sailed from it there arose a terrible tempest, in which +many seamen perished, and he and his crew were never more heard of. His +sloop was last seen by a brother townsman and shipmaster, who, ere the +storm came on, had been fortunate enough to secure an asylum for his +barque in an English harbour on an exposed portion of the coast. Vessel +after vessel had been coming ashore during the day; and the beach was +strewed with wrecks and dead bodies; but he had marked his townsman's +sloop in the offing from mid-day till near evening, exhausting every +nautical shift and expedient to keep aloof from the shore; and at +length, as the night was falling, the skill and perseverance exerted +seemed successful; for, clearing a formidable headland that had lain on +the lee for hours, and was mottled with broken ships and drowned men, +the sloop was seen stretching out in a long tack into the open sea. +"Miller's seamanship has saved him once more!" said Matheson, the +Cromarty skipper, as, quitting his place of outlook, he returned to his +cabin; but the night fell tempestuous and wild, and no vestige of the +hapless sloop was ever after seen. It was supposed that, heavy laden, +and labouring in a mountainous sea, she must have started a plank and +foundered. And thus perished,--to borrow from the simple eulogium of his +seafaring friends, whom I heard long after condoling with my +mother,--"one of the best sailors that ever sailed the Moray Firth." + +The fatal tempest, as it had prevailed chiefly on the eastern coasts of +England and the south of Scotland, was represented in the north by but a +few bleak, sullen days, in which, with little wind, a heavy ground-swell +came rolling in coastwards from the cast, and sent up its surf high +against the precipices of the Northern Sutor. There were no forebodings +in the master's dwelling; for his Peterhead letter--a brief but hopeful +missive--had been just received; and my mother was sitting, on the +evening after, beside the household fire, plying the cheerful needle, +when the house door, which had been left unfastened, fell open, and I +was despatched from her side to shut it. What follows must be regarded +as simply the recollection, though a very vivid one, of a boy who had +completed his fifth year only a mouth before. Day had not wholly +disappeared, but it was fast posting on to night, and a grey haze spread +a neutral tint of dimness over every more distant object, but left the +nearer ones comparatively distinct, when I saw at the open door, within +less than a yard of my breast, as plainly as ever I saw anything, a +dissevered hand and arm stretched towards me. Hand and arm were +apparently those of a female: they bore a livid and sodden appearance; +and directly fronting me, where the body ought to have been, there was +only blank, transparent space, through which I could see the dim forms +of the objects beyond. I was fearfully startled, and ran shrieking to my +mother, telling what I had seen; and the house-girl whom she next sent +to shut the door, apparently affected by my terror, also returned +frightened, and said that she too had seen the woman's hand; which, +however, did not seem to be the case. And finally, my mother going to +the door, saw nothing, though she appeared much impressed by the +extremeness of my terror and the minuteness of my description. I +communicate the story, as it lies fixed in my memory, without attempting +to explain it. The supposed apparition may have been merely a momentary +affection of the eye, of the nature described by Sir Walter Scott in his +"Demonology," and Sir David Brewster in his "Natural Magic." But if so, +the affection was one of which I experienced no after-return; and its +coincidence, in the case, with the probable time of my father's death, +seems at least curious. + +There followed a dreary season, on which I still look back in memory, as +on a prospect which, sunshiny and sparkling for a time, has become +suddenly enveloped in cloud and storm. I remember my mother's long fits +of weeping, and the general gloom of the widowed household; and how, +after she had sent my two little sisters to bed,--for such had been the +increase of the family,--and her hands were set free for the evening, +she used to sit up late at night engaged as a seamstress, in making +pieces of dress for such of the neighbours as chose to employ her. My +father's new house lay untenanted at the time; and though his sloop had +been partially insured, the broker with whom he dealt was, it would +seem, on the verge of insolvency, and having raised objections to paying +the money, it was long ere any part of it could be realized. And so, +with all my mother's industry, the household would have fared out ill, +had it not been for the assistance lent her by her two brothers, +industrious, hard-working men, who lived with their aged parents, and an +unmarried sister, about a bow-shot away, and now not only advanced her +money as she needed it, but also took her second child, the elder of my +two sisters, a docile little girl of three years, to live with them. I +remember I used to go wandering disconsolately about the harbour at this +season, to examine the vessels which had come in during the night; and +that I oftener than once set my mother a-crying, by asking her why the +shipmasters who, when my father was alive, used to stroke my head and +slip halfpence into my pockets, never now took any notice of me, or gave +me anything? She well knew that the shipmasters--not an ungenerous class +of men--had simply failed to recognise their old comrade's child; but +the question was only too suggestive, notwithstanding, of both her own +loss and mine. I used, too, to climb, day after day, a grassy +protuberance of the old coast-line immediately behind my mother's house, +that commands a wide reach of the Moray Firth, and to look wistfully +out, long after every one else had ceased to hope, for the sloop with +the two stripes of white and the two square topsails. But months and +years passed by, and the white stripes and the square topsails I never +saw. + +The antecedents of my father's life impressed me more powerfully during +my boyhood than at least aught I acquired at school; and I have +submitted them to the reader at considerable length, as not only curious +in themselves, but as forming a first chapter in the story of my +education. And the following stanzas, written at a time when, in opening +manhood, I was sowing my wild oats in verse, may serve to show that they +continued to stand out in bold relief on my memory, even after I had +grown up:-- + + + "Round Albyn's western shores, a lonely skiff + Is coasting slow:--the adverse winds detain: + And now she rounds secure the dreaded cliff,[1] + Whose horrid ridge beats back the northern main; + And now the whirling Pentland roars in rain + Her stern beneath, for favouring breezes rise; + The green isles fade, whitens the watery plain. + O'er the vexed waves with meteor speed she flies. + Till Moray's distant hills o'er the blue waves arise. + + Who guides that vessel's wanderings o'er the wave; + A patient, hardy man, of thoughtful brow; + Serene and warm of heart, and wisely brave, + And sagely skill'd, when gurly breezes blow, + To press through angry waves the adventurous prow. + Age hath not quell'd his strength, nor quench'd desire + Of generous deed, nor chill'd his bosom's glow; + Yet to a better world his hopes aspire. + Ah! this must sure be thee! All hail, my honoured Sire! + + Alas! thy latest voyage draws near a close, + For Death broods voiceless in the darkening sky; + Subsides the breeze; the untroubled waves repose; + The scene is peaceful all. Can Death be nigh, + When thus, mute and unarm'd, his vassals lie? + Mark ye that cloud! There toils the imprisoned gale; + E'en now it comes, with voice uplifted high; + Resound the shores, harsh screams the rending sail, + And roars th' amazed wave, and bursts the thunder peal! + + Three days the tempest raged; on Scotia's shore + Wreck piled on wreck, and corse o'er corse was thrown; + Her rugged cliffs were red with clotted gore; + Her dark caves echoed back th' expiring moan; + And luckless maidens mourned their lovers gone, + And friendless orphans cried in vain for bread; + And widow'd mothers wandered forth alone;-- + Restore, O wave, they cried,--restore our dead! + And then the breast they bared, and beat th' unsheltered head. + + Of thee, my Sire, what mortal tongue can tell! + No friendly bay thy shattered barque received; + Ev'n when thy dust reposed in ocean cell, + Strange baseless tales of hope thy friends deceived + Which oft they doubted sad, or gay believed. + At length, when deeper, darker, wax'd the gloom, + Hopeless they grieved; but 'twas in vain they grieved: + If God be truth, 'tis sure no voice of doom, + That bids the accepted soul its robes of joy assume." + + +I had been sent, previous to my father's death, to a dame's school, +where I was taught to pronounce my letters to such effect in the old +Scottish mode, that still, when I attempt spelling a word aloud, which +is not often,--for I find the process a perilous one,--the _aa's_ and +_ee's_, and _uh's_ and _vaus_, return upon me and I have to translate +them with no little hesitation as I go along, into the more modish +sounds. A knowledge of the letters themselves I had already acquired by +studying the signposts of the place,--rare works of art, that excited my +utmost admiration, with jugs, and glasses, and bottles, and ships, and +loaves of bread upon them; all of which could, as the artists had +intended, be actually recognised. During my sixth year I spelt my way, +under the dame, through the Shorter Catechism, the Proverbs, and the New +Testament, and then entered upon her highest form, as a member of the +Bible class; but all the while the process of acquiring learning had +been a dark one, which I slowly mastered, in humble confidence in the +awful wisdom of the schoolmistress, not knowing whither it tended, when +at once my mind awoke to the meaning of that most delightful of all +narratives,--the story of Joseph. Was there ever such a discovery made +before! I actually found out for myself, that the art of reading is the +art of finding stories in books, and from that moment reading became one +of the most delightful of my amusements. I began by getting into a +corner at the dismissal of the school, and there conning over to myself +the new-found story of Joseph; nor did one perusal serve; the other +Scripture stories followed,--in especial, the story of Samson and the +Philistines, of David and Goliath, of the prophets Elijah and Elisha; +and after these came the New Testament stories and parables. Assisted by +my uncles, I began to collect a library in a box of birch-bark about +nine inches square, which I found quite large enough to contain a great +many immortal works,--Jack the Giant-Killer, and Jack and the +Bean-Stalk, and the Yellow Dwarf, and Blue Beard, and Sinbad the Sailor, +and Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, with +several others of resembling character. Those intolerable nuisances the +useful-knowledge books had not yet arisen, like tenebrious stars, on the +educational horizon, to darken the world, and shed their blighting +influence on the opening intellect of the "youth-hood;" and so, from my +rudimental books--books that made themselves truly such by their +thorough assimilation with the rudimental mind--I passed on, without +being conscious of break or line of division, to books on which the +learned are content to write commentaries and dissertations, but which I +found to be quite as nice children's books as any of the others. Old +Homer wrote admirably for little folk, especially in the Odyssey; a copy +of which,--in the only true translation extant,--for, judging from its +surpassing interest, and the wrath of critics, such I hold that of Pope +to be,--I found in the house of a neighbour. Next came the Iliad; not, +however, in a complete copy, but represented by four of the six volumes +of Bernard Lintot. With what power, and at how early an age, true genius +impresses! I saw, even at this immature period, that no other writer +could cast a javelin with half the force of Homer. The missiles went +whizzing athwart his pages; and I could see the momentary gleam of the +steel, ere it buried itself deep in brass and bull-hide. I next +succeeded in discovering for myself a child's book, of not less interest +than even the Iliad, which might, I was told, be read on Sabbaths, in a +magnificent old edition of the "Pilgrim's Progress," printed on coarse +whity-brown paper, and charged with numerous woodcuts, each of which +occupied an entire page, that, on principles of economy, bore +letter-press on the other side. And such delightful prints as these +were! It must have been some such volume that sat for its portrait to +Wordsworth, and which he so exquisitely describes as + + + "Profuse in garniture of wooden cuts, + Strange and uncouth; dire faces, figures dire, + Sharp-knee'd, sharp elbow'd, and lean-ankled too, + With long and ghastly shanks,--forms which, once seen, + Could never be forgotten." + + +In process of time I had devoured, besides these genial works Robinson +Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, Ambrose on Angels, the "judgment chapter" in +Howie's Scotch Worthies, Byron's Narrative, and the Adventures of Philip +Quarll, with a good many other adventures and voyages, real and +fictitious, part of a very miscellaneous collection of books made by my +father. It was a melancholy little library to which I had fallen heir. +Most of the missing volumes had been with the master aboard his vessel +when he perished. Of an early edition of Cook's Voyages, all the volumes +were now absent save the first; and a very tantalizing romance, in four +volumes,--Mrs. Ratcliff's "Mysteries of Udolpho," was represented by +only the earlier two. Small as the collection was, it contained some +rare books,--among the rest, a curious little volume, entitled "The +Miracles of Nature and Art," to which we find Dr. Johnson referring, in +one of the dialogues chronicled by Boswell, as scarce even in his day, +and which had been published, he said, some time in the seventeenth +century by a bookseller whose shop hung perched on Old London Bridge, +between sky and water. It contained, too, the only copy I ever saw of +the "Memoirs of a Protestant condemned to the Galleys of France for his +Religion,"--a work interesting from the circumstance that--though it +bore another name on its title-page--it had been translated from the +French for a few guineas by poor Goldsmith, in his days of obscure +literary drudgery, and exhibited the peculiar excellencies of his style. +The collection boasted, besides, of a curious old book, illustrated by +very uncouth plates, that detailed the perils and sufferings of an +English sailor who had spent his best years of life as a slave in +Morocco. It had its volumes of sound theology, too, and of stiff +controversy,--Flavel's Works, and Henry's Commentary, and Hutchinson on +the Lesser Prophets, and a very old treatise on the Revelation, with the +title-page away, and blind Jameson's volume on the Hierarchy, with first +editions of Naphthali, the Cloud of Witnesses, and the Hind let Loose. +But with these solid authors I did not venture to grapple until long +after this time. Of the works of fact and incident which it contained, +those of the voyagers were my especial favourites. I perused with +avidity the voyages of Anson, Drake, Raleigh, Dampier, and Captain Woods +Rogers; and my mind became so filled with conceptions of what was to be +seen and done in foreign parts, that I wished myself big enough to be a +sailor, that I might go and see coral islands and burning mountains, and +hunt wild beasts and fight battles. I have already made mention of my +two maternal uncles; and referred, at least incidentally, to their +mother, as the friend and relative of my fathers aged cousin, and, like +her, a great-grand-child of the last curate of Nigg. The curate's +youngest daughter had been courted and married by a somewhat wild young +farmer, of the clan Ross, but who was known, like the celebrated +Highland outlaw, from the colour of his hair, as Roy, or the Red. Donald +Roy was the best club-player in the district; and as King James's "Book +of Sports" was not deemed a very bad one in the semi-Celtic parish of +Nigg, the games in which Donald took part were usually played on the +Sabbath. About the time of the Revolution, however, he was laid hold of +by strong religious convictions, heralded, say the traditions of the +district, by events that approximated in character to the supernatural; +and Donald became the subject of a mighty change. There is a phase of +the religious character, which in the south of Scotland belongs to the +first two ages of Presbytery, but which disappeared ere its third +establishment under William of Nassau, that we find strikingly +exemplified in the Welches, Pedens, and Cargills of the times of the +persecution, and in which a sort of wild machinery of the supernatural +was added to the commoner aspects of a living Christianity. The men in +whom it was exhibited were seers of visions and dreamers of dreams; and, +standing on the very verge of the natural world, they looked far into +the world of spirits, and had at times their strange glimpses of the +distant and the future. To the north of the Grampians, as if born out of +due season, these seers pertain to a later age. They flourished chiefly +in the early part of the last century; for it is a not uninstructive +fact, that in the religious history of Scotland, the eighteenth century +of the Highland and semi-Highland districts of the north corresponded in +many of its traits to the seventeenth century of the Saxon-peopled +districts of the south; and Donald Roy was one of the most notable of +the class. The anecdotes regarding him which still float among the old +recollections of Ross-shire, if transferred to Peden or Welch, would be +found entirely in character with the strange stories that inlay the +biographies of these devoted men, and live so enduringly in the memory +of the Scottish people. Living, too, in an age in which, like the +Covenanters of a former century, the Highlander still retained his +weapons, and knew how to use them, Donald had, like the Patons, +Hackstons, and Balfours of the south, his dash of the warlike spirit; +and after assisting his minister, previous to the rebellion of 1745, in +what was known as the great religious revival of Nigg, he had to assist +him, shortly after, in pursuing a band of armed Caterans, that, +descending from the hills, swept the parish of its cattle. And coming up +with the outlaws in the gorge of a wild Highland glen, no man of his +party was more active in the fray that followed than old Donald, or +exerted himself to better effect in re-capturing the cattle. I need +scarce add, that he was an attached member of the Church of Scotland: +but he was not destined to die in her communion. + +Donald's minister, John Balfour of Nigg--a man whose memory is still +honoured in the north--died in middle life, and an unpopular presentee +was obtruded on the people. The policy of Robertson prevailed at the +time; Gillespie had been deposed only four years previous, for refusing +to assist in the disputed settlement of Inverkeithing; and four of the +Nigg Presbytery, overawed by the stringency of the precedent, repaired +to the parish church to conduct the settlement of the obnoxious +licentiate, and introduce him to the parishioners. They found, however, +only an empty building; and, notwithstanding the ominous absence of the +people, they were proceeding in shame and sorrow with their work, when a +venerable man, far advanced in life, suddenly appeared before them, and, +solemnly protesting against the utter mockery of such a proceeding, +impressively declared, "that if they settled a man to the _walls_ of +that kirk, the blood of the parish of Nigg would be required at their +hands." Both Dr. Hetherington and Dr. Merle d'Aubigne record the event; +but neither of these accomplished historians seems to have been aware of +the peculiar emphasis which a scene that would have been striking in any +circumstances derived from the character of the protester--old Donald +Roy. The Presbytery, appalled, stopt short in the middle of its work; +nor was it resumed till an after day, when, at the command of the +Moderate majority of the Church--a command not unaccompanied by +significant reference to-the fate of Gillespie--the forced settlement +was consummated. Donald, who carried the entire parish with him, +continued to cling to the National Church for nearly ten years after, +much befriended by one of the most eminent and influential divines of +the north--Fraser of Alness--the author of a volume on Sanctification, +still regarded as a standard work by Scottish theologians. But as +neither the people nor their leader ever entered on any occasion the +parish church, or heard the obnoxious presentee, the Presbytery at +length refused to tolerate the irregularity by extending to them as +before the ordinary Church privileges; and so they were lost to the +Establishment, and became Seceders. And in the communion of that portion +of the Secession known as the Burghers, Donald died several years after, +at a patriarchal old age. + +Among his other descendants, he had three grand-daughters, who were left +orphans at an early age by the death of both their parents, and whom +the old man, on their bereavement, had brought to his dwelling to live +with him. They had small portions apiece, derived from his son-in-law, +their father, which did not grow smaller under the care of Donald; and +as each of the three was married in succession out of his family, he +added to all his other kindnesses the gift of a gold ring. They had been +brought up under his eye sound in the faith; and Donald's ring had, in +each case, a mystic meaning;--they were to regard it, he told them, as +the wedding ring of their _other Husband_, the Head of the Church, and +to be faithful spouses to Him in their several households. Nor did the +injunction, nor the significant symbol with which it was accompanied, +prove idle in the end. They all brought the savour of sincere piety into +their families. The grand-daughter with whom the writer was more +directly connected, had been courted and married by an honest and +industrious but somewhat gay young tradesman, but she proved, under God, +the means of his conversion; and their children, of whom eight grew up +to be men and women, were reared in decent frugality, and the exercise +of honest principles carefully instilled. Her husband's family had, like +that of my paternal ancestors, been a seafaring one. His father, after +serving for many years on shipboard, passed the latter part of his life +as one of the armed boatmen that, during the last century, guarded the +coasts in behalf of the revenue; and his only brother, the boatman's +son, an adventurous young sailor had engaged in Admiral Vernon's +unfortunate expedition, and left his bones under the walls of +Carthagena; but he himself pursued the peaceful occupation of a +shoemaker, and, in carrying on his trade, usually employed a few +journeymen, and kept a few apprentices. In course of time the elder +daughters of the family married, and got households of their own; but +the two sons, my uncles, remained under the roof of their parents, and +at the time when my father perished, they were both in middle life. And, +deeming themselves called on to take his place in the work of +instruction and discipline, I owed to them much more of my real +education than to any of the teachers whose schools I afterwards +attended. They both bore a marked individuality of character, and were +much the reverse of commonplace or vulgar men. + +My elder uncle, James, added to a clear head and much native sagacity, a +singularly retentive memory, and great thirst of information. He was a +harness-maker, and wrought for the farmers of an extensive district of +country; and as he never engaged either journeyman or apprentice, but +executed all his work with his own hands, his hours of labour, save that +he indulged in a brief pause as the twilight came on, and took a mile's +walk or so, were usually protracted from six o'clock in the morning till +ten at night. Such incessant occupation left him little time for +reading; but he often found some one to read beside him during the day; +and in the winter evenings his portable bench used to be brought from +his shop at the other end of the dwelling, into the family sitting-room, +and placed beside the circle round the hearth, where his brother +Alexander, my younger uncle, whose occupation left his evenings free, +would read aloud from some interesting volume for the general +benefit,--placing himself always at the opposite side of the bench, so +as to share in the light of the worker. Occasionally the family circle +would be widened by the accession of from two to three intelligent +neighbours, who would drop in to listen; and then the book, after a +space, would be laid aside, in order that its contents might be +discussed in conversation. In the summer months Uncle James always spent +some time in the country, in looking after and keeping in repair the +harness of the farmers for whom he wrought; and during his journeys and +twilight walks on these occasions there was not an old castle, or +hill-fort, or ancient encampment, or antique ecclesiastical edifice, +within twenty miles of the town, which he had not visited and examined +over and over again. He was a keen local antiquary; knew a good deal +about the architectural styles of the various ages, at a time when these +subjects were little studied or known; and possessed more traditionary +lore, picked up chiefly in his country journeys, than any man I ever +knew. What he once heard he never forgot; and the knowledge which he had +acquired he could communicate pleasingly and succinctly, in a style +which, had he been a writer of books, instead of merely a reader of +them, would have had the merit of being clear and terse, and more laden +with meaning than words. From his reputation for sagacity, his advice +used to be much sought after by the neighbours in every little +difficulty that came their way; and the counsel given was always shrewd +and honest. I never knew a man more entirely just in his dealings than +Uncle James, or who regarded every species of meanness with a more +thorough contempt. I soon learned to bring my story-books to his +workshop, and became, in a small way, one of his _readers_,--greatly +more, however, as may be supposed, on my own account than his. My books +were not yet of the kind which he would have chosen for himself; but he +took an interest in _my_ interest; and his explanations of all the hard +words saved me the trouble of turning over a dictionary. And when tired +of reading, I never failed to find rare delight in his anecdotes and +old-world stories, many of which were not to be found in books, and all +of which, without apparent effort on his own part, he could render +singularly amusing. Of these narratives, the larger part died with him; +but a portion of them I succeeded in preserving in a little traditionary +work published a few years after his death. I was much a favourite with +Uncle James,--even more, I am disposed to think, on my father's account +than on that of his sister, my mother. My father and he had been close +friends for years; and in the vigorous and energetic sailor he had found +his _beau-ideal_ of a man. + +My Uncle Alexander was of a different cast from his brother both in +intellect and temperament; but he was characterized by the same strict +integrity; and his religious feelings, though quiet and unobtrusive, +were perhaps more deep. James was somewhat of a humorist, and fond of a +good joke. Alexander was grave and serious; and never, save on one +solitary occasion, did I know him even attempt a jest. On hearing an +intelligent but somewhat eccentric neighbour observe, that "all flesh is +grass," in a strictly physical sense, seeing that all the flesh of the +herbivorous animals is elaborated from vegetation, and all the flesh of +the carnivorous animals from that of the herbivorous ones, Uncle Sandy +remarked that, knowing, as he did, the piscivorous habits of the +Cromarty folk, he should surely make an exception in his generalization, +by admitting that in at least one village "all flesh is fish." My uncle +had acquired the trade of the cartwright, and was employed in a workshop +at Glasgow at the time the first war of the French Revolution broke out; +when, moved by some such spirit as possessed his uncle,--the victim of +Admiral Vernon's unlucky expedition,--or Old Donald Roy, when he buckled +himself to his Highland broadsword, and set out in pursuit of the +Caterans,--he entered the navy. And during the eventful period which +intervened between the commencement of the war and the peace of 1802, +there was little either suffered or achieved by his countrymen in which +he had not a share. He sailed with Nelson; witnessed the mutiny at the +Nore; fought under Admiral Duncan at Camperdown, and under Sir John +Borlase Warren at Loch Swilly; assisted in capturing the Generoux and +Guillaume Tell, two French ships of the line; was one of the seamen who, +in the Egyptian expedition, were drafted out of Lord Keith's fleet to +supply the lack of artillerymen in the army of Sir Ralph Abercromby; had +a share in the danger and glory of the landing in Egypt; and fought in +the battle of 13th March, and in that which deprived our country of one +of her most popular generals. He served, too, at the siege of +Alexandria. And then, as he succeeded in procuring his discharge during +the short peace of 1802, he returned home with a small sum of +hardly-earned prize-money, heartily sick of war and bloodshed. I was +asked not long ago by one of his few surviving comrades, whether my +uncle had ever told me that _their_ gun was the first landed in Egypt, +and the first dragged up the sand-bank immediately over the beach, and +how hot it grew under their hands, as, with a rapidity unsurpassed along +the line, they poured out in thick succession its iron discharges upon +the enemy. I had to reply in the negative. All my uncle's narratives +were narratives of what he had seen--not of what he had done; and when, +perusing, late in life, one of his favourite works--Dr. Keith's "Signs +of the Times"--he came to the chapter in which that excellent writer +describes the time of hot naval warfare which immediately followed the +breaking out of war, as the period in which the second vial was poured +out on the sea, and in which the waters "became as the blood of a dead +man, so that every living soul died in the sea," I saw him bend his head +in reverence as he remarked, "Prophecy, I find, gives to all our glories +but a single verse, and it is a verse of judgment." Uncle Sandy, +however, did not urge the peace principles which he had acquired amid +scenes of death and carnage, into any extravagant consequences; and on +the breaking out, in 1803, of the second war of the Revolution, when +Napoleon threatened invasion from Brest and Boulogne, he at once +shouldered his musket as a volunteer. He had not his brother's fluency +of speech; but his narratives of what he had seen were singularly +truthful and graphic; and his descriptions of foreign plants and +animals, and of the aspect of the distant regions which he had visited, +had all the careful minuteness of those of a Dampier. He had a decided +turn for natural history. My collection contains a murex, not unfrequent +in the Mediterranean, which he found time enough to transfer, during the +heat of the landing in Egypt, from the beach to his pocket; and the +first ammonite I ever saw was a specimen, which I still retain, that he +brought home with him from one of the Liassic deposits of England. + +Early on the Sabbath evenings I used regularly to attend at my uncle's +with two of my maternal cousins, boys of about my own age, and latterly +with my two sisters, to be catechized, first on the Shorter Catechism, +and then on the Mother's Catechism of Willison. On Willison my uncles +always cross-examined us, to make sure that we understood the short and +simple questions; but, apparently regarding the questions of the Shorter +Catechism as seed sown for a future day, they were content with having +them well fixed in our memories. There was a Sabbath class taught in the +parish church at the time by one of the elders; but Sabbath-schools my +uncles regarded as merely compensatory institutions, highly creditable +to the teachers, but very discreditable indeed to the parents and +relatives of the taught; and so they of course never thought of sending +us there. Later in the evening, after a short twilight walk, for which +the sedentary occupation of my Uncle James formed an apology, but in +which my Uncle Alexander always shared, and which usually led them into +solitary woods, or along an unfrequented sea-shore, some of the old +divines were read; and I used to take my place in the circle, though, I +am afraid, not to much advantage. I occasionally caught a fact, or had +my attention arrested for a moment by a simile or metaphor; but the +trains of close argument, and the passages of dreary "application," were +always lost. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] Cape Wrath. + + + + +CHAPTER III. + + "At Wallace' name what Scottish blood + But boils up in a spring-tide flood! + Oft have our fearless fathers strode + By Wallace' side, + Still pressing onward, red wat shod, + Or glorious died."--BURNS. + + +I first became thoroughly a Scot some time in my tenth year; and the +consciousness of country has remained tolerably strong within me ever +since. My uncle James had procured for me from a neighbour the loan of a +common stall-edition of Blind Harry's "Wallace," as modernized by +Hamilton; but after reading the first chapter,--a piece of dull +genealogy, broken into very rude rhyme,--I tossed the volume aside as +uninteresting; and only resumed it at the request of my uncle, who urged +that, simply for _his_ amusement and gratification, I should read some +three or four chapters more. Accordingly, the three or four chapters +more I did read;--I read "how Wallace killed young Selbie the +Constable's son;" "how Wallace fished in Irvine Water;" and "how Wallace +killed the Churl with his own staff in Ayr;" and then Uncle James told +me, in the quiet way in which he used to make a joke tell, that the book +seemed to be rather a rough sort of production, filled with accounts of +quarrels and bloodshed, and that I might read no more of it unless I +felt inclined. But I now did feel inclined very strongly, and read on +with increasing astonishment and delight. I was intoxicated with the +fiery narratives of the blind minstrel,--with his fierce breathings of +hot, intolerant patriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess; +and, glorying in being a Scot, and the countryman of Wallace and the +Graham, I longed for a war with the Southron, that the wrongs and +sufferings of these noble heroes might yet be avenged. All I had +previously heard and read of the marvels of foreign parts, of the +glories of modern battles, seemed tame and commonplace, compared with +the incidents in the life of Wallace; and I never after vexed my mother +by wishing myself big enough to be a sailor. My Uncle Sandy, who had +some taste for the refinements of poetry, would fain have led me on from +the exploits of Wallace to the "Life of the Bruce," which, in the form +of a not very vigorous imitation of Dryden's "Virgil," by one Harvey, +was bound up in the same volume, and which my uncle deemed the +better-written life of the two. And so far as the mere amenities of +style were concerned, he was, I daresay, right. But I could not agree +with him. Harvey was by much too fine and too learned for me; and it was +not until some years after, when I was fortunate enough to pick up one +of the later editions of Barbour's "Bruce," that the Hero-King of +Scotland assumed his right place in my mind beside its Hero-Guardian. +There are stages of development in the immature youth of individuals, +that seem to correspond with stages of development in the immature youth +of nations; and the recollections of this early time enable me, in some +measure, to understand how it was that, for hundreds of years, Blind +Harry's "Wallace," with its rude and naked narrative, and its +exaggerated incident, should have been, according to Lord Hailes, the +Bible of the Scotch people. + +I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after +mastering that grand acquirement of my life,--the art of holding +converse with books; and was transferred straightforth to the grammar +school of the parish, at which there attended at this time about a +hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, +much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the +counting, seeing that it consisted of only _lassies_. And here, too, the +early individual development seems nicely correspondent with an early +national one. In his depreciatory estimate of contemporary woman, the +boy is always a true savage. The old parish school of the place had been +nobly situated in a snug corner, between the parish churchyard and a +thick wood; and from the interesting centre which it formed, the boys, +when tired of making dragoon-horses of the erect head-stones, or of +leaping along the flat-laid memorials, from end to end of the +grave-yard, "without touching grass," could repair to the taller trees, +and rise in the world by climbing among them. As, however, they used to +encroach, on these latter occasions, upon the laird's pleasure-grounds, +the school had been removed ere my time to the sea-shore; where, though +there were neither tombstones nor trees, there were some balancing +advantages, of a kind which perhaps only boys of the old school could +have adequately appreciated. As the school-windows fronted the opening +of the Firth, not a vessel could enter the harbour that we did not see; +and, improving through our opportunities, there was perhaps no +educational institution in the kingdom in which all sorts of barques and +carvels, from the fishing yawl to the frigate, could be more correctly +drawn on the slate, or where any defect in hulk or rigging, in some +faulty delineation, was surer of being more justly and unsparingly +criticised. Further, the town, which drove a great trade in salted pork +at the time, had a killing-place not thirty yards from the school-door, +where from eighty to a hundred pigs used sometimes to die for the +general good in a single day; and it was a great matter to hear, at +occasional intervals, the roar of death outside rising high over the +general murmur within, or to be told by some comrade, returned from his +five minutes' leave of absence, that a hero of a pig had taken three +blows of the hatchet ere it fell, and that even after its subjection to +the sticking process, it had got hold of Jock Keddie's hand in its +mouth, and almost smashed his thumb. We learned, too, to know, from our +signal opportunities of observation, not only a good deal about +pig-anatomy,--especially about the detached edible parts of the animal, +such as the spleen and the pancreas, and at least one other very +palatable viscus besides,--but became knowing also about the _take_ and +curing of herrings. All the herring boats during the fishing season +passed our windows on their homeward way to the harbour; and, from their +depth in the water, we became skilful enough to predicate the number of +crans aboard of each with wonderful judgment and correctness. In days of +good general fishings, too, when the curing-yards proved too small to +accommodate the quantities brought ashore, the fish used to be laid in +glittering heaps opposite the school-house door; and an exciting scene, +that combined the bustle of the workshop with the confusion of the +crowded fair, would straightway spring up within twenty yards of the +forms at which we sat, greatly to our enjoyment, and, of course, not a +little to our instruction. We could see, simply by peering over book or +slate, the curers going about rousing their fish with salt, to +counteract the effects of the dog-day sun; bevies of young women +employed as gutters, and horridly incarnadined with blood and viscera, +squatting around the heaps, knife in hand, and plying with busy fingers +their well-paid labours, at the rate of sixpence per hour; relays of +heavily-laden fish-wives bringing ever and anon fresh heaps of herrings +in their creels; and outside of all, the coopers hammering as if for +life and death,--now tightening hoops, and now slackening them, and anon +caulking with bulrush the leaky seams. It is not every grammar school in +which such lessons are taught as those in which all were initiated, and +in which all became in some degree accomplished, in the grammar school +of Cromarty! + +The building in which we met was a low, long, straw-thatched cottage, +open from gable to gable, with a mud floor below, and an unlathed roof +above; and stretching along the naked rafters, which, when the master +chanced to be absent for a few minutes, gave noble exercise in climbing, +there used frequently to lie a helm, or oar, or boathook, or even a +foresail,--the spoil of some hapless peat-boat from the opposite side of +the Firth. The Highland boatmen of Ross had carried on a trade in peats +for ages with the Saxons of the town; and as every boat owed a +long-derived perquisite of twenty peats to the grammar school, and as +payment was at times foolishly refused, the party of boys commissioned +by the master to exact it almost always succeeded, either by force or +stratagem, in securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the +institution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until +redeemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was stowed up +over the rafters. These peat-expeditions, which were intensely popular +in the school, gave noble exercise to the faculties. It was always a +great matter to see, just as the school met, some observant boy appear, +cap in hand, before the master, and intimate the fact of an arrival at +the shore, by the simple words, "Peat-boat, Sir." The master would then +proceed to name a party, more or less numerous, according to the +exigency; but it seemed to be matter of pretty correct calculation that, +in the cases in which the peat claim was disputed, it required about +twenty boys to bring home the twenty peats, or, lacking these, the +compensatory sail or spar. There were certain ill-conditioned boatmen +who almost always resisted, and who delighted to tell us--invariably, +too, in very bad English--that our perquisite was properly the hangman's +perquisite,[2] made over to us because we were _like him_; not +seeing--blockheads as they were!--that the very admission established in +full the rectitude of our claim, and gave to us, amid our dire perils +and faithful contendings, the strengthening consciousness of a just +quarrel. In dealing with these recusants, we used ordinarily to divide +our forces into two bodies, the larger portion of the party filling +their pockets with stones, and ranging themselves on some point of +vantage, such as the pier-head; and the smaller stealing down as near +the boat as possible, and mixing themselves up with the purchasers of +the peats. We then, after due warning, opened fire upon the boatmen; +and, when the pebbles were hopping about them like hailstones, the boys +below commonly succeeded in securing, under cover of the fire, the +desired boathook or oar. And such were the ordinary circumstances and +details of this piece of Spartan education; of which a townsman has told +me he was strongly reminded when boarding, on one occasion, under cover +of a well-sustained discharge of musketry, the vessel of an enemy that +had been stranded on the shores of Berbice. + +The parish schoolmaster was a scholar and an honest man, and if a boy +really wished to learn, _he_ certainly could teach him. He had attended +the classes at Aberdeen during the same sessions as the late Dr. Mearns, +and in mathematics and the languages had disputed the prize with the +Doctor; but he had failed to get on equally well in the world; and now, +in middle life, though a licentiate of the Church, he had settled down +to be what he subsequently remained--the teacher of a parish school. +There were usually a few grown-up lads under his tuition--careful +sailors, that had stayed ashore during the winter quarter to study +navigation as a science,--or tall fellows, happy in the patronage of the +great, who, in the hope of being made excisemen, had come to school to +be initiated in the mysteries of gauging,--or grown young men, who, on +second thoughts, and somewhat late in the day, had recognised the Church +as their proper vocation; and these used to speak of the master's +acquirements and teaching ability in the very highest terms. He himself, +too, could appeal to the fact, that no teacher in the north had ever +sent more students to college, and that his better scholars almost +always got on well in life. But then, on the other hand, the pupils who +wished to do nothing--a description of individuals that comprised fully +two-thirds of all the younger ones--were not required to do much more +than they wished; and parents and guardians were loud in their +complaints that he was no suitable schoolmaster for them; though the +boys themselves usually thought him quite suitable enough. + +He was in the habit of advising the parents or relations of those he +deemed his clever lads, to give them a classical education; and meeting +one day with Uncle James, he urged that I should be put on Latin. I was +a great reader, he said; and he found that when I missed a word in my +English tasks, I almost always substituted a synonym in the place of it. +And so, as Uncle James had arrived, on data of his own, at a similar +conclusion, I was transferred from the English to the Latin form, and, +with four other boys, fairly entered on the "Rudiments." I laboured with +tolerable diligence for a day or two; but there was no one to tell me +what the rules meant, or whether they really meant anything; and when I +got on as far as _penna_, a pen, and saw how the changes were rung on +one poor word, that did not seem to be of more importance in the old +language than in the modern one, I began miserably to flag, and to long +for my English reading, with its nice amusing stories, and its +picture-like descriptions. The Rudiments was by far the dullest book I +had ever seen. It embodied no thought that I could perceive,--it +certainly contained no narrative,--it was a perfect contrast to not only +the "Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace," but to even the +Voyages of Cook and Anson. None of my class-fellows were by any means +bright;--they had been all set on Latin without advice of the master; +and yet, when he learned, which he soon did, to distinguish and call us +up to our tasks by the name of the "heavy class," I was, in most +instances, to be found at its nether end. Shortly after, however, when +we got a little farther on, it was seen that I had a decided turn for +translation. The master, good simple man that he was, always read to us +in English, as the school met, the piece of Latin given us as our task +for the day; and as my memory was strong enough to carry away the whole +translation in its order, I used to give him back in the evening, word +for word, his own rendering, which satisfied him on most occasions +tolerably well. There were none of us much looked after; and I soon +learned to bring books of amusement to the school with me, which, amid +the Babel confusion of the place, I contrived to read undetected. Some +of them, save in the language in which they were written, were identical +with the books proper to the place. I remember perusing by stealth in +this way, Dryden's "Virgil," and the "Ovid" of Dryden and his friends; +while Ovid's own "Ovid," and Virgil's own "Virgil," lay beside me, +sealed up in the fine old tongue, which I was thus throwing away my only +chance of acquiring. + +One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's task +well fixed in my memory, and no book of amusement to read, I began +gossiping with my nearest class-fellow, a very tall boy, who ultimately +shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most occasions sat +beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him about the tall +Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his +curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end, +every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel. My story-telling +vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no stopping in my +course. I had to tell all the stories I ever heard or read; all my +father's adventures, so far as I knew them, and all my Uncle +Sandy's,--with the story of Gulliver, and Philip Quarll, and Robinson +Crusoe,--of Sinbad, and Ulysses, and Mrs. Radcliffe's heroine Emily, +with, of course, the love-passages left out; and at length, after weeks +and months of narrative, I found my available stock of acquired fact +and fiction fairly exhausted. The demand on the part of my +class-fellows was, however, as great and urgent as ever; and, setting +myself, in the extremity of the case, to try my ability of original +production, I began to dole out to them by the hour and the diet, long +extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. +My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like +Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and +they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, +abounding in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And +finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful +encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded +in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying +open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious old age, like that of +Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of +confectionery and fruits. The master had a tolerably correct notion of +what was going on in the "heavy class;"--the stretched-out necks, and +the heads clustered together, always told their own special story when I +was engaged in telling mine; but, without hating the child, he spared +the rod, and simply did what he sometimes allowed himself to +do--bestowed a nickname upon me. I was the _Sennachie_, he said; and as +the Sennachie I might have been known so long as I remained under his +charge, had it not been that, priding himself upon his Gaelic, he used +to bestow upon the word the full Celtic pronunciation, which, agreeing +but ill with the Teutonic mouths of my school-fellows, militated against +its use; and so the name failed to take. With all my carelessness, I +continued to be a sort of favourite with the master; and, when at the +general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, +vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground +common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, Sir," he has +said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection, a +_Tatler_ or _Spectator_,--"That, Sir, is a good paper;--it's an +_Addison_;" or, "That's one of Steele's, Sir;" and on finding in my +copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had +headed "Poem on Care," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it +carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served +as a pointer, in the one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the +level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar, +Sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's +an ill-spelt word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended +to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is good,--very +good indeed, Sir." And then he added, with a grim smile, "_Care_, Sir, +is, I daresay, as you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely +bestow a little more of it on your spelling and your grammar." + +The school, like almost all the other grammar-schools of the period in +Scotland, had its yearly cock-fight, preceded by two holidays and a +half, during which the boys occupied themselves in collecting and +bringing up their cocks. And such always was the array of fighting birds +mustered on the occasion, that the day of the festival, from morning +till night, used to be spent in fighting out the battle. For weeks after +it had passed, the school-floor would continue to retain its +deeply-stained blotches of blood, and the boys would be full of exciting +narratives regarding the glories of gallant birds, who had continued to +fight until both their eyes had been picked out, or who, in the moment +of victory, had dropped dead in the middle of the cock-pit. The yearly +fight was the relic of a barbarous age; and, in at least one of its +provisions, there seemed evidence that it was that of an intolerant age +also: every pupil at school, without exemption, had his name entered on +the subscription-list, as a cock-fighter, and was obliged to pay the +master at the rate of twopence per head, ostensibly for leave to bring +his birds to the pit; but, amid the growing humanities of a better +time, though the twopences continued to be exacted, it was no longer +imperative to bring the birds; and availing myself of the liberty I +never brought any. Nor, save for a few minutes, on two several +occasions, did I ever attend the fight. Had the combat been one among +the boys themselves, I would readily enough have done my part, by +meeting with any opponent of my years and standing; but I could not bear +to look at the bleeding birds. And so I continued to pay my yearly +sixpence, as a holder of three cocks,--the lowest sum deemed in any +degree genteel,--but remained simply a fictitious or paper cock-fighter, +and contributed in no degree to the success of the _head-stock_ or +leader, to whose party, in the general division of the school, it was my +lot to fall. Neither, I must add, did I learn to take an interest in the +sacrificial orgies of the adjoining slaughter-house. A few of the chosen +school-boys were permitted by the killers to exercise at times the +privilege of knocking down a pig, and even, on rare occasions, to essay +the sticking; but I turned with horror from both processes; and if I +drew near at all, it was only when some animal, scraped and cleaned, and +suspended from the beam, was in the course of being laid open by the +butcher's knife, that I might mark the forms of the viscera, and the +positions which they occupied. To my dislike of the annual cock-fight my +uncles must have contributed. They were loud in their denunciations of +the enormity; and on one occasion, when a neighbour was unlucky enough +to remark, in extenuation, that the practice had been handed down to us +by pious and excellent men, who seemed to see nothing wrong in it, I saw +the habitual respect for the old divines give way, for at least a +moment. Uncle Sandy hesitated under apparent excitement; but, quick and +fiery as lightning, Uncle James came to his rescue. "Yes, excellent +men!" said my uncle, "but the excellent men of a rude and barbarous age; +and, in some parts of their character, tinged by its barbarity. For the +cock-fight which these excellent men have bequeathed to us, they ought +to have been sent to Bridewell for a week, and fed upon bread and +water." Uncle James was, no doubt, over hasty, and felt so a minute +after; but the practice of fixing the foundations of ethics on a _They +themselves did it_, much after the manner in which the Schoolmen fixed +the foundations of their nonsensical philosophy on a "_He himself said +it_," is a practice which, though not yet exploded in even very pure +Churches, is always provoking, and not quite free from peril to the +worthies, whether dead or alive, in whose precedents the moral right is +made to rest. In the class of minds represented among the people by that +of Uncle James, for instance, it would be much easier to bring down even +the old divines, than to bring up cock-fighting. + +My native town had possessed, for at least an age or two previous to +that of my boyhood, its sprinkling of intelligent, book-consulting +mechanics and tradesfolk; and as my acquaintance gradually extended +among their representatives and descendants, I was permitted to rummage, +in the pursuit of knowledge, delightful old chests and cupboards, filled +with tattered and dusty volumes. The moiety of my father's library which +remained to me consisted of about sixty several works; my uncle +possessed about a hundred and fifty more; and there was a literary +cabinet-maker in the neighbourhood, who had once actually composed a +poem of thirty lines on the Hill of Cromarty, whose collection of books, +chiefly poetical, amounted to from about eighty to a hundred. I used to +be often at nights in the workshop of the cabinet-maker, and was +sometimes privileged to hear him repeat his poem. There was not much +admiration of poets or poetry in the place; and my praise, though that +of a very young critic, had always the double merit of being both ample +and sincere. I knew the very rocks and trees which his description +embraced,--had heard the birds to which he referred, and seen the +flowers; and as the Hill had been of old a frequent scene of executions, +and had borne the gallows of the sheriffdom on its crest, nothing could +be more definite than the grave reference, in his opening line, to + + + "The verdant rising of the _Gallow_-hill." + + +And so I thought a very great deal of his poem, and what I thought I +said; and he, on the other hand, evidently regarded me as a lad of +extraordinary taste and discernment for my years. There was another +mechanic in the neighbourhood,--a house-carpenter, who, though not a +poet, was deeply read in books of all kinds, from the plays of Farquhar +to the sermons of Flavel; and as both his father and grandfather--the +latter, by the way, a Porteous-mob man, and the former a personal friend +of poor Fergusson the poet--had also been readers and collectors of +books, he possessed a whole pressful of tattered, hard-working volumes, +some of them very curious ones; and to me he liberally extended, what +literary men always value, "the full freedom of the press." But of all +my occasional benefactors in this way, by far the greatest was poor old +Francie, the retired clerk and supercargo. + +Francie was naturally a man of fair talent and active curiosity. Nor was +he by any means deficient in acquirement. He wrote and figured well, and +knew a good deal about at least the theory of business; and when +articled in early life to a Cromarty merchant and shopkeeper, it was +with tolerably fair prospects of getting on in the world. He had, +however, a certain infirmity of brain, which rendered both talent and +acquirement of but little avail, and that began to manifest itself very +early. While yet an apprentice, on ascertaining that the way was clear, +he used, though grown a tall lad, to bolt out from behind the counter +into the middle of a green directly opposite, and there, joining in the +sports of some group of youngsters, which the place rarely wanted, he +would play out half a game at marbles, or honey-pots, or hy-spy, and, +when he saw his master or a customer approaching, bolt back again The +thing was not deemed seemly; but Francie, when spoken to on the subject, +could speak as sensibly as any young person of his years. He needed +relaxation, he used to say, though he never suffered it to interfere +with his proper business; and where was there safer relaxation to be +found than among innocent children? This, of course, was eminently +rational, and even virtuous. And so, when his term of apprenticeship had +expired, Francie was despatched, not without hope of success, to +Newfoundland,--where he had relations extensively engaged in the fishing +trade,--to serve as one of their clerks. He was found to be a competent +clerk; but unluckily there was but little known of the interior of the +island at the time; and some of the places most distant from St. John's, +such as the Bay and River of Exploits, bore tempting names; and so, +after Francie had made many inquiries at the older inhabitants regarding +what was to be seen amid the scraggy brushwood and broken rocks of the +inner country, a morning came in which he was reported missing at the +office; and little else could be learned respecting him, than that at +early dawn he had been seen setting out for the woods, provided with +staff and knapsack. He returned in about a week, worn out and +half-starved. He had not been so successful as he had anticipated, he +said, in providing himself by the way with food, and so he had to turn +back ere he could reach the point on which he had previously determined; +but he was sure he would be happier in his next journey. It was palpably +unsafe to suffer him to remain exposed to the temptation of an +unexplored country; and as his friends and superiors at St. John's had +just laden a vessel with fish for the Italian market during Lent, +Francie was despatched with her as supercargo, to look after the sales, +in a land of which every footbreadth had been familiar to men for +thousands of years, and in which it was supposed he would have no +inducement to wander. Francie, however, had read much about Italy; and +finding, on landing at Leghorn, that he was within a short distance of +Pisa, he left ship and cargo to take care of themselves, and set out on +foot to see the famous hanging tower, and the great marble cathedral. +And tower and cathedral he did see: but it was meanwhile found that he +was not quite suited for a supercargo; and he had shortly after to +return to Scotland, where his friends succeeded in establishing him in +the capacity of clerk and overseer upon a small property in Forfarshire, +which was farmed by the proprietor on what was then the newly introduced +modern system. He was acquainted, however, with the classical +description of Glammis Castle, in the letters of the poet Gray; and +after visiting the castle, he set out to examine the ancient encampment +at Ardoch--the _Lindum_ of the Romans. Finally, all hopes of getting him +settled at a distance being given up by his friends, he had to fall back +upon Cromarty, where he was yet once more appointed to a clerkship. The +establishment with which he was now connected was a large hempen +manufactory; and it was his chief employment to register the quantities +of hemp given out to the spinners, and the number of hanks of yarn into +which they had converted it, when given in. He soon, however, began to +take long walks; and the old women, with their yarn, would be often +found accumulated, ere his return, by tens and dozens at his +office-door. At length, after taking a very long walk indeed, for it +stretched from near the opening to the head of the Cromarty Firth, a +distance of about twenty miles, and included in its survey the antique +tower of Kinkell and the old Castle of Craighouse, he was relieved from +the duties of his clerkship, and left to pursue his researches +undisturbed, on a small annuity, the gift of his friends. He was +considerably advanced in life ere I knew him, profoundly grave, and very +taciturn, and, though he never discussed politics, a mighty reader of +the newspapers. "Oh! this is terrible," I have heard him exclaim, when +on one occasion a snow storm had blocked up both the coast and the +Highland roads for a week together, and arrested the northward course +of the mails,--"It is terrible to be left in utter ignorance of the +public business of the country!" + +Francie, whom every one called Mr. ---- to his face, and always Francie +when his back was turned, chiefly because it was known he was +punctilious on the point, and did not like the more familiar term, used +in the winter evenings to be a regular member of the circle that met +beside my Uncle James's work-table. And, chiefly through the influence, +in the first instance, of my uncles, I was permitted to visit him in his +own room--a privilege enjoyed by scarce any one else--and even invited +to borrow his books. His room--a dark and melancholy chamber, grey with +dust--always contained a number of curious but not very rare things, +which he had picked up in his walks--prettily coloured fungi--vegetable +monstrosities of the commoner kind, such as "fause craws' nests," and +flattened twigs of pine--and with these, as the representatives of +another department of natural science, fragments of semi-transparent +quartz or of glittering feldspar, and sheets of mica a little above the +ordinary size. But the charm of the apartment lay in its books. Francie +was a book-fancier, and lacked only the necessary wealth to be in the +possession of a very pretty collection. As it was, he had some curious +volumes; among others, a first-edition copy of the "Nineteen Years' +Travels of William Lithgow," with an ancient woodcut, representing the +said William in the background, with his head brushing the skies, and, +far in front, two of the tombs which covered the heroes of Ilium, barely +tall enough to reach half-way to his knee, and of the length, in +proportion to the size of the traveller, of ordinary octavo volumes. He +had black-letter books, too, on astrology, and on the planetary +properties of vegetables; and an ancient book on medicine, that +recommended as a cure for the toothache a bit of the jaw of a suicide, +well triturated; and, as an infallible remedy for the falling-sickness, +an ounce or two of the brains of a young man, carefully dried over the +fire. Better, however, than these, for at least my purpose, he had a +tolerably complete collection of the British essayists, from Addison to +Mackenzie, with the "Essays" and "Citizen of the World" of Goldsmith; +several interesting works of travels and voyages, translated from the +French; and translations from the German, of Lavater, Zimmerman, and +Klopstock. He had a good many of the minor poets too; and I was enabled +to cultivate, mainly from his collection, a tolerably adequate +acquaintance with the wits of the reign of Queen Anne. Poor Francie was +at bottom a kindly and honest man; but the more intimately one knew him, +the more did the weakness and brokenness of his intellect appear. His +mind was a labyrinth without a clue, in whose recesses there lay stored +up a vast amount of book-knowledge, that could never be found when +wanted, and was of no sort of use to himself, or any one else. I got +sufficiently into his confidence to be informed, under the seal of +strict secrecy, that he contemplated producing a great literary work, +whose special character he had not quite determined, but which was to be +begun a few years hence. And when death found him, at an age which did +not fall far short of the allotted threescore and ten, the great unknown +work was still an undefined idea, and had still to be begun. + +There were several other branches of my education going on at this time +outside the pale of the school, in which, though I succeeded in amusing +myself, I was no trifler. The shores of Cromarty are strewed over with +water-rolled fragments of the primary rocks, derived chiefly from the +west during the ages of the boulder clay; and I soon learned to take a +deep interest in sauntering over the various pebble-beds when shaken up +by recent storms, and in learning to distinguish their numerous +components. But I was sadly in want of a vocabulary; and as, according +to Cowper, "the growth of what is excellent is slow," it was not until +long after that I bethought me of the obvious enough expedient of +representing the various species of simple rocks, by certain numerals, +and the compound ones by the numerals representative of each separate +component, ranged, as in vulgar fractions, along a medial line, with the +figures representative of the prevailing materials of the mass above, +and those representative of the materials in less proportions below. +Though, however, wholly deficient in the signs proper to represent what +I knew, I soon acquired a considerable quickness of eye in +distinguishing the various kinds of rock, and tolerably definite +conceptions of the generic character of the porphyries, granites, +gneisses, quartz-rocks, clay-slates, and mica-schists, which everywhere +strewed the beach. In the rocks of mechanical origin I was at this time +much less interested; but in individual, as in general history, +mineralogy almost always precedes geology. I was fortunate enough to +discover, one happy morning, among the lumber and debris of old John +Feddes's dark room, an antique-fashioned hammer, which had belonged, my +mother told me, to old John himself more than a hundred years before. It +was an uncouth sort of implement, with a handle of strong black oak, and +a short, compact head, square on the one face and oblong on the other. +And though it dealt rather an obtuse blow, the temper was excellent, and +the haft firmly set; and I went about with it, breaking into all manner +of stones, with great perseverance and success. I found, in a +large-grained granite, a few sheets of beautiful black mica, that, when +split exceedingly thin, and pasted between slips of mica of the ordinary +kind, made admirably-coloured eye-glasses, that converted the landscapes +around into richly-toned drawings in sepia; and numerous crystals of +garnet embedded in mica-schist, that were, I was sure, identical with +the stones set in a little gold brooch, the property of my mother. To +this last surmise, however, some of the neighbours to whom I showed my +prize demurred. The stones in my mother's brooch were precious stones, +they said; whereas what _I_ had found was merely a "stone upon the +shore." My friend the cabinet-maker went so far as to say that the +specimen was but a mass of plum-pudding stone, and its dark-coloured +enclosures simply the currants; but then, on the other hand, Uncle Sandy +took my view of the matter: the stone was not plum-pudding stone, he +said: he had often seen plum-pudding stone in England, and knew it to be +a sort of rough conglomerate of various components; whereas my stone was +composed of a finely-grained silvery substance, and the crystals which +it contained were, he was sure, gems like those in the brooch, and, so +far as he could judge, real garnets. This was a great decision; and, +much encouraged in consequence, I soon ascertained that garnets are by +no means rare among the pebbles of the Cromarty shore. Nay, so mixed up +are they with its sands even,--a consequence of the abundance of the +mineral among the primary rocks of Ross,--that after a heavy surf has +beaten the exposed beach of the neighbouring hill, there may be found on +it patches of comminuted garnet, from one to three square yards in +extent, that resemble, at a little distance, pieces of crimson +carpeting, and nearer at hand, sheets of crimson bead-work, and of which +almost every point and particle is a gem. From some unexplained +circumstance, connected apparently with the specific gravity of the +substance, it separates in this style from the general mass, on coasts +much beaten by the waves; but the garnets of these curious pavements, +though so exceedingly abundant, are in every instance exceedingly +minute. I never detected in them a fragment greatly larger than a +pin-head; but it was always with much delight that I used to fling +myself down on the shore beside some newly-discovered patch, and bethink +me, as I passed my fingers along the larger grains, of the heaps of gems +in Aladdin's cavern, or of Sinbad's valley of diamonds. + +The Hill of Cromarty formed at this time at once my true school and +favourite play-ground; and if my master did wink at times harder than +master ought, when I was playing truant among its woods or on its +shores, it was, I believe, whether he thought so or no, all for the +best. My uncle Sandy had, as I have already said, been bred a +cartwright; but finding, on his return, after his seven years' service +on board a man-of-war, that the place had cartwrights enough for all the +employment, he applied himself to the humble but not unremunerative +profession of a sawyer, and used often to pitch his saw-pit, in the more +genial seasons of the year, among the woods of the hill. I remember, he +never failed setting it down in some pretty spot, sheltered from the +prevailing winds under the lee of some fern-covered rising ground or +some bosky thicket, and always in the near neighbourhood of a spring; +and it used to be one of my most delightful exercises to find out for +myself among the thick woods, in some holiday journey of exploration, +the place of a newly-formed pit. With the saw-pit as my baseline of +operations, and secure always of a share in Uncle Sandy's dinner, I used +to make excursions of discovery on every side,--now among the thicker +tracts of wood, which bore among the town-boys, from the twilight gloom +that ever rested in their recesses, the name of "the dungeons;" and anon +to the precipitous sea-shore, with its wild cliffs and caverns. The Hill +of Cromarty is one of a chain belonging to the great Ben Nevis line of +elevation; and, though it occurs in a sandstone district, is itself a +huge primary mass, upheaved of old from the abyss, and composed chiefly +of granitic gneiss and a red splintery horn-stone. It contains also +numerous veins and beds of hornblend rock and chlorite-schist, and of a +peculiar-looking granite, of which the quartz is white as milk, and the +feldspar red as blood. When still wet by the receding tide, these veins +and beds seem as if highly polished, and present a beautiful aspect; and +it was always with great delight that I used to pick my way among them, +hammer in hand, and fill my pockets with specimens. + +There was one locality which I in especial loved. No path runs the way. +On the one side, an abrupt iron-tinged promontory, so remarkable for its +human-like profile, that it seems part of a half-buried sphinx, +protrudes into the deep green water. On the other--less prominent, for +even at full tide the traveller can wind between its base and the +sea--there rises a shattered and ruined precipice, seamed with blood-red +ironstone, that retains on its surface the bright metallic gleam, and +amid whose piles of loose and fractured rock one may still detect +fragments of stalactite. The stalactite is all that remains of a +spacious cavern, which once hollowed the precipice, but which, more than +a hundred years before, had tumbled down during a thunder-storm, when +filled with a flock of sheep, and penned up the poor creatures for ever. +The space between these headlands forms an irregular crescent of great +height, covered with wood a-top, and amid whose lichened crags, and on +whose steep slopes, the hawthorn, and bramble, and wild rasp, and rock +strawberry, take root, with many a scraggy shrub and sweet wild flower +besides; while along its base lie huge blocks of green hornblend, on a +rude pavement of granitic gneiss, traversed at one point, for many +yards, by a broad vein of milk-white quartz. The quartz vein formed my +central point of attraction in this wild paradise. The white stone, +thickly traversed by threads of purple and red, is a beautiful though +unworkable rock; and I soon ascertained that it is flanked by a vein of +feldspar broader than itself, of a brick-red tint, and the red stone +flanked, in turn, by a drab-coloured vein of the same mineral, in which +there occur in great abundance masses of a homogeneous mica,--mica not +existing in lamina, but, if I may use the term, as a sort of micaceous +felt. It would almost seem as if some gigantic experimenter of the old +world had set himself to separate into their simple mineral components +the granitic rocks of the hill, and that the three parallel veins were +the results of his labour. Such, however, was not the sort of idea which +they at this time suggested to me. I had read in Sir Walter Raleigh's +voyage to Guiana, the poetic description of that upper country in which +the knight's exploration of the river Corale terminated, and where, amid +lovely prospects of rich valleys, and wooded hills, and winding waters, +almost every rock bore on its surface the yellow gleam of gold. True, +according to the voyager, the precious metal was itself absent. But Sir +Walter, on afterwards showing "some of the stones to a Spaniard of the +Caraccas, was told by him they were _la madre de oro_, that is, the +mother of gold, and that the mine itself was further in the ground." And +though the quartz vein of the Cromarty Hill contained no metal more +precious than iron, and but little even of that, it was, I felt sure, +the "mother" of something very fine. As for silver, I was pretty certain +I had found the "mother" of _it_, if not, indeed, the precious metal +itself, in a cherty boulder, enclosing numerous cubes of rich galena; +and occasional masses of iron pyrites gave, as I thought, large promise +of gold. But though sometimes asked in humble irony, by the +farm-servants who came to load their carts with sea-weed along the +Cromarty beach, whether I was "getting siller in the stanes," I was so +unlucky as never to be able to answer their question in the affirmative. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] There may have been truth in the allegation; at least the hangman of +Inverness enjoyed, from time immemorial, a similar perquisite,--a peat +out of every creel brought to the burgh market. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + "Strange marble stones, here larger and there less, + And of full various forms, which still increase + In height and bulk by a continual drop. + Which upon each distilling from the top, + And falling still exactly on the crown. + There break themselves to mists, which, trickling down. + Crust into stone, and (but with leisure) swell + The sides, and still advance the miracle."--CHARLES COTTON. + + +It is low water in the Firth of Cromarty during stream tides, between +six and seven o'clock in the evening; and my uncle Sandy, in returning +from his work at the close of the day, used not unfrequently, when, +according to the phrase of the place, "there was a tide in the water," +to strike down the hillside, and spend a quiet hour in the ebb. I +delighted to accompany him on these occasions. There are professors of +Natural History that know less of living nature than was known by Uncle +Sandy; and I deemed it no small matter to have all the various +productions of the sea with which he was acquainted pointed out to me in +these walks, and to be in possession of his many curious anecdotes +regarding them. + +He was a skilful crab and lobster fisher, and knew every hole and +cranny, along several miles of rocky shore, in which the creatures were +accustomed to shelter, with not a few of their own peculiarities of +character. Contrary to the view taken by some of our naturalists, such +as Agassiz, who hold that the crab--a genus comparatively recent in its +appearance in creation--is less embryotic in its character, and higher +in its standing, than the more ancient lobster, my uncle regarded the +lobster as a more highly developed and more intelligent animal than the +crab. The hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two +openings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives to +escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is +usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one +opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, +as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself +through sheer loss of temper. And yet the crab has, he used to add, some +points of intelligence about him too. When, as sometimes happened, he +got hold, in his dark narrow recess in the rock, of some luckless digit, +my uncle showed me how that, after the first tremendous squeeze, he +began always to experiment upon what he had got, by alternately +slackening and straitening his grasp, as if to ascertain whether it had +life in it, or was merely a piece of dead matter; and that the only way +to escape him, on these trying occasions, was to let the finger lie +passively between his nippers, as if it were a bit of stick or tangle; +when, apparently deeming it such, he would be sure to let it go; +whereas, on the least attempt to withdraw it, he would at once straiten +his gripe, and not again relax it for mayhap half an hour. In dealing +with the lobster, on the other hand, the fisher had to beware that he +did not depend too much on the hold he had got of the creature, if it +was merely a hold of one of the great claws. For a moment it would +remain passive in his grasp; he would then be sensible of a slight +tremor in the captured limb, and mayhap hear a slight crackle; and, +_presto_, the captive would straightway be off like a dart through the +deep-water hole, and only the limb remain in the fisher's hand. My uncle +has, however, told me that lobsters do not always lose their limbs with +the necessary judgment. They throw them off when suddenly frightened, +without first waiting to consider whether the sacrifice of a pair of +legs is the best mode of obviating the danger. On firing a musket +immediately over a lobster just captured, he has seen it throw off both +its great claws in the sudden extremity of its terror, just as a +panic-struck soldier sometimes throws away his weapons. Such, in kind, +were the anecdotes of Uncle Sandy. He instructed me, too, how to find, +amid thickets of laminaria and fuci, the nest of the lump-fish, and +taught me to look well in its immediate neighbourhood for the male and +female fish, especially for the male; and showed me further, that the +hard-shelled spawn of this creature may, when well washed, be eaten raw, +and forms at least as palatable a viand in that state as the imported +caviare of Russia and the Caspian. There were instances in which the +common crow acted as a sort of jackal to us in our lump-fish +explorations. We would see him busied at the side of some fuci-covered +pool, screaming and cawing as if engaged in combating an enemy; and, on +going up to the place, we used to find the lump-fish he had killed fresh +and entire, but divested of the eyes, which we found, as a matter of +course, that the assailant, in order to make sure of victory, had taken +the precaution of picking out at an early stage of the contest. + +Nor was it with merely the edible that we busied ourselves on these +journeys. The brilliant metallic _plumage_ of the sea mouse +(_Aphrodita_), steeped as in the dyes of the rainbow, excited our +admiration time after time; and still higher wonder used to be awakened +by a much rarer annelid, brown, and slender as a piece of rope-yarn, and +from thirty to forty feet in length, which no one save my uncle had ever +found along the Cromarty shores, and which, when broken in two, as +sometimes happened in the measuring, divided its vitality so equally +between the pieces, that each was fitted, we could not doubt, though +unable to repeat in the case the experiment of Spallanzani, to set up as +an independent existence, and carry on business for itself. The +annelids, too, that form for themselves tubular dwellings built up of +large grains of sand (_amphitrites_), always excited our interest. Two +hand-shaped tufts of golden-hued setae--furnished, however, with greatly +more than the typical number of fingers--rise from the shoulders of +these creatures, and must, I suspect, be used as hands in the process of +building; at least the hands of the most practised builder could not set +stones with nicer skill than is exhibited by these worms in the setting +of the grains which compose their cylindrical dwellings--dwellings that, +from their form and structure, seem suited to remind the antiquary of +the round towers of Ireland, and, from the style of their masonry, of +old Cyclopean walls. Even the mason-wasps and bees are greatly inferior +workmen to these mason _amphitrites_. I was introduced also, in our ebb +excursions, to the cuttle-fish and the sea-hare, and shown how the one, +when pursued by an enemy, discharges a cloud of ink to conceal its +retreat, and that the other darkens the water around it with a lovely +purple pigment, which my uncle was pretty sure would make a rich dye, +like that extracted of old by the Tyrians from a whelk which he had +often seen on the beach near Alexandria. I learned, too, to cultivate an +acquaintance with some two or three species of doris, that carry their +arboraceous, tree-like lungs on their backs, as Macduff's soldiers +carried the boughs of Birnam wood to the Hill of Dunsinane; and I soon +acquired a sort of affection for certain shells, which bore, as I +supposed, a more exotic aspect than their neighbours. Among these were, +_Trochus Zizyphinus_, with its flame-like markings of crimson, on a +ground of paley-brown; _Patella pellucida_, with its lustrous rays of +vivid blue on its dark epidermis, that resemble the sparks of a firework +breaking against a cloud; and, above all, _Cypraea Europea_, a not rare +shell further to the north, but so little abundant in the Firth of +Cromarty, as to render the live animal, when once or twice in a season I +used to find it creeping on the laminaria at the extreme outer edge of +the tide-line, with its wide orange mantle flowing liberally around it, +somewhat of a prize. In short, the tract of sea-bottom laid dry by the +ebb formed an admirable school, and Uncle Sandy an excellent teacher, +under whom I was not in the least disposed to trifle; and when, long +after, I learned to detect old-marine bottoms far out of sight of the +sea--now amid the ancient forest-covered Silurians of central England, +and anon opening to the light on some hillside among the Mountain +Limestones of our own country--I have felt how very much I owed to his +instructions. + +His facts wanted a vocabulary adequately fitted to represent them; but +though they "lacked a commodity of good names," they were all founded on +careful observation, and possessed that first element of +respectability--perfect originality: they were all acquired by himself. +I owed more, however, to the habit of observation which he assisted me +in forming, than even to his facts; and yet some of these were of high +value. He has shown me, for instance, that an immense granitic boulder +in the neighbourhood of the town, known for ages as the Clach Malloch, +or Cursed Stone, stands so exactly in the line of low water, that the +larger stream-tides of March and September lay dry its inner side, but +never its outer one;--round the outer side there are always from two to +four inches of water; and such had been the case for at least a hundred +years before, in his father's and grandfather's days--evidence enough of +itself, I have heard him say, that the relative levels of sea and land +were not altering; though during the lapsed century the waves had so +largely encroached on the low flat shores, that elderly men of his +acquaintance, long since passed away, had actually held the plough when +young where they had held the rudder when old. He used, too, to point +out to me the effect of certain winds upon the tides. A strong hasty +gale from the east, if coincident with a spring-tide, sent up the waves +high upon the beach, and cut away whole roods of the soil; but the gales +that usually kept larger tides from falling during ebb were prolonged +gales from the west. A series of these, even when not very high, left +not unfrequently from one to two feet water round the Clach Malloch, +during stream-tides, that would otherwise have laid its bottom bare--a +proof, he used to say, that the German Ocean, from its want of breadth, +could not be heaped up against our coasts to the same extent, by the +violence of a very powerful east wind, as the Atlantic by the force of a +comparatively moderate westerly one. It is not improbable that the +philosophy of the Drift Current, and of the apparently reactionary Gulf +Stream, may be embodied in this simple remark. + +The woods on the lower slopes of the hill, when there was no access to +the zones covered save at low ebb by the sea, furnished me with +employment of another kind. I learned to look with interest on the +workings of certain insects, and to understand some of at least their +simpler instincts. The large Diadem Spider, which spins so strong a web, +that, in pressing my way through the furze thickets, I could hear its +white silken cords crack as they yielded before me, and which I found +skilled, like an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering +itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial favourite; +though its great size, and the wild stories I had read about the bite of +its cogener the tarantula, made me cultivate its acquaintance somewhat +at a distance. Often, however, have I stood beside its large web, when +the creature occupied its place in the centre, and, touching it with a +withered grass stalk, I have seen it sullenly swing on the lines "with +its hands," and then shake them with a motion so rapid, that--like +Carathis, the mother of the Caliph Vathek, who, when her hour of doom +had come, "glanced off in a rapid whirl, which rendered her +invisible"--the eye failed to see either web or insect for minutes +together. Nothing appeals more powerfully to the youthful fancy than +those coats, rings, and amulets of eastern lore, that conferred on their +possessors the gift of invisibility. I learned, too, to take an especial +interest in what, though they belong to a different family, are known as +the Water _Spiders_; and have watched them speeding by fits and starts, +like skaters on the ice, across the surface of some woodland spring or +streamlet--fearless walkers on the waters, that, with true faith in the +integrity of the implanted instinct, never made shipwreck in the eddy or +sank in the pool. It is to these little creatures that Wordsworth refers +in one of his sonnets on sleep:-- + + + "O sleep, thou art to me + A fly that up and down himself doth shove + Upon a fretful rivulet; now _above_, + Now _on_ the water, vexed with mockery." + + +As shown, however, to the poet himself on one occasion, somewhat to his +discomfort, by assuredly no mean authority--Mr. James Wilson--the +"vexed" "fly," though one of the hemipterous insects, never uses its +wings, and so never gets "_above_" the water. Among my other favourites +were the splendid dragon-flies, the crimson-speckled Burnet moths, and +the small azure butterflies, that, when fluttering among delicate +harebells and crimson-tipped daisies, used to suggest to me, long ere I +became acquainted with the pretty figure of Moore,[3] or even ere the +figure had been produced, the idea of flowers that had taken to flying. +The wild honey bees, too, in their several species, had peculiar charms +for me. There were the buff-coloured carders, that erected over their +honey-jars domes of moss; the lapidary red-tipped bees, that built amid +the recesses of ancient cairns, and in old dry stone walls, and were so +invincibly brave in defending their homesteads, that they never gave up +the quarrel till they died; and, above all, the yellow-zoned +humble-bees, that lodged deep in the ground along the dry sides of +grassy banks, and were usually wealthier in honey than any of their +cogeners, and existed in larger communities. But the herd-boys of the +parish, and the foxes of its woods and brakes, shared in my interest in +the wild honey bees, and, in the pursuit of something else than +knowledge, were ruthless robbers of their nests. I often observed, that +the fox, with all his reputed shrewdness, is not particularly knowing on +the subject of bees. He makes as dead a set on a wasp's nest as on that +of the carder or humble-bee, and gets, I doubt not, heartily stung for +his pains; for though, as shown by the marks of his teeth, left on +fragments of the paper combs scattered about, he attempts eating the +young wasps in the chrysalis state, the undevoured remains seem to argue +that he is but little pleased with them as food. There were occasions, +however, in which even the herd-boys met with only disappointment in +their bee-hunting excursions; and in one notable instance, the result of +the adventure used to be spoken of in school and elsewhere, under our +breath and in secret, as something very horrible. A party of boys had +stormed a humble-bees' nest on the side of the old chapel-brae, and, +digging inwards along the narrow winding earth passage, they at length +came to a grinning human skull, and saw the bees issuing thick from out +a round hole at its base--the _foramen magnum_. The wise little workers +had actually formed their nest within the hollow of the head, once +occupied by the busy brain; and their spoilers, more scrupulous than +Samson of old, who seems to have enjoyed the meat brought forth out of +the eater, and the sweetness extracted from the strong, left in very +great consternation their honey all to themselves. + +One of my discoveries of this early period would have been deemed a not +unimportant one by the geologist. Among the woods of the hill, a short +half-mile from the town, there is a morass of comparatively small +extent, but considerable depth, which had been laid open by the bursting +of a waterspout on the uplands, and in which the dark peaty chasm +remained unclosed, though the event had happened ere my birth, until I +had become old and curious enough thoroughly to explore it. It was a +black miry ravine, some ten or twelve feet in depth. The bogs around +waved thick with silvery willows of small size; but sticking out from +the black sides of the ravine itself, and in some instances stretched +across it from side to side, lay the decayed remains of huge giants of +the vegetable world, that had flourished and died long ages ere, in at +least our northern part of the island, the course of history had begun. +There were oaks of enormous girth, into whose coal-black substance one +could dig as easily with a pickaxe as one digs into a bank of clay; and +at least one noble elm, which ran across the little stream that +trickled, rather than flowed, along the bottom of the hollow, and which +was in such a state of keeping, that I have scooped out of its trunk, +with the unassisted hand, a way for the water. I have found in the +ravine--which I learned very much to like as a scene of exploration, +though I never failed to quit it sadly bemired--handfuls of hazel-nuts, +of the ordinary size, but black as jet, with the cups of acorns, and +with twigs of birch that still retained almost unchanged their silvery +outer crust of bark, but whose ligneous interior existed as a mere pulp. +I have even laid open, in layers of a sort of unctuous clay, resembling +fuller's earth, leaves of oak, birch, and hazel, that had fluttered in +the wind thousands of years before; and there was one happy day in which +I succeeded in digging from out the very bottom of the excavation a huge +fragment of an extraordinary-looking deer's horn. It was a broad, +massive, strange-looking piece of bone, evidently old-fashioned in its +type; and so I brought it home in triumph to Uncle James, as the +antiquary of the family, assured that he could tell me all about it. +Uncle James paused in the middle of his work; and, taking the horn in +his hand, surveyed it leisurely on every side. "That is the horn, boy," +he at length said, "of no deer that now lives in this country. We have +the red deer, and the fallow deer, and the roe; and none of them have +horns at all like that. I never saw an elk; but I am pretty sure this +broad, plank-like horn can be none other than the horn of an elk." My +uncle set aside his work; and, taking the horn in his hand, went out to +the shop of a cabinet-maker in the neighbourhood, where there used to +work from five to six journeymen. They all gathered round him to examine +it, and agreed in the decision that it was an entirely different sort of +horn from any borne by the existing deer of Scotland, and that this +surmise regarding it was probably just. And, apparently to enhance the +marvel, a neighbour, who was lounging in the shop at the time, remarked, +in a tone of sober gravity, that it had lain in the Moss of the Willows +"for perhaps half a century." There was positive anger in the tone of my +uncle's reply. "Half a century, Sir!!" he exclaimed; "was the elk a +native of Scotland half a century ago? There is no notice of the elk, +Sir, in British history. That horn must have lain in the Moss of the +Willows for thousands of years!" "Ah, ha, James, ah, ha," ejaculated the +neighbour, with a sceptical shake of the head; but as neither he nor any +one else dared meet my uncle on historical ground, the controversy took +end with the ejaculation. I soon added to the horn of the elk that of a +roe, and part of that of a red deer, found in the same ravine; and the +neighbours, impressed by Uncle James's view, used to bring strangers to +look at them. At length, unhappily, a relation settled in the south, who +had shown me kindness, took a fancy to them; and, smit by the charms of +a gorgeous paint-box which he had just sent me, I made them over to him +entire. They found their way to London, and were ultimately lodged in +the collection of some obscure virtuoso, whose locality or name I have +been unable to trace. + +The Cromarty Sutors have their two lines of caves--an ancient line +hollowed by the waves many centuries ago, when the sea stood, in +relation to the land, from fifteen to thirty feet higher along our +shores than it does now; and a modern line, which the surf is still +engaged in scooping out. Many of the older caves are lined with +stalactites, deposited by springs that, filtering through the cracks and +fissures of the gneiss, find lime enough in their passage to acquire +what is known as a _petrifying_, though, in reality, only an incrusting +quality. And these stalactites, under the name of "white stones made by +the water," formed of old--as in that Cave of Slains specially mentioned +by Buchanan and the Chroniclers, and in those caverns of the Peak so +quaintly described by Cotton--one of the grand marvels of the place. +Almost all the old gazetteers sufficiently copious in their details to +mention Cromarty at all, refer to its "Dropping Cave" as a marvellous +marble-producing cavern; and this "Dropping Cave" is but one of many +that look out upon the sea from the precipices of the southern Sutor, in +whose dark recesses the drops ever tinkle, and the stony ceilings ever +grow. The wonder could not have been deemed a great or very rare one by +a man like the late Sir George Mackenzie of Coul, well known from his +travels in Iceland, and his experiments on the inflammability of the +diamond; but it so happened, that Sir George, curious to see the sort of +stones to which the old gazetteers referred, made application to the +minister of the parish for a set of specimens; and the minister +straightway deputed the commission, which he believed to be not a +difficult one, to one of his poorer parishioners, an old nailer, as a +means of putting a few shillings in his way. + +It so happened, however, that the nailer had lost his wife by a sad +accident, only a few weeks before; and the story went abroad that the +poor woman was, as the townspeople expressed it, "coming back." She had +been very suddenly hurried out of the world. When going down the quay +after nightfall one evening, with a parcel of clean linen for a sailor, +her relative, she had missed footing on the pier edge, and, +half-brained, half-drowned, had been found in the morning, stone dead, +at the bottom of the harbour. And now, as if pressed by some unsettled +business, she used to be seen, it was said, hovering after nightfall +about her old dwelling, or sauntering along the neighbouring street; +nay, there were occasions, according to the general report, in which she +had even exchanged words with some of the neighbours, little to their +satisfaction. The words, however, seemed in every instance to have +wonderfully little to do with the affairs of another world. I remember +seeing the wife of a neighbour rush into my mother's one evening about +this time, speechless with terror, and declare, after an awful pause, +during which she had lain half-fainting in a chair, that she had just +seen Christy. She had been engaged, as the night was falling, but ere +darkness had quite set in, in piling up a load of brushwood for fuel +outside the door, when up started the spectre on the other side of the +heap, attired in the ordinary work-day garb of the deceased, and, in a +light and hurried tone, asked, as Christy might have done ere the fatal +accident, for a share of the brushwood. "Give me some of that _hag_," +said the ghost; "you have plenty--I have none." It was not known whether +or no the nailer had seen the apparition; but it was pretty certain he +believed in it; and as the "Dropping Cave" is both dark and solitary, +and had forty years ago a bad name to boot--for the mermaid had been +observed disporting in front of it even at mid-day, and lights and +screams heard from it at nights--it must have been a rather formidable +place to a man living in the momentary expectation of a visit from a +dead wife. So far as could be ascertained--for the nailer himself was +rather close in the matter--he had not entered the cave at all. He +seemed, judging from the marks of scraping left along the sides for +about two or three feet from the narrow opening, to have taken his stand +outside, where the light was good, and the way of retreat clear, and to +have raked outwards to him, as far as he could reach, all that stuck to +the walls, including ropy slime and mouldy damp, but not one particle of +stalactite. It was, of course, seen that his specimens would not suit +Sir George; and the minister, in the extremity of the case, applied to +my uncles, though with some little unwillingness, as it was known that +no remuneration for their trouble could be offered to them. My uncles +were, however, delighted with the commission--it was all for the benefit +of science; and, providing themselves with torches and a hammer, they +set out for the caves. And I, of course, accompanied them--a very happy +boy--armed, like themselves, with hammer and torch, and prepared +devotedly to labour in behalf of science and Sir George. + +I had never before seen the caves by torch-light; and though what I now +witnessed did not quite come up to what I had read regarding the Grotto +of Antiparos, or even the wonders of the Peak, it was unquestionably +both strange and fine. The celebrated Dropping Cave proved inferior--as +is not unfrequently the case with the celebrated--to a cave almost +entirely unknown, which opened among the rocks a little further to the +east; and yet even _it_ had its interest. It widened, as one entered, +into a twilight chamber, green with velvety mosses, that love the damp +and the shade; and terminated in a range of crystalline wells, fed by +the perpetual dropping, and hollowed in what seemed an altar-piece of +the deposited marble. And above, and along the sides, there depended +many a draped fold, and hung many a translucent icicle. The other cave, +however, we found to be of much greater extent, and of more varied +character. It is one of three caves of the old coast line, known as the +Doocot or Pigeon Caves, which open upon a piece of rocky beach, overhung +by a rudely semicircular range of gloomy precipices. The points of the +semicircle project on either side into deep water--into at least water +so much deeper than the fall of ordinary neaps, that it is only during +the ebb of stream tides that the place is accessible by land; and in +each of these bold promontories--the terminal horns of the +crescent--there is a cave of the present coast-line, deeply hollowed, in +which the sea stands from ten to twelve feet in depth when the tide is +at full, and in which the surf thunders, when gales blow hard from the +stormy north-east, with the roar of whole parks of artillery. The cave +in the western promontory, which bears among the townsfolk the name of +the "Puir Wife's Meal Kist," has its roof drilled by two small +perforations--the largest of them not a great deal wider than the +blow-hole of a porpoise--that open externally among the cliffs above; +and when, during storms from the sea, the huge waves come rolling ashore +like green moving walls, there are certain times of the tide in which +they shut up the mouth of the cave, and so compress the air within, that +it rushes upwards through the openings, roaring in its escape as if ten +whales were blowing at once, and rises from amid the crags overhead in +two white jets of vapour, distinctly visible, to the height of from +sixty to eighty feet. If there be critics who have deemed it one of the +extravagances of Goethe that he should have given life and motion, as in +his famous witch-scene in "Faust," to the Hartz crags, they would do +well to visit this bold headland during some winter tempest from the +east, and find his description perfectly sober and true: + + + "See the giant crags, oh ho! + How they snort and how they blow!" + + +Within, at the bottom of the crescent, and where the tide never reaches +when at the fullest, we found the large pigeon cave which we had come to +explore, hollowed for about a hundred and fifty feet in the line of a +fault. There runs across the opening the broken remains of a wall +erected by some monopolizing proprietor of the neighbouring lands, with +the intention of appropriating to himself the pigeons of the cavern; but +his day, even at this time, had been long gone by, and the wall had sunk +into a ruin. As we advanced, the cave caught the echoes of our +footsteps, and a flock of pigeons, startled from their nests, came +whizzing out, almost brushing us with their wings. The damp floor +sounded hollow to the tread; we saw the green mossy sides, which close +in the uncertain light, more than twenty feet overhead, furrowed by +ridges of stalactites, that became whiter and purer as they retired from +the vegetative influences; and marked that the last plant which appeared +as we wended our way inwards was a minute green moss, about half an inch +in length, which slanted outwards on the prominence of the sides, and +overlay myriads of similar sprigs of moss, long before converted into +stone, but which, faithful in death to the ruling law of their lives, +still pointed, like the others, to the free air and the light. And then, +in the deeper recesses of the cave, where the floor becomes covered with +uneven sheets of stalagmite, and where long spear-like icicles and +drapery-like foldings, pure as the marble of the sculptor, descend from +above, or hang pendent over the sides, we found in abundance magnificent +specimens for Sir George. The entire expedition was one of wondrous +interest; and I returned next day to school, big with description and +narrative, to excite, by truths more marvellous than fiction, the +curiosity of my class-fellows. + +I had previously introduced them to the marvels of the hill; and during +our Saturday half-holidays, some of them had accompanied me in my +excursions to it. But it had failed, somehow, to catch their fancy. It +was too solitary, and too far from home, and, as a scene of amusement, +not at all equal to the town-links, where they could play at "shinty" +and "French and English," almost within _hail_ of their parents' +homesteads. The very tract along its flat, moory summit, over which, +according to tradition, Wallace had once driven before him in headlong +rout a strong body of English, and which was actually mottled with +sepulchral tumuli, still visible amid the heath, failed in any marked +degree to engage them; and though they liked well enough to hear about +the caves, they seemed to have no very great desire to see them. There +was, however, one little fellow, who sat in the Latin form--the member +of a class lower and brighter than the heavy one, though it was not +particularly bright either--who differed in this respect from all the +others. Though he was my junior by about a twelvemonth, and shorter by +about half a head, he was a diligent boy in even the Grammar School, in +which boys were so rarely diligent, and, for his years, a thoroughly +sensible one, without a grain of the dreamer in his composition. I +succeeded, however, notwithstanding his sobriety, in infecting him +thoroughly with my peculiar tastes, and learned to love him very much, +partly because he doubled my amusements by sharing in them, and partly, +I daresay--on the principle on which Mahomet preferred his old wife to +his young one--because "he believed in me." Devoted to him as Caliban in +the _Tempest_ to his friend Trinculo-- + + + "I showed him the best springs, I plucked him berries. + And I with my long nails did dig him pig-nuts." + + +His curiosity on this occasion was largely excited by my description of +the Doocot Cave; and, setting out one morning to explore its wonders, +armed with John Feddes's hammer, in the benefits of which my friend was +permitted liberally to share, we failed, for that day at least, in +finding our way back. + +It was on a pleasant spring morning that, with my little curious friend +beside me, I stood on the beach opposite the eastern promontory, that, +with its stern granitic wall, bars access for ten days out of every +fourteen to the wonders of the Doocot; and saw it stretching provokingly +out into the green water. It was hard to be disappointed, and the caves +so near. The tide was a low neap, and if we wanted a passage dry-shod, +it behoved us to wait for at least a week; but neither of us understood +the philosophy of neap-tides at the period. I was quite sure I had got +round at low water with my uncles not a great many days before, and we +both inferred, that if we but succeeded in getting round now, it would +be quite a pleasure to wait among the caves inside until such time as +the fall of the tide should lay bare a passage for our return. A narrow +and broken shelf runs along the promontory, on which, by the assistance +of the naked toe and the toe-nail, it is just possible to creep. We +succeeded in scrambling up to it; and then, crawling outwards on all +fours--the precipice, as we proceeded, beetling more and more formidable +from above, and the water becoming greener and deeper below--we reached +the outer point of the promontory; and then doubling the cape on a still +narrowing margin--the water, by a reverse process, becoming shallower +and less green as we advanced inwards--we found the ledge terminating +just where, after clearing the sea, it overhung the gravelly beach at an +elevation of nearly ten feet. Adown we both dropped, proud of our +success; up splashed the rattling gravel as we fell; and for at least +the whole coming week--though we were unaware of the extent of our good +luck at the time--the marvels of the Doocot Cave might be regarded as +solely and exclusively our own. For one short seven days--to borrow +emphasis from the phraseology of Carlyle--"they were our own, and no +other man's." + +The first few hours were hours of sheer enjoyment The larger cave proved +a mine of marvels; and we found a great deal additional to wonder at on +the slopes beneath the precipices, and along the piece of rocky +sea-beach in front. We succeeded in discovering for ourselves, in +creeping, dwarf bushes, that told of the blighting influences of the +sea-spray; the pale yellow honeysuckle, that we had never seen before, +save in gardens and shrubberies; and on a deeply-shaded slope that +leaned against one of the steeper precipices, we detected the +sweet-scented woodroof of the flower-plot and parterre, with its pretty +verticillate leaves, that become the more odoriferous the more they are +crushed, and its white delicate flowers. There, too, immediately in the +opening of the deeper cave, where a small stream came pattering in +detached drops from the over-beetling precipice above, like the first +drops of a heavy thunder-shower, we found the hot, bitter scurvy grass, +with its minute cruciform flowers, which the great Captain Cook had +used in his voyages; above all, _there_ were the caves with their +pigeons--white, variegated, and blue--and their mysterious and gloomy +depths, in which plants hardened into stone, and water became marble. In +a short time we had broken off with our hammers whole pocketfuls of +stalactites and petrified moss. There were little pools at the side of +the cave, where we could see the work of congelation going on, as at the +commencement of an October frost, when the cold north wind ruffles, and +but barely ruffles, the surface of some mountain lochan or sluggish +moorland stream, and shows the newly-formed needles of ice projecting +mole-like from the shores into the water. So rapid was the course of +deposition, that there were cases in which the sides of the hollows +seemed growing almost in proportion as the water rose in them; the +springs, lipping over, deposited their minute crystals on the edges; and +the reservoirs deepened and became more capacious as their mounds were +built up by this curious masonry. The long telescopic prospect of the +sparkling sea, as viewed from the inner extremity of the cavern, while +all around was dark as midnight--the sudden gleam of the sea-gull, seen +for a moment from the recess, as it flitted past in the sunshine--the +black heaving bulk of the grampus, as it threw up its slender jets of +spray, and then, turning downwards, displayed its glossy back and vast +angular fin--even the pigeons, as they shot whizzing by, one moment +scarce visible in the gloom, the next radiant in the light--all acquired +a new interest, from the peculiarity of the _setting_ in which we saw +them. They formed a series of sun-gilt vignettes, framed in jet; and it +was long ere we tired of seeing and admiring in them much of the strange +and the beautiful. It did seem rather ominous, however, and perhaps +somewhat supernatural to boot, that about an hour after noon, the tide, +while there was yet a full fathom of water beneath the brow of the +promontory, ceased to fall, and then, after A quarter of an hour's +space, began actually to creep upwards on the beach. But just hoping +that there might be some mistake in the matter, which the evening tide +would scarce fail to rectify, we continued to amuse ourselves, and to +hope on. Hour after hour passed, lengthening as the shadows lengthened, +and yet the tide still rose. The sun had sunk behind the precipices, and +all was gloom along their bases, and double gloom in their caves; but +their rugged brows still caught the red glare of evening. The flush rose +higher and higher, chased by the shadows; and then, after lingering for +a moment on their crests of honeysuckle and juniper, passed away, and +the whole became sombre and grey. The sea-gull sprang upwards from where +he had floated on the ripple, and hied him slowly away to his lodge in +his deep-sea stack; the dusky cormorant flitted past, with heavier and +more frequent stroke, to his whitened shelf high on the precipice; the +pigeons came whizzing downwards from the uplands and the opposite land, +and disappeared amid the gloom of their caves; every creature that had +wings made use of them in speeding homewards; but neither my companion +nor myself had any; and there was no possibility of getting home without +them. We made desperate efforts to scale the precipices, and on two +several occasions succeeded in reaching mid-way shelves among the crags, +where the sparrowhawk and the raven build; but though we had climbed +well enough to render our return a matter of bare possibility, there was +no possibility whatever of getting farther up: the cliffs had never been +scaled before, and they were not destined to be scaled now. And so, as +the twilight deepened, and the precarious footing became every moment +more doubtful and precarious still, we had just to give up in despair. +"Wouldn't care for myself," said the poor little fellow, my companion, +bursting into tears, "if it were not for my mother; but what will my +mother say?" "Wouldn't care neither," said I, with a heavy heart; "but +it's just back water, and we'll get out at twall." We retreated together +into one of the shallower and drier caves, and, clearing a little spot +of its rough stones, and then groping along the rocks for the dry grass +that in the spring season hangs from them in withered tufts, we formed +for ourselves a most uncomfortable bed, and lay down in one another's +arms. For the last few hours mountainous piles of clouds had been rising +dark and stormy in the sea-mouth: they had flared portentously in the +setting sun, and had worn, with the decline of evening, almost every +meteoric tint of anger, from fiery red to a sombre thundrous brown, and +from sombre brown to doleful black. And we could now at least hear what +they portended, though we could no longer see. The rising wind began to +howl mournfully amid the cliffs, and the sea, hitherto so silent, to +beat heavily against the shore, and to boom, like distress-guns, from +the recesses of the two deep-sea caves. We could hear, too, the beating +rain, now heavier, now lighter, as the gusts swelled or sank; and the +intermittent patter of the streamlet over the deeper cave, now driving +against the precipices, now descending heavily on the stones. + +My companion had only the real evils of the case to deal with, and so, +the hardness of our bed and the coldness of the night considered, he +slept tolerably well; but I was unlucky enough to have evils greatly +worse than the real ones to annoy me. The corpse of a drowned seaman had +been found on the beach about a month previous, some forty yards firm +where we lay. The hands and feet, miserably contracted, and corrugated +into deep folds at every joint, yet swollen to twice their proper size, +had been bleached as white as pieces of alumed sheep-skin; and where the +head should have been, there existed only a sad mass of rubbish. I had +examined the body, as young people are apt to do, a great deal too +curiously for my peace; and, though I had never done the poor nameless +seaman any harm, I could not have suffered more from him during that +melancholy night, had I been his murderer. Sleeping or waking, he was +continually before me. Every time I dropped into a doze, he would come +stalking up the beach from the spot where he had lain, with his stiff +white fingers, that stuck out like eagle's toes, and his pale, broken +pulp of a head, and attempt striking me; and then I would awaken with a +start, cling to my companion, and remember that the drowned sailor had +lain festering among the identical bunches of sea-weed that still rotted +on the beach not a stone-cast away. The near neighbourhood of a score of +living bandits would have inspired less horror than the recollection of +that one dead seaman. + +Towards midnight the sky cleared and the wind fell, and the moon, in her +last quarter, rose red as a mass of heated iron out of the sea. We crept +down, in the uncertain light, over the rough slippery crags, to +ascertain whether the tide had not fallen sufficiently far to yield us a +passage; but we found the waves chafing among the rocks just where the +tide-line had rested twelve hours before, and a full fathom of sea +enclasping the base of the promontory. A glimmering idea of the real +nature of our situation at length crossed my mind. It was not +imprisonment for a tide to which we had consigned ourselves, it was +imprisonment for a week. There was little comfort in the thought, +arising, as it did, amid the chills and terrors of a dreary midnight; +and I looked wistfully on the sea as our only path of escape. There was +a vessel crossing the wake of the moon at the time, scarce half a mile +from the shore; and, assisted by my companion, I began to shout at the +top of my lungs, in the hope of being heard by the sailors. We saw her +dim bulk falling slowly athwart the red glittering belt of light that +had rendered her visible, and then disappearing in the murky blackness, +and just as we lost sight of her for ever, we could hear an indistinct +sound mingling with the dash of the waves--the shout, in reply, of the +startled helmsman. The vessel, as we afterwards learned, was a large +stone-lighter, deeply laden, and unfurnished with a boat; nor were her +crew at all sure that it would have been safe to attend to the midnight +voice from amid the rocks, even had they had the means of communication +with the shore. We waited on and on, however, now shouting by turns, and +now shouting together; but there was no second reply; and at length, +losing hope, we groped our way back to our comfortless bed, just as the +tide had again turned on the beach, and the waves began to roll upwards +higher and higher at every dash. + +As the moon rose and brightened, the dead seaman became less +troublesome; and I had succeeded in dropping as soundly asleep as my +companion, when we were both aroused by a loud shout. We started up and +again crept downwards among the crags to the shore; and as we reached +the sea the shout was repeated. It was that of at least a dozen harsh +voices united. There was a brief pause, followed by another shout; and +then two boats, strongly manned, shot round the western promontory, and +the men, resting on their oars, turned towards the rock, and shouted yet +again. The whole town had been alarmed by the intelligence that two +little boys had straggled away in the morning to the rocks of the +southern Sutor, and had not found their way back. The precipices had +been a scene of frightful accidents from time immemorial, and it was at +once inferred that one other sad accident had been added to the number. +True, there were cases remembered of people having been tide-bound in +the Doocot Caves, and not much the worse in consequence; but as the +caves were inaccessible during neaps, we could not, it was said, +possibly be in them; and the sole remaining ground of hope was, that, as +had happened once before, only one of the two had been killed, and that +the survivor was lingering among the rocks, afraid to come home. And in +this belief, when the moon rose and the surf fell, the two boats had +been fitted out. It was late in the morning ere we reached Cromarty, but +a crowd on the beach awaited our arrival; and there were anxious-looking +lights glancing in the windows, thick and manifold; nay, such was the +interest elicited, that some enormously bad verses, in which the writer +described the incident a few days after, became popular enough to be +handed about in manuscript, and read at tea-parties by the _elite_ of +the town. Poor old Miss Bond, who kept the town boarding-school, got the +piece nicely dressed up, somewhat on the principle upon which Macpherson +translated Ossian; and at our first school-examination--proud and happy +day for the author!--it was recited with vast applause, by one of her +prettiest young ladies, before the assembled taste and fashion of +Cromarty. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[3] + + "The beautiful blue damsel flies, + That fluttered round the jasmine steins, + Like winged flowers or flying gems." + + PARADISE AND THE PEEL. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + + "The wise + Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said. + Of Such materials wretched men were made."--BYRON. + + +The report went abroad about this time, not without some foundation, +that Miss Bond purposed patronizing me. The copy of my verses which had +fallen into her hands--a genuine holograph--bore a-top a magnificent +view of the Doocot, in which horrid crags of burnt umber were perforated +by yawning caverns of Indian ink, and crested by a dense pine-forest of +sap-green; while vast waves blue on the one side and green on the other, +and bearing blotches of white lead a-top, rolled frightfully beneath. +And Miss Bond had concluded, it was said, that such a genius as that +evinced by the sketch and the "poem" for those sister arts of painting +and poesy in which she herself excelled, should not be left to waste +itself uncared for in the desert wilderness. She had published, shortly +before, a work, in two slim volumes, entitled, "Letters of a Village +Governess"--a curious kind of medley, little amenable to the ordinary +rules, but a genial book notwithstanding, with more heart than head +about it; and not a few of the incidents which it related had the merit +of being true. It was an unlucky merit for poor Miss Bond. She dated her +book from Fortrose, where she taught what was designated in the Almanac +as the boarding-school of the place, but which, according to Miss Bond's +own description, was the school of the "village governess." And as her +tales were found to be a kind of mosaics composed of droll bits of fact +picked up in the neighbourhood, Fortrose soon became considerably too +hot for her. She had drawn, under the over-transparent guise of the +niggardly Mrs. Flint, the skinflint wife of a "paper minister," who had +ruined at one fell blow her best silk dress, and a dozen of good eggs to +boot, by putting the eggs in her pocket when going out to a party, and +then stumbling over a stone. And, of course, Mrs. Skinflint and the Rev. +Mr. Skinflint, with all their blood-relations, could not be other than +greatly gratified to find the story furbished up in the printed form, +and set in fun. There were other stories as imprudent and as amusing--of +young ladies caught eavesdropping at their neighbours' windows; and of +gentlemen, ill at ease in their families, sitting soaking among vulgar +companions in the public-house; and so the authoress, shortly after the +appearance of her work, ceased to be the village governess of Fortrose, +and became the village governess of Cromarty. + +It was on this occasion that I saw, for the first time, with mingled +admiration and awe, a human creature--not dead and gone, and merely a +printed name--that had actually published a book. Poor Miss Bond was a +kindly sort of person, fond of children, and mightily beloved by them in +turn; and, though keenly alive to the ludicrous, without a grain of +malice in her. I remember how, about this time, when, assisted by some +three or four boys more, I had succeeded in building a huge house, full +four feet long and three feet high, that contained us all, and a fire, +and a great deal of smoke to boot, Miss Bond the authoress came, and +looked in upon us, first through the little door, and then down through +the chimney, and gave us kind words, and seemed to enjoy our enjoyment +very much; and how we all deemed her visit one of the greatest events +that could possibly have taken place. She had been intimate with the +parents of Sir Walter Scott; and, on the appearance of Sir Walter's +first publication, the "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," she had +taken a fit of enthusiasm, and written to him; and, when in the cold +paroxysm, and inclined to think she had done something foolish, had +received from Sir Walter, then Mr. Scott, a characteristically +warm-hearted reply. She experienced much kindness at his hands ever +after; and when she herself became an author, she dedicated her book to +him. He now and then procured boarders for her; and when, after leaving +Cromarty for Edinburgh, she opened a school in the latter place, and got +on with but indifferent success, Sir Walter--though straggling with his +own difficulties at the time--sent her an enclosure of ten pounds, to +scare, as he said in his note, "the wolf from the door." But Miss Bond, +like the original of his own Jeanie Deans, was a "proud bodie;" and the +ten pounds were returned, with the intimation that the wolf had not yet +come to the door. Poor lady! I suspect he came to the door at last. Like +many other writers of books, her voyage through life skirted, for the +greater part of the way, the bleak lee-shore of necessity; and it cost +her not a little skilful steering at times to give the strand a +respectable offing. And in her solitary old age, she seemed to have got +fairly aground. There was an attempt made by some of her former pupils +to raise money enough to purchase for her a small annuity; but when the +design was in progress, I heard of her death. She illustrated in her +life the remark recorded by herself in her "Letters," as made by a +humble friend:--"It's no an easy thing, Mem, for a woman to go through +the world _without a head_," _i.e._, single and unprotected. + +From some unexplained cause, Miss Bond's patronage never reached me. I +am sure the good lady intended giving me lessons in both drawing and +composition; for she had said it, and her heart was a kind one; but then +her time was too much occupied to admit of her devoting an occasional +hour to myself alone; and as for introducing me to her young-lady +classes, in my rough garments, ever greatly improved the wrong way by my +explorations in the ebb and the peat-moss, and frayed, at times, beyond +even my mother's ability of repair, by warping to the tops of great +trees, and by feats as a cragsman--that would have been a piece of +Jack-Cadeism, on which, then or now, no village governess could have +ventured. And so I was left to get on in verse and picture-making quite +in the wild way, without care or culture. + +My schoolfellows liked my stories well enough--better at least, on most +occasions, than they did the lessons of the master; but, beyond the +common ground of enjoyment which these extempore compositions furnished +to both the "sennachie" and his auditors, our tracts of amusement lay +widely apart. I disliked, as I have said, the yearly cock-fight--found +no pleasure in cat-killing, or in teasing at nights, or on the street, +the cross-tempered, half-witted _eccentrics_ of the village--usually +kept aloof from the ordinary play-grounds, and very rarely mingled in +the old hereditary games. On the other hand, with the exception of my +little friend of the cave, who, even after that disastrous incident, +evinced a tendency to trust and follow me as implicitly as before, my +schoolmates cared as little for my amusements as I did for theirs; and, +having the majority on their side, they of course voted mine to be the +foolish ones. And certainly a run of ill-luck followed me in my sports +about this time, that did give some show of reason to their decision. + +In the course of my book-hunting, I had fallen in with two old-fashioned +military treatises, part of the small library of a retired officer +lately deceased, of which the one entitled the "Military Medley," +discussed the whole art of marshalling troops, and contained numerous +plans, neatly coloured, of battalions drawn up in all possible forms, to +meet all possible exigencies; while the other, which also abounded in +prints, treated of the noble science of fortification according to the +system of Vauban. I poured over both works with much perseverance; and, +regarding them as admirable toy-books, set myself to construct, on a +very small scale, some of the toys with which they specially dealt. The +sea-shore in the immediate neighbourhood of the town appeared to my +inexperienced eye an excellent field for the carrying on of a campaign. +The sea-sand I found quite coherent enough, when still moistened by the +waters of the receding tide, to stand up in the form of towers and +bastions, and long lines of rampart; and there was one of the commonest +of the Littorinidae--_Littorina litoralis_, that in one of its varieties +is of a rich yellow colour, and in another of a bluish-green tint--which +supplied me with soldiers enough to execute all the evolutions figured +and described in the "Medley." The warmly-hued yellow shells represented +Britons in their scarlet--the more dingy ones, the French in their +uniforms of dirty blue; well-selected specimens of _Purpura lapillus_, +just tipped on their backs with a speck of paint, blue or red, from my +box, made capital dragoons; while a few dozens of the slender pyramidal +shells of _Turritella communis_ formed complete parks of artillery. With +such unlimited stores of the _materiel_ of war at my command, I was +enabled, more fortunate than Uncle Toby of old, to fight battles and +conduct retreats, assault and defend, build up fortifications, and then +batter them down again, at no expense at all; and the only drawback on +such a vast amount of advantage that I could at first perceive consisted +in the circumstance, that the shore was exceedingly open to observation, +and that my new amusements, when surveyed at a little distance, did +greatly resemble those of the very young children of the place, who used +to repair to the same arenaceous banks and shingle-beds, to bake +dirt-pies in the sand, or range lines of shells on little shelves of +stone, imitative of the crockery cupboard at home. Not only my +school-fellows, but also some of their parents, evidently arrived at the +conclusion that the two sets of amusements--mine and those of the little +children--were identical; for the elder folk said, that "in their time, +poor Francie had been such another boy, and every one saw what he had +come to;" while the younger, more energetic in their manifestations, +and more intolerant of folly, have even paused in their games of +marbles, or ceased spinning their tops, to hoot at me from a safe +distance. But the campaign went on; and I solaced myself by reflecting, +that neither the big folk nor the little folk could bring a battalion of +troops across a bridge of boats in the face of an enemy, or knew that a +regular fortification could be constructed on only a regular polygon. + +I at length discovered however, that as a sea-shore is always a sloping +plane, and the Cromarty beach, in particular, a plane of a rather steep +slope, it afforded no proper site for a fortress fitted to stand a +protracted siege, seeing that, fortify the place as I might, it could be +easily commanded by batteries raised on the higher side. And so fixing +upon a grassy knoll among the woods, in the immediate neighbourhood of a +scaur of boulder clay, capped by a thick stratum of sand, as a much +better scene of operations, I took possession of the knoll somewhat +irregularly; and carrying to it large quantities of sand from the scaur, +converted it into the site of a magnificent stronghold. First I erected +an ancient castle, consisting of four towers built on a rectangular +base, and connected by straight curtains embrasured a-top. I then +surrounded the castle by outworks in the modern style, consisting of +greatly lower curtains than the ancient ones, flanked by numerous +bastions, and bristling with cannon of huge calibre, made of the jointed +stalks of the hemlock; while, in advance of these, I laid down ravelins, +horn-works, and tenailles. I was vastly delighted with my work: it +would, I was sure, be no easy matter to reduce such a fortress; but +observing an eminence in the immediate neighbourhood which could, I +thought, be occupied by a rather annoying battery, I was deliberating +how I might best take possession of it by a redoubt, when out started, +from behind a tree, the factor of the property on which I was +trespassing, and rated me soundly for spoiling the grass in a manner so +wantonly mischievous. Horn-work and half-moon, tower and bastion, +proved of no manner of effect in repelling an attack of a kind so little +anticipated. I did think that the factor, who was not only an +intelligent man, but had also seen much service in his day on the town +links, as the holder of a commission in the Cromarty volunteers, might +have perceived that I was labouring on scientific principles, and so +deem me worthy of some tolerance on that account; but I suppose he did +not; though, to be sure, his scold died out good-naturedly enough in the +end, and I saw him laugh as he turned away. But so it was, that in the +extremity of my mortification I gave up generalship and bastion-building +for the time; though, alas! my next amusement must have worn in the eyes +of my youthful compeers as suspicious an aspect as either. + +My friend of the cave had lent me what I had never seen before--a fine +quarto edition of Anson's Voyages, containing the original prints (my +father's copy had only the maps); among the others, Mr. Brett's +elaborate delineation of that strangest of vessels, a proa of the +Ladrone Islands. I was much struck by the singularity of the +construction of a barque that, while its head and stern were exactly +alike, had sides that totally differed from each other, and that, with +the wind upon the beam, outsailed, it was said, all other vessels in the +world; and having the command of the little shop in which my Uncle Sandy +made occasional carts and wheelbarrows when unemployed abroad, I set +myself to construct a miniature proa, on the model given in the print, +and succeeded in fabricating a very extraordinary proa indeed. While its +lee side was perpendicular as a wall, its windward one, to which there +was an outrigger attached, resembled that of a flat-bottomed boat; head +and stern were exactly alike, so as to fit each for performing in turn +the part of either; a moveable yard, which supported the sail, had to be +shifted towards the end converted into the stern for the time, at each +tack; while the sail itself--a most uncouth-looking thing--formed a +scalene triangle. Such was the vessel--some eighteen inches long or +so--with which I startled from their propriety the mimic navigators of a +horse-pond in the neighbourhood--all very masterly critics in all sorts +of barques and barges known on the Scottish coast. According to +Campbell, + + + "'Twas a thing beyond + Description wretched: such a wherry, + Perhaps, ne'er ventured on a pond, + Or crossed a ferry." + + +And well did my fellows appreciate its extreme ludicrousness. It was +certainly rash to "venture" it on this especial "pond;" for, greatly to +the damage of the rigging, it was fairly pelted off, and I was sent to +test elsewhere its sailing qualities, which were, as I ascertained, not +very remarkable after all. And thus, after a manner so unworthy, were my +essays in strategy and barque-building received by a censorious age, +that judged ere it knew. Were I sentimental, which lucidly I am not, I +might well exclaim, in the very vein of Rousseau, Alas! it has been ever +the misfortune of my life that, save by a few friends, I have never been +understood! + +I was evidently out-Francieing Francie; and the parents of my young +friend, who saw that I had acquired considerable influence over him, and +were afraid lest I should make another Francie of _him_, had become +naturally enough desirous to break off our intimacy, when there occurred +an unlucky accident, which served materially to assist them in the +design. My friend's father was the master of a large trading smack, +which, in war times, carried a few twelve-pounders, and was furnished +with a small magazine of powder and shot; and my friend having secured +for himself from the general stock, through the connivance of the +ship-boy, an entire cannon cartridge, containing some two or three +pounds of gunpowder, I was, of course, let into the secret, and invited +to share in the sport and the spoil We had a glorious day together in +his mother's garden: never before did such magnificent volcanoes break +forth out of mole-hills, or were plots of daisies and violets so +ruthlessly scorched and torn by the explosion of deep laid mines; and +though a few mishaps did happen to over-forward fingers, and to +eye-brows that were in the way, our amusements passed off innocuously on +the whole, and evening saw nearly the half of our precious store +unexhausted. It was garnered up by my friend in an unsuspected corner of +the garret in which he slept, and would have been safe, had he not been +seized, when going to bed, with a yearning desire to survey his treasure +by candle-light; when an unlucky spark from the flame exploded the +whole. He was so sadly burnt about the face and eyes as to be blind for +several days after; but, amid smoke and confusion, he gallantly bolted +his garret-door, and, while the inmates of the household, startled by +the shock and the noise, came rushing up stairs, sturdily refused to let +any of them in. Volumes of gunpowder reek issued from every crack and +cranny, and his mother and sisters were prodigiously alarmed. At length, +however, he capitulated--terms unknown; and I, next morning, heard with +horror and dismay of the accident. It had been matter of agreement +between us on the previous day, mainly in order to screen the fine +fellow of a ship-boy, that I should be regarded as the owner of the +powder; but here was a consequence on which I had not calculated; and +the strong desire to see my poor friend was dashed by the dread of being +held responsible by his parents and sisters for the accident. And so, +more than a week elapsed ere I could muster up courage enough to visit +him. I was coldly received by his mother, and, what vexed me to the +heart, coldly received by himself; and suspecting that he had been +making an ungenerous use of our late treaty, I took leave in high +dudgeon, and came away. My suspicions, however, wronged him: he had +stoutly denied, as I afterwards learned, that I had any share in the +powder; but his friends deeming the opportunity a good one for breaking +with me, had compelled him, very unwillingly, and after much +resistance, to give me up. And from this period more than two years +elapsed, though our hearts beat quick and high every time we +accidentally met, ere we exchanged a single word. On one occasion, +however, shortly after the accident, we did exchange letters. I wrote to +him from the school-form, when, of course, I ought to have been engaged +with my tasks, a stately epistle, in the style of the billets in the +"Female Quixote," which began, I remember, as follows:--"I once thought +I had a friend whom I could rely upon; but experience tells me he was +only nominal. For, had he been a real friend, no accident could have +interfered with, or arbitrary command annihilated, his affection," &c., +&c. As I was rather an indifferent scribe at the time, one of the lads, +known as the "copperplate writers" of the class, made for me a fair copy +of my lucubration, full of all manner of elegant dashes, and in which +the spelling of every word was scrupulously tested by the dictionary. +And, in due course, I received a carefully engrossed note in reply, of +which the manual portion was performed by my old companion, but the +composition, as he afterwards told me, elaborated by some one else. It +assured me he was still my friend, but that there were "certain +circumstances" which would prevent us from meeting for the future on our +old terms. We were, however, destined to meet pretty often in the +future, notwithstanding; and narrowly missed going to the bottom +together many years after, in the Floating Manse, grown infirm in her +nether parts at the time, when he was the outed minister of Small Isles, +and I editor of the _Witness_ newspaper. + +I had a maternal aunt long settled in the Highlands of Sutherland, who +was so much older than her sister, my mother, that, when nursing her +eldest boy, she had, when on a visit to the low country, assisted also +in nursing her. The boy had shot up into a very clever lad, who, having +gone to seek his fortune in the south, rose, through the several degrees +of clerkship in a mercantile firm, to be the head of a commercial house +of his own, which, though ultimately unsuccessful, seemed for some four +or five years to be in a fair way of thriving. For about three of these +the portion of the profits which fell to my cousin's share did not fall +short of fifteen hundred pounds per annum; and on visiting his parents +in their Highland home in the heyday of his prosperity, after an absence +of years, it was found that he had a great many friends in his native +district on whom he had not calculated, and of a class that had not been +greatly in the habit of visiting his mother's cottage, but who now came +to lunch, and dine, and take their wine with him, and who seemed to +value and admire him very much. My aunt, who was little accustomed to +receive high company, and found herself, like Martha of old, "cumbered +about much serving," urgently besought my mother, who was young and +active at the time, to visit and assist her; and, infinitely to my +delight, I was included in the invitation. The place was not much above +thirty miles from Cromarty; but then it was in the _true_ Highlands, +which I had never before seen, save on the distant horizon; and, to a +boy who had to walk all the way, even thirty miles, in an age when +railways were not, and ere even mail gigs had penetrated so far, +represented a journey of no inconsiderable distance. My mother, though +rather a delicate-looking woman, walked remarkably well; and early on +the evening of the second day, we reached together my aunt's cottage, in +the ancient Barony of Gruids. It was a low, long, dingy edifice of turf, +four or five rooms in length, but only one in height, that, lying along +a gentle acclivity, somewhat resembled at a distance a huge black snail +creeping up the hill. As the lower apartment was occupied by my uncle's +half-dozen milk-cows, the declination of the floor, consequent on the +nature of the site, proved of signal importance, from the free drainage +which it secured; the second apartment, reckoning upwards, which was of +considerable size, formed the sitting-room of the family, and had, in +the old Highland style, its fire full in the middle of the floor, +without back or sides; so that, like a bonfire kindled in the open air, +all the inmates could sit around it in a wide circle--the women +invariably ranged on the one side, and the men on the other; the +apartment beyond was partitioned into small and very dark bed-rooms; +while, further on still, there was a closet with a little window in it, +which was assigned to my mother and me; and beyond all lay what was +emphatically "the room," as it was built of stone, and had both window +and chimney, with chairs, and table, and chest of drawers, a large +box-bed, and a small but well-filled bookcase. And "the room" was, of +course, for the time, my cousin the merchant's apartment,--his dormitory +at night, and the hospitable refectory in which he entertained his +friends by day. + +My aunt's family was one of solid worth. Her husband--a compactly-built, +stout-limbed, elderly Highlander, rather below the middle size, of grave +and somewhat melancholy aspect, but in reality of a temperament rather +cheerful than otherwise--had been somewhat wild in his young days. He +had been a good shot and a skilful angler, and had danced at bridals, +and, as was common in the Highlands at the time, at lykewakes; nay, on +one occasion he had succeeded in inducing a new-made widow to take the +floor in a strathspey, beside her husband's corpse when every one else +had failed to bring her up, by roguishly remarking, in her hearing, that +whoever else might have refused to dance at poor Donald's death wake, he +little thought it would have been she. But a great change had passed +over him; and he was now a staid, thoughtful, God-fearing man, much +respected in the Barony for honest worth and quiet unobtrusive +consistency of character. His wife had been brought, at an early age, +under the influence of Donald Roy's ring, and had, like her mother, been +the means of introducing the vitalities of religion into her household. +They had two other sons besides the merchant--both well-built, robust +men, somewhat taller than their father, and of such character, that one +of my Cromarty cousins, in making out his way, by dint of frequent and +sedulous inquiry, to their dwelling, found the general verdict of the +district embodied in the very bad English of a poor old woman, who, +after doing her best to direct him, certified her knowledge of the +household by remarking, "It's a goot mistress;--it's a goot +maister;--it's a goot, goot two lads." The elder of the two brothers +superintended, and partly wrought, his father's little farm; for the +father himself found employment enough in acting as a sort of humble +factor for the proprietor of the Barony, who lived at a distance, and +had no dwelling upon the land. The younger was a mason and slater, and +was usually employed, in the working seasons, at a distance; but in +winter, and, on this occasion, for a few weeks during the visit of his +brother the merchant, he resided with his father. Both were men of +marked individuality of character. The elder, Hugh, was an ingenious, +self-taught mechanic, who used in the long winter evenings to fashion a +number of curious little articles by the fireside--among the rest, +Highland snuff-mulls, with which he supplied all his friends; and he was +at this time engaged in building for his father a Highland barn, and, to +vary the work, fabricating for him a Highland plough. The younger, +George, who had wrought for a few years at his trade in the south of +Scotland, was a great reader, wrote very tolerable prose, and verse +which, if not poetry, to which he made no pretensions, was at least +quaintly-turned rhyme. He had, besides, a competent knowledge of +geometry, and was skilled in architectural drawing; and--strange +accomplishment for a Celt--he was an adept in the noble science of +self-defence. But George never sought out quarrels; and such was his +amount of bone and muscle, and such the expression of manly resolution +stamped on his countenance, that they never came in his way unsought. + +At the close of the day, when the members of the household had assembled +in a wide circle round the fire, my uncle "took the Book," and I +witnessed, for the first time, family-worship conducted in Gaelic. +There was, I found, an interesting peculiarity in one portion of the +services which he conducted. He was, as I have said, an elderly man, and +had worshipped in his family ere Dr. Stewart's Gaelic translation of the +Scriptures had been introduced into the county; and as he possessed in +those days only the English Bible, while his domestics understood only +Gaelic, he had to acquire the art, not uncommon in Sutherland at the +time, of translating the English chapter for them, as he read, into +their native tongue; and this he had learned to do with such ready +fluency, that no one could have guessed it to be other than a Gaelic +work from which he was reading. Nor had the introduction of Dr. +Stewart's translation rendered the practice obsolete in his household. +His Gaelic was _Sutherlandshire_ Gaelic, whereas that of Dr. Stewart was +Argyleshire Gaelic. His family understood his rendering better, in +consequence, than that of the Doctor; and so he continued to translate +from his English Bible _ad aperturam libri_, many years after the Gaelic +edition had been spread over the country. The concluding evening prayer +was one of great solemnity and unction. I was unacquainted with the +language in which it was couched; but it was impossible to avoid being +struck, notwithstanding, with its wrestling earnestness and fervour. The +man who poured it forth evidently believed there was an unseen ear open +to it, and an all-seeing presence in the place, before whom every secret +thought lay exposed. The entire scene was a deeply impressive one; and +when I saw, in witnessing the celebration of high mass in a Popish +cathedral many years after, the altar suddenly enveloped in a dim and +picturesque obscurity, amid which the curling smoke of the incense +ascended, and heard the musically-modulated prayer sounding in the +distance from within the screen, my thoughts reverted to the rude +Highland cottage, where, amid solemnities not theatric, the red umbry +light of the fire fell with uncertain glimmer upon dark walls, and bare +black rafters, and kneeling forms, and a pale expanse of dense smoke, +that, filling the upper portion of the roof, overhung the floor like a +ceiling, and there arose amid the gloom the sounds of prayer truly +God-directed, and poured out from the depths of the heart; and I felt +that the stoled priest of the cathedral was merely an artist, though a +skilful one, but that in the "priest and father" of the cottage there +were the truth and reality from which the artist drew. No bolt was drawn +across the outer door as we retired for the night. The philosophic Biot, +when employed with his experiments on the second pendulum, resided for +several months in one of the smaller Shetland islands; and, fresh from +the troubles of France--his imagination bearing about with it, if I may +so speak, the stains of the guillotine--the state of trustful security +in which he found the simple inhabitants filled him with astonishment. +"Here, during the twenty-five years in which Europe has been devouring +herself," he exclaimed, "the door of the house I inhabit has remained +open day and night." The interior of Sutherland was at the time of my +visit in a similar condition. The door of my uncle's cottage, +unfurnished with lock or bar, opened, like that of the hermit in the +ballad, with a latch; but, unlike that of the hermit, it was not because +there were no stores within to demand the care of the master, but +because at that comparatively recent period the crime of theft was +unknown in the district. + +I rose early next morning, when the dew was yet heavy on grass and +lichen, curious to explore a locality so new to me. The tract, though a +primary one, forms one of the tamer gneiss districts of Scotland; and I +found the nearer hills comparatively low and confluent, and the broad +valley in which lay my uncle's cottage, flat, open, and unpromising. +Still there were a few points to engage me; and the more I attached +myself to them, the more did their interest grow. The western slopes of +the valley are mottled by grassy tomhans--the moraines of some ancient +glacier, around and over which there rose, at this period, a low +widely-spreading wood of birch, hazel, and mountain ash--of hazel, with +its nuts fast filling at the time, and of mountain ash, with its berries +glowing bright in orange and scarlet. In looking adown the hollow, a +group of the green tomhans might be seen relieved against the blue hills +of Ross; in looking upwards, a solitary birch-covered hillock of similar +origin, but larger proportions, stood strongly out against the calm +waters of Loch Shin and the purple peaks of the distant Ben-Hope. In the +bottom of the valley, close beside my uncle's cottage, I marked several +low swellings of the rock beneath, rising above the general level; and, +ranged along these, there were groups of what seemed to be huge boulder +stones, save that they were less rounded and water-worn than ordinary +boulders, and were, what groups of boulders rarely are, all of one +quality. And on examination, I ascertained that some of their number, +which stood up like broken obelisks, tall, and comparatively narrow of +base, and all hoary with moss and lichen, were actually still connected +with the mass of rock below. They were the wasted upper portions of vast +dikes and veins of a grey, large-grained syenite, that traverse the +fundamental gneiss of the valley, and which I found veined, in turn, by +threads and seams of a white quartz, abounding in drusy cavities, +thickly lined along their sides with sprig crystals. Never had I seen +such lovely crystals on the shores of Cromarty, or anywhere else. They +were clear and transparent as the purest spring water, furnished each +with six sides, and sharpened a-top into six facets. Borrowing one of +Cousin George's hammers, I soon filled a little box with these gems, +which even my mother and aunt were content to admire, as what of old +used, they said, to be called Bristol diamonds, and set in silver +brooches and sleeve buttons. Further, within less than a hundred yards +of the cottage, I found a lively little stream, brown, but clear as a +cairngorm of the purest water, and abounding, as I soon ascertained, in +trout, lively and little like itself, and gaily speckled with scarlet. +It wound through a flat, dank meadow, never disturbed by the plough; for +it had been a burying-ground of old, and flat undressed stones lay thick +amid the rank grass. And in the lower corner, where the old turf-wall +had sunk into an inconspicuous mound, there stood a mighty tree, all +solitary, for its fellows had long before disappeared, and so +hollow-hearted in its corrupt old age, that though it still threw out +every season a mighty expanse of foliage, I was able to creep into a +little chamber in its trunk, from which I could look out through +circular openings where boughs once had been, and listen, when a sudden +shower came sweeping down the glen, to the pattering of the rain-drops +amid the leaves. The valley of the Gruids was perhaps not one of the +finest or most beautiful of Highland valleys, but it was a very +admirable place after all; and amid its woods, and its rocks, and its +tomhans, and at the side of its little trouting stream, the weeks passed +delightfully away. + +My cousin William, the merchant, had, as I have said, many guests; but +they were all too grand to take any notice of me. There was, however, +one delightful man, who was said to know a great deal about rocks and +stones, that, having heard of my fine large crystals, desired to see +both them and the boy who had found them; and I was admitted to hear him +talk about granites, and marbles, and metallic veins, and the gems that +lie hid among the mountains in nooks and crannies. I am afraid I would +not now deem him a very accomplished mineralogist: I remember enough of +his conversation to conclude that he knew but little, and that little +not very correctly: but not before Werner or Hutton could I have bowed +down with a profounder reverence. He spoke of the marbles of Assynt--of +the petrifactions of Helmsdale and Brora--of shells and plants embedded +in solid rocks, and of forest trees converted into stone; and my ears +drank in knowledge eagerly, as those of the Queen of Sheba of old when +she listened to Solomon. But all too soon did the conversation change. +My cousin was mighty in Gaelic etymology, and so was the mineralogist; +and while my cousin held that the name of the Barony of Gruids was +derived from the great hollow tree, the mineralogist was quite as +certain that it was derived from its syenite, or, as he termed it, its +_granite_, which resembled, he remarked, from the whiteness of its +feldspar, a piece of curd. _Gruids_, said the one, means the place of +the great tree; _Gruids_, said the other, means the place of the curdled +stone. I do not remember how they settled the controversy; but it +terminated, by an easy transition, in a discussion respecting the +authenticity of Ossian--a subject on which they were both perfectly +agreed. There could exist no manner of doubt regarding the fact that the +poems given to the world by Macpherson had been sung in the Highlands by +Ossian, the son of Fingal, more than fourteen hundred years before. My +cousin was a devoted member of the Highland Society; and the Highland +Society, in these days, was very much engaged in ascertaining the right +cut of the philabeg, and in determining the chronology and true sequence +of events in the Ossianic age. + +Happiness perfect and entire is, it is said, not to be enjoyed in this +sublunary state; and even in the Gruids, where there was so much to be +seen, heard, and found out, and where I was separated by more than +thirty miles from my Latin--for I had brought none of it from home with +me--this same Ossianic controversy rose like a Highland fog on my +horizon, to chill and darken my hours of enjoyment. My cousin possessed +everything that had been written on the subject, including a +considerable amount of manuscript of his own composition; and as Uncle +James had inspired him with the belief that I could master anything to +which in good earnest I set my mind, he had determined that it should be +no fault of his if I did not become mighty in the controversy regarding +the authenticity of Ossian. This was awful. I liked Blair's Dissertation +well enough, nor did I greatly quarrel with that of Kames; and as for +Sir Walter's critique in the _Edinburgh_, on the opposite side, I +thought it not only thoroughly sensible, but, as it furnished me with +arguments against the others, deeply interesting to boot. But then there +succeeded a vast ocean of dissertation, emitted by Highland gentlemen +and their friends, as the dragon in the Apocalypse emitted the great +flood which the earth swallowed up; and, when once fairly embarked upon +it, I could see no shore and find no bottom. And so at length, though +very unwillingly--for my cousin was very kind--I fairly mutinied and +struck work, just as he had begun to propose that, after mastering the +authenticity controversy, I should set myself to acquire Gaelic, in +order that I might be able to read Ossian in the original. My cousin was +not well pleased; but I did not choose to aggravate the case by giving +expression to the suspicion which, instead of lessening, has rather +grown upon me since, that as I possessed an English copy of the poems, I +had read the true Ossian in the original already. With Cousin George, +however, who, though strong on the authenticity side, liked a joke +rather better than he did Ossian, I was more free; and to him I ventured +to designate his brother's fine Gaelic copy of the poems, with a superb +head of the ancient bard affixed, as "The Poems of Ossian in Gaelic, +translated from the original English by their author." George looked +grim, and called me infidel, and then laughed, and said he would tell +his brother. But he didn't; and as I really liked the poems, especially +"_Temora_" and some of the smaller pieces, and could read them with more +real pleasure than the greater part of the Highlanders who believed in +them, I did not wholly lose credit with my cousin the merchant. He even +promised to present me with a finely bound edition of the "Elegant +Extracts," in three bulky octavo volumes, whenever I should have gained +my first prize at College; but I unluckily failed to qualify myself for +the gift; and my copy of the "Extracts" I had to purchase for myself ten +years after, at a book-stall, when working in the neighbourhood of +Edinburgh as a journeyman mason. + +It is not every day one meets with so genuine a Highlander as my cousin +the merchant; and though he failed to inspire me with all his own +Ossianic faith and zeal, there were some of the little old Celtic +practices which he resuscitated _pro tempore_ in his father's household, +that I learned to like very much. He restored the genuine Highland +breakfasts; and, after hours spent in busy exploration outside, I found +I could as thoroughly admire the groaning table, with its cheese, and +its trout, and its cold meat, as even the immortal Lexicographer +himself. Some of the dishes, too, which he revived, were at least +curious. There was a supply of _gradden_-meal prepared--_i.e._, grain +dried in a pot over the fire, and then coarsely ground in a +handmill--which made cakes that, when they had hunger for their sauce, +could be eaten; and on more than one occasion I shared in a not +unpalatable sort of blood-pudding, enriched with butter, and well +seasoned with pepper and salt, the main ingredient of which was derived, +through a judicious use of the lancet, from the _yeld_ cattle of the +farm. The practice was an ancient, and by no means unphilosophic one. In +summer and early autumn there is plenty of grass in the Highlands; but, +of old at least, there used to be very little grain in it before the +beginning of October; and as the cattle could, in consequence, provide +themselves with a competent supply of blood from the grass, when their +masters, who could not eat grass, and had little else that they could +eat, were able to acquire very little, it was opportunely discovered +that, by making a division in this way of the all-essential fluid, +accumulated as a common stock, the circumstances of the cattle and their +owners could be in some degree equalized. With these peculiarly Highland +dishes there mingled others not less genuine--now and then a salmon from +the river, and a haunch of venison from the hill-side--which I relished +better still; and if all Highlanders live but as well in the present day +as I did during my stay with my aunt and cousins, they would be rather +unreasonable were they greatly to complain. + +There were some of the other Highland restorations effected by my +cousin that pleased me much. He occasionally gathered at night around +the central Ha' fire a circle of the elderly men of the neighbourhood, +to repeat long-derived narratives of the old clan feuds of the district, +and wild Fingalian legends; and though, of course, ignorant of the +language in which the stories were conveyed, by taking my seat beside +Cousin George, and getting him to translate for me in an under tone, as +the narratives went on, I contrived to carry away with me at least as +much of the clan stories and legends as I ever after found use for. The +clan stories were waxing at the time rather dim and uncertain in +Sutherland. The county, through the influence of its good Earls and its +godly Lords Reay, had been early converted to Protestantism; and its +people had in consequence ceased to take liberties with the throats and +cattle of their neighbours, about a hundred years earlier than in any +other part of the Scotch Highlands. And as for the Fingalian legends, +they were, I found, very wild legends indeed. Some of them immortalized +wonderful hunters, who had excited the love of Fingal's lady, and whom +her angry and jealous husband had sent out to hunt monstrous wild boars +with poisonous bristles on their backs,--secure in this way of getting +rid of them. And some of them embalmed the misdeeds of spiritless +diminutive Fions, not very much above fifteen feet in height, who, +unlike their more active companions, could not leap across the Cromarty +or Dornoch Firths on their spears, and who, as was natural, were very +much despised by the women of the tribe. The pieces of fine sentiment +and brilliant description discovered by Macpherson seemed never to have +found their way into this northern district. But, told in fluent Gaelic, +in the great "Ha'," the wild legends served every necessary purpose +equally well. The "Ha'" in the autumn nights, as the days shortened and +the frosts set in, was a genial place; and so attached was my cousin to +its distinctive principle--the fire in the midst--as handed down from +the "days of other years," that in the plan of a new two-storied house +for his father, which he had procured from a London architect, one of +the nether rooms was actually designed in the circular form; and a +hearth like a millstone, placed in the centre, represented the place of +the fire. But there was, as I remarked to Cousin George, no +corresponding central hole in the room above, through which to let up +the smoke; and I questioned whether a nicely plastered apartment, round +as a band-box, with the fire in the middle, like the sun in the centre +of an Orrery, would have been quite like anything ever seen in the +Highlands before. The plan, however, was not destined to encounter +criticism, or give trouble in the execution of it. + +On Sabbaths my cousin and his two brothers attended the parish church, +attired in the full Highland dress; and three handsome, well-formed men +they were; but my aunt, though mayhap not quite without the mother's +pride, did not greatly relish the exhibition; and oftener than once I +heard her say so to her sister my mother; though she, smitten by the +gallant appearance of her nephews, seemed inclined rather to take the +opposite side. My uncle, on the other hand, said nothing either for or +against the display. He had been a keen Highlander in his younger days; +and when the inhibition against wearing tartan and the philabeg had been +virtually removed, in consideration of the achievements of the "hardy +and dauntless men" who, according to Chatham, conquered for England "in +every quarter of the globe," he had celebrated the event in a +merrymaking, at which the dance was kept up from night till morning; but +though he retained, I suspect, his old partialities, he was now a +sobered man; and when I ventured to ask him, on one occasion, why he too +did not get a Sunday kilt, which, by the way, he would "_have set_," +notwithstanding his years, as well as any of his sons, he merely replied +with a quiet "No, no; there's no fool like an old fool." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + "When they sawe the darksome night, + They sat them downe and cryed."--BABES IN THE WOOD. + + +I spent the holidays of two other autumns in this delightful Highland +valley. On the second, as on the first occasion, I had accompanied my +mother, specially invited; but the third journey was an unsanctioned +undertaking of my own and a Cromarty cousin, my contemporary, to whom, +as he had never travelled the way, I had to act as protector and guide. +I reached my aunt's cottage without mishap or adventure of any kind; but +found, that during the twelvemonth which had just elapsed, great changes +had taken place in the circumstances of the household. My cousin George, +who had married in the interim, had gone to reside in a cottage of his +own; and I soon ascertained that my cousin William, who had been for +several months resident with his father, had not nearly so many visitors +as before; nor did presents of salmon and haunches of venison come at +all so often the way. Immediately after the final discomfiture of +Napoleon, an extensive course of speculation in which he had ventured to +engage had turned out so ill, that, instead of making him a fortune, as +at first seemed probable, it had landed him in the _Gazette_; and he was +now tiding over the difficulties of a time of settlement, six hundred +miles from the scene of disaster, in the hope of being soon enabled to +begin the world anew. He bore his losses with quiet magnanimity; and I +learned to know and like him better during his period of eclipse than in +the previous time, when summer friends had fluttered around him by +scores. He was a generous, warm-hearted man, who felt, with the force of +an implanted instinct not vouchsafed to all, that it is more blessed to +give than to receive; and it was doubtless a wise provision of nature, +and worthy, in this point of view, the special attention of moralists +and philosophers, that his old associates, the grand gentlemen, did not +now often come his way; seeing that his inability any longer to give +would cost him, in the circumstances, great pain. + +I was much with my cousin George in his new dwelling. It was one of the +most delightful of Highland cottages, and George was happy in it, far +above the average lot of humanity, with his young wife. He had dared, in +opposition to the general voice of the district, to build it half-way up +the slope of a beautiful tomhan, that, waving with birch from base to +summit, rose regular as a pyramid from the bottom of the valley, and +commanded a wide view of Loch Shin on the one hand, with the moors and +mountains that lie beyond; and overlooked, on the other, with all the +richer portions of the Barony of Gruids, the church and picturesque +hamlet of Lairg. Half-hidden by the graceful birchen trees that sprang +up thick around, with their silvery boles and light foliage, it was +rather a nest than a house; and George, emancipated, by his reading, and +his residence for a time in the south, from at least the wilder beliefs +of the locality, failed to suffer, as had been predicted, for his +temerity; as the "good people," who, much to their credit, had made +choice of the place for themselves long before, never, to his knowledge, +paid him a visit. He had brought his share of the family library with +him; and it was a large share. He had mathematical instruments too, and +a colour-box, and the tools of his profession; in especial, large +hammers fitted to break great stones; and I was generously made free of +them all,--books, instruments, colour-box, and hammers. His cottage, +too, commanded, from its situation, a delightful variety of most +interesting objects. It had all the advantages of my uncle's domicile, +and a great many more. + +The nearer shores of Loch Shin were scarce half a mile away; and there +was a low long promontory which shot out into the lake, that was covered +at that time by an ancient wood of doddered time-worn trees, and bore +amid its outer solitudes, where the waters circled round its terminal +apex, one of those towers of hoary eld--memorials, mayhap, of the +primeval stone-period in our island, to which the circular erections of +Glenelg and Dornadilla belong. It was formed of undressed stones of vast +size, uncemented by mortar; and through the thick walls ran winding +passages--the only covered portions of the building, for the inner area +had never been furnished with a roof--in which, when a sudden shower +descended, the loiterer amid the ruins could find shelter. It was a +fascinating place to a curious boy. Some of the old trees had become +mere whitened skeletons, that stretched forth their blasted arms to the +sky, and had so slight a hold of the soil, that I have overthrown them +with a delightful crash, by merely running against them; the heath rose +thick beneath, and it was a source of fearful joy to know that it +harboured snakes full three feet long; and though the loch itself is by +no means one of our finer Highland lochs, it furnished, to at least my +eye at this time, a delightful prospect in still October mornings, when +the light gossamer went sailing about in white filmy threads, and birch +and hazel, glorified by decay, served to embroider with gold the brown +hillsides which, standing up on either hand in their long vista of more +than twenty miles, form the barriers of the lake; and when the sun, +still struggling with a blue diluted haze, fell delicately on the smooth +surface, or twinkled for a moment on the silvery coats of the little +trout, as they sprang a few inches into the air, and then broke the +water into a series of concentric rings in their descent. When I last +passed the way, both the old wood and the old tower were gone; and for +the latter, which, though much a ruin, might have survived for ages, I +found only a long extent of dry-stone dike, and the wide ring formed by +the old foundation-stones, which had proved too massive to be removed. A +greatly more entire erection of the same age and style, known of old as +Dunaliscag--which stood on the Ross-shire side of the Dornoch Firth, and +within whose walls, forming, as it did, a sort of half-way stage, I +used, on these Sutherlandshire journeys, to eat my piece of cake with a +double relish--I found, on last passing the way, similarly represented. +Its grey venerable walls, and dark winding passages of many steps--even +the huge pear-shaped lintel, which had stretched over its little door, +and which, according to tradition, a great Fingalian lady had once +thrown across the Dornoch Firth from off the point of her spindle--had +all disappeared, and I saw instead, only a dry-stone wall. The men of +the present generation do certainly live in a most enlightened age--an +age in which every trace of the barbarism of our early ancestors is fast +disappearing; and were we but more zealous in immortalizing the public +benefactors who efface such dark memorials of the past as the tower of +Dunaliscag and the promontory of Loch Shin, it would be, doubtless, an +encouragement to others to speed us yet further on in the march of +improvement. It seems scarce fair that the enlightened destroyers of +Arthur's Oven or of the bas-relief known as Robin of Redesdale, or of +the Town-cross of Edinburgh, should enjoy all the celebrity attendant on +such acts, while the equally deserving iconoclasts of Dunaliscag and the +tower of Loch Shin should be suffered to die without their fame. + +I remember spending one singularly delightful morning with Cousin George +beside the ancient tower. He pointed out to me, amid the heath, several +plants to which the old Highlanders used to attach occult +virtues,--plants that disenchanted bewitched cattle, not by their +administration as medicines to the sick animals, but by bringing them in +contact, as charms, with the injured milk; and plants which were used as +philters, either for procuring love, or exciting hatred. It was, he +showed me, the root of a species of orchis that was employed in making +the philters. While most of the radical fibres of the plant retain the +ordinary cylindrical form, two of their number are usually found +developed into starchy tubercles; but, belonging apparently to different +seasons, one of the two is of a dark colour, and of such gravity that it +sinks in water; while the other is light-coloured, and floats. And a +powder made of the light-coloured tubercle formed the main ingredient, +said my cousin, in the love philter; while a powder made of the +dark-coloured one excited, it was held, only antipathy and dislike. And +then George would speculate on the origin of a belief which could, as he +said, neither be suggested by reason, nor tested by experience. Living, +however, among a people with whom beliefs of the kind were still vital +and influential, he did not wholly escape their influence; and I saw +him, in one instance, administer to an ailing cow a little live trout, +simply because the traditions of the district assured him, that a trout +swallowed alive by the creature was the only specific in the case. Some +of his Highland stories were very curious. He communicated to me, for +example, beside the broken tower, a tradition illustrative of the Celtic +theory of dreaming, of which I have since often thought. Two young men +had been spending the early portion of a warm summer day in exactly such +a scene as that in which he communicated the anecdote. There was an +ancient ruin beside them, separated, however, from the mossy bank on +which they sat, by a slender runnel, across which there lay, immediately +over a miniature cascade, a few withered grass stalks. Overcome by the +heat of the day, one of the young men fell asleep; his companion watched +drowsily beside him; when all at once the watcher was aroused to +attention by seeing a little indistinct form, scarce larger than a +humble-bee, issue from the mouth of the sleeping man, and, leaping upon +the moss, move downwards to the runnel, which it crossed along the +withered grass stalks, and then disappeared amid the interstices of the +ruin. Alarmed by what he saw, the watcher hastily shook his companion by +the shoulder, and awoke him; though, with all his haste, the little +cloud-like creature, still more rapid in its movements, issued from the +interstice into which it had gone, and, flying across the runnel, +instead of creeping along the grass stalks and over the sward, as +before, it re-entered the mouth of the sleeper, just as he was in the +act of awakening. "What is the matter with you?" said the watcher, +greatly alarmed. "What ails you?" "Nothing ails me," replied the other; +"but you have robbed me of a most delightful dream. I dreamed I was +walking through a fine rich country, and came at length to the shores of +a noble river; and, just where the clear water went thundering down a +precipice, there was a bridge all of silver, which I crossed; and then, +entering a noble palace on the opposite side, I saw great heaps of gold +and jewels, and I was just going to load myself with treasure, when you +rudely awoke me, and I lost all." I know not what the asserters of the +clairvoyant faculty may think of the story; but I rather believe I have +occasionally seen them make use of anecdotes that did not rest on +evidence a great deal more solid than the Highland legend, and that +illustrated not much more clearly the philosophy of the phenomena with +which they profess to deal. + +Of all my cousins, Cousin George was the one whose pursuits most nearly +resembled my own, and in whose society I most delighted to share. He did +sometimes borrow a day from his work, even after his marriage; but then, +according to the poet, it was + + + "The love he bore to science was in fault." + + +The borrowed day was always spent in transferring to paper some +architectural design, or in working out some mathematical problem, or in +rendering some piece of Gaelic verse into English, or some piece of +English prose into Gaelic; and as he was a steady, careful man, the +appropriated day was never seriously missed. The winter, too, was all +his own, for, in those northern districts, masons are never employed +from a little after Hallowday, till the second, or even third month of +spring, a circumstance which I carefully noted at this time in its +bearing on the amusements of my cousin, and which afterwards weighed not +a little with me when I came to make choice of a profession for myself. +And George's winters were always ingeniously spent. He had a great +command of Gaelic, and a very tolerable command of English; and so a +translation of Bunyan's "Visions of Heaven and Hell," which he published +several years subsequent to this period, was not only well received by +his country folk of Sutherland and Ross, but was said by competent +judges to be really a not inadequate rendering of the meaning and spirit +of the noble old tinker of Elstow. I, of course, could be no authority +respecting the merits of a translation, the language of which I did not +understand; but living much amid the literature of a time when almost +every volume, whether the Virgil of a Dryden, or the Meditations of a +Hervey, was heralded by its sets of complimentary verses, and having a +deep interest in whatever Cousin George undertook and performed, I +addressed to him, in the old style, a few introductory stanzas, which, +to indulge me in the inexpressible luxury of seeing myself in print for +the first time, he benevolently threw into type. They survive to remind +me that my cousin's belief in Ossian did exert some little influence +over my phraseology when I addressed myself to him, and that, with the +rashness natural to immature youth, I had at this time the temerity to +term myself "poet." + + + Yes, oft I've said, as oft I've seen + The men who dwell its hills among, + That Morven's land has ever been + A land of valour, worth, and song. + + But Ignorance, of darkness dire, + Has o'er that land a mantle spread; + And all untuned and rude the lyre + That sounds beneath its gloomy shade. + + With muse of calm untiring wing, + Oh, be it thine, my friend, to show + The Celtic swain how Saxons sing + Of Hell's dire gloom and Heaven's glow + + So shall the meed of fame be thine, + The glistening bay-wreath green and gay; + Thy poet, too, though weak his line, + Shall frame for thee th' approving lay. + + +Longing for some profession in which his proper work would give exercise +to the faculties which he most delighted to cultivate, my cousin +resolved on becoming candidate for a Gaelic Society school--a poor +enough sort of office then, as now; but which, by investing a little +money in cattle, by tilling a little croft, and by now and then emitting +from the press a Gaelic translation, might, he thought, be rendered +sufficiently remunerative to supply the very moderate wants of himself +and his little family. And so he set out for Edinburgh, amply furnished +with testimonials that meant more in his case than testimonials usually +mean, to stand an examination before a Committee of the Gaelic School +Society. Unluckily for his success, however, instead of bringing with +him his ordinary Sabbath-day suit of dark brown and blue (the kilt had +been assumed for but a few weeks, to please his brother William), he had +provided himself with a suit of tartan, as at once cheap and +respectable, and appeared before the Committee--if not in the garb, in +at least the many-coloured hues, of his clan--a robust manly Highlander, +apparently as well suited to enact the part of colour-serjeant to the +Forty-Second, as to teach children their letters. A grave member of the +Society, at that time in high repute for sanctity of character, but who +afterwards, becoming righteous overmuch, was loosened from his charge, +and straightway, spurning the ground, rose into an Irvingite angel, came +at once to the conclusion that no such type of man, encased in +clan-tartan, could possibly have the root of the matter in him; and so +he determined that Cousin George should be cast in the examination. But +then, as it could not be alleged with any decency that my cousin was +inadmissible on the score of his having too much tartan, it was agreed +that he should be declared inadmissible on the score of his having too +little Gaelic. And, of course, at this result the examinators arrived; +and George, ultimately to his advantage, was cast accordingly. I still +remember the astonishment evinced by a worthy catechist of the +north--himself a Gaelic teacher--on being told how my cousin had fared. +"George Munro not allowed to pass," he said, "for want of right Gaelic! +Why, he has more right Gaelic in his own self than all the Society's +teachers in this corner of Scotland put together. They are the +_curiousest_ people, some of these good gentlemen of the Edinburgh +Committees, that I ever heard of: they're just like our country +lawyers." It would, however, be far from fair to regard this +transaction, which took place, I may mention, so late as the year 1829, +as a specimen of the actings of either civic societies or country +lawyers. George's chief examinator on the occasion was the minister of +the Gaelic Chapel of the place, at that time one of the Society's +Committee for the year; and, not being a remarkably scrupulous man, he +seems to have stretched a point or two, in compliance with the pious +wishes and occult judgment of the Society's Secretary. But the anecdote +is not without its lesson. When devout Walter Taits set themselves +ingeniously to manoeuvre with the purest of intentions, and for what +they deem the best of purposes--when, founding their real grounds of +objection on one set of appearances, they found their ostensible grounds +of objection on another and entirely different set--they are always +exposed to the signal danger of--getting indevout Duncan M'Caigs to +assist them. Only two years from the period of my cousin's examination +before the Society, his reverend examinator received at the bar of the +High Court of Justiciary, in the character of a thief convicted of +eleven several acts of stealing, sentence of transportation for fourteen +years. + +I had several interesting excursions with my cousin William. We found +ourselves one evening--on our way home from a mineral spring which he +had discovered among the hills--in a little lonely valley, which opened +transversely into that of the Gruids, and which, though its sides were +mottled with green furrow-marked patches, had not at the time a single +human habitation. At the upper end, however, there stood the ruins of a +narrow two-storied house, with one of its gables still entire from +foundation-stone to the shattered chimney-top, but with the other gable, +and the larger part of the front wall, laid prostrate along the sward. +My cousin, after bidding me remark the completeness of the solitude, and +that the eye could not command from the site of the ruin a single spot +where man had ever dwelt, told me that it had been the scene of the +strict seclusion, amounting almost to imprisonment, about eighty years +before, of a lady of high birth, over whom, in early youth, there had +settled a sad cloud of infamy. She had borne a child to one of the +menials of her father's house, which, with the assistance of her +paramour, she had murdered; and being too high for the law to reach in +these northern parts, at a time when the hereditary jurisdiction still +existed entire, and her father was the sole magistrate, possessed of the +power of life and death in the district, she was sent by her family to +wear out life in this lonely retreat, in which she remained secluded +from the world for more than half a century. And then, long after the +abolition of the local jurisdictions, and when her father and brother, +with the entire generation that knew of her crime, had passed away, she +was permitted to take up her abode in one of the seaport towns of the +north, where she was still remembered at this time as a crazy old lady, +invariably silent and sullen, that used to be seen in the twilight +flitting about the more retired lanes and closes, like an unhappy ghost. +The story, as told me in that solitary valley, just as the sun was +sinking over the hill beyond, powerfully impressed my fancy. Crabbe +would have delighted to tell it; and I now relate it, as it lies fast +wedged in my memory, mainly for the peculiar light which it casts on the +times of the hereditary jurisdictions. It forms an example of one of the +judicial banishments of an age that used, in ordinary cases, to save +itself all sorts of trouble of the kind, by hanging its victims. I may +add, that I saw a good deal of the neighbourhood at this time in the +company of my cousin, and gleaned, from my visits to shieling and +cottage, most of my conceptions of the state of the Northern Highlands, +ere the clearance system had depopulated the interior of the country, +and precipitated its poverty-stricken population upon the coasts. + +There was, however, one of my excursions with Cousin William, that +turned out rather unfortunately. The river Shin has its bold +salmon-leap, which even yet, after several hundred pounds' worth of +gunpowder have been expended in sloping its angle of ascent, to +facilitate the passage of the fish, is a fine picturesque object, but +which at this time, when it presented all its original abruptness, was a +finer object still. Though distant about three miles from my uncle's +cottage, we could distinctly hear its roarings from beside his door, +when October nights were frosty and still; and as we had been told many +strange stories regarding it--stories about bold fishers who had +threaded their dangerous way between the overhanging rock and the water, +and who, striking outwards, had speared salmon through the foam of the +cataract as they leaped--stories, too, of skilful sportsmen, who, taking +their stand in the thick wood beyond, had shot the rising animals, as +one shoots a bird flying,--both my Cromarty cousin and myself were +extremely desirous to visit the scene of such feats and marvels; and +Cousin William obligingly agreed to act as our guide and instructor by +the way. He did look somewhat askance at our naked feet; and we heard +him remark, in an under tone, to his mother, that when he and his +brothers were boys, she never suffered _them_ to visit her Cromarty +relations unshod; but neither Cousin Walter nor myself had the +magnanimity to say, that _our_ mothers had also taken care to see us +shod; but that, deeming it lighter and cooler to walk barefoot, the good +women had no sooner turned their backs than we both agreed to fling our +shoes into a corner, and set out on our journey without them. The walk +to the salmon-leap was a thoroughly delightful one. We passed through +the woods of Achanie, famous for their nuts; startled, as we went, a +herd of roe deer; and found the leap itself far exceeded all +anticipation. The Shin becomes savagely wild in its lower reaches. +Rugged precipices of gneiss, with scattered bushes fast anchored in the +crevices, overhang the stream, which boils in many a dark pool, and +foams over many a steep rapid; and immediately beneath, where it threw +itself headlong, at this time, over the leap--for it now merely rushes +in snow adown a steep slope--there was a caldron, so awfully dark and +profound, that, according to the accounts of the district, it had no +bottom; and so vexed was it by a frightful whirlpool, that no one ever +fairly caught in its eddies had succeeded, it was said, in regaining the +shore. We saw, as we stood amid the scraggy trees of an overhanging +wood, the salmon leaping up by scores, most of them, however, to fall +back again into the pool--for only a very few stray fish that attempted +the cataract at its edges seemed to succeed in forcing their upward way; +we saw, too, on a shelf of the precipitous but wooded bank, the rude +hut, formed of undressed logs, where a solitary watcher used to take his +stand, to protect them from the spear and fowlingpiece of the poacher, +and which in stormy nights, when the cry of the kelpie mingled with the +roar of the flood, must have been a sublime lodge in the wilderness, in +which a poet might have delighted to dwell. I was excited by the scene; +and, when heedlessly leaping from a tall lichened stone into the long +heath below, my right foot came so heavily in contact with a sharp-edged +fragment of rock concealed in the moss, that I almost screamed aloud +with pain. I, however, suppressed the shriek, and, sitting down and +setting my teeth close, bore the pang, until it gradually moderated, and +my foot, to the ankle, seemed as if almost divested of feeling. In our +return, I halted as I walked, and lagged considerably behind my +companions; and during the whole evening the injured foot seemed as if +dead, save that it glowed with an intense heat. I was, however, at ease +enough to write a sublime piece of blank verse on the cataract; and, +proud of my production, I attempted reading it to Cousin William. But +William had taken lessons in recitation under the great Mr. Thelwall, +politician and elocutionist; and deeming it proper to set me right in +all the words which I mispronounced--three out of every four at least, +and not unfrequently the fourth word also--the reading of the piece +proved greatly stiffer and slower work than the writing of it; and, +somewhat to my mortification, my cousin declined giving me any definite +judgment on its merits, even when I had done. He insisted, however, on +the signal advantages of reading well. He had an acquaintance, he said, +a poet, who had taken lessons under Mr. Thelwall, and who, though his +verses, when he published, met with no great success, was so indebted to +his admirable elocution, as to be invariably successful when he read +them to his friends. + +Next morning my injured foot was stiff and sore; and, after a few days +of suffering, it suppurated and discharged great quantities of blood and +matter. It was, however, fast getting well again, when, tired of +inaction, and stirred up by my cousin Walter, who wearied sadly of the +Highlands, I set out with him, contrary to all advice, on my homeward +journey, and, for the first six or eight miles, got on tolerably well. +My cousin, a stout, active lad, carried the bag of Highland +luxuries--cheese, and butter, and a full peck of nuts--with which we had +been laden by my aunt; and, by way of indemnity for taking both my share +of the burden and his own, he demanded of me one of my long extempore +stories, which, shortly after leaving my aunt's cottage, I accordingly +began. My stories, when I had cousin Walter for my companion, were +usually co-extensive with the journey to be performed: they became ten, +fifteen, or twenty miles long, agreeably to the measure of the road, and +the determination of the mile-stones; and what was at present required +was a story of about thirty miles in length, whose one end would touch +the Barony of Gruids, and the other the Cromarty Ferry. At the end, +however, of the first six or eight miles, my story broke suddenly down, +and my foot, after becoming very painful, began to bleed. The day, too, +had grown raw and unpleasant, and after twelve o'clock there came on a +thick wetting drizzle. I limped on silently in the rear, leaving at +every few paces a blotch of blood upon the road, until, in the parish of +Edderton, we both remembered that there was a short cut through the +hills, which two of our older cousins had taken during the previous +year, when on a similar journey; and as Walter deemed himself equal to +anything which his elder cousins could perform, and as I was exceedingly +desirous to get home as soon as possible, and by the shortest way, we +both struck up the hill-side, and soon found ourselves in a dreary +waste, without trace of human habitation. + +Walter, however, pushed on bravely and in the right direction; and, +though my head was now becoming light, and my sight dim, I succeeded in +struggling after him, until, just as the night was falling, we reached a +heathy ridge, which commands the northern sea-board of the Cromarty +Firth, and saw the cultivated country and the sands of Nigg lying only a +few miles below. The sands are dangerous at certain hours of the tide, +and accidents frequently happen in the fords; but then there could, we +thought, be no fear of us; for though Walter could not swim, I could; +and as I was to lead the way, he of course would be safe, by simply +avoiding the places where I lost footing. The night fell rather thick +than dark, for there was a moon overhead, though it could not be seen +through the cloud; but, though Walter steered well, the downward way was +exceedingly rough and broken, and we had wandered from the path. I +retain a faint but painful recollection of a scraggy moor, and of dark +patches of planting, through which I had to grope onwards, stumbling as +I went; and then, that I began to feel as if I were merely dreaming, and +that the dream was a very horrible one, from which I could not awaken. +And finally, on reaching a little cleared spot on the edge of the +cultivated country, I dropped down as suddenly as if struck by a bullet, +and, after an ineffectual attempt to rise, fell fast asleep. Walter was +much frightened; but he succeeded in carrying me to a little rick of +dried grass which stood up in the middle of the clearing; and after +covering me well up with the grass, he laid himself down beside me. +Anxiety, however, kept him awake; and he was frightened, as he lay, to +hear the sounds of psalm-singing, in the old Gaelic style, coming +apparently from a neighbouring clump of wood. Walter believed in the +fairies; and, though psalmody was not one of the reputed accomplishments +of the "good people" in the low country, he did not know but that in the +Highlands the case might be different. Some considerable time after the +singing had ceased, there was a slow, heavy step heard approaching the +rick; an exclamation in Gaelic followed; and then a rough hard hand +grasped Walter by the naked heel. He started up, and found himself +confronted by an old, grey-headed man, the inmate of a cottage, which, +hidden in the neighbouring clump, had escaped his notice. + +The old man, in the belief that we were gipsies, was at first disposed +to be angry at the liberty we had taken with his hayrick; but Walter's +simple story mollified him at once, and he expressed deep regret that +"poor boys, who had met with an accident," should have laid them down in +such a night under the open sky, and a house so near. "It was putting +disgrace," he said, "on a Christian land." I was assisted into his +cottage, whose only other inmate, an aged woman, the old Highlander's +wife, received us with great kindness and sympathy; and on Walter's +declaring our names and lineage, the hospitable regrets and regards of +both host and hostess waxed stronger and louder still. They knew our +maternal grandfather and grandmother, and remembered old Donald Roy; and +when my cousin named my father, there was a strongly-expressed burst of +sorrow and commiseration, that the son of a man whom they had seen so +"well to do in the world" should be in circumstances so deplorably +destitute. I was too ill to take much note of what passed. I only +remember, that of the food which they placed before me, I could partake +of only a few spoonfuls of milk; and that the old woman, as she washed +my feet, fell a-crying over me. I was, however, so greatly recruited by +a night's rest in their best bed, as to be fit in the morning to be +removed, in the old man's _rung_-cart, to the house of a relation in the +parish of Nigg, from which, after a second day's rest, I was conveyed in +another cart to the Cromarty Ferry. And thus terminated the last of my +boyish visits to the Highlands. + +Both my grandfather and grandmother had come of long-lived races, and +Death did not often knock at the family door. But the time when the +latter "should cross the river," though she was some six or eight years +younger than her husband, came first; and so, according to Bunyan, she +"called for her children, and told them that her hour had come." She was +a quiet, retiring woman, and, though intimately acquainted with her +Bible, not in the least fitted to make a female Professor of Theology: +she could _live_ her religion better than _talk_ it; but she now +earnestly recommended to her family the great interests once more; and, +as its various members gathered round her bed, she besought one of her +daughters to read to her, in their hearing, that eighth chapter of the +Romans which declares that "there is now no condemnation to them which +are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the +Spirit." She repeated, in a sinking voice, the concluding verses,--"For +I am persuaded, that neither death nor life, nor angels nor +principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor +height nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us +from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And, resting +in confidence on the hope which the passage so powerfully expresses, she +slept her last sleep, in simple trust that all would be well with her in +the morning of the general awakening. I retain her wedding-ring, the +gift of Donald Roy. It is a sorely-wasted fragment, worn through on one +of the sides, for she had toiled long and hard in her household, and the +breach in the circlet, with its general thinness, testify to the fact; +but its gold is still bright and pure; and, though not much of a +relic-monger, I would hesitate to exchange it for the Holy Coat of +Treves, or for waggon-loads of the wood of the "true cross." + +My grandmother's term of life had exceeded by several twelvemonths the +full threescore and ten; but when, only a few years after, Death next +visited the circle, it was on its youngest members that his hand was +laid. A deadly fever swept over the place, and my two sisters--the one +in her tenth, the other in her twelfth year--sank under it within a few +days of each other. Jean, the elder, who resided with my uncles, was a +pretty little girl, of fine intellect, and a great reader; Catherine, +the younger, was lively and affectionate, and a general favourite; and +their loss plunged the family in deep gloom. My uncles made little show +of grief, but they felt strongly: my mother for weeks and months wept +for her children, like Rachel of old, and refused to be comforted, +because they were not; but my grandfather, now in his eighty-fifth year, +seemed to be rendered wholly bankrupt in heart by their loss. As is +perhaps not uncommon in such cases, his warmer affections strode across +the generation of grown-up men and women--his sons and daughters--and +luxuriated among the children their descendants. The boys, his +grandsons, were too wild for him; but the two little girls--gentle and +affectionate--had seized on his whole heart; and now that they were +gone, it seemed as if he had nothing in the world left to care for. He +had been, up till this time, notwithstanding his great age, a hale and +active man. In 1803, when France threatened invasion, he was, though on +the verge of seventy, one of the first men in the place to apply for +arms as a volunteer; but now he drooped and gradually sunk, and longed +for the rest of the grave. "It is God's will," I heard him say about +this time, to a neighbour who congratulated him on his long term of life +and unbroken health--"It is God's will, but not my desire." And in +rather more than a twelvemonth after the death of my sisters, he was +seized by almost his only illness--for, for nearly seventy years he had +not been confined to bed for a single day--and was carried off in less +than a week. During the last few days, the fever under which he sank +mounted to his brain; and he talked in unbroken narrative of the events +of his past life. He began with his earliest recollections; described +the battle of Culloden as he had witnessed it from the Hill of Cromarty, +and the appearance of Duke William and the royal army as seen during a +subsequent visit to Inverness; ran over the after events of his +career--his marriage, his interviews with Donald Roy, his business +transactions with neighbouring proprietors, long dead at the time; and +finally, after reaching, in his oral history, his term of middle life, +he struck off into another track, and began laying down, with singular +coherency, the statements of doctrine in a theological work of the old +school, which he had been recently perusing. And finally, his mind +clearing as his end approached, he died in good hope. It is not +uninteresting to look back on two such generations of Scotchmen as those +to which my uncles and grandfather belonged. They differed very +considerably in some respects. My grandfather, with most of his +contemporaries of the same class, had a good deal of the Tory in his +composition. He stood by George III. in the early policy of his reign, +and by his adviser Lord Bute; reprobated Wilkes and Junius; and gravely +questioned whether Washington and his coadjutors, the American +Republicans, were other than bold rebels. My uncles, on the contrary, +were stanch Whigs, who looked upon Washington as perhaps the best and +greatest man of modern times--stood firm by the policy of Fox, as +opposed to that of Pitt--and held that the war with France, which +immediately succeeded the First Revolution, was, however thoroughly it +changed its character afterwards, one of unjustifiable aggression. But +however greatly my uncles and grandfather may have differed on these +points, they were equally honest men. + +The rising generation can perhaps form no very adequate conception of +the number and singular interest of the links which serve to connect the +recollections of a man who has seen his fiftieth birth-day, with what to +them must appear a remote past. I have seen at least two men who fought +at Culloden--one on the side of the King, the other on that of the +Prince--and, with these, not a few who witnessed the battle from a +distance. I have conversed with an aged woman that had conversed, in +turn, with an aged man who had attained to mature manhood when the +persecutions of Charles and James were at their height, and remembered +the general regret excited by the death of Renwick. My eldest maternal +aunt--the mother of Cousin George--remembered old John Feddes--turned of +ninety at the time; and John's buccaneering expedition could not have +dated later than the year 1687. I have known many who remembered the +abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions; and have listened to stories +of executions which took place on the gallows-hills of burghs and +sheriffdoms, and of witch-burnings perpetrated on town Links and +baronial Laws. And I have felt a strange interest in these glimpses of a +past so unlike the present, when thus presented to the mind as personal +reminiscences, or as well-attested traditions, removed from the +original witnesses by but a single stage. All, for instance, which I +have yet read of witch-burnings has failed to impress me so strongly as +the recollections of an old lady who in 1722 was carried in her nurse's +arms--for she was almost an infant at the time--to witness a +witch-execution in the neighbourhood of Dornoch--the last which took +place in Scotland. The lady well remembered the awe-struck yet excited +crowd, the lighting of the fire, and the miserable appearance of the +poor fatuous creature whom it was kindled to consume, and who seemed to +be so little aware of her situation, that she held out her thin +shrivelled hands to warm them at the blaze. But what most impressed the +narrator--for it must have been a frightful incident in a sad +spectacle--was the circumstance that, when the charred remains of the +victim were sputtering and boiling amid the intense heat of the flames, +a cross gust of wind suddenly blew the smoke athwart the spectators, and +she felt in her attendant's arms as if in danger of being suffocated by +the horrible stench. I have heard described, too, by a man whose father +had witnessed the scene, an execution which took place, after a brief +and inadequate trial, on the burgh-gallows of Tain. The supposed +culprit, a Strathcarron Highlander, had been found lurking about the +place, noting, as was supposed, where the burghers kept their cattle, +and was hung as a spy; but they all, after the execution, came to deem +him innocent, from the circumstance that, when his dead body was +dangling in the wind, a white pigeon had come flying the way, and, as it +passed over, half-encircled the gibbet. + +One of the two Culloden soldiers whom I remember was an old forester who +lived in a picturesque cottage among the woods of the Cromarty Hill; and +in his last illness, my uncles, whom I had always leave to accompany, +used not unfrequently to visit him. He had lived at the time his full +century, and a few months more: and I still vividly remember the large +gaunt face that used to stare from the bed as they entered, and the +huge, horny hand. He had been settled in life, previous to the year +1745, as the head gardener of a northern proprietor, and little dreamed +of being engaged in war; but the rebellion broke out; and as his master, +a stanch Whig, had volunteered to serve on behalf of his principles in +the royal army, his gardener, a "mighty man of his hands," went with +him. As his memory for the later events of his life was gone at this +time, its preceding forty years seemed a blank, from which not a single +recollection could be drawn; but well did he remember the battle, and +more vividly still, the succeeding atrocities of the troops of +Cumberland. He had accompanied the army, after its victory at Culloden, +to the camp at Fort-Augustus, and there witnessed scenes of cruelty and +spoliation of which the recollection, after the lapse of seventy years, +and in his extreme old age, had still power enough to set his Scotch +blood aboil. While scores of cottages were flaming in the distance, and +blood not unfrequently hissing on the embers, the men and women of the +army used to be engaged in racing in sacks, or upon Highland ponies; and +when the ponies were in request, the women, who must have sat for their +portraits in Hogarth's "March to Finchley," took their seats astride +like the men. Gold circulated and liquor flowed in abundance; and in a +few weeks there were about twenty thousand head of cattle brought in by +marauding parties of the soldiery from the crushed and impoverished +Highlanders; and groups of drovers from Yorkshire and the south of +Scotland--coarse vulgar men--used to come every day to share in the +spoil, by making purchases at greatly less than half-price. + +My grandfather's recollections of Culloden were merely those of an +observant boy of fourteen, who had witnessed the battle from a distance. +The day, he has told me, was drizzly and thick; and on reaching the brow +of the Hill of Cromarty, where he found many of his townsfolk already +assembled, he could scarce see the opposite land. But the fog gradually +cleared away; first one hill-top came into view, and then another; till +at length the long range of coast, from the opening of the great +Caledonian valley to the promontory of Burgh-head, was dimly visible +through the haze. A little after noon there suddenly rose a round white +cloud from the Moor of Culloden, and then a second round white cloud +beside it. And then the two clouds mingled together, and went rolling +slantways on the wind towards the west; and he could hear the rattle of +the smaller fire-arms mingling with the roar of the artillery. And then, +in what seemed an exceedingly brief space of time, the cloud dissipated +and disappeared, the boom of the greater guns ceased, and a sharp +intermittent patter of musketry passed on towards Inverness. But the +battle was presented to the imagination, in these old personal +narratives, in many a diverse form. I have been told by an ancient +woman, who, on the day of the fight, was engaged in tending some sheep +on a solitary common near Munlochy, separated from the Moor of Culloden +by the Firth, and screened by a lofty hill, that she sat listening in +terror to the boom of the cannon; but that she was still more scared by +the continuous howling of her dog, who sat upright on his haunches all +the time the firing lasted, with his neck stretched out towards the +battle, and "looking as if he saw a spirit." Such are some of the +recollections which link the memories of a man who has lived his +half-century, to those of the preceding age, and which serve to remind +him how one generation of men after another break and disappear on the +shores of the eternal world, as wave after wave breaks in foam upon the +beach, when storms are rising, and the ground-swell sets in heavily from +the sea. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + "Whose elfin prowess scaled the orchard wall."--ROGERS. + + +Some of the wealthier tradesmen of the town, dissatisfied with the small +progress which their boys were making under the parish schoolmaster, +clubbed together and got a schoolmaster of their own; but, though a +rather clever young man, he proved an unsteady one, and, regular in his +irregularities, got diurnally drunk, on receiving the instalments of his +salary at term-days, as long as his money lasted. Getting rid of him, +they procured another--a licentiate of the Church--who for some time +promised well. He seemed steady and thoughtful, and withal a painstaking +teacher; but coming in contact with some zealous Baptists, they +succeeded in conjuring up such a cloud of doubt around him regarding the +propriety of infant baptism, that both his bodily and mental health +became affected by his perplexities, and he had to resign his charge. +And then, after a pause, during which the boys enjoyed a delightfully +long vacation, they got yet a third schoolmaster, also a licentiate, and +a person of a high, if not very consistent religious profession, who was +always getting into pecuniary difficulties, and always courting, though +with but little success, wealthy ladies, who, according to the poet, had +"acres of charms." To the subscription school I was transferred, at the +instance of Uncle James, who remained quite sure, notwithstanding the +experience of the past, that I was destined to be a scholar. And, +invariably fortunate in my opportunities of amusement, the transference +took place only a few weeks ere the better schoolmaster, losing health +and heart in a labyrinth of perplexity resigned his charge. I had +little more than time enough to look about me on the new forms, and to +renew, on a firmer foundation than ever, my friendship with my old +associate of the cave--who had been for the two previous years an inmate +of the subscription school, and was now less under maternal control than +before--when on came the long vacation; and for four happy months I had +nothing to do. + +My amusements had undergone very little change: I was even fonder of the +shores and woods than ever, and better acquainted with the rocks and +caves. A very considerable change, however, had taken place in the +amusements of the school-fellows my contemporaries, who were now from +two to three years older than when I had been associated with them in +the parish school. Hy-spy had lost its charms; nor was there much of its +old interest for them in French and English; whereas my rock excursions +they came to regard as very interesting indeed. With the exception of my +friend of the cave, they cared little about rocks or stones; but they +all liked brambles, and sloes, and _craws-apples_, tolerably well, and +took great delight in assisting me to kindle fires in the caverns of the +old-coast line, at which we used to broil shell-fish and crabs, taken +among the crags and boulders of the ebb below, and roast potatoes, +transferred from the fields of the hill above. There was one cave, an +especial favourite with us, in which our fires used to blaze day after +day for weeks together. It is deeply hollowed in the base of a steep +ivy-mantled precipice of granitic gneiss, a full hundred feet in height; +and bears on its smoothed sides and roof, and along its uneven +bottom,--fretted into pot-like cavities, with large rounded pebbles in +them,--unequivocal evidence that the excavating agent to which it owed +its existence had been the wild surf of this exposed shore. But for more +than two thousand years wave had never reached it: the last general +elevation of the land had raised it beyond the reach of the highest +stream-tides; and when my gang and I took possession of its twilight +recesses, its stony sides were crusted with mosses and liverworts; and +a crop of pale, attenuated, sickly-looking weeds, on which the sun had +never looked in his strength, sprang thickly up over its floor. In the +remote past it had been used as a sort of garner and thrashing-place by +a farmer of the parish, named Marcus, who had succeeded in rearing crops +of bere and oats on two sloping plots at the foot of the cliffs in its +immediate neighbourhood; and it was known, from this circumstance, to my +uncles and the older inhabitants of the town, as Marcus's Cave. My +companions, however, had been chiefly drawn to it by a much more recent +association. A poor Highland pensioner--a sorely dilapidated relic of +the French-American War, who had fought under General Wolfe in his +day--had taken a great fancy to the cave, and would fain have made it +his home. He was ill at ease in his family;--his wife was a termagant, +and his daughter disreputable; and, desirous to quit their society +altogether, and live as a hermit among the rocks, he had made +application to the gentleman who tenanted the farm above, to be +permitted to fit up the cave for himself as a dwelling. So bad was his +English, however, that the gentleman failed to understand him; and his +request was, as he believed, rejected, while it was in reality only not +understood. Among the younger folk the cave came to be known, from the +incident, as "Rory Shingles' Cave;" and my companions were delighted to +believe that they were living in it as Rory would have lived, had his +petition been granted. In the wild half-savage life which we led, we did +contrive to provide for ourselves remarkably well. The rocky shores +supplied us with limpets, periwinkles, and crabs, and now and then a +lump-fish; the rugged slopes under the precipices, with hips, sloes, and +brambles; the broken fragments of wreck along the beach, and the wood +above, furnished abundance of fuel; and as there were fields not half a +mile away, I fear the more solid part of our diet consisted often of +potatoes which we had not planted, and of pease and beans which we had +not sown. One of our number contrived to bring away a pot unobserved +from his home; another succeeded in providing us with a pitcher; there +was a good spring not two hundred yards from the cave mouth, which +supplied us with water; and, thus possessed of not merely all that +nature requires, but a good deal more, we contrived to fare sumptuously +every day. It has been often remarked, that civilized man, when placed +in circumstances at all favourable, soon learns to assume the savage. I +shall not say that my companions or myself had been particularly +civilized in our previous state; but nothing could be more certain, than +that during our long vacation, we became very happy, and tolerably +perfect savages. The class which we attended was of a kind not opened in +any of our accredited schools, and it might be difficult to procure +testimonials in its behalf, easily procurable as these usually are; and +yet there were some of its lessons which might be conned with some +little advantage, by one desirous of cultivating the noble sentiment of +self-reliance, or the all-important habit of self-help. At the time, +however, they appeared quite pointless enough; and the moral, as in the +case of the continental apologue of Reynard the Fox, seemed always +omitted. + +Our parties in these excursions used at times to swell out to ten or +twelve--at times to contract to two or three; but what they gained in +quantity they always lost in quality, and became mischievous with the +addition of every new member, in greatly more than the arithmetical +ratio. When most innocent, they consisted of only a brace of members--a +warm-hearted, intelligent boy from the south of Scotland, who boarded +with two elderly ladies of the place, and attended the subscription +school; and the acknowledged leader of the band, who, belonging to the +permanent irreducible staff of the establishment, was never off duty. We +used to be very happy, and not altogether irrational, in these little +skeleton parties. My new friend was a gentle, tasteful boy, fond of +poetry, and a writer of soft, simple verses in the old-fashioned +pastoral vein, which he never showed to any one save myself; and we +learned to love one another all the more, from the circumstance that I +was of a somewhat bold, self-relying temperament, and he of a clinging, +timid one. Two of the stanzas of a little pastoral, which he addressed +to me about a twelvemonth after this time, when permanently quitting the +north country for Edinburgh, still remain fixed in my memory; and I must +submit them to the reader, both as adequately representative of the many +others, their fellows, which have been lost, and of that juvenile poetry +in general which "is written," according to Sir Walter Scott, "rather +from the recollection of what has pleased the author in others, than +what has been suggested by his own imagination." + + + "To you my poor sheep I resign, + My colly, my crook, and my horn: + To leave you, indeed, I repine, + But I must away with the morn. + New scenes shall evolve on my sight, + The world and its follies be new; + But ah! can such scenes of delight + Ere arise, as I witnessed with you!" + + +Timid as he naturally was, he soon learned to abide in my company +terrors which most of my bolder companions shrank from encountering. I +was fond of lingering in the caves until long after nightfall, +especially in those seasons when the moon at full, or but a few days in +her wane, rose out of the sea as the evening wore on, to light up the +wild precipices of that solitary shore, and to render practicable our +ascending path to the hill above. And Finlay was almost the only one of +my band who dared to encounter with me the terrors of the darkness. Our +fire has often startled the benighted boatman as he came rowing round +some rocky promontory, and saw the red glare streaming seawards from the +cavern mouth, and partially lighting up the angry tumbling of the surf +beyond; and excise-cutters have oftener than once altered their tack in +middle Firth, and come bearing towards the coast, to determine whether +the wild rocks of Marcus were not becoming a haunt of smugglers. + +Immediately beyond the granitic gneiss of the hill there is a subaqueous +deposit of the Lias formation, never yet explored by geologist, because +never yet laid bare by the ebb; though every heavier storm from the sea +tells of its existence, by tossing ashore fragments of its dark +bituminous shale. I soon ascertained that the shale is so largely +charged with inflammable matter as to burn with a strong flame, as if +steeped in tar or oil, and that I could repeat with it the common +experiment of producing gas by means of a tobacco-pipe luted with clay. +And, having read in Shakspere of a fuel termed "sea-coal," and unaware +at the time that the poet merely meant coal brought to London by sea, I +inferred that the inflammable shale cast up from the depths of the Firth +by the waves could not be other than the veritable "sea-coal" which +figured in the reminiscences of Dame Quickly; and so, assisted by +Finlay, who shared in the interest which I felt in the substance, as at +once classical and an original discovery, I used to collect it in large +quantities and convert it into smoky and troubled fires, that ever +filled our cavern with a horrible stench, and scented all the shore. +Though unaware of the fact at the time, it owed its inflammability, not +to vegetable, but to animal substance; the tar which used to boil in it +to the heat, like resin in a fagot of moss-fir, was as strange a mixture +as ever yet bubbled in witches' caldron--blood of pterodactyle and +grease of ichthyosaur--eye of belemnite and hood of nautilus; and we +learned to delight in its very smell, all oppressive as that was, as +something wild, strange, and inexplicable. Once or twice I seemed on the +eve of a discovery: in splitting the masses, I occasionally saw what +appeared to be fragments of shells embedded in its substance; and at +least once I laid open a mysterious-looking scroll or volute, existing +on the dark surface as a cream-coloured film; but though these organisms +raised a temporary wonder, it was not until a later period that I +learned to comprehend their true import, as the half-effaced but still +decipherable characters of a marvellous record of the grey, +dream-encircled past. + +With the docile Finlay as my companion, and left to work out my own will +unchallenged, I was rarely or never mischievous. On the occasions, +however, in which my band swelled out to ten or a dozen, I often +experienced the ordinary evils of leadership, as known in all gangs and +parties, civil and ecclesiastical; and was sometimes led, in +consequence, to engage in enterprises which my better judgment +condemned. I fain wish that among the other "Confessions" with which our +literature is charged, we had the _bona fide_ "Confessions of a Leader," +with examples of the cases in which, though he seems to overbear, he is +in reality overborne, and actually follows, though he appears to lead. +Honest Sir William Wallace, though seven feet high, and a hero, was at +once candid and humble enough to confess to the canons of Hexham, that, +his "soldiers being evil-disposed men," whom he could neither "justify +nor punish," he was able to protect women and Churchmen only so long as +they "abided in his sight." And, of course, other leaders, less tall and +less heroic, must not unfrequently find themselves, had they but +Wallace's magnanimity to confess the fact, in circumstances much akin to +those of Wallace. When bee-masters get hold of queen bees, they are +able, by controlling the movements of these natural leaders of hives, to +control the movements of the hives themselves; and not unfrequently in +Churches and States do there exist inconspicuous bee-masters, who, by +influencing or controlling the leader-bees, in reality influence and +control the movements of the entire body, politic or ecclesiastical, +over which these natural monarchs seem to preside. But truce with +apology. Partly in the character of leader--partly being my self led--I +succeeded about this time in getting one of my larger parties into a +tolerably serious scrape. We passed every day, on our way to the cave, a +fine large orchard, attached to the manor-house of the Cromarty estate; +and in ascending an adjacent hill over which our path lay, and which +commands a bird's-eye view of the trim-kept walks and well-laden trees, +there used not unfrequently to arise wild speculations among us +regarding the possibility and propriety of getting a supply of the +fruit, to serve as desserts to our meals of shell-fish and potatoes. +Weeks elapsed, however, and autumn was drawing on to its close, ere we +could quite make up our minds regarding the adventure, when at length I +agreed to lead; and, after arranging the plan of the expedition, we +broke into the orchard under the cloud of night, and carried away with +us whole pocketfuls of apples. They were all intolerably bad--sour, +hard, baking apples; for we had delayed the enterprise until the better +fruit had been pulled: but though they set our teeth on edge, and we +flung most of them into the sea, we had "snatched" in the foray, what +Gray well terms "a fearful joy," and had some thought of repeating it, +merely for the sake of the excitement induced and the risk encountered, +when out came the astounding fact, that one of our number had "peached," +and, in the character of king's evidence, betrayed his companions. + +The factor of the Cromarty property had an orphan nephew, who formed at +times a member of our gang, and who had taken a willing part in the +orchard foray. He had also engaged, however, in a second enterprise of a +similar kind wholly on his own account, of which we knew nothing. An +out-house pertaining to the dwelling in which he lodged, though itself +situated outside the orchard, was attached to another house inside the +walls, which was employed by the gardener as a store-place for his +apples; and finding an unsuspected crevice in the partition which +divided the two buildings, somewhat resembling that through which +Pyramus and Thisbe made love of old in the city of Babylon, our comrade, +straightway availing himself of so fair an opening, fell a-courting the +gardener's apples. Sharpening the end of a long stick, he began +harpooning, through the hole, the apple-heap below; and though the hole +was greatly too small for admitting the finer and larger specimens, and +they, in consequence, fell back, disengaged from the harpoon, in the +attempt to land them, he succeeded in getting a good many of the smaller +ones. Old John Clark the gardener--far advanced in life at the time, and +seeing too imperfectly to discover the crevice which opened high amid +the obscurity of the loft--was in a perfect maze regarding the evil +influence that was destroying his apples. The harpooned individuals lay +scattered over the floor by scores; but the agent that had dispersed and +perforated them remained for weeks together an inscrutable mystery to +John. At length, however, there came a luckless morning, in which our +quondam companion lost hold, when busy at work, of the pointed stick; +and when John next entered his storehouse, the guilty harpoon lay +stretched across the harpooned apples. The discovery was followed up; +the culprit detected; and, on being closeted with his uncle the factor, +he communicated not only the details of his own special adventure, but +the particulars of ours also. And early next day there was a message +sent us by a safe and secret messenger, to the effect that we would be +all put in prison in the course of the week. + +We were terribly frightened; so much so, that the strong point of our +position--the double-dyed guilt of the factor's nephew--failed to occur +to any of us; and we looked for only instant incarceration. I still +remember the intense feeling of shame I used to experience every time I +crossed my mother's door for the street--the agonizing, all-engrossing +belief that every one was looking at and pointing me out--and the +terror, when in my uncles'--akin to that of the culprit who hears from +his box the footsteps of the returning jury--that, having learned of my +offence, they were preparing to denounce me as a disgrace to an honest +family, on which, in the memory of man, no stain had before rested. The +discipline was eminently wholesome, and I never forgot it. It did seem +somewhat strange, however, that no one appeared to know anything about +our misdemeanour: the factor kept our secret remarkably well; but we +inferred he was doing so in order to pounce upon us all the more +effectually; and, holding a hasty council in the cave, we resolved that, +quitting our homes for a few weeks, we should live among the rocks till +the storm that seemed rising should have blown by. + +Marcus's Cave was too accessible and too well known; but my knowledge of +the locality enabled me to recommend to my lads two other caves in which +I thought we might be safe. The one opened in a thicket of furze, some +forty feet above the shore; and, though large enough within to contain +from fifteen to twenty men, it presented outside much the appearance of +a fox-earth, and was not known to half-a-dozen people in the country. It +was, however, damp and dark; and we found that we could not venture on +lighting a fire in it without danger of suffocation. It was pronounced +excellent, however, as a temporary place of concealment, were the search +for us to become very hot. The other cavern was wide and open; but it +was a wild, ghostly-looking place, scarcely once visited from one +twelvemonth's end to another: its floor was green with mould, and its +ridgy walls and roof bristled over with slim pale stalactites, which +looked like the pointed tags that roughen a dead-dress. It was certain, +too, that it was haunted. Marks of a cloven foot might be seen freshly +impressed on its floor, which had been produced either by a stray goat, +or by something worse; and the few boys to whom its existence and +character were known used to speak of it under their breath as "the +Devil's Cave." My lads did at first look round them as we entered, with +an awe-struck and disconsolate expression; but falling busily to work +among the cliffs, we collected large quantities of withered grass and +fern for bedding, and, selecting the drier and less exposed portions of +the floor, soon piled up for ourselves a row of little lairs, formed in +a sort of half-way style between that of the wild beast and the gipsy, +on which it would have been possible enough to sleep. We selected, too, +a place for our fire, gathered a little heap of fuel, and secreted in a +recess, for ready use, our Marcus' Cave pot and pitcher, and the lethal +weapons of the gang, which consisted of an old bayonet so corroded with +rust that it somewhat resembled a three-edged saw and an old horseman's +pistol tied fast to the stock by cobbler's ends, and with lock and +ramrod wanting. Evening surprised us in the middle of our preparations; +and as the shadows fell dark and thick, my lads began to look most +uncomfortably around them. At length they fairly struck work: there was +no use, they said, for being in the Devil's Cave so late--no use, +indeed, for being in it at all, until we were made sure the factor did +actually intend to imprison us; and, after delivering themselves to this +effect, they fairly bolted, leaving Finlay and myself to bring up the +rear at our leisure. My well-laid plan was, in short, found unworkable, +from the inferior quality of my materials. I returned home with a heavy +heart, somewhat grieved that I had not confided my scheme to only +Finlay, who could, I ascertained, do braver things, with all his +timidity, than the bolder boys, our occasional associates. And yet, +when, in passing homewards through the dark lonely woods of the Hill, I +bethought me of the still deeper solitude and gloom of the haunted cave +far below, and thought further, that at that very moment the mysterious +being with the cloven foot might be traversing its silent floor, I felt +my blood run cold, and at once leaped to the conclusion that, save for +the disgrace, a cave with an evil spirit in it could be not a great deal +better than a prison. Of the prison, however, we heard no more; though I +never forgot the grim but precious lesson read me by the factor's +threat; and from that time till the present--save now and then, by +inadvertently admitting into my newspaper a paragraph written in too +terse a style by some good man in the provinces, against some very bad +man his neighbour--I have not been fairly within wind of the law. I +would, however, seriously advise such of my young friends as may cast a +curious eye over these pages to avoid taking any such lesson as mine at +first-hand. One half-hour of the mental anguish which I at this time +experienced, when I thought of my mother and uncles, and the infamy of a +prison, would have vastly more than counterbalanced all that could have +been enjoyed from banqueting on apples, even had they been those of the +Hesperides or of Eden, instead of being, what they were in this case, +green masses of harsh acid, alike formidable to teeth and stomach. I +must add, in justice to my friend of the Doocot Cave, that, though an +occasional visitor at Marcus, he had prudently avoided getting into this +scrape. + +Our long vacation came at length to an end, by the appointment of a +teacher to the subscription school; but the arrangement was not the most +profitable possible for the pupils. It was an ominous circumstance, that +we learned in a few days to designate the new master by a nickname, and +that the name stuck--a misfortune which almost never befalls the truly +superior man. He had, however, a certain dash of cleverness about him; +and observing that I was of potent influence among my school-fellows, he +set himself to determine the grounds on which my authority rested. Copy +and arithmetic books, in schools in which there was liberty, used in +those ancient times to be charged with curious revelations. In the +parish school, for instance, which excelled, as I have said, every other +school in the world in its knowledge of barques and carvels, it was not +uncommon to find a book which, when opened at the right end, presented +only copy-lines or arithmetical questions, that, when opened at the +wrong one, presented only ships and boats. And there were cases on +record in which, on the grand annual examination-day that heralded the +vacation, the worthy parish minister, by beginning to turn over the +leaves of some exhibited book at the reverse end, found himself engaged, +when expecting only the questions of Cocker, or the slip-lines of +Butterworth, amid whole fleets of smacks, frigates, and brigantines. My +new master, professionally acquainted with this secret property of +arithmetic and copy-books, laid hold of mine, and, bringing them to his +desk, found them charged with very extraordinary revelations indeed. The +blank spaces were occupied with deplorably scrabbled couplets and +stanzas, blent with occasional remarks in rude prose, that dealt chiefly +with natural phenomena. One note, for instance, which the master took +the trouble of deciphering, referred to the supposed _fact_, familiar as +a matter of sensation to boys located on the sea-coast, that during the +bathing season the water is warmer in windy days, when the waves break +high, than during dead calms; and accounted for it (I fear not very +philosophically) on the hypothesis that the "waves, by slapping against +each other, engender heat, as heat may be engendered by clapping the +hands." The master read on, evidently with much difficulty, and +apparently with considerable scepticism: he inferred that I had been +borrowing, not inventing: though where such prose and such verse could +have been borrowed, and, in especial, such grammar and such spelling, +even cleverer men than he might well have despaired of ever finding out. +And in order to test my powers, he proposed furnishing me with a theme +on which to write. "Let us see," he said, "let us see: the +dancing-school ball comes on here next week--bring me a poem on the +dancing-school ball." The subject did not promise a great deal; but, +setting myself to work in the evening, I produced half-a-dozen stanzas +on the ball, which were received as good, in evidence that I actually +could rhyme; and for some weeks after I was rather a favourite with the +new master. + +I had, however, ere now become a wild insubordinate boy, and the only +school in which I could properly be taught was that world-wide school +which awaited me, in which Toil and Hardship are the severe but noble +teachers. I got into sad scrapes. Quarrelling, on one occasion, with a +boy of my own standing, we exchanged blows across the form; and when +called up for trial and punishment, the fault was found to attach so +equally to both sides, that the same number of _palmies_, well laid on, +were awarded to each. I bore mine, however, like a North American +Indian, whereas my antagonist began to howl and cry; and I could not +resist the temptation of saying to him in a whisper that unluckily +reached the ear of the master, "Ye big blubbering blockhead, take that +for a drubbing from me." I had of course to receive a few palmies +additional for the speech; but then, "who cared for that?" The master, +however, "cared" considerably more for the offence than I did for the +punishment. And in a subsequent quarrel with another boy--a stout and +somewhat desperate mulatto--I got into a worse scrape still, of which he +thought still worse. The mulatto, in his battles, which were many, had a +trick, when in danger of being over-matched, of drawing his knife; and +in our affair--the necessities of the fight seeming to require it--he +drew his knife upon me. To his horror and astonishment, however, instead +of running off, I immediately drew mine, and, quick as lightning, +stabbed him in the thigh. He roared out in fright and pain, and, though +more alarmed than hurt, never after drew knife upon a combatant. But the +value of the lesson which I gave was, like most other very valuable +things, inadequately appreciated; and it merely procured for me the +character of being a dangerous boy. I had certainly reached a dangerous +stage; but it was mainly myself that was in jeopardy. There is a +transition-time in which the strength and independence of the latent man +begin to mingle with the wilfulness and indiscretion of the mere boy, +which is more perilous than any other, in which many more downward +careers of recklessness and folly begin, that end in wreck and ruin, +than in all the other years of life which intervene between childhood +and old age. The growing lad should be wisely and tenderly dealt with at +this critical stage. The severity that would fain compel the implicit +submission yielded at an earlier period, would probably succeed, if his +character was a strong one, in insuring but his ruin. It is at this +transition-stage that boys run off to sea from parents and masters, or, +when tall enough, enlist in the army for soldiers. The strictly orthodox +parent, if more severe than wise, succeeds occasionally in driving, +during this crisis, his son into Popery or infidelity; and the sternly +moral one, in landing _his_ in utter profligacy. But, leniently and +judiciously dealt with, the dangerous period passes: in a few years at +most--in some instances in even a few months--the sobriety incidental to +a further development of character ensues, and the wild boy settles down +into a rational young man. + +It so chanced, however, that in what proved the closing scene in my term +of school attendance, I was rather unfortunate than guilty. The class to +which I now belonged read an English lesson every afternoon, and had its +rounds of spelling; and in these last I acquitted myself but ill; partly +from the circumstance that I spelt only indifferently, but still more +from the further circumstance, that, retaining strongly fixed in my +memory the broad Scotch pronunciation acquired at the dames' school, I +had to carry on in my mind the double process of at once spelling the +required word, and of translating the old sounds of the letters of which +it was composed into the modern ones. Nor had I been taught to break the +words into syllables; and so, when required one evening to spell the +word "_awful_," with much deliberation--for I had to translate, as I +went on, the letters _a-w_ and _u_--I spelt it word for word, without +break or pause, as a-w-f-u-l. "No," said the master, "a-w, _aw_, f-u-l, +_awful_; spell again." This seemed preposterous spelling. It was +sticking in an _a_, as I thought, into the middle of the word, where, I +was sure, no _a_ had a right to be; and so I spelt it as at first. The +master recompensed my supposed contumacy with a sharp cut athwart the +ears with his tawse; and again demanding the spelling of the word, I yet +again spelt it as at first. But on receiving a second cut, I refused to +spell it any more; and, determined on overcoming my obstinacy, he laid +hold of me and attempted throwing me down. As wrestling, however, had +been one of our favourite Marcus' Cave exercises, and as few lads of my +inches wrestled better than I, the master, though a tall and tolerably +robust fellow, found the feat considerably more difficult than he could +have supposed. We swayed from side to side of the school-room, now +backwards, now forwards, and for a full minute it seemed to be rather a +moot point on which side the victory was to incline. At length, however, +I was tripped over a form; and as the master had to deal with me, not as +master usually deals with pupil, but as one combatant deals with +another, whom he has to beat into submission, I was mauled in a way that +filled me with aches and bruises for a full month thereafter. I greatly +fear that, had I met the fellow on a lonely road five years subsequent +to our encounter, when I had become strong enough to raise breast-high +the "great lifting stone of the Dropping Cave," he would have caught as +sound a thrashing as he ever gave to little boy or girl in his life; but +all I could do at this time was to take down my cap from off the pin, +when the affair had ended, and march straight out of school. And thus +terminated my school education. Before night I had avenged myself, in a +copy of satiric verses, entitled "The Pedagogue," which--as they had +some little cleverness in them, regarded as the work of a boy, and as +the known eccentricities of their subject gave me large +scope--occasioned a good deal of merriment in the place; and of the +verses a fair copy, written out by Finlay, was transmitted through the +Post-Office to the pedagogue himself. But the only notice he ever took +of them was incidentally, in a short speech made to the copyist a few +days after. "I _see_, Sir," he said,--"I _see_ you still associate with +that fellow Miller; perhaps he will make you a poet!" "I had thought, +Sir," said Finlay very quietly, in reply, "that poets were born--not +made." + +As a specimen of the rhyme of this period, and as in some degree a +set-off against my drubbing, which remains till this day an unsettled +score, I submit my pasquinade to the reader:-- + + + THE PEDAGOGUE. + + With solemn mien and pious air, + S--k--r attends each call of grace; + Loud eloquence bedecks his prayer, + And formal sanctity his face. + + All good; but turn the other side, + And see the smirking beau displayed; + The pompous strut, exalted air, + And all that marks the fop, is there. + + In character we seldom see + Traits so diverse meet and agree: + Can the affected mincing trip, + Exalted brow, and pride-pressed lip, + In strange incongruous union meet, + With all that stamps the hypocrite? + We see they do: but let us scan + Those secret springs which move the man. + + Though now he wields the knotty birch, + His better hope lies in the Church: + For this the sable robe he wears, + For this in pious guise appears. + But then, the weak will cannot hide + Th' inherent vanity and pride; + And thus he acts the coxcomb's part, + As dearer to his poor vain heart: + Nature's born fop! a saint by art!! + But hold! he wears no fopling's dress + Each seam, each thread, the eye can trace + His garb all o'er;--the dye, though true, + Time-blanch'd, displays a fainter hue: + Dress forms the fopling's better part; + Reconcile this, and prove your art. + + "Chill penury represses pride;"-- + A maxim by the wise denied; + For 'tis alone tame plodding souls, + Whose spirits bend when it controls,-- + Whose lives run on in one dull same, + Plain honesty their highest aim. + With him it merely can repress-- + Tailor o'er-cow'd--the pomp of dress; + His spirit, unrepressed, can soar + High as e'er folly rose before; + Can fly pale study, learn'd debate, + And ape proud fashion's idle state: + Yet fails in that engaging grace + That lights the practised courtier's face. + His weak affected air we mark, + And, smiling, view the would-be spark; + Complete in every act and feature,-- + An ill-bred, silly, awkward creature. + + +My school-days fairly over, a life of toil frowned full in front of me; +but never yet was there a half-grown lad less willing to take up the man +and lay down the boy. My set of companions was fast breaking up;--my +friend of the Doocot Cave was on the eve of proceeding to an academy in +a neighbouring town; Finlay had received a call from the south, to +finish his education in a seminary on the banks of the Tweed; one +Marcus' Cave lad was preparing to go to sea; another to learn a trade; a +third to enter a shop; the time of dispersal was too evidently at hand; +and, taking counsel one day together, we resolved on constructing +something--we at first knew not what--that might serve as a monument to +recall to us in after years the memory of our early pastimes and +enjoyments. The common school-book story of the Persian shepherd, who, +when raised by his sovereign to high place in the empire, derived his +chief pleasure from contemplating, in a secret apartment, the pipe, +crook, and rude habiliments of his happier days, suggested to me that we +also should have our secret apartment, in which to store up, for future +contemplation, our bayonet and pistol, pot and pitcher; and I +recommended that we should set ourselves to dig a subterranean chamber +for that purpose among the woods of the Hill, accessible, like the +mysterious vaults of our story-books, by a trap-door. The proposal was +favourably received; and, selecting a solitary spot among the trees as a +proper site, and procuring spade and mattock, we began to dig. + +Soon passing through the thin crust of vegetable mould, we found the red +boulder clay beneath exceedingly stiff and hard; but day after day saw +us perseveringly at work; and we succeeded in digging a huge square +pit, about six feet in length and breadth, and fully seven feet deep. +Fixing four upright posts in the corners, we lined our apartment with +slender spars nailed closely together; and we had prepared for giving it +a massive roof of beams formed of fallen trees, and strong enough to +bear a layer of earth and turf from a foot to a foot and a half in +depth, with a little opening for the trap-door; when we found, one +morning, on pressing onwards to the scene of our labours, that we were +doggedly tracked by a horde of boys considerably more numerous than our +own party. Their curiosity had been excited, like that of the Princess +Nekayah in Rasselas, by the tools which we carried, and by "seeing that +we had directed our walk every day to the same point;" and in vain, by +running and doubling, by scolding and remonstrating, did we now attempt +shaking them off. I saw that, were we to provoke a general _melee_, we +could scarce expect to come off victors; but deeming myself fully a +match for their stoutest boy, I stepped out and challenged him to come +forward and fight me. He hesitated, looked foolish, and refused; but +said, he would readily fight with any of my party except myself. I +immediately named my friend of the Doocot Cave, who leaped out with a +bound to meet him; but the boy, as I had anticipated, refused to fight +him also; and, observing the proper effect produced, I ordered my lads +to march forward; and from an upper slope of the hill we had the +satisfaction of seeing that our pursuers, after lingering for a little +while on the spot on which we had left them, turned homewards, fairly +cowed, and pursued us no more. But, alas! on reaching our secret +chamber, we ascertained, by marks all too unequivocal, that it was to be +secret no longer. Some rude hand had torn down the wooden lining, and +cut two of the posts half through with a hatchet; and on returning +disconsolately to the town, we ascertained that Johnstone the forester +had just been there before us, declaring that some atrociously wicked +persons--for whose apprehension a proclamation was to be instantly +issued--had contrived a diabolical trap, which he had just discovered, +for maiming the cattle of the gentleman, his employer, who farmed the +Hill. Johnstone was an old Forty-Second man, who had followed Wellington +over the larger part of the Peninsula; but though he had witnessed the +storming and sack of San Sebastian, and a great many other bad things, +nothing had he ever seen on the Peninsula, or anywhere else, he said, +half so mischievous as the cattle-trap. We, of course, kept our own +secret; and as we all returned under the cloud of night, and with heavy +hearts filled up our excavation level with the soil, the threatened +proclamation was never issued. Johnstone, however--who had been watching +my motions for a considerable time before, and whom, as he was a +formidable fellow, very unlike any of the other foresters, I had been +sedulously watching in turn--had no hesitation in declaring that I, and +I only, could be the designer of the cattle-trap. I had acquainted +myself in books, he said, with the mode of entrapping by pitfalls wild +beasts in the forests abroad; and my trap for the Colonel's cattle was, +he was certain, a result of my book-acquired knowledge. + +I was one day lounging in front of my mother's dwelling, when up came +Johnstone to address me. As the evidence regarding the excavation had +totally broken down, I was aware of no special offence at the time that +could have secured for me such a piece of attention, and inferred that +the old soldier was labouring under some mistake; but Johnstone's +address soon evinced that he was not in the least mistaken. "He wished +to be acquainted with me," he said. "It was all nonsense for us to be +bothering one another, when we had no cause to quarrel." He used +occasionally to eke out his pension, and his scanty allowance as +forester, by catching a basket of fish for himself from off the rocks of +the Hill; and he had just discovered a projecting rock at the foot of a +tall precipice, which would prove, he was sure, one of the best fishing +platforms in the Firth. But then, in the existing state, it was wholly +inaccessible. He was, however, of opinion, that it was possible to lay +it open by carrying a path adown the shelving face of the precipice. He +had seen Wellington address himself to quite as desperate-looking +matters in the Peninsula; and were I but to assist him, he was sure, he +said, we could construct between us the necessary path. The undertaking +was one wholly according to my own heart; and next morning Johnstone and +I were hard at work on the giddy brow of the precipice. It was topped by +a thick bed of boulder clay, itself--such was the steepness of the +slope--almost a precipice; but a series of deeply-cut steps led us +easily adown the bed of clay; and then a sloping shelf, which, with much +labour, we deepened and flattened, conducted us not unsafely some +five-and-twenty or thirty feet along the face of the precipice proper. A +second series of steps, painfully scooped out of the living rock, and +which passed within a few yards of a range of herons' nests perched on a +hitherto inaccessible platform, brought us down some five-and-twenty or +thirty feet more; but then we arrived at a sheer descent of about twenty +feet, at which Johnstone looked rather blank, though, on my suggesting a +ladder, he took heart again, and, cutting two slim taper trees in the +wood above, we flung them over the precipice into the sea; and then +fishing them up with a world of toil and trouble, we squared and bored +them upwards, and, cutting tenons for them in the hard gneiss, we placed +them against the rock front, and nailed over them a line of steps. The +precipice beneath sloped easily on to the fishing rock, and so a few +steps more completed our path. I never saw a man more delighted than +Johnstone. As being lighter and more active than he--for though not +greatly advanced in life, he was considerably debilitated by severe +wounds--I had to take some of the more perilous parts of the work on +myself. I had cut the tenons for the ladder with a rope round my waist, +and had recovered the trees flung into the sea by some adroit swimming; +and the old soldier became thoroughly impressed with the conviction that +my proper sphere was the army. I was already five feet three, he said; +in little more than a twelvemonth I would be five feet seven; and were I +then but to enlist, and to keep from the "drop drink"--a thing which he +never could do--I would, he was certain, rise to be a serjeant. In +brief, such were the terms on which Johnstone and I learned to live ever +after, that, had I constructed a _score_ of traps for the Colonel's +cattle, I believe he would have winked at them all. Poor fellow! he got +into difficulties a good many years after, and, on the accession of the +Whigs to power, mortgaged his pension, and emigrated to Canada. Deeming +the terms hard, however, as he well might, he first wrote a letter to +his old commander, the Duke of Wellington--I holding the pen for him--in +which, in the hope that their stringency might be relaxed in his behalf, +he stated both his services and his case. And promptly did the Duke +reply, in an essentially kind holograph epistle, in which, after stating +that he had no influence at the time with the Ministers of the Crown, +and no means of getting a relaxation of their terms in behalf of any +one, he "earnestly recommended William Johnstone, _first_, not to seek a +provision for himself in Canada, unless he were able-bodied, and fit to +provide for himself in circumstances of extreme hardship; and, _second_, +on no account to sell or mortgage his pension." But the advice was not +taken;--Johnstone did emigrate to Canada, and did mortgage his pension; +and I fear--though I failed to trace his after history--that he suffered +in consequence. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + "Now, surely, thought I, there's enou + To fill life's dusty way; + And who will miss a poet's feet, + Or wonder where he stray! + So to the woods and wastes I'll go, + And I will build an ozier bower; + And sweetly there to me shall flow + The meditative hour."--HENRY KIRKE WHITE. + + +Finlay was away; my friend of the Doocot Cave was away; my other +companions were all scattered abroad; my mother, after a long widowhood +of more than eleven years, had entered into a second marriage; and I +found myself standing face to face with a life of labour and restraint. +The prospect appeared dreary in the extreme. The necessity of ever +toiling from morning to night, and from one week's end to another, and +all for a little coarse food and homely raiment, seemed to be a dire +one; and fain would I have avoided it. But there was no escape; and so I +determined on being a mason. I remembered my Cousin George's long winter +holidays, and how delightfully he employed them; and, by making choice +of Cousin George's profession, I trusted to find, like him, large +compensation, in the amusements of one-half the year, for the toils of +the other half. Labour shall not wield over me, I said, a rod entirely +black, but a rod like one of Jacob's peeled wands, chequered white and +black alternately. + +I however, did look, even at this time, notwithstanding the antecedents +of a sadly mis-spent boyhood, to something higher than mere amusement; +and, daring to believe that literature, and, mayhap, natural science, +were, after all, my proper vocations, I resolved that much of my leisure +time should be given to careful observation, and the study of our best +English authors. Both my uncles, especially James, were sorely vexed by +my determination to be a mason; they had expected to see me rising in +some one of the learned professions; yet here was I going to be a mere +operative mechanic, like one of themselves! I spent with them a serious +hour, in which they urged that, instead of entering as a mason's +apprentice, I should devote myself anew to my education. Though the +labour of their hands formed their only wealth, they would assist me, +they said, in getting through college; nay, if I preferred it, I might +meanwhile come and live with them: all they asked of me in return was +that I should give myself as sedulously to my lessons as, in the event +of my becoming a mason, I would have to give myself to my trade. I +demurred. The lads of my acquaintance, who were preparing for college +had an eye, I said, to some profession; they were qualifying themselves +to be lawyers, or medical men, or, in much larger part, were studying +for the Church; whereas I had no wish, and no peculiar fitness to be +either lawyer or doctor; and as for the Church, that was too serious a +direction to look in for one's bread, unless one could honestly regard +one's-self as _called_ to the Church's proper work; and I could not. +There, said my uncles, you are perfectly right: better be a poor +mason--better be anything honest, however humble--than an _uncalled_ +minister. How very strong the hold taken of the mind in some cases by +hereditary convictions of which the ordinary conduct shows little +apparent trace! I had for the last few years been a wild boy--not +without my share of respect for Donald Roy's religion, but possessed of +none of Donald's seriousness; and yet here was his belief in this +special matter lying so strongly entrenched in the recesses of my mind, +that no consideration whatever could have induced me to outrage it by +obtruding my unworthiness on the Church. Though, mayhap, overstrained +in many of its older forms, I fain wish the conviction, in at least some +of its better modifications, were more general now. It might be well for +all the Protestant Churches practically to hold, with Uncles James and +Sandy, that true ministers cannot be manufactured out of ordinary +men--men ordinary in talent and character--in a given number of years, +and then passed by the imposition of hands into the sacred office; but +that, on the contrary, ministers, when real, are all special creations +of the grace of God. I may add, that in a belief of this kind, deeply +implanted in the popular mind of Scotland, the strength of our recent +Church controversy mainly lay. + +Slowly and unwillingly my uncles at length consented that I should make +trial of a life of manual labour. The husband of one of my maternal +aunts was a mason, who, contracting for jobs on a small scale, usually +kept an apprentice or two, and employed a few journeymen. With him I +agreed to serve for the term of three years; and, getting a suit of +strong moleskin clothes, and a pair of heavy hob-nailed shoes, I waited +only for the breaking up of the winter frosts, to begin work in the +Cromarty quarries--jobbing masters in the north of Scotland usually +combining the profession of the quarrier with that of the mason. In the +beautiful poetic fragment from which I have chosen my motto, poor Kirke +White fondly indulges in the dream of a hermit life--quiet, meditative, +solitary, spent far away in deep woods, or amid wide-spread wastes, +where the very sounds that arose would be but the faint echoes of a +loneliness in which man was not--a "voice of the desert, never dumb." +The dream is that of a certain brief period of life between boyhood and +comparatively mature youth; and we find more traces of it in the poetry +of Kirke White than in that of almost any other poet; simply because he +wrote at the age in which it is natural to indulge in it, and because, +being less an imitator, and more original, than most juvenile poets, he +gave it as portion of the internal experience from which he drew. But +it is a dream not restricted to young poets: the ignorant, half-grown +lad, who learns, for the first time, "about the great rich gentleman who +advertises for a hermit," and wishes that he had but the necessary +qualification of beard to offer himself as a candidate, indulges in it +also; and I, too, in this transition stage, cherished it with all the +strength of a passion. It seems to spring out of a latent timidity in +the yet undeveloped mind, that shrinks from grappling with the stern +realities of life, amid the crowd and press of the busy world, and +o'ershaded by the formidable competition of men already practised in the +struggle. I have still before me the picture of the "lodge in some vast +wilderness" to which I could have fain retired, to lead all alone a life +quieter, but quite as wild, as my Marcus' Cave one; and the snugness and +comfort of the humble interior of my hermitage, during some boisterous +night of winter, when the gusty wind would be howling around the roof, +and the rain beating on the casement, but when, in the calm within, the +cheerful flame would roar in the chimney, and glance bright on rafter +and wall, still impress me as if the recollection were in reality that +of a scene witnessed, not of a mere vision conjured up by the fancy. But +it was all the idle dream of a truant lad, who would fain now, as on +former occasions, have avoided going to school--that best and noblest of +all schools, save the Christian one, in which honest Labour is the +teacher--in which the ability of being useful is imparted, and the +spirit of independence communicated, and the habit of persevering effort +acquired; and which is more moral than the schools in which only +philosophy is taught, and greatly more happy than the schools which +profess to teach only the art of enjoyment. Noble, upright, self-relying +Toil! Who that knows thy solid worth and value would be ashamed of thy +hard hands, and thy soiled vestments, and thy obscure tasks--thy humble +cottage, and hard couch, and homely fare! Save for thee and thy lessons, +man in society would everywhere sink into a sad compound of the fiend +and the wild beast; and this fallen world would be as certainly a moral +as a natural wilderness. But I little thought of the excellence of thy +character and of thy teachings, when, with a heavy heart, I set out +about this time, on a morning of early spring, to take my first lesson +from thee in a sandstone quarry. + +I have elsewhere recorded the history of my few first days of toil; but +it is possible for two histories, of the same period and individual, to +be at once true to fact, and unlike each other in the scenes which they +describe, and the events which they record. The quarry in which I +commenced my life of labour was, as I have said, a sandstone one, and +exhibited in the section of the furze-covered bank which it presented, a +bar of deep red stone beneath, and a bar of pale red clay above. Both +deposits belonged to formations equally unknown, at the time, to the +geologist. The deep-red stone formed part of an upper member of the +Lower Old Red Sandstone; the pale red clay, which was much roughened by +rounded pebbles, and much cracked and fissured by the recent frosts, was +a bed of the boulder clay. Save for the wholesome restraint that +confined me for day after day to this spot, I should perhaps have paid +little attention to either. Mineralogy, in its first rudiments, had +early awakened my curiosity, just as it never fails to awaken, with its +gems and its metals, and its hard glittering rocks, of which tools may +be made, the curiosity of infant tribes and nations. But in unsightly +masses of mechanical origin, whether sandstone or clay, I could take no +interest; just as infant societies take no interest in such masses, and +so fail to know anything of geology; and it was not until I had learned +to detect among the ancient sandstone strata of this quarry exactly the +same phenomena as those which I used to witness in my walks with Uncle +Sandy in the ebb, that I was fairly excited to examine and inquire. It +was the necessity which made me a quarrier that taught me to be a +geologist. Further, I soon found that there was much to be enjoyed in a +life of labour. A taste for the beauties of natural scenery is of itself +a never-failing spring of delight; and there was scarce a day in which I +wrought in the open air, during this period, in which I did not +experience its soothing and exhilarating influence. Well has it been +said by the poet Keats, that "a thing of beauty is a joy for ever." I +owed much to the upper reaches of the Cromarty Firth, as seen, when we +sat down to our mid-day meal, from the gorge of the quarry, with their +numerous rippling currents, that, in the calm, resembled streamlets +winding through a meadow, and their distant grey promontories tipped +with villages that brightened in the sunshine; while, pale in the +background, the mighty hills, still streaked with snow, rose high over +bay and promontory, and gave dignity and power to the scene. + +Still, however, with all my enjoyments, I had to suffer some of the +evils of excessive toil. Though now seventeen, I was still seven inches +short of my ultimate stature; and my frame, cast more at the time in the +mould of my mother than in that of the robust sailor, whose "back," +according to the description of one of his comrades, "no one had ever +put to the ground," was slim and loosely knit; and I used to suffer much +from wandering pains in the joints, and an oppressive feeling about the +chest, as if crushed by some great weight. I became subject, too, to +frequent fits of extreme depression of spirits, which took almost the +form of a walking sleep--results, I believe, of excessive fatigue--and +during which my absence of mind was so extreme, that I lacked the +ability of protecting myself against accident, in cases the most simple +and ordinary. Besides other injuries, I lost at different times during +the first few months of my apprenticeship, when in these fits of partial +somnambulism, no fewer than seven of my finger-nails. But as I gathered +strength, my spirits became more equable; and not until many years +after, when my health failed for a time under over-exertion of another +kind, had I any renewed experience of the fits of walking sleep. + +My master, an elderly man at the time--for, as he used not unfrequently +to tell his apprentices, he had been born on the same day and year as +George the Fourth, and so we could celebrate, if we pleased, both +birthdays together--was a person of plodding, persevering industry, who +wrought rather longer hours than was quite agreeable to one who wished +to have some time to himself; but he was, in the main, a good master. As +a builder, he made conscience of every stone he laid. It was remarked in +the place, that the walls built by Uncle David never bulged or fell; and +no apprentice or journeyman of his was permitted, on any plea, to make +"slight wark." Though by no means a bold or daring man, he was, from +sheer abstraction, when engrossed in his employment, more thoroughly +insensible to personal danger than almost any other individual I ever +knew. On one occasion, when an overloaded boat, in which he was carrying +stones from the quarry to the neighbouring town, was overtaken by a +series of rippling seas, and suddenly sank, leaving him standing on one +of the thwarts submerged to the throat, he merely said to his partner, +on seeing his favourite snuff-mull go floating past, "Od, Andro man, +just rax out your han' and tak' in my snuff-box." On another, when a +huge mass of the boulder clay came toppling down upon us in the quarry +with such momentum, that it bent a massive iron lever like a bow, and +crushed into minute fragments a strong wheelbarrow, Uncle David, who, +older and less active than any of the others, had been entangled in the +formidable debris, relieved all our minds by remarking, as we rushed +back, expecting to find him crushed as flat as a botanical preparation, +"Od, I draid, Andro man, we have lost our good barrow." He was at first +of opinion that I would do him little credit as a workman: in my absent +fits I was well-nigh as impervious to instruction as he himself was +insensible to danger; and I laboured under the further disadvantage of +knowing a little, as an amateur, of both hewing and building, from the +circumstance, that when the undertakings of my schoolboy days involved, +as they sometimes did, the erection of a house, I used always to be +selected as the mason of the party. And all that I had learned on these +occasions I had now to unlearn. In the course of a few months, however, +I did unlearn it all; and then, acquiring in less than a fortnight a +very considerable mastery over the mallet--for mine was one of the not +unfrequent cases in which the mechanical knock seems, after many an +abortive attempt, to be caught up at once--I astonished Uncle David one +morning by setting myself to compete with him, and by hewing nearly two +feet of pavement for his one. And on this occasion my aunt, his wife, +who had been no stranger to his previous complaints, was informed that +her "stupid nephew" was to turn out "a grand workman after all." + +A life of toil has, however, its peculiar temptations. When overwrought, +and in my depressed moods, I learned to regard the ardent spirits of the +dram-shop as high luxuries: they gave lightness and energy to both body +and mind, and substituted for a state of dulness and gloom, one of +exhilaration and enjoyment. Usquebaugh was simply happiness doled out by +the glass, and sold by the gill. The drinking usages of the profession +in which I laboured were at this time many: when a foundation was laid, +the workmen were treated to drink; they were treated to drink when the +walls were levelled for laying the joists; they were treated to drink +when the building was finished; they were treated to drink when an +apprentice joined the squad; treated to drink when his "apron was +washed;" treated to drink when "his time was out;" and occasionally they +learned to treat one another to drink. In laying down the +foundation-stone of one of the larger houses built this year by Uncle +David and his partner, the workmen had a royal "founding-pint," and two +whole glasses of the whisky came to my share. A full-grown man would +not have deemed a gill of usquebaugh an overdose, but it was +considerably too much for me; and when the party broke up, and I got +home to my books, I found, as I opened the pages of a favourite author, +the letters dancing before my eyes, and that I could no longer master +the sense. I have the volume at present before me--a small edition of +the Essays of Bacon, a good deal worn at the corners by the friction of +the pocket; for of Bacon I never tired. The condition into which I had +brought myself was, I felt, one of degradation. I had sunk, by my own +act, for the time, to a lower level of intelligence than that on which +it was my privilege to be placed; and though the state could have been +no very favourable one for forming a resolution, I in that hour +determined that I should never again sacrifice my capacity of +intellectual enjoyment to a drinking usage; and, with God's help, I was +enabled to hold by the determination. Though never a strict abstainer, I +have wrought as an operative mason for whole twelvemonths together, in +which I did not consume half-a-dozen glasses of ardent spirits, or +partake of half-a-dozen draughts of fermented liquor. But I do see, in +looking back on this my first year of labour, a dangerous point, at +which, in the attempt to escape from the sense of depression and +fatigue, the craving appetite of the confirmed tippler might have been +formed. + +The ordinary, long-wrought quarries of my native town have been opened +in the old coast-line along the southern shores of the Cromarty Firth, +and they contain no organisms. The beds occasionally display their +water-rippled surfaces, and occasionally their areas of ancient +desiccation, in which the polygonal partings still remain as when they +had cracked in the drying, untold ages before. But the rock contains +neither fish nor shell; and the mere mechanical processes of which it +gave evidence, though they served to raise strange questions in my mind, +failed to interest me so deeply as the wonderful organisms of other +creations would have done. We soon quitted these quarries, however, as +they proved more than usually difficult in the working at this time, for +a quarry situated on the northern shore of the Moray Firth, which had +been recently opened in an inferior member of the Lower Old Red +Sandstone, and which, as I subsequently ascertained, does in some of its +beds contain fossils. It was, however, not to the quarry itself that my +first-found organisms belonged. There lies in the Firth beyond, an +outlier of the Lias, which, like the Marcus' Cave one referred to in a +preceding chapter, strews the beach with its fragments after every storm +from the sea; and in a nodular mass of bluish-grey limestone derived +from this subaqueous bed I laid open my first-found ammonite. It was a +beautiful specimen, graceful in its curves as those of the Ionic volute, +and greatly more delicate in its sculpturing; and its bright +cream-coloured tint, dimly burnished by the prismatic hues of the +original pearl, contrasted exquisitely with the dark grey of the matrix +which enclosed it. I broke open many a similar nodule during our stay at +this delightful quarry, and there were few of them in which I did not +detect some organism of the ancient world--scales of fishes, groups of +shells, bits of decayed wood, and fragments of fern. At the dinner hour +I used to show my new-found specimens to the workmen; but though they +always took the trouble of looking at them, and wondered at times how +the shells and plants had "got into the stones," they seemed to regard +them as a sort of natural toys, which a mere lad might amuse himself in +looking after, but which were rather below the notice of grown-up people +like themselves. One workman, however, informed me, that things of a +kind I had not yet found--genuine thunderbolts--which in his father's +times were much sought for the cure of bewitched cattle--were to be +found in tolerable abundance on a reach of the beach about two miles +further to the west; and as, on quitting the quarry for the piece of +work on which we were to be next engaged, Uncle David gave us all a +half-holiday, I made use of it in visiting the tract of shore indicated +by the workman. And there, leaning against the granitic gneiss and +hornblend slate of the Hill of Eathie, I found a Liassic deposit, +amazingly rich in its organisms--not buried under the waves, as at +Marcus' shore, or as opposite our new quarry, but at one part underlying +a little grass-covered plain, and at another exposed for several hundred +yards together along the shore. Never yet did embryo geologist break +ground on a more promising field; and memorable in my existence was this +first of the many happy evenings that I have spent in exploring it. + +The Hill of Eathie, like the Cromarty Sutors, belongs, as I have already +had occasion to mention, to what De Beaumont would term the Ben Nevis +system of hills--that latest of our Scottish mountain systems which, +running from south-west to north-east, in the line of the great +Caledonian valley, and in that of the valleys of the Nairn, Findhorn, +and Spey, uptilted in its course, when it arose, the Oolites of +Sutherland, and the Lias of Cromarty and Ross. The deposit which the +Hill of Eathie disturbed is exclusively a Liassic one. The upturned base +of the formation rests immediately against the Hill; and we may trace +the edges of the various overlying beds for several hundred feet +outwards, until, apparently near the top of the deposit, we lose them in +the sea. The various beds--all save the lowest, which consists of a blue +adhesive clay--are composed of a dark shale, consisting of +easily-separable laminae, thin as sheets of pasteboard; and they are +curiously divided from each other by bands of fossiliferous limestone of +but from one to two feet thick. These Liassic beds, with their +separating bands, are a sort of boarded books; for as a series of +volumes reclining against a granite pedestal in the geologic library of +nature, I used to find pleasure in regarding them. The limestone bands, +elaborately marbled with lignite, ichthyolite, and shell, form the stiff +boarding; the pasteboard-like laminae between--tens and hundreds of +thousands in number in even the slimmer volumes--compose the +closely-written leaves. I say closely written; for never yet did signs +or characters lie closer on page or scroll than do the organisms of the +Lias on the surface of these leaf-like laminae. I can scarce hope to +communicate to the reader, after the lapse of so many years, an adequate +idea of the feeling of wonder which the marvels of this deposit excited +in my mind, wholly new as they were to me at the time. Even the fairy +lore of my first-formed library--that of the birchen box--had impressed +me less. The general tone of the colouring of these written leaves, +though dimmed by the action of untold centuries, is still very striking. +The ground is invariably of a deep neutral grey, verging on black; while +the flattened organisms, which present about the same degree of relief +as one sees in the figures of an embossed card, contrast with it in +tints that vary from opaque to silvery white, and from pale yellow to an +umbry or chestnut brown. Groups of ammonites appear as if drawn in white +chalk; clusters of a minute undescribed bivalve are still plated with +thin films of the silvery nacre; the mytilaceae usually bear a warm tint +of yellowish brown, and must have been brilliant shells in their day; +gryphites and oysters are always of a dark grey, and plagiostomae +ordinarily of a bluish or neutral tint. On some of the leaves curious +pieces of incident seem recorded. We see fleets of minute terebratulae, +that appear to have been covered up by some sudden deposit from above, +when riding at their anchors; and whole argosies of ammonites, that +seemed to have been wrecked at once by some untoward accident, and sent +crushed and dead to the bottom. Assemblages of bright black plates, that +shine like pieces of Japan work, with numerous parallelogrammical scales +bristling with nail-like points, indicate where some armed fish of the +old ganoid order lay down and died; and groups of belemnites, that lie +like heaps of boarding-pikes thrown carelessly on a vessel's deck on the +surrender of the crew, tell where _skulls_ of cuttle-fishes of the +ancient type had ceased to trouble the waters. I need scarce add, that +these spear-like belemnites formed the supposed thunderbolts of the +deposit. Lying athwart some of the pages thus strangely inscribed we +occasionally find, like the dark hawthorn leaf in Bewick's well-known +vignette, slim-shaped leaves coloured in deep umber; and branches of +extinct pines, and fragments of strangely-fashioned ferns, form their +more ordinary garnishing. Page after page, for tens and hundreds of feet +together, repeat the same wonderful story. The great Alexandrian +library, with its tomes of ancient literature, the accumulation of long +ages, was but a meagre collection--not less puny in bulk than recent in +date--compared with this marvellous library of the Scotch Lias. + +Who, after once spending even a few hours in such a school, could avoid +being a geologist? I had formerly found much pleasure among rocks and in +caves; but it was the wonders of the Eathie Lias that first gave +direction and aim to my curiosity. From being a mere child, that had +sought amusement in looking over the _pictures_ of the stony volume of +nature, I henceforth became a sober student desirous of reading and +knowing it as a book. The extreme beauty, however, of the Liassic +fossils made me pass over at this time, as of little interest, a +discovery which, if duly followed up, would have probably landed me full +in the midst of the Old Red Sandstone ichthyolites fully ten years ere I +learned to know them. In forming a temporary harbour, at which we boated +the stones we had been quarrying, I struck my pick into a slaty +sandstone bed, thickly mottled in the layers by carbonaceous markings. +They consisted, I saw, of thin rectilinear stems or leaves, much broken +and in a bad state of keeping, that at once suggested to me layers of +comminuted _Zostera marina_, such as I had often seen on the Cromarty +beach thrown up from the submarine meadows of the Firth beyond. But +then, with magnificent ammonites and belemnites, and large well-marked +lignites, to be had in abundance at Eathie just for the laying open and +the picking up, how could I think of giving myself to disinter what +seemed to be mere broken fragments of _Zostera_? Within, however, a few +feet of these carbonaceous markings there occurred one of those +platforms of violent death for which the Old Red Sandstone is so +remarkable--a platform strewed over with fossil remains of the firstborn +ganoids of creation, many of which still bore in their contorted +outlines evidence of sudden dissolution and the dying pang. + +During the winter of this year--for winter at length came, and, my +labours over, three happy months were all my own--I had an opportunity +of seeing, deep in a wild Highland glen, the remains of one of our old +Scotch forests of the native pine. My cousin George, finding his pretty +Highland cottage on the birch-covered tomhan situated too far from his +ordinary scenes of employment, had removed to Cromarty; and when his +work had this year come to a close for the season, he made use of his +first leisure in visiting his father-in-law, an aged shepherd who +resided in the upper recesses of Strathcarron. He had invited me to +accompany him; and of the invitation I gladly availed myself. We struck +across the tract of wild hills which intervenes between the Cromarty and +Dornoch Firths, a few miles to the west of the village of Invergordon; +and after spending several hours in toiling across dreary moors, +unopened at the time by any public road, we took our noon-day +refreshment in an uninhabited valley, among broken cottage walls, with a +few furrowed patches stretching out around us, green amid the waste. One +of the best swordsmen in Ross had once lived there; but both he and his +race had been lost to Scotland in consequence of the compelled +emigration so common in the Highlands during the last two ages; and +Cousin George came strongly out against the lairds. The chill winter +night had fallen on the dark hills and alder-skirted river of +Strathcarron, as, turning from off the road that winds along the Kyle of +Dornoch, we entered its bleak gorge; and as the shepherd's dwelling lay +high up the valley, where the lofty sides approach so near, and rise so +abruptly, that for the whole winter quarter the sun never falls on the +stream below, we had still some ten or twelve miles of broken road +before us. The moon, in her first quarter, hung on the edge of the +hills, dimly revealing their rough outline; while in a recess of the +stream, far beneath, we could see the torch of some adventurous fisher, +now gleaming red on rock and water, now suddenly disappearing, eclipsed +by the overhanging brushwood. It was late ere we reached the shepherd's +cottage--a dark-raftered, dimly-lighted erection of turf and stone. The +weather for several weeks before had been rainy and close, and the +flocks of the inmate had been thinned by the common scourge of the +sheep-farmer at such seasons on damp, boggy farms. The beams were laden +with skins besmeared with blood, that dangled overhead to catch the +conservative influences of the smoke; and on a rude plank-table below, +there rose two tall pyramids of braxy-mutton, heaped up each on a +corn-riddle. The shepherd--a Highlander of large proportions, but hard, +and thin, and worn by the cares and toils of at least sixty winters--sat +moodily beside the fire. The state of his flocks was not cheering; and, +besides, he had seen a vision of late, he said, that filled his mind +with strange forebodings. He had gone out after nightfall on the +previous evening to a dank hollow, in which many of his flock had died. +The rain had ceased a few hours before, and a smart frost had set in, +and filled the whole valley with a wreath of silvery vapour, dimly +lighted by the thin fragment of a moon that appeared as if resting on +the hill-top. The wreath stretched out its grey folds beneath him--for +he had climbed half-way up the acclivity--when suddenly the figure of a +man, formed as of heated metal--the figure of what seemed to be a brazen +man brought to a red heat in a furnace--sprang up out of the darkness; +and, after stalking over the surface of the fog for a few brief seconds, +during which, however, it had traversed the greater part of the valley, +it as suddenly disappeared, leaving an evanescent trail of flame behind +it. There could be little doubt that the old shepherd had merely seen +one of those shooting lights that in mountain districts so frequently +startle the night traveller; but the apparition now filled his whole +mind, as one vouchsafed from the spiritual world, and of strange and +frightful portent:-- + + + "A meteor of the night of distant years, + That flashed unnoticed, save by wrinkled eld, + Musing at midnight upon prophecies." + + +I spent the greater part of the following day with my cousin in the +forest of Corrybhalgan, and saw two large herds of red deer on the +hills. The forest was but a shred of its former self; but the venerable +trees still rose thick and tall in some of the more inaccessible +hollows; and it was interesting to mark, where they encroached furthest +on the open waste, how thoroughly they lost the ordinary character of +the Scotch fir, and how, sending out from their short gnarled boles +immense branches, some two or three feet over the soil, they somewhat +resembled in their squat, dense proportions, and rounded contours, +gigantic bee-hives. It was of itself worth while undertaking a journey +to the Highlands, to witness these last remains of that arboreous +condition of our country to which the youngest of our geological +formations, the Peat Mosses, bear such significant witness; and which +still, largely existing as the condition of the northern countries of +continental Europe, "remains to attest," as Humboldt well remarks, "more +than even the records of history, the youthfulness of our civilisation." +I revisited at this time, before returning home, the Barony of Gruids; +but winter had not improved it: its humble features, divested of their +summer complexion, had assumed an expression of blank wretchedness; and +hundreds of its people, appalled at the time by a summons of ejection, +looked quite as depressed and miserable as its scenery. + +Finlay and my friend of the Doocot Cave were no longer within reach; +but during this winter I was much in the company of a young man about +five years my senior, who was of the true stuff of which friends are +made, and to whom I became much attached. I had formed some acquaintance +with him about five years before, on his coming to the place from the +neighbouring parish of Nigg, to be apprenticed to a house-painter, who +lived a few doors from my mother's. But there was at first too great a +disparity between us for friendship; he was a tall lad, and I a wild +boy; and, though occasionally admitted into his sanctum--a damp little +room in an outhouse in which he slept, and in his leisure hours made +water-colour drawings and verses--it was but as an occasional visitor, +who, having a rude taste for literature and the fine arts, was just +worthy of being encouraged in this way. My year of toil had, however, +wrought wonders for me: it had converted me into a sober young man; and +William Ross now seemed to find scarce less pleasure in my company than +I did in his. Poor William! his name must be wholly unfamiliar to the +reader; and yet he had that in him which ought to have made it a known +one. He was a lad of genius--drew truthfully, had a nice sense of the +beautiful, and possessed the true poetic faculty; but he lacked health +and spirits, and was naturally of a melancholy temperament, and +diffident of himself. He was at this time a thin, pale lad, fair-haired, +with a clear waxen complexion, flat chest, and stooping figure; and +though he lasted considerably longer than could have been anticipated +from his appearance, in seven years after he was in his grave. He was +unfortunate in his parents; his mother, though of a devout family of the +old Scottish type, was an aberrant specimen;--she had fallen in early +youth, and had subsequently married an ignorant, half-imbecile labourer, +with whom she passed a life of poverty and unhappiness; and of this +unpromising marriage William was the eldest child. It was certainly not +from either parent he derived his genius. His maternal grandmother and +aunt were, however, excellent Christian women of superior intelligence, +who supported themselves by keeping a girls' school in the parish; and +William, who had been brought at an early age to live with them, and was +naturally a gentle-spirited, docile boy, had the advantage, in +consequence, of having that most important lesson of any education--the +lesson of a good example at home--set well before him. His boyhood had +been that of the poet: he had loved to indulge in his day-dreams in the +solitude of a deep wood beside his grandmother's cottage; and had +learned to write verses and draw landscapes in a rural locality in which +no one had ever written verses or drawn landscapes before. And finally, +as, in the north of Scotland, in those primitive times, the nearest +approach to an artist was a house-painter, William was despatched to +Cromarty, when he had grown tall enough for the work, to cultivate his +natural taste for the fine arts, in papering rooms and lobbies, and in +painting railings and wheel-barrows. There are, I believe, a few +instances on record of house-painters rising to be artists: the history +of the late Mr. William Bonnar, of the Royal Academy of Edinburgh, +furnishes one of these; but the fact that the cases are not more +numerous serves, I fear, to show how much oftener a turn for drawing is +a merely imitative, than an original, self-derived faculty. Almost all +the apprentices of our neighbour the house-painter had their turn for +drawing decided enough to influence their choice of a profession; and +what was so repeatedly the case in Cromarty must, I should think, have +been the case in many similar places; but of how few of these embryo +limners have the works appeared in even a provincial exhibition-room! + +At the time my intimacy with William became most close, both his +grandmother and aunt were dead, and he was struggling with great +difficulty through the last year of his apprenticeship. As his master +supplied him with but food and lodging, his linen was becoming scant, +and his Sabbath suit shabby; and he was looking forward to the time +when he should be at liberty to work for himself, with all the anxiety +of the voyager who fears that his meagre stock of provisions and water +may wholly fail him ere he reaches port. I of course could not assist +him. I was an apprentice like himself, and had not the command of a +sixpence; nor, had the case been otherwise, would he in all probability +have consented to accept of my help; but he lacked spirits as much as +money, and in that particular my society did him good. We used to beat +over all manner of subjects together, especially poetry and the fine +arts; and though we often differed, our differences served only to knit +us the more. He, for instance, deemed the "Minstrel" of Beattie the most +perfect of English poems; but though he liked Dryden's "Virgil" well +enough, he could find no poetry whatever in the "Absalom and Ahithophel" +of Dry den; whereas I liked both the "Minstrel" and the "Ahithophel," +and, indeed, could hardly say, unlike as they were in complexion and +character, which of the two I read oftenest or admired most. Again, +among the prose writers, Addison was his especial favourite, and Swift +he detested; whereas I liked Addison and Swift almost equally well, and +passed without sense of incongruity, from the Vision of Mirza, or the +paper on Westminster Abbey, to the true account of the death of +Partridge, or the Tale of a Tub. If, however, he could wonder at the +latitudinarian laxity of my taste, there was at least one special +department in which I could marvel quite as much at the incomprehensible +breadth of his. Nature had given me, in despite of the phrenologists, +who find music indicated by two large protuberances on the corners of my +forehead, a deplorably defective ear. My uncle Sandy, who was profoundly +skilled in psalmody, had done his best to make a singer of me; but he +was at length content to stop short, after a world of effort, when he +had, as he thought, brought me to distinguish St. George's from any +other psalm-tune. On the introduction, however, of a second tune into +the parish church that repeated the line at the end of the stanza, even +this poor fragment of ability deserted me; and to this day--though I +rather like the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection +to drums in particular--doubts do occasionally come across me whether +there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, +on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed +for himself a fife and clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he +succeeded in discoursing sweet music; and addressing himself at another +and later period to both the principles and practice of the science, he +became one of the best flute-players in the district. Notwithstanding my +dulness of ear, I do cherish a pleasing recollection of the sweet sounds +that used to issue from his little room in the outhouse, every milder +evening as I approached, and of the soothed and tranquil state in which +I ever found him on these occasions as I entered. I could not understand +his music, but I saw that, mentally at least, though, I fear, not +physically--for the respiratory organs were weak--it did him great good. + +There was, however, one special province in which our tastes thoroughly +harmonized. We were both of us, if not alike favoured, at least equally +devoted, lovers of the wild and beautiful in nature; and many a +moonlight walk did we take together this winter among the woods and +rocks of the hill. It was once said of Thomson, by one who was himself +not at all morbidly poetic in his feelings, that "he could not have +viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye." It might at least +be said of my friend, that he never saw a piece of fine or striking +scenery without being deeply moved by it. As for the mere candles, if +placed on a deal dresser or shop-counter, they might have failed to +touch him; but if burning in some _lyke_-wake beside the dead, or in +some vaulted crypt or lonely rock-cave, he also could not have looked +other than poetically on them. I have seen him awed into deep solemnity, +in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered down upon us over the +hill, red and broad, and cloud-encircled, through the interstices of +some clump of dark firs; and have observed him become suddenly silent, +as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and +saw far beneath, the slim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like +a narrow strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the +steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in +gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had not been equal +to my own, but he was acquainted with at least one class of books of +which I knew scarce anything;--he had carefully studied Hogarth's +"Analysis of Beauty," Fresnoy's "Art of Painting," Gessner's "Letters," +the "Lectures of Sir Joshua Reynolds," and several other works of a +similar kind; and in all the questions of criticism that related to +external form, the effects of light and shade, and the influences of the +meteoric media, I found him a high authority. He had a fine eye for +detecting the peculiar features which gave individuality and character +to a landscape--those features, as he used to say, which the artist or +poet should seize and render prominent, while, at the same time, lest +they should be lost as in a mob, he softened down the others; and, +recognising him as a master in this department of characteristic +selection, I delighted to learn in his school--by far the best of its +kind I ever attended. I was able, however, in part to repay him, by +introducing him to many an interesting spot among the rocks, or to +retired dells and hollows in the woods, which, from his sedentary +habits, he would scarce ever have discovered for himself. I taught him +too, to light fires after nightfall in the caves, that we might watch +the effects of the strong lights and deep shadows in scenes so wild; and +I still vividly remember the delight he experienced, when, after +kindling up in the day-time a strong blaze at the mouth of the Doocot +Cave, which filled the recess within with smoke, we forced our way +inwards through the cloud, to mark the appearance of the sea and the +opposite land seen through a medium so dense, and saw, on turning round, +the landscape strangely enwrapped "in the dun hues of earthquake and +eclipse." We have visited, after nightfall, the glades of the +surrounding woods together, to listen to the night breeze, as it swept +sullenly along the pine-tops; and, after striking a light in the old +burial vault of a solitary churchyard, we have watched the ray falling +on the fissured walls and ropy damp and mould; or, on setting on fire a +few withered leaves, have seen the smoke curling slowly upwards, through +a square opening in the roof, into the dark sky. William's mind was not +of the scientific cast. He had, however, acquired some knowledge of the +mathematics, and some skill both in architecture and in the anatomy of +the human skeleton and muscles; while of perspective he perhaps knew +well-nigh as much as was known at the time. I remember he preferred the +Treatise on this art, of Ferguson the astronomer and mechanician, to any +other; and used to say that the twenty years spent by the philosopher as +a painter were fully redeemed, though they had produced no good +pictures, by his little work on Perspective alone. My friend had ere +this time given up the writing of verses very much, because he had +learned to know what verses ought to be, and failed to satisfy himself +with his own; and ere his death, I saw him resign in succession his +flute and pencil, and yield up all the hopes he had once cherished of +being known. But his weak health affected his spirits, and prostrated +the energies of a mind originally rather delicate than strong. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + "Others apart sat on a hill retired, + In thoughts more elevate; and reasoned high + Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate-- + Fixed fate, freewill, foreknowledge absolute; + And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."--MILTON. + + +Spring came on, and brought with it its round of labour--quarrying, +building, and stone-cutting; but labour had now no terrors for me: I +wrought hard during the hours allotted to toil, and was content; and +read, wrote, or walked, during the hours that were properly my own, and +was happy. Early in May, however, we had finished all the work for which +my master had previously contracted; and as trade was unusually dull at +the time, he could procure no further contracts, and the squad was +thrown out of employment. I rushed to the woods and rocks, and got on +with my lessons in geology and natural science; but my master, who had +no lessons to learn, wearied sadly of doing nothing; and at length, very +unwillingly--for he had enacted the part of the employer, though on a +small scale, for a full quarter of a century--he set himself to procure +work as a journeyman. He had another apprentice at the time; and he, +availing himself of the opportunity which the old man's inability of +employing him furnished, quitted his service, and commenced work on his +own behalf--a step to which, though the position of a journeyman's +apprentice seemed rather an anomalous one, I could not see my way. And +so, as work turned up for both master and apprentice at a place about +twenty miles distant from Cromarty, I set out with him, to make trial, +for the first time, of the sort of life that is spent in bothies and +barracks. Our work was to consist, I was informed, of building and +hewing at an extensive farm-steading on the banks of the river Conon, +which one of the wealthier proprietors of the district was getting built +for himself, not on contract, but by the old mode of employing +operatives on day's wages; and my master was to be permitted to rate as +a full journeyman, though now considerably in his decline as a workman, +on condition that the services of his apprentice should be rated so much +lower than their actual value as to render master and man regarded as +one lot--a fair bargain to the employer, and somewhat more. The +arrangement was not quite a flattering one for me; but I acquiesced in +it without remark, and set out with my master for Conon-side. + +The evening sun was gleaming delightfully as we neared the scene of our +labours, on the broad reaches of the Conon, and lighting up the fine +woods and noble hills beyond. It would, I knew, be happiness to toil for +some ten hours or so per day in so sweet a district, and then to find +the evening all my own; but on reaching the work, we were told that we +would require to set out in the morning for a place about four miles +further to the west, where there were a few workmen engaged in building +a jointure-house for the lady of a Ross-shire proprietor lately dead, +and which lay off the river in a rather unpromising direction. And so, a +little after sun-rise, we had to take the road with our tools slung +across our backs, and before six o'clock we reached the rising +jointure-house, and set to work. The country around was somewhat bare +and dreary--a scene of bogs and moors, overlooked by a range of tame +heathy hills; but in our immediate neighbourhood there was a picturesque +little scene--rather a vignette than a picture--that in some degree +redeemed the general deformity. Two meal-mills--the one small and old, +the other larger and more modern--were placed beside each other, on +ground so unequal, that, seen in front, the smaller seemed perched on +the top of the larger; a group of tall graceful larches rose immediately +beside the lower building, and hung their slim branches over the huge +wheel; while a few aged ash-trees that encircled the mill-pond, which, +in sending its waters down the hill, supplied both wheels in succession, +sprang up immediately beside the upper erection, and shot their branches +over its roof. On closing our labours for the evening, we repaired to +the old mansion-house, about half a mile away, in which the dowager lady +for whom we wrought still continued to reside, and where we expected to +be accommodated, like the other workmen, with beds for the night. We had +not been expected, however, and there were no beds provided for us; but +as the Highland carpenter who had engaged to execute the woodwork of the +new building had an entire bed to himself, we were told we might, if we +pleased, lie three a-bed with him. But though the carpenter was, I +daresay, a most respectable man, and a thorough Celt, I had observed +during the day that he was miserably affected by a certain skin disease, +which, as it was more prevalent in the past of Highland history than +even at this time, must have rendered his ancestors of old very +formidable, even without their broadswords; and so I determined on no +account to sleep with him. I gave my master fair warning, by telling him +what I had seen; but uncle David, always insensible to danger, conducted +himself on the occasion as in the sinking boat or under the falling +bank, and so went to bed with the carpenter; while I, stealing out, got +into the upper story of an out-house; and, flinging myself down in my +clothes on the floor, on a heap of straw, was soon fast asleep. I was, +however, not much accustomed at the time to so rough a bed: every time I +turned me in my lair, the strong, stiff straw rustled against my face; +and about midnight I awoke. + +I rose to a little window which opened upon a dreary moor, and commanded +a view in the distance, of a ruinous chapel and solitary burying-ground, +famous in the traditions of the district as the chapel and +burying-ground of Gillie-christ. Dr. Johnson relates, in his "Journey," +that when eating, on one occasion, his dinner in Skye to the music of +the bagpipe, he was informed by a gentleman, "that in some remote time, +the Macdonalds of Glengarry having been injured or offended by the +inhabitants of Culloden, and resolving to have justice, or vengeance, +they came to Culloden on a Sunday, when, finding their enemies at +worship, they shut them up in the church, which they set on fire; and +this, said he, is the tune that the piper played while they were +burning." Culloden, however, was not the scene of the atrocity: it was +the Mackenzies of Ord that their fellow-Christians and +brother-Churchmen, the Macdonalds of Glengarry, succeeded in converting +into animal charcoal, when the poor people were engaged, like good +Catholics, in attending mass; and in this old chapel of Gillie-christ +was the experiment performed. The Macdonalds, after setting fire to the +building, held fast the doors until the last of the Mackenzies of Ord +had perished in the flames; and then, pursued by the Mackenzies of +Brahan, they fled into their own country, to glory ever after in the +greatness of the feat. The evening was calm and still, but dark for the +season, for it was now near mid-summer; and every object had disappeared +in the gloom, save the outlines of a ridge of low hills that rose beyond +the moor; but I could determine where the chapel and churchyard lay; and +great was my astonishment to see a light flickering amid the +grave-stones and the ruins. At one time seen, at another hid, like the +revolving lantern of a lighthouse, it seemed to be passing round and +round the building; and, as I listened, I could hear distinctly what +appeared to be a continuous screaming of most unearthly sound, +proceeding from evidently the same spot as the twinkle of the light. +What could be the meaning of such an apparition, with such +accompaniments--the time of its appearance midnight--the place a +solitary burying-ground? I was in the Highlands: was there truth, after +all, in the many floating Highland stories of spectral dead-lights and +wild supernatural sounds, seen and heard by nights in lonely places of +sepulture, when some sudden death was near? I did feel my blood run +somewhat cold, for I had not yet passed the credulous time of life--and +had some thoughts of stealing down to my master's bedside, to be within +reach of the human voice, when I saw the light quitting the churchyard, +and coming downwards across the moor in a straight line, though tossed +about in the dead calm, in many a wave and flourish; and further, I +could ascertain, that what I had deemed a persistent screaming was in +reality a continuous singing, carried on at the pitch of a powerful +though somewhat cracked voice. In a moment after, one of the servant +girls of the mansion-house came rushing out half-dressed to the door of +an outer-building in which the workmen and the farm-servant lay, and +summoned them immediately to rise. Mad Bell had again broke out, she +said, and would set them on fire a second time. + +The men rose, and, as they appeared at the door, I joined them; but on +striking out a few yards into the moor, we found the maniac already in +the custody of two men, who had seized and were dragging her towards her +cottage, a miserable hovel, about half a mile away. She never once spoke +to us, but continued singing, though in a lower and more subdued tone of +voice than before, a Gaelic song. We reached her hut, and, making use of +her own light, we entered. A chain of considerable length, attached by a +stopple in one of the Highland _couples_ of the erection, showed that +her neighbours had been compelled on former occasions to abridge her +liberty; and one of the men, in now making use of it, so wound it round +her person as to bind her down, instead of giving her the scope of the +apartment, to the damp uneven floor. A very damp and uneven floor it +was. There were crevices in the roof above, which gave free access to +the elements; and the turf walls, perilously bulged by the leakage in +several places, were green with mould. One of the masons and I +simultaneously interfered. It would never do, we said, to pin down a +human creature in that way to the damp earth. Why not give her what the +length of the chain permitted--the full range of the room? If we did +that, replied the man, she would be sure to set herself free before +morning, and we would just have to rise and bind her again. But we +resolved, we rejoined, whatever might happen, that she should _not_ be +tied down in that way to the filthy floor; and ultimately we succeeded +in carrying our point. The song ceased for a moment: the maniac turned +round, presenting full to the light the strongly-marked, energetic +features of a woman of about fifty-five; and, surveying us with a keen, +scrutinizing glance, altogether unlike that of the idiot, she +emphatically repeated the sacred text, "Blessed are the merciful, for +they shall obtain mercy." She then began singing, in a low, mournful +tone, an old Scotch ballad; and, as we left the cottage, we could hear +her voice gradually heightening as we retired, until it had at length +attained to its former pitch and wildness of tone. + +Before daybreak the maniac succeeded in setting herself free; but the +paroxysm of the fit had meanwhile passed over; and when she visited me +next morning at the place where I was hewing--a little apart from the +other workmen, who were all engaged in building on the walls--save for +the strongly-marked features, I would scarce have recognised her. She +was neatly dressed, though her gown was neither fine nor new; her clean +white cap was nicely arranged; and her air seemed to be rather that of +the respectable tradesman's wife or daughter, than of the ordinary +country woman. For some little time she stood beside me without +speaking, and then somewhat abruptly asked,--"What makes _you_ work as a +mason?" I made some commonplace reply; but it failed to satisfy her. +"All your fellows are real masons," she said; "but you are merely in the +disguise of a mason; and I have come to consult you about the deep +matters of the soul." The matters she had come to inquire regarding were +really very deep indeed; she had, I found, carefully read Flavel's +"Treatise on the Soul of Man"--a volume which, fortunately for my +credit, I also had perused; and we were soon deep together in the rather +bad metaphysics promulgated on the subject by the Schoolmen, and +republished by the divine. It seemed clear, she said, that every human +soul was created--not transmitted--created, mayhap, at the time when it +began to be; but if so, how, or on what principle did it come under the +influence of the Fall? I merely remarked, in reply, that she was of +course acquainted with the views of the old theologians--_such as +Flavel_--men who really knew as much about such things as could be +known, and perhaps a little more: was she not satisfied with them? Not +dissatisfied, she said; but she wanted more light. Could a soul not +derived from our first parents be rendered vile simply by being put into +a body derived from them? One of the passages in Flavel, on this special +point, had luckily struck me, from its odd obscurity of expression, and +I was able to quote it in nearly the original words. You know, I +remarked, that a great authority on the question "declined confidently +to affirm that the moral infection came by way of physical agency, as a +rusty scabbard infects and defiles a bright sword when sheathed therein: +it might be," he thought, "by way of natural concomitancy, as Estius +will have it; or, to speak as Dr. Reynolds doth, by way of ineffable +resultancy and emanation." As this was perfectly unintelligible, it +seemed to satisfy my new friend. I added, however, that, like herself, I +was waiting for more light on the difficulty, and might set myself to it +in right earnest, when I found it fully demonstrated that the Creator +could not, or did not, make man equally the descendant in soul as in +body of the original progenitors of the race. I believed, with the great +Mr. Locke, that he could do it; nor was I aware he had anywhere said +that what he could do in the matter he had not done. Such was the first +of many strange conversations with the maniac, who, with all her sad +brokenness of mind, was one of the most intellectual women I ever knew. +Humble as were the circumstances in which I found her, her brother, who +was at this time about two years dead, had been one of the best-known +ministers of the Scottish Church in the Northern Highlands. To quote +from an affectionate notice by the editor of a little volume of his +sermons, published a few years ago--the Rev. Mr. Mackenzie of North +Leith--"he was a profound divine, an eloquent preacher, a +deeply-experienced Christian, and, withal, a classical scholar, a +popular poet, a man of original genius, and eminently a man of prayer." +And his poor sister Isabel, though grievously vexed at times by a dire +insanity, seemed to have received from nature powers mayhap not inferior +to his. + +We were not always engaged with the old divines; Isabel's tenacious +memory was stored with the traditions of the district; and many an +anecdote could she tell of old chieftains, forgotten on the lands which +had once been their own, and of Highland poets, whose songs had been +sung for the last time. The story of the "Raid of Gillie-christ" has +been repeatedly in print since I first heard it from her: it forms the +basis of the late Sir Thomas Dick Lander's powerful tale of "Allan with +the Red Jacket;" and I have seen it in its more ordinary traditionary +dress, in the columns of the _Inverness Courier_. But at this time it +was new to me; and on no occasion could it have lost less by the +narrator. She was herself a Mackenzie; and her eyes flashed a wild fire +when she spoke of the barbarous and brutal Macdonalds, and of the +measured march and unfaltering notes of their piper outside the burning +chapel, when her perishing ancestors were shrieking in their agony +within. She was acquainted also with the resembling story of that Cave +of Eigg, in which a body of the Macdonalds themselves, consisting of +men, women, and children--the entire population of the island--had been +suffocated wholesale by the Macleods of Skye; and I have heard from her +more good sense on the subject of the Highland character "ere the gospel +changed it," as illustrated by these passages in their history, than +from some Highlanders sane enough on other matters, but carried away by +a too indiscriminating respect for the wild courage and half-instinctive +fidelity of the old race. The ancient Highlanders were bold, faithful +dogs, she has said, ready to die for their masters, and prepared to do, +at their bidding, like other dogs, the most cruel and wicked actions; +and as dogs often were they treated; nay, even still, after religion had +made them men (as if condemned to suffer for the sins of their parents), +they were frequently treated as dogs. The pious martyrs of the south had +contended in God's behalf; whereas the poor Highlanders of the north had +but contended in behalf of their chiefs; and so, while God had been kind +to the descendants of _His_ servants, the chiefs had been very unkind to +the descendants of theirs. From excellent sense, however, in these +conversations, my new companion used often to wander into deplorable +insanity. Her midnight visits to the old chapel of Gillie-christ were +made, she said, in order that she might consult her father in her +difficulties; and the good man, though often silent for nights together, +rarely failed to soothe and counsel her from the depths of his quiet +grave, on every occasion when her unhappiness became extreme. It was +acting on his advice, however, that she had set fire to a door that had +for a time excluded her from the burying-ground, and burnt it down. She +had been married in early life; and I have rarely heard anything wilder +or more ingenious than the account she gave of a quarrel with her +husband, that terminated in their separation. + +After living happily with him for several years, she all at once, she +said, became most miserable, and everything in their household went on +ill. But though her husband seemed to have no true conception of the +cause of their new-born misery, she had. He used, from motives of +economy, to keep a pig, which, when converted into bacon, was always +useful in the family; and an occasional ham of the animal now and then +found its way to her brother's manse, as a sort of friendly +acknowledgment of the many good things received from him. One wretched +pig, however--a little black thing, only a few weeks old--which her +husband had purchased at a fair, was, she soon discovered, possessed by +an evil spirit, that had a strange power of quitting the animal to do +mischief in her dwelling, and an ability of not only rendering her +fearfully unhappy, but even of getting at times into her husband. The +husband himself, poor blinded man! could see nothing of all this; nor +would he believe _her_, who could and did see it; nor yet could she +convince him that it was decidedly his duty to get rid of the pig. She +was not satisfied that she herself had a clear right to kill the +creature: it was undoubtedly her husband's property, not hers; but could +she only succeed in placing it in circumstances in which it might be +free either to kill itself or not, and were it, in these circumstances, +to destroy itself, she was sure all the better divines would acquit her +of aught approaching to moral guilt in the transaction; and the relieved +household would be free from both the evil spirit and the little pig. +The mill-pond was situated immediately beside her dwelling: its steep +sides, which were walled with stone, were unscaleable by at least little +pigs; and among the aged ashes which sprang up immediately at its edge, +there was one that shot out a huge bough, like a bent arm, directly over +it, far beyond the stonework, so that the boys of the neighbourhood used +to take their seat on it, and fish for little trout that sometimes found +their way into the pond. On the projecting branch one day, when her +husband's back was turned, and there was no one to see or interfere, she +placed the pig. It stood for a while: there was no doubt, therefore, it +_could_ stand; but, unwilling to stand any longer, it +sprawled--slipped--fell--dropped into the water, in short--and +ultimately, as it could not make its way up the bank, was drowned. And +thus ended the pig. It would seem, however, as if the evil spirit had +got into her husband instead--so extreme was his indignation at the +transaction. He would accept of neither apology nor explanation; and, +unable of course to live any longer under the same roof with a man so +unreasonable, she took the opportunity, when he was quitting that part +of the country for employment at a distance, to remain behind in her old +cottage--the same in which she at that time resided. Such was the +maniac's account of her quarrel with her husband; and, when listening to +men chopping little familiar logic on one of the profoundest mysteries +of Revelation--a mystery which, once received as an article of faith, +serves to unlock many a difficulty, but which is itself wholly +irreducible by the human intellect--I have been sometimes involuntarily +led to think of her ingenious but not very sound argumentation on the +fall of the pig. It is dangerous to attempt explaining, in the +theological province, what in reality cannot be explained. Some weak +abortion of the human reason is always substituted, in the attempt, for +some profound mystery in the moral government of God; and men +ill-grounded in the faith are led to confound the palpable abortion with +the inscrutable mystery, and are injured in consequence. + +I succeeded in getting a bed in the mansion-house, without, like Marsyas +of old, perilling my skin; and though there was but little of interest +in the immediate neighbourhood, and not much to be enjoyed within +doors--for I could procure neither books nor congenial +companionship--with the assistance of my pencil and sketch-book I got +over my leisure hours tolerably well. My new friend Isabel would have +given me as much of her conversation as I liked; for there was many a +point on which she had to consult me, and many a mystery to state, and +secret to communicate; but, though always interested in her company, I +was also always pained, and invariably quitted her, after each +lengthened _tete-a-tete_, in a state of low spirits, which I found it +difficult to shake off. There seems to be something peculiarly +unwholesome in the society of a strong-minded maniac; and so I contrived +as much as possible--not a little, at times, to her mortification--to +avoid her. For hours together, however, I have seen her perfectly sane; +and, on these occasions, she used to speak much about her brother, for +whom she entertained a high reverence, and gave me many anecdotes +regarding him, not uninteresting in themselves, which she told +remarkably well. Some of these my memory still retains. "There were two +classes of men," she has said, "for whom he had a special +regard--Christian men of consistent character; and men who, though they +made no profession of religion, were honest in their dealings, and of +kindly dispositions. And with people of this latter kind he used to have +a great deal of kindly intercourse, cheerful enough at times--for he +could both make a joke and take one--but which usually did his friends +good in the end. So long as my father and my mother lived, he used to +travel across the country once every year to pay them a visit; and he +was accompanied, on one of these journeys, by one of this less religious +class of his parishioners, who had, however, a great regard for him, and +whom he liked, in turn, for his blunt honesty, and obliging disposition. +They had baited for some time at a house in the outer skirts of my +brother's parish, where there was a child to baptize, and where, I fear, +Donald must have got an extra dram; for he was very argumentative all +the evening after; and finding he could not agree with my brother on any +one subject, he suffered him to shoot a-head for a few hundred yards, +and did not again come up with him, until, in passing through a thick +clump of natural wood, he found him standing, lost in thought, before a +singularly-shaped tree. Donald had never seen such a strange-looking +tree in all his days before. The lower part of it was twisted in and +out, and backwards and forwards, like an ill-made cork-screw; while the +higher shot straight upwards, direct as a line; and its taper top +seemed like a finger pointing at the sky. 'Come, tell me, Donald,' said +my brother, 'what you think this tree is like?' 'Indeed, I kenna, Mr. +Lachlan,' replied Donald; 'but if you let me take that straight bit aff +the tap o't, it will be gey an' like the _worm_ o' a whisky still.' 'But +I cannot want the straight bit,' said my brother; 'the very pith and +point of my comparison lies in the straight bit. One of the old fathers +would perhaps have said, Donald, that that tree resembled the course of +the Christian. His early progress has turns and twists in it, just like +the lower part of that tree; one temptation draws him to the +left--another to the right: his upward course is a crooked one; but it +is an upward course for all that; for he has, like the tree, the +principle of sky-directed growth within him: the disturbing influences +weaken as grace strengthens, and appetite and passion decay; and so the +early part of his career is not more like the warped and twisted trunk +of that tree, than his latter years resemble its taper top. He shoots +off heavenward in a straight line.'" Such is a specimen of the anecdotes +of this poor woman. I saw her once afterwards, though for only a short +time; when she told me that, though people could not understand _us_, +there was meaning in both her thoughts and in mine; and some years +subsequently, when I was engaged as a journeyman mason in the south of +Scotland, she walked twenty miles to pay my mother a visit, and stayed +with her for several days. Her death was a melancholy one. When fording +the river Conon in one of her wilder moods, she was swept away by the +stream and drowned, and her body cast upon the bank a day or two after. + +Our work finished at this place, my master and I returned on a Saturday +evening to Conon-side, where we found twenty-four workmen crowded in a +rusty corn-kiln, open from gable to gable, and not above thirty feet in +length. A row of rude beds, formed of undressed slabs, ran along the +sides; and against one of the gables there blazed a line of fires, with +what are known as masons' setting-irons, stuck into the stonework +behind, for suspending over them the pots used in cooking the food of +the squad. The scene, as we entered, was one of wild confusion. A few of +the soberer workmen were engaged in "baking and firing" oaten cakes, and +a few more occupied, with equal sobriety, in cooking their evening +porridge; but in front of the building there was a wild party of +apprentices, who were riotously endeavouring to prevent a Highland +shepherd from driving his flock past them, by shaking their aprons at +the affrighted animals; and a party equally bent on amusement inside +were joining with burlesque vehemence in a song which one of the men, +justly proud of his musical talents, had just struck up. Suddenly the +song ceased, and with wild uproar a bevy of some eight or ten workmen +burst out into the green in full pursuit of a squat little fellow, who +had, they said, insulted the singer. The cry rose wild and high, "A +ramming! a ramming!" The little fellow was seized and thrown down; and +five men--one holding his head, and one stationed at each arm and +leg--proceeded to execute on his body the stern behests of barrack-law. +He was poised like an ancient battering-ram, and driven endlong against +the wall of the kiln,--that important part of his person coming in +violent contact with the masonry, "where," according to Butler, "a kick +hurts honour" very much. After the third blow, however, he was released, +and the interrupted song went on as before. I was astonished, and +somewhat dismayed, by this specimen of barrack-life; but, getting +quietly inside the building, I succeeded in cooking for my uncle and +myself some porridge over one of the unoccupied fires, and then stole +off, as early as I could, to my lair in a solitary hay-loft--for there +was no room for us in the barrack--where, by the judicious use of a +little sulphur and mercury, I succeeded in freeing my master from the +effects of the strange bed-fellowship which our recent misery had made, +and preserving myself from infection. The following Sabbath was a day +of quiet rest; and I commenced the labours of the week, disposed to +think that my lot, though rather a rough one, was not altogether +unendurable; and that, even were it worse than it was, it would be at +once wise and manly, seeing that winter would certainly come, cheerfully +to acquiesce in and bear up under it. + +I had, in truth, entered a school altogether new--at times, as I have +just shown, a singularly noisy and uproarious one, for it was a school +without master or monitor; but its occasional lessons were, +notwithstanding, eminently worthy of being scanned. All know that there +exists such a thing as professional character. On some men, indeed, +nature imprints so strongly the stamp of individuality, that the feebler +stamp of circumstance and position fails to impress them. Such cases, +however, must always be regarded as exceptional. On the average masses +of mankind, the special employments which they pursue, or the kinds of +business which they transact, have the effect of moulding them into +distinct classes, each of which bears an artificially induced character +peculiarly its own. Clergymen, as such, differ from merchants and +soldiers, and all three from lawyers and physicians. Each of these +professions has long borne in our literature, and in common opinion, a +character so clearly appreciable by the public generally, that, when +truthfully reproduced in some new work of fiction, or exemplified by +some transaction in real life, it is at once recognised as marked by the +genuine class-traits and peculiarities. But the professional +characteristics descend much lower in the scale than is usually +supposed. There is scarce a trade or department of manual labour that +does not induce its own set of peculiarities--peculiarities which, +though less within the range of the observation of men in the habit of +recording what they remark, are not less real than those of the man of +physic or of law. The barber is as unlike the weaver, and the tailor as +unlike both, as the farmer is unlike the soldier, or as either farmer +or soldier is unlike the merchant, lawyer, or minister. And it is only +on the same sort of principle that all men, when seen from the top of a +lofty tower, whether they be tall or short, seem of the same stature, +that these differences escape the notice of men in the higher walks. + +Between the workmen that pass sedentary lives within doors, such as +weavers and tailors, and those who labour in the open air, such as +masons and ploughmen, there exists a grand generic difference. Sedentary +mechanics are usually less contented than laborious ones; and as they +almost always work in parties, and as their comparatively light, though +often long and wearily-plied employments, do not so much strain their +respiratory organs but that they can keep up an interchange of idea when +at their toils, they are generally much better able to state their +grievances, and much more fluent in speculating on their causes. They +develop more freely than the laborious out-of-door workers of the +country, and present, as a class, a more intelligent aspect. On the +other hand, when the open-air worker does so overcome his difficulties +as to get fairly developed, he is usually of a fresher or more vigorous +type than the sedentary one. Burns, Hogg, Allan Cunningham, are the +literary representatives of the order; and it will be found that they +stand considerably in advance of the Thoms, Bloomfields, and Tannahills, +that represent the sedentary workmen. The silent, solitary, hard-toiled +men, if nature has put no better stuff in them than that of which +stump-orators and Chartist lecturers are made, remain silent, repressed +by their circumstances; but if of a higher grade, and if they once do +get their mouths fairly opened, they speak with power, and bear with +them into our literature the freshness of the green earth and the +freedom of the open sky. + +The specific peculiarities induced by particular professions are not +less marked than the generic ones. How different, for instance, the +character of a sedentary tailor, as such, from that of the equally +sedentary barber! Two imperfectly-taught young lads, of not more than +the average intellect, are apprenticed, the one to the hair-dresser, the +other to the fashionable clothes-maker of a large village. The barber +has to entertain his familiar round of customers, when operating upon +their heads and beards. He must have no controversies with them; that +might be disagreeable, and might affect his command of the scissors or +razor; but he is expected to communicate to them all he knows of the +gossip of the place; and as each customer supplies him with a little, he +of course comes to know more than anybody else. And as his light and +easy work lays no stress on his respiration, in course of time he learns +to be a fast and fluent talker, with a great appetite for news, but +little given to dispute. He acquires, too, if his round of customers be +good, a courteous manner; and if they be in large proportion +Conservatives, he becomes, in all probability, a Conservative too. The +young tailor goes through an entirely different process. He learns to +regard dress as the most important of all earthly things--becomes +knowing in cuts and fashions--is taught to appreciate, in a way no other +individual can, the aspect of a button, or the pattern of a vest; and as +his work is cleanly, and does not soil his clothes, and as he can get +them more cheaply, and more perfectly in the fashion, than other +mechanics, the chances are ten to one that he turns out a beau. He +becomes great in that which he regards as of all things greatest--dress. +A young tailor may be known by the cut of his coat and the merits of his +pantaloons, among all other workmen; and as even fine clothes are not +enough of themselves, it is necessary that he should also have fine +manners; and not having such advantages of seeing polite society as his +neighbour the barber, his gentlemanly manners are always less fine than +grotesque. Hence more ridicule of tailors among working men than of any +other class of mechanics. And such--if nature has sent them from her +hand ordinary men, for the extraordinary rise above all the modifying +influences of profession--are the processes through which tailors and +hair-dressers put on then distinctive characters as such. A village +smith hears well-nigh as much gossip as a village barber; but he +develops into an entirely different sort of man. He is not bound to +please his customers by his talk; nor does his profession leave his +breath free enough to talk fluently or much; and so he listens in grim +and swarthy independence--strikes his iron while it is hot--and when, +after thrusting it into the fire, he bends himself to the bellows, he +drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily +to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical +character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not +the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and +contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean; +and although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there +is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up as a +beau on the strength of a prettily-shaped shoe; and so a beau the +shoemaker is not, but, on the contrary, a careless, manly fellow, who, +when not overmuch devoted to Saint Monday, gains usually, in his course +through life, a considerable amount of sense. Shoemakers are often in +large proportions intelligent men; and Bloomfield, the poet, Gifford the +critic and satirist, and Carey the missionary, must certainly be +regarded as thoroughly respectable contributions from the profession, to +the worlds of poetry, criticism, and religion. + +The professional character of the mason varies a good deal in the +several provinces of Scotland, according to the various circumstances in +which he is placed. He is in general a blunt, manly, taciturn fellow, +who, without much of the Radical or Chartist about him, especially if +wages be good and employment abundant, rarely touches his hat to a +gentleman. His employment is less purely mechanical than many others: he +is not like a man ceaselessly engaged in pointing needles or fashioning +pin-heads. On the contrary, every stone he lays or hews demands the +exercise of a certain amount of judgment for itself; and so he cannot +wholly suffer his mind to fall asleep over his work. When engaged, too, +in erecting some fine building, he always experiences a degree of +interest in marking the effect of the design developing itself +piecemeal, and growing up under his hands; and so he rarely wearies of +what he is doing. Further, his profession has this advantage, that it +educates his sense of sight. Accustomed to ascertain the straightness of +lines at a glance, and to cast his eye along plane walls, or the +mouldings of entablatures or architraves, in order to determine the +rectitude of the masonry, he acquires a sort of mathematical precision +in determining the true bearings and position of objects, and is usually +found, when admitted into a rifle club, to equal, without previous +practice, its second-rate shots. He only falls short of its first-rate +ones, because, uninitiated by the experience of his profession in the +mystery of the parabolic curve, he fails, in taking aim, to make the +proper allowance for it. The mason is almost always a silent man: the +strain on his respiration is too great, when he is actively employed, to +leave the necessary freedom to the organs of speech; and so at least the +provincial builder or stone-cutter rarely or never becomes a democratic +orator. I have met with exceptional cases in the larger towns; but they +were the result of individual idiosyncrasies, developed in clubs and +taverns, and were not professional. + +It is, however, with the character of our north-country masons that I +have at present chiefly to do. Living in small villages, or in cottages +in the country, they can very rarely procure employment in the +neighbourhood of their dwellings, and so they are usually content to +regard these as simply their homes for the winter and earlier spring +months, when they have nothing to do, and to remove for work to other +parts of the country, where bridges, or harbours, or farm-steadings are +in the course of building--to be subjected there to the influences of +what is known as the barrack, or rather bothy life. These barracks or +bothies are almost always of the most miserable description. I have +lived in hovels that were invariably flooded in wet weather by the +overflowings of neighbouring swamps, and through whose roofs I could +tell the hour at night, by marking from my bed the stars that were +passing over the openings along the ridge: I have resided in other +dwellings of rather higher pretensions, in which I have been awakened +during every heavier night-shower by the rain-drops splashing upon my +face where I lay a-bed. I remember that Uncle James, in urging me not to +become a mason, told me that a neighbouring laird, when asked why he +left a crazy old building standing behind a group of neat modern +offices, informed the querist that it was not altogether through bad +taste the hovel was spared, but from the circumstance that he found it +of great convenience every time his speculations brought a _drove of +pigs_ or _a squad of masons_ the way. And my after experience showed me +that the story might not be in the least apocryphal, and that masons had +reason at times for not touching their hats to gentlemen. + +In these barracks the food is of the plainest and coarsest description: +oatmeal forms its staple, with milk, when milk can be had, which is not +always; and as the men have to cook by turns, with only half an hour or +so given them in which to light a fire, and prepare the meal for a dozen +or twenty associates, the cooking is invariably an exceedingly rough and +simple affair. I have known mason-parties engaged in the central +Highlands in building bridges, not unfrequently reduced, by a tract of +wet weather, that soaked their only fuel the turf, and rendered it +incombustible, to the extremity of eating their oatmeal raw, and merely +moistened by a little water, scooped by the hand from a neighbouring +brook. I have oftener than once seen our own supply of salt fail us; and +after relief had been afforded by a Highland smuggler--for there was +much smuggling in salt in those days, ere the repeal of the duties--I +have heard a complaint from a young fellow regarding the hardness of our +fare, at once checked by a comrade's asking him whether he was not an +ungrateful dog to grumble in that way, seeing that, after living on +fresh poultices for a week, we had actually that morning got porridge +with salt in it. One marked effect of the annual change which the +north-country mason has to undergo, from a life of domestic comfort to a +life of hardship in the bothy, if he has not passed middle life, is a +great apparent increase in his animal spirits. At home he is in all +probability a quiet, rather dull-looking personage, not much given to +laugh or joke; whereas in the bothy, if the squad be a large one, he +becomes wild, and a humorist--laughs much, and grows ingenious in +playing off pranks on his fellows. As in all other communities, there +are certain laws recognised in the barrack as useful for controlling at +least its younger members, the apprentices; but in the general tone of +merriment, even these lose their character, and, ceasing to be a terror +to evildoers, become in the execution mere occasions of mirth. I never, +in all my experience, saw a serious punishment inflicted. Shortly after +our arrival at Conon-side, my master, chancing to remark that he had not +wrought as a journeyman for twenty-five years before, was voted a +"ramming," for taking, as was said, such high ground with his brother +workmen; but, though sentence was immediately executed, they dealt +gently with the old man, who had good sense enough to acquiesce in the +whole as a joke. And yet, amid all this wild merriment and license, +there was not a workman who did not regret the comforts of his quiet +home, and long for the happiness which was, he felt, to be enjoyed only +there. It has been long known that gaiety is not solid enjoyment; but +that the gaiety should indicate little else than the want of solid +enjoyment, is a circumstance not always suspected. My experience of +barrack-life has enabled me to receive without hesitation what has been +said of the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere, +and fully to credit the often-repeated statement, that the abject serfs +of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of a free country. +Poor fellows! If the British people were as unhappy as slaves or serfs, +they would, I daresay, learn in time to be quite as merry. There are, +however, two circumstances that serve to prevent the bothy life of the +north-country mason from essentially injuring his character in the way +it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to +calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, +unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the +effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly +narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to +the humanizing influences of his home. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + + "The muse, nae poet ever fand her, + Till by himsel' he learned to wander + Adown some trottin' burn's meander, + An' no think lang: + Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder + A heartfelt sang!"--BURNS. + + +There are delightful walks in the immediate neighbourhood of Conon-side; +and as the workmen--engaged, as I have said, on day's wages--immediately +ceased working as the hour of six arrived, I had, during the summer +months, from three to four hours to myself every evening, in which to +enjoy them. The great hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty +Firth divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the sea +ceases to flow. There is the valley of the Peffer, and the valley of the +Conon; and a tract of broken hills lies between, formed of the Great +Conglomerate base of the Old Red System. The conglomerate, always a +picturesque deposit, terminates some four or five miles higher up the +valley, in a range of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they +front the interior of the country, as if they formed the terminal +barrier of some exposed sea-coast. A few straggling pines crest their +summits; and the noble woods of Brahan Castle, the ancient seat of the +Earls of Seaforth, sweep downwards from their base to the margin of the +Conon. On our own side of the river, the more immature but fresh and +thickly-clustered woods of Conon House rose along the banks; and I was +delighted to find among them a ruinous chapel and ancient +burying-ground, occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little +green hillock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the +gradual wear of the channel, and the consequent fall of the water to a +lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the +eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely +lichened tombstones that mark the ancient grave-yard; and among the +tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its +iron gnomon worn to an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and +moss. And around this little lonely yard sprang the young wood, thick as +a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to admit, in slant lines +along the tombstones and the ruins, the red light of the setting sun. + +I greatly enjoyed those evening walks. From Conon-side as a centre, a +radius of six miles commands many objects of interest; Strathpeffer, +with its mineral springs--Castle Leod, with its ancient trees, among the +rest, one of the largest Spanish chestnuts in Scotland--Knockferrel, +with its vitrified fort--the old tower of Fairburn--the old though +somewhat modernized tower of Kinkell--the Brahan policies, with the old +Castle of the Seaforths--the old Castle of Kilcoy--and the Druidic +circles of the moor of Redcastle. In succession I visited them all, with +many a sweet scene besides; but I found that my four hours, when the +visit involved, as it sometimes did, twelve miles' walking, left me +little enough time to examine and enjoy. A half-holiday every week would +be a mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the +quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for +natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, "loves to look upon +what is old." My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its +woods, and towers, and noble river, seem as if bathed in the red light +of gorgeous sunsets. Its uneven plain of Old Red Sandstone leans, at a +few miles' distance, against dark Highland hills of schistose gneiss, +that, at the line where they join on to the green Lowlands, are low and +tame, but sweep upwards into an alpine region, where the old +Scandinavian flora of the country--that flora which alone flourished in +the times of its boulder clay--still maintains its place against the +Germanic invaders which cover the lower grounds, as the Celt of old used +to maintain exactly the same ground against the Saxon. And at the top of +a swelling moor, just beneath where the hills rise rugged and black, +stands the pale tall tower of Fairburn, that, seen in the gloamin', as I +have often seen it, seems a ghastly spectre of the past, looking from +out its solitude at the changes of the present. The freebooter, its +founder, had at first built it, for greater security, without a door, +and used to climb into it through the window of an upper story by a +ladder. But now unbroken peace brooded over its shattered ivy-bound +walls, and ploughed fields crept up year by year along the moory slope +on which it stood, until at length all became green, and the dark heath +disappeared. There is a poetic age in the life of most individuals, as +certainly as in the history of most nations; and a very happy age it is. +I had now fully entered on it; and enjoyed in my lonely walks along the +Conon, a happiness ample enough to compensate for many a long hour of +toil, and many a privation. I have quoted, as the motto of this chapter, +an exquisite verse from Burns. There is scarce another stanza in the +wide round of British literature that so faithfully describes the mood +which, regularly as the evening came, and after I had buried myself in +the thick woods, or reached some bosky recess of the river bank, used to +come stealing over me, and in which I have felt my heart and intellect +as thoroughly in keeping with the scene and hour as the still woodland +pool beside me, whose surface reflected in the calm every tree and rock +that rose around it, and every hue of the heavens above. And yet the +mood, though sweet, was also, as the poet expresses it, a pensive one: +it was steeped in the happy melancholy sung so truthfully by an elder +bard, who also must have entered deeply into the feeling. + + + "When I goe musing all alone, + Thinking of divers things foreknowne-- + When I builde castles in the air, + Voide of sorrow and voide of care, + Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet-- + Methinks the time runs very fleet; + All my joyes to this are follie;-- + None soe sweet as melanchollie. + + "When to myself I sit and smile, + With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, + By a brook side or wood soe green, + Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, + A thousand pleasures doe me blesse, + And crowne my soul with happiness + All my joyes to this are follie;-- + None soe sweet as melanchollie." + + +When I remember how my happiness was enhanced by every little bird that +burst out into sudden song among the trees, and then as suddenly became +silent, or by every bright-scaled fish that went darting through the +topaz-coloured depths of the water, or rose for a moment over its calm +surface--how the blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in +the wood delighted me, and every golden-tinted cloud that gleamed over +the setting sun, and threw its bright flush on the river, seemed to +inform the heart of a heaven beyond--I marvel, in looking over the +scraps of verse produced at the time, to find how little of the +sentiment in which I so luxuriated, or of the nature which I so enjoyed, +found their way into them. But what Wordsworth well terms "the +accomplishment of verse," given to but few, is as distinct from the +poetic faculty vouchsafed to many, as the ability of relishing exquisite +music is distinct from the power of producing it. Nay, there are cases +in which the "faculty" may be very high, and yet the "accomplishment" +comparatively low, or altogether wanting. I have been told by the late +Dr. Chalmers, whose Astronomical Discourses form one of the finest +philosophical poems in any language, that he never succeeded in +achieving a readable stanza; and Dr. Thomas Brown, whose metaphysics +glow with poetry, might, though he produced whole volumes of verse, +have said nearly the same thing of himself. But, like the Metaphysician, +who would scarce have published his verses unless he had thought them +good ones, my rhymes pleased me at this period, and for some time after, +wonderfully well: they came to be so associated in my mind with the +scenery amid which they were composed, and the mood which it rarely +failed of inducing, that though they neither breathed the mood nor +reflected the scenery, they always suggested both; on the principle, I +suppose, that a pewter spoon, bearing the London stamp, suggested to a +crew of poor weather-beaten sailors in one of the islands of the +Pacific, their far-distant home and its enjoyments. One of the pieces +suggested at this time I shall, however, venture on submitting to the +reader. The few simple thoughts which it embodies arose in the solitary +churchyard among the woods, beside the aged, lichen-incrusted +dial-stone. + + + ON SEEING A SUN-DIAL IN A CHURCHYARD + + Grey dial-stone, I fain would know + What motive placed thee here, + Where darkly opes the frequent grave, + And rests the frequent bier. + Ah! bootless creeps the dusky shade, + Slow o'er thy figured plain: + When mortal life has passed away, + Time counts his hours in vain. + + As sweeps the clouds o'er ocean's breast, + When shrieks the wintry wind. + So doubtful thoughts, grey dial-stone, + Come sweeping o'er my mind. + I think of what could place thee here, + Of those beneath thee laid, + And ponder if thou wert not raised + In mockery o'er the dead. + + Nay, man, when on life's stage they fret. + May mock his fellow-men! + In sooth, their soberest freaks afford + Rare food for mockery then. + But ah! when passed their brief sojourn-- + When Heaven's dread doom is said-- + Beats there the human heart could pour + Like mockeries o'er the dead? + + The fiend unblest, who still to harm + Directs his felon power, + May ope the book of grace to him + Whose day of grace is o'er; + But never sure could mortal man, + Whate'er his age or clime, + Thus raise in mockery o'er the dead, + The stone that measures time. + + Grey dial-stone, I fain would know + What motive placed thee here, + Where sadness heaves the frequent sigh, + And drops the frequent tear. + Like thy carved plain, grey dial-stone, + Grief's weary mourners be: + Dark sorrow metes out time to them-- + Dark shade marks time on thee. + + I know it now: wert thou not placed + To catch the eye of him + To whom, through glistening tears, earth's gauds + Worthless appear, and dim? + We think of time when time has fled, + The friend our tears deplore; + The God whom pride-swollen hearts deny, + Grief-humbled hearts adore. + + Grey stone, o'er thee the lazy night + Passes untold away; + Nor were it thine at noon to teach + If failed the solar ray. + In death's dark night, grey dial-stone, + Cease all the works of men; + In life, if Heaven withhold its aid, + Bootless these works and vain. + + Grey dial-stone, while yet thy shade + Points out those hours are mine-- + While yet at early morn I rise-- + And rest at day's decline-- + Would that the SUN that formed thine, + His bright rays beamed on me, + That I, wise for the final day, + Might measure time, like thee! + + +These were happy evenings--all the more happy from the circumstance that +I was still in heart and appetite a boy, and could relish as much as +ever, when their season came on, the wild raspberries of the Conon +woods--a very abundant fruit in that part of the country--and climb as +lightly as ever, to strip the guean-trees of their wild cherries. When +the river was low, I used to wade into its fords in quest of its pearl +muscles (_Unio Margaritiferus_); and, though not very successful in my +pearl-fishing, it was at least something to see how thickly the +individuals of this greatest of British fresh-water molluscs lay +scattered among the pebbles of the fords, or to mark them creeping +slowly along the bottom--when, in consequence of prolonged droughts, the +current had so moderated that they were in no danger of being swept +away--each on its large white foot, with its valves elevated over its +back, like the carpace of some tall tortoise. I found occasion at this +time to conclude, that the _Unio_ of our river-fords secretes pearls so +much more frequently than the _Unionidae_ and _Anadonta_ of our still +pools and lakes, not from any specific peculiarity in the constitution +of the creature, but from the effects of the habitat which it is its +nature to choose. It receives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river +many a rough blow from sticks and pebbles carried down in times of +flood, and occasionally from the feet of the men and animals that cross +the stream during droughts; and the blows induce the morbid secretions +of which pearls are the result. There seems to exist no inherent cause +why _Anadon Cygnea_, with its beautiful silvery nacre--as bright often, +and always more delicate than that of _Unio Margaritiferus_--should not +be equally productive of pearls; but, secure from violence in its still +pools and lakes, and unexposed to the circumstances that provoke +abnormal secretions, it does not produce a single pearl for every +hundred that are ripened into value and beauty by the exposed +current-tossed _Unionidae_ of our rapid mountain rivers. Would that +hardship and suffering bore always in a creature of a greatly higher +family similar results, and that the hard buffets dealt him by fortune +in the rough stream of life could be transmuted, by some blessed +internal predisposition of his nature, into pearls of great price. + +It formed one of my standing enjoyments at this time to bathe, as the +sun was sinking behind the woods, in the deeper pools of the Conon--a +pleasure which, like all the more exciting pleasures of youth, bordered +on terror. Like that of the poet, when he "wantoned with the breakers," +and the "freshening sea made them a terror," "'twas a pleasing fear." +But it was not current nor freshening eddy that rendered it such: I had +acquired, long before, a complete mastery over all my motions in the +water, and, setting out from the shores of the Bay of Cromarty, have +swam round vessels in the roadstead, when, among the many boys of a +seaport town, not more than one or two would venture to accompany me; +but the poetic age is ever a credulous one, as certainly in individuals +as in nations: the old fears of the supernatural may be modified and +etherealized, but they continue to influence it; and at this period the +Conon still took its place among the haunted streams of Scotland. There +was not a river in the Highlands that used, ere the erection of the +stately bridge in our neighbourhood, to sport more wantonly with human +life--an evidence, the ethnographer might perhaps say, of its purely +Celtic origin; and as Superstition has her figures as certainly as +Poesy, the perils of a wild mountain-born stream, flowing between +thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by +a frightful goblin, that took a malignant delight in luring into its +pools, or overpowering in its fords, the benighted traveller. Its +goblin, the "water-wraith," used to appear as a tall woman dressed in +green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, +ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various +fords--always dangerous ones--where of old she used to start, it was +said, out of the river, before the terrified traveller, to point at him, +as in derision, with her skinny finger, or to beckon him invitingly on; +and I was shown the very tree to which a poor Highlander had clung, +when, in crossing the river by night, he was seized by the goblin, and +from which, despite of his utmost exertions, though assisted by a young +lad, his companion, he was dragged into the middle of the current, +where he perished. And when, in swimming at sunset over some dark pool, +where the eye failed to mark or the foot to sound the distant bottom, +the twig of some sunken bush or tree has struck against me as I passed, +I have felt, with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless +fingers of the goblin. + +The old chapel among the woods formed the scene, says tradition, of an +incident similar to that which Sir Walter Scott relates in his "Heart of +Mid-Lothian," when borrowing, as the motto of the chapter in which he +describes the preparations for the execution of Porteous, from an author +rarely quoted--the Kelpie. "The hour's come," so runs the extract, "but +not the man;"--nearly the same words which the same author employs in +his "Guy Mannering," in the cave scene between Meg Merrilies and Dirk +Hatteraick. "There is a tradition," he adds in the accompanying note, +"that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent +showers, the discontented voice of the water-spirit was heard to +pronounce these words. At the same moment, a man urged on by his fate, +or, in Scottish language, _fey_, arrived at a gallop, and prepared to +cross the water. No remonstrance from the bystanders was of power to +stop him: he plunged into the stream, and perished." So far Sir Walter. +The Ross-shire story is fuller, and somewhat different in its details. +On a field in the near neighbourhood of the chapel, now laid out into +the gardens of Conon House, there was a party of Highlanders engaged in +an autumnal day at noon, some two or three centuries ago, in cutting +down their corn, when the boding voice of the wraith was heard rising +from the Conon beneath--"The hour's come, but not the man." Immediately +after, a courier on horseback was seen spurring down the hill in hot +haste, making directly for what is known as a "fause ford," that lies +across the stream just opposite the old building, in the form of a +rippling bar, which, indicating apparently, though very falsely, little +depth of water, is flanked by a deep black pool above and below. The +Highlanders sprang forward to warn him of his danger, and keep him back; +but he was unbelieving and in haste, and rode express, he said, on +business that would brook no delay; and as for the "fause ford," if it +could not be ridden, it could be swam; and, whether by riding or +swimming, he was resolved on getting across. Determined, however, on +saving him in his own despite, the Highlanders forced him from his +horse, and, thrusting him into the little chapel, locked him in; and +then, throwing open the door when the fatal hour had passed, they called +to him that he might now pursue his journey. But there was no reply, and +no one came forth; and on going in they found him lying cold and stiff, +with his face buried in the water of a small stone font. He had fallen, +apparently, in a fit, athwart the wall; and his predestined hour having +come, he was suffocated by the few pints of water in the projecting +font. At this time the stone font of the tradition--a rude trough, +little more than a foot in diameter either way--was still to be seen +among the ruins; and, like the veritable cannon in the Castle of +Udolpho, beside which, according to Annette, the ghost used to take its +stand, it imparted by its solid reality a degree of authenticity to the +story in this part of the country, which, if unfurnished with a "local +habitation," as in Sir Walter's note, it would have wanted. Such was one +of the many stories of the Conon with which I became acquainted at a +time when the beliefs they exemplified were by no means quite dead, and +of which I could think as tolerably serious realities, when, lying a-bed +all alone at midnight, the solitary inmate of a dreary barrack, +listening to the roar of the Conon. + +Besides the long evenings, we had an hour to breakfast, and another to +dinner. Much of the breakfast hour was spent in cooking our food; but as +a bit of oaten cake and a draught of milk usually served us for the +mid-day meal, the greater part of the hour assigned to _it_ was +available for purposes of rest or amusement. And when the day was fine, +I used to spend it by the side of a mossy stream, within a few minutes' +walk of the work-shed, or in a neighbouring planting, beside a little +irregular lochan, fringed round with flags and rushes. The mossy stream, +black in its deeper pools, as if it were a rivulet of tar, contained a +good many trout, which had acquired a hue nearly as deep as its own, and +formed the very negroes of their race. They were usually of small +size--for the stream itself was small; and, though little countries +sometimes produce great men, little streams rarely produce great fish. +But on one occasion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the +younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with torch and +spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a +monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally +bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the +beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its +complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a +bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded +at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat, that it had lived +for years in its dark pool, a hermit apart from its fellows. I am not +now, however, altogether certain that the inference was a sound one. +Some fishes, like some men, have a wonderful ability of assuming the +colours that best suit their interests for the time. I have been unable +to determine whether the trout be one of these conformists; but it used +to strike me at this period as at least curious, that the fishes in even +the lower reaches of the dark little rivulet should differ so entirely +in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into which its peaty +waters fall, and whose scaly denizens are of silvery brightness. No fish +seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very +abundant one in the estuary of the Conon--the common flounder. Standing +on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of +bottom on which they lay--visible to only a very sharp eye--by pitching +a very small pebble right over them. Was the patch a pale one--for a +minute or so they carried its pale colour along with them into some +darker tract, where they remained distinctly visible from the contrast, +until, gradually acquiring the deeper hue, they again became +inconspicuous. But if startled back to the same pale patch from which +they had set out, I have then seen them visible for a minute or so, from +their over-dark tint, until, gradually losing it in turn, they paled +down, as at first, to the colour of the lighter ground. An old +Highlander, whose suit of tartan conformed to the general hue of the +heather, was invisible at a little distance, when traversing a moor, but +came full into view in crossing a green field or meadow: the suit given +by nature to the flounder, tinted apparently on the same principle of +concealment, exhibits a degree of adaptation to its varying +circumstances, which the tartan wanted. And it is certainly curious +enough to find, in one of our commonest fishes, a property which used to +be regarded as one of the standing marvels of the zoology of those +remote countries of which the chameleon is a native. + +The pond in the piece of planting, though as unsightly a little patch of +water as might be, was, I found, a greatly richer study than the dark +rivulet. Mean and small as it was--not larger in area inside its fringe +of rushes than a fashionable drawing-room--its natural history would +have formed an interesting volume; and many a half-hour have I spent +beside it in the heat of the day, watching its numerous +inhabitants--insect, reptilian, and vermiferous. There were +two--apparently _three_--different species of libellula that used to +come and deposit their eggs in it--one of the two, that large kind of +dragon-fly (_Eshna grandis_), scarce smaller than one's +middle-finger--which is so beautifully coloured black and yellow, as if +adorned by the same taste one sees displayed in the chariots and +liveries of the fashionable world. The other fly was a greatly more +slender and smaller species or genus, rather _Agrion_; and it seemed +two, not one, from the circumstance, that about one-half the individuals +were beautifully variegated black and sky-blue, the other half black and +bright crimson. But the peculiarity was merely a sexual one: as if in +illustration of those fine analogies with which all nature is charged, +the sexes put on the _complementary_ colours, and are mutually +fascinating, not by resembling, but by _corresponding_ to, each other. I +learned in time to distinguish the disagreeable-looking larvae of these +flies, both larger and smaller, with their six hairy legs, and their +grotesque formidable vizors, and found that they were the very pirates +of the water, as the splendid insects into which they were ultimately +developed were the very tyrants of the lower air. It was strange to see +the beautiful winged creature that sprang out of the pupa into which the +repulsive-looking pirate had been transformed, launch forth into its new +element, changed in everything save its nature, but still unchanged in +that, and rendering itself as formidable to the moth and the butterfly +as it had been before to the newt and the tadpole. There is, I daresay, +an analogy here also. It is in the first state of our own species, as +certainly as in that of the dragon-fly, that the character is fixed. +Further, I used to experience much interest in watching the progress of +the frog, in its earlier stages from the egg to the fish; then from the +fish to the reptile fish, with its fringed tail, and ventral and +pectoral _limbs_; and, last of all, from the reptile fish to the +complete reptile. I had not yet learned--nor was it anywhere known at +the time--that the history of the individual frog, through these +successive transformations, is a history in small of the animal creation +itself in its earlier stages--that in order of time the egg-like mollusc +had taken precedence of the fish, and the fish of the reptile; and that +an intermediate order of creatures had once abounded, in which, as in +the half-developed frog, the natures of both fish and reptile were +united. But, though unacquainted with this strange analogy, the +transformations were of themselves wonderful enough to fill for a time +my whole mind. I remember being struck one afternoon, after spending my +customary spare half hour beside the pond, and marking the peculiar +style of colouring in the yellow and black libellulidae in the common +wasp, and in a yellow and black species of ichneumon fly, to detect in +some half-dozen gentlemen's carriages that were standing opposite our +work-shed--for the good old knight of Conon House had a dinner-party +that evening--exactly the same style of ornamental colouring. The +greater number of the vehicles were yellow and black--just as these were +the prevailing colours among the wasps and libellulidae; but there was a +slight admixture of other colours among them too: there was at least one +that was black and green, or black and blue, I forget which; and another +black and brown. And so it was among the insects also: the same sort of +taste, both in colour and the arrangements of colour, and even in the +proportions of the various colours, seemed to have regulated the style +of ornament manifested in the carriages of the dinner party, and of the +insect visitors of the pond. Further, I thought I could detect a +considerable degree of resemblance in form between a chariot and an +insect. There was a great _abdominal_ body separated by a narrow isthmus +from a _thoracic_ coach-box, where the directing power was stationed; +while the wheels, poles, springs, and general framework on which the +vehicle rested, corresponded to the wings, limbs, and antennae of the +insect. There was at least sufficient resemblance of form to justify +resemblance of colour; and here _was_ the actual resemblance of colour +which the resemblance of form justified. I remember that, in musing over +the coincidence, I learned to suspect, for the first time, that it might +be no mere coincidence after all; and that the fact embodied in the +remarkable text which informs us that the Creator made man in his own +image, might in reality lie at its foundation as the proper solution. +Man, spurred by his necessities, has discovered for himself mechanical +contrivances, which he has afterwards found anticipated as contrivances +of the Divine Mind, in some organism, animal or vegetable. In the same +way his sense of beauty in form or colour originates some pleasing +combination of lines or tints; and then he discovers that _it_ also has +been anticipated. He gets his chariot tastefully painted black and +yellow, and lo! the wasp that settles on its wheel, or the dragon-fly +that darts over it, he finds painted in exactly the same style. His +neighbour, indulging in a different taste, gets _his_ vehicle painted +black and blue, and lo! some lesser libellula or ichneumon fly comes +whizzing past, to justify his style of ornament also, but at the same +time to show that it, too, had existed ages before. + +The evenings gradually closed in as the season waned--at first +abridging, and at length wholly interdicting, my evening walks; and +having no other place to which to retire, save the dark, gousty hay-loft +into which a light was never admitted, I had to seek the shelter of the +barrack, and succeeded usually in finding a seat within at least _sight_ +of the fire. The place was greatly over-crowded; and, as in all +over-large companies, it had commonly its four or five groups of +talkers; each group furnished with a topic of its own. The elderly men +spoke about the state of the markets, and speculated, in especial, on +the price of oatmeal; the apprentices talked about lasses; while knots +of intermediate age discussed occasionally both markets and lasses too, +or spoke of old companions, their peculiarities and history, or +expatiated on the adventures of former work seasons, and the characters +of the neighbouring lairds. Politics proper I never heard. During the +whole season a newspaper never once entered the barrack door. At times a +song or story secured the attention of the whole barrack; and there was +in especial one story-teller whose powers of commanding attention were +very great. He was a middle-aged Highlander, not very skilful as a +workman, and but indifferently provided with English; and as there +usually attaches a nickname to persons in the humbler walks that are +marked by any eccentricity of character, he was better known among his +brother workmen as Jock Mo-ghoal, _i.e._ John my Darling, than by his +proper name. Of all Jock Mo-ghoal's stories Jock Mo-ghoal was himself +the hero; and certainly most wonderful was the invention of the man. As +recorded in his narratives, his life was one long epic poem, filled with +strange and startling adventure, and furnished with an extraordinary +machinery of the wild and supernatural; and though all knew that Jock +made imagination supply, in his histories, the place of memory, not even +Ulysses or AEneas--men who, unless very much indebted to their poets, +must have been of a similar turn--could have attracted more notice at +the courts of Alcinuous or Dido, than Jock in the barrack. The workmen +used, on the mornings after big greater narratives, to look one another +full in the face, and ask, with a smile rather incipient than fully +manifest, whether "Jock wasna perfectly wonderfu' last nicht?" + +He had several times visited the south of Scotland, as one of a band of +Highland reapers, for employment in his proper profession very often +failed poor Jock; and these journeys formed the grand occasions of his +adventures. One of his narratives commenced, I remember, with a +frightful midnight scene in a solitary churchyard. Jock had lost his way +in the darkness; and, after stumbling among burial-mounds and +tombstones, he had toppled into an open grave, which was of a depth so +profound, that for some time he failed to escape from it, and merely +pulled down upon himself, in his attempts to climb its loose sides, +musty skulls, and great thigh-bones, and pieces of decayed coffins. At +length, however, he did succeed in getting out, just as a party of +unscrupulous resurrectionists were in the act of entering the +burying-ground; and they, naturally enough preferring an undecayed +subject that had the life in it to preserve it fresh, to dead corpses +the worse for the keeping, gave him chase; and it was with the extremest +difficulty that, after scudding over wild moors and through dark woods, +he at length escaped them by derning himself in a fox-earth. The season +of autumnal labour over, he visited Edinburgh on his way north; and was +passing along the High Street, when, seeing a Highland girl on the +opposite side with whom he was intimate, and whom he afterwards married, +he strode across to address her, and a chariot coming whirling along the +street at the time at full speed, he was struck by the pole and knocked +down. The blow had taken him full on the chest; but though the bone +seemed injured, and the integuments became frightfully swollen and +livid, he was able to get up; and, on asking to be shown the way to a +surgeon's shop, his acquaintance the girl brought him to an under-ground +room in one of the narrow lanes off the street, which, save for the +light of a great fire, would have been pitch dark at mid-day, and in +which he found a little wrinkled old woman, as yellow as the smoke that +filled the apartment. "Choose," said the hag, as she looked at the +injured part, "one of two things--a cure slow but sure, or sudden but +imperfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get home?" +"That, that," said Jock; "if I were ance home I could bear it well +enouch." The hag began to pass her hand over the injured part, and to +mutter under her breath some potent charm; and as she muttered and +manipulated, the swelling gradually subsided, and the livid tints +blanched, till at length nought remained to tell of the recent accident +save a pale spot in the middle of the breast, surrounded by a +thread-like circle of blue. And now, she said, you are well for three +weeks; but be prepared for the fourth. Jock prosecuted his northward +journey, and encountered the usual amount of adventure by the way. He +was attacked by robbers, but, assistance coming up, he succeeded in +beating them off. He lost his way in a thick mist, but found shelter, +after many hours' wandering far among the hills, in a deserted +shepherd's shielin'. He was nearly buried in a sudden snow-storm that +broke out by night, but, getting into the middle of a cooped-up flock +of sheep, they kept him warm and comfortable amid the vast +drift-wreaths, till the light of morning enabled him to prosecute his +journey. At length he reached home, and was prosecuting his ordinary +avocations, when the third week came to a close; and he was on a lonely +moor at the very hour he had met with the accident on the High Street, +when he suddenly heard the distant rattle of a chariot, though not a +shadow of the vehicle was to be seen; the sounds came bearing down upon +him, heightening as they approached, and, when at the loudest, a violent +blow on the breast prostrated him on the moor. The stroke of the High +Street "had come back," just as the wise woman had said it would, though +with accompaniments that Jock had not anticipated. It was with +difficulty he reached his cottage that evening; and there elapsed fully +six weeks ere he was able to quit it again. Such, in its outlines, was +one of the marvellous narratives of Jock Mo-ghoal. He belonged to a +curious class, known by specimen, in, I suppose, almost every locality, +especially in the more primitive ones--for the smart ridicule common in +the artificial states of society greatly stunt their growth; and in our +literature--as represented by the Bobadils, Young Wildings, Caleb +Balderstons, and Baron Munchausens--they hold a prominent place. The +class is to be found of very general development among the vagabond +tribes. I have listened to wonderful personal narratives that had not a +word of truth in them, "from gipsies brown in summer glades that bask," +as I took my seat beside their fire, in a wild rock-cave in the +neighbourhood of Rosemarkie, or at a later period in the cave of Marcus; +and in getting into conversation with individuals of the more thoroughly +lapsed classes of our large towns, I have found that a faculty of +extemporary fabrication was almost the only one which I could calculate +on finding among them in a state of vigorous activity. That in some +cases the propensity should be found co-existing with superior calibre +and acquirement, and with even a sense of honour by no means very +obtuse, must be regarded as one of the strange anomalies which so often +surprise and perplex the student of human character. As a misdirected +toe-nail, injured by pressure, sometimes turns round, and, re-entering +the flesh, vexes it into a sore, it would seem as if that noble +inventive faculty to which we owe the parable and the epic poem, were +liable, when constrained by self-love, to similar misdirections; and +certainly, when turned inwards upon its possessor, the moral character +festers or grows callous around it. + +There was no one in the barrack with whom I cared much to converse, or +who, in turn, cared much to converse with me; and so I learned, on the +occasions when the company got dull, and broke up into groups, to retire +to the hay-loft where I slept, and pass there whole hours seated on my +chest. The loft was a vast apartment, some fifty or sixty feet in +length, with its naked rafters raised little more than a man's height +over the floor; but in the starlit nights, when the openings in the wall +assumed the character of square patches of darkness-visible stamped upon +utter darkness, it looked quite as well as any other unlighted place +that could not be seen; and in nights brightened by the moon, the pale +beams, which found access at openings and crevices, rendered its wide +area quite picturesque enough for ghosts to walk in. But I never saw +any; and the only sounds I heard were those made by the horses in the +stable below, champing and snorting over their food. They were, I doubt +not, happy enough in their dark stalls, because they were horses, and +had plenty to eat; and I was at times quite happy enough in the dark +loft above, because I was a man, and could think and imagine. It is, I +believe, Addison who remarks, that if all the thoughts which pass +through men's minds were to be made public, the great difference which +seems to exist between the thinking of the wise and of the unwise would +be a good deal reduced; seeing that it is a difference which does not +consist in their not having the same weak thoughts in common, but +merely in the prudence through which the wise suppress their foolish +ones. I still possess notes of the cogitations of these solitary +evenings, ample enough to show that they were extraordinary combinations +of the false and the true; but I at the same time hold them sufficiently +in memory to remember, that I scarce, if at all, distinguished between +what was false and true in them at the time. The literature of almost +every people has a corresponding early stage, in which fresh thinking is +mingled with little conceits, and in which the taste is usually false, +but the feeling true. + +Let me present my young readers, from my notes, with the variously +compounded cogitations of one of these quiet evenings. What formed so +long ago one of my exercises may now form one of theirs, if they but set +themselves to separate the solid from the unsolid thinking contained in +my abstract. + + + MUSINGS. + + "I stood last summer on the summit of Tor-Achilty [a pyramidal hill + about six miles from Conon side], and occupied, when there, the + centre of a wide circle, about fifty miles in diameter. I can still + call up its rough-edged sea of hills, with the clear blue firmament + arching over, and the slant rays of the setting sun gleaming + athwart. Yes, over that circular field, fifty miles across, the + firmament closed all around at the horizon, as a watch-glass closes + round the dial-plate of the watch. Sky and earth seemed + co-extensive; and yet how incalculably vast their difference of + area! Thousands of systems seemed but commensurate, to the eye, + with a small district of earth fifty miles each way. But capacious + as the human imagination has been deemed, can it conceive of an + area of wider field? Mine cannot. My mind cannot take in more at a + glance, if I may so speak, than is taken in by the eye. I cannot + conceive of a wider area than that which the sight commands from + the summit of a lofty eminence. I can pass in imagination through + many such areas. I can add field to field _ad infinitum_; and thus + conceive of infinite space, by conceiving of a space which can be + infinitely added to; but all of space that I can take in at one + process, is an area commensurate with that embraced at a glance by + the eye. How, then, have I my conception of the earth as a + whole--of the solar system as a whole--nay, of many systems as a + whole? Just as I have my conceptions of a school-globe or of an + Orrery--by diminution. It is through the diminution induced by + distance that the sidereal heavens only co-extend, as seen from the + top of Tor-Achilty, with a portion of the counties of Ross and + Inverness. The apparent area is the same, but the colouring is + different. Our ideas of greatness, then, are much less dependent on + actual area than on what painters term aerial perspective. The + dimness of distance, and the diminution of parts, are essential to + right conceptions of great magnitude. + + "Of the various figures presented to me here, I seize strong hold + of but one. I brood over the picture of the solar system conjured + up. I conceive of the satellites as light shallops that continually + sail round heavier vessels, and consider how much more of space + they must traverse than the orbs to which they are attached. The + entire system is presented to me as an Orrery of the apparent size + of the area of landscape seen from the hill-top; but dimness and + darkness prevent the diminution from communicating that appearance + of littleness to the whole which would attach to it, were it, like + an actual Orrery, sharply defined and clear. As the picture rises + before me, the entire system seems to possess, what I suspect it + wants, its atmosphere like that of the earth, which reflects the + light of the sun in the different degrees of excessive + brightness--noon-tide splendour, the fainter shades of evening, and + grey twilight obscurity. This veil of light is thickest towards the + centre of the system; for when the glance rests on its edges, the + suns of other systems may be seen peeping through. I see Mercury + sparkling to the sun, with its oceans of molten glass, and its + fountains of liquid gold. I see the ice-mountains of Saturn, hoar + through the twilight. I behold the earth rolling upon itself, from + darkness to light, and from light to darkness. I see the clouds of + winter settling over one part of it, with the nether mantle of snow + shining through them; I see in another a brown, dusky waste of sand + lighted up by the glow of summer. One ocean appears smooth as a + mirror--another is black with tempest. I see the pyramid of shade + which each of the planets casts from its darkened side into the + space behind; and I perceive the stars twinkling through each + opening, as through the angular doors of a pavilion. + + "Such is the scene seen at right angles with the plane in which the + planets move; but what would be its aspect if I saw it in the line + of the plane? What would be its appearance if I saw it edgewise? + There arises in my mind one of those uncertainties which so + frequently convince me that I am ignorant. I cannot complete my + picture, for I do not know whether all the planets move in one + plane. How determine the point? A ray of light breaks in. Huzza! I + have found it. If the courses of the planets as seen in the heavens + form parallel lines, then must they all move in one plane; and + _vice versa_. But hold! That would be as seen from the sun--if the + planets _could_ be seen from the sun. The earth is but one of their + own number, and from it the point of view must be disadvantageous. + The diurnal motion must perplex. But no. The apparent motion of + the heavens need not disturb the observation. Let the course of the + planets through the fixed stars, be marked, and though, from the + peculiarity of the point of observation, their motion may at one + time seem more rapid, and at another more slow, yet, if their plane + be, as a workman would say, _out of twist_, their lines will seem + parallel. Still in some doubt, however: I long for a glance at an + Orrery, to determine the point; and then I remember that Ferguson, + an untaught man like myself, had made more Orreries than any one + else, and that mechanical contrivances of the kind were the natural + recourse of a man unskilled in the higher geometry. But it would be + better to be a mathematician than skilful in contriving Orreries. A + man of the Newtonian cast of mind, and accomplished in the + Newtonian learning, could solve the problem where I sat, without an + Orrery. + + "From the thing contemplated, I pass to the consideration of the + mind that contemplates. Oh! that wonderful Newton, respecting whom + the Frenchman inquired whether he ate and slept like other men! I + consider how one mind excels another; nay, how one man excels a + thousand; and, by way of illustration, I bethink me of the mode of + valuing diamonds. A single diamond that weighs fifty carats is + deemed more valuable than two thousand diamonds, each of which only + weighs one. My illustration refers exclusively to the native + powers; but may it not, I ask, bear also on the acquisition of + knowledge? Every new idea added to the stock already collected is a + carat added to the diamond; for it is not only valuable in itself, + but it also increases the value of all the others, by giving to + each of them a new link of association. + + "The thought links itself on to another, mayhap less sound:--Do not + the minds of men of exalted genius, such as Homer, Milton, + Shakspere, seem to partake of some of the qualities of infinitude? + Add a great many bricks together, and they form a pyramid as huge + as the peak of Teneriffe. Add all the common minds together that + the world ever produced, and the mind of a Shakspere towers over + the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That + which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it + not so with genius of a certain altitude? Homer, Milton, Shakspere, + were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; + Shakspere an illiterate wool-comber; Milton skilled in all human + learning. But they have all risen to an equal height. Learning has + added nothing to the _illimitable_ genius of the one; nor has the + want of it detracted from the _infinite_ powers of the others. But + it is time that I go and prepare supper." + + +I visited the policies of Conon House a full quarter of a century after +this time--walked round the kiln, once our barrack--scaled the outside +stone-stair of the hay-loft, to stand for half a minute on the spot +where I used to spend whole hours seated on my chest, so long before; +and then enjoyed a quiet stroll among the woods of the Conon. The river +was big in flood: it was exactly such a river Conon as I had lost sight +of in the winter of 1821, and eddied past dark and heavy, sweeping over +bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound +seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic +branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of +withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How +vividly the past rose up before me!--boyish day-dreams, forgotten for +twenty years--the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a +period when the atmosphere of feeling was warmer than now, and the +immaturities of the mental kingdom grew rank and large, like the ancient +_cryptogamia_, and bore no specific resemblance to the productions of a +riper time. The season I had passed in the neighbourhood so long +before--the first I had anywhere spent among strangers--belonged to an +age when home is not a country, nor a province even, but simply a little +spot of earth, inhabited by friends and relatives; and the verses, long +forgotten, in which my joy had found vent when on the eve of returning +to that home, came chiming as freshly into my memory as if scarce a +month had passed since I had composed them beside the Conon. Here they +are, with all the green juvenility of the home-sickness still about +them--a true petrifaction of an extinct feeling:-- + + + TO THE CONON. + + Conon, fair flowed thy mountain stream, + Through blossom'd heath and ripening field. + When, shrunk by summer's fervid beam, + Thy peaceful waves I first beheld. + Calmly they swept thy winding shore. + When harvest's mirthful feast was nigh-- + When, breeze-borne, with thy hoarser roar + Came mingling sweet the reapers' cry. + + But now I mark thy angry wave + Rush headlong to the stormy sea; + Wildly the blasts of winter rave, + Sad rustling through the leafless tree + Loose on its spray the alder leaf + Hangs wavering, trembling, sear and brow + And dark thy eddies whirl beneath, + And white thy foam comes floating down. + + Thy banks with withered shrubs are spread; + Thy fields confess stern winter's reign; + And gleams yon thorn with berries red, + Like banner on a ravaged plain. + Hark! ceaseless groans the leafless wood; + Hark! ceaseless roars thy stream below + Ben-Vaichard's peaks are dark with cloud + Ben-Weavis' crest is white with snow. + + And yet, though red thy stream comes down + Though bleak th' encircling hills appear-- + Though field be bare, and forest brown, + And winter rule the waning year-- + Unmoved I see each charm decay, + Unmourn'd the sweets of autumn die; + And fading flower and leafless spray + Court all in vain the thoughtful sigh. + + Not that dull grief delights to see + Vex'd Nature wear a kindred gloom; + Not that she smiled in vain to me, + When gaily prank'd in summer's bloom + Nay, much I loved, at even-tide, + Through Brahan's lonely woods to stray. + To mark thy peaceful billows glide, + And watch the sun's declining ray. + + But yet, though roll'd thy billows fair + As e'er roll'd those of classic stream-- + Though green thy woods, now dark and bare, + Bask'd beauteous in the western beam; + To mark a scene that childhood loved, + The anxious eye was turned in vain; + Nor could I find the friend approved, + That shared my joy or soothed my pain. + + Now winter reigns: these hills no more + Shall sternly bound my anxious view + Soon, bent my course to Croma's shore, + Shall I yon winding path pursue. + Fairer than _here_ gay summer's glow + To me _there_ wintry storms shall seem + Then blow, ye bitter breezes, blow, + And lash the Conon's mountain stream. + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + + "The bounding pulse, the languid limb + The changing spirit's rise and fall-- + We know that these were felt by him, + For these are felt by all."--MONTGOMERY. + + +The apprenticeship of my friend William Ross had expired during the +working season of this year, when I was engaged at Conon-side; and he +was now living in his mother's cottage in the parish of Nigg, on the +Ross-shire side of the Cromarty Firth. And so, with the sea between us, +we could no longer meet every evening as before, or take long +night-walks among the woods. I crossed the Firth, however, and spent one +happy day in his society, in a little, low-roofed domicile, with a +furze-roughened ravine on the one side, and a dark fir-wood on the +other; and which, though picturesque and interesting as a cottage, must, +I fear, have been a very uncomfortable home. His father, whom I had not +before seen, was sitting beside the fire as I entered. In all except +expression he was wonderfully like my friend; and yet he was one of the +most vapid men I ever knew--a man literally without an idea, and almost +without a recollection or a fact. And my friend's mother, though she +showed a certain kindliness of disposition which her husband wanted, was +loquacious and weak. Had my quondam acquaintance, the vigorous-minded +maniac of Ord, seen William and his parents, she would have triumphantly +referred to them in evidence that Flavel and the Schoolmen were wholly +in the right in holding that souls are not "derived through parental +traduction." + +My friend had much to show me: he had made an interesting series of +water-colour sketches of the old castles of the neighbourhood, and a +very elaborate set of drawings of what are known as the Runic obelisks +of Ross: he had made some first attempts, too, in oil-painting; but +though his drawing was, as usual, correct, there was a deadness and want +of transparency about his colouring, which characterized all his after +attempts in the same department, and which was, I suspect, the result of +some such deficiency in his perceptions of the harmonies of colour as +that which, in another department of sense, made me so insensible to the +harmonies of sound. His drawings of the obelisks were of singular +interest. Not only have the thirty years which have since elapsed +exerted their dilapidating effect on all the originals from which he +drew, but one of the number--the most entire of the group at that +time--has been since almost wholly destroyed; and so, what he was then +able to do, there can be no such opportunity of doing again. Further, +his representations of the sculptured ornaments, instead of being (what +those of artists too often are) mere picturesque approximations, were +true in every curve and line. He told me he had spent a fortnight in +tracing out the involved mathematical figures, curves, circles, and +right lines--on which the intricate fretwork of one of the obelisks was +formed, and in making separate drawings of each compartment, before +commencing his draught of the entire stone. And, looking with the eye of +the stone-cutter at his preliminary sketches, from the first meagre +lilies that formed the ground-work of some involved and difficult knot, +to the elaborate knot itself, I saw that, with such a series of drawings +before me, I myself could learn to cut Runic obelisks, in all the +integrity of the complex ancient style, in less than a fortnight. My +friend had formed some striking and original views regarding the +theology represented by symbol on these ancient stones--at that time +regarded as Runic, but now held to be rather of Celtic origin. In the +centre of each obelisk, on the more important and strongly relieved +side, there always occurs a large cross, rather of the Greek than of the +Roman type, and usually elaborately wrought into a fretwork, composed of +myriads of snakes, raised in some of the compartments over half-spheres +resembling apples. In one of the Ross-shire obelisks--that of Shadwick, +in the parish of Nigg--the cross is entirely composed of these +apple-like, snake-covered protuberances; and it was the belief of my +friend, that the original idea of the whole, and, indeed, the +fundamental idea of this school of sculpture, was exactly that so +emphatically laid down by Milton in the opening argument of his +poem--man's fall symbolized by the serpents and the apples, and the +great sign of his restoration, by the cross. But in order to indicate +that to the divine Man, the Restorer, the cross itself was a consequence +of the Fall, even it was covered over with symbols of the event, and, in +one curious specimen, built up of them. It was the snakes and apples +that had reared, _i.e._, rendered imperative, the cross. My friend +further remarked, that from this main idea a sort of fretwork had +originated, which seemed more modern in some of its specimens than the +elaborately-carved snakes, and strongly-relieved apples, but in which +the twistings of the one, and the circular outlines of the others might +be distinctly traced; and that it seemed ultimately to have passed from +a symbol into a mere ornament; as, in earlier instances, hieroglyphic +pictures had passed into mere arbitrary signs or characters. I know not +what may be thought of the theory of William Ross; but when, in +visiting, several years ago, the ancient ruins of Iona, I marked, on the +more ancient crosses, the snakes and apparent apples, and then saw how +the same combination of figures appeared as mere ornamental fretwork on +some of the later tombs, I regarded it as more probably the right one +than any of the others I have yet seen broached on the subject. I dined +with my friend this day on potatoes and salt, flanked by a jug of water; +nor were the potatoes by any means very good ones; but they formed the +only article of food in the household at the time. He had now dined and +breakfasted upon them, he said, for several weeks together; but though +not very strengthening, they kept in the spark of life; and he had saved +up money enough to carry him to the south of Scotland in the spring, +where he trusted to find employment. A poor friendless lad of genius, +diluting his thin consumptive blood on bad potatoes and water, and, at +the same time, anticipating the labours of our antiquarian societies by +his elaborate and truthful drawings of an interesting class of national +antiquities, must be regarded as a melancholy object of contemplation; +but such hapless geniuses there are in every age in which art is +cultivated, and literature has its admirers; and, shrinkingly modest and +retiring in their natures, the world rarely finds them out in time. + +I found employment enough for my leisure during this winter in my books +and walks, and in my uncle James's workshop, which, now that Uncle James +had no longer to lecture me about my Latin, and my carelessness as a +scholar in general, was a very pleasant place, where a great deal of +sound remark and excellent information were always to be had. There was +another dwelling in the neighbourhood in which I sometimes spent a not +unpleasant hour. It was a damp underground room, inhabited by a poor old +woman, who had come to the town from a country parish in the previous +year, bringing with her a miserably deformed lad, her son, who, though +now turned of twenty, more resembled, save in his head and face, a boy +of ten, and who was so helpless a cripple, that he could not move from +off his seat. "Poor lame Danie," as he was termed, was, notwithstanding +the hard measure dealt him by nature, an even-tempered, +kindly-dispositioned lad, and was, in consequence, a great favourite +with the young people in the neighbourhood, especially with the humbly +taught young women, who--regarding him simply as an intelligence, +coupled with sympathies, that could write letters--used to find him +employment, which he liked not a little, as a sort of amanuensis and +adviser-general in their affairs of the heart. Richardson tells that he +learned to write his Pamela by the practice he acquired in writing +love-letters, when a very young lad, for half a score love-sick females, +who trusted and employed him. "Poor Danie," though he bore on a skeleton +body, wholly unfurnished with muscle, a brain of the average size and +activity, was not born to be a novelist; but he had the necessary +materials in abundance; and though secret enough to all his other +acquaintance, I, who cared not a great deal about the matter, might, I +found, have as many of his experiences as I pleased. I enjoyed among my +companions the reputation of being what they termed "close-minded;" and +Danie, satisfied, in some sort, that I deserved the character, seemed to +find it a relief to roll over upon my shoulders the great weight of +confidence which, rather liberally, as would seem, for his comfort, had +been laid upon his own. It is recorded of himself by Burns, that he +"felt as much pleasure in being in the secret of half the loves of the +parish of Tarbolton, as ever did statesman in knowing the intrigues of +half the Courts of Europe." And, writing to Dr. Moore, he adds, that it +was "with difficulty" his pen was "restrained from giving him a couple +of paragraphs on the love-adventures of his compeers, the humble inmates +of the farm-house and cottage." I, on the other hand, bore my +confidences soberly enough, and kept them safe and very close--regarding +myself as merely a sort of back-yard of mind, in which Danie might store +up at pleasure the precious commodities intrusted to his charge, which, +from want of stowage, it cumbered him to keep, but which were his +property, not mine. And though, I daresay, I could still fill more than +"a couple of paragraphs" with the love-affairs of townswomen, some of +whose daughters were courted and married ten years ago, I feel no +inclination whatever, after having kept their secrets so long, to begin +blabbing them now. Danie kept a draft-board, and used to take a pride in +beating all his neighbours; but in a short time he taught me--too +palpably to his chagrin--to beat himself; and finding the game a rather +engrossing one besides, and not caring to look on the woe-begone +expression that used to cloud the meek pale face of my poor +acquaintance, every time he found his men swept off the board, or cooped +up into a corner, I gave up drafts, the only game of the kind of which I +ever knew anything, and in the course of a few years succeeded in +unlearning pretty completely all the moves. It appeared wonderful that +the processes essential to life could have been carried on in so +miserable a piece of framework as the person of poor Danie: it was +simply a human skeleton bent double, and covered with a sallow skin. But +they were not carried on in it long. About eighteen months after the +first commencement of our acquaintance, when I was many miles away, he +was seized by a sudden illness, and died in a few hours. I have seen, in +even our better works of fiction, less interesting characters portrayed +than, poor gentle-spirited Danie, the love-depository of the young dames +of the village; and I learned a thing or two in his school. + +It was not until after several weeks of the working season had passed, +that my master's great repugnance to doing nothing overcame his almost +equally great repugnance again to seek work as a journeyman. At length, +however, a life of inactivity became wholly intolerable to him; and, +applying to his former employer, he was engaged on the previous +terms--full wages for himself, and a very small allowance for his +apprentice, who was now, however, recognised as the readier and more +skilful stone-cutter of the two. In cutting mouldings of the more +difficult kinds, I had sometimes to take the old man under charge, and +give him lessons in the art, from which, however, he had become rather +too rigid in both mind and body greatly to profit. We both returned to +Conon-side, where there was a tall dome of hewn work to be erected over +the main archway of the steading at which we had been engaged during the +previous year; and, as few of the workmen had yet assembled on the +spot, we succeeded in establishing ourselves as inmates of the barrack, +leaving the hay-loft, with its inferior accommodation, to the later +comers. We constructed for ourselves a bed-frame of rough slabs, and +filled it with hay; placed our chests in front of it; and, as the rats +mustered by thousands in the place, suspended our sack of oatmeal by a +rope, from one of the naked rafters, at rather more than a man's height +over the floor. And, having both pot and pitcher, our household economy +was complete. Though resolved not to forego my evening walks, I had +determined to conform also to every practice of the barrack; and as the +workmen, drafted from various parts of the country, gradually increased +around us, and the place became crowded, I soon found myself engaged in +the rolicking barrack-life of the north-country mason. The rats were +somewhat troublesome. A comrade who slept in the bed immediately beside +ours had one of his ears bitten through one night as he lay asleep, and +remarked, that he supposed it would be his weasand they would attack +next time; and, on rising one morning, I found that the four brightly +plated jack-buttons to which my braces had been fastened had been fairly +cut from off my trousers, and carried away, to form, I doubt not, a +portion of some miser-hoard in the wall. But even the rats themselves +became a source of amusement to us, and imparted to our rude domicile, +in some little degree, the dignity of danger. It was not likely that +they would succeed in eating us all up, as they had done wicked Bishop +Hatto of old; but it was at least something that they had begun to try. + +The dwellers in the hay-loft had not been admitted in the previous +season to the full privileges of the barrack, nor had they been required +to share in all its toils and duties. They had to provide their quota of +wood for the fire, and of water for general household purposes: but they +had not to take their turn of cooking and baking for the entire mess, +but were permitted, as convenience served, to cook and bake for +themselves. And so, till now, I had made cakes and porridge, with at +times an occasional mess of brose or _brochan_, for only my master and +myself--a happy arrangement, which, I daresay, saved me a few +_rammings_; seeing that, in at least my earlier efforts, I had been +rather unlucky as a cook, and not very fortunate as a baker. My +experience in the Cromarty caves had rendered me skilful in both boiling +and roasting potatoes, and in preparing shell-fish for the table, +whether molluscous or crustacean, according to the most approved +methods; but the exigencies of our wild life had never brought me fairly +in contact with the cerealia; and I had now to spoil a meal or two, in +each instance, ere my porridge became palatable, or my cakes crisp, or +my brose free and knotty, or my _brochan_ sufficiently smooth and void +of knots. My master, poor man, did grumble a little at first; but there +was a general disposition in the barrack to take part rather with his +apprentice than with himself; and after finding that the cases were to +be given against him, he ceased making complaints. My porridge was at +times, I must confess, very like leaven; but then, it was a standing +recipe in the barrack, that the cook should continue stirring the mess +and adding meal, until, from its first wild ebullitions in full boil, it +became silent over the fire; and so I could show that I had made my +porridge like leaven, quite according to rule. And as for my _brochan_, +I succeeded in proving that I had actually failed to satisfy, though I +had made two kinds of it at once in the same pot. I preferred this viand +when of a thicker consistency than usual, whereas my master liked it +thin enough to be drunk out of the bowl; but as it was I who had the +making of it, I used more instead of less meal than ordinary, and +unluckily, in my first experiment, mixed up the meal in a very small +bowl. It became a dense dough-like mass; and on emptying it into the +pot, instead of incorporating with the boiling water, it sank in a solid +cake to the bottom. In vain I stirred, and manipulated, and kept up the +fire. The stubborn mass refused to separate or dilute, and at length +burnt brown against the bottom of the pot--a hue which the gruel-like +fluid which floated over also assumed; and at length, in utter despair +of securing aught approaching to an average consistency for the whole, +and hearing my master's foot at the door, I took the pot from off the +fire, and dished up for supper a portion of the thinner mixture which it +contained, and which, in at least colour and consistency, not a little +resembled chocolate. The poor man ladled the stuff in utter dismay. "Od, +laddie," he said, "what ca' ye this? Ca' ye this _brochan_?" "Onything +ye like, master," I replied; "but there are two kinds in the pot, and it +will go hard if none of them please you." I then dished him a piece of +the cake, somewhat resembling in size and consistency a small brown +dumpling, which he of course found wholly inedible, and became angry. +But this bad earth of ours "is filled," according to Cowper, "with wrong +and outrage;" and the barrack laughed and took part with the defaulter. +Experience, however, that does so much for all, did a little for me. I +at length became a tolerably fair plain cook, and not a very bad baker; +and now, when the exigencies required that I should take my full share +in the duties of the barrack, I was found adequate to their proper +fulfilment. I made cakes and porridge of fully the average excellence; +and my brose and _brochan_ enjoyed at least the negative happiness of +escaping animadversion and comment. + +Some of the inmates, however, who were exceedingly nice in their eating, +were great connoisseurs in porridge; and it was no easy matter to please +them. There existed unsettled differences--the results of a diversity of +tastes--regarding the time that should be given to the boiling of the +mess, respecting the proportion of salt that should be allotted to each +individual, and as to whether the process of "mealing," as it was +termed, should be a slow or a hasty one, and, of course, as in all +controversies of all kinds, the more the matters in dispute were +discussed, the more did they grow in importance. Occasionally the +disputants had their porridge made at the same time in the same pot: +there were, in especial, two of the workmen who differed upon the +degree-of-salt question, whose bickers were supplied from the same +general preparation; and as these had usually opposite complaints to +urge against the cooking, their objections served so completely to +neutralize each other, that they in no degree told against the cook. One +morning the cook--a wag and a favourite--in making porridge for both the +controversialists, made it so exceedingly fresh as to be but little +removed from a poultice; and, filling with the preparation in this state +the bicker of the salt-loving connoisseur, he then took a handful of +salt, and mixing it with the portion which remained in the pot, poured +into the bicker of the fresh man, porridge very much akin to a pickle. +Both entered the barrack sharply set for breakfast, and sat down each to +his meal; and both at the first spoonful dropped their spoons. "A +ramming to the cook!" cried the one--"he has given me porridge without +salt!" "A ramming to the cook!" roared out the other--"he has given me +porridge like brine!" "You see, lads," said the cook, stepping out into +the middle of the floor, with the air of a much-injured orator--"you +see, lads, what matters have come to at last: there is the very pot in +which I made in one mess the porridge in both their bickers. I don't +think we should bear this any longer; we have all had our turn of it, +though mine happens to be the worst; and I now move that these two +fellows be rammed." No sooner said than done. There was a terrible +struggling, and a burning sense of injustice; but no single man in the +barrack was match for half-a-dozen of the others. The disputants, too, +instead of making common cause together, were prepared to assist in +ramming each the other; and so rammed they both were. And at length, +when the details of the stratagem came out, the cook--by escaping for +half an hour into the neighbouring wood, and concealing himself there, +like some political exile under ban of the Government--succeeded in +escaping the merited punishment. + +The cause of justice was never, I found, in greater danger in our little +community, than when a culprit succeeded in getting the laughers on his +side. I have said that I became a not very bad baker. Still less and +less sorely, as I improved in this useful art, did my cakes try the +failing teeth of my master, until at length they became crisp and nice; +and he began to find that my new accomplishment was working serious +effects upon the contents of his meal-chest. With a keenly whetted +appetite, and in vigorous health, I was eating a great deal of bread; +and, after a good deal of grumbling, he at length laid it down as law +that I should restrict myself for the future to two cakes per week. I at +once agreed; but the general barrack, to whose ears some of my master's +remonstrances had found their way, was dissatisfied; and it would +probably have overturned in conclave our agreement, and punished the old +man, my master, for the niggardly stringency of his terms, had I not +craved, by way of special favour, to be permitted to give them a week's +trial. One evening early in the week, when the old man had gone out, I +mixed up the better part of a peck of meal in a pot, and placing two of +the larger chests together in the same plane, kneaded it out into an +enormous cake, at least equal in area to an ordinary-sized Newcastle +grindstone. I then cut it up into about twenty pieces, and, forming a +vast semicircle of stones round the fire, raised the pieces to the heat +in a continuous row, some five or six feet in length. I had ample and +ready assistance vouchsafed me in the "firing"--half the barrack were +engaged in the work--when my master entered, and after scanning our +employment in utter astonishment--now glancing at the ring of meal which +still remained on the united chests, to testify to the huge proportions +of the disparted bannock, and now at the cones, squares, rhombs, and +trapeziums of cake that hardened to the heat in front of the fire, he +abruptly asked--"What's this, laddie?--are ye baking for a wadding?" +"Just baking one of the two cakes, master," I replied; "I don't think +we'll need the other one before Saturday night." A roar of laughter from +every corner of the barrack precluded reply; and in the laughter, after +an embarrassed pause, the poor man had the good sense to join. And +during the rest of the season I baked as often and as much as I pleased. +It is, I believe, Goldsmith who remarks, that "wit generally succeeds +more from being happily addressed, than from its native poignancy," and +that "a jest calculated to spread at a gaming table, may be received +with perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat." +On Goldsmith's principle, the joke of what was termed, from the +well-known fairy tale, "the big bannock wi' the Malison," could have +perhaps succeeded in only a masons' barrack; but never there at least +could joke have been more successful. + +As I had not yet ascertained that the Old Red Sandstone of the north of +Scotland is richly fossiliferous, Conon-side and its neighbourhood +furnished me with no very favourable field for geologic exploration. It +enabled me, however, to extend my acquaintance with the great +conglomerate base of the system, which forms here, as I have already +said, a sort of miniature Highlands, extending between the valleys of +the Conon and the Peffer, and which--remarkable for its picturesque +cliffs, abrupt eminences, and narrow steep-sided dells--bears in its +centre a pretty wood-skirted loch, into which the old Celtic prophet +Kenneth Ore, when, like Prospero, he relinquished his art, buried "deep +beyond plummet sound" the magic stone in which he was wont to see both +the distant and the future. Immediately over the pleasure-grounds of +Brahan, the rock forms exactly such cliffs as the landscape gardener +would make, if he could--cliffs with their rude prominent pebbles +breaking the light over every square foot of surface, and furnishing +footing, by their innumerable projections, to many a green tuft of moss, +and many a sweet little flower; while far below, among the deep woods, +there stand up enormous fragments of the same rock, that must have +rolled down in some remote age from the precipices above, and which, +mossy and hoar, and many of them ivy-bound, resemble artificial +ruins--obnoxious, however, to none of the disparaging associations which +the make-believe ruin is sure always to awaken. It was inexpressibly +pleasant to spend a quiet evening hour among these wild cliffs, and +imagine a time when the far distant sea beat against their bases; but +though their enclosed pebbles evidently owed their rounded form to the +attrition of water, the imagination seemed paralyzed when it attempted +calling up a still earlier time, when these solid rocks existed as but +loose sand and pebbles, tossed by waves or scattered by currents; and +when, for hundreds and thousands of square miles, the wild tract around +existed as an ancient ocean, skirted by unknown lands. I had not yet +collected enough of geologic fact to enable me to grapple with the +difficulties of a restoration of the more ancient time. There was a +later period, also, represented in the immediate neighbourhood by a +thick deposit of stratified sand, of which I knew as little as of the +conglomerate. We dug into it, in founding a thrashing-mill, for about +ten feet, but came to no bottom; and I could see that it formed the +subsoil of the valley all around the policies of Conon-side, and +underlay most of its fields and woods. It was white and pure, as if it +had been washed by the sea only a few weeks previous; but in vain did I +search its beds and layers for a fragment of shell by which to determine +its age. I can now, however, entertain little doubt that it belonged to +the boulder clay period of submergence, and that the fauna with which it +was associated bore the ordinary sub-arctic character. When this +stratified sand was deposited, the waves must have broken against the +conglomerate precipices of Brahan, and the sea have occupied, as firths +and sounds, the deep Highland valleys of the interior. And on such of +the hills of the country as had their heads above water at the time, +that interesting but somewhat meagre Alpine Flora must have flourished, +which we now find restricted to our higher mountain summits. + +Once every six weeks I was permitted to visit Cromarty, and pass a +Sabbath there; but as my master usually accompanied me, and as the way +proved sufficiently long and weary to press upon his failing strength +and stiffening limbs, we had to restrict ourselves to the beaten road, +and saw but little. On, however, one occasion this season, I journeyed +alone, and spent so happy a day in finding my homeward road along blind +paths--that ran now along the rocky shores of the Cromarty Firth in its +upper reaches, now through brown, lonely moors, mottled with Danish +encampments, and now beside quiet, tomb-besprinkled burying-grounds, and +the broken walls of deserted churches--that its memory still lives +freshly in my mind, as one of the happiest of my life. I passed whole +hours among the ruins of Craighouse--a grey fantastic rag of a castle, +consisting of four heavily-arched stories of time-eaten stone, piled +over each other, and still bearing a-top its stone roof and its ornate +turrets and bartizans-- + + + "A ghastly prison, that eternally + Hangs its blind visage out to the one sea." + + +It was said in these days to be haunted by its goblin--a +miserable-looking, grey-headed, grey-bearded, little old man, that might +be occasionally seen late in the evening, or early in the morning, +peering out through some arrow-slit or shot-hole at the chance +passenger. I remember getting the whole history of the goblin this day +from a sun-burnt herd-boy, whom I found tending his cattle under the +shadow of the old castle-wall. I began by asking him whose _apparition_ +he thought it was that could continue to haunt a building, the very name +of whose last inhabitant had been long since forgotten. "_Oh, they're +saying_," was the reply, "it's the spirit of the man that was killed on +the foundation-stone, just after it was laid, and then built intil the +wa' by the masons, that he might _keep_ the castle by coming back again; +and _they're saying_ that a' the verra auld houses in the kintra had +murderit men builded intil them in that way, and that they have a' o' +them their bogle." I recognised in the boy's account of the matter an +old and widely-spread tradition, which, whatever may have been its +original basis of truth, seems to have so far influenced the buccaneers +of the 17th century, as to have become a reality in their hands. "If +time," says Sir Walter Scott, "did not permit the buccaneers to lavish +away their plunder in their usual debaucheries, they were wont to hide +it, with many superstitious solemnities, in the desert islands and +_keys_ which they frequented, and where much treasure, whose lawless +owners perished without reclaiming it, is still supposed to be +concealed. The most cruel of mankind are often the most superstitious; +and those pirates are said to have had recourse to a horrid ritual, in +order to secure an unearthly guardian to their treasures. They killed a +negro or Spaniard, and buried him with the treasure, believing that his +spirit would haunt the spot, and terrify away all intruders." There is a +figurative peculiarity in the language in which Joshua denounced the man +who should dare rebuild Jericho, that seems to point at some ancient +pagan rite of this kind. Nor does it seem improbable that a practice +which existed in times so little remote as those of the buccaneers, may +have first begun in the dark and cruel ages of human sacrifices. "Cursed +be the man before the Lord," said Joshua, "that riseth up and buildeth +this city of Jericho: _he shall lay the foundation thereof in his +firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it_." + +The large-farm system had been already introduced into the part of the +country in which I at this time resided, on the richer and more level +lands; but many a Gaelic-speaking cottar and small tenant still lived on +the neighbouring moors and hill-sides. Though Highland in their surnames +and language, they bore a character considerably different from that of +the simpler Highlanders of the interior of Sutherland, or of a class I +had shortly afterwards an opportunity of studying--the Highlanders of +the western coast of Ross-shire. Doors were not left unbarred at night +in the neighbourhood; and there were wretched hovels among the moors, +very zealously watched and guarded indeed. There was much illicit +distillation and smuggling at this time among the Gaelic-speaking people +of the district; and it told upon their character with the usual +deteriorating effect. Many of the Highlanders, too, had wrought as +labourers at the Caledonian Canal, where they had come in contact with +south-country workmen, and had brought back with them a confident, +loquacious smartness, that, based on a ground-work of ignorance, which +it rendered active and obtrusive, had a bizarre and disagreeable effect, +and formed but an indifferent substitute for the diffident and taciturn +simplicity which it had supplanted. But I have ever found the people of +those border districts of the Highlands which join on to the low +country, or that inhabit districts much traversed by tourists, of a +comparatively inferior cast: the finer qualities of the Highland +character seem easily injured: the hospitality, the simplicity, the +unsuspecting honesty, disappear; and we find, instead, a people +rapacious, suspicious, and unscrupulous, considerably beneath the +Lowland average. In all the unopened districts of the remote Highlands +into which I have penetrated, I have found the people strongly engage my +sympathies and affections--much more strongly than in any part of the +Lowlands; whereas, on the contrary, in the deteriorated districts I have +been sensible of an involuntary revulsion of feeling, when in contact +with the altered race, of which, among the low-country Scotch or the +English, I have had no experience. I remember being impressed, in +reading, many years ago, one of Miss Ferrier's novels, with the truth of +a stroke that brought out very practically the ready susceptibility of +injury manifested by the Celtic character. Some visitors of condition +from the Highlands are represented as seeking out in one of our larger +towns of the south, a simple Highland lad, who had quitted a remote +northern district only a few months before; and when they find him, it +is as a prisoner in Bridewell. + +Towards the end of September, my master, who had wholly failed in +overcoming his repugnance to labour as a mere journeyman, succeeded in +procuring a piece of work by contract, in a locality about fourteen +miles nearer our home than Conon-side, and I accompanied him to assist +in its completion. Our employment in our new scene of labour was of the +most disagreeable kind. Burns, who must have had a tolerably extensive +experience of the evils of hard work, specifies in his "Twa Dogs" three +kinds of labour in especial that give poor "cot-folk" "fash enough." + + + "Trowth, Caesar, whiles they're fash'd eneugh; + A cottar howkin' in a sheugh, + Wi' dirty stanes biggin' a dyke. + Baring a quarry, and sic like." + + +All very disagreeable employments, as I also can testify; and our work +here unfortunately combined the whole three. We were engaged in +rebuilding one of those old-fashioned walls of gentlemen's +pleasure-grounds known as "_ha has_," that line the sides of deep +ditches, and raise their tops to but the level of the sward; and as the +ditch in this special instance was a wet one, and as we had to clear it +of the old fallen materials, and to dig it out for our new line of +foundation, while at the same time we had to furnish ourselves with +additional materials from a neighbouring quarry, we had at once the +"baring of the quarry," the "howkin' in the sheugh," and the "biggin' of +the dyke wi' dirty stanes," to "fash" us. The last-named employment is +by far the most painful and trying. In most kinds of severe labour the +skin thickens, and the hand hardens, through a natural provision, to +suit the requirements of the task imposed, and yield the necessary +protection to the integuments below; but the "dirty stanes" of the +dyke-builder, when wet as well as dirty, try the reproductive powers of +the cuticle too severely, and wear it off, so that under the rough +friction the quick is laid bare. On this occasion, and on at least one +other, when engaged in building in a wet season in the Western +Highlands, I had all my fingers oozing blood at once; and those who +think that in such circumstances labour protracted throughout a long day +can be other than torture, would do well to try. How these poor hands of +mine burnt and beat at night at this time, as if an unhappy heart had +been stationed in every finger! and what cold chills used to run, sudden +as electric shocks, through the feverish frame! + +My general health, too, had become far from strong. As I had been almost +entirely engaged in hewing for the two previous seasons, the dust of the +stone, inhaled at every breath, had exerted the usual weakening effects +on the lungs--those effects under which the life of the stone-cutter is +restricted to about forty-five years; but it was only now, when working +day after day with wet feet in a water-logged ditch, that I began to be +sensibly informed, by a dull, depressing pain in the chest, and a +blood-stained mucoidal substance, expectorated with difficulty, that I +had already caught harm from my employment, and that my term of life +might fall far short of the average one. I resolved, however, as the +last year of my apprenticeship was fast drawing to its close, to +complete, at all hazards, my engagement with my master. It had been +merely a verbal engagement, and I might have broken it without blame, +when, unable to furnish me with work in his character as a master-mason, +he had to transfer my labour to another; but I had determined not to +break it, all the more doggedly from the circumstance that my uncle +James, in a moment of irritation, had said at its commencement that he +feared I would no more persist in being a mason than I had done in being +a scholar; and so I wrought perseveringly on; and slowly and painfully, +rood after rood, the wall grew up under our hands. My poor master, who +suffered even more from chopped hands and bleeding fingers than I did, +was cross and fretful, and sometimes sought relief in finding fault with +his apprentice; but, sobered by my forebodings of an early death, I used +to make no reply; and the hasty, ill-tempered expressions in which he +gave vent virtually to but his sense of pain and discomfort, were almost +always followed by some conciliatory remark. Superstition takes a strong +hold of the mind in circumstances such as those in which I was at this +time placed. One day when on the top of a tall building, part of which +we were throwing down to supply us with materials for our work, I raised +up a broad slab of red micaceous sandstone, thin as a roofing slate, and +exceedingly fragile, and, holding it out at arm's length, dropped it +over the wall. I had been worse than usual all that morning, and much +depressed; and, ere the slab parted from my hand, I said--looking +forward to but a few months of life--I shall break up like that +sandstone slab, and perish as little known. But the sandstone slab did +not break up: a sudden breeze blew it aslant as it fell; it cleared the +rough heap of stones below, where I had anticipated it would have been +shivered to fragments; and, lighting on its edge, stuck upright like a +miniature obelisk, in the soft green sward beyond. None of the +Philosophies or the Logics would have sanctioned the inference which I +immediately drew; but that curious chapter in the history of human +belief which treats of signs and omens abounds in such postulates and +such conclusions. I at once inferred that recovery awaited me: I was "to +live and not die;" and felt lighter, during the few weeks I afterwards +toiled at this place, under the cheering influence of the conviction. + +The tenant of the farm on which our work was situated, and who had been +both a great distiller and considerable fanner in his day, had become +bankrupt shortly before, and was on the eve of quitting the place, a +broken man. And his forlorn circumstances seemed stamped on almost every +field and out-house of his farm. The stone fences were ruinous; the +hedges gapped by the almost untended cattle; a considerable sprinkling +of corn-ears lay rotting on the lea; and here and there an entire sheaf, +that had fallen from the "leading-cart" at the close of harvest, might +be seen still lying among the stubble, fastened to the earth by the +germination of its grains. Some of the out-houses were miserable beyond +description. There was a square of modern offices, in which the cattle +and horses of the farm--appropriated by the landlord, at the time under +the law of hypothec--were tolerably well lodged; but the hovel in which +three of the farm-servants lived, and in which, for want of a better, my +master and I had to cook and sleep, was one of the most miserable +tumble-down erections I ever saw inhabited. It had formed part of an +ancient set of offices that had been condemned about fourteen years +before; but the proprietor of the place becoming insolvent, it had been +spared, in lack of a better, to accommodate the servants who wrought on +the farm; and it had now become not only a comfortless, but also a very +unsafe dwelling. It would have formed no bad subject, with its bulging +walls and gapped roof, that showed the bare ribs through the breaches, +for the pencil of my friend William Koss; but the cow or horse that had +no better shelter than that which it afforded could not be regarded as +other than indifferently lodged. Every heavier shower found its way +through the roof in torrents: I could even tell the hour of the night by +the stars which passed over the long opening that ran along the ridge +from gable to gable; and in stormy evenings I have paused at every ruder +blast, in the expectation of hearing the rafters crack and give way over +my head. The distiller had introduced upon his farm, on a small scale, +what has since been extensively known as the bothy system; and this +hovel was the bothy. There were, as I have said, but three farm-servants +who lived in it at the time--young, unmarried lads, extremely ignorant, +and of gay, reckless dispositions, whose care for their master's +interests might be read in the germinating sheaves that lay upon his +fields, and who usually spoke of him, when out of his hearing, as "the +old sinner." He too evidently cared nothing for them; and they detested +him, and regarded the ruin which had overtaken him, and which their own +recklessness and indifference to his welfare must have at least assisted +to secure, with open satisfaction. "It was ae comfort, anyhow," they +said, "that the blastit old sinner, after a' his near-goingness wi' +them, was now but a dyvour bankrupt." Bad enough certainly; and yet +natural enough, and, in a sense, proper enough too. The Christian divine +would have urged these men to return their master good for evil. +Cobbett, on the contrary, would have advised them to go out at nights a +rick-burning. The better advice will to a certainty not be taken by +ninety-nine out of every hundred of our bothy-men; for it is one of the +grand evils of the system, that it removes its victims beyond the +ennobling influences of religion; and, on the other hand, at least this +much may be said for the worse counsel, that the system costs the +country every year the price of a great many corn-ricks. + +The three lads lived chiefly on brose, as the viand at all edible into +which their oatmeal could be most readily converted; and never baked or +made for themselves a dish of porridge or gruel, apparently to avoid +trouble, and that they might be as little as possible in the hated +bothy. I always lost sight of them in the evening; but towards midnight +their talk frequently awoke me as they were going to bed; and I heard +them tell of incidents that had befallen them at the neighbouring +farm-houses, or refer to blackguard bits of scandal which they had +picked up. Sometimes a fourth voice mingled in the dialogue. It was that +of a reckless poacher, who used to come in, always long after +nightfall, and fling himself down on a lair of straw in a corner of the +bothy; and usually ere day broke he was up and away. The grand enjoyment +of the three farm-lads--the enjoyment which seemed to counterbalance, +with its concentrated delights, the comfortless monotony of weeks--was a +rustic ball which took place once every month, and sometimes oftener, at +a public-house in the neighbouring village, and at which they used to +meet some of the farm-lasses of the locality, and dance and drink whisky +till morning. I know not how their money stood such frequent carousals; +but they were, I saw, bare of every necessary article of clothing, +especially of underclothing and linen; and I learned from their +occasional talk about justice-of-peace summonses, that the previous +term-day had left in the hands of their shoemakers and drapers unsettled +bills. But such matters were taken very lightly: the three lads, if not +happy, were at least merry; and the monthly ball, for which they +sacrificed so much, furnished not only its hours of pleasure while it +lasted, but also a week's talking in anticipation ere it came, and +another week's talking over its various incidents after it had passed. +And such was my experience of the bothy system in its first beginnings. +It has since so greatly increased, that there are now single counties in +Scotland in which there are from five to eight hundred farm-servants +exposed to its deteriorating influences; and the rustic population bids +fair in those districts fully to rival that of our large towns in +profligacy, and greatly to outrival them in coarseness. Were I a +statesman, I would, I think, be bold enough to try the efficacy of a tax +on bothies. It is long since Goldsmith wrote regarding a state of +society in which "wealth accumulates and men decay," and since Burns +looked with his accustomed sagacity on that change for the worse in the +character of our rural people which the large-farm system has +introduced. "A fertile improved country is West Lothian," we find the +latter poet remarking, in one of his journals, "but the more elegance +and luxury among the farmers, I always observe in equal proportion the +rudeness and stupidity of the peasantry. This remark I have made all +over the Lothians, Merse, Roxburgh, &c.; and for this, among other +reasons, I think that a man of romantic taste--'a man of feeling'--will +be better pleased with the poverty but intelligent minds of the +peasantry of Ayrshire (peasantry they all are, below the Justice of +Peace), than the opulence of a club of Merse farmers, when he at the +same time considers the Vandalism of their plough-folks." The +deteriorating effect of the large-farm system, remarked by the poet, is +inevitable. It is impossible that the modern farm-servant, in his +comparatively irresponsible situation, and with his fixed wages of +meagre amount, can be rendered as thoughtful and provident a person as +the small farmer of the last age, who, thrown on his own resources, had +to cultivate his fields and drive his bargains with his Martinmas and +Whitsunday settlement with the landlord full before him; and who often +succeeded in saving money, and in giving a classical education to some +promising son or nephew, which enabled the young man to rise to a higher +sphere of life. Farm-servants, as a class, _must_ be lower in the scale +than the old tenant-farmers, who wrought their little farms with their +own hands; but it is possible to elevate them far above the degraded +level of the bothy; and unless means be taken to check the spread of the +ruinous process of brute-making which the system involves, the Scottish +people will sink, to a certainty, in the agricultural districts, from +being one of the most provident, intelligent, and moral in Europe, to be +one of the most licentious, reckless, and ignorant. + +Candle-light is a luxury in which no one ever thinks of indulging in a +barrack; and in a barrack such as ours at this time, riddled with gaps +and breaches, and filled with all manner of cold draughts, it was not +every night in which a candle would have burnt. And as our fuel, which +consisted of sorely decayed wood--the roofing of a dilapidated +out-house which we were pulling down--formed but a dull fire, it was +with difficulty I could read by its light. By spreading out my book, +however, within a foot or so of the embers, I was enabled, though +sometimes at the expense of a headache, to prosecute a new tract of +reading which had just opened to me, and in which, for a time, I found +much amusement. There was a vagabond pedlar who travelled at this time +the northern counties, widely known as Jack from Dover, but whose true +name was Alexander Knox, and who used to affirm that he was of the same +family as the great Reformer. The pedlar himself was, however, no +reformer. Once every six weeks or two months he got madly drunk, and not +only "perished the pack," as he used to say, but sometimes got into +prison to boot. There were, however, some kind relations in the south, +who always set him up again; and Jack from Dover, after a fortnight of +misery, used to appear with the ordinary bulk of merchandise at his +back, and continue thriving until he again got drunk. He had a turn for +buying and reading curious books, which, after mastering their contents, +he always sold again; and he learned to bring them, when of a kind which +no one else would purchase, to my mother, and recommend them as suitable +for me. Poor Jack was always conscientious in his recommendations. I +know not how he contrived to take the exact measure of my tastes in the +matter, but suitable for me they invariably were; and as his price +rarely exceeded a shilling per volume, and sometimes fell below a +sixpence, my mother always purchased, when she could, upon his judgment. +I owed to his discrimination my first copy of Bacon's "Wisdom of the +Ancients," "done into English by Sir Arthur Gorges," and a book to which +I had long after occasion to refer in my geological writings--Maillet's +"Telliamed"--one, of the earlier treatises on the development +hypothesis; and he had now procured for me a selection, in one volume, +of the Poems of Gawin Douglas and Will Dunbar, and another collection +in a larger volume, of "Ancient Scottish Poems," from the MSS. of George +Bannatyne. I had been previously almost wholly unacquainted with the +elder Scotch poets. My uncle James had introduced me, at a very early +age, to Burns and Ramsay, and I had found out Fergusson and Tannahill +for myself; but that school of Scotch literature which nourished between +the reigns of David the Second and James the Sixth had remained to me, +until now, well-nigh a _terra incognita_, and I found no little pleasure +in exploring the antique recesses which it opened up. Shortly after, I +read Ramsay's "Evergreen," the "King's Quair," and the true "Actes and +Deides of ye illuster and vailyeand campioun Shyr Wilham Wallace," not +modernized, as in my first copy, but in the tongue in which they had +been recited of old by Henry the Minstrel: I had previously gloated over +Harbour's Bruce; and thus my acquaintance with the old Scots poets, if +not very profound, became at least so respectable, that not until many +years after did I meet with an individual who knew them equally well. + +The strange picturesque allegories of Douglas, and the terse sense and +racy humour of Dunbar, delighted me much. As I had to con my way slowly +amid the difficulties of a language which was no longer that spoken by +my country-folk, I felt as if I were creating the sense which I found; +it came gradually out like some fossil of the rock, from which I had +laboriously to chip away the enveloping matrix; and in hanging +admiringly over it, I thought I perceived how it was that some of my old +schoolfellows, who were prosecuting their education at college, were +always insisting on the great superiority of the old Greek and Roman +writers over the writers of our own country. I could not give them +credit for much critical discernment: they were indifferent enough, some +of them, to both verse and prose, and hardly knew in what poetry +consisted; and yet I believed them to be true to their perceptions when +they insisted on what they termed the high excellence of the ancients. +With my old schoolfellows, I now said, the process of perusal, when +reading an English work of classical standing, is so sudden, compared +with the slowness with which they imagine or understand, that they slide +over the surface of their author's numbers, or of his periods, without +acquiring a due sense of what lies beneath; whereas, in perusing the +works of a Greek or Latin author, they have just to do what I am doing +in deciphering the "Palice of Honour" or the "Goldin Terge,"--they have +to proceed slowly, and to render the language of their author into the +language of their own thinking. And so, losing scarce any of his meaning +in consequence, and not reflecting on the process through which they +have entered into it, they contrast the little which they gain from a +hurried perusal of a good English book, with the much which they gain +from the very leisurely perusal of a good Latin or Greek one; and term +_the little_ the poverty of modern writers, and _the much_ the fertility +of the ancients. Such was my theory, and it was at least not an +uncharitable one to my acquaintance. I was, however, arrested in the +middle of my studies by a day of soaking rain, which so saturated with +moisture the decayed spongy wood, our fuel, that, though I succeeded in +making with some difficulty such fires of it as sufficed to cook our +victuals, it defied my skill to make one by which I could read. At +length, however, this dreary season of labour--by far the gloomiest I +ever spent--came to a close, and I returned with my master to Cromarty +about Martinmas, our heavy job of work completed, and my term of +apprenticeship at a close. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + + "Far let me wander down thy craggy shore, + With rocks and trees bestrewn, dark Loch Maree."--SMALL. + + +The restorative powers of a constitution which at this time it took much +hard usage to injure, came vigorously into operation on my removal from +the wet ditch and the ruinous hovel; and ere the close of winter I had +got once more into my ordinary state of robust health. I read, wrote, +drew, corresponded with my friend William Ross (who had removed to +Edinburgh), re-examined the Eathie Lias, and re-explored the Eathie +Burn--a noble Old Red Sandstone ravine, remarkable for the wild +picturesqueness of its cliffs and the beauty of its cataracts. I spent, +too, many an evening in Uncle James's workshop, on better terms with +both my uncles than almost ever before--a consequence, in part, of the +sober complexion which, as the seasons passed, my mind was gradually +assuming, and in part, of the manner in which I had completed my +engagement with my master. "Act always," said Uncle James, "as you have +done in this matter. In all your dealings, give your neighbour the _cast +of the bauk_--'good measure, heaped up and running over'--and you will +not lose by it in the end." I certainly did not lose by faithfully +serving out my term of apprenticeship. It is not uninstructive to +observe how strangely the public are led at times to attach paramount +importance to what is in reality only subordinately important, and to +pass over the really paramount without thought or notice. The destiny in +life of the skilled mechanic is much more influenced, for instance, by +his second education--that of his apprenticeship--than by his +first--that of the school; and yet it is to the education of the school +that the importance is generally regarded as attaching, and we never +hear of the other. The careless, incompetent scholar has many +opportunities of recovering himself; the careless, incompetent +apprentice, who either fails to serve out his regular time, or who, +though he fulfils his term, is discharged an inferior workman, has very +few; and further, nothing can be more certain than that inferiority as a +workman bears much more disastrously on the condition of the mechanic +than inferiority as a scholar. Unable to maintain his place among +brother journeymen, or to render himself worthy of the average wages of +his craft, the ill-taught mechanic falls out of regular employment, +subsists precariously for a time on occasional jobs, and either, forming +idle habits, becomes a vagabond _tramper_, or, getting into the toils of +some rapacious task-master, becomes an enslaved _sweater_. For one +workman injured by neglect of his school-education, there are scores +ruined by neglect of their apprenticeship-education. Three-fourths of +the distress of the country's mechanics (of course not reckoning that of +the unhappy class who have to compete with machinery), and nine-tenths +of their vagabondism, will be found restricted to inferior workmen, who, +like Hogarth's "careless apprentice," neglected the opportunities of +their second term of education. The sagacious painter had a truer +insight into this matter than most of our modern educationists. + +My friend of the Doocot Cave had been serving a short apprenticeship to +a grocer in London during the latter years in which I had been working +out mine as a stone-mason in the north country; and I now learned that +he had just returned to his native place, with the intention of setting +up in business for himself. To those who move in the upper walks, the +superiority in status of the village shop-keeper over the journeyman +mason may not be very perceptible; but, surveyed from the lower levels +of society, it is quite considerable enough to be seen; even Gulliver +could determine that the Emperor of Lilliput was taller by almost the +breadth of a nail than any of his Court; and, though extremely desirous +of renewing my acquaintanceship with my old friend, I was sensible +enough of his advantage over me in point of position, to feel that the +necessary advances should be made on his part, not on mine. I, however, +threw myself in his way, though after a manner so fastidiously proud and +jealous, that even yet, every time the recollection crosses me, it +provokes me to a smile. On learning that he was engaged at the quay in +superintending the landing of some goods, for, I suppose, his future +shop, I assumed the leathern apron, which I had thrown aside for the +winter at Martinmas, and stalked past him in my working dress--a +veritable operative mason--eyeing him steadfastly as I passed. He looked +at me for a moment; and then, without sign of recognition, turned +indifferently away. I failed taking into account that he had never seen +me girt with a leathern apron before--that, since we had last parted, I +had grown more than half a foot--and that a young man of nearly five +feet eleven inches, with an incipient whisker palpably visible on his +cheek, might be a different-looking sort of person from a smooth-chinned +stripling of little more than five feet three. And certainly my friend, +as I learned from him nearly three years after, failed on this occasion +to recognise me. But believing that he did, and that he did not choose +to reckon among his friends a humble working man, I returned to my home +very sad, and, I am afraid, not a little angry; and, locking up the +supposed slight in my breast, as of too delicate a nature to be +communicated to any one, for more than two years from this time I did +not again cross his path. + +I was now my own master, and commenced work as a journeyman in behalf of +one of my maternal aunts--the aunt who had gone so many years before to +live with her aged relative, the cousin of my father, and the mother of +his first wife. Aunt Jenny had resided for many years after this time +with an aged widow lady, who had lived apart in quiet gentility on very +small means; and now that she was dead, my aunt saw her vocation gone, +and wished that she too could live apart, a life of humble independency, +supporting herself by her spinning-wheel, and by now and then knitting a +stocking. She feared, however, to encounter the formidable drain on her +means of a half-yearly room-rent; and, as there was a little bit of +ground at the head of the strip of garden left me by my father, which +bordered on a road that, communicating between town and country, bore, +as is common in the north of Scotland, the French name of the _Pays_, it +occurred to me that I might try my hand, as a skilled mechanic, in +erecting upon it a cottage for Aunt Jenny. Masons have, of course, more +in their power in the way of house-building than any other class of +mechanics. It was necessary, however, that there should be money +provided for the purchase of wood for the roof, and for the carting of +the necessary stones and mortar; and I had none. But Aunt Jenny had +saved a few pounds, and a very few proved sufficient; and so I built a +cottage in the _Pays_, of a single room and a closet, as my first job, +which, if not very elegant, or of large accommodation, came fully up to +Aunt Jenny's ideas of comfort, and which, for at least a quarter of a +century, has served her as a home. It was completed before Whitsunday, +and I then deliberated on setting myself to seek after employment of a +more remunerative kind, with just a little of the feeling to which we +owe one of the best-known elegiac poems in the language--the "Man was +made to Mourn" of Burns. "There is nothing that gives me a more +mortifying picture of human life," said the poet, "than a man seeking +work." The required work, however, came direct in my way without +solicitation, and exactly at the proper time. I was engaged to assist in +hewing a Gothic gateway among the woods of my old haunt, Conon-side; and +was then despatched, when the work was on the eve of being finished, to +provide materials for building a house on the western coast of +Ross-shire. My new master had found me engaged in the previous season, +amid the wild turmoil of the barrack, in studying practical geometry, +and had glanced approvingly over a series of architectural drawings +which I had just completed; and he now sought me out in consequence, and +placed me in charge of a small party which he despatched in advance of +his other workmen, and which I was instructed to increase, by employing +a labourer or two on arriving at the scene of our future employment. + +We were to be accompanied by a carter from a neighbouring town; and on +the morning fixed for the commencement of our journey, his cart and +horse were early at Conon-side, to carry across the country the tools +required at our new job; but of himself we saw no trace; and about ten +o'clock we set off without him. Ascertaining, however, when about two +miles on our way, that we had left behind us a lever useful in the +setting of large stones, I bade my companion wait for me at the village +of Contin, where we expected meeting the carter; and, returning for the +tool, I quitted the high road on finding it, and, to save time, and +avoid a detour of about three miles, struck across the country direct on +the village. My way was, however, a very rough one; and in coming upon +the Conon, which it was necessary I should ford--for by avoiding the +detour I had missed the bridge--I found it tolerably heavy in flood. +Save for the iron lever which I carried, I would have selected, as my +point of crossing, one of the still deep pools, as much safer to a +vigorous swimmer than any of the apparent fords, with their powerful +currents, whirling eddies, and rough bottoms. But though the heroes of +antiquity--men such as Julius Caeesar and Horatius Cocles--could swim +across rivers and seas in heavy armour, the specific gravity of the +human subject in these latter ages of the world forbids such feats; and, +concluding that I had not levity enough in my framework to float across +the lever, I selected, with some hesitation, one of the better-looking +fords, and, with my trousers dangling from the iron beam on my shoulder, +entered the river. Such was the arrowy swiftness of the current, +however, that the water had scarce reached my middle when it began to +hollow out the stones and gravel from under my feet, and to bear me down +per force in a slanting direction. There was a foaming rapid just at +hand; and immediately beyond, a deep, dark pool, in which the chafed +current whirled around, as if exhausting the wrath aroused by its recent +treatment among rocks and stones, ere recovering its ordinary temper; +and had I lost footing, or been carried a little further down, I know +not how it might have fared with me in the wild foaming descent that lay +between the ford and the pool. Curiously enough, however, the one idea +which, in the excitement of the moment, filled my mind, was an intensely +ludicrous one. I would, of course, lose not only the lever in the +torrent, but my trousers also; and how was I ever to get home without +them? Where, in the name of wonder, should I get a kilt to borrow? I +have oftener than once experienced this strange sensation of the +ludicrous in circumstances with which a different feeling would have +harmonized better. Byron represents it as rising in extreme grief: it +is, however, I suspect, greatly more common in extreme danger; and all +the instances which the poet himself gives in his note--Sir Thomas More +on the scaffold, Anne Boleyn in the Tower, and those victims of the +French Revolution "with whom it became a fashion to leave some _mot_ as +a legacy"--were all jokers rather in circumstances of desperate and +hopeless peril than of sorrow. It is, however, in danger, us certainly +as in grief, a joyless sort of mirth. + + + "That playfulness of sorrow ne'er beguiles; + It smiles in bitterness: but still it smiles, + And sometimes with the wisest and the best. + Till even the scaffold echoes with their jest." + + +The feeling, however, though an inharmoniously toned, is not a +weakening one. I laughed in the stream, but I did not yield to it; and, +making a violent effort, when just on the edge of the rapid, I got into +stiller water, and succeeded in making my way to the opposite bank, +drenched to the arm-pits. It was in nearly the same reach of the Conon +that my poor friend the maniac of Ord lost her life a few days after. + +I found my companion in charge of the cart with our tools, baiting at an +inn a little beyond Contin; but there was no sign of the carter; and we +were informed by the innkeeper, to whom he was well known, that we might +have to wait for him all day, and perhaps not see him at night. +Click-Clack--a name expressive of the carter's fluency as a talker, by +which he was oftener designated than by the one in the parish +register--might no doubt have purposed in the morning joining us at an +early hour, but that was when he was sober; and what his intention might +be now, said the innkeeper, when in all probability he was drunk, no +living man could say. This was rather startling intelligence to men who +had a long journey through a rough country before them; and my +comrade--a lad a year or two older than myself, but still an +apprentice--added to my dismay by telling me he had been sure from the +first there was something wrong with Click-Clack, and that his master +had secured his services, not from choice, but simply because, having +thoughtlessly become surety for him at a sale for the price of a horse, +and being left to pay for the animal, he had now employed him, in the +hope of getting himself reimbursed. I resolved, however, on waiting for +the carter until the last moment after which it would be possible for us +to reach our ultimate stage without perilously encroaching on the night; +and, taking it for granted that he would not very soon join us, I set +out for a neighbouring hill, which commands an extensive view, to take +note of the main features of a district with which I had formed, during +the two previous years, not a few interesting associations, and to dry +my wetted clothes in the breeze and the sun. The old tower of Fairburn +formed one of the most striking objects in the prospect; and the eye +expatiated beyond from where the gneiss region begins, on a tract of +broken hill and brown moor, uncheered by a single green field or human +dwelling. There are traditions that, in their very peculiarity, and +remoteness from the tract of ordinary intention, give evidence of their +truth; and I now called up a tradition, which I owed to my friend the +maniac, respecting the manner in which the Mackenzies of Fairburn and +the Chisholms of Strathglass had divided this barren tract between them. +It had lain, from the first settlement of the country, an unappropriated +waste, and neither proprietor could tell where his own lands terminated, +or those of his neighbour began; but finding that the want of a proper +line of demarcation led to quarrels between their herdsmen when baiting +in their summer shielings with their cattle, they agreed to have the +tract divided. The age of land-surveyors had not yet come; but, +selecting two old women of seventy-five, they sent them out at the same +hour, to meet among the hills, the one from Fairburn Tower, the other +from Erchless Castle, after first binding themselves to accept their +place of meeting as the point at which to set up the boundary-stone of +the two properties. The women, attended by a bevy of competent +witnesses, journeyed as if for life and death; but the Fairburn woman, +who was the laird's foster-mother, either more zealous or more active +than the Chisholm one, travelled nearly two miles for her one; and when +they came in sight of each other in the waste, it was far from the +fields of Fairburn, and comparatively at no great distance from those of +the Chisholm. It is not easy knowing why they should have regarded one +another in the light of enemies; but at a mile's distance their flagging +pace quickened into a run, and, meeting at a narrow rivulet, they would +fain have fought; but lacking, in their utter exhaustion, strength for +fighting and breath for scolding, they could only seat themselves on the +opposite banks, and _girn_ at one another across the stream. George +Cruikshank has had at times worse subjects for his pencil. It is, I +believe, Landor, in one of his "imaginary conversations," who makes a +Highland laird inform Adam Smith that, desirous to ascertain, in some +sort of conceivable degree, the size of his property, he had placed a +line of pipers around it, each at such a distance from his nearest +neighbour that he could barely catch the sound of his bagpipe; and that +from the number of pipers required he was able to form an approximate +estimate of the extent of his estate. And here, in a Highland tradition, +genuine at least as such, are we introduced to an expedient of the kind +scarce less ludicrous or inadequate than that which Landor must, in one +of his humorous moods, have merely imagined. + +I returned to the inn at the hour from which, as I have said, it would +be possible for us, and not more than possible, to complete our day's +journey; and finding, as I had anticipated, no trace of Click-Clack, we +set off without him. Our way led us through long moory straths, with +here and there a blue lake and birch wood, and here and there a group of +dingy cottages and of irregular fields; but the general scenery was that +of the prevailing schistose gneiss of the Scotch Highlands, in which +rounded confluent hills stand up over long-withdrawing valleys, and +imposing rather from its bare and lonely expansiveness, than from aught +bold or striking in its features. The district had been opened up only a +few seasons previous by the Parliamentary road over which we travelled, +and was at that time little known to the tourist; and the thirty years +which have since passed have in some respects considerably changed it, +as they have done the Highlands generally. Most of the cottages, when I +last journeyed the way, were represented by but broken ruins, and the +fields by mossy patches that remained green amid the waste. I marked at +one spot an extraordinary group of oak-trees, in the last stage of +decay, which would have attracted notice from their great bulk and size +in even the forests of England. The largest of the group lay rotting +upon the ground--a black, doddered shell, fully six feet in diameter, +but hollow as a tar-barrel; while the others, some four or five in +number, stood up around it, totally divested of all their larger boughs, +but green with leaves, that, from the minuteness of the twigs on which +they grew, wrapped them around like close-fitting mantles. Their period +of "tree-ship"--to borrow a phrase from Cowper--must have extended far +into the obscure past of Highland history--to a time, I doubt not, when +not a few of the adjacent peat mosses still lived as forests, and when +some of the neighbouring clans--Frasers, Bissets, and Chisholms--had, at +least under the existing names (French and Saxon in their derivation), +not yet begun to be. Ere we reached the solitary inn of +Auchen-nasheen--a true Highland clachan of the ancient type, the night +had fallen dark and stormy for a night in June; and a grey mist which +had been descending for hours along the hills--blotting off their brown +summits bit by bit, as an artist might his pencilled hills with a piece +of India rubber, but which, methodical in its encroachments, had +preserved in its advances a perfect horizontality of line--had broken +into a heavy, continuous rain. As, however, the fair weather had lasted +us till we were within a mile of our journey's end, we were only +partially wet on our arrival, and soon succeeded in drying ourselves in +front of a noble turf fire. My comrade would fain have solaced himself, +after our weary journey, with something nice. He held that a Highland +inn should be able to furnish at least a bit of mutton-ham or a cut of +dried salmon, and ordered a few slices, first of ham, and then of +salmon; but his orders served merely to perplex the landlord and his +wife, whose stores seemed to consist of only oatmeal and whisky; and, +coming down in his expectations and demands, and intimating that he was +very hungry, and that anything edible would do, we heard the landlady +inform, with evident satisfaction, a red-armed wench, dressed in blue +plaiding, that "the lads would take porridge." The porridge was +accordingly prepared; and, when engaged in discussing this familiar +viand, a little before midnight--for we had arrived late--a tall +Highlander entered the inn, dropping like a mill-wheel. He was charged, +he said, with messages to the landlord, and to two mason lads in the +inn, from a forlorn carter with whom he had travelled about twenty +miles, but who, knocked up by the "drap drink" and a pair of bad shoes, +had been compelled to shelter for the night in a cottage about seven +miles short of Auchen-nasheen. The carter's message to the landlord was +simply to the effect that the two mason lads having stolen his horse and +cart, he instructed him to detain his property for him until he himself +should come up in the morning. As for his message to the lads, said the +Highlander, "it was no meikle worth gaun o'er again; but if we liked to +buckle on a' the Gaelic curses to a' the English ones, it would be +something like that." + +We were awakened next morning by a tremendous hubbub in the adjoining +apartment. "It is Click-Clack the carter," said my comrade: "oh, what +shall we do?" We leaped up; and getting into our clothes in doubly-quick +time, set ourselves to reconnoitre through the crannies of a deal +partition, and saw the carter standing in the middle of the next room, +storming furiously, and the landlord, a smooth-spoken, little old man, +striving hard to conciliate him. Click-Clack was a rough-looking fellow, +turned of forty, of about five feet ten, with a black unshaven beard, +like a shoe-brush stuck under his nose, which was red as a coal, and +attired in a sadly-breached suit of Aberdeen grey, topped by a brimless +hat, that had been borrowed, apparently, from some obliging scare-crow. +I measured him in person and expression; and, deeming myself his match, +even unassisted by my comrade, on whose discretion I could calculate +with more certainty than on his valour, I entered the apartment, and +taxed him with gross dereliction of duty. He had left us to drive his +horse and cart for a whole day, and had broken, for the sake of his +wretched indulgence in the public-house, his engagement with our master; +and I would report him to a certainty. The carter turned upon me with +the fierceness of a wild beast; but, first catching his eye, as I would +that of a maniac, I set my face very near his, and he calmed down in a +moment. He could not help being late, he said: he had reached the inn at +Contin not an hour after we had left it; and it was really very hard to +have to travel a long day's journey in such bad shoes. We accepted his +apology; and, ordering the landlord to bring in half a mutchkin of +whisky, the storm blew by. The morning, like the previous night, had +been thick and rainy; but it gradually cleared up as the day rose; and +after breakfast we set out together along a broken footpath, never +before traversed by horse and cart. We passed a solitary lake, on whose +shores the only human dwelling was a dark turf shieling, at which, +however, Click-Clack ascertained there was whisky to be sold; and then +entered upon a tract of scenery wholly different in its composition and +character from that through which our journey had previously lain. + +There runs along the west coast of Scotland, from the island of Rum to +the immediate neighbourhood of Cape Wrath, a formation, laid down by +Macculloch, in his Geological Map of the Kingdom, as Old Red Sandstone, +but which underlies formations deemed primary--two of these of quartz +rock, and a third of that unfossiliferous limestone in which the huge +Cave of Smoo is hollowed, and to which the Assynt marbles belong. The +system, which, taken as a whole--quartz-rock, lime, and +sandstone--corresponds bed for bed with the Lower Old Red of the east +coast, and is probably a highly metamorphic example of that great +deposit, exhibits its fullest development in Assynt, where all its four +component beds are present. In the tract on which we now entered, it +presents only two of these--the lower quartz-rock, and the underlying +red sandstone; but wherever any of its members appear, they present +unique features--marks of enormous denudation, and a bold style of +landscape altogether its own; and, in now entering upon it for the first +time, I was much impressed by its extraordinary character. Loch Maree, +one of the wildest of our Highland lakes, and at this time scarce at all +known to the tourist, owes to it all that is peculiar in its +appearance--its tall pyramidal quartz mountains, that rise at one +stride, steep, and well-nigh as naked as the old Pyramids, from nearly +the level of the sea, to heights on which at midsummer the snows of +winter gleam white in streaks and patches; and a picturesque sandstone +tract of precipitous hills, which flanks its western shore, and bore at +this period the remains of one of the old pine forests. A continuous +wall of gneiss mountains, that runs along the eastern side of the lake, +sinks sheer into its brown depths, save at one point, where a level +tract, half-encircled by precipices, is occupied by fields and +copsewood, and bears in the midst a white mansion-house; the blue +expanse of the lake greatly broadens in its lower reaches; and a group +of partially submerged hillocks, that resemble the forest-covered ones +on its western shores, but are of lower altitude, rise over its waters, +and form a miniature archipelago, grey with lichened stone, and bosky +with birch and hazel. Finding at the head of the loch that no horse and +cart had ever forced their way along its sides, we had to hire a boat +for the transport of at least cart and baggage; and when the boatmen +were getting ready for the voyage, which was, with the characteristic +dilatoriness of the district, a work of hours, we baited at the clachan +of _Kinlochewe_--a humble Highland inn, like that in which we had passed +the night. The name--that of an old farm which stretches out along the +_head_ or upper end of Loch Maree--has a remarkable etymology: it means +simply the head of _Loch Ewe_--the salt-water loch into which the waters +of Loch Maree empty themselves by a river little more than a mile in +length, and whose present _head_ is some sixteen or twenty miles distant +from the farm which bears its name. Ere that last elevation of the +land, however, to which our country owes the level marginal strip that +stretches between the present coast-line and the ancient one, the sea +must have found its way to the old farm. Loch Maree (Mary's Loch), a +name evidently of mediaeval origin, would then have existed as a +prolongation of the marine Loch Ewe, and _Kinlochewe_ would have +actually been what the compound words signify--the head of Loch Ewe. +There seems to be reason for holding that, ere the latest elevation of +the land took place in our island, it had received its first human +inhabitants--rude savages, who employed tools and weapons of stone, and +fashioned canoes out of single logs of wood. Are we to accept +etymologies such as the instanced one--and there are several such in the +Highlands--as good, in evidence that these aboriginal savages were of +the Celtic race, and that Gaelic was spoken in Scotland at a time when +its strips of grassy links, and the sites of many of its seaport towns, +such as Leith, Greenock, Musselburgh, and Cromarty, existed as oozy +sea-beaches, covered twice every day by the waters of the ocean? + +It was a delightful evening--still, breathless, clear--as we swept +slowly across the broad breast of Loch Maree; and the red light of the +sinking sun fell on many a sweet wild recess, amid the labyrinth of +islands purple with heath, and overhung by the birch and mountain-ash; +or slanted along the broken glades of the ancient forest; or lighted up +into a blush the pale stony faces of the tall pyramidal hills. A boat +bearing a wedding party was crossing the lake to the white house on the +opposite side, and a piper stationed in the bows, was discoursing sweet +music, that, softened by distance, and caught up by the echoes of the +rocks, resembled no strain I had ever heard from the bagpipe before. +Even the boatmen rested on their oars, and I had just enough of Gaelic +to know that they were remarking how very beautiful it was. "I wish," +said my comrade, "you understood these men: they have a great many +curious stories about the loch, that I am sure you would like. See you +that large island? It is Island-Maree. There is, they tell me, an old +burying-ground on it, in which the Danes used to bury long ages ago, and +whose ancient tomb-stones no man can read. And yon other island beside +it is famous as the place in which the _good_ people meet every year to +make submission to their queen. There is, they say, a little loch in the +island, and another little island in the loch; and it is under a tree on +that inner island that the queen sits and gathers kain for the Evil One. +They tell me that, for certain, the fairies have not left this part of +the country yet." We landed, a little after sunset, at the point from +which our road led across the hills to the sea-side, but found that the +carter had not yet come up; and at length, despairing of his appearance, +and unable to carry off his cart and the luggage with us, as we had +succeeded in bringing off cart, horse, and luggage on the previous day, +we were preparing to take up our night's lodging under the shelter of an +overhanging crag, when we heard him coming soliloquizing through the +wood, in a manner worthy of his name, as if he were not one, but twenty +carters. "What a perfect shame of a country!" he exclaimed--"perfect +shame! Road for a horse, forsooth!--more like a turnpike stair. And not +a feed of corn for the poor beast; and not a public-house atween this +and Kinlochewe; and not a drop of whisky: perfect, perfect shame of a +country!" On his coming up in apparently very bad humour, we found him +disposed to transfer the shame of the country to our shoulders. What +sort of people were we, he asked, to travel in such a land without +whisky! Whisky, however, there was none to produce: there was no whisky +nearer, we told him, than the public-house at the sea-side, where we +proposed spending the night; and, of course, the sooner we got there the +better. And after assisting him to harness his horse, we set off in the +darkening twilight, amid the hills. Rough grey rocks, and little blue +lochans, edged with flags, and mottled in their season with +water-lilies, glimmered dim and uncertain in the imperfect light as we +passed; but ere we reached the inn of Flowerdale in Gairloch, every +object stood out clear, though cold, in the increscent light of morning; +and a few light streaks of cloud, poised in the east over the unrisen +sun, were gradually exchanging their gleam of pale bronze for a deep +flush of mingled blood and fire. + +After the refreshment of a few hours' sleep and a tolerable breakfast, +we set out for the scene of our labours, which lay on the sea-shore, +about two miles further to the north and west; and were shown an +out-house--one of a square of dilapidated offices--which we might fit +up, we were told, for our barrack. The building had been originally what +is known on the north-western coast of Scotland, with its ever-weeping +climate, as a hay-barn; but it was now merely a roof-covered tank of +green stagnant water, about three-quarters of a foot in depth, which had +oozed through the walls from an over-gorged pond in the adjacent court, +that in a tract of recent rains had overflowed its banks, and not yet +subsided. Our new house did look exceedingly like a beaver-dam, with +this disadvantageous difference, that no expedient of diving could bring +us to better chambers on the other side of the wall. My comrade, setting +himself to sound the abyss with his stick, sung out in sailor style, +"three feet water in the hold." Click-Clack broke into a rage: "That a +dwelling for human creatures!" he said. "If I was to put my horse +intil't, poor beast! the very hoofs would rot off him in less than a +week. Are we eels or puddocks, that we are sent to live in a loch?" +Marking, however, a narrow portion of the ridge which dammed up the +waters of the neighbouring pool whence our domicile derived its supply, +I set myself to cut it across, and had soon the satisfaction of seeing +the general surface lowered fully a foot, and the floor of our future +dwelling laid bare. Click-Clack, gathering courage as he saw the waters +ebbing away, seized a shovel, and soon showed us the value of his many +years' practice in the labours of the stable; and then, despatching him +for a few cart-loads of a dry shell-sand from the shore, which I had +marked by the way as suitable for mixing with our lime, we had soon for +our tank of green water a fine white floor. "Man wants but little here +below," especially in a mason's barrack. There were two square openings +in the apartment, neither of them furnished with frame or glass; but the +one we filled up with stone, and an old unglazed frame, which, with the +assistance of a base and border of turf, I succeeded in fitting into the +other, gave at least an air of respectability to the place. Boulder +stones, capped with pieces of mossy turf, served us for seats; and we +had soon a comfortable peat fire blazing against the gable; but we were +still sadly in want of a bed: the fundamental damp of the floor was, we +saw, fast gaining on the sand; and it would be neither comfortable nor +safe to spread our dried grass and blankets over _it_. My comrade went +out to see whether the place did not furnish materials enough of any +kind to make a bedstead, and soon returned in triumph, dragging after +him a pair of harrows which he placed side by side in a snug corner +beside the fire, with of course the teeth downwards. A good Catholic, +prepared to win heaven for himself by a judicious use of sharp points, +might have preferred having them turned the other way; but my comrade +was an enlightened Protestant; and besides, like Goldsmith's sailor, he +loved to lie soft. The second piece of luck was mine. I found lying +unclaimed in the yard an old barn-door, which a recent gale had blown +from off its hinges; and by placing it above the harrows, and driving a +row of stakes around it into the floor, to keep the outer sleeper from +rolling off--for the wall served to secure the position of the inner +one--we succeeded in constructing, by our joint efforts, a luxurious +bed. There was but one serious drawback on its comforts: the roof +overhead was bad, and there was an obstinate drop, that used, during +every shower which fell in the season of sleep, to make a dead set at +my face, and try me at times with the water torture of the old story, +mayhap half a dozen times in the course of a single night. + +Our barrack fairly fitted up, I set out with my comrade, whose knowledge +of Gaelic enabled him to act as my interpreter, to a neighbouring group +of cottages, to secure a labourer for the work of the morrow. The +evening was now beginning to darken; but there was still light enough to +show me that the little fields I passed through on my way resembled very +much those of Liliput, as described by Gulliver. They were, however, +though equally small, greatly more irregular, and had peculiarities, +too, altogether their own. The land had originally been stony; and as it +showed, according to the Highland phrase, its "bare bones through its +skin"--large bosses of the rock beneath coming here and there to the +surface--the Highlanders had gathered the stones in great pyramidal +heaps on the bare bosses; and so very numerous were these in some of the +fields, that they looked as if some malignant sorcerer had, in the time +of harvest, converted all their shocks into stone. On approaching the +cottage of our future labourer, I was attracted by a door of very +peculiar construction that lay against the wall. It had been brought +from the ancient pine forest on the western bank of Loch Maree, and was +formed of the roots of trees so curiously interlaced by nature, that +when cut out of the soil, which it had covered over like a piece of +network, it remained firmly together, and now formed a door which the +mere imitator of the rustic might in vain attempt to rival. We entered +the cottage, and plunging downwards two feet or so, found ourselves upon +the dunghill of the establishment, which in this part of the country +usually occupied at the time an ante-chamber which corresponded to that +occupied by the cattle a few years earlier, in the midland districts of +Sutherland. Groping in this foul outer chamber through a stifling +atmosphere of smoke, we came to an inner door raised to the level of +the soil outside, through which a red umbry gleam escaped into the +darkness; and, climbing into the inner apartment, we found ourselves in +the presence of the inmates of the mansion. The fire, as in the cottage +of my Sutherlandshire relative, was placed in the middle of the floor: +the master of the mansion, a red-haired, strongly-built Highlander, of +the middle size and age, with his son, a boy of twelve, sat on the one +side; his wife, who, though not much turned of thirty, had the haggard, +drooping cheeks, hollow eyes, and pale, sallow complexion of old age, +sat on the other. We broke our business to the Highlander through my +companion--for, save a few words caught up at school by the boy, there +was no English in the household--and found him disposed to entertain it +favourably. A large pot of potatoes hung suspended over the fire, under +a dense ceiling of smoke; and he hospitably invited us to wait supper, +which, as our dinner had consisted of but a piece of dry oaten cake, we +willingly did. As the conversation went on, I became conscious that it +turned upon myself, and that I was an object of profound commiseration +to the inmates of the cottage. "What," I inquired of my companion, "are +these kind people pitying me so very much for?" "For your want of +Gaelic, to be sure. How can a man get on in the world that wants +Gaelic?" "But do not they themselves," I asked, "want English?" "O yes," +he said, "but what does that signify? What is the use of English in +Gairloch?" The potatoes, with a little ground salt, and much unbroken +hunger as sauce, ate remarkably well. Our host regretted that he had no +fish to offer us; but a tract of rough weather had kept him from sea, +and he had just exhausted his previous supply; and as for bread, he had +used up the last of his grain crop a little after Christmas, and had +been living, with his family, on potatoes, with fish when he could get +them, ever since. + +Thirty years have now passed since I shared in the Highlander's evening +meal, and during the first twenty of these, the use of the +potatoe--unknown in the Highlands a century before--greatly increased. I +have been told by my maternal grandfather, that about the year 1740, +when he was a boy of about eight or nine years of age, the head-gardener +at Balnagown Castle used, in his occasional visits to Cromarty, to bring +him in his pocket, as great rarities, some three or four potatoes; and +that it was not until some fifteen or twenty years after this time that +he saw potatoes reared in fields in any part of the Northern Highlands. +But, once fairly employed as food, every season saw a greater breadth of +them laid down. In the North-western Highlands, in especial, the use of +these roots increased from the year 1801 to the year 1846 nearly a +hundredfold, and came at length to form, as in Ireland, not merely the +staple, but in some localities almost the only food of the people; and +when destroyed by disease in the latter year, famine immediately ensued +in both Ireland and the Highlands. A writer in the _Witness_, whose +letter had the effect of bringing that respectable paper under the eye +of Mr. Punch, represented the Irish famine as a direct judgment on the +Maynooth Endowment; while another writer, a member of the Peace +Association--whose letter did not find its way into the _Witness_, +though it reached the editor--challenged the decision on the ground that +the Scotch Highlanders, who were greatly opposed to Maynooth, suffered +from the infliction nearly as much as the Irish themselves, and that the +offence punished must have been surely some one of which both +Highlanders and Irish had been guilty in common. _He_, however, had +found out, he said, what the crime visited actually was. Both the Irish +and Highland famines were judgments upon the people for their great +homicidal efficiency as soldiers in the wars of the empire--an +efficiency which, as he truly remarked, was almost equally +characteristic of both nations. For my own part, I have been unable +hitherto to see the steps which conduct to such profound conclusions; +and am content simply to hold, that the superintending Providence who +communicated to man a calculating, foreseeing nature, does occasionally +get angry with him, and inflict judgments upon him, when, instead of +exercising his faculties, he sinks to a level lower than his own, and +becomes content, like some of the inferior animals, to live on a single +root. + +There are two periods favourable to observation--an early and a late +one. A fresh eye detects external traits and peculiarities among a +people, seen for the first time, which disappear as they become +familiar; but it is not until after repeated opportunities of study, and +a prolonged acquaintanceship, that internal characteristics and +conditions begin to be rightly known. During the first fortnight of my +residence in this remote district, I was more impressed than at a later +stage by certain peculiarities of manner and appearance in the +inhabitants. Dr. Johnson remarked that he found fewer very tall or very +short men among the people of the Hebrides than in England: I was now +struck by a similar mediocrity of size among the Highlanders of Western +Ross; five-sixths of the grown men seemed to average between five feet +seven and five feet nine inches in height, and either tall or short men +I found comparatively rare. The Highlanders of the eastern coast were, +on the contrary, at that period, mayhap still, very various of +stature--some of them exceedingly diminutive, others of great bulk and +height; and, as might be seen in the congregations of the parish +churches removed by but a few miles, there were marked differences in +this respect between the people of contiguous districts--certain tracts +of plain or valley producing larger races than others. I was inclined to +believe at the time that the middle-sized Highlanders of the west coast +were a less mixed race than the unequally-sized Highlanders of the east: +I at least found corresponding inequalities among the higher-born +Highland families, that, as shown by their genealogies, blended the +Norman and Saxon with the Celtic blood; and as the unequally-sized +Highland race bordered on that Scandinavian one which fringes the +greater part of the eastern coast of Scotland, I inferred that there had +been a similar blending of blood among _them_. I have since seen, in +Gustav Kombst's Ethnographic Map of the British Islands, the difference +which I at this time but inferred, indicated by a different shade of +colour, and a different name. The Highlanders of the east coast Kombst +terms "Scandinavian-Gaelic;" those of the west, +"Gaelic-Scandinavian-Gaelic,"--names indicative, of course, of the +proportions in which he holds that they possess the Celtic blood. +Disparity of bulk and size appears to be one of the consequences of a +mixture of races; nor does the induced inequality seem restricted to the +physical framework. Minds of large calibre, and possessed of the kingly +faculty, come first into view, in our history, among the fused tribes, +just as of old it was the mixed marriages that first produced the +giants. The difference in size which I remarked in particular districts +of the Scandinavian-Gaelic region, separated, in some instances, by but +a ridge of hills or an expanse of moor, must have been a result of the +old clan divisions, and is said to have marked the clans themselves very +strongly. Some of them were of a greatly more robust, and some of a +slimmer type, than others. + +I was struck by another peculiarity in the west coast Highlanders. I +found the men in general greatly better-looking than the women, and that +in middle life they bore their years much more lightly. The females +seemed old and haggard at a period when the males were still +comparatively fresh and robust. I am not sure whether the remark may not +in some degree apply to Highlanders generally. The "rugged form" and +"harsher features," which, according to Sir Walter, "mark the mountain +band," accord worse with the female than with the male countenance and +figure. But I at least found this discrepancy in the appearance of the +sexes greatly more marked on the west than on the eastern coast; and saw +only too much reason to conclude that it was owing in great part to the +disproportionately large share of crushing labour laid, in the +district, in accordance with the practice of a barbarous time, on the +weaker frame of the female. There is, however, a style of female +loveliness occasionally though rarely exemplified in the Highlands, +which far transcends the Saxon or Scandinavian type. It is manifested +usually in extreme youth--at least between the fourteenth and eighteenth +year; and its effect we find happily indicated by Wordsworth--who seems +to have met with a characteristic specimen--in his lines to a Highland +girl. He describes her as possessing as her "dower," "a very _shower_ of +beauty." Further, however, he describes her as very young. + + + "Twice seven consenting years had shed + Their utmost bounty on her head." + + +I was, besides, struck at this time by finding, that while almost all +the young lads under twenty with whom I came in contact had at least a +smattering of English, I found only a single Highlander turned of forty +with whom I could exchange a word. The exceptional Highlander was, +however, a curiosity in his way. He seemed to have a natural turn for +acquiring languages, and had derived his English, not from conversation, +but, in the midst of a Gaelic-speaking people, from the study of the +Scriptures in our common English version. His application of Bible +language to ordinary subjects told at times with rather ludicrous +effect. Upon inquiring of him, on one occasion, regarding a young man +whom he wished to employ as an extra labourer, he described him in +exactly the words in which David is described in the chapter that +records the combat with Goliath, as "but a youth, and ruddy, and of a +fair countenance;" and on asking where he thought we could get a few +loads of water-rolled pebbles for causewaying a floor, he directed us to +the bed of a neighbouring rivulet, where we might "choose us," he said, +"smooth stones out of the brook." He spoke with great deliberation, +translating evidently his Gaelic thinking, as he went on, into +scriptural English. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + + "A man of glee + With hair of glittering grey, + As blythe a man as you could see + On a spring holiday."--WORDSWORTH. + + +There existed at this time no geological map of Scotland. Macculloch's +did not appear until about six or seven years after (in 1829 or 1830), +and Sedgwick and Murchison's interesting sketch of the northern +formations[4] not until at least five years after (1828). And so, on +setting out on the morning after that of my arrival, to provide stones +for our future erection, I found myself in a _terra incognita_, new to +the quarrier, and unknown to the geologist. Most of the stratified +primary rocks make but indifferent building materials; and in the +immediate neighbourhood of our work I could find only one of the worst +of the class--the schistose gneiss. On consulting, however, the scenery +of the district, I marked that at a certain point both shores of the +open sea-loch on whose margin we were situated suddenly changed their +character. The abrupt rugged hills of gneiss that, viewed from an +eminence, resembled a tumbling sea, suddenly sank into low brown +promontories, unbroken by ravines, and whose eminences were mere flat +swellings; and in the hope of finding some change of formation +coincident with the change of scenery, I set out with my comrade for the +nearest point at which the broken outline passed into the rectilinear +or merely undulatory one. But though I did expect a change, it was not +without some degree of surprise that, immediately after passing the +point of junction, I found myself in a district of red sandstone. It was +a hard, compact, dark-coloured stone, but dressed readily to pick and +hammer, and made excellent corner-stones and ashlar; and it would have +furnished us with even hewn work for our building, had not our employer, +unacquainted, like every one else at the time, with the mineral +capabilities of the locality, brought his hewing stone in a sloop, at no +small expense, through the Caledonian Canal, from one of the quarries of +Moray--a circuitous voyage of more than two hundred miles. + +Immediately beside where we opened our quarry, there was a little +solitary shieling: it was well-nigh such an edifice as I used to erect +when a boy--some eight or ten feet in length, and of so humble an +altitude, that, when standing erect in the midst, I could lay my hand on +the roof-tree. A heath-bed occupied one of the corners; a few grey +embers were smouldering in the middle of the floor; a pot lay beside +them, ready for use, half-filled with cockles and razor-fish, the spoils +of the morning ebb; and a cog of milk occupied a small shelf that +projected from the gable above. Such were the contents of the shieling. +Its only inmate, a lively little old man, sat outside, at once tending a +few cows grouped on the moor, and employed in stripping with a +pocket-knife, long slender filaments from off a piece of moss fir; and +as he wrought and watched, he crooned a Gaelic song, not very musically +mayhap, but, like the happy song of the humble-bee, there was perfect +content in every tone. He had a great many curious questions to ask in +his native Gaelic, of my comrade, regarding our employment and our +employer; and when satisfied, he began, I perceived, like the Highlander +of the previous evening, to express very profound commiseration for me. +"Is that man also pitying me?" I asked. "O yes, very much," was the +reply: "he does not at all see how you are to live in Gairloch without +Gaelic." I was reminded by the shieling and its happy inmate, of one of +my father's experiences, as communicated to me by Uncle James. In the +course of a protracted kelp voyage among the Hebrides, he had landed in +his boat, before entering one of the sounds of the Long Island, to +procure a pilot, but found in the fisherman's cottage on which he had +directed his course, only the fisherman's wife--a young creature of not +more than eighteen--engaged in nursing her child, and singing a Gaelic +song, in tones expressive of a light heart, till the rocks rang again. A +heath bed, a pot of baked clay, of native manufacture, fashioned by the +hand, and a heap of fish newly caught, seemed to constitute the only +wealth of the cottage; but its mistress was, notwithstanding, one of the +happiest of women; and deeply did she commiserate the poor sailors, and +earnestly wish for the return of her husband, that he might assist them +in their perplexity. The husband at length appeared. "Oh," he asked, +after the first greeting, "have you any salt?" "Plenty," said the +master; "and you, I see, from your supply of fresh fish, want it very +much; but come, pilot us through the sound, and you shall have as much +salt as you require." And so the vessel got a pilot, and the fisherman +got salt; but never did my father forget the light-hearted song of the +happy mistress of that poor Highland cottage. It was one of the palpable +characteristics of our Scottish Highlanders, for at least the first +thirty years of the century, that they were contented enough, as a +people, to find more to pity than to envy in the condition of their +neighbours; and I remember that at this time, and for years after, I +used to deem the trait a good one. I have now, however, my doubts on the +subject, and am not quite sure whether a content so general as to be +national may not, in certain circumstances, be rather a vice than a +virtue. It is certainly no virtue when it has the effect of arresting +either individuals or peoples in their course of development; and is +perilously allied to great suffering, when the men who exemplify it are +so thoroughly happy amid the mediocrities of the present, that they fail +to make provision for the contingencies of the future. + +We were joined in about a fortnight by the other workmen from the Low +country, and I resigned my temporary charge (save that I still retained +the time-book in my master's behalf) into the hands of an ancient mason, +remarkable over the north of Scotland for his skill as an operative, and +who, though he was now turned of sixty, was still able to build and hew +considerably more than the youngest and most active man in the squad. He +was at this time the only survivor of three brothers, all masons, and +all not merely first-class workmen, but of a class to which, at least to +the north of the Grampians, only they themselves belonged, and very +considerably in advance of the first. And on the removal of the second +of the three brothers to the south of Scotland, it was found that, amid +the stone-cutters of Glasgow, David Fraser held relatively the same +place that he had done among those of the north. I have been told by Mr. +Kenneth Matheson--a gentleman well known as a master-builder in the west +of Scotland--that in erecting some hanging stairs of polished stone, +ornamented in front and at the outer edge by the common fillet and +torus, his ordinary workmen used to complete for him their one step +a-piece per day, and David Fraser his _three_ steps, finished equally +well. It is easily conceivable how, in the higher walks of art, one man +should excel a thousand--nay, how he should have neither competitor when +living, nor successor when dead. The English gentleman who, after the +death of Canova, asked a surviving brother of the sculptor whether he +purposed carrying on Canova's _business_, found that he had achieved in +the query an unintentional joke. But in the commoner avocations there +appear no such differences between man and man; and it may seem strange +how, in ordinary stone-cutting, one man could thus perform the work of +three. My acquaintance with old John Fraser showed me how very much the +ability depended on a natural faculty. John's strength had never been +above the average of that of Scotchmen, and it was now considerably +reduced; nor did his mallet deal more or heavier blows than that of the +common workman. He had, however, an extraordinary power of conceiving of +the finished piece of work, as lying within the rude stone from which it +was his business to disinter it; and while ordinary stone-cutters had to +repeat and re-repeat their lines and draughts, and had in this way +virtually to give to their work several surfaces in detail ere they +reached the true one, old John cut upon the true figure at once, and +made one surface serve for all. In building, too, he exercised a similar +power: he hammer-dressed his stones with fewer strokes than other +workmen, and in fitting the interspaces between stones already laid, +always picked from out of the heap at his feet the stone that exactly +fitted the place; while other operatives busied themselves in picking up +stones that were too small or too large; or, if they set themselves to +reduce the too large ones, reduced them too little or too much, and had +to fit and fit again. Whether building or hewing, John never seemed in a +hurry. He has been seen, when far advanced in life, working very +leisurely, as became his years, on the one side of a wall, and two stout +young fellows building against him on the other side--toiling, +apparently, twice harder than he, but the old man always contriving to +keep a little a-head of them both. + +David Fraser I never saw; but as a hewer he was said considerably to +excel even his brother John. On hearing that it had been remarked among +a party of Edinburgh masons, that, though regarded as the first of +Glasgow stone-cutters, he would find in the eastern capital at least his +equals, he attired himself most uncouthly in a long-tailed coat of +tartan, and, looking to the life the untamed, untaught, conceited little +Celt, he presented himself on Monday morning, armed with a letter of +introduction from a Glasgow builder, before the foreman of an Edinburgh +squad of masons engaged upon one of the finer buildings at that time in +the course of erection. The letter specified neither his qualifications +nor his name: it had been written merely to secure for him the necessary +employment, and the necessary employment it did secure. The better +workmen of the party were engaged, on his arrival, in hewing columns, +each of which was deemed sufficient work for a week; and David was +asked, somewhat incredulously, by the foreman, "if he could hew?" "O +yes, _he thought_ he could hew." "Could he hew columns such as these!" +"O yes, _he thought_ he could hew columns such as these." A mass of +stone in which a possible column lay hid, was accordingly placed before +David, not under cover of the shed, which was already occupied by +workmen, but, agreeably to David's own request, directly in front of it, +where he might be seen by all, and where he straightway commenced a most +extraordinary course of antics. Buttoning his long tartan coat fast +around him, he would first look along the stone from the one end, anon +from the other, and then examine it in front and rear; or, quitting it +altogether for the time, he would take up his stand beside the other +workmen, and, after looking at them with great attention, return and +give it a few taps with the mallet, in a style evidently imitative of +theirs, but monstrously a caricature. The shed all that day resounded +with roars of laughter; and the only thoroughly grave man on the ground +was he who occasioned the mirth of all the others. Next morning David +again buttoned his coat; but he got on much better this day than the +former: he was less awkward and less idle, though not less observant +than before: and he succeeded ere evening in tracing, in workman-like +fashion, a few draughts along the future column. He was evidently +greatly improving. On the morning of Wednesday he threw off his coat; +and it was seen that, though by no means in a hurry, he was seriously at +work. There were no more jokes or laughter; and it was whispered in the +evening that the strange Highlander had made astonishing progress +during the day. By the middle of Thursday he had made up for his two +days' trifling, and was abreast of the other workmen; before night he +was far ahead of them; and ere the evening of Friday, when they had +still a full day's work on each of their columns, David's was completed +in a style that defied criticism; and, his tartan coat again buttoned +around him, he sat resting himself beside it. The foreman went out and +greeted him. "Well," he said, "you have beaten us all: you certainly +_can_ hew!" "Yes," said David; "I _thought_ I could hew columns. Did the +other men take much more than a week to learn?" "Come, come, _David +Fraser_," replied the foreman; "we all guess who you are: you have had +your joke out; and now, I suppose, we must give you your week's wages, +and let you away." "Yes," said David; "work waits for me in Glasgow; but +I just thought it might be well to know how you hewed on this east side +of the country." + +John Fraser was a shrewd, sarcastic old man, much liked, however, by his +brother workmen; though his severe sayings--which, never accompanied by +any ill-nature, were always tolerated in the barrack--did both himself +and them occasional harm when repeated outside. To men who have to live +for months together on oatmeal and salt, the difference between porridge +with and porridge without milk is a very great difference indeed, both +in point of salutariness and comfort; and I had succeeded in securing, +on the ordinary terms, ere the arrival of John, what was termed a _set_ +of skimmed milk from the wife of the gentleman at whose dwelling-house +we were engaged in working. The skimmed milk was, however, by no means +good: it was thin, blue, and sour; and we received it without complaint +only because we knew that, according to the poet, it was "better just +than want aye," and that there was no other dairy in that part of the +country. But old John was less prudent; and, taking the dairy-maid to +task in his quiet ironical style, he began by expressing wonder and +regret that a grand lady like her mistress should be unable to +distinguish the difference between milk and wine. The maid indignantly +denied the fact _in toto_: her mistress, she said, did know the +difference. "O no," replied John; "wine always gets better the longer it +is kept, and milk always the worse; but your mistress, not knowing the +difference, keeps her milk very long, in order to make it better, and +makes it so very bad in consequence, that there are some days we can +scarce eat it at all." The dairy-maid bridled up, and, communicating the +remark to her mistress, we were told next morning that we might go for +our milk to the next dairy, if we pleased, but that we would get none +from her. And so, for four months thereafter, we had to do penance for +the joke, on that not very luxurious viand "dry porridge." The pleasures +of the table had occupied but small space amid the very scanty +enjoyments of our barrack even before, and they were now so considerably +reduced, that I could have almost wished at meal-times that--like the +inhabitants of the moon, as described by Baron Munchausen--I could open +up a port-hole in my side, and lay in at once provisions enough for a +fortnight; but the infliction told considerably more on our +constitutions than on our appetites; and we all became subject to small +but very painful boils in the muscular parts of the body--a species of +disease which seems to be scarce less certainly attendant on the +exclusive use of oatmeal, than sea-scurvy on the exclusive use of salt +meat. Old John, however, though in a certain sense the author of our +calamity, escaped all censure, while a double portion fell to the share +of the gentleman's wife. + +I never met a man possessed of a more thoroughly mathematical head than +this ancient mason. I know not that he ever saw a copy of Euclid; but +the principles of the work seemed to lie as self-evident truths in his +mind. In the ability, too, of drawing shrewd inferences from natural +phenomena, old John Fraser excelled all the other untaught men I ever +knew. Until my acquaintance with him commenced, I had been accustomed +to hear the removal of what was widely known in the north of Scotland as +"the travelled stone of Petty," attributed to supernatural agency. An +enormous boulder had been carried in the night-time by the fairies, it +was said, from its resting place on the sea-beach, into the middle of a +little bay--a journey of several hundred feet; but old John, though he +had not been on the spot at the time, at once inferred that it had been +carried, not by the fairies, but by a thick cake of ice, considerable +enough, when firmly clasped round it, to float it away. He had seen, he +told me, stones of considerable size floated off by ice on the shore +opposite his cottage, in the upper reaches of the Cromarty Firth: ice +was an agent that sometimes "walked off with great stones;" whereas he +had no evidence whatever that the fairies had any powers that way; and +so he accepted the agent which he knew, as the true one in the removal +of the travelled stone, and not the hypothetical agents of which he knew +nothing. Such was the natural philosophy of old John; and in this +special instance geologic science has since fully confirmed his +decision. He was chiefly a favourite among us, however, from his even +and cheerful temper, and his ability of telling humorous stories, that +used to set the barrack in a roar, and in which he never spared himself, +if the exhibition of a weakness or absurdity gave but point to the fun. +His narrative of a visit to Inverness, which he had made when an +apprentice lad, to see a sheep-stealer hung, and his description of the +terrors of a night-journey back, in which he fancied he saw men waving +in the wind on almost every tree, till on reaching his solitary barrack +he was utterly prostrated by the apparition of his own great-coat +suspended from a pin, has oftener than once convulsed us with laughter. +But John's humorous confessions, based as they always were on a strong +good sense, that always saw the early folly in its most ludicrous +aspect, never lowered him in our eyes. Of his wonderful skill as a +workman, much was incommunicable; but it was at least something to know +the principles on which he directed the operations of what a +phrenologist would perhaps term his extraordinary faculties of _form_ +and _size_; and so I recognise old John as one of not the least useful +nor able of my many teachers. Some of his professional lessons were of a +kind which the south and east country masons would be the better for +knowing. In that rainy district of Scotland of which we at this time +occupied the central tract, rubble walls built in the ordinary style +leak like the bad roofs of other parts of the country; and +mansion-houses constructed within its precincts by qualified workmen +from Edinburgh and Glasgow have been found to admit the water in such +torrents as to be uninhabitable, until their more exposed walls had been +slated over like their roofs. Old John, however, always succeeded in +building water-tight walls. Departing from the ordinary rule of the +builder elsewhere, and which on the east coast of Scotland he himself +always respected, he slightly elevated the under beds of his stones, +instead of laying them, as usual, on the dead level; while along the +edges of their upper beds he struck off a small rude champer; and by +these simple contrivances, the rain, though driven with violence against +his work, coursed in streams along its face, without entering into the +interior and soaking through. + +For about six weeks we had magnificent weather--clear, sunny skies, and +calm seas; and I greatly enjoyed my evening rambles amid the hills, or +along the sea-shore. I was struck, in these walks, by the amazing +abundance of the wild flowers which covered the natural meadows and +lower hill-slopes--an abundance, as I have since remarked, equally +characteristic of both the northern and western islands of Scotland. The +lower slopes of Gairloch, of western Sutherland, of Orkney, and of the +northern Hebrides generally--though, for the purposes of the +agriculturist, vegetation languishes, and wheat is never reared--are by +many degrees richer in wild flowers than the fat loamy meadows of +England. They resemble gaudy pieces of carpeting, as abundant in petals +as in leaves. Little of the rare is to be detected in these meadows, +save, perhaps, that in those of western Sutherland a few Alpine plants +may be found at a greatly lower level than elsewhere in Britain; but the +vast profusion of blossoms borne by species common to almost every other +part of the kingdom, imparts to them an apparently novel character. We +may detect, I am inclined to think, in this singular floral profusion, +the operation of a law not less influential in the animal than the +vegetable world, which, when hardship presses upon the life of the +individual shrub or quadruped, so as to threaten its vitality, renders +it fruitful on behalf of its species. I have seen the principle +strikingly exemplified in the common tobacco plant, when reared in a +northern country, in the open air. Year after year it continued to +degenerate, and to exhibit a smaller leaf and shorter stem, until the +successors of what in the first year of trial had been rigorous plants, +of some three to four feet in height, had in the sixth or eighth become +mere weeds, of scarce as many inches. But while the as yet undegenerate +plant had merely borne atop a few florets, which produced a small +quantity of exceedingly minute seeds, the stunted weed, its descendant, +was so thickly covered over in its season with its pale yellow bells, as +to present the appearance of a nosegay; and the seeds produced were not +only bulkier in the mass, but also individually of much greater size. +The tobacco had grown productive in proportion as it had degenerated. In +the common scurvy-grass, too--remarkable, with some other plants for +taking its place among both the productions of our Alpine heights and of +our sea-shores--it will be found that, in proportion as its habitat +proves ungenial, and its leaves and stems become dwarfish and thin, its +little white cruciform flowers increase, till, in localities where it +barely exists, as if on the edge of extinction, we find the entire plant +forming a dense bundle of seed vessels, each charged to the full with +seed. And in the gay meadows of Gairloch and Orkney, crowded with a +vegetation that approaches its northern limit of production, we detect +what seems to be the same principle chronically operative; and hence, it +would seem, their extraordinary gaiety. Their richly blossoming plants +are the poor productive _Irish_ of the vegetable world; for Doubleday +seems quite in the right in holding that the law extends to not only the +inferior animals, but to our own species also. The lean, ill-fed sow and +rabbit rear, it has been long known, a greatly more numerous progeny +than the same animals when well cared for and fat; and every horse and +cattle breeder knows that to over-feed his animals proves a sure mode of +rendering them sterile. The sheep, if tolerably well pastured, brings +forth only a single lamb at a birth; but if half-starved and lean, the +chances are that it may bring forth two or three. And so it is also with +the greatly higher human race. Place them in circumstances of +degradation and hardship so extreme as almost to threaten their +existence as individuals, and they increase, as if in behalf of the +species, with a rapidity without precedent in circumstances of greater +comfort. The aristocratic families of a country are continually running +out; and it requires frequent creations to keep up the House of Lords; +whereas our poorer people seem increasing in more than the arithmetical +ratio. In Skye, though fully two-thirds of the population emigrated +early in the latter half of the last century, a single generation had +scarce passed ere the gap was completely filled; and miserable Ireland, +as it existed ere the famine, would have been of itself sufficient, had +the human family no other breeding-place, to people in a few ages the +world. Here too, in close neighbourhood with the flower-covered meadows, +were there miserable cottages that were swarming with children--cottages +in which, for nearly the half of every twelvemonth, the cereals were +unknown as food, and whose over-toiled female inmates did all the +domestic work, and more than half the work of the little fields outside. + +How exquisitely the sun sets in a clear, calm, summer evening over the +blue Hebrides! Within less than a mile of our barrack, there rose a +tall hill, whose bold summit commanded all the Western Isles, from Sleat +in Skye, to the Butt of the Lewis. To the south lay the trap islands; to +the north and west, the gneiss ones. They formed, however, seen from +this hill, one great group, which, just as the sun had sunk, and sea and +sky were so equally bathed in gold as to exhibit on the horizon no +dividing line, seemed in their transparent purple--darker or lighter +according to the distance--a group of lovely clouds, that, though +moveless in the calm, the first light breeze might sweep away. Even the +flat promontories of sandstone, which, like outstretched arms, enclosed +the outer reaches of the foreground--promontories edged with low red +cliffs, and covered with brown heath--used to borrow at these times, +from the soft yellow beam, a beauty not their own. Amid the inequalities +of the gneiss region within--a region more broken and precipitous, but +of humbler altitude, than the great gneiss tract of the midland +Highlands--the chequered light and shade lay, as the sun declined, in +strongly contrasted patches, that betrayed the abrupt inequalities of +the ground, and bore, when all around was warm, tinted, and bright, a +hue of cold neutral grey; while immediately over and beyond this rough +sombre base there rose two noble pyramids of red sandstone, about two +thousand feet in height, that used to flare to the setting sun in bright +crimson, and whose nearly horizontal strata, deeply scored along the +lines, like courses of ashlar in an ancient wall, added to the mural +effect communicated by their bare fronts and steep rectilinear outlines. +These tall pyramids form the terminal members, towards the south, of an +extraordinary group of sandstone hills, of denudation unique in the +British islands, to which I have already referred, and which extends +from the northern boundary of Assynt to near Applecross. But though I +formed at this time my first acquaintance with the group, it was not +until many years after that I had an opportunity of determining the +relations of their component beds to each other, and to the fundamental +rocks of the country. + +At times my walks were directed along the sea-shore. Naturalists well +know how much the western coasts of Scotland differ in their productions +from its eastern ones; but it was a difference wholly new to me at this +time; and though my limited knowledge enabled me to detect it in but +comparatively few particulars, I found it no uninteresting task to trace +it for myself in even these few. I was first attracted by one of the +larger sea-weeds, _Himanthalia lorea_--with its cup-shaped disc and long +thong-like receptacles--which I found very abundant on the rocks here, +but which I had never seen in the upper reaches of the Moray Firth, and +which is by no means very common on any portion of the east coast. From +the sea-weeds I passed to the shells, among which I detected not only a +difference in the proportions in which the various species occurred, but +also species that were new to me--such as a shell, not rare in Gairloch, +_Nassa reticulata_, but rarely if ever seen in the Moray or Cromarty +Firths; and three other shells which I saw here for the first time, +_Trochus umbilicatus_, _Trochus magus_, and _Pecten niveus_.[5] I found, +too, that the common edible oyster, _ostrea edulis_, which on the east +coast lies always in comparatively deep water, is sometimes found in the +Gairloch, as, for instance, in the little bay opposite Flowerdale, in +beds laid bare by the ebb of stream-tides. It is always interesting to +come unexpectedly either upon a new species or a striking peculiarity in +an old one; and I deemed it a curious and suggestive fact that there +should be British shells still restricted to our western shores, and +that have not yet made their way into the German Ocean, along the coasts +of either extremity of the island. Are we to infer that they are shells +of more recent origin than the widely-diffused ones? or are they merely +feebler in their reproductive powers? and is the German Ocean, as some +of our geologists hold, a comparatively modern sea, into which only the +hardier mollusca of rapid increase have yet made their way? Further, I +found that the true fishes differ considerably in the group on the +opposite sides of the island. The haddock and whiting are greatly more +common on the east coast: the hake and horse mackerel very much more +abundant on the west. Even where the species are the same on both sides, +the varieties are different. The herring of the west coast is a short, +thick, richly-flavoured fish, greatly superior to the large lean variety +so abundant on the east; whereas the west-coast cod are large-headed, +thin-bodied, pale-coloured fishes, inferior, even in their best season, +to the darker-coloured, small-headed variety of the east. In no respect +do the two coasts differ more, or at least to the north of the +Grampians, than in the transparency of the water. The bottom is rarely +seen on the east coast at a depth of more than twenty feet, and not +often at more than twelve; whereas on the west I have seen it very +distinctly, during a tract of dry weather, at a depth of sixty or +seventy feet. The handles of the spears used in Gairloch in spearing +flat fish and the common edible crab (_Cancer Pagurus_), are sometimes +five-and-twenty feet in length--a length which might in vain be given to +spear-handles upon the east coast, seeing that there, at such a depth of +water, flat fish or crab was never yet seen from the surface. + +Deceived by this transparency, I have plunged oftener than once over +head and ears, when bathing among the rocks, in pools where I had +confidently expected to find footing. From a rock that rose abrupt as a +wall from the low-water level of stream tides to a little above the line +of flood, I occasionally amused myself, when the evenings were calm, in +practising the Indian method of diving--that in which the diver carries +a weight with him, to facilitate his sinking, and keep him steadily at +the bottom. I used to select an oblong-shaped stone, of sixteen or +eighteen pounds' weight, but thin enough to be easily held in one hand; +and after grasping it fast, and quitting the rock edge, I would in a +second or two find myself on the grey pebble-strewed ooze beneath, some +twelve or fifteen feet from the surface, where I found I could steadily +remain, picking up any small objects I chanced to select, until, breath +failing, I quitted my hold of the stone. And then two or three seconds +more were always sufficient to bring me to the surface again. There are +many descriptions, in the works of the poets, of submarine scenery, but +it is always scenery such as may be seen by an eye looking down into the +water--not by an eye enveloped in it--and very different from that with +which I now became acquainted. I found that in these hasty trips to the +bottom I could distinguish masses and colours, but that I always failed +to determine outlines. The minuter objects--pebbles, shells, and the +smaller bunches of sea-weed--always assumed the circular form; the +larger, such as detached rocks, and patches of sand, appeared as if +described by irregular curves. The dingy gneiss rock rose behind and +over me like a dark cloud, thickly dotted with minute circular spots of +soiled white--the aspect assumed, as seen through the water, by the +numerous specimens of univalve shells (_Purpura lapillus_ and _Patella +vulgata_) with which it was speckled; beneath, the irregular floor +seemed covered by a carpet that somewhat resembled in the pattern a +piece of marbled paper, save that the circular or oval patches of which +it was composed, and which had as their nuclei, stones, rocks, +shell-fish, bunches of fuci, and fronds of laminaria, were greatly +larger. There spread around a misty groundwork of green intensely deep +along its horizon, but comparatively light overhead, in its middle sky, +which had always its prodigy--wonderful circlets of light, that went +widening outwards, and with whose delicate green there mingled +occasional flashes of pale crimson. Such was the striking though +somewhat meagre scenery of a sea-bottom in Gairloch, as seen by a human +eye submerged in from two to three fathoms of water. + +There still continued to linger in this primitive district, at the time, +several curious arts and implements, that had long become obsolete in +most other parts of the Highlands, and of which the remains, if found in +England or the Low country, would have been regarded by the antiquary as +belonging to very remote periods. During the previous winter I had read +a little work descriptive of an ancient ship, supposed to be Danish, +which had been dug out of the silt of an English river, and which, among +other marks of antiquity, exhibited seams caulked with moss--a +peculiarity which had set at fault, it was said, the modern +ship-carpenter, in the chronology of his art, as he was unaware that +there had ever been a time when moss was used for such a purpose. On +visiting, however, a boat-yard at Gairloch, I found the Highland builder +engaged in laying a layer of dried moss, steeped in tar, along one of +his seams, and learned that such had been the practice of +boat-carpenters in that locality from time immemorial. I have said that +the little old Highlander of the solitary shieling, whom we met on first +commencing our quarrying labours beside his hut, was engaged in +stripping with a pocket-knife long slender filaments from off a piece of +moss-fir. He was employed in preparing these ligneous fibres for the +manufacture of a primitive kind of cordage, in large use among the +fishermen, and which possessed a strength and flexibility that could +scarce have been expected from materials of such venerable age and +rigidity as the roots and trunks of ancient trees, that had been locked +up in the peat-mosses of the district for mayhap a thousand years. Like +the ordinary cordage of the rope-maker, it consisted of three strands, +and was employed for haulsers, the cork-bauks of herring-nets, and the +lacing of sails. Most of the sails themselves were made, not of canvas, +but of a woollen stuff, the thread of which, greatly harder and stouter +than that of common plaid, had been spun on the distaff and spindle. As +hemp and flax must have been as rare commodities of old in the western +Highlands, and the Hebrides generally, as they both were thirty years +ago in Gairloch, whereas moss-fir must have been abundant, and sheep, +however coarse their fleeces, common enough, it seems not improbable +that the old Highland fleets that fought in the "Battle of the Bloody +Bay," or that, in troublous times, when Donald quarrelled with the king, +ravaged the coasts of Arran and Ayrshire, may been equipped with similar +sails and cordage. Scott describes the fleet of the "Lord of the Isles," +in the days of the Bruce, as consisting of "proud galleys," "streamered +with silk and tricked with gold." I suspect he would have approved +himself a truer antiquary, though mayhap worse poet, had he described it +as composed of very rude carvels, caulked with moss, furnished with +sails of dun-coloured woollen stuff still redolent of the oil, and +rigged out with brown cordage formed of the twisted fibres of moss-fir. +The distaff and spindle was still, as I have said, in extensive use in +the district. In a scattered village in the neighbourhood of our +barrack, in which all the adult females were ceaselessly engaged in the +manufacture of yarn, there was not a single spinning-wheel. Nor, though +all its cottages had their little pieces of tillage, did it boast its +horse or plough. The cottars turned up the soil with the old Highland +implement, the _cass-chron_; and the necessary manure was carried to the +fields in spring, and the produce brought home in autumn, on the backs +of the women, in square wicker-work panniers, with slip-bottoms. How +these poor Highland women did toil! I have paused amid my labours under +the hot sun, to watch them as they passed, bending under their load of +peat or manure, and at the same time twirling the spindle as they crept +along, and drawing out the never-ending thread from the distaff stuck in +their girdles. Their appearance in most cases betrayed their life of +hardship. I scarce saw a Gairloch woman of the humbler class turned of +thirty, who was not thin, sallow, and prematurely old. The men, their +husbands and brothers, were by no means worn out with hard work. I have +seen them, time after time, sunning themselves on a mossy bank, when the +females were thus engaged; and used, with my brother-workmen--who were +themselves Celts, but of the industrious, hardworking type--to feel +sufficiently indignant at the lazy fellows. But the arrangement which +gave them rest, and their wives and sisters hard labour, seemed to be as +much the offspring of a remote age as the woollen sails and the moss-fir +cordage. Several other ancient practices and implements had at this time +just disappeared from the district. A good meal-mill of the modern +construction had superseded, not a generation before, several small +mills with horizontal water-wheels, of that rude antique type which +first supplanted the still more ancient handmill. These horizontal mills +still exist, however--at least they did so only two years ago--in the +gneiss region of Assynt. The antiquary sometimes forgets that, tested by +his special rules for determining periods, several ages may be found +contemporary in contiguous districts of the same country. I am old +enough to have seen the handmill at work in the north of Scotland; and +the traveller into the Highlands of western Sutherland might have +witnessed the horizontal mill in action only two years ago. But to the +remains of either, if dug out of the mosses or sand-hills of the +southern counties, we would assign an antiquity of centuries. In the +same way, the unglazed earthen pipkin, fashioned by the hand without the +assistance of the potter's wheel, is held to belong to the "bronze and +stone periods" of the antiquary; and yet my friend of the Doocot Cave, +when minister of Small Isles, found the remains of one of these pipkins +in the famous charnel cave of Eigg, which belonged to an age not earlier +than that of Mary, and more probably pertained to that of her son James; +and I have since learned, that in the southern portions of the Long +Island, this same hand-moulded pottery of the bronze period has been +fashioned for domestic use during the early part of the present century. +A chapter devoted to these lingering, or only recently departed, arts of +the primitive ages, would be a curious one; but I fear the time for +writing it is now well-nigh past. My few facts on the subject may serve +to show that, even as late as the year 1823, some three days' journey +into the Highlands might be regarded as analogous in some respects to a +journey into the past of some three or four centuries. But even since +that comparatively recent period the Highlands have greatly changed. + +After some six or eight weeks of warm sunny days and lovely evenings, +there came on a dreary tract of rainy weather, with strong westerly +gales; and for three months together, while there was scarce a day that +had not its shower, some days had half-a-dozen. Gairloch occupies, as I +have said, exactly the focus of that great curve of annual rain which, +impinging on our western shores from the Atlantic, extends from the +north of Assynt to the south of Mull, and exhibits on the rain-gauge an +average of thirty-five yearly inches--an average very considerably above +the medium quantity that falls in any other part of Great Britain, save +a small tract at the Land's End, included in a southern curve of equal +fall. The rain-fall of this year, however, must have stood very +considerably above even this high average; and the corn crops of the +poor Highlanders soon began to testify to the fact. There had been a +larger than ordinary promise during the fine weather; but in the danker +hollows the lodged oats and barley now lay rotting on the ground, or, on +the more exposed heights, stood up, shorn of the ears, as mere naked +spikes of straw. The potatoes, too, had become soft and watery, and must +have formed but indifferent food to the poor Highlanders, condemned, +even in better seasons, to feed upon them during the greater part of the +year, and now thrown upon them almost exclusively by the failure of the +corn crop. The cottars of the neighbouring village were on other +accounts in more than usually depressed circumstances at the time. Each +family paid to the laird for its patch of corn-land, and the pasturage +of a wide upland moor, on which each kept three cows a-piece, a small +yearly rent of three pounds. The males were all fishermen as well as +crofters; and, small as the rent was, they derived their only means of +paying it from the sea--chiefly, indeed, from the herring +fishery--which, everywhere an uncertain and precarious source of supply, +is more so here than in most other places on the north-western coasts of +Scotland. And as for three years together the herring fishing had failed +in the Loch, they had been unable, term after term, to meet with the +laird, and were now three years in arrears. Fortunately for them, he was +a humane, sensible man, comfortable enough in his circumstances to have, +what Highland proprietors often have not, the complete command of his +own affairs; but they all felt that their cattle were their own only by +sufferance, and so long as he forbore urging his claims against them; +and they entertained but little hope of ultimate extrication. I saw +among these poor men much of that indolence of which the country has +heard not a little; and could not doubt, from the peculiar aspects in +which it presented itself, that it was, as I have said, a long-derived +hereditary indolence, in which their fathers and grandfathers had +indulged for centuries. But there was certainly little in their +circumstances to lead to the formation of new habits of industry. Even a +previously industrious people, were they to be located within the great +north-western curve of thirty-five inch rain, to raise corn and potatoes +for the autumnal storms to blast, and to fish in the laird's behalf +herrings that year after year refused to come to be caught, would, I +suspect, in a short time get nearly as indolent as themselves. And +certainly, judging from the contrast which my brother-workmen presented +to these Highlanders of the west coast, the indolence which we saw, and +for which my comrades had no tolerance whatever, could scarce be +described as inherently Celtic. I myself was the only genuine Lowlander +of our party. John Fraser, who, though turned of sixty, would have laid +or hewn stone for stone with the most diligent Saxon mason in Britain or +elsewhere, was a true Celt of the Scandinavian-Gaelic variety; and all +our other masons--Macdonalds, M'Leods, and Mackays, hard-working men, +who were content to toil from season to season, and all day long--were +true Celts also. But they had been bred on the eastern border of the +Highlands, in a sandstone district, where they had the opportunity of +acquiring a trade, and of securing in the working season regular +well-remunerated employment; and so they had developed into industrious, +skilled mechanics, of at least the ordinary efficiency. There are other +things much more deeply in fault as producing causes of the indolence of +the west-coast Highlander than his Celtic blood. + +On finishing the dwelling-house upon which we had been engaged, nearly +one-half the workmen quitted the squad for the low country, and the +remainder removed to the neighbourhood of the inn at which we had spent +our first night, or rather morning, in the place, to build a kitchen and +store-room for the inn-keeper. Among the others, we lost the society of +Click-Clack, who had been a continual source of amusement and annoyance +to us in the barrack all the season long. We soon found that he was +regarded by the Highlanders in our neighbourhood with feelings of the +intensest horror and dread: they had learned somehow that he used to be +seen in the low country flitting suspiciously at nights about +churchyards, and was suspected of being a resurrectionist; and not one +of the ghouls or vampires of eastern story could have been more feared +or hated in the regions which they were believed to infest, than a +resurrectionist in the Western Highlands. Click-Clack had certainly a +trick of wandering about at nights; and not unfrequently did he bring, +on his return from some nocturnal ramble, dead bodies with him into the +barrack; but they were invariably the dead bodies of cod, gurnard, and +hake. I know not where his fishing-bank lay, or what bait he employed; +but I observed that almost all the fish which he caught were ready dried +and salted. Old John Fraser was not without suspicion that there were +occasional interferences on the part of the carter with the integrity of +our meal-barrel; and I have seen the old man smoothing the surface of +the meal just before quitting the barrack for his work, and inscribing +upon it with his knife-point the important moral injunction, "Thou shalt +not steal," in such a way as to render it impossible to break the +commandment within the precincts of the barrel, without, at the same +time, effacing some of its characters. And these once effaced, +Click-Clack, as he was no writer himself, and had no assistant or +confidant, could not have re-inscribed. Ere quitting us for the low +country, I bargained with him that he should carry my blanket in his +cart to Conon-side, and gave him a shilling and a dram in advance, as +pay for the service. He carried it, however, no further than the next +inn, where, pledging it for a second shilling and second dram, he left +me to relieve it as I passed. Poor Click-Clack, though one of the +cleverest of his class, was decidedly half-witted; and I may remark, as +at least curious, that though I have known idiocy in its unmixed state +united to great honesty, and capable of disinterested attachment, I +never yet knew one of the half-witted caste who was not selfish and a +rogue. + +We were unlucky in our barracks this season. Ere completing our first +piece of work, we had to quit the hay-barn, our earliest dwelling, to +make way for the proprietor's hay, and to shelter in a cow-house, where, +as the place had no chimney, we were nearly suffocated by smoke; and we +now found the innkeeper, our new employer, speculating, like the +magistrates in Joe Miller, on the practicability of lodging us in a +building, the materials of which were to be used in erecting the one +which we were engaged to build. We did our best to solve the problem, +by hanging up at the end of the doomed hovel--which had been a +salt-store in its day, and was in damp weather ever sweating +salt-water--a hanging partition of mats, that somewhat resembled the +curtain of a barn-theatre; and, making our beds within, we began pulling +down piecemeal, as the materials were required, that part of the +erection which lay outside. We had very nearly unhoused ourselves ere +our work was finished; and the chill blasts of October, especially when +they blew in at the open end of our dwelling, rendered it as +uncomfortable as a shallow cave in an exposed rock-front. My boyish +experiences, however, among the rocks of Cromarty, constituted no bad +preparation for such a life, and I roughed it out at least as well as +any of my comrades. The day had so contracted, that night always fell +upon our unfinished labours, and I had no evening walks; but there was a +delightful gneiss island, of about thirty acres in extent, and nearly +two miles away, to which I used to be occasionally despatched to quarry +lintels and corner stones, and where work had all the charms of play; +and the quiet Sabbaths were all my own. So long as the laird and his +family were at the mansion-house of Flowerdale--at least four months of +every year--there was an English service in the parish church; but I had +come to the place this season before the laird, and now remained in it +after he had gone away, and there was no English service for me. And so +I usually spent my Sabbaths all alone in the noble Flowerdale woods, now +bright under their dark hillsides, in the autumnal tints, and remarkable +for the great height and bulk of their ash trees, and of a few detached +firs, that spoke, in their venerable massiveness, of former centuries. +The clear, calm mornings, when the gossamer went sailing in long grey +films along the retired glades of the wood, and the straggling sunlight +fell on the crimson and orange mushroom, as it sprang up amid the dank +grass, and under thickly-leaved boughs of scarlet and gold, I deemed +peculiarly delightful. For one who had neither home nor church, the +autumnal woods formed by much a preferable Sabbath haunt to a shallow +cave, dropping brine, unprovided with chair or table, and whose only +furniture consisted of two rude bedsteads of undressed slabs, that bore +atop two blankets a-piece, and a heap of straw. Sabbath-walking in +parties, and especially in the neighbourhood of our large towns, is +always a frivolous, and often a very bad thing; but lonely Sabbath-walks +in a rural district--walks such as the poet Graham describes--are not +necessarily bad; and the Sabbatarians who urge that in all cases, men, +when not in church on the Sabbath, ought to be in their dwellings, must +know very little indeed of the "huts where poor men lie." In the mason's +barrack, or the farm-servant's bothy, it is often impossible to enjoy +the quiet of the Sabbath: the circumstances necessary to its enjoyment +must be sought in the open air, amid the recesses of some thick wood, or +along the banks of some unfrequented river, or on the brown wastes of +some solitary moor. + +We had completed all our work ere Hallowday, and, after a journey of +nearly three days, I found myself once more at home, with the leisure of +the long happy winter before me. I still look lack on the experiences of +this year with a feeling of interest. I had seen in my boyhood, in the +interior of Sutherland, the Highlanders living in that condition of +comparative comfort which they enjoyed from shortly after the +suppression of the rebellion of 1745, and the abolition of the +hereditary jurisdictions, till the beginning of the present century, and +in some localities for ten or twelve years later. And here again I saw +them in a condition--the effect mainly of the introduction of the +extensive sheep-farm system into the interior of the country--which has +since become general over almost the entire Highlands, and of which the +result may be seen in the annual famines. The population, formerly +spread pretty equally over the country, now exists as a miserable +selvedge, stretched along its shores, dependent in most cases on +precarious fisheries, that prove remunerative for a year or two, and +disastrous for mayhap half-a-dozen; and able barely to subsist when +most successful, a failure in the potato crop, or in the expected return +of the herring shoals, at once reduces them to starvation. The grand +difference between the circumstances of the people of the Highlands in +the better time and the worse may be summed up in the one important +vocable--_capital_. The Highlander was never wealthy: the inhabitants of +a wild mountainous district, formed of the primary rocks, never are. But +he possessed, on the average, his six, or eight, or ten head of cattle, +and his small flock of sheep; and when, as sometimes happened in the +high-lying districts, the corn-crop turned out a failure, the sale of a +few cattle or sheep more than served to clear scores with the landlord, +and enabled him to purchase his winter and spring supply of meal in the +Lowlands. He was thus a capitalist, and possessed the capitalist's +peculiar advantage of not "living from hand to mouth," but on an +accumulated fund, which always stood between him and absolute want, +though not between him and positive hardship, and which enabled him to +rest, during a year of scarcity, on his own resources, instead of +throwing himself on the charity of his Lowland neighbours. Nay, in what +were emphatically termed "the dear years" of the beginning of the +present and latter half of the past century, the humble people of the +Lowlands, especially our Lowland mechanics and labourers, suffered more +than the crofters and _small_ farmers of the Highlands, and this mainly +from the circumstance, that as the failure of the crops which induced +the scarcity was a corn failure, not a failure of grass and pasture, the +humbler Highlanders had sheep and cattle, which continued to supply them +with food and raiment; while the humbler Lowlanders, depending on corn +almost exclusively, and accustomed to deal with the draper for their +articles of clothing, were reduced by the high price of provisions to +great straits. There took place, however, about the beginning of the +century, a mighty change, coincident with, and, to a certain extent, an +effect of, the wars of the first French Revolution. The price of +provisions rose in England and the Lowlands, and with the price of +provisions, the rent of land. The Highland proprietor naturally enough +set himself to determine how his rental also was to be increased; and, +as a consequence of the conclusion at which he arrived, the sheep-farm +and clearance system began. Many thousand Highlanders, ejected from +their snug holdings, employed their little capital in emigrating to +Canada and the States; and there, in most cases, the little capital +increased, and a rude plenty continues to be enjoyed by their +descendants. Many thousands more, however, fell down upon the coasts of +the country, and, on moss-covered moors or bare promontories, ill suited +to repay the labours of the agriculturist, commenced a sort of +amphibious life as crofters and fishermen. And, located on an ungenial +soil, and prosecuting with but indifferent skill a precarious trade, +their little capital dribbled out of their hands, and they became the +poorest of men. Meanwhile, in some parts of the Highlands and Islands a +busy commerce sprang up, which employed--much to the profit of the +landlords--many thousands of the inhabitants. The kelp manufacture +rendered inhospitable islets and tracts of bleak rocky shore, rich in +sea-weed, of as much value to the proprietors as the best land in +Scotland; and, under the impetus given by full employment, and, if not +ample, at least remunerative pay, population increased. Suddenly, +however, Free Trade, in its first approaches, destroyed the trade in +kelp; and then the discovery of a cheap mode of manufacturing soda out +of common salt secured its ruin beyond the power of legislation to +retrieve. Both the people and landlords experienced in the kelp +districts the evils which a ruined commerce always leaves behind it. Old +Highland families disappeared from amid the aristocracy and landowners +of Scotland; and the population of extensive islands and sea-boards of +the country, from being no more than adequate, suddenly became +oppressively redundant. It required, however, another drop to make the +full cup run over. The potatoes had become, as I have shown, the staple +food of the Highlander; and when, in 1846, the potato-blight came on, +the people, most of them previously stripped of their little capitals, +and divested of their employment, were deprived of their food, and +ruined at a blow. The same stroke which did little more than slightly +impinge on the comforts of the people of the Lowlands, utterly +prostrated the Highlanders; and ever since, the sufferings of famine +have become chronic along the bleak shores and rugged islands of at +least the north-western portion of our country. Nor is it perhaps the +worst part of the evil that takes the form of clamorous want: so heavily +have the famines borne on a class which were not absolutely the poor +when they came on, that they are absolutely the poor now;--they have +dissipated the last remains of capital possessed by the _people_ of the +Highlands. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] Appended to their joint paper on the "Deposits contained between the +Scottish Primary Rocks and Oolitic Series," and interesting, as the +first published geological map of Scotland to the north of the Firths of +Forth and Clyde. + +[5] There are only two of these exclusively west-coast shells,--_Trochus +umbilicatus_ and _Pecten niveus_. As neither of them has yet been +detected in any Tertiary formation, they are in all probability shells +of comparatively recent origin, that came into existence in some western +centre of creation; whereas specimens of _Trochus magus_ and _Nassa +reticulata_, which occasionally occur on the eastern coasts of the +kingdom, I have also found in a Pleistocene deposit. Thus the more +widely-spread shells seem to be also the shells of more ancient +standing. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + + "Edina! Scotia's darling seat! + All hail thy palaces and towers!"--BURNS. + + +There had occurred a sad accident among the Cromarty rocks this season, +when I was labouring in Gairloch, which, from the circumstance that it +had nearly taken place in my own person about five years before, a good +deal impressed me on my return. A few hundred yards from the very bad +road which I had assisted old Johnstone of the Forty-Second in +constructing, there is a tall inaccessible precipice of ferruginous +gneiss, that from time immemorial down to this period had furnished a +secure nestling-place to a pair of ravens--the only birds of their +species that frequented the rocks of the Hill. Year after year, +regularly as the breeding season came round, the ravens used to make +their appearance, and enter on possession of their hereditary home: they +had done so for a hundred years, to a certainty--some said, for a much +longer time; and as there existed a tradition in the place that the nest +had once been robbed of its young birds by a bold climber, I paid it a +visit one morning, in order to determine whether I could not rob it too. +There was no getting up to it from below: the precipice, more +inaccessible for about a hundred feet from its base than a castle wall, +overhung the shore; but it seemed not impracticable from above; and, +coming gradually down upon it, availing myself, as I crept along, of +every little protuberance and hollow, I at length stood within six or +eight feet of the young birds. From that point, however, a smooth shelf, +without projection or cavity, descended at an angle of about forty to +the nest, and terminated abruptly, without ledge or margin, in the +overhanging precipice. Have I not, I asked, crept along a roof of even a +steeper slope than that of the shelf? Why not, in like manner, creep +along it to the nest, where there is firm footing? I had actually +stretched out my naked foot to take the first step, when I observed, as +the sun suddenly broke out from behind a cloud, that the light glistened +on the smooth surface. It was incrusted over by a thin layer of +chlorite, slippery as the mixture of soap and grease that the +ship-carpenter spreads over his slips on the morning of a launch. I at +once saw there was an element of danger in the way, on which I had at +first failed to calculate; and so, relinquishing the attempt as +hopeless, I returned by the path I had come, and thought no more of +robbing the raven's nest. It was, however, again attempted this season, +but with tragic results, by a young lad from Sutherland, named Mackay, +who had previously approved his skill as a cragsman in his native +county, and several times secured the reward given by an Agricultural +Society for the destruction of young birds of prey. As the incident was +related to me, he had approached the nest by the path which I had +selected; he had paused where I had paused, and even for a longer time; +and then, venturing forward, he no sooner committed himself to the +treacherous chlorite, than, losing footing as if on a steep sheet of +ice, he shot right over the precipice. Falling sheer for the first fifty +feet or so without touching the rock, he was then turned full round by a +protuberance against which he had glanced, and, descending for the lower +half of the way head foremost, and dashing with tremendous force among +the smooth sea-stones below, his brains were scattered over an area of +from ten to twelve square yards in extent. His only companion--an +ignorant Irish lad--had to gather up the fragments of his head in a +napkin. + +I now felt that, save for the gleam of the sun on the glistening +chlorite--seen not a moment too soon--I should probably have been +substituted as the victim for poor Mackay, and that he, warned by my +fate, would in all likelihood have escaped. And though I knew it might +be asked, Why the interposition of a Providence to save _you_, when he +was left to perish? I _did_ feel that I did not owe my escape merely to +my acquaintance with chlorite and its properties. For the full +development of the moral instincts of our nature, one may lead a life by +much too quiet and too secure: a sprinkling in one's lot of sudden +perils and hair-breadth escapes is, I am convinced, more wholesome, if +positive superstition be avoided, than a total absence of danger. For my +own part, though I have, I trust, ever believed in the doctrine of a +particular Providence, it has been always some narrow escape that has +given me my best evidences of the vitality and strength of the belief +within. It has ever been the touch of danger that has rendered it +emotional. A few years after this time, when stooping forward to examine +an opening fissure in a rock front, at which I was engaged in quarrying, +a stone, detached from above by a sudden gust of wind, brushed so +closely past my head as to beat down the projecting front of my bonnet, +and then dented into a deep hollow the sward at my feet. There was +nothing that was not perfectly natural in the occurrence; but the gush +of acknowledgment that burst spontaneously from my heart would have set +at nought the scepticism which should have held that there was no +Providence in it. On another occasion, I paused for some time, when +examining a cave of the old-coast line, directly under its low-browed +roof of Old Red conglomerate, as little aware of the presence of danger +as if I had been standing under the dome of St. Paul's; but when I next +passed the way, the roof had fallen, and a mass, huge enough to have +given me at once death and burial, cumbered the spot which I had +occupied. On yet another occasion, I clambered a few yards down a +precipice, to examine some crab-apple trees, which, springing from a +turret-like projection of the rock, far from gardens and nurseries, had +every mark of being indigenous; and then, climbing up among the +branches, I shook them in a manner that must have exerted no small +leverage power on the outjet beneath, to possess myself of some of the +fruit, as the native apples of Scotland. On my descent, I marked, +without much thinking of the matter, an apparently recent crack running +between the outjet and the body of the precipice. I found, however, +cause enough to think of it on my return, scarce a month after; for then +both outjet and trees lay broken and fractured on the beach more than a +hundred feet below. With such momentum had even the slimmer twigs been +dashed against the sea-pebbles, that they stuck out from under more than +a hundred tons of fallen rock, divested of the bark on their under +sides, as if peeled by the hand. And what I felt on all these occasions +was, I believe, not more in accordance with the nature of man as an +instinct of the moral faculty, than in agreement with that provision of +the Divine Government under which a sparrow falleth not without +permission. There perhaps never was a time in which the doctrine of a +particular Providence was more questioned and doubted than in the +present; and yet the scepticism which obtains regarding it seems to be +very much a scepticism of effort, conjured up by toiling intellects, in +a quiet age, and among the easy classes; while the belief which, +partially and for the time, it overshadows, lies safely entrenched all +the while amid the fastnesses of the unalterable nature of man. When +danger comes to touch it, it will spring up in its old proportions; nay, +so indigenous is it to the human heart, that if it will not take its +_cultivated_ form as a belief in Providence, it will to a certainty take +to it its _wild_ form as a belief in Fate or Destiny. Of a doctrine so +fundamentally important that there can be no religion without it, God +himself seems to have taken care when he moulded the human heart. + +The raven no longer builds among the rocks of the Hill of Cromarty; and +I saw many years ago its last pair of eagles. This last noble bird was a +not unfrequent visitor of the Sutors early in the present century. I +still remember scaring it from its perch on the southern side of the +hill, as day was drawing to a close, when the tall precipices amid which +it had lodged lay deep in the shade; and vividly recollect how +picturesquely it used to catch the red gleam of evening on its plumage +of warm brown, as, sailing outwards over the calm sea many hundred feet +below, it emerged from under the shadow of the cliffs into the sunshine. +Uncle James once shot a very large eagle beneath one of the loftiest +precipices of the southern Sutor; and, swimming out through the surf to +recover its body--for it had dropped dead into the sea--he kept its skin +for many years as a trophy.[6] But eagles are now no longer to lie seen +or shot on the Sutors or their neighbourhood. The badger, too--one of +perhaps the oldest inhabitants of the country, for it seems to have been +contemporary with the extinct elephants and hyaenas of the Pleistocene +periods--has become greatly less common on their steep sides than in the +days of my boyhood; and both the fox and otter are less frequently seen. +It is not uninteresting to mark with the eye of the geologist, how +palpably in the course of a single lifetime--still nearly twenty years +short of the term fixed by the Psalmist--these wild animals have been +posting on in Scotland to that extinction which overtook, within its +precincts, during the human period, the bear, the beaver, and the wolf, +and of which the past history of the globe, as inscribed on its rocks, +furnishes so strong a record. + +Winter passed in the usual pursuits; and I commenced the working season +of a new year by assisting my old master to inclose with a stone wall a +little bit of ground, which he had bought on speculation, but had failed +in getting feued out for buildings. My services, however, were +gratuitous--given merely to eke out the rather indifferent bargain that +the old man had been able to drive in his own behalf for my labours as +an apprentice; and when our job was finished, it became necessary that I +should look out for employment of a more profitable character. There was +not much doing in the north; but work promised to be abundant in the +great towns of the south: the disastrous building mania of 1824-25 had +just begun, and, after some little hesitation, I resolved on trying +whether I could not make my way as a mechanic among the stone-cutters of +Edinburgh perhaps the most skilful in their profession in the world. I +was, besides, desirous to get rid of a little property in Leith, which +had cost the family great annoyance, and not a little money, but from +which, so long as the nominal proprietor was a minor, we could not shake +ourselves loose. It was a house on the Coal-hill, or rather the +self-contained ground-floor of a house, which had fallen to my father +through the death of a relative, so immediately before his own death +that he had not entered upon possession. It was burdened with legacies +to the amount of nearly two hundred pounds; but then the yearly rent +amounted to twenty-four pounds; and my mother, acting on the advice of +friends, and deeming the investment a good one, had no sooner recovered +the insurance-money of my father's vessel from the underwriter, than she +handed the greater part of it to the legatees, and took possession of +the property in my behalf. Alas! never was there a more unfortunate +inheritance or worse investment. It had been let as a public-house and +tap-room, and had been the scene of a somewhat rough, and, I daresay, +not very respectable, but yet profitable trade; but no sooner had it +become mine than, in consequence of some alterations in the harbour, the +greater part of the shipping that used to lie at the Coal-hill removed +to a lower reach; the tap-room business suddenly fell off; and the rent +sank, during the course of one twelvemonth, from twenty-four to twelve +pounds. And then in its sear and wintry state, the unhappy house came to +be inhabited by a series of miserable tenants, who, though they +sanguinely engaged to pay the twelve pounds, never paid them. I still +remember the brief, curt letters from our agent, the late Mr. Veitch, +town-clerk of Leith, that never failed to fill my mother with terror and +dismay, and very much resembled, in at least the narrative parts, +jottings by the poet Crabbe, for some projected poem on the profligate +poor. Two of our tenants made moonlight flittings just on the eve of the +term; and though the little furniture which they left behind them was +duly rouped at the cross, such was the inevitable expense of the +transaction, that none of the proceeds of the sale reached Cromarty. The +house was next inhabited by a stout female, who kept a certain +description of lady-lodgers; and for the first half-year she paid the +rent most conscientiously; but the authorities interfering, there was +another house found for her and her ladies in the neighbourhood of the +Calton, and the rent of the second half-year remained unpaid. And as the +house lost, in consequence of her occupation, the modicum of character +which it had previously retained, it lay for five years wholly +untenanted, save by a mischievous spirit--the ghost, it was said, of a +murdered gentleman, whose throat had been cut in an inner apartment by +the ladies, and his body flung by night into the deep mud of the +harbour. The ghost was, however, at length detected by the police, +couching in the form of one of the ladies themselves, on a lair of straw +in the corner of one of the rooms, and exorcised into Bridewell; and +then the house came to be inhabited by a tenant who had both the will +and the ability to pay. One year's rent, however, had to be expended in +repairs; and ere the next year passed, the heritors of the parish were +rated for the erection of the magnificent parish church of North Leith, +then in course of building, with its tall and graceful spire and classic +portico; and as we had no one to state our case, our house was rated, +not according to its reduced, but according to its original value. And +so the entire rental of the second year, with several pounds additional +which I had to subtract from my hard-earned savings as a mason, were +appropriated in behalf of the ecclesiastical Establishment of the +country, by the builders of the church and spire. I had attained my +majority when lodging in the fragment of a salt storehouse in Gairloch; +and, competent in the eye of the law to dispose of the house on the +Coal-hill, I now hoped to find, if not a purchaser, at least some one +foolish enough to take it off my hands for nothing. I have since heard +and read a good deal about the atrocious landlords of the poorer and +less reputable sort of houses in our large towns, and have seen it +asserted that, being a bad and selfish kind of people, they ought to be +rigorously dealt with. And so, I daresay, they ought; but at the same +time I cannot forget, that I myself was one of these atrocious landlords +from my fifth till nearly my twenty-second year, and that I could not +possibly help it, and was very sorry for it. + +On the fourth day after losing sight of the Hill of Cromarty, the Leith +smack in which I sailed was slowly threading her way, in a morning of +light airs and huge broken fog-wreaths, through the lower tracts of the +Firth of Forth. The islands and distant land looked dim and grey through +the haze, like objects in an unfinished drawing; and at times some vast +low-browed cloud from the sea applied the sponge as it rolled past, and +blotted out half a county at a time; but the sun occasionally broke +forth in partial glimpses of great beauty, and brought out into bold +relief little bits of the landscape--now a town, and now an islet, and +anon the blue summit of a hill. A sunlit wreath rose from around the +abrupt and rugged Bass as we passed; and my heart leaped within me as I +saw, for the first time, that stern Patmos of the devout and brave of +another age looming dark and high through the diluted mist, and +enveloped for a moment, as the cloud parted, in an amber-tinted glory. +There had been a little Presbyterian oasis of old in the neighbourhood +of Cromarty, which, in the midst of the Highland and _Moderate_ +indifferency that characterized the greater part of the north of +Scotland during the seventeenth century, had furnished the Bass with not +a few of its most devoted victims. Mackilligen of Alness, Hogg of +Kiltearn, and the Rosses of Tain and Kincardine, had been incarcerated +in its dungeons; and, when labouring in the Cromarty quarries in early +spring, I used to know that it was time to gather up my tools for the +evening, when I saw the sun resting over the high-lying farm which +formed the patrimony of another of its better-known victims--young +Fraser of Brea. And so I looked with a double interest on the bold +sea-girt rock, and the sun-gilt cloud that rose over its scared +forehead, like that still brighter halo which glorifies it in the +memories of the Scottish people. Many a long-cherished association drew +my thoughts to Edinburgh. I was acquainted with Ramsay, and Fergusson, +and the "Humphrey Clinker" of Smollett, and had read a description of +the place in the "Marmion" and the earlier novels of Scott; and I was +not yet too old to feel as if I were approaching a great magical +city--like some of those in the "Arabian Nights"--that was even more +intensely poetical than Nature itself. I did somewhat chide the +tantalizing mist, that, like a capricious showman, now raised one corner +of its curtain, and anon another, and showed me the place at once very +indistinctly, and only by bits at a time; and yet I know not that I +could in reality have seen it to greater advantage, or after a mode +more in harmony with my previous conceptions. The water in the harbour +was too low, during the first hour or two after our arrival, to float +our vessel, and we remained tacking in the roadstead, watching for the +signal from the pier-head which was to intimate to us when the tide had +risen high enough for our admission; and so I had sufficient time given +me to con over the features of the scene, as presented in detail. At one +time a flat reach of the New Town came full into view, along which, in +the general dimness, the multitudinous chimneys stood up like stacks of +corn in a field newly reaped; at another, the Castle loomed out dark in +the cloud; then, as if suspended over the earth, the rugged summit of +Arthur's Seat came strongly out, while its base still remained invisible +in the wreath; and anon I caught a glimpse of the distant Pentlands, +enveloped by a clear blue sky, and lighted up by the sun. Leith, with +its thicket of masts, and its tall round Tower, lay deep in shade in the +foreground--a cold, dingy, ragged town, but so strongly relieved against +the pale smoky grey of the background, that it seemed another little +city of Zoar, entire in front of the burning. And such was the strangely +picturesque countenance with which I was favoured by the Scottish +capital, when forming my earliest acquaintance with it, twenty-nine +years ago. + +It was evening ere I reached it. The fog of the early part of the day +had rolled off, and every object stood out in clear light and shade +under a bright sunshiny sky. The workmen of the place--their labours +just closed for the day--were passing in groups along the streets to +their respective homes; but I was too much engaged in looking at the +buildings and shops to look very discriminately at them; and it was not +without some surprise that I found myself suddenly laid hold of by one +of their number, a slim lad, in pale moleskin a good deal bespattered +with paint. My friend William Ross stood before me; and his welcome on +the occasion was a very hearty one. I had previously taken a hasty +survey of my unlucky house in Leith, accompanied by a sharp, +keen-looking, one-handed man of middle age, who kept the key, and acted, +under the town-clerk, as general manager; and who, as I afterwards +ascertained, was the immortal Peter M'Craw. But I had seen nothing +suited to put me greatly in conceit with my patrimony. It formed the +lowermost floor of an old black building, four stories in height, +flanked by a damp narrow court along one of its sides, and that turned +to the street its sharp-peaked, many-windowed gable. The lower windows +were covered up by dilapidated, weather-bleached shutters; in the upper, +the comparatively fresh appearance of the rags that stuffed up holes +where panes ought to have been, and a few very pale-coloured petticoats +and very dark-coloured shirts fluttering in the wind, gave evident signs +of habitation. It cost my conductor's one hand an arduous wrench to lay +open the lock of the outer door, in front of which he had first to +dislodge a very dingy female, attired in an earth-coloured gown, that +seemed as if starched with ashes; and as the rusty hinges creaked, and +the door fell against the wall, we became sensible of a damp, +unwholesome smell, like the breath of a charnel-house, which issued from +the interior. The place had been shut up for nearly two years; and so +foul had the stagnant atmosphere become, that the candle which we +brought with us to explore burned dim and yellow like a miner's lamp. +The floors, broken up in fifty different places, were littered with +rotten straw; and in one of the corners there lay a damp heap, gathered +up like the lair of some wild beast, on which some one seemed to have +slept, mayhap months before. The partitions were crazed and tottering; +the walls blackened with smoke; broad patches of plaster had fallen from +the ceilings, or still dangled from them, suspended by single hairs; and +the bars of the grates, crusted with rust, had become red as foxtails. +Mr. M'Craw nodded his head over the gathered heap of straw. "Ah," he +said--"got in again, I see! The shutters must be looked to." "I +daresay," I remarked, looking disconsolately around me, "you don't find +it very easy to get tenants for houses of this kind." "_Very_ easy!" +said Mr. M'Craw, with somewhat of a Highland twang, and, as I thought, +with also a good deal of Highland _hauteur_--as was of course quite +natural in so shrewd and extensive a house-agent, when dealing with the +owner of a domicile that would not let, and who made foolish +remarks--"No, nor easy at all, or it would not be locked up in this way: +but if we took off the shutters you would soon get tenants enough." "Oh, +I suppose so; and I daresay it is as difficult to sell as to let such +houses." "Ay, and more," said Mr. M'Craw: "it's all sellers, and no +buyers, when we get this low." "But do you not think," I perseveringly +asked, "that some kind, charitable person might be found in the +neighbourhood disposed to take it off my hands as a free gift! It's +terrible to be married for life to a baggage of a house like this, and +made liable, like other husbands, for all its debts. Is there no way of +getting a divorce?" "Don't know," he emphatically replied, with somewhat +of a nasal snort; and so we parted; and I saw or heard no more of Peter +M'Craw until many years after, when I found him celebrated in the +well-known song by poor Gilfillan.[7] And in the society of my friend I +soon forgot my miserable house, and all the liabilities which it +entailed. + +I was as entirely unacquainted with great towns at this time as the +shepherd in Virgil; and, excited by what I saw, I sadly tasked my +friend's peripatetic abilities, and, I fear, his patience also, in +taking an admiring survey of all the more characteristic streets, and +then in setting out for the top of Arthur's Seat--from which, this +evening, I watched the sun set behind the distant Lomonds--that I might +acquaint myself with the features of the surrounding country, and the +effect of the city as a whole. And amid much confused and imperfect +recollection of picturesque groups of ancient buildings, and magnificent +assemblages of elegant modern ones, I carried away with me two vividly +distinct ideas--first results, as a painter might perhaps say, of a +"fresh eye," which no after survey has served to freshen or intensify. I +felt that I had seen, not one, but two cities--a city of the past and a +city of the present--set down side by side, as if for purposes of +comparison, with a picturesque valley drawn like a deep score between +them, to mark off the line of division. And such in reality seems to be +the grand peculiarity of the Scottish capital--its distinguishing trait +among the cities of the empire; though, of course, during the +twenty-nine years that have elapsed since I first saw it, the more +ancient of its two cities--greatly modernized in many parts--has become +less uniformly and consistently antique in its aspect. Regarded simply +as matters of taste, I have found little to admire in the improvements +that have so materially changed its aspect. Of its older portions I used +never to tire: I found I could walk among them as purely for the +pleasure which accrued, as among the wild and picturesque of nature +itself; whereas one visit to the elegant streets and ample squares of +the new city always proved sufficient to satisfy; and I certainly never +felt the desire to return to any of them to saunter in quest of pleasure +along the smooth, well-kept pavements. I of course except Princes +Street. There the two cities stand ranged side by side, as if for +comparison; and the eye falls on the features of a natural scenery that +would of itself be singularly pleasing even were both the cities away. +Next day I waited on the town-clerk, Mr. Veitch, to see whether he could +not suggest to me some way in which I might shake myself loose from my +unfortunate property on the Coal-hill. He received me civilly--told me +that the property was not quite so desperate an investment as I seemed +to think it, as at least the site, in which I had an interest with the +other proprietors, was worth something, and as the little courtyard was +exclusively my own; and that he thought he could get the whole disposed +of for me, if I was prepared to accept of a small price. And I was of +course, as I told him, prepared to accept of a very small one. Further, +on learning that I was a stone-cutter, and unemployed, he kindly +introduced me to one of his friends, a master-builder, by whom I was +engaged to work at a manor-house a few miles to the south of Edinburgh. +And procuring "lodgings" in a small cottage of but a single apartment, +near the village of Niddry Mill, I commenced my labours as a hewer under +the shade of the Niddry woods. + +There was a party of sixteen masons employed at Niddry, besides +apprentices and labourers. They were accomplished +stone-cutters--skilful, especially in the cutting of mouldings, far +above the average of the masons of the north country; and it was with +some little solicitude that I set myself to labour beside them on +mullions, and transoms, and labels--for our work was in the old English +style--a style in which I had no previous practice. I was diligent, +however, and kept old John Fraser's principle in view (though, as Nature +had been less liberal in imparting the necessary faculties, I could not +cut so directly as he used to do on the required planes and curves +inclosed in the stones); and I had the satisfaction of finding, when +pay-night came round, that the foreman, who had frequently stood beside +me during the week to observe my modes of working, and the progress +which I made, estimated my services at the same rate as he did those of +the others. I was by and by intrusted, too, like the best of them, with +all the more difficult kinds of work required in the erection, and was +at one time engaged for six weeks together in fashioning long, slim, +deeply-moulded mullions, not one of which broke in my hands, though the +stone on which I wrought was brittle and gritty, and but indifferently +suited for the nicer purposes of the architect. I soon found, however, +that most of my brother workmen regarded me with undisguised hostility +and dislike, and would have been better pleased had I, as they seemed to +expect, from the northern locality in which I had been reared, broken +down in the trial. I was, they said, "a Highlander newly come to +Scotland," and, if not chased northwards again, would carry home with me +half the money of the country. Some of the builders used to criticize +very unfairly the workmanship of the stones which I hewed: they could +not lay them, they said; and the hewers sometimes refused to assist me +in carrying in or in turning the weightier blocks on which I wrought. +The foreman, however, a worthy, pious man, a member of a Secession +congregation, stood my friend and encouraged me to persevere. "Do not," +he has said, "suffer yourself to be driven from the work, and they will +soon tire out, and leave you to pursue your own course. I know exactly +the nature of your offence: you do not drink with them or treat them; +but they will soon cease to expect that you should; and when once they +find that you are not to be coerced or driven off, they will let you +alone." As, however, from the abundance of employment--a consequence of +the Building mania--the men were masters and more at the time, the +foreman could not take my part openly in opposition to them; but I was +grateful for his kindness, and felt too thoroughly indignant at the mean +fellows who could take such odds against an inoffensive stranger, to be +much in danger of yielding to the combination. It is only a weak man +whom the wind deprives of his cloak: a man of the average strength is +more in danger of losing it when assailed by the genial beams of a too +kindly sun. + +I threw myself, as usual, for the compensatory pleasures, on my evening +walks, but found the enclosed state of the district, and the fence of a +rigorously-administered trespass-law, serious drawbacks; and ceased to +wonder that a thoroughly cultivated country is, in most instances, so +much less beloved by its people than a wild and open one. Rights of +proprietorship may exist equally in both; but there is an important +sense in which the open country belongs to the proprietors and to the +people too. All that the heart and the intellect can derive from it may +be alike free to peasant and aristocrat; whereas the cultivated and +strictly fenced country belongs usually, in every sense, to only the +proprietor; and as it is a much simpler and more obvious matter to love +one's country as a scene of hills, and streams, and green fields, amid +which Nature has often been enjoyed, than as a definite locality, in +which certain laws and constitutional privileges exist, it is rather to +be regretted than wondered at that there should be often less true +patriotism in a country of just institutions and equal laws, whose soil +has been so exclusively appropriated as to leave only the dusty +high-roads to its people, than in wild open countries, in which the +popular mind and affections are left free to embrace the soil, but whose +institutions are partial and defective. Were our beloved Monarch to +regard such of the gentlemen of her court as taboo their Glen Tilts, and +shut up the passes of the Grampians, as a sort of disloyal Destructives +of a peculiar type, who make it their vocation to divest her people of +their patriotism, and who virtually teach them that a country no longer +theirs is not worth the fighting for, it might be very safely concluded +that she was but manifesting, in one other direction, the strong good +sense which has ever distinguished her. Though shut out, however, from +the neighbouring fields and policies, the Niddry woods were open to me; +and I have enjoyed many an agreeable saunter along a broad planted belt, +with a grassy path in the midst, that forms their southern boundary, and +through whose long vista I could see the sun sink over the picturesque +ruins of Craigmillar Castle. A few peculiarities in the natural history +of the district showed me, that the two degrees of latitude which lay +between me and the former scenes of my studies were not without their +influence on both the animal and vegetable kingdoms. The group of +land-shells was different, in at least its proportions; and one +well-marked mollusc--the large tortoise-shell helix (_helix aspersa_), +very abundant in this neighbourhood--I had never seen in the north at +all. I formed, too, my first acquaintance in this woody, bush-skirted +walk, with the hedgehog in its wild state--an animal which does not +occur to the north of the Moray Firth. I saw, besides, though the summer +was of but the average warmth, the oak ripening its acorns--a rare +occurrence among the Cromarty woods, where, in at least nine out of +every ten seasons, the fruit merely forms and then drops off. But my +researches this season lay rather among fossils than among recent plants +and animals. I was now for the first time located on the Carboniferous +System: the stone at which I wrought was intercalated among the working +coal-seams, and abounded in well-marked impressions of the more robust +vegetables of the period--stigmaria, sigillaria, calamites, and +lepidodendra; and as they greatly excited my curiosity I spent many an +evening hour in the quarry in which they occurred, in tracing their +forms in the rock; or, extending my walks to the neighbouring coal pits, +I laid open with my hammer, in quest of organisms, the blocks of shale +or stratified clay raised from beneath by the miner. There existed at +the time none of those popular digests of geological science which are +now so common; and so I had to grope my way without guide or assistant, +and wholly unfurnished with a vocabulary. At length, however, by dint of +patient labour, I came to form not very erroneous, though of course +inadequate, conceptions of the ancient Coal Measure Flora: it was +impossible to doubt that its numerous ferns were really such; and though +I at first failed to trace the supposed analogies of its lepidodendra +and calamites, it was at least evident that they were the bole-like +stems of great plants, that had stood erect like trees. A certain amount +of fact, too, once acquired, enabled me to assimilate to the mass little +snatches of information, derived from chance paragraphs and occasional +articles in magazines and reviews, that, save for my previous +acquaintance with the organisms to which they referred, would have told +me nothing. And so the vegetation of the Coal Measures began gradually +to form within my mind's eye, where all had been blank before, as I had +seen the spires and columns of Edinburgh forming amid the fog, on the +morning of my arrival. + +I found, however, one of the earliest dreams of my youth curiously +mingling with my restorations, or rather forming their groundwork. I had +read Gulliver at the proper age; and my imagination had become filled +with the little men and women, and retained strong hold of at least one +scene laid in the country of the very tall men--that in which the +traveller, after wandering amid grass that rose twenty feet over his +head, lost himself in a vast thicket of barley forty feet high. I became +the owner, in fancy, of a colony of Liliputians, that manned my +eighteen-inch canoe, or tilled my apron-breadth of a garden; and, +coupling with the men of Liliput the scene in Brobdignag, I had often +set myself to imagine, when playing truant on the green slopes of the +Hill, or among the swamps of the "Willows," how some of the +vignette-like scenes by which I was surrounded would have appeared to +creatures so minute. I have imagined them threading their way through +dark forests of bracken forty feet high--or admiring on the hill-side +some enormous club-moss that stretched out its green hairy arms for +whole roods--or arrested at the edge of some dangerous morass, by hedges +of gigantic horse-tail, that bore a-top, high over the bog, their +many-windowed, club-like cones, and at every point shot forth their +green verticillate leaves, huge as coach-wheels divested of the rim. And +while I thus dreamed for my Liliputian companions, I became for the time +a Liliputian myself, examined the minute in Nature as if through a +magnifying-glass, roamed in fancy under ferns that had shot up into +trees, and saw the dark club-like heads of the equisetaceae stand up +over the spiky branches, some six yards or so above head. And now, +strange to tell, I found I had just to fall back on my old juvenile +imaginings, and to form my first approximate conceptions of the forests +of the Coal Measures, by learning to look at our ferns, club-mosses, and +equisetaceae, with the eye of some wandering traveller of Liliput lost +amid their entanglements. When sauntering at sunset along the edge of a +wood-embosomed stream that ran through the grounds, and beside which the +horse-tail rose thick and rank in the danker hollows, and the bracken +shot out its fronds from the drier banks, I had to sink in fancy as of +old into a manikin of a few inches, and to see intertropical jungles in +the tangled grasses and thickly-interlaced equisetaceae, and tall trees +in the brake and the lady-fern. But many a wanting feature had to be +supplied, and many an existing one altered. Amid forests of arboraceous +ferns, and of horse-tails tall as the masts of pinnaces, there stood up +gigantic club-mosses, thicker than the body of a man, and from sixty to +eighty feet in height, that mingled their foliage with strange monsters +of the vegetable world, of types no longer recognisable among the +existing forms--sculptured ullodendra, bearing rectilinear stripes of +sessile cones along their sides--and ornately tatooed sigillaria, fluted +like columns, and with vertical rows of leaves bristling over their +stems and larger branches. Such were some of the dreams in which I began +at this period for the first time to indulge; nor have they, like the +other dreams of youth, passed away. The aged poet has not unfrequently +to complain, that as he rises in years, his "visions float less palpably +before him." Those, on the contrary, which science conjures up, grow in +distinctness, as, in the process of slow acquirement, form after form is +evoked from out the obscurity of the past, and one restoration added to +another. + +There were at this time several collier villages in the neighbourhood of +Edinburgh, which have since disappeared. They were situated on what were +called the "edge-coals"--those steep seams of the Mid-Lothian Coal +Basin which, lying low in the system, have got a more vertical tilt +against the trap eminences of the south and west than the upper seams in +the middle of the field, and which, as they could not be followed in +their abrupt descent beyond a certain depth, are now regarded, for at +least the practical purposes of the miner, and until the value of coal +shall have risen considerably, as wrought out. One of these villages, +whose foundations can no longer be traced, occurred in the immediate +vicinity of Niddry Mill. It was a wretched assemblage of dingy, +low-roofed, tile-covered hovels, each of which perfectly resembled all +the others, and was inhabited by a rude and ignorant race of men, that +still bore about them the soil and stain of recent slavery. Curious as +the fact may seem, all the older men of that village, though situated +little more than four miles from Edinburgh, had been born slaves. Nay, +eighteen years later (in 1842), when Parliament issued a commission to +inquire into the nature and results of female labour in the coal-pits of +Scotland, there was a collier still living that had never been twenty +miles from the Scottish capital, who could state to the Commissioners +that both his father and grandfather had been slaves--that he himself +had been born a slave--and that he had wrought for years in a pit in the +neighbourhood of Musselburgh ere the colliers got their freedom. Father +and grandfather had been parishioners of the late Dr. Carlyle of +Inveresk. They were cotemporary with Chatham and Cowper, and Burke and +Fox; and at a time when Granville Sharpe could have stepped forward and +effectually protected the runaway negro who had taken refuge from the +tyranny of his master in a British port, no man could have protected +_them_ from the Inveresk laird, their proprietor, had they dared to +exercise the right, common to all Britons besides, of removing to some +other locality, or of making choice of some other employment. Strange +enough, surely, that so entire a fragment of the barbarous past should +have been thus dovetailed into the age not yet wholly passed away! I +regard it as one of the more singular circumstances of my life, that I +should have conversed with Scotchmen who had been born slaves. The +collier women of this village--poor over-toiled creatures, who carried +up all the coal from underground on their backs, by a long turnpike +stair inserted in one of the shafts--continued to bear more of the marks +of serfdom still about them than even the men. How these poor women did +labour, and how thoroughly, even at this time, were they characterized +by the slave nature! It has been estimated by a man who knew them +well--Mr. Robert Bald--that one of their ordinary day's work was equal +to the carrying of a hundredweight from the level of the sea to the top +of Ben Lomond. They were marked by a peculiar type of mouth, by which I +learned to distinguish them from all the other females of the country. +It was wide, open, thick-lipped, projecting equally above and below, and +exactly resembled that which we find in the prints given of savages in +their lowest and most degraded state, in such narratives of our modern +voyagers as, for instance, the "Narrative of Captain Fitzroy's Second +Voyage of the Beagle." During, however, the lapse of the last twenty +years this type of mouth seems to have disappeared in Scotland. It was +accompanied by traits of almost infantile weakness. I have seen these +collier women crying like children, when toiling under their load along +the upper rounds of the wooden stair that traversed the shaft; and then +returning, scarce a minute after, with the empty creel, singing with +glee. The collier houses were chiefly remarkable for being all alike, +outside and in; all were equally dingy, dirty, naked, and uncomfortable. +I first learned to suspect, in this rude village, that the democratic +watchword, "Liberty and Equality," is somewhat faulty in its philosophy. +Slavery and Equality would be nearer the mark. Wherever there is +liberty, the original differences between man and man begin to manifest +themselves in their external circumstances, and the equality +straightway ceases. It is through slavery that equality, among at least +the masses, is to be fully attained.[8] + +I found but little intelligence in the neighbourhood, among even the +villagers and country people, that stood on a higher platform than the +colliers. The fact may be variously accounted for; but so it is, that +though there is almost always more than the average amount of knowledge +and acquirement amongst the mechanics of large towns, the little hamlets +and villages by which they are surrounded are usually inhabited by a +class considerably below the average. In M. Quetelet's interesting +"Treatise on Man," we find a series of maps given, which, based on +extensive statistical tables, exhibit by darker and lighter shadings the +moral and intellectual character of the people in the various districts +of the countries which they represent. In one map, for instance, +representative of the state of education in France, while certain +well-taught provinces are represented by a bright tint, as if enjoying +the light, there are others, in which great ignorance obtains, that +exhibit a deep shade of blackness, as if a cloud rested over them; and +the general aspect of the whole is that of a landscape seen from a +hill-top in a day of dappled light and shadow. There are certain minuter +shadings, however, by which certain curious facts might be strikingly +represented to the eye in this manner, for which statistical tables +furnish no adequate basis, but which men who have seen a good deal of +the people of a country might be able to give in a manner at least +approximately correct. In a shaded map representative of the +intelligence of Scotland, I would be disposed--sinking the lapsed +classes, or representing them merely by a few such dark spots as mottle +the sun--to represent the large towns as centres of focal brightness; +but each of these focal centres I would encircle with a halo of darkness +considerably deeper in shade than the medium spaces beyond. I found that +in the tenebrious halo of the Scottish capital there existed, +independently of the ignorance of the poor colliers, three distinct +elements. A considerable proportion of the villagers were farm-servants +in the decline of life, who, unable any longer to procure, as in their +days of unbroken strength, regular engagements from the farmers of the +district, supported themselves as occasional labourers. And they, of +course, were characterized by the ignorance of their class. Another +portion of the people were carters--employed mainly, in these times, ere +the railways began, in supplying the Edinburgh coal-market, and in +driving building materials into the city from the various quarries. And +carters as a class, like all who live much in the society of horses, are +invariably ignorant and unintellectual. A third, but greatly smaller +portion than either of the other two, consisted of mechanics; but it was +only mechanics of an inferior order, that remained outside the city to +work for carters and labourers: the better skilled, and, as to a certain +extent the terms are convertible, the more intelligent mechanics found +employment and a home in Edinburgh. The cottage in which I lodged was +inhabited by an old farm-servant--a tall, large-bodied, small-headed +man, who, in his journey through life, seemed to have picked up scarce +an idea; and his wife, a woman turned of sixty, though a fine enough +_body_ in the main, and a careful manager, was not more intellectual. +They had but a single apartment in their humble dwelling, fenced off by +a little bit of partition from the outer door--and I could fain have +wished that they had two--but there was no choice of lodgings in the +village, and I had just to content myself, as the working man always +must in such circumstances, with the shelter I could get. My bed was +situated in the one end of the room, and my landlady's and her husband's +in the other, with the passage by which we entered between; but decent +old Peggy Russel had been accustomed to such arrangements all her life +long, and seemed never once to think of the matter; and--as she had +reached that period of life at which women of the humbler class assume +the characteristics of the other sex, somewhat, I suppose, on the +principle on which very ancient female birds put on male plumage--I in a +short time ceased to think of it also. It is not the less true, however, +that the purposes of decency demand that much should be done, especially +in the southern and midland districts of Scotland, for the dwellings of +the poor. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[6] Uncle James would scarce have sanctioned, had he been consulted in +the matter, the use to which the carcase of his dead eagle was applied. +There lived in the place an eccentric, half-witted old woman, who, for +the small sum of one halfpenny, used to fall a-dancing on the street to +amuse children, and rejoiced in the euphonious though somewhat obscure +appellation of "Dribble Drone." Some young fellows, on seeing the eagle +divested of its skin, and looking remarkably clean and well-conditioned, +suggested that it should be sent to "Dribble;" and, accordingly, in the +character of a "great goose, the gift of a gentleman," it was landed at +her door. The gift was thankfully accepted. Dribble's cottage proved +odoriferous at dinner-time for the several following days; and when +asked, after a week had gone by, how she had relished the great goose +which the gentleman had seat, she replied, that it was "Unco sweet, but +oh! teuch, teuch!" For years after, the reply continued to be proverbial +in the place: and many a piece of over-hard stock-fish, and over-fresh +steak, used to be characterized as, "Like Dribble Drone's eagle, unco +sweet, but oh! teuch, teuch!" + +[7] Well known as Gilfillan's song is among ourselves, it is much less +so to the south of the Border, and I present it to my English readers, +as a worthy representative, in these latter days, of those ludicrous +songs of our country in the olden time which are so admirably suited to +show, notwithstanding the gibe of Goldsmith, + + + "That a Scot may have humour, I almost said wit." + + + THE TAX-GATHERER. + + Oh! do you ken Peter, the taxman an' writer? + Ye're well aff wha ken naething 'bout him ava; + They ca' him Inspector, or Poor's Rate Collector-- + My faith! he's weel kent in Leith, Peter M'Craw! + He ca's and he comes again--haws, and he hums again-- + He's only ae hand, but it's as good as twa; + He pu's't out and raxes, an' draws in the taxes, + An' pouches the siller--shame! Peter M'Craw! + + He'll be at your door by daylight on a Monday, + On Tyesday ye're favoured again wi' a ca'; + E'en a slee look he gied me at kirk the last Sunday, + Whilk meant--"_Mind the preachin' an' Peter M'Craw._" + He glowrs at my auld door as if he had made it; + He keeks through the keyhole when I am awa'; + He'll syne read the auld stane, that tells a' wha read it, + To "_Blisse God for a' giftes_,"[*]--but Peter M'Craw! + + His sma' papers neatly are 'ranged a' completely, + That yours, for a wonder, 's the first on the raw! + There's nae jinkin' Peter, nae antelope's fleeter; + Nae _cuttin_' acquaintance wi' Peter M'Craw! + 'Twas just Friday e'enin', Auld Reekie I'd been in, + I'd gatten a shillin'--I maybe gat twa; + I thought to be happy wi' friends ower a drappie, + When wha suld come papin--but Peter M'Craw? + + There's houp o' a ship though she's sair pressed wi' dangere, + An' roun' her frail timmers the angry winds blaw; + I've aften gat kindness unlocked for frae strangers, + But wha need houp kindness frae Peter M'Craw? + I've kent a man pardoned when just at the gallows-- + I've kent a chiel honest whase trade was the law! + I've kent fortune's smile even fa' on gude fallows; + But I ne'er kent exception wi' Peter M'Craw! + + Our toun, yince sae cheerie, is dowie an' eerie; + Our shippies hae left us, our trade is awa'; + There's nae fair maids strayin', nae wee bairnies playin; + Ye've muckle to answer for, Peter M'Craw! + But what gude o' greevin' as lang's we are leevin'? + My banes I'll soon lay within yon kirk-yard wa'; + There nae care shall press me, nae taxes distress me, + For there I'll be free frae thee--Peter M'Craw! + + [*]A devout legend, common in the seventeenth century above the +entrance of houses. + +[8] The act for manumitting our Scotch colliers was passed in the year +1775, forty-nine years prior to the date of my acquaintance with the +class at Niddry. But though it was only such colliers of the village as +were in their fiftieth year when I knew them (with, of course, all the +older ones), who had been born slaves, even its men of thirty had +actually, though not nominally, come into the world in a state of +bondage, in consequence of certain penalties attached to the +emancipating act, of which the poor ignorant workers under ground were +both too improvident and too little ingenious to keep clear. They were +set free, however, by a second act passed in 1799. The language of both +these acts, regarded as British ones of the latter half of the last +century, and as bearing reference to British subjects living within the +limits of the island, strikes with startling effect. "Whereas," says the +preamble of the older act--that of 1775--"by the statute law of +Scotland, as explained by the judges of the courts of law there, many +colliers, and coal-bearers, and salters, are in a state of _slavery or +bondage_, bound to the collieries or salt-works where they work _for +life, transferable with the collieries and salt-works_; and whereas the +emancipating," &c. &c. A passage in the preamble of the act of 1799 is +scarce less striking: it declares that, notwithstanding the former act, +"many colliers and coal-bearers _still continue in a state of bondage_" +in Scotland. The history of our Scotch colliers will be found a curious +and instructive one. Their slavery seems not to have been derived from +the ancient tunes of general serfship, but to have originated in +comparatively modern acts of the Scottish Parliament, and in decisions +of the Court of Session--in acts of a Parliament in which the poor +ignorant subterranean men of the country were, of course, wholly +unrepresented, and in decisions of a Court in which no agent of theirs +ever made appearance in their behalf. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + + "See Inebriety, her wand she waves, + And lo! her pale and lo! her purple slaves."--CRABBE. + + +I was joined in the course of a few weeks, in Peggy Russel's one-roomed +cottage, by another lodger--lodgers of the humbler class usually +consociating together in pairs. My new companion had lived for some +time, ere my arrival at Niddry, in a neighbouring domicile, which, as he +was what was termed a "quiet-living man," and as the inmates were +turbulent and unsteady, he had, after bearing a good deal, been +compelled to quit. Like our foreman, he was a strict Seceder, in full +communion with his Church. Though merely a common labourer, with not +more than half the wages of our skilled workmen, I had observed, ere our +acquaintance began, that no mason in the squad was more comfortably +attired on week-days than he, or wore a better suit on Sunday; and so I +had set him down, from the circumstance, as a decent man. I now found +that, like my uncle Sandy, he was a great reader of good books--an +admirer even of the same old authors--deeply read like him, in Durham +and Rutherford--and entertaining, too, a high respect for Baxter, +Boston, old John Brown, and the Erskines. In one respect, however, he +differed from both my uncles: he had begun to question the excellence of +religious Establishments; nay, to hold that the country might be none +the worse were its ecclesiastical endowments taken away--a view which +our foreman also entertained; whereas both Uncles Sandy and James were +as little averse as the old divines themselves to a State-paid ministry, +and desiderated only that it should be a good one. There were two other +Seceders engaged as masons at the work--more of the polemical and less +of the devout type than the foreman or my new comrade the labourer; and +they also used occasionally to speak, not merely of the doubtful +usefulness, but--as they were stronger in their language than their more +self-denying and more consistent co-religionists--of the positive +worthlessness of Establishments. The Voluntary controversy did not break +out until about nine years after this time, when the Reform Bill gave +vent to many a pent-up opinion and humour among that class to which it +extended the franchise; but the materials of the war were evidently +already accumulating among the intelligent Dissenters of Scotland; and +from what I now saw, its first appearance in a somewhat formidable +aspect failed to take me by surprise. I must in justice add, that all +the religion of our party was to be found among its Seceders. Our other +workmen were really wild fellows, most of whom never entered a church. A +decided reaction had already commenced within the Establishment, on the +cold, elegant, unpopular Moderatism of the previous period--that +Moderatism which had been so adequately represented in the Scottish +capital by the theology of Blair and the ecclesiastical policy of +Robertson; but it was chiefly among the middle and upper classes that +the reaction had begun; and scarce any portion of the humbler people, +lost to the Church during the course of the two preceding generations, +had yet been recovered. And so the working men of Edinburgh and its +neighbourhood, at this time, were in large part either non-religious, or +included within the Independent or Secession pale. + +John Wilson--for such was the name of my new comrade--was a truly good +man--devout, conscientious, friendly--not highly intellectual, but a +person of plain good sense, and by no means devoid of general +information. There was another labourer at the work, an unhappy little +man, with whom I have often seen John engaged in mixing mortar, or +carrying materials to the builders, but never without being struck by +the contrast which they presented in character and appearance. John was +a plain, somewhat rustic-looking personage; and an injury which he had +received from gunpowder in a quarry, that had destroyed the sight of one +of his eyes, and considerably dimmed that of the other, had, of course, +not served to improve his looks; but he always wore a cheerful, +contented air; and, with all his homeliness, was a person pleasant to +the sight. His companion was a really handsome man--grey-haired, +silvery-whiskered, with an aristocratic cast of countenance, that would +have done no discredit to a royal drawing-room, and an erect though +somewhat petit figure, cast in a mould that, if set off more to +advantage, would have been recognised as elegant. But John Lindsay--for +so he was called--bore always the stamp of misery on his striking +features. There lay between the poor little man and the Crawford peerage +only a narrow chasm, represented by a missing marriage certificate; but +he was never able to bridge the gulf across; and he had to toil on in +unhappiness, in consequence, as a mason's labourer. I have heard the +call resounding from the walls twenty times a day--"John, Yearl Crafurd, +bring us anither hod o' lime." + +I found religion occupying a much humbler place among these workmen of +the south of Scotland than that which I had used to see assigned to it +in the north. In my native district and the neighbouring counties, it +still spoke with authority; and a man who stood up in its behalf in any +society, unless very foolish or very inconsistent, always succeeded in +silencing opposition, and making good its claims. Here, however, the +irreligious asserted their power as the majority, and carried matters +with a high hand; and religion itself, existing as but _dissent_, not as +an _establishment_, had to content itself with bare toleration. +Remonstrance, or even advice, was not permitted. "Johnnie, boy," I have +heard one of the rougher mechanics say, half in jest, half in earnest, +to my companion, "if you set yourself to convert me, I'll brak your +face;" and I have known another of them remark, with a patronizing air, +that "kirks werena very bad things, after a';" that he "aye liked to be +in a kirk, for the sake of decency, once a twelvemonth;" and that, as he +"hadna been kirked for the last ten months, he was just only waiting for +a rainy Sabbath, to lay in his stock o' divinity for the year." Our new +lodger, aware how little any interference with the religious concerns of +others was tolerated in the place, seemed unable for some time to muster +up resolution enough to broach in the family his favourite subject. He +retired every night, before going to bed, to his closet--the blue vault, +with all its stars--often the only closet of the devout lodger in a +south-country cottage; but I saw that each evening, ere he went out, he +used to look uneasily at the landlord and me, as if there lay some +weight on his mind regarding us, of which he was afraid to rid himself, +and which yet rendered him very uncomfortable. "Well, John," I asked one +evening, speaking direct, to his evident embarrassment; "what is it?" +John looked at old William the landlord, and then at me. "Did we not +think it right," he said, "that there should be evening worship in the +family?" Old William had not idea enough for conversation: he either +signified acquiescence in whatever was said that pleased him, by an +ever-recurring ay, ay, ay; or he grumbled out his dissent in a few +explosive sounds, that conveyed his meaning rather in their character as +tones than as vocables. But there now mingled with the ordinary +explosions the distinct enunciation, given with, for him, unwonted +emphasis, that he "wasna for _that_." I struck in, however, on the other +side, and appealed to Peggy. "I was sure," I said, "that Mrs. Russel +would see the propriety of John's proposal." And Mrs. Russel, as most +women would have done in the circumstances, unless, indeed, very bad +ones, did see the propriety of it; and from that evening forward the +cottage had its family worship. John's prayers were always very earnest +and excellent, but sometimes just a little too long; and old William, +who, I fear, did not greatly profit by them, used not unfrequently to +fall asleep on his knees. But though he sometimes stole to his bed when +John chanced to be a little later in taking the book than usual, and got +into a profound slumber ere the prayer began, he deferred to the +majority, and gave us no active opposition. He was not a vicious man: +his intellect had slept through life, and he had as little religion as +an old horse or dog; but he was quiet and honest, and, to the measure of +his failing ability, a faithful worker in his humble employments. His +religious training, like that of his brother villagers, seemed to have +been sadly neglected. Had he gone to the parish church on Sunday, he +would have heard a respectable moral essay read from the pulpit, and +would, of course, have slept under it; but William, like most of his +neighbours, preferred sleeping out the day at home, and never did go to +the church; and as certainly as he went not to the teacher of religion, +the teacher of religion never came to him. During the ten months which I +spent in the neighbourhood of Niddry Mill, I saw neither minister nor +missionary. But if the village furnished no advantageous ground on which +to fight the battle of religious Establishments--seeing that the +Establishment was of no manner of use there--it furnished ground quite +as unsuitable for the class of Voluntaries who hold that the supply of +religious instruction should, as in the case of all other commodities, +be regulated by the demand. Demand and supply were admirably well +balanced in the village of Niddry: there was no religious instruction, +and no wish or desire for it. + +The masons at Niddry House were paid fortnightly, on a Saturday night. +Wages were high--we received two pounds eight shillings for our two +weeks' work; but scarce half-a-dozen in the squad could claim at +settlement the full tale, as the Monday and Tuesday after pay-night were +usually blank days, devoted by two-thirds of the whole to drinking and +debauchery. Not often have wages been more sadly mis-spent than by my +poor work-fellows at Niddry, during this period of abundant and +largely-remunerated employment. On receiving their money, they set +straightway off to Edinburgh, in parties of threes and fours; and until +the evening of the following Monday or Tuesday I saw no more of them. +They would then come dropping in, pale, dirty, +disconsolate-looking--almost always in the reactionary state of +unhappiness which succeeds intoxication--(they themselves used to term +it "_the horrors_")--and with their nervous system so shaken, that +rarely until a day or two after did they recover their ordinary working +ability. Narratives of their adventures, however, would then begin to +circulate through the squad--adventures commonly of the "Tom and Jerry" +type; and always, the more extravagant they were, the more was the +admiration which they excited. On one occasion, I remember (for it was +much spoken about as a manifestation of high spirit) that three of them, +hiring a coach, drove out on the Sunday to visit Roslin and Hawthornden, +and in this way spent their six pounds so much in the style of +gentlemen, that they were able to get back to the mallet without a +farthing on the evening of Monday. And, as they were at work on Tuesday +in consequence, they succeeded, as they said, in saving the wages of a +day usually lost, just by doing the thing so genteelly. Edinburgh had in +those times a not very efficient police, and, in some of its less +reputable localities, must have been dangerous. Burke found its West +Port a fitting scene for his horrid trade a good many years after; and +from the stories of some of our bolder spirits, which, though mayhap +exaggerated, had evidently their nucleus of truth, there was not a +little of the violent and the lawless perpetrated in its viler haunts +during the years of the speculation mania. Four of our masons found, one +Saturday evening, a country lad bound hand and foot on the floor of a +dark inner room in one of the dens of the High Street; and such was the +state of exhaustion to which he was reduced, mainly through the +compression of an old apron wrapped tightly round his face, that though +they set him loose, it was some time ere he could muster strength enough +to crawl away. He had been robbed by a bevy of women whom he had been +foolish enough to treat; and on threatening to call in the watchman, +they had fallen upon a way of keeping him quiet, which, save for the +interference of my wild fellow-workmen, would soon have rendered him +permanently so. And such was but one of many stories of the kind. + +There was of course a considerable diversity of talent and acquirement +among my more reckless associates at the work; and it was curious enough +to mark their very various views regarding what constituted spirit or +the want of it. One weak lad used to tell us about a singularly spirited +brother apprentice of his, who not only drank, kept loose company, and +played all sorts of very mischievous practical jokes, but even +occasionally stole, out of warehouses; which was of course a very +dauntless thing, seeing that it brought him within wind of the gallows; +whereas another of our wild workmen--a man of sense and +intelligence--not unfrequently cut short the narratives of the weaker +brother, by characterizing his spirited apprentice as a mean, graceless +scamp, who, had he got his deservings, would have been hung like a dog. +I found that the intelligence which results from a fair school +education, sharpened by a subsequent taste for reading, very much +heightened in certain items the standard by which my comrades regulated +their conduct. Mere intelligence formed no guard amongst them against +intemperance or licentiousness; but it did form a not ineffectual +protection against what are peculiarly the mean vices--such as theft, +and the grosser and more creeping forms of untruthfulness and +dishonesty. Of course, exceptional cases occur in all grades of society: +there have been accomplished ladies of wealth and rank who have indulged +in a propensity for stealing out of drapers' shops; and gentlemen of +birth and education who could not be trusted in a library or a +bookseller's back-room; and what sometimes occurs in the higher walks +must be occasionally exemplified in the lower also; but, judging from +what I have seen, I must hold it as a general rule, that a good +intellectual education is a not inefficient protection against the +meaner felonies, though not in any degree against the "pleasant vices." +The only adequate protection against both, equally, is the sort of +education which my friend John Wilson the labourer exemplified--a kind +of education not often acquired in schools, and not much more frequently +possessed by schoolmasters than by any other class of professional men. + +The most remarkable man in our party was a young fellow of +three-and-twenty--at least as much a blackguard as any of his +companions, but possessed of great strength of character and intellect, +and, with all his wildness, marked by very noble traits. He was a +strongly and not inelegantly formed man, of about six +feet--dark-complexioned, and of a sullen cast of countenance, which, +however, though he could, I doubt not, become quite as formidable as he +looked, concealed in his ordinary moods much placidity of temper, and a +rich vein of humour. Charles ---- was the recognised hero of the squad; +but he differed considerably from the men who admired him most. Burns +tells us that he "often courted the acquaintance of the part of mankind +commonly known by the ordinary phrase of _blackguards_;" and that, +"though disgraced by follies, nay, sometimes stained with guilt, he had +yet found among them, in not a few instances, some of the noblest +virtues--magnanimity, generosity, disinterested friendship, and even +modesty." I cannot say with the poet that I ever courted the +acquaintance of blackguards; but though the labouring man may select his +friends, he cannot choose his work-fellows; and so I have not +unfrequently _come in contact_ with blackguards, and have had +opportunities of pretty thoroughly knowing them. And my experience of +the class has been very much the reverse of that of Burns. I have +usually found their virtues of a merely theatric cast, and their vices +real; much assumed generosity in some instances, but a callousness of +feeling, and meanness of spirit, lying concealed beneath. In this poor +fellow, however, I certainly did find a sample of the nobler variety of +the genus. Poor Charles did too decidedly belong to it. He it was that +projected the Sunday party to Roslin; and he it was that, pressing his +way into the recesses of a disreputable house in the High Street, found +the fast-bound wight choking in an apron, and, unloosing the cords, let +him go. No man of the party squandered his gains more recklessly than +Charles, or had looser notions regarding the legitimacy of the uses to +which he too often applied them. And yet, notwithstanding, he was a +generous-hearted fellow; and, under the influence of religious +principle, would, like Burns himself, have made a very noble man. + +In gradually forming my acquaintance with him, I was at first struck by +the circumstance that he never joined in the clumsy ridicule with which +I used to be assailed by the other workmen. When left, too, on one +occasion, in consequence of a tacit combination against me, to roll up a +large stone to the sort of block-bench, or _siege_, as it is technically +termed, on which the mass had to be hewn, and as I was slowly succeeding +in doing, through dint of very violent effort, what some two or three +men usually united to do, Charles stepped out to assist me; and the +combination at once broke down. Unlike the others, too, who, while they +never scrupled to take odds against me, seemed sufficiently chary of +coming in contact with me singly, he learned to seek me out in our +intervals of labour, and to converse on subjects upon which we felt a +common interest. He was not only an excellent operative mechanic, but +possessed also of considerable architectural skill; and in this special +province we found an interchange of idea not unprofitable. He had a +turn, too, for reading, though he was by no means extensively read; and +liked to converse about books. Nor, though the faculty had been but +little cultivated, was he devoid of an eye for the curious in nature. On +directing his attention, one morning, to a well-marked impression of +lepidodendron, which delicately fretted with its lozenge-shaped network +one of the planes of the stone before me, he began to describe, with a +minuteness of observation not common among working men, certain strange +forms which had attracted his notice when employed among the grey +flagstones of Forfarshire. I long after recognised in his description +that strange crustacean of the Middle Old Red Sandstone of Scotland, the +_Pterygotus_--an organism which was wholly unknown at this time to +geologists, and which is but partially known still; and I saw in 1838, +on the publication, in its first edition, of the "Elements" of Sir +Charles Lyell, what he meant to indicate, by a rude sketch which he drew +on the stone before us, and which, to the base of a semi-ellipsis, +somewhat resembling a horse-shoe, united an angular prolongation not +very unlike the iron stem of a pointing trowel drawn from the handle. He +had evidently seen, long ere it had been detected by the scientific eye, +that strange ichthyolite of the Old Red system, the _Cephalaspis_. His +story, though he used to tell it with great humour, and no little +dramatic effect, was in reality a very sad one. He had quarrelled, when +quite a lad, with one of his fellow-workmen, and was unfortunate enough, +in the pugilistic encounter which followed, to break his jawbone, and +otherwise so severely to injure him, that for some time his recovery +seemed doubtful. Flying, pursued by the officers of the law, he was, +after a few days' hiding, apprehended, lodged in jail, tried at the High +Court of Justiciary, and ultimately sentenced to three months' +imprisonment. And these three months he had to spend--for such was the +wretched arrangement of the time--in the worst society in the world. In +sketching, as he sometimes did, for the general amusement, the +characters of the various prisoners with whom he had associated--from +the sneaking pick-pocket and the murderous ruffian, to the simple +Highland smuggler, who had converted his grain into whisky, with scarce +intelligence enough to see that there was aught morally wrong in the +transaction--he sought only to be as graphic and humorous as he could, +and always with complete success. But there attached to his narratives +an unintentional moral; and I cannot yet call them up without feeling +indignant at that detestable practice of promiscuous imprisonment which +so long obtained in our country, and which had the effect of converting +its jails into such complete criminal-manufacturing institutions, that, +had the honest men of the community risen and dealt by them as the +Lord-George-Gordon mob dealt with Newgate, I hardly think they would +have been acting out of character. Poor Charles had a nobility in his +nature which saved him from being contaminated by what was worst in his +meaner associates; but he was none the better for his imprisonment, and +he quitted jail, of course, a marked man; and his after career was, I +fear, all the more reckless in consequence of the stain imparted at this +time to his character. He was as decidedly a leader among his brother +workmen as I myself had been, when sowing my wild oats, among my +schoolfellows; but society in its settled state, and in a country such +as ours, allows no such scope to the man as it does to the boy; and so +his leadership, dangerous both to himself and his associates, had +chiefly as the scene of its trophies the grosser and more lawless haunts +of vice and dissipation. His course through life was a sad, and, I fear, +a brief one. When that sudden crash in the commercial world took place, +in which the speculation mania of 1824-25 terminated, he was, with +thousands more, thrown out of employment; and, having saved not a +farthing of his earnings, he was compelled, under the pressure of actual +want, to enlist as a soldier into one of the regiments of the line, +bound for one of the intertropical colonies. And there, as his old +comrades lost all trace of him, he too probably fell a victim, in an +insalubrious climate, to old habits and new rum. + +Finding me incorrigible, I was at length left by my brother operatives +to be as peculiar as I pleased; and the working portion of the autumnal +months passed off pleasantly enough in hewing great stones under the +branching foliage of the elm and chestnut trees of Niddry Park. From the +circumstance, however, that the stones were so great, the previous trial +had been an embarrassing one; and, though too proud to confess that I +cared aught about the matter, I was now glad enough that it was fairly +over. Our modern Temperance Societies--institutions which at this time +had not begun to exist--have done much to shield sober working men from +combinations of the trying character to which, in the generation +well-nigh passed away, they were too often exposed. There are few +working parties which have not now their groups of enthusiastic +Teetotallers, that always band together against the drinkers, and +mutually assist and keep one another in countenance: and a breakwater is +thus formed in the middle of the stream, to protect from that grinding +oppression of the poor by the poor, which, let popular agitators declaim +on the other side as they may, is at once more trying and more general +than the oppression which they experience from the great and wealthy. +According to the striking figure of the wise old king, "it is like a +sweeping rain, which leaveth no food." Fanaticism in itself is not a +good thing; nor are there many quiet people who do not dislike +enthusiasm; and the members of new sects, whether they be religious +sects or no, are almost always enthusiasts, and in some degree +fanatical. A man can scarce become a vegetarian even without also +becoming in some measure intolerant of the still large and not very +disreputable class that eat beef with their greens, and herrings with +their potatoes; and the drinkers of water do say rather strong things of +the men who, had they been guests at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, +would have seen no great harm in partaking in moderation of the wine. +There is a somewhat intolerant fanaticism among the Teetotallers, just +as there is fanaticism amongst most other new sects; and yet, +recognising it simply as strength, and knowing what it has to contend +with, I am much disposed to tolerate it, whether _it_ tolerate me or no. +Human nature, with all its defects, is a wiser thing than the mere +common sense of the creatures whose nature it is; and we find in it +special provisions, as in the instincts of the humbler animals, for +overmastering the special difficulties with which it is its destiny to +contend. And the sort of fanaticism to which I refer seems to be one of +those provisions. A few Teetotallers of the average calibre and +strength, who take their stand against the majority in a party of wild +dissipated mechanics, would require a considerable amount of vigorous +fanaticism to make good their position; nor do I see in ordinary men, as +society at present exists, aught at once sufficiently potent in its +nature, and sufficiently general in its existence, to take its place and +do its work. It seems to subsist in the present imperfect state as a +wise provision, though, like other wise provisions, such as the horns of +the bull or the sting of the bee, it is misdirected at times, and does +harm. + +Winter came on, and our weekly wages were lowered immediately after +Hallow-day, from twenty-four to fifteen shillings per week. This was +deemed too large a reduction; and, reckoning by the weekly hours during +which, on the average, we were still able to work--forty-two, as nearly +as I could calculate, instead of sixty--it _was_ too great a reduction +by about one shilling and ninepence. I would, however, in the +circumstances, have taken particular care not to strike work for an +advance. I knew that three-fourths of the masons about town--quite as +improvident as the masons of our own party--could not live on their +resources for a fortnight, and had no general fund to sustain them; and +further, that many of the master-builders were not very urgently +desirous to press on their work throughout the winter. And so, when, on +coming to the work-shed on the Monday morning after the close of our +first fortnight on the reduced scale, I found my comrades gathered in +front of it in a group, and learned that there was a grand strike all +over the district, I received the intelligence with as little of the +enthusiasm of the "independent associated mechanic" as possibly may be. +"You are in the right in your claims," I said to Charles; "but you have +taken a bad time for urging them, and will be beaten to a certainty. The +masters are much better prepared for a strike than you are. How, may I +ask, are you yourself provided with the sinews of war?" "Very ill +indeed," said Charles, scratching his head: "if the masters don't give +in before Saturday, it's all up with me; but never mind; let us have one +day's fun: there's to be a grand meeting at Bruntsfield Links; let us go +in as a deputation from the country masons, and make a speech about our +rights and duties; and then, if we see matters going very far wrong, we +can just step back again, and begin work to-morrow." "Bravely resolved," +I said: "I shall go with you by all means, and take notes of your +speech." We marched into town, about sixteen in number; and, on joining +the crowd already assembled on the Links, were recognised, by the deep +red hue of our clothes and aprons, which differed considerably from that +borne by workers in the paler Edinburgh stone, as a reinforcement from a +distance, and were received with loud cheers. Charles, however, did not +make his speech: the meeting, which was about eight hundred strong, +seemed fully in the possession of a few crack orators, who spoke with a +fluency to which he could make no pretensions; and so he replied to the +various calls from among his comrades, of "Cha, Cha," by assuring them +that he could not catch the eye of the gentleman in the chair. The +meeting had, of course, neither chair nor chairman; and after a good +deal of idle speech-making, which seemed to satisfy the speakers +themselves remarkably well, but which at least some of their auditory +regarded as nonsense, we found that the only motion on which we could +harmoniously agree was a motion for an adjournment. And so we adjourned +till the evening, fixing as our place of meeting one of the humbler +halls of the city. + +My comrades proposed that we should pass the time until the hour of +meeting in a public-house; and, desirous of securing a glimpse of the +sort of enjoyment for which they sacrificed so much, I accompanied them. +Passing not a few more inviting-looking places, we entered a low tavern +in the upper part of the Canongate, kept in an old half-ruinous +building, which has since disappeared. We passed on through a narrow +passage to a low-roofed room in the centre of the erection, into which +the light of day never penetrated, and in which the gas was burning +dimly in a close sluggish atmosphere, rendered still more stifling by +tobacco-smoke, and a strong smell of ardent spirits. In the middle of +the crazy floor there was a trap-door which lay open at the time; and a +wild combination of sounds, in which the yelping of a dog, and a few +gruff voices that seemed cheering him on, were most noticeable, rose +from the apartment below. It was customary at this time for dram-shops +to keep badgers housed in long narrow boxes, and for working men to keep +dogs; and it was part of the ordinary sport of such places to set the +dogs to unhouse the badgers. The wild sport which Scott describes in his +"Guy Mannering," as pursued by Dandy Dinmont and his associates among +the Cheviots, was extensively practised twenty-nine years ago amid the +dingier haunts of the High Street and the Canongate. Our party, like +most others, had its dog--a repulsive-looking brute, with an +earth-directed eye, as if he carried about with him an evil conscience; +and my companions were desirous of getting his earthing ability tested +upon the badger of the establishment; but on summoning the +tavern-keeper, we were told that the party below had got the start of +us: their dog was as we might hear, "just drawing the badger; and +before our dog could be permitted to draw him, the poor brute would +require to get an hour's rest." I need scarce say that the hour was +spent in hard drinking in that stagnant atmosphere; and we then all +descended through the trap-door, by means of a ladder, into a +bare-walled dungeon, dark and damp, and where the pestiferous air smelt +like that of a burial vault. The scene which followed was exceedingly +repulsive and brutal--nearly as much so as some of the scenes furnished +by those otter hunts in which the aristocracy of the country delight +occasionally to indulge. Amid shouts and yells, the badger, with the +blood of his recent conflict still fresh upon him, was again drawn to +the box mouth; and the party returning satisfied to the apartment above, +again betook themselves to hard drinking. In a short time the liquor +began to tell, not first, as might be supposed, on our younger men, who +were mostly tall, vigorous fellows, in the first flush of their full +strength, but on a few of the middle-aged workmen, whose constitutions +seemed undermined by a previous course of dissipation and debauchery. +The conversation became very loud, very involved, and, though highly +seasoned with emphatic oaths, very insipid; and leaving with Cha--who +seemed somewhat uneasy that my eye should be upon their meeting in its +hour of weakness--money enough to clear off my share of the reckoning, I +stole out to the King's Park, and passed an hour to better purpose among +the trap rocks than I could possibly have spent it beside the trap-door. +Of that tavern party, I am not aware that a single individual save the +writer is now living: its very dog did not live out half his days. His +owner was alarmed one morning, shortly after this time, by the +intelligence that a dozen of sheep had been worried during the night on +a neighbouring farm, and that a dog very like his had been seen prowling +about the fold; but in order to determine the point, he would be +visited, it was added, in the course of the day, by the shepherd and a +law-officer. The dog meanwhile, however, conscious of guilt--for dogs +do seem to have consciences in such matters--was nowhere to be found, +though, after the lapse of nearly a week, he again appeared at the work; +and his master, slipping a rope round his neck, brought him to a +deserted coal-pit half-filled with water, that opened in an adjacent +field, and, flinging him in, left the authorities no clue by which to +establish his identity with the robber and assassin of the fold. + +I had now quite enough of the strike; and, instead of attending the +evening meeting, passed the night with my friend William Ross. Curious +to know, however, whether my absence had been observed by my brother +workmen, I asked Cha, when we next met, "what he thought of _our_ +meeting?" "Gude-sake!" he replied, "let that flee stick to the wa'! We +got upon the _skuff_ after you left us, and grew deaf to time, and so +not one of us has seen the meeting yet." I learned, however, that, +though somewhat reduced in numbers, it had been very spirited and +energetic, and had resolved on nailing the colours to the mast; but in a +few mornings subsequent, several of the squads returned to work on their +master's terms, and all broke down in about a week after. Contrary to +what I should have expected from my previous knowledge of him, I found +that my friend William Ross took a warm interest in strikes and +combinations, and was much surprised at the apathy which I manifested on +this occasion; nay, that he himself, as he told me, actually officiated +as clerk for a combined society of house-painters, and entertained +sanguine hopes regarding the happy influence which the principle of +union was yet to exercise on the status and comfort of the working man. +There are no problems more difficult than those which speculative men +sometimes attempt solving, when they set themselves to predict how +certain given characters would act in certain given circumstances. In +what spirit, it has been asked, would Socrates have listened to the +address of Paul on Mars Hill, had he lived a few ages later? and what +sort of a statesman would Robert Burns have made? I cannot answer +either question; but this I know, that from my intimate acquaintance +with the retiring, unobtrusive character of my friend in early life, I +should have predicted that he would have taken no interest whatever in +strikes or combinations; and I was now surprised to find the case +otherwise. And he, on the other hand, equally intimate with my +comparatively wild boyhood, and my influence among my schoolfellows, +would have predicted that I should have taken a very warm interest in +such combinations, mayhap as a ringleader; at all events, as an +energetic, influential member; and he was now not a little astonished to +see me keeping aloof from them, as things of no account or value. I +believe, however, we were both acting in character. Lacking my +obstinacy, he had in some degree yielded, on first coming to the +capital, to the tyranny of his brother workmen; and, becoming one of +themselves, and identifying his interest with theirs, his talents and +acquirements had recommended him to an office of trust among them; +whereas I, stubbornly battling, like Harry of the Wynd, "for my own +hand," would not stir a finger in assertion of the alleged rights of +fellows who had no respect for the rights which were indisputably mine. + +I may here mention, that this first year of the building mania was also +the first, in the present century, of those great _strikes_ among +workmen, of which the public has since heard and seen so much. Up till +this time, combination among operatives for the purpose of raising the +rate of wages had been a crime punishable by law; and though several +combinations and trade unions did exist, open strikes, which would have +been a too palpable manifestation of them to be tolerated, could scarce +be said ever to take place. I saw enough at the period to convince me, +that though the _right_ of combination, abstractly considered, is just +and proper, the strikes which would result from it as consequences would +be productive of much evil, and little good; and in an argument with my +friend William on the subject, I ventured to assure him that his +house-painter's union would never benefit the operative house-painters +as a class, and urged him to give up his clerkship. "There is a want," I +said, "of true leadership among our operatives in these combinations. It +is the wilder spirits that dictate the conditions; and, pitching their +demands high, they begin usually by enforcing acquiescence in them on +the quieter and more moderate among their companions. They are tyrants +to their fellows ere they come into collision with their masters, and +have thus an enemy in the camp, not unwilling to take advantage of their +seasons of weakness, and prepared to rejoice, though secretly mayhap, in +their defeats and reverses. And further, their discomfiture will be +always quite certain enough when seasons of depression come, from the +circumstance that, fixing their terms in prosperous times, they will fix +them with reference rather to their present power of enforcing them, +than to that medium line of fair and equal adjustment on which a +conscientious man could plant his foot and make a firm stand. Men such +as you, able and ready to work in behalf of these combinations, will of +course get the work to do, but you will have little or no power given +you in their direction: the direction will be apparently in the hands of +a few fluent _gabbers_; and yet even they will not be the actual +directors--they will be but the exponents and voices of the general +mediocre sentiment and inferior sense of the mass as a whole, and +acceptable only so long as they give utterance to that; and so, +ultimately, exceedingly little will be won in this way for working men. +It is well that they should be allowed to combine, seeing that +combination is permitted to those who employ them; but until the +majority of our working men of the south become very different from what +they now are--greatly wiser and greatly better--there will be more lost +than gained by their combinations. According to the circumstances of the +time and season, the current will be at one period running in their +favour against the masters, and at another in favour of the masters +against them: there will be a continual ebb and flow, like that of the +sea, but no general advance; and the sooner that the like of you and I +get out of the rough conflict and jostle of the tideway, and set +ourselves to labour apart on our own internal resources, it will be all +the better for us." William, however, did not give up his clerkship; and +I daresay the sort of treatment which I had received at the hands of my +fellow-workmen made me express myself rather strongly on the subject; +but the actual history of the numerous strikes and combinations which +have taken place during the quarter of a century and more which has +since intervened, is of a kind not in the least suited to modify my +views. There _is_ a want of judicious leadership among our working men; +and such of the autobiographies of the class as are able and interesting +enough to obtain a hearing of their authors show, I am inclined to +think, how this takes place. Combination is first brought to bear among +them against the men, their fellows, who have vigour enough of intellect +to think and act for themselves; and such always is the character of the +born leader: these true leaders are almost always forced into the +opposition; and thus separating between themselves and the men fitted by +nature to render them formidable, they fall under the direction of mere +chatterers and stump orators, which is in reality no direction at all. +The author of the "Working Man's Way in the World"--evidently a very +superior man--had, he tells us, to quit at one time his employment, +overborne by the senseless ridicule of his brother workmen. Somerville +states in his Autobiography, that, both as a labouring man and a +soldier, it was from the hands of his comrades that--save in one +memorable instance--he had experienced all the tyranny and oppression of +which he had been the victim. Nay, Benjamin Franklin himself was deemed +a much more ordinary man in the printing-house in Bartholomew Close, +where he was teased and laughed at as the _Water-American_, than in the +House of Representatives, the Royal Society, or the Court of France. +The great Printer, though recognised by accomplished politicians as a +profound statesman, and by men of solid science as "the most rational of +the philosophers," was regarded by his poor brother compositors as +merely an odd fellow, who did not conform to their drinking usages, and +whom it was therefore fair to tease and annoy as a contemner of the +_sacrament_ of the _chapel_.[9] + +The life of my friend was, however, pitched on a better and higher tone +than that of most of his brother unionists. It was intellectual and +moral, and its happier hours were its hours of quiet self-improvement, +when, throwing himself on the resources within, he forgot for the time +the unions and combinations that entailed upon him much troublesome +occupation, but never did him any service. I regretted, however, to find +that a distrust of his own powers was still growing upon him, and +narrowing his circle of enjoyment. On asking him whether he still amused +himself with his flute, he turned, after replying with a brief "O no!" +to a comrade with whom he had lived for years, and quietly said to him, +by way of explaining the question, "Robert, I suppose you don't know I +was once a grand flute-player!" And sure enough Robert did not know. He +had given up, too, his water-colour drawing, in which his taste was +decidedly fine; and even in oils, with which he still occasionally +engaged himself, instead of casting himself full on nature, as at an +earlier period, he had become a copyist of the late Rev. Mr. Thomson of +Duddingstone, at that time in the full blow of his artistic reputation; +nor could I see that he copied him well. I urged and remonstrated, but +to no effect. "Ah, Miller," he has said, "what matters it how I amuse +myself? You have stamina in you, and will force your way; but I want +strength: the world will never hear of me." That overweening conceit +which seems but natural to the young man as a playful disposition to the +kitten, or a soft and timid one to the puppy, often assumes a +ridiculous, and oftener still an unamiable, aspect. And yet, though it +originates many very foolish things, it seems to be in itself, like the +fanaticism of the Teetotaller, a wise provision, which, were it not made +by nature, would leave most minds without spring enough to effect, with +the required energy, the movements necessary to launch them fairly into +busy or studious life. The sobered man of mature age who has learned +pretty correctly to take the measure of himself, has usually acquired +both habits and knowledge that assist him in urging his onward way, and +the moving force of necessity always presses him onward from behind; but +the exhilarating conviction of being born to superior parts, and to do +something astonishingly clever, seems necessary to the young man; and +when I see it manifesting itself, if not very foolishly or very +offensively, I usually think of my poor friend William Ross, who was +unfortunate enough wholly to want it; and extend to it a pretty ample +toleration. Ultimately my friend gave up painting, and restricted +himself to the ornamental parts of his profession, of which he became +very much a master. In finishing a ceiling in oils, upon which he had +represented in bold relief some of the ornately sculptured foliage of +the architect, the gentleman for whom he wrought (the son-in-law of a +distinguished artist, and himself an amateur), called on his wife to +admire the truthful and delicate shading of their house-painter. It was +astonishing, he said, and perhaps somewhat humiliating, to see the mere +mechanic trenching so decidedly on the province of the artist. Poor +William Ross, however, was no mere mechanic; and even artists might +have regarded his encroachments on their proper domain with more of +complacency than humiliation. One of the last pieces of work upon which +he was engaged was a gorgeously painted ceiling in the palace of some +Irish bishop, which he had been sent all the way from Glasgow to finish. + +Every society, however homely, has its picturesque points, nor did even +that of the rather commonplace hamlet in which I resided at this time +wholly want them. There was a decaying cottage a few doors away, that +had for its inmate a cross-tempered old crone, who strove hard to set up +as a witch, but broke down from sheer want of the necessary capital. She +had been one of the underground workers of Niddry in her time; and, +being as little intelligent as most of the other collier-women of the +neighbourhood, she had not the necessary witch-lore to adapt her +pretensions to the capacity of belief which obtained in the district. +And so the general estimate formed regarding her was that to which our +landlady occasionally gave expression. "Donnart auld bodie," Peggy used +to say; "though she threaps hersel' a witch, she's nae mair witch than I +am: she's only just trying, in her feckless auld age, to make folk stand +in her reverence." Old Alie was, however, a curiosity in her way--quite +malignant enough to be a real witch, and fitted, if with a few more +advantages of acquirement, she had been antedated an age or two, to +become as hopeful a candidate for a tar-barrel as most of her class. Her +next-door neighbour was also an old woman, and well-nigh as poor as the +crone; but she was an easy-tempered genial sort of person, who wished +harm to no one; and the expression of content that dwelt on her round +fresh face, which, after the wear of more than seventy winters, still +retained its modicum of colour, contrasted strongly with the fierce +wretchedness that gleamed from the sharp and sallow features of the +witch. It was evident that the two old women, though placed externally +in almost the same circumstances, had essentially a very different lot +assigned to them, and enjoyed existence in a very unequal degree. The +placid old woman kept a solitary lodger--"Davie the apprentice"--a +wayward, eccentric lad, much about my own age, though in but the second +"year of his time," who used to fret even her temper, and who, after +making trial of I know not how many other professions, now began to find +that his genius did not lie to the mallet. Davie was stage-mad; but for +the stage nature seemed to have fitted him rather indifferently: she had +given him a squat ungainly figure, an inexpressive face, a voice that in +its intonations somewhat resembled the grating of a carpenter's saw; +and, withal, no very nice conception of either comic or serious +character; but he could recite in the "big bow-wow style," and think and +dream of only plays and play-actors. To Davie the world and its concerns +seemed unworthy of a moment's care, and the stage appeared the only +great reality. He was engaged, when I first made his acquaintance, in +writing a play, with which he had already filled a whole quire of +foolscap, without, however, having quite entered upon the plot; and he +read to me some of the scenes in tones of such energy that the whole +village heard. Though written in the kind of verse which Dr. Young +believed to be the language of angels, his play was sad stuff; and when +he paused for my approbation, I ventured to suggest an alteration in one +of the speeches. "There, Sir," said Davie, in the vein of Cambyses, +"take the pen; let me see, Sir, how _you_ would turn it." I accordingly +took the pen, and re-wrote the speech. "Hum," said Davie, as he ran his +eye along the lines, "that, Sir, is mere poetry. What, think you, could +the great Kean make of feeble stuff like that? Let me tell you, Sir, you +have no notion whatever of stage effect." I, of course, at once +acquiesced; and Davie, mollified by my submission, read to me yet +another scene. Cha, however, of whom he stood a good deal in awe, used +to tease him not a little about his play. I have heard him inquire +sedulously about the development of the story and the management of the +characters, and whether he was writing the several parts with a due eye +to the capabilities of the leading actors of the day; and Davie, not +quite sure, apparently, whether Cha was in joke or earnest, was usually +on these occasions very chary of reply. + +Davie, had he but the means of securing access, would have walked in +every night to the city to attend the playhouse; and it quite astonished +him, he used to say, that I, who really knew something of the drama, and +had four shillings a day, did not nightly at least devote one of the +four to purchase perfect happiness and a seat in the shilling gallery. +On some two, or at most three occasions, I did attend the playhouse, +accompanied by Cha and a few of the other workmen; but though I had been +greatly delighted, when a boy, by the acting of a company of strollers +that had visited Cromarty, and converted the Council House Hall into a +theatre, the greatly better acting of the Edinburgh company failed to +satisfy me now. The few plays, however, which I saw enacted chanced to +be of a rather mediocre character, and gave no scope for the exhibition +of nice histrionic talent; nor were any of the great actors of the south +on the Edinburgh boards at the time. The stage scenery, too, though +quite fine enough of its kind, had, I found, altogether a different +effect upon me from the one which it had been elaborated to produce. In +perusing our fine old dramas, it was the truth of nature that the +vividly-drawn scenes and figures, and the happily-portrayed characters, +always suggested; whereas the painted canvas, and the respectable but +yet too palpable acting, served but to unrealize what I saw, and to +remind me that I was merely in a theatre. Further, I deemed it too large +a price to devote a whole evening to see some play acted which, mayhap, +as a composition I would not have deemed worth the reading; and so the +temptation of play-going failed to tempt me; and latterly, when my +comrades set out for the playhouse, I stayed at home. Whatever the +nature of the process through which they have gone, a considerable +proportion of the more intelligent mechanics of the present generation +seem to have landed in conclusions similar to the one at which I at this +time arrived. At least, for every dozen of the class that frequented the +theatre thirty years ago, there is scarce one that frequents it now. I +have said that the scenery of the stage made no very favourable +impression upon me. Some parts of it must, however, have made a +considerably stronger one than I could have supposed at the time. +Fourteen years after, when the whole seemed to have passed out of +memory, I was lying ill of small-pox, which, though a good deal modified +apparently by the vaccination of a long anterior period, was accompanied +by such a degree of fever, that for two days together one delirious +image continued to succeed another in the troubled sensorium, as scene +succeeds scene in the box of an itinerant showman. As is not uncommon, +however, in such cases, though ill enough to be haunted by the images, I +was yet well enough to know that they were idle unrealities, the mere +effects of indisposition; and even sufficiently collected to take an +interest in watching them as they arose, and in striving to determine +whether they were linked together by the ordinary associative ties. I +found, however, that they were wholly independent of each other. Curious +to know whether the will exerted any power over them, I set myself to +try whether I could not conjure up a death's-head as one of the series; +but what rose instead was a cheerful parlour fire, bearing a-top a +tea-kettle, and as the picture faded and then vanished, it was succeeded +by a gorgeous cataract, in which the white foam, at first strongly +relieved against the dark rock over which it fell, soon exhibited a deep +tinge of sulphurous blue, and then came dashing down in one frightful +sheet of blood. The great singularity of the vision served to freshen +recollection, and I detected in the strange cataract every line and tint +of the water-fall in the incantation scene in "Der Freischuetz" which I +had witnessed in the Theatre Royal of Edinburgh, with certainly no very +particular interest, so long before. There are, I suspect, provinces in +the philosophy of mind into which the metaphysicians have not yet +entered. Of that accessible storehouse in which the memories of past +events lie arranged and taped up, they appear to know a good deal; but +of a mysterious cabinet of daguerrotype pictures, of which, though fast +locked up on ordinary occasions, disease sometimes flings the door ajar, +they seem to know nothing. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[9] The kind of club into which the compositors of a printing-house +always form themselves has from time immemorial been termed a _chapel_; +and the petty tricks by which Franklin was annoyed were said to be +played him by the chapel ghost. "My employer desiring," he says, "after +some weeks, to have me in the composing room, I left the pressmen. A new +_bien-venu_ for drink, being five shillings, was demanded of me by the +compositors. I thought it an imposition, as I had paid one to the +pressmen. The master thought so too, and forbade my paying it. I stood +out two or three weeks, was accordingly considered as an +_excommunicate_, and had so many little pieces of private malice +practised on me by mixing my sorts, transposing and breaking my matter, +&c. &c., if ever I stepped out of the room, and all ascribed to the +_chapel ghost_, which, they said, ever haunted those not regularly +admitted, that, notwithstanding my master's protection, I found myself +obliged to comply and pay the money." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + + "Let not this weak, unknowing hand, + Presume thy bolts to throw."--POPE. + + +The great fires of the Parliament Close and the High Street were events +of this winter. A countryman, who had left town when the old spire of +the Tron Church was blazing like a torch, and the large group of +buildings nearly opposite the Cross still enveloped in flame from +ground-floor to roof-tree, passed our work-shed, a little after two +o'clock, and, telling us what he had seen, remarked that, if the +conflagration went on as it was doing, we would have, as our next +season's employment, the Old Town of Edinburgh to rebuild. And as the +evening closed over our labours, we went in to town in a body, to see +the fires that promised to do so much for us. The spire had burnt out, +and we could but catch between us and the darkened sky, the square +abrupt outline of the masonry a-top that had supported the wooden +broach, whence, only a few hours before, Fergusson's bell had descended +in a molten shower. The flames, too, in the upper group of buildings, +were restricted to the lower stories, and flared fitfully on the tall +forms and bright swords of the dragoons, drawn from the neighbouring +barracks, as they rode up and down the middle space, or gleamed athwart +the street on groups of wretched-looking women and ruffian men, who +seemed scanning with greedy eyes the still unremoved heaps of household +goods rescued from the burning tenements. The first figure that caught +my eye was a singularly ludicrous one. Removed from the burning mass but +by the thickness of a wall, there was a barber's shop brilliantly +lighted with gas, the uncurtained window of which permitted the +spectators outside to see whatever was going on in the interior. The +barber was as busily at work as if he were a hundred miles from the +scene of danger, though the engines at the time were playing against the +outside of his gable wall; and the immediate subject under his hands, as +my eye rested upon him, was an immensely fat old fellow, on whose round +bald forehead and ruddy cheeks the perspiration, occasioned by the +oven-like heat of the place, was standing out in huge drops, and whose +vast mouth, widely opened to accommodate the man of the razor, gave to +his countenance such an expression as I have sometimes seen in grotesque +Gothic heads of that age of art in which the ecclesiastical architect +began to make sport of his religion. The next object that presented +itself was, however, of a more sobering description. A poor working man, +laden with his favourite piece of furniture, a glass-fronted press or +cupboard, which he had succeeded in rescuing from his burning dwelling, +was emerging from one of the lanes, followed by his wife, when, striking +his foot against some obstacle in the way, or staggering from the too +great weight of his load, he tottered against a projecting corner, and +the glazed door was driven in with a crash. There was hopeless misery in +the wailing cry of his wife--"Oh, ruin, ruin!--_it's_ lost too!" Nor was +his own despairing response less sad:--"Ay, ay, puir lassie, its a' at +an end noo." Curious as it may seem, the wild excitement of the scene +had at first rather exhilarated than depressed my spirits; but the +incident of the glass cupboard served to awaken the proper feeling; and +as I came more into contact with the misery of the catastrophe, and +marked the groups of shivering houseless creatures that watched beside +the broken fragments of their stuff, I saw what a dire calamity a great +fire really is. Nearly two hundred families were already at this time +cast homeless into the streets. Shortly before quitting the scene of +the conflagration for the country, I passed along a common stair, which +led from the Parliament Close towards the Cowgate, through a tall old +domicile, eleven stories in height, and I afterwards remembered that the +passage was occupied by a smouldering oppressive vapour, which, from the +direction of the wind, could scarce have been derived from the adjacent +conflagration, though at the time, without thinking much of the +circumstance, I concluded it might have come creeping westwards on some +low cross current along the narrow lanes. In less than an hour after +that lofty tenement was wrapt in flames, from the ground story to more +than a hundred feet over its tallest chimneys, and about sixty +additional families, its tenants, were cast into the streets with the +others. My friend William Ross afterwards assured me, that never had he +witnessed anything equal in grandeur to this last of the conflagrations. +Directly over the sea of fire below, the low-browed clouds above seemed +as if charged with a sea of blood, that lightened and darkened by fits +as the flames rose and fell; and far and wide, tower and spire, and tall +house-top, glared out against a background of darkness, as if they had +been brought to a red heat by some great subterranean, earth-born fire, +that was fast rising to wrap the entire city in destruction. The old +church of St. Giles, he said, with the fantastic masonry of its pale +grey tower, bathed in crimson, and that of its dark rude walls suffused +in a bronzed umber, and with the red light gleaming inwards through its +huge mullioned windows, and flickering on its stone roof, formed one of +the most picturesque objects he had ever seen.[10] + +I sometimes heard old Dr. Colquhoun of Leith preach. There were fewer +authors among the clergy in those days than now; and I felt a special +interest in a living divine who had written so good a book, that my +uncle Sandy--no mean judge in such matters--had assigned to it a place +in his little theological library, among the writings of the great +divines of other ages. The old man's preaching days, ere the winter of +1824, were well-nigh done: he could scarce make himself heard over half +the area of his large, hulking chapel, which was, however, always less +than half filled; but, though the feeble tones teasingly strained the +ear, I liked to listen to his quaintly attired but usually very solid +theology, and found, as I thought, more matter in his discourses than in +those of men who spoke louder and in a flashier style. The worthy man, +however, did me a mischief at this time. There had been a great Musical +Festival held in Edinburgh about three weeks previous to the +conflagration, at which oratorios were performed in the ordinary pagan +style, in which amateurs play at devotion, without even professing to +feel it; and the Doctor, in his first sermon after the great fires, gave +serious expression to the conviction, that they were judgments sent upon +Edinburgh, to avenge the profanity of its Musical Festival. Edinburgh +had sinned, he said, and Edinburgh was now punished; and it was +according to the Divine economy, he added, that judgments administered +exactly after the manner of the infliction which we had just witnessed +should fall upon cities and kingdoms. I liked the reasoning very ill. I +knew only two ways in which God's judgments could be determined to be +really such--either through direct revelation from God himself, or in +those cases in which they take place so much in accordance with His +fixed laws, and in such relation to the offence or crime visited in them +by punishment, that man, simply by the exercise of his rational +faculties, and reasoning from cause to effect, as is his nature, can +determine them for himself. And the great Edinburgh fires had come under +neither category. God did not reveal that He had punished the tradesmen +and mechanics of the High Street for the musical sins of the lawyers and +landowners of Abercromby Place and Charlotte Square; nor could any +natural relation be established between the oratorios in the Parliament +House or the concerts in the Theatre Royal, and the conflagrations +opposite the Cross or at the top of the Tron Church steeple. All that +could be proven in the case were the facts of the festival and of the +fires; and the further fact, that, so far as could be ascertained, there +was no visible connexion between them, and that it was not the people +who had joined in the one that had suffered from the others. And the +Doctor's argument seemed to be the perilous loose one, that as God had +sometimes of old visited cities and nations with judgments which had no +apparent connexion with the sins punished, and which could not be +recognised as judgments had not He himself told that such they were, the +Edinburgh fires, of which He had told nothing, might be properly +regarded--seeing that they had in the same way no connexion with the +oratorios, and had wrought no mischief to the people who had patronized +the oratorios--as special judgments on the oratorios. The good old +Papist had said, "I believe because it is impossible." What the Doctor +in this instance seemed to say was, "I believe because it is not in the +least likely." If, I argued, Dr. Colquhoun's own house and library had +been burnt, he would no doubt very properly have deemed the infliction a +great trial to himself; but on what principle could he have further held +that it was not only a trial to himself, but also a judgment on his +neighbour? If we must not believe that the falling of the tower of +Siloam was a special visitation on the sins of the poor men whom it +crushed, how, or on what grounds, are we to believe that it was a +special visitation on the sins of the men whom it did not in the least +injure? I fear I remembered Dr. Colquhoun's remarks on the fire better +than aught else I ever heard from him; nay, I must add, that nothing had +I ever found in the writings of the sceptics that had a worse effect on +my mind; and I now mention the circumstance to show how sober in +applications of the kind, in an age like the present, a theologian +should be. It was some time ere I forgot the ill savour of that dead +fly; and it was to beliefs of a serious and very important class that it +served for a time to impart its own doubtful character. + +But from the minister whose chapel I oftenest attended, I was little in +danger of having my beliefs unsettled by reasonings of this stumbling +cast. "Be sure," said both my uncles, as I was quitting Cromarty for the +south, "be sure you go and hear Dr. M'Crie." And so Dr. M'Crie I did go +and hear; and not once or twice, but often. The biographer of Knox--to +employ the language in which Wordsworth describes the humble hero of the +"Excursion"-- + + + "was a man + Whom no one could have passed without remark." + + +And on first attending his church, I found that I had unwittingly seen +him before, and that without remark I had _not_ passed him. I had +extended one of my usual evening walks, shortly after commencing work at +Niddry, in the direction of the southern suburb of Edinburgh, and was +sauntering through one of the green lanes of Liberton, when I met a +gentleman whose appearance at once struck me. He was a singularly erect, +spare, tall man, and bore about him an air which, neither wholly +clerical nor wholly military, seemed to be a curious compound of both. +The countenance was pale, and the expression, as I thought, somewhat +melancholy; but an air of sedate power sat so palpably on every feature, +that I stood arrested as he passed, and for half a minute or so remained +looking after him. He wore, over a suit of black, a brown great-coat, +with the neck a good deal whitened by powder, and the rim of the hat +behind, which was slightly turned up, bore a similar stain. "There is +mark about that old-fashioned man," I said to myself: "who or what can +he be?" Curiously enough, the apparent combination of the military and +the clerical in his gait and air suggested to me Sir Richard Steele's +story, in the "Tattler," of the old officer who, acting in the double +capacity of major and chaplain to his regiment, challenged a young man +for blasphemy, and after disarming, would not take him to mercy until he +had first begged pardon of God upon his knees on the duelling ground, +for the irreverence with which he had treated His name. My curiosity +regarding the stranger gentleman was soon gratified. Next Sabbath I +attended the Doctor's chapel, and saw the tall, spare, clerico-military +looking man in the pulpit. I have a good deal of faith in the military +air, when, in the character of a natural trait, I find it strongly +marking men who never served in the army. I have not yet seen it borne +by a civilian who had not in him at least the elements of the soldier; +nor can I doubt that, had Dr. M'Crie been a Scotch covenanter of the +times of Charles II, the insurgents at Bothwell would have had what they +sadly wanted--a general. The shrewd sense of his discourses had great +charms for me; and, though not a flashy, nor, in the ordinary sense of +the term, even an eloquent preacher, there were none of the other +Edinburgh clergy his contemporaries to whom I found I could listen with +greater profit or satisfaction. A simple incident which occurred during +my first morning attendance at his chapel, strongly impressed me with a +sense of his sagacity. There was a great deal of coughing in the place, +the effect of a recent change of weather; and the Doctor, whose voice +was not a strong one, and who seemed somewhat annoyed by the ruthless +interruptions, stopping suddenly short in the middle of his argument, +made a dead pause. When people are taken greatly by surprise, they cease +to cough--a circumstance on which he had evidently calculated. Every +eye was now turned towards him, and for a full minute so dead was the +silence, that one might have heard a pin drop. "I see, my friends," said +the Doctor, resuming speech, with a suppressed smile--"I see you can be +all quiet enough when I am quiet." There was not a little genuine +strategy in the rebuke; and as cough lies a good deal more under the +influence of the will than most coughers suppose, such was its effect, +that during the rest of the day there was not a tithe of the previous +coughing. + +The one-roomed cottage which I shared with its three other inmates, did +not present all the possible conveniences for study; but it had a little +table in a corner, at which I contrived to write a good deal; and my +book-shelf already exhibited from twenty to thirty volumes, picked up on +Saturday evenings at the book-stalls of the city, and which were all +accessions to my little library. I, besides, got a few volumes to read +from my friend William Ross, and a few more through my work-fellow Cha; +and so my rate of acquirement in book-knowledge, if not equal to that of +some former years, at least considerably exceeded what it had been in +the previous season, which I had spent in the Highlands, and during +which I had perused only three volumes--one of the three a slim volume +of slim poems, by a lady, and the other, that rather curious than +edifying work, "Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed." The cheap literature +had not yet been called into existence; and, without in the least +undervaluing its advantages, it was, I daresay, better on the whole as a +mental exercise, and greatly better in the provision which it made for +the future, that I should have to urge my way through the works of our +best writers in prose and verse--works which always made an impression +on the memory--than that I should have been engaged instead in picking +up odds and ends of information from loose essays, the hasty productions +of men too little vigorous, or too little at leisure, to impress upon +their writings the stamp of their own individuality. In quiet moonlight +nights I found it exceedingly pleasant to saunter all alone through the +Niddry woods. Moonlight gives to even leafless groves the charms of full +foliage, and conceals tameness of outline in a landscape. I found it +singularly agreeable, too, to listen, from a solitude so profound as +that which a short walk secured to me, to the distant bells of the city +ringing out, as the clock struck eight, the old curfew peal; and to +mark, from under the interlacing boughs of a long-arched vista, the +intermittent gleam of the Inchkeith light now brightening and now +fading, as the lanthorn revolved. In short, the winter passed not +unpleasantly away: I had now nothing to annoy me in the work-shed; and +my only serious care arose from my unlucky house in Leith, for which I +found myself summoned one morning, by an officer-looking man, to pay +nearly three pounds--the last instalment which I owed, I was told, as +one of the heritors of the place, for its fine new church. I must +confess I was wicked enough to wish on this occasion that the property +on the Coal-hill had been included in the judgment on the Musical +Festival. But shortly after, not less to my astonishment than delight, I +was informed by Mr. Veitch that he had at length found a purchaser for +my house; and, after getting myself served heir to my father before the +Court of the Canongate, and paying a large arrear of feu-duty to that +venerable corporation, in which I had to recognise my feudal superior, I +got myself as surely dissevered from the Coal-hill as paper and +parchment could do it, and pocketed, in virtue of the transaction, a +balance of about fifty pounds. As nearly as I could calculate on what +the property had cost us, from first to last, the _composition_ which it +paid was one of about five shillings in the pound. And such was the +concluding passage in the history of a legacy which threatened for a +time to be the ruin of the family. When I last passed along the +Coal-hill, I saw my umquhile house existing as a bit of dingy wall, a +single storey in height, and perforated by three narrow old-fashioned +doors, jealously boarded up, and apparently, as in the days when it was +mine, of no manner of use in the world. I trust, however, it is no +longer the positive mischief to its proprietor that it was to me. + +The busy season had now fairly commenced: wages were fast mounting up to +the level of the former year, which they ultimately overtopped; and +employment had become very abundant. I found, however, that it might be +well for me to return home for a few months. The dust of the stone which +I had been hewing for the last two years had begun to affect my lungs, +as they had been affected in the last autumn of my apprenticeship, but +much more severely; and I was too palpably sinking in flesh and strength +to render it safe for me to encounter the consequences of another season +of hard work as a stone-cutter. From the stage of the malady at which I +had already arrived, poor workmen, unable to do what I did, throw +themselves loose from their employment, and sink in six or eight months +into the grave--some at an earlier, some at a later period of life; but +so general is the affection, that few of our Edinburgh stone-cutters +pass their fortieth year unscathed, and not one out of every fifty of +their number ever reaches his forty-fifth year. I accordingly engaged my +passage for the north in an Inverness sloop, and took leave of my few +friends--of the excellent foreman of the Niddry squad, and of Cha and +John Wilson, with both of whom, notwithstanding their opposite +characters, I had become very intimate. Among the rest, too, I took +leave of a paternal cousin settled in Leith, the wife of a +genial-hearted sailor, master of a now wholly obsolete type of vessel, +one of the old Leith and London smacks, with a huge single mast, massive +and tall as that of a frigate, and a mainsail of a quarter of an acre. I +had received much kindness from my cousin, who, besides her relationship +to my father, had been a contemporary and early friend of my mother's; +and my welcome from the master her husband--one of the best-natured men +I ever knew--used always to be one of the heartiest. And after parting +from Cousin Marshall, I mustered up resolution enough to call on yet +another cousin. + +Cousin William, the eldest son of my Sutherlandshire aunt, had been for +some years settled in Edinburgh, first as an upper clerk and +manager--for, after his failure as a merchant he had to begin the world +anew; and now, in the speculation year, he had succeeded in establishing +a business for himself, which bore about it a hopeful and promising air +so long as the over-genial season lasted, but fell, with many a more +deeply-rooted establishment, in the tempest which followed. On quitting +the north, I had been charged with a letter for him by his father, which +I knew, however, to be wholly recommendatory of myself, and so I had +failed to deliver it. Cousin William, like Uncle James, had fully +expected that I was to make my way in life in some one of the learned +professions; and as his position--though, as the result unfortunately +showed, a not very secure one--was considerably in advance of mine, I +kept aloof from him, in the character of a poor relation, who was quite +as proud as he was poor, and in the belief that his new friends, of +whom, I understood, he had now well-nigh as many as before, would hold +that the cousinship of a mere working man did him little credit. He had +learned from home, however, that I was in Edinburgh, and had made not a +few ineffectual attempts to find me out, of which I had heard; and now, +on forming my resolution to return to the north, I waited upon him at +his rooms in Ambrose's Lodgings--at that time possessed of a sort of +classical interest, as the famous Blackwood Club, with Christopher North +at its head, used to meet in the hotel immediately below. Cousin William +had a warm heart, and received me with great kindness, though I had, of +course, to submit to the scold which I deserved; and as some young +friends were to look in upon him in the evening, he said, I had to do +what I would fain have avoided, perform penance, by waiting, on his +express invitation, to meet with them. They were, I ascertained, chiefly +students of medicine and divinity, in attendance at the classes of the +University, and not at all the formidable sort of persons I had feared +to meet; and finding nothing very unattainable in their conversation, +and as Cousin William made a dead set on me "to bring me out," I at +length ventured to mingle in it, and found my reading stand me in some +stead. There was a meeting, we were told, that evening, in the apartment +below, of the Blackwood Club. The night I spent with my cousin was, if +our information was correct, and the _Noctes_ not a mere myth, one of +the famous _Noctes Ambrosiance_; and fain would I have seen, for but a +moment, from some quiet corner, the men whose names fame had blown so +widely; but I have ever been unlucky in the curiosity--though I have +always strongly entertained it--which has the personal appearance of +celebrated men for its object. I had ere now several times lingered in +Castle Street of a Saturday evening, opposite the house of Sir Walter +Scott, in the hope of catching a glimpse of that great writer and genial +man, but had never been successful I could fain, too, have seen Hogg +(who at the time occasionally visited Edinburgh); with Jeffrey; old +Dugald Stewart, who still lived; _Delta_, and Professor Wilson: but I +quitted the place without seeing any of them; and ere I again returned +to the capital, ten years after, death had been busy in the high places, +and the greatest of their number was no longer to be seen. In short, Dr. +M'Crie was the only man whose name promises to live, of whose personal +appearance I was able to carry away with me at this time a distinct +image. Addison makes his _Spectator_ remark, rather in joke than +earnest, that "a reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure till he +knows whether the writer of it be a black or a fair man, of a mild or +choleric disposition, married or a bachelor, with other particulars of +the like nature, that conduce very much to the right understanding of an +author." I am inclined to say nearly as much, without being the least +in joke. I think I understand an author all the better for knowing +exactly how he looked. I would have to regard the massive vehemence of +the style of Chalmers as considerably less characteristic of the man, +had it been dissociated from the broad chest and mighty structure of +bone; and the warlike spirit which breathes, in a subdued but still very +palpable form, in the historical writings of the elder M'Crie, strikes +me as singularly in harmony with the military air of this Presbyterian +minister of the type of Knox and Melville. However theologians may +settle the meaning of the text, it is one of the grand lessons of his +writings, that such of the Churches of the Reformation as did _not_ +"take the sword, perished by the sword." + +I was accompanied to the vessel by my friend William Ross, from whom I, +alas! parted for the last time; and, when stepping aboard, Cousin +William, whom I had scarce expected to see, but who had snatched an hour +from business, and walked down all the way to Leith to bid me farewell, +came forward to grasp me by the hand. I am not much disposed to quarrel +with the pride of the working man, when according to Johnson and +Chalmers, it is a defensive, not an aggressive pride; but it does at +times lead him to be somewhat less than just to the better feelings of +the men who occupy places in the scale a little higher than his own. +Cousin William, from whom I had kept so jealously aloof, had a heart of +the finest water. His after course was rough and unprosperous. After the +general crash of 1825-26, he struggled on in London for some six or +eight years, in circumstances of great difficulty; and then, receiving +some surbodinate appointment in connexion with the Stipendiary +Magistracy of the West Indies, he sailed for Jamaica--where, +considerably turned of fifty at the time--he soon fell a victim to the +climate. + +In my voyage north, I spent about half as many days on sea, between +Leith Roads and the Sutors of Cromarty, as the Cunard steamers now +spend in crossing the Atlantic. I had taken a cabin passage, not caring +to subject my weakened lungs to the exposure of a steerage one; but +during the seven days of thick, foggy mornings, clear moonlight nights, +and almost unbroken calms, both night and morning, in which we tided our +slow way north, I was much in the forecastle with the men, seeing how +sailors lived, and ascertaining what they were thinking about, and how. +We had rare narratives at nights-- + + + "Wonderful stories of battle and wreck, + That were told by the men of the watch." + + +Some of the crew had been voyagers in their time to distant parts of the +world; and though no existence can be more monotonous than the every-day +life of the seaman, the profession has always its bits of striking +incident, that, when strung together, impart to it an air of interest +which its ordinary details sadly want, and which lures but to disappoint +the young lads of a romantic cast, who are led to make choice of it in +its presumed character as a continued series of stirring events and +exciting adventures. What, however, struck me as curious in the +narratives of my companions, was the large mixture of the supernatural +which they almost always exhibited. The story of Jack Grant the mate, +given in an early chapter, may be regarded as not inadequately +representative of the sailor stories which were told on deck and +forecastle, along at least the northern coasts of Scotland, nearly +thirty years later. That life of peril which casts the seaman much at +the mercy of every rough gale and lee-shore, and in which his +calculations regarding ultimate results must be always very doubtful, +has a strong tendency to render him superstitious. He is more removed, +too, than the landsman of his education and standing, from the influence +of general opinion, and the mayhap over-sceptical teaching of the Press; +and, as a consequence of their position and circumstances, I found, at +this period, seamen of the generation to which I myself belonged as firm +believers in wraiths, ghosts, and death-warnings, as the landward +contemporaries of my grandfather had been sixty years before. A series +of well-written nautical tales had appeared shortly previous to this +time in one of the metropolitan monthlies--the _London Magazine_, if I +rightly remember; and I was now interested to find in one of the +sailors' stories, the original of decidedly the best of their +number--"The Doomed Man." The author of the series--a Mr. Hamilton, it +was said, who afterwards became an Irvingite teacher, and grew too +scrupulous to exercise in fiction a very pleasing pen, though he +continued to employ, as a portrait-painter, a rather indifferent +pencil--had evidently sought such opportunities of listening to sailor's +stories as those on which I had at this time thrust myself. Very curious +materials for fiction may be found in this way by the _litterateur_. It +must be held that Sir Walter Scott was no incompetent judge of the +capabilities, for the purposes of the novelist, of a piece of narrative; +and yet we find him saying of the story told by a common sailor to his +friend William Clerk, which he records in the "Letters on Demonology and +Witchcraft," that "the tale, properly managed, might have made the +fortune of a romancer." + +At times by day--for the sailors' stories were stories of the night--I +found interesting companionship in the society of a young student of +divinity, one of the passengers, who, though a lad of parts and +acquirements, did not deem it beneath him to converse on literary +subjects with a working man in pale moleskin, and with whom I did not +again meet until many years after, when we were both actively engaged in +prosecuting the same quarrel--he as one of the majority of the +Presbytery of Auchterarder, and I as editor of the leading newspaper of +the Non-Intrusion party. Perhaps the respected Free Church minister of +North Leith may be still able to call to memory--not, of course, the +subjects, but the _fact_, of our discussions on literature and the +belles-lettres at this time; and that, on asking me one morning whether +I had not been, according to Burns, "crooning to mysel'," when on deck +during the previous evening, what seemed from the cadence to be verse, I +ventured to submit to him, as my night's work, a few descriptive +stanzas. And, as forming in some sort a memorial of our voyage, and in +order that my friendly critic may be enabled, after the lapse of +considerably more than a quarter of a century, to review his judgment +respecting them, I now submit them to the reader:-- + + + STANZAS WRITTEN AT SEA. + + Joy of the poet's soul, I court thy aid; + * * * * * + Around our vessel heaves the midnight wave; + The cheerless moon sinks in the western sky; + Reigns breezeless silence!--in her ocean cave + The mermaid rests, while her fond lover nigh, + Marks the pale star-beams as they fall from high. + Gilding with tremulous light her couch of sleep. + Why smile incred'lous? the rapt Muse's eye + Through earth's dark caves, o'er heaven's fair plains, can sweep, + Can range its hidden cell, where toils the unfathom'd deep. + + On ocean's craggy floor, beneath the shade + Of bushy rock-weed tangled, dusk, and brown, + She sees the wreck of founder'd vessel laid, + In slimy silence, many a fathom down + From where the star-beam trembles; o'er it thrown + Are heap'd the treasures men have died to gain. + And in sad mockery of the parting groan, + That bubbled 'mid the wild unpitying main, + Quick gushing o'er the bones, the restless tides complain. + + Gloomy and wide rolls the sepulchral sea, + Grave of my kindred, of my sire the grave! + Perchance, where now he sleeps, a space for me + Is mark'd by Fate beneath the deep green wave. + It well may he! Poor bosom, why dost heave + Thus wild? Oh, many a care, troublous and dark. + On earth attends thee still; the mermaid's cave + Grief haunts not; sure 'twere pleasant there to mark, + Serene, at noontide hour, the sailor's passing barque. + + Sure it were pleasant through the vasty deep, + When on its bosom plays the golden beam. + With headlong speed by bower and cave to sweep; + When flame the waters round with emerald gleam-- + When, borne from high by tides and gales, the scream + Of sea-mew softened falls--when bright and gay + The crimson weeds, proud ocean's pendants, stream + From trophied wrecks and rock-towers darkly grey-- + Through scenes so strangely fair 'twere pleasant, sure, to stray. + + Why this strange thought? If, in that ocean laid. + The ear would cease to hear, the eye to see, + Though sights and sounds like these circled my bed, + Wakeless and heavy would my slumbers be: + Though the mild soften'd sun-light beam'd on me + (If a dull heap of bones retained my name, + That bleach'd or blacken'd 'mid the wasteful sea), + Its radiance all unseen, its golden beam + In vain through coral groves or emerald roofs might stream. + + Yet dwells a spirit in this earthy frame + Which Oceans cannot quench nor Time destroy;-- + A deathless, fadeless ray, a heavenly flame, + That pure shall rise when fails each base alloy + That earth instils, dark grief, or baseless joy: + Then shall the ocean's secrets meet its sight;-- + For I do hold that happy souls enjoy + A vast all-reaching range of angel-flight, + From the fair source of day, even to the gates of night. + + Now night's dark veil is rent; on yonder land, + That blue and distant rises o'er the main, + I see the purple sky of morn expand, + Scattering the gloom. Then cease my feeble strain: + When darkness reign'd, thy whisperings soothed my pain-- + The pain by weariness and languor bred. + But now my eyes shall greet a lovelier scene + Than fancy pictured: from his dark green bed + Soon shall the orb of day exalt his glorious head. + + +I found my two uncles, Cousin George, and several other friends and +relations, waiting for me on the Cromarty beach; and was soon as happy +among them as a man suffering a good deal from debility, but not much +from positive pain, could well be. When again, about ten years after +this time, I visited the south of Scotland, it was to receive the +instructions necessary to qualify me for a bank accountant; and when I +revisited it at a still later period, it was to undertake the management +of a metropolitan newspaper. In both these instances I mingled with a +different sort of persons from those with whom I had come in contact in +the years 1824-25. And, in now taking leave of the lower class, I may be +permitted to make a few general remarks regarding them. + +It is a curious change which has taken place in this country during the +last hundred years. Up till the times of the Rebellion of 1745, and a +little later, it was its remoter provinces that formed its dangerous +portions; and the effective strongholds from which its advance-guards of +civilisation and good order gradually gained upon old anarchy and +barbarism, were its great towns. We are told by ecclesiastical +historians, that in Rome, after the age of Constantine, the term +villager (_Pagus_) came to be regarded as synonymous with heathen, from +the circumstance that the worshippers of the gods were then chiefly to +be found in remote country places; and we know that in Scotland the +Reformation pursued a course exactly resembling that of Christianity +itself in the old Roman world: it began in the larger and more +influential towns; and it was in the remoter country districts that the +displaced religion lingered longest, and found its most efficient +champions and allies. Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, St. Andrews, Dundee, +were all Protestant, and sent out their well-taught burghers to serve in +the army of the Lords of the Congregation, when Huntly and Hamilton were +arming their vassals to contend for the obsolete faith. In a later age +the accessible Lowlands were imbued with an evangelistic +Presbyterianism, when the more mountainous and inaccessible provinces of +the country were still in a condition to furnish, in what was known as +the Highland Host, a dire instrument of persecution. Even as late as the +middle of the last century, "Sabbath," according to a popular writer, +"never got aboon the Pass of Killicrankie;" and the Stuarts, exiled for +their adherence to Popery, continued to found almost their sole hopes of +restoration on the swords of their co-religionists the Highlanders. +During the last hundred years, however, this old condition of matters +has been strangely reversed; and it is in the great towns that +_Paganism_ now chiefly prevails. In at least their lapsed classes--a +rapidly increasing proportion of their population--it is those cities of +our country which first caught the light of religion and learning, that +have become preeminently its dark parts; just, if I may employ the +comparison, as it is those portions of the moon which earliest receive +the light when she is in her increscent state, and shine like a thread +of silver in the deep blue of the heavens, that first become dark when +she falls into the wane. + +It is mainly during the elapsed half of the present century that this +change for the worse has taken place in the large towns of Scotland. In +the year 1824 it was greatly less than half accomplished; but it was +fast going on; and I saw, partially at least, the processes in operation +through which it has been effected. The cities of the country have +increased their population during the past fifty years greatly beyond +the proportion of its rural districts--a result in part of the +revolutions which have taken place in the agricultural system of the +Lowlands, and of the clearances of the Highlands; and in part also of +that extraordinary development of the manufactures and trade of the +kingdom which the last two generations have witnessed. Of the wilder +Edinburgh mechanics with whom I formed at this time any acquaintance, +less than one-fourth were natives of the place. The others were mere +settlers in it, who had removed mostly from country districts and small +towns, in which they had been known, each by his own circle of +neighbourhood, and had lived, in consequence, under the wholesome +influence of public opinion. In Edinburgh--grown too large at the time +to permit men to know aught of their neighbours--they were set free from +this wholesome influence, and, unless when under the guidance of higher +principle, found themselves at liberty to do very much as they pleased. +And--with no _general_ opinion to control--cliques and parties of their +wilder spirits soon formed in their sheds and workshops a standard of +opinion of their own, and found only too effectual means of compelling +their weaker comrades to conform to it. And hence a great deal of wild +dissipation and profligacy, united, of course, to the inevitable +improvidence. And though dissipation and improvidence are quite +compatible with intelligence in the first generation, they are sure +always to part company from it in the second. The family of the unsteady +spendthrift workman is never a well-taught family. It is reared up in +ignorance; and, with evil example set before and around it, it almost +necessarily takes its place among the lapsed classes. In the third +generation the descent is of course still greater and more hopeless than +in the second. There is a type of even physical degradation already +manifesting itself in some of our large towns, especially among degraded +females, which is scarce less marked than that exhibited by the negro, +and which both my Edinburgh and Glasgow readers must have often remarked +on the respective High Streets of these cities. The features are +generally bloated and overcharged, the profile lines usually concave, +the complexion coarse and high, and the expression that of a dissipation +and sensuality become chronic and inherent. And how this +class--constitutionally degraded, and with the moral sense, in most +instances, utterly undeveloped and blind--are ever to be reclaimed, it +is difficult to see. The immigrant Irish form also a very appreciable +element in the degradation of our large towns. They are, however, +_pagans_, not of the new, but of the old type: and are chiefly +formidable from the squalid wretchedness of a physical character which +they have transferred from their mud cabins into our streets and lanes, +and from the course of ruinous competition into which they have entered +with the unskilled labourers of the country, and which has had the +effect of reducing our lowlier countrymen to a humbler level than they +perhaps ever occupied before. Meanwhile, this course of degradation is +going on, in all our larger towns, in an ever-increasing ratio; and all +that philanthropy and the Churches are doing to counteract it is but as +the discharge of a few squirts on a conflagration. It is, I fear, +preparing terrible convulsions for the future. When the dangerous +classes of a country were located in its remote districts, as in +Scotland in the early half of the last century, it was comparatively +easy to deal with them: but the _sans culottes_ of Paris in its First +Revolution, placed side by side with its executive Government, proved +very formidable indeed; nor is it, alas! very improbable that the +ever-growing masses of our large towns, broken loose from the sanction +of religion and morals, may yet terribly avenge on the upper classes and +the Churches of the country the indifferency with which they have been +suffered to sink. + +I was informed by Cousin George, shortly after my arrival, that my old +friend of the Doocot Cave, after keeping shop as a grocer for two years, +had given up business, and gone to college to prepare himself for the +Church. He had just returned home, added George, after completing his +first session, and had expressed a strong desire to meet with me. His +mother, too, had joined in the invitation--would I not take tea with +them that evening?--and Cousin George had been asked to accompany me. I +demurred; but at length set out with George, and, after an interruption +in our intercourse of about five years, spent the evening with my old +friend. And for years after we were inseparable companions, who, when +living in the same neighbourhood, spent together almost every hour not +given to private study or inevitable occupation, and who, when separated +by distance, exchanged letters enough to fill volumes. We had parted +boys, and had now grown men; and for the first few weeks we took stock +of each other's acquirements and experiences, and the measure of each +other's calibre, with some little curiosity. The mind of my friend had +developed rather in a scientific than literary direction. He afterwards +carried away the first mathematical prize of his year at college, and +the second in natural philosophy; and he had, I now found, great +acuteness as a metaphysician, and no inconsiderable acquaintance with +the antagonistic positions of the schools of Hume and Reid. On the other +hand, my opportunities of observation had been perhaps greater than his, +and my acquaintance with men, and even with books, more extensive; and +in the interchange of idea which we carried on, both were gainers: he +occasionally picked up in our conversations a fact of which he had been +previously ignorant; and I, mayhap, learned to look more closely than +before at an argument. I introduced him to the Eathie Lias, and assisted +him in forming a small collection, which, ere he ultimately dissipated +it, contained some curious fossils--among the others, the second +specimen of _Pterichthys_ ever found; and he, in turn, was able to give +me a few geological notions, which, though quite crude enough--for +natural science was not taught at the university which he attended--I +found of use in the arrangement of my facts--now become considerable +enough to stand in need of those threads of theory without which large +accumulations of fact refuse to hang together in the memory. There was +one special hypothesis which he had heard broached, and the utter +improbability of which I was not yet geologist enough to detect, which +for a time filled my whole imagination. It had been said, he told me, +that the ancient world, in which my fossils, animal and vegetable, had +flourished and decayed--a world greatly older than that before the +Flood--had been tenanted by rational, responsible beings, for whom, as +for the race to which we ourselves belong, a resurrection and a day of +final judgment had awaited. But many thousands of years had elapsed +since that day--emphatically the _last_ to the Pre-Adamite race--had +come and gone. Of all the accountable creatures that had been summoned +to its bar, bone had been gathered to its bone, so that not a vestige of +the framework of their bodies occurred in the rocks or soils in which +they had been originally inhumed; and, in consequence, only the remains +of their irresponsible contemporaries, the inferior animals, and of the +vegetable productions of their fields and forests, were now to be found. +The dream filled for a time my whole imagination; but though poetry +might find ample footing on a hypothesis so suggestive and bold, I need +scarce say that it has itself no foundation in science. Man had _no_ +responsible predecessor on earth. At the determined time, when his +appointed habitation was completely fitted for him, he came and took +possession of it; but the old geologic ages had been ages of +immaturity--_days_ whose work as a work of promise was "good," but not +yet "very good," nor yet ripened for the appearance of a moral agent, +whose nature it is to be a fellow-worker with the Creator in relation to +even the physical and the material. The planet which we inhabit seems to +have been prepared for man, and for man only. + +Partly through my friend, but in part also from the circumstance that I +retained a measure of intimacy with such of my schoolfellows as had +subsequently prosecuted their education at college, I was acquainted, +during the later years in which I wrought as a mason, with a good many +university-taught lads; and I sometimes could not avoid comparing them +in my mind with working men of, as nearly as I could guess, the same +original calibre. I did not always find that general superiority on the +side of the scholar which the scholar himself usually took for granted. +What he had specially studied he knew, save in rare and exceptional +cases, better than the working man; but while the student had been +mastering his Greek and Latin, and expatiating in Natural Philosophy and +the Mathematics, the working man, if of an inquiring mind, had been +doing something else; and it is at least a fact, that all the great +readers of my acquaintance at this time--the men most extensively +acquainted with English literature--were not the men who had received +the classical education. On the other hand, in framing an argument, the +advantage lay with the scholars. In that common sense, however, which +reasons but does not argue, and which enables men to pick their stepping +prudently through the journey of life, I found that the classical +education gave no superiority whatever; nor did it appear to form so +fitting an introduction to the realities of business as that course of +dealing with things tangible and actual in which the working man has to +exercise his faculties, and from which he derives his experience. One +cause of the over-low estimate which the classical scholar so often +forms of the intelligence of that class of the people to which our +skilled mechanics belong, arises very much from the forwardness of a set +of blockheads who are always sure to obtrude themselves upon his notice, +and who come to be regarded by him as average specimens of their order. +I never yet knew a truly intelligent mechanic obtrusive. Men of the +stamp of my two uncles, and of my friend William Ross, never press +themselves on the notice of the classes above them. A minister newly +settled in a charge, for instance, often finds that it is the dolts of +his flock that first force themselves upon his acquaintance. I have +heard the late Mr. Stewart of Cromarty remark, that the humbler +dunderheads of the parish had all introduced themselves to his +acquaintance long ere he found out its clever fellows. And hence often +sad mistakes on the part of a clergyman in dealing with the people. It +seems never to strike him that there may be among them men of his own +calibre, and, in certain practical departments, even better taught than +he; and that this superior class is always sure to lead the others. And +in preaching down to the level of the men of humbler capacity, he fails +often to preach to men of any capacity at all, and is of no use. Some of +the clerical contemporaries of Mr. Stewart used to allege that, in +exercising his admirable faculties in the theological field, he +sometimes forgot to lower himself to his people, and so preached over +their heads. And at times, when they themselves came to occupy his +pulpit, as occasionally happened, they addressed to the congregation +sermons quite simple enough for even children to comprehend. I taught at +the time a class of boys in the Cromarty Sabbath-school, and invariably +found on these occasions, that while the memories of my pupils were +charged to the full with the striking thoughts and graphic illustrations +of the very elaborate discourses deemed too high for them, they +remembered of the very simple ones, specially lowered to suit narrow +capacities, not a single word or note. All the attempts at originating a +cheap literature that have failed, have been attempts pitched too low: +the higher-toned efforts have usually succeeded. If the writer of these +chapters has been in any degree successful in addressing himself as a +journalist to the Presbyterian people of Scotland, it has always been, +not by writing _down_ to them, but by doing his best on all occasions to +write _up_ to them. He has ever thought of them as represented by his +friend William, his uncles, and his Cousin George--by shrewd old John +Fraser, and his reckless though very intelligent acquaintance Cha; and +by addressing to them on every occasion as good sense and as solid +information as he could possibly muster, he has at times succeeded in +catching their ear, and perhaps, in some degree, in influencing their +judgment. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[10] The extreme picturesqueness of these fires--in part a consequence +of the great height and peculiar architecture of the buildings which +they destroyed--caught the nice eye of Sir Walter Scott. "I can +conceive," we find him saying, in one of his letters of the period, "no +sight more grand or terrible than to see these lofty buildings on fire +from top to bottom, vomiting out flames, like a volcano, from every +aperture, and finally crashing down one after another, into an abyss of +fire, which resembled nothing but hell; for there were vaults of wine +and spirits which set up huge jets of flames whenever they were called +into activity by the fall of these massive fragments. Between the corner +of the Parliament Square and the Tron Church, all is destroyed excepting +some new buildings at the lower extremity." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + + "Beware, Lorenzo, a slow, sudden death."--YOUNG. + + +There was one special subject which my friend, in our quiet evening +walks, used to urge seriously upon my attention. He had thrown up, under +strong religious impressions, what promised to be so good a business, +that in two years he had already saved money enough to meet the expenses +of a college course of education. And assuredly, never did man determine +on entering the ministry with views more thoroughly disinterested than +his. Patronage ruled supreme in the Scottish Establishment at the time; +and my friend had no influence and no patron; but he could not see his +way clear to join with the Evangelical Dissenters or the Secession; and +believing that the most important work on earth is the work of saving +souls, he had entered on his new course in the full conviction that, if +God had work for him of this high character to do, He would find him an +opportunity of doing it. And now, thoroughly in earnest, and as part of +the special employment to which he had devoted himself, he set himself +to press upon my attention the importance, in their personal bearing, of +religious concerns. + +I was not unacquainted with the standard theology of the Scottish +Church. In the parish school I had, indeed, acquired no ideas on the +subject; and though I now hear a good deal said, chiefly with a +controversial bearing, about the excellent religious influence of our +parochial seminaries, I never knew any one who owed other than the +merest smattering of theological knowledge to these institutions, and +not a single individual who had ever derived from them any tincture, +even the slightest, of religious feeling. In truth, during almost the +whole of the last century, and for at least the first forty years of the +present, the people of Scotland were, with all their faults, +considerably more Christian than the larger part of their schoolmasters. +So far as I can remember, I carried in my memory from school only a +single remark at all theological in its character, and it was of a kind +suited rather to do harm than good. In reading in the class one Saturday +morning a portion of the Hundred and Nineteenth Psalm, I was told by the +master that that ethical poem was a sort of alphabetical acrostic--a +circumstance, he added, that accounted for its broken and inconsecutive +character as a composition. Chiefly, however, from the Sabbath-day +catechizings to which I had been subjected during boyhood by my uncles, +and latterly from the old divines, my Uncle Sandy's favourites, and from +the teachings of the pulpit, I had acquired a considerable amount of +religious knowledge. I had thought, too, a good deal about some of the +peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, in their character as abstruse +positions--such as the doctrine of the Divine decrees, and of man's +inability to assume the initiative in the work of his own conversion. I +had, besides, a great admiration of the Bible, especially of its +narrative and poetical parts; and could scarce give strong enough +expression to the contempt which I entertained for the vulgar and +tasteless sceptics who, with Paine at their head, could speak of it as a +weak or foolish book. Further, reared in a family circle, some of whose +members were habitually devout, and all of whom respected and stood up +for religion, and were imbued with the stirring ecclesiastical +traditions of their country, I felt that the religious side in any +quarrel had a sort of hereditary claim upon me. I believe I may venture +to say, that previous to this time I had never seen a religious man +badgered for his religion, and much in a minority, without openly taking +part with him; nor is it impossible that, in a time of trouble, I might +have almost deserved the character given by old John Howie to a rather +notable "gentleman sometimes called Burly," who, "although he was by +some reckoned none of the most religious," joined himself to the +suffering party, and was "always zealous and honest-hearted." And yet my +religion was a strangely incongruous thing. It took the form, in my +mind, of a mass of indigested theology, with here and there a prominent +point developed out of due proportion, from the circumstance that I had +thought upon it for myself; and while entangled, if I may so speak, amid +the recesses and under cover of the general chaotic mass, there +harboured no inconsiderable amount of superstition, there rested over it +the clouds of a dreary scepticism. I have sometimes, in looking back on +the doubts and questionings of this period, thought, and perhaps even +spoken of myself as an infidel. But an infidel I assuredly was not: my +belief was at least as real as my incredulity, and had, I am inclined to +think, a much deeper seat in my mind. But wavering between the two +extremes--now a believer, and anon a sceptic--the belief usually +exhibiting itself as a strongly-based instinct,--the scepticism as the +result of some intellectual process--I lived on for years in a sort of +uneasy see-saw condition, without any middle ground between the two +extremes, on which I could at once reason and believe. + +That middle ground I now succeeded in finding. It is at once delicate +and dangerous to speak of one's own spiritual condition, or of the +emotional sentiments on which one's conclusions regarding it are often +so doubtfully founded. Egotism in the religious form is perhaps more +tolerated than in any other; but it is not on that account less perilous +to the egotist himself. There need be, however, less delicacy in +speaking of one's beliefs than of one's feelings; and I trust I need not +hesitate to say, that I was led to see at this time, through the +instrumentality of my friend, that my theologic system had previously +wanted a central object, to which the heart, as certainly as the +intellect, could attach itself; and that the true centre of an efficient +_Christianity_ is, as the name ought of itself to indicate, "the Word +made Flesh." Around this central sun of the Christian +system--appreciated, however, not as a _doctrine_ which is a mere +abstraction, but as a Divine Person--so truly Man, that the affections +of the human heart can lay hold upon Him, and so truly God, that the +mind, through faith, can at all times and in all places be brought into +direct contact with Him--all that is really religious takes its place in +a subsidiary and subordinate relation. I say subsidiary and subordinate. +The Divine Man is the great attractive centre, the sole gravitating +point of a system which owes to Him all its coherency, and which would +be but a chaos were He away. It seems to be the existence of the human +nature in this central and paramount object that imparts to +Christianity, in its subjective character, its peculiar power of +influencing and controlling the human mind. There may be men who, +through a peculiar idiosyncrasy of constitution, are capable of loving, +after a sort, a mere abstract God, unseen and inconceivable; though, as +shown by the air of sickly sentimentality borne by almost all that has +been said and written on the subject, the feeling in its true form must +be a very rare and exceptional one. In all my experience of men, I never +knew a genuine instance of it The love of an abstract God seems to be as +little natural to the ordinary human constitution as the love of an +abstract sun or planet. And so it will be found, that in all the +religions that have taken strong hold of the mind of man, the element of +a vigorous humanity has mingled, in the character of its gods, with the +theistic element. The gods of classic mythology were simply powerful men +set loose from the tyranny of the physical laws; and, in their purely +human character, as warm friends and deadly enemies, they were both +feared and loved. And so the belief which bowed at their shrines ruled +the old civilized world for many centuries. In the great ancient +mythologies of the East--Buddhism and Brahmanism--both very influential +forms of belief--we have the same elements, genuine humanity added to +god-like power. In the faith of the Moslem, the human character of the +man Mahommed, elevated to an all-potential viceregency in things sacred, +gives great strength to what without it would be but a weak theism. +Literally it is Allah's supreme prophet that maintains for Allah himself +a place in the Mahommedan mind. Again, in Popery we find an excess of +humanity scarce leas great than in the classical mythology itself, and +with nearly corresponding results. Though the Virgin Mother takes, as +queen of heaven, a first place in the scheme, and forms in that +character a greatly more interesting goddess than any of the old ones +who counselled Ulysses, or responded to the love of Anchises or of +Endymion, she has to share her empire with the minor saints, and to +recognise in them a host of rivals. But undoubtedly to this popular +element Popery owes not a little of its indomitable strength. In, +however, all these forms of religion, whether inherently false from the +beginning, or so overlaid in some after stage by the fictitious and the +untrue as to have their original substratum of truth covered up by error +and fable, there is such a want of coherency between the theistic and +human elements, that we always find them undergoing a process of +separation. We see the human element ever laying hold on the popular +mind, and there manifesting itself in the form of a vigorous +superstition; and the theistic element, on the other hand, recognised by +the cultivated intellect as the exclusive and only element, and +elaborated into a sort of natural theology, usually rational enough in +its propositions, but for any practical purpose always feeble and +inefficient. Such a separation of the two elements took place of old in +the ages of the classical mythology; and hence the very opposite +characters of the wild but genial and popular fables so exquisitely +adorned by the poets, and the rational but uninfluential doctrines +received by a select few from the philosophers. Such a separation took +place, too, in France in the latter half of the last century; and still +on the European Continent generally do we find this separation +represented by the assertors of a weak theism on the one hand, and of a +superstitious saint-worship on the other. In the false or corrupted +religions, the two indispensable elements of Divinity and Humanity +appear as if blended together by a mere mechanical process; and it is +their natural tendency to separate, through a sort of subsidence on the +part of the human element from the theistic one, as if from some lack of +the necessary affinities. In Christianity, on the other hand, when +existing in its integrity as the religion of the New Testament, the +union of the two elements is complete: it partakes of the nature, not of +a mechanical, but of a chemical mixture; and its great central +doctrine--the true Humanity and true Divinity of the Adorable +Saviour--is a truth equally receivable by at once the humblest and the +loftiest intellects. Poor dying children possessed of but a few simple +ideas, and men of the most robust intellects, such as the Chalmerses, +Fosters, and Halls of the Christian Church, find themselves equally able +to rest their salvation on the _man_ "Christ, who is over all, _God_ +blessed for ever." Of this fundamental truth of the two natures, that +condensed enunciation of the gospel which forms the watchword of our +faith, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved," is a +direct and palpable embodiment; and Christianity is but a mere name +without it. + +I was impressed at this time by another very remarkable feature in the +religion of Christ in its subjective character. Kames, in his "Art of +Thinking," illustrates, by a curious story, one of his observations on +the "nature of man." "Nothing is more common," he says, "than love +converted into hatred; and we have seen instances of hatred converted +into love." And in exemplifying the remark, he relates his anecdote of +"Unnion and Valentine." Two English soldiers, who fought in the wars of +Queen Anne--the one a petty officer, the other a private sentinel--had +been friends and comrades for years; but, quarrelling in some love +affair, they became bitter enemies. The officer made an ungenerous use +of his authority, and so annoyed and persecuted the sentinel as almost +to fret him into madness; and he was frequently heard to say that he +would die to be avenged of him. Whole months were spent in the +infliction of injuries on the one side, and in the venting of complaints +on the other; when, in the midst of their mutual rage, they were both +selected, as men of tried courage, to share in some desperate attack, +which was, however, unsuccessful; and the officer, in the retreat, was +disabled, and struck down by a shot in the thigh. "Oh, Valentine! and +will you leave me here to perish?" he exclaimed, as his old comrade +rushed past him. The poor injured man immediately returned; and, in the +midst of a thick fire, bore off his wounded enemy to what seemed a place +of safety, when he was struck by a chance ball, and fell dead under his +burden. The officer, immediately forgetting his wound, rose up, tearing +his hair; and, throwing himself on the bleeding body, he cried, "Ah, +Valentine! and was it for me, who have so barbarously used thee, that +thou hast died? I will not live after thee." He was not by any means to +be forced from the corpse; but was removed with it bleeding in his arms, +and attended with tears by all his comrades, who knew of his harshness +to the deceased. When brought to a tent, his wounds were dressed by +force; but the next day, still calling on Valentine, and lamenting his +cruelties to him, he died in the pangs of remorse and despair. + +This surely is a striking story; but the commonplace remark based upon +it by the philosopher is greatly less so. Men who have loved _do_ often +learn to hate the object of their affections; and men who have hated +sometimes learn to love: but the portion of the anecdote specially +worthy of remark appears to be that which, dwelling on the o'ermastering +remorse and sorrow of the rescued soldier, shows how effectually his +poor dead comrade had, by dying for him "while he was yet his enemy," +"heaped coals of fire upon his head." And such seems to be one of the +leading principles on which, with a Divine adaptation to the heart of +man, the scheme of Redemption has been framed. The Saviour approved his +love, "in that while we were yet sinners, He died for us." There is an +inexpressibly great power in this principle; and many a deeply-stirred +heart has felt it to its core. The theologians have perhaps too +frequently dwelt on the Saviour's vicarious satisfaction for human sin +in its relation to the offended justice of the Father. How, or on what +principle, the Father was satisfied, I know not, and may never know. The +enunciation regarding vicarious satisfaction may be properly received in +faith as a _fact_, but, I suspect, not properly reasoned upon until we +shall be able to bring the moral sense of Deity, with its requirements, +within the limits of a small and trivial logic. But the thorough +adaptation of the scheme to man's nature is greatly more appreciable, +and lies fully within the reach of observation and experience. And how +thorough that adaptation is, all who have really looked at the matter +ought to be competent to say. Does an earthly priesthood, vested with +alleged powers to interpose between God and man, always originate an +ecclesiastical tyranny, which has the effect, in the end, of shutting up +the mass of men from their Maker?--here is there a High Priest passed +into the heavens--the only Priest whom the evangelistic Protestant +recognises as really such--to whom, in his character of Mediator between +God and man, all may apply, and before whom there need be felt none of +that abject prostration of the spirit and understanding which man always +experiences when he bends before the merely human priest. Is +self-righteousness the besetting infirmity of the religious man?--in the +scheme of vicarious righteousness it finds no footing. The +self-approving Pharisee must be content to renounce his own merits, ere +he can have part or lot in the fund of merit which alone avails; and yet +without personal righteousness he can have no evidence whatever that he +has an interest in the all-prevailing imputed righteousness. But it is +in the closing scene of life, when man's boasted virtues become so +intangible in his estimation that they elude his grasp, and sins and +shortcomings, little noted before, start up around him like spectres, +that the scheme of Redemption appears worthy of the infinite wisdom and +goodness of God, and when what the Saviour did and suffered seems of +efficacy enough to blot out the guilt of every offence. It is when the +minor lights of comfort are extinguished that the Sun of Righteousness +shines forth, and more than compensates for them all. + +The opinions which I formed at this time on this matter of prime +importance I found no after occasion to alter or modify. On the +contrary, in passing from the subjective to the objective view, I have +seen the doctrine of the union of the two natures greatly confirmed. The +truths of geology appear destined to exercise in the future no +inconsiderable influence on natural theology; and with this especial +doctrine they seem very much in accordance. Of that long and stately +march of creation with which the records of the stony science bring us +acquainted, the distinguishing characteristic is progress. There appears +to have been a time when there existed on our planet only dead matter +unconnected with vitality; and then a time in which plants and animals +of a low order began to be, but in which even fishes, the humblest of +the vertebrata, were so rare and exceptionable, that they occupied a +scarce appreciable place in Nature. Then came an age of fishes huge of +size, and that to the peculiar ichthyic organization added certain +well-marked characteristics of the reptilian class immediately above +them. And then, after a time, during which the reptile had occupied a +place as inconspicuous as that occupied by the fish in the earlier +periods of animal life, an age of reptiles of vast bulk and high +standing was ushered in. And when, in the lapse of untold ages, _it_ +also had passed away, there succeeded an age of great mammals. +Molluscs, fishes, reptiles, mammals, had each in succession their +periods of vast extent; and then there came a period that differed even +more, in the character of its master-existence, from any of these +creations, than they, with their many vitalities, had differed from the +previous inorganic period in which life had not yet begun to be. The +human period began--the period of a fellow-worker with God, created in +God's own image. The animal existences of the previous ages formed, if I +may so express myself, mere figures in the landscapes of the great +garden which they inhabited. Man, on the other hand, was placed in it to +"keep and to dress it;" and such has been the effect of his labours, +that they have altered and improved the face of whole continents. Our +globe, even as it might be seen from the moon, testifies, over its +surface, to that unique nature of man, unshared in by any of the +inferior animals, which renders him, in things physical and natural, a +fellow-worker with the Creator who first produced it. And of the +identity of at least his intellect with that of his Maker, and, of +consequence, of the integrity of the revelation which declares that he +was created in God's own image, we have direct evidence in his ability +of not only conceiving of God's contrivances, but even of reproducing +them; and this, not as a mere imitator, but as an original thinker. He +may occasionally borrow the principles of his contrivances from the +works of the Original Designer, but much more frequently, in studying +the works of the Original Designer does he discover in them the +principles of his own contrivances. He has not been an imitator: he has +merely been exercising, with resembling results, the resembling mind, +_i.e._, the mind made in the Divine image. But the existing scene of +things is not destined to be the last. High as it is, it is too low and +too imperfect to be regarded as God's finished work: it is merely one of +the _progressive_ dynasties; and Revelation and the implanted instincts +of our nature alike teach us to anticipate a glorious _terminal_ +dynasty. In the first dawn of being, simple vitality was united to +matter: the vitality thus united became, in each succeeding period, of a +higher and yet higher order;--it was in succession the vitality of the +mollusc, of the fish, of the reptile, of the sagacious mammal, and, +finally, of responsible, immortal man, created in the image of God. What +is to be the next advance? Is there to be merely a repetition of the +past--an introduction a second time of "man made in the image of God?" +No! The geologist, in the tables of stone which form his records, finds +no example of dynasties once passed away again returning. There has been +no repetition of the dynasty of the fish--of the reptile--of the mammal. +The dynasty of the future is to have glorified man for its inhabitant; +but it is to be the dynasty--the "_kingdom_"--not of glorified man made +in the image of God, but of God himself in the form of man. In the +doctrine of the two natures, and in the further doctrine that the +terminal dynasty is to be peculiarly the dynasty of Him in whom the +natures are united, we find that required progression beyond which +progress cannot go. Creation and the Creator meet at one point, and in +one person. The long ascending line from dead matter to man has been, a +progress Godwards--not an asymptotical progress, but destined from the +beginning to furnish a point of union; and, occupying that point as true +God and true man, as Creator and created, we recognise the adorable +Monarch of all the Future. It is, as urged by the Apostle, the especial +glory of our race, that it should have furnished that point of contact +at which Godhead has united Himself, not to man only, but also, through +man, to His own Universe--to the Universe of Matter and of Mind. + +I remained for several months in delicate and somewhat precarious +health. My lungs had received more serious injury than I had at first +supposed; and it seemed at one time rather doubtful whether the severe +mechanical irritation which had so fretted them that the air-passages +seemed overcharged with matter and stone-dust, might not pass into the +complaint which it stimulated, and become confirmed consumption. +Curiously enough, my comrades had told me in sober earnest--among the +rest, Cha, a man of sense and observation--that I would pay the forfeit +of my sobriety by being sooner affected than they by the stone-cutter's +malady: "a good _bouse_" gave, they said, a wholesome fillip to the +constitution, and "cleared the sulphur off the lungs;" and mine would +suffer for want of the medicine which kept theirs clean. I know not +whether there was virtue in their remedy: it seems just possible that +the shock given to the constitution by an overdose of strong drink may +in certain cases be medicinal in its effects; but they were certainly +not in error in their prediction. Among the hewers of the party I was +the first affected by the malady. I still remember the rather pensive +than sad feeling with which I used to contemplate, at this time, an +early death, and the intense love of nature that drew me, day after day, +to the beautiful scenery which surrounds my native town, and which I +loved all the more from the consciousness that my eyes might so soon +close upon it for ever. "It _is_ a pleasant thing to behold the sun." +Among my manuscripts--useless scraps of paper, to which, however, in +their character as fossils of the past epochs of my life, I cannot help +attaching an interest not at all in themselves--I find the mood +represented by only a few almost infantile verses, addressed to a docile +little girl of five years, my eldest sister by my mother's second +marriage, and my frequent companion, during my illness, in my short +walks. + + + TO JEANIE. + + Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go + To whare the white-starred gowans grow, + Wi' the puddock flower o' gowden hue. + The snaw-drap white and the bonny vi'let blue. + + Sister Jeanie, haste, we'll go + To whare the blossomed lilacs grow-- + To whare the pine-tree, dark an' high, + Is pointing its tap at the cloudless sky. + + Jeanie, mony a merry lay + Is sung in the young-leaved woods to-day; + Flits on light wing the dragon-flee, + An' bums on the flowrie the big red-bee. + + Down the burnie wirks its way + Aneath the bending birken spray, + An' wimples roun' the green moss-stane, + An' mourns. I kenna why, wi' a ceaseless mane. + + Jeanie, come; thy days o' play + Wi' autumn-tide shall pass away; + Sune shall these scenes, in darkness cast, + Be ravaged wild by the wild winter blast. + + Though to thee a spring shall rise, + An' scenes as fair salute thine eyes; + An' though, through many a cludless day, + My winsome Jean shall be heartsome and gay; + + He wha grasps thy little hand + Nae langer at thy side shall stand, + Nor o'er the flower-besprinkled brae + Lead thee the low'nest and the bonniest way. + + Dost thou see yon yard sae green, + Spreckled wi' mony a mossy stane? + A few short weeks o' pain shall fly, + An' asleep in that _bed_ shall thy puir brither lie. + + Then thy mither's tears awhile + May chide thy joy an' damp thy smile; + But sune ilk grief shall wear awa', + And I'll be forgotten by ane an' by a'. + + Dinna think the thought is sad; + Life vexed me aft, but this mak's glad: + When cauld my heart and closed my e'e, + Bonny shall the dreams o' my slumbers be. + + +At length, however, my constitution threw off the malady; though--as I +still occasionally feel--the organ affected never quite regained its +former vigour; and I began to experience the quiet but exquisite +enjoyment of the convalescent. After long and depressing illness, youth +itself appears to return with returning health; and it seems to be one +of the compensating provisions, that while men of robust constitution +and rigid organization get gradually old in their spirits and obtuse in +their feelings, the class that have to endure being many times sick have +the solace of being also many times young. The reduced and weakened +frame becomes as susceptible of the emotional as in tender and delicate +youth. I know not that I ever spent three happier months than the +autumnal months of this year, when gradually picking up flesh and +strength amid my old haunts, the woods and caves. My friend had left me +early in July for Aberdeen, where he had gone to prosecute his studies +under the eye of a tutor, one Mr. Duncan, whom he described to me in his +letters as perhaps the most deeply learned man he had ever seen. "You +may ask him a common question," said my friend, "without getting an +answer--for he has considerably more than the average absentness of the +great scholar about him; but if you inquire of him the state of any one +controversy ever agitated in the Church or the world, he will give it +you at once, with, if you please, all the arguments on both sides." The +trait struck me at the time as one of some mark; and I thought of it +many years after, when fame had blown the name of my friend's tutor +pretty widely as Dr. Duncan, Hebrew Professor in our Free Church +College, and one of the most profoundly learned of Orientalists. Though +separated, however, from my friend, I found a quiet pleasure in +following up, in my solitary walks, the views which his conversations +had suggested; and in a copy of verses, the production of this time, +which, with all their poverty and stiffness, please me as true, and as +representative of the convalescent feeling, I find direct reference to +the beliefs which he had laboured to instil. My verses are written in a +sort of metre which, in the hands of Collins, became flexible and +exquisitely poetic, and which in those of Kirke White is at least +pleasing, but of which we find poor enough specimens in the +"Anthologies" of Southey, and which perhaps no one so limited in his +metrical vocabulary, and so defective in his musical ear, as the writer +of these chapters, should ever have attempted. + + + SOLACE. + + No star of golden influence hailed the birth + Of him who, all unknown and lonely, pours, + As fails the light of eve, + His pensive, artless song; + Yea, those who mark out honour, ease, wealth, fame, + As man's sole joys, shall find no joy in him; + Yet of far nobler kind + His silent pleasures prove. + For not unmarked by him the ways of men; + Nor yet to him the ample page unknown, + Where, traced by Nature's hand, + Is many a pleasing line. + Oh! when the world's dull children bend the knee, + Meanly obsequious, to some mortal god, + It yields no vulgar joy + Alone to stand aloof; + Or when they jostle on wealth's crowded road, + And swells the tumult on the breeze, 'tis sweet, + Thoughtful, at length reclined, + To list the wrathful hum. + What though the weakly gay affect to scorn + The loitering dreamer of life's darkest shade, + Stingless the jeer, whose voice + Comes from the erroneous path. + Scorner, of all thy toils the end declare! + If pleasure, pleasure comes uncalled, to cheer + The haunts of him who spends + His hours in quiet thought. + And happier he who can repress desire, + Than they who seldom mourn a thwarted wish; + The vassals they of fate-- + The unbending conqueror he, + And thou, blest Muse, though rudely strung thy lyre, + Its tones can guile the dark and lonesome day-- + Can smooth the wrinkled brow, + And dry the sorrowing tear. + Thine many a bliss--oh, many a solace thine! + By thee up-held, the soul asserts her throne, + The chastened passions sleep, + And dove-eyed Peace prevails. + And thou, fair Hope! when other comforts fail-- + When night's thick mists descend--thy beacon flames, + Till glow the dark clouds round + With beams of promised bliss. + Thou failest not, when, mute the soothing lyre, + Lives thy unfading solace: sweet to raise + Thy eye, O quiet Hope, + And greet a friend in heaven!-- + A friend, a brother, one whose awful throne + In holy fear heaven's mightiest sons approach: + Man's heart to feel for man-- + To save him God's great power! + Conqueror of death, joy of the accepted soul, + Oh, wonders raise no doubt when told of thee! + Thy way past finding out, + Thy love, can tongue declare? + Cheered by thy smile, Peace dwells amid the storm; + Held by thy hand, the floods assail in vain; + With grief is blent a joy, + And beams the vault of death. + + +Passing, in one of my walks this autumn, the cave in which I used to +spend in boyhood so many happy hours with Finlay, I found it smoking, as +of old, with a huge fire, and occupied by a wilder and more careless +party than even my truant schoolfellows. It had been discovered and +appropriated by a band of gipsies, who, attracted by the soot-stains on +its roof and sides, and concluding that it had been inhabited by the +gipsies of other days, had without consulting factor or landlord, at +once entered upon possession, as the proper successors of its former +occupants. They were a savage party, with a good deal of the true gipsy +blood in them, but not without mixture of a broken-down class of +apparently British descent; and one of their women was purely Irish. +From what I had previously heard about gipsies, I was not prepared for a +mixture of this kind; but I found it pretty general, and ascertained +that at least one of the ways in which it had taken place was +exemplified by the case of the one Irish woman. Her gipsy husband had +served as a soldier, and had married her when in the army. I have been +always exceedingly curious to see man in his rude elements--to study him +as the savage, whether among the degraded classes of our own country, +or, as exhibited in the writings of travellers and voyagers, in his +aboriginal state; and I now did not hesitate to visit the gipsies, and +to spend not unfrequently an hour or two in their company. They at first +seemed jealous of me as a spy; but finding me inoffensive, and that I +did not bewray counsel, they came at length to recognise me as the +"quiet, sickly lad," and to chatter as freely in my presence as in that +of the other pitchers with ears, which they used to fabricate out of tin +by the dozen and the score, and the manufacture of which, with the +making of horn spoons, formed the main branch of business carried on in +the cave. I saw in these visits curious glimpses of gipsy life. I could +trust only to what I actually witnessed: what was told me could on no +occasion be believed; for never were there lies more gross and monstrous +than those of the gipsies; but even the lying formed of itself a +peculiar trait. I have never heard lying elsewhere that set all +probability so utterly at defiance--a consequence, in part, of their +recklessly venturing, like unskilful authors, to expatiate in walks of +invention over which their experience did not extend. On one occasion an +old gipsy woman, after pronouncing my malady consumption, prescribed for +me as an infallible remedy, raw parsley minced small and made up into +balls with fresh butter; but seeing, I suppose, from my manner, that I +lacked the necessary belief in her specific, she went on to say, that +she had derived her knowledge of such matters from her mother, one of +the most "skeely women that ever lived." Her mother, she said, had once +healed a lord's son of a grievous hurt in half a minute, after all the +English doctors had shown they could do nothing for him. His eye had +been struck out of its socket by a blow, and hung half-way down his +cheek; and though the doctors could of course return it to its place, it +refused to stick, always falling out again. Her mother, however, at once +understood the case; and, making a little slit at the back of the young +man's neck, she got hold of the end of a sinew, and pulling in the +dislodged orb at a tug, she made all tight by running a knot on the +controlling ligament, and so kept the eye in its place. And, save that +the young lord continued to squint a little, he was well at once. The +peculiar anatomy on which this invention was framed must have, of +course, resembled that of a wax-doll with winking eyes; but it did well +enough for the woman; and, having no character for truth to maintain, +she did not hesitate to build on it. On asking her whether she ever +attended church, she at once replied, "O yes, at one time very often. I +am the daughter of a minister--a _natural_ daughter, you know: my +father was the most powerful preacher in all the south, and I always +went to hear him." In about an hour after, however, forgetting her +extemporary sally, and the reverend character with which she had +insisted her sire, she spoke of him, in another equally palpable +invention, as the greatest "king of the gipsies" that the gipsies ever +had. Even the children had caught this habit of monstrous mendacity. +There was one of the boys of the band, considerably under twelve, who +could extemporize lying narratives by the hour, and seemed always +delighted to get a listener; and a little girl, younger still, who +"lisped in _fiction_, for the _fiction_ came." There were two things +that used to strike me as peculiar among these gipsies--a Hindu type of +head, small of size, but with a considerable fulness of forehead, +especially along the medial line, in the region, as the phrenologist +would perhaps say, of _individuality_ and _comparison_; and a singular +posture assumed by the elderly females of the tribe in squatting before +their fires, in which the elbow rested on the knees brought close +together, the chin on the palms, and the entire figure (somewhat +resembling in attitude a Mexican mummy) assumed an outlandish +appearance, that reminded me of some of the more grotesque sculptures of +Egypt and Hindustan. The peculiar type of head was derived, I doubt not, +from an ancestry originally different from that of the settled races of +the country; nor is it impossible that the peculiar position--unlike any +I have ever seen Scottish females assume--was also of foreign origin. + +I have witnessed scenes among these gipsies, of which the author of the +"Jolly Beggars" might have made rare use, but which formed a sort of +materials that I lacked the special ability rightly to employ. It was +reported on one occasion that a marriage ceremony and wedding were to +take place in the cave, and I sauntered the way, in the hope of +ascertaining how its inmates contrived to do for themselves what of +course no clergyman could venture to do for them--seeing that, of the +parties to be united, the bridegroom might have already as many wives +living as "Peter Bell," and the bride as many husbands. A gipsy marriage +had taken place a few years previous in a cave near Rosemarkie. An old +male gipsy, possessed of the rare accomplishment of reading, had +half-read, half-spelled the English marriage-service to the young +couple, and the ceremony was deemed complete at its close. And I now +expected to witness something similar. In an opening in the wood above, +I encountered two very drunk gipsies, and saw the first-fruits of the +coming merriment. One of the two was an uncouth-looking monster, +sallow-skinned, flat-faced, round-shouldered, long and thinly limbed, at +least six feet two inches in height, and, from his strange +misproportions, he might have passed for seven feet any day, were it not +that his trousers, made for a much shorter man, and rising to the middle +of his calfless leg, gave him much the appearance of a big boy walking +on stilts. The boys of the place called him "Giant Grimbo;" while his +companion, a tight dapper little fellow, who always showed off a +compact, well-rounded leg in corduroy inexpressibles, they had learned +to distinguish as "Billy Breeches." The giant, who carried a bagpipe, +had broken down ere I came up with them; and now, sitting on the grass, +he was droning out in fitful blasts a diabolical music, to which Billy +Breeches was dancing; but, just as I passed, Billy also gave way, after +wasting an infinity of exertion in keeping erect; and, falling over the +prostrate musician, I could hear the bag groaning out its soul as he +pressed against it, in a lengthened melancholious squeal. I found the +cave bearing an aspect of more than ordinary picturesqueness. It had its +two fires, and its double portion of smoke, that went rolling out in the +calm like an inverted river; for it clung close to the roof, as if by a +reversed gravitation, and turned its foaming surface downwards. At the +one fire an old gipsy woman was engaged in baking oaten cakes; and a +great pot, that dispensed through the cave the savoury odour of unlucky +poultry out short in the middle of their days, and of hapless hares +destroyed without the game licence, depended over the other. An ass, the +common property of the tribe, stood meditating in the foreground; two +urchins, of about from ten to twelve years a-piece--wretchedly supplied +in the article of clothing--for the one, provided with only a pair of +tattered trousers, was naked from the waist upwards, and the other, +furnished with only a dilapidated jacket, was naked from the waist +downwards--were engaged in picking up fuel for the fire, still further +in front; a few of the ordinary inmates of the place lounged under cover +of the smoke, apparently in a mood not in the least busy; and on a couch +of dried fern sat evidently the central figure of the group, a young, +sparkling-eyed brunette, more than ordinarily marked by the Hindu +peculiarities of head and feature, and attended by a savage-looking +fellow of about twenty, dark as a mulatto, and with a profusion of long +flexible hair, black as jet, hanging down to his eyes, and clustering +about his cheeks and neck. These were, I ascertained, the bride and +bridegroom. The bride was engaged in sewing a cap--the bridegroom in +watching the progress of the work. I observed that the party, who were +less communicative than usual, seemed to regard me in the light of an +intruder. An elderly tinker, the father of the bride, grey as a leafless +thorn in winter, but still stalwart and strong, sat admiring a bit of +spelter of about a pound weight. It was gold, he said, or, as he +pronounced the word, "guild," which had been found in an old cairn, and +was of immense value, "for it was peer guild and that was the best o' +guild;" but if I pleased, he would sell it to me, a very great bargain. +I was engaged with some difficulty in declining the offer, when we were +interrupted by the sounds of the bagpipe. Giant Grimbo and Billy +Breeches had succeeded in regaining their feet, and were seen staggering +towards the cave. "Where's the whisky, Billy!" inquired the proprietor +of the gold, addressing himself to the man of the small clothes. +"Whisky!" said Billy, "ask Grimbo." "Where's the whisky, Grimbo?" +reiterated the tinker. "Whisky!" replied Grimbo, "Whisky!" and yet +again, after a pause and a hiccup, "Whisky!" "Ye confounded blacks!" +said the tinker, springing to his feet with an agility wonderful for an +age so advanced as his, "Have you drunk it all? But take that, Grimbo," +he added, planting a blow full on the side of the giant's head, which +prostrated his vast length along the floor of the cave. "And take that, +Billy," he iterated, dealing such another blow to the shorter man, which +sent him right athwart his prostrate comrade. And then, turning to me, +he remarked with perfect coolness, "That, master, I call smart hitting." +"Honest lad," whispered one of the women immediately after, "it will be +a _reugh_ time wi' us here the nicht: you had just better be stepping +your ways." I had already begun to think so without prompting; and so, +taking my leave of the gipsies, I failed being, as I had proposed, one +of the witnesses of the wedding. + +There is a sort of grotesque humour in scenes of the kind described, +that has charms for artists and authors of a particular class--some of +them men of broad sympathies and great genius; and hence, through their +representations, literary and pictorial, the ludicrous point of view has +come to be the conventional and ordinary one. And yet it is a sad enough +merriment, after all, that has for its subject a degradation so extreme. +I never knew a gipsy that seemed to possess a moral sense--a degree of +_Pariahism_ which has been reached by only one other class in the +country, and that a small one--the descendants of degraded females in +our large towns. An education in Scotland, however secular in its +character, always casts a certain amount of enlightenment on the +conscience; a home, however humble, whose inmates win their bread by +honest industry, has a similar effect; but in the peculiar walks in +which for generations there has been no education of any kind, or in +which bread has been the wages of infamy, the moral sense seems so +wholly obliterated, that there appears to survive nothing in the mind to +which the missionary or the moralist can appeal. It seems scarce +possible for a man to know even a very little of these classes, without +learning, in consequence, to respect honest labour, and even secular +knowledge, as at least the _second-best_ things, in their moral bearing +and influence, that can exist among a people. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + + "For such is the flaw or the depth of the plan + In the make of that wonderful creature called man, + No two virtues, whatever relation they claim, + Nor even two different shades of the same. + Though like as was ever twin-brother to brother. + Possessing the one shall imply you've the other."--BURNS. + + +During my period of convalescence, I amused myself in hewing for my +uncles, from an original design, an ornate dial-stone; and the +dial-stone still exists, to show that my skill as a stone-cutter rose +somewhat above the average of the profession in those parts of the +country in which it ranks highest. Gradually as I recovered health and +strength, little jobs came dropping in. I executed sculptured tablets in +a style not common in the north of Scotland; introduced into the +churchyards of the locality a better type of tombstone than had obtained +in them before, save, mayhap, at a very early period; distanced all my +competitors in the art of inscription-cutting; and at length found that, +without exposing my weakened lungs to the rough tear and wear to which +the ordinary stone-cutter must subject himself, I could live. I deemed +it an advantage, too, rather than the reverse, that my new branch of +employment brought me not unfrequently for a few days into country +districts sufficiently distant from home to present me with new fields +of observation, and to open up new tracts of inquiry. Sometimes I spent +half a week in a farm-house in the neighbourhood of some country +churchyard--sometimes I lodged in a village--oftener than once I +sheltered beside some gentleman's seat, where the august shadow of +lairdship lay heavy on society; and in this way I came to see and know +a good deal of the Scottish people, in their many-coloured aspects, of +which otherwise I might have remained ignorant. At times, too, on some +dusty cottage shelf I succeeded in picking up a rare book, or, what was +not less welcome, got a curious tradition from the cottager; or there +lay within the reach of an evening walk some interesting piece of +antiquity, or some rock-section, which I found it profitable to visit. A +solitary burying-ground, too, situated, as country burying-grounds +usually are, in some pleasant spot, and surrounded by its groups of +ancient trees, formed a much more delightful scene of labour than a +dusty work-shed, or some open area in a busy town; and altogether I +found my new mode of life a quiet and happy one. Nor, with all its +tranquillity, was it a sort of life in which the intellect was in any +great danger of falling asleep. There was scarce a locality in which new +game might not be started, that, in running down, kept the faculties in +full play. Let me exemplify by describing the courses of inquiry, +physical and metaphysical, which opened up to me when spending a few +days, first in the burying-ground of Kirkmichael, and next in the +churchyard of Nigg. + +I have elsewhere somewhat fancifully described the ruinous chapel and +solitary grave-yard of Kirkmichael as lying on the sweep of a gentle +declivity, within a few yards of a flat sea-beach, so little exposed to +the winds, that it would seem as if "ocean muffled its waves in +approaching this field of the dead." And so the two vegetations--that of +the land and of the sea--undisturbed by the surf, which on opener coasts +prevents the growth of either along the upper littoral line, where the +waves beat heaviest, here meet and mingle, each encroaching for a little +way on the province of the other. And at meal-times, and when returning +homewards in the evening along the shore, it furnished me with amusement +enough to mark the character of the several plants of both floras that +thus meet and cross each other, and the appearances which they assume +when inhabiting each the other's province. On the side of the land, +beds of thrift, with its gay flowers the sea-pinks, occupied great +prominent cushions, that stood up like little islets amid the flowing +sea, and were covered over by salt water during stream-tides to the +depth of from eighteen inches to two feet. With these there occasionally +mingled spikes of the sea-lavender; and now and then, though more +rarely, a _sea-aster_, that might be seen raising above the calm surface +its composite flowers, with their bright yellow staminal pods, and their +pale purple petals. Far beyond, however, even the cushions of thrift, I +could trace the fleshy, jointed stems of the glass-wort, rising out of +the mud, but becoming diminutive and branchless as I followed them +downwards, till at depths where they must have been frequently swum over +by the young coal-fish and the flounder, they appeared as mere fleshy +spikes, scarce an inch in height, and then ceased. On the side of the +sea it was the various fucoids that rose highest along the beach: the +serrated focus barely met the salt-wort; but the bladder-bearing fucus +(_fucus nodosus_) mingled its brown fronds not unfrequently with the +crimson flowers of the thrift, and the vesicular fucus (_fucus +vesiculosus_) rose higher still, to enter into strange companionship +with the sea-side plantains and the common scurvy-grass. Green +enteromorpha of two species--_E. compressa_ and _E. intestinalis_--I +also found abundant along the edges of the thrift-beds; and it struck me +as curious at the time, that while most of the land-plants which had +thus descended beyond the sea-level were of the high dicotyledonous +division, the sea-weeds with which they mingled their leaves and +seed-vessels were low in their standing--fuci and enteromorpha--plants +at least not higher than their kindred cryptogamia, the lichens and +mosses of the land. Far beyond, in the outer reaches of the bay, where +land-plants never approached, there were meadows of a submarine +vegetation, of (for the sea) a comparatively high character. Their +numerous plants (_zostera marina_) had true roots, and true leaves, and +true flowers; and their spikes ripened amid the salt waters towards the +close of autumn, round white seeds, that, like many of the seeds of the +land, had their sugar and starch. But these plants kept far aloof, in +their green depths, from their cogeners the monocotyledons of the +terrestrial flora. It was merely the low _Fucaceae_ and _Conferveae_ of +the sea that I found meeting and mixing with the descending dicotyledons +of the land. I felt a good deal of interest in marking, about this time, +how certain belts of marine vegetation occurred on a vast boulder +situated in the neighbourhood of Cromarty, on the extreme line of the +ebb of spring-tides. I detected the various species ranged in zones, +just as on lofty hills the botanist finds his agricultural, moorland, +and alpine zones rising in succession the one over the other. At the +base of the huge mass, at a level to which the tide rarely falls, the +characteristic vegetable is the rough-stemmed tangle--_Laminaria +digitata_. In the zone immediately above the lowest, the prevailing +vegetable is the smooth-stemmed tangle--_Laminaria saccharina_. Higher +still there occurs a zone of the serrated fucus--_F. serratus_--blent +with another familiar fucus--_F. nodosus_. Then comes a yet higher zone +of _Fucus vesiculosus_; and higher still, a few scattered tufts of +_Fucus canaliculatus_; and then, as on lofty mountains that rise above +the line of perpetual snow, vegetation ceases, and the boulder presents +a round bald head, that rises over the surface after the first few hours +of ebb have passed. But far beyond its base, where the sea never falls, +green meadows of _zostera_ flourish in the depths of the water, where +they unfold their colourless flowers, unfurnished with petals, and ripen +their farinaceous seeds, that, wherever they rise to the surface, seem +very susceptible of frost. I have seen the shores strewed with a line of +green _zostera_, with its spikes charged with seed, after a smart +October frost, that had been coincident with the ebb of a low +spring-tide, had nipt its rectilinear fronds and flexible stems. + +But what, it may be asked, was the bearing of all this observation? I +by no means saw its entire bearing at the time: I simply observed and +recorded, because I found it pleasant to observe and record. And yet one +of the wild dreams of Maillet in his _Telliamed_ had given a certain +degree of unity, and a certain definite direction, to my gleanings of +fact on the subject, which they would not have otherwise possessed. It +was held by this fanciful writer, that the vegetation of the land had +been derived originally from that of the ocean. "In a word," we find him +saying, "do not herbs, plants, roots, grains, and all of this kind that +the earth produces and nourishes, come from the sea? Is it not at least +natural to think so, since we are certain that all our habitable lands +came originally from the sea? Besides, in small islands far from the +Continent, which have appeared a few ages ago at most, and where it is +manifest that never any men had been, we find shrubs, herbs, and roots. +Now, you must be forced to own that either those productions owed their +origin to the sea, _or to a new creation, which is absurd_." And then +Maillet goes on to show, after a manner which--now that algaeology has +become a science--must be regarded as at least curious, that the plants +of the sea, though not so well developed as those of the land, are +really very much of the same nature. "The fishermen of Marseilles find +daily," he says, "in their nets, and among their fish, plants of a +hundred kinds, with their fruits still upon them; and though these +fruits are not so large nor so well nourished as those of our earth, yet +their species is in no other respects dubious. There they find clusters +of white and black grapes, peach-trees, pear-trees, prune-trees, +apple-trees, and all sorts of flowers." Such was the sort of wild fable +invented in a tract of natural science in which I found it of interest +to acquaint myself with the truth. I have since seen the extraordinary +vision of Maillet revived, first by Oken, and then by the author of the +"Vestiges of Creation;" and when, in grappling with some of the views +and statements of the latter writer, I set myself to write the chapter +of my little work which deals with this special hypothesis, I found that +I had in some sort studied in the school in which the education +necessary to its production was most thoroughly to be acquired. Had the +ingenious author of the "Vestiges" taken lessons for but a short time at +the same form, he would scarce have thought of reviving in those latter +ages the dream of Oken and Maillet. A knowledge of the facts would to a +certainty have protected him against the reproduction of the hypothesis. + +The lesson at Nigg was of a more curious kind, though, mayhap, less +certainly conclusive in its bearings. The house of the proprietor of +Nigg bordered on the burying-ground. I was engaged in cutting an +inscription on the tombstone of his wife, recently dead; and a poor +idiot, who found his living in the kitchen, and to whom the deceased had +shown kindness; used to come every day to the churchyard, to sit beside +me, and jabber in broken expressions his grief. I was struck with the +extremeness of his idiocy: he manifested even more than the ordinary +inability of his class to deal with figures, for he could scarce tell +whether nature had furnished him with one head or with two; and no power +of education could have taught him to count his fingers. He was equally +defective, too, in the mechanical. Angus could not be got into trousers; +and the contrivance of the button remained a mystery which he was never +able to comprehend. And so he wore a large blue gown, like that of a +beadsman, which slipped over his head, and was bound by a belt round his +middle, with a stout woollen shirt underneath. But, though unacquainted +with the mystery of the button, there were mysteries of another kind +with which he seemed to have a most perfect acquaintance: Angus--always +a faithful attendant at church--was a great critic in sermons; nor was +it every preacher that satisfied him; and such was his imitative turn, +that he himself could preach by the hour, in the manner--so far at +least as voice and gesture went--of all the popular ministers of the +district. There was, however, rather a paucity of idea in his +discourses: in his more energetic passages, when he struck the book and +stamped with his foot, he usually iterated, in sonorous Gaelic--"The +wicked, the wicked, O wretches the wicked!" while a passage of a less +depreciatory character served him for setting off his middle tones and +his pathos. But that for which his character was chiefly remarkable was +an instinctive, foxlike cunning, that seemed to lie at its very basis--a +cunning which co-existed, however, with perfect honesty, and a devoted +attachment to his patron the proprietor. + +The town of Cromarty had its poor imbecile man of quite a different +stamp. Jock Gordon had been, it was said, "like other people" till his +fourteenth year, when a severe attack of illness left him bankrupt in +both mind and body. He rose from his bed lame of a foot and hand, his +one side shrunken and nerveless, the one lobe of his brain apparently +inoperative, and with less than half his former energy and intellect; +not at all an idiot, however, though somewhat more helpless--the poor +mutilated fragment of a reasoning man. Among his other failings, he +stuttered lamentably. He became an inmate of the kitchen of Cromarty +House; and learned to run, or, I should rather say, to _limp_, +errands--for he had risen from the fever that ruined him to run no +more--with great fidelity and success. He was fond of church-going, of +reading good little books, and, notwithstanding his sad stutter, of +singing. During the day, he might be heard, as he hobbled along the +streets on business, "_singing in into himself_," as the children used +to say, in a low unvaried under-tone, somewhat resembling the humming of +a bee; but when night fell, the whole town heard him. He was no +patronizer of modern poets or composers. "There was a ship, and a ship +of fame," and "Death and the fair Lady," were his especial favourites; +and he could repeat the "Gosport Tragedy," and the "Babes in the Wood," +from beginning to end. Sometimes he stuttered in the notes, and then +they lengthened on and on into a never-ending quaver that our first-rate +singers might have envied. Sometimes there was a sudden break--Jock had +been consulting the pocket in which he stored his bread; but no sooner +was his mouth half-cleared than he began again. In middle-life, however, +a great calamity overtook Jock. His patron, the occupant of Cromarty +House, quitted the country for France: Jock was left without occupation +or aliment; and the streets heard no more of his songs. He grew lank and +thin, and stuttered and limped more painfully than before, and was in +the last stage of privation and distress; when the benevolent proprietor +of Nigg, who resided half the year in a town-house in Cromarty, took +pity upon him, and introduced him to his kitchen. And in a few days Jock +was singing and limping errands with as much energy as ever. But the +time at length came when his new benefactor had to quit his house in +town for his seat in the country; and it behoved Jock to take temporary +leave of Cromarty, and follow him. And then the poor imbecile man of the +town-kitchen had, of course, to measure himself against his formidable +rival, the vigorous idiot of the country one. + +On Jock's advent at Nigg--which had taken place a few weeks previous to +my engagement in the burying-ground of the parish--the character of +Angus seemed to dilate in energy and power. He repaired to the +churchyard with spade and pickaxe, and began digging a grave. It was a +grave, he said, for wicked Jock Gordon; and Jock, whether he thought it +or no, had come to Nigg, he added, only to be buried. Jock, however, was +not to be dislodged so; and Angus, professing sudden friendship for him, +gave expression to the magnanimous resolution, that he would not only +tolerate Jock, but also be very kind to him, and show him the place +where he kept all his money. He had lots of money, he said, which he had +hidden in a dike; but he would show the place to Jock Gordon--to poor +cripple Jock Gordon: he would show him the very hole, and Jock would get +it all. And so he brought Jock to the hole--a cavity in a turf-wall in +the neighbouring wood--and, taking care that his own way of retreat was +clear, he bade him insinuate his hand. No sooner had he done so, +however, than there issued forth from between his fingers a cloud of +wasps, of the variety so abundant in the north country, that build their +nests in earthy banks and old mole-hills; and poor Jock, ill fitted for +retreat in any sudden emergency, was stung within an inch of his life. +Angus returned in high glee, preaching about "wicked Jock Gordon, whom +the very wasps wouldn't let alone;" but though he pretended no further +friendship for a few days after, he again drew to him in apparent +kindness; and on the following Saturday, on Jock being despatched to a +neighbouring smithy with a sheep's head to singe, Angus volunteered his +services to show him the way. + +Angus went trotting before; Jock came limping behind: the fields were +open and bare; the dwellings few and far between; and after having +passed, in about an hour's walking, half-a-dozen little hamlets, Jock +began to marvel exceedingly that there should be no sign of the smith's +shop. "Poor foolish Jock Gordon!" ejaculated Angus, quickening his trot +into a canter; "what does he know about carrying sheep's heads to the +smithy?" Jock laboured hard to keep up with his guide; quavering and +semi-quavering, as his breath served--for Jock always began to sing, +when in solitary places, after nightfall, as a protection against +ghosts. At length the daylight died entirely away, and he could only +learn from Angus that the smithy was further off than ever; and, to add +to his trouble and perplexity, the roughness of the ground showed him +that they were wandering from the road. First they went toiling athwart +what seemed an endless range of fields, separated from one another by +deep ditches and fences of stone; then they crossed over a dreary moor, +bristling with furze and sloe-thorn; then over a waste of bogs and +quagmires; then across a track of newly-ploughed land; and then they +entered a second wood. At length, after a miserable night's wandering, +day broke upon the two forlorn satyrs; and Jock found himself in a +strange country, with a long narrow lake in front and a wood behind. He +had wandered after his guide into the remote parish of Tarbet. + +Tarbet abounded at that time in little muddy lakes, edged with +water-flags and reeds, and swarming with frogs and eels; and it was one +of the largest and deepest of these that now lay before Jock and his +guide. Angus tucked up his blue gown, as if to wade across. Jock would +have as soon thought of fording the German Ocean. "Oh, wicked Jock +Gordon!" exclaimed the fool, when he saw him hesitate; "the colonel's +waiting, poor man, for his head, and Jock will no' take it to the +smithy." He stepped into the water. Jock followed in sheer desperation; +and, after clearing the belt of reeds, both sank to the middle in the +mingled water and mud. Angus had at length accomplished the object of +his journey. Extricating himself in a moment--for he was lithe and +active--he snatched the sheep's head and trotters from Jock, and, +leaping ashore, left the poor man sticking fast. It was church-time ere +he reached, on his way back, the old Abbey of Fearn, still employed as a +Protestant place of worship; and as the sight of the gathering people +awakened his church-going propensity, he went in. He was in high +spirits--seemed, by the mouths he made, very much to admire the sermon, +and paraded the sheep's head and trotters through the passages and +gallery a score of times at least, like a monk of the order of St. +Francis exhibiting the relics of some favourite saint. In the evening he +found his way home, but learned, to his grief and astonishment, that +"wicked Jock Gordon" had got there shortly before him in a cart. The +poor man had remained sticking in the mud for three long hours after +Angus had left him, until at length the very frogs began to cultivate +his acquaintance, as they had done that of King Log of old; and in the +mud he would have been sticking still, had he not been extricated by a +farmer of Fearn, who, in coming to church, had taken the lake in his +way. He left Nigg, however, for Cromarty on the following day, convinced +that he was no match for his rival, and dubious how the next adventure +might terminate. + +Such was the story which I found current in Nigg, when working in its +churchyard, with the hero of the adventure often beside me. It led me to +take special note of his class, and to collect facts respecting them, on +which I erected a sort of semi-metaphysical theory of human character, +which, though it would not now be regarded as by any means a novel one, +I had thought out for myself, and which possessed for me, in +consequence, the charm of originality. In these poor creatures, I thus +argued, we find, amid much general dilapidation and brokenness of mind, +certain instincts and peculiarities remaining entire. Here, in Angus, +for instance, there is that instinctive cunning which some of the lower +animals, such as the fox, possess, existing in a wonderful degree of +perfection. Pope himself, who "could not drink tea without a stratagem," +could scarce have possessed a larger share of it. And yet how distinct +must not this sort of ingenuity be from the mechanical ingenuity! Angus +cannot fix a button in its hole. I even see him baffled by a tall +snuff-box, with a small quantity of snuff at its bottom, that lies +beyond the reach of his finger. He has not ingenuity enough to lay it on +its side, or to empty its snuff on his palm; but stretches and ever +stretches towards it the unavailing digit, and then gets angry to find +it elude his touch. There are other idiots, however, who have none of +Angus's cunning, in whom this mechanical ability is decidedly developed. +Many of the _cretins_ of the Alps are said to be remarkable for their +skill as artisans; and it is told of a Scotch idiot, who lived in a +cottage on the Maolbuie Common in the upper part of the Black Isle, and +in whom a similar mechanical ability existed, abstracted from ability of +almost every other kind, that, among other things, he fabricated, out of +a piece of rude metal, a large sacking needle. Angus is attached to his +patron, and mourns for the deceased lady; but he seems to have little +general regard for the species--simply courting for the time those from +whom he expects snuff. The Cromarty idiot, on the contrary, is obliging +and kindly to all, and bears a peculiar love to children; and, though +more an imbecile in some respects than even Angus, he has a turn for +dress, and can attire himself very neatly. In this last respect, +however, the Cromarty fool was excelled by an idiot of the last age, +known to the children of many a village and hamlet as Fool Charloch, who +used to go wandering about the country, adorned, somewhat in the style +of an Indian chief, with half a peacock's tail stuck in his cap. Yet +another idiot, a fierce and dangerous creature, seemed as invariably +malignant in his dispositions as the Cromarty one is benevolent, and +died in a prison, to which he was committed for killing a poor +half-witted associate. Yet another idiot of the north of Scotland had a +strange turn for the supernatural. He was a mutterer of charms, and a +watcher of omens, and possessed, it was said, the second sight. I +collected not a few other facts of a similar kind, and thus reasoned +regarding them:-- + +These idiots are imperfect men, from whose minds certain faculties have +been effaced, and other faculties left to exhibit themselves, all the +more prominently from the circumstances of their standing so much alone. +They resemble men who have lost their hands, but retain their feet, or +who have lost their sight or smell, but retain their taste and hearing. +But as the limbs and the senses, if they did not exist as separate parts +of the frame, could not be separately lost, so in the mind itself, or in +at least the organization through which the mind manifests itself, +there must also be separate parts, or they would not be thus found +isolated by Nature in her mutilated and abortive specimens. Those +metaphysicians who deal by the mind as if it were simply a general power +existing in _states_, must be scarce less in error than if they were to +regard the _senses_ as merely a general power existing in states, +instead of recognising them as distinct, independent powers, so various +often in their degree of development, that, from the full perfection of +any one of them, the perfection, or even the existence, of any of the +others cannot be predicated. If, for instance, it were--as some +physicians hold--the same general warmth of emotive power that glows in +benevolence and burns in resentment, the fierce, dangerous idiot that +killed his companion, and the kindly-dispositioned Cromarty one who +takes home pailfuls of water to the poor old women of the place, and +parts with his own toys to its children, would, instead of thus +exhibiting the opposite poles of character, at least so far resemble one +another, that the vindictive fool would at times be kindly and obliging, +and the benevolent one at times violent and resentful. But such is not +the case: the one is never madly savage--the other never genial and +kind; and so it seems legitimate to infer, that it is not a general +power or energy that acts through them in different states, but two +particular powers or energies, as unlike in their natures, and as +capable of acting apart, as seeing and hearing. Even powers which seem +to have so much in common, that the same words are sometimes made use of +in reference to both, may be as distinct as smelling and tasting. We +speak of the _cunning_ workman, and we speak of the _cunning_ man; and +refer to a certain faculty of contrivance manifested in dealing with +characters and affairs on the part of the one, and in dealing with +certain modifications of matter on the part of the other; but so +entirely different are the two faculties, and, further, so little +dependent are they, in at least their first elements, on intellect, that +we may find the cunning which manifests itself in affairs, existing, as +in Angus, totally dissociated from mechanical skill; and, on the other +hand, the cunning of the artisan, existing, as in the idiot of the +Maolbuie, totally dissociated from that of the diplomatist. In short, +regarding idiots as persons of fragmentary mind, in whom certain primary +mental elements may be found standing out in a state of great +entireness, and all the more striking in their relief from the +isolation, I came to view them as _bits of analysis_, if I may so +express myself, made to my hand by Nature, and from the study of which I +could conceive of the structure of minds of a more complete, and +therefore more complex character. As children learn the alphabet from +cards, each of which contains only a letter or two a-piece, printed +large, I held at this time, and, with a few modifications, hold still, +that those primary sentiments and propensities which form the basis of +character, may be found separately stamped in the same way on the +comparatively blank minds of the imbecile; and that the student of +mental philosophy might learn from them what may be regarded as the +alphabet of his science, much more truthfully than from those +metaphysicians who represent mind as a power not manifested in +contemporaneous and separable faculties, but as existing in consecutive +states. + +Cromarty had been fortunate in its parish ministers. From the death of +its last curate, shortly after the Revolution, and, the consequent +return of its old "outed minister," who had resigned his living for +conscience' sake, twenty-eight years before, and now came to spend his +evening of life with his people, it had enjoyed the services of a series +of devout and popular men; and so the cause of the Establishment was +particularly strong in both town and parish. At the beginning of the +present century Cromarty had not its single Dissenter; and though a few +of what were known as "Haldane's people" might be found in it, some +eight or ten years later they failed in effecting a lodgment, and +ultimately quitted it for a neighbouring town. Almost all the Dissent +that has arisen in Scotland since the Revolution has been an effect of +Moderatism and forced settlements; and as the place had known neither, +its people continued to harbour within the Church of their fathers, nor +wished to change. A vacancy had occurred in the incumbency, during my +sojourn in the south, through the death of the incumbent, the respected +minister of my childhood and youth; and I found, on my return, a new +face in the pulpit. It was that of a remarkable man--the late Mr. +Stewart of Cromarty--one of at once the most original thinkers and +profound theologians I ever knew; though he has, alas! left as little +mark of his exquisite talent behind him, as those sweet singers of +former ages, the memory of whose enchanting notes has died, save as a +doubtful echo, with the generation that heard them. I sat, with few +interruptions, for sixteen years under his ministry; and for nearly +twelve of these enjoyed his confidence and friendship. + +I never could press myself on the notice of superior men, however +desirous of forming their acquaintance; and have, in consequence, missed +opportunities innumerable of coming in friendly contact with persons +whom it would be at once a pleasure and an honour to know. And so, for +the first two years, or rather more, I was content to listen with +profound attention to the pulpit addresses of my new minister, and to +appear as a catechumen, when my turn came, at his diets of catechising. +He had been struck, however, as he afterwards told me, by my sustained +attention when at church; and, on making inquiry regarding me among his +friends, he was informed that I was a great reader, and, it was +believed, a writer of verse. And coming unwittingly out upon him one day +as he was passing, when quitting my work-place for the street, he +addressed me "Well, lad," he said, "it is your dinner hour: I hear I +have a poet among my people?" "I doubt it much," I replied. "Well," he +rejoined, "one may fall short of being a poet, and yet gain by +exercising one's tastes and talents in the poetic walk. The +accomplishment of verse is at least not a vulgar one." The conversation +went on as we passed together along the street; and he stood for a time +opposite the manse door. "I am forming," he said, "a small library for +our Sabbath-school scholars and teachers: most of the books are simple +enough little things; but it contains a few works of the intellectual +class. Call upon me this evening that we may look over them, and you may +perhaps find among them some volumes you would wish to read." I +accordingly waited upon him in the evening; and we had a long +conversation together. He was, I saw, curiously sounding me, and taking +my measure in all directions; or, as he himself afterwards used to +express it in his characteristic way, he was like a traveller who, +having come unexpectedly on a dark pool in a ford, dips down his staff, +to ascertain the depth of the water and the nature of the bottom. He +inquired regarding my reading, and found that in the belles-lettres, +especially in English literature, it was about as extensive as his own. +He next inquired respecting my acquaintance with the metaphysicians. +"Had I read Reid?" "Yes." "Brown?" "Yes." "_Hume?_" "Yes." "Ah! ha! +Hume!! By the way, has he not something very ingenious about miracles? +Do you remember his argument?" I stated the argument. "Ah, very +ingenious--most ingenious. And how would you answer that?" I said, "I +thought I could give an abstract of the reply of Campbell," and sketched +in outline the reverend Doctor's argument. "And do you deem that +satisfactory?" said the minister. "No, not at all," I replied. "No! no! +_that's_ not satisfactory." "But perfectly satisfactory," I rejoined, +"that such is the general partiality for the better side, that the worse +argument has been received as perfectly adequate for the last sixty +years." The minister's face gleamed with the broad fun that entered so +largely into his composition, and the conversation shifted into other +channels. + +From that night forward I enjoyed perhaps more of his confidence and +conversation than any other man in his parish. Many an hour did he spend +beside me in the churchyard, and many a quiet tea did I enjoy in the +manse; and I learned to know how much solid worth and true wisdom lay +under the somewhat eccentric exterior of a man who sacrificed scarce +anything to the conventionalities. This, with the exception of Chalmers, +sublimest of Scottish preachers--for, little as he was known, I will +challenge for him that place--was a genial man, who, for the sake of a +joke, would sacrifice anything save principle; but, though marvellously +careless of maintaining intact the "gloss of the clerical enamel," never +was there sincerity more genuine than his, or a more thorough honesty. +Content to be in the right, he never thought of simulating it, and +sacrificed even less than he ought to appearances. I may mention, that +on coming to Edinburgh, I found the peculiar taste formed under the +ministrations of Mr. Stewart most thoroughly gratified under those of +Dr. Guthrie; and that in looking round the congregation, I saw, with +pleasure rather than surprise, that all Mr. Stewart's people resident in +Edinburgh had come to the same conclusion; for there--sitting in the +Doctor's pews--they all were. Certainly in fertility of illustration, in +soul-stirring, evangelistic doctrine, and in a general basis of rich +humour, the resemblance between the deceased and the living minister +seems complete; but genius is always unique; and while in breadth of +popular power Dr. Guthrie stands alone among living preachers, I have +never either heard or read argument in the analogical field that in +ingenuity or originality equalled that of Mr. Stewart. + +That in which he specially excelled all the men I ever knew was the +power of detecting and establishing occult resemblances. He seemed able +to read off, as if by intuition--not by snatches and fragments, but as a +consecutive whole--that old revelation of type and symbol which God +first gave to man; and when privileged to listen to him, I have been +constrained to recognise, in the evident integrity of the reading, and +the profound and consistent theological system which the pictorial +record conveyed, a demonstration of the divinity of its origin, not less +powerful and convincing than the demonstrations of the other and more +familiar departments of the Christian evidences. Compared with other +theologians in this province, I have felt under his ministry as if, when +admitted to the company of some party of modern _savans_ employed in +deciphering a hieroglyphic covered obelisk of the desert, and here +successful in discovering the meaning of an insulated sign, and there of +a detached symbol, we had been suddenly joined by some sage of the olden +time, to whom the mysterious inscription was but a piece of common +language written in a familiar alphabet, and who could read off +fluently, and as a whole, what the others could but darkly guess at in +detached and broken parts. To this singular power of tracing analogies +there was added in Mr. Stewart an ability of originating the most vivid +illustrations. In some instances a sudden stroke produced a figure that +at once illuminated the subject-matter of his discourse, like the light +of a lanthorn flashed hastily upon a painted wall; in others he dwelt +upon an illustrative picture, finishing it with stroke after stroke, +until it filled the whole imagination, and sank deep into the memory. I +remember hearing him preach, on one occasion, on the return of the Jews +as a people to HIM whom they had rejected, and the effect which their +sudden conversion could not fail to have on the unbelieving and Gentile +world. Suddenly his language, from its high level of eloquent +simplicity, became that of metaphor, "When JOSEPH," he said, "shall +reveal himself to his _brethren_, the _whole house of Pharaoh shall hear +the weeping_." On another occasion I heard him dwell on that vast +profundity, characteristic of the scriptural revelation of God, which +ever deepens and broadens the longer and more thoroughly it is explored, +until at length the student--struck at first by its expansiveness, but +conceiving of it as if it were a mere _measured_ expansiveness--finds +that it partakes of the unlimited infinity of the Divine nature itself. +Naturally and simply, as if growing out of the subject, like a +berry-covered mistletoe out of the massy trunk of an oak, there sprung +up one of his more lengthened illustrations. A child bred up in the +interior of the country has been brought for the first time to the +sea-shore, and carried out into the middle of one of the noble firths +that indent so deeply our line of coast. And, on his return, he +describes to his father, with all a child's eagerness, the wonderful +expansiveness of the _ocean_ which he had seen. He went out, he tells +him, far amid the great waves and the rushing tides, until at length the +hills seemed diminished into mere hummocks, and the wide land itself +appeared along the waters but as a slim strip of blue. And then, when in +mid-sea, the sailors heaved the lead; and it went down, and down, and +down, and the long line slipped swiftly away, coil after coil, till, ere +the plummet rested on the ooze below, all was well-nigh expended. And +was it not the great sea, asks the boy, that was so vastly broad, and so +profoundly deep? Ah! my child, exclaims the father, you have not seen +aught of its greatness: you have sailed over merely one of its little +arms. Had it been out into the wide ocean that the seamen had carried +you, "you would have _seen_ no shore, and you would have _found_ no +bottom." In one rare quality of the orator Mr. Stewart stood alone among +his contemporaries. Pope refers to a strange power of creating love and +admiration by "just touching the brink of all we hate." And Burke, in +some of his nobler passages, happily exemplifies the thing. He +intensified the effect of his burning eloquence by the employment of +figures so homely--nay, almost so repulsive--that the man of lower +powers who ventured on their use would find them effective in but +lowering his subject, and ruining his cause. I need but refer, in +illustration, to the well-known figure of the disembowelled bird, which +occurs in the indignant denial that the character of the revolutionary +French in aught resembled that of the English. "We have not," says the +orator, "been drawn and trussed, in order that we may be filled, like +stuffed birds in a museum, with chaff, and rags, and paltry blurred +shreds of paper about the rights of man." Into this perilous but +singularly effective department, closed against even superior men, Mr. +Stewart could enter safely and at will. One of the last sermons I heard +him preach--a discourse of singular power--was on the "Sin-offering" of +the Jewish economy, as minutely described in Leviticus. He drew a +picture of the slaughtered animal, foul with dust and blood, and +streaming, in its impurity, to the sun, as it awaited the consuming fire +amid the uncleanness of ashes outside the camp--its throat gashed +across--its entrails laid open; a vile and horrid thing, which no one +could see without experiencing emotions of disgust, nor touch without +contracting defilement. The description appeared too painfully +vivid--its introduction too little in accordance with the rules of a +just taste. But the master in this difficult walk knew what he was +doing. And that, he said, pointing to the strongly-coloured picture he +had just completed--"And THAT IS SIN." By one stroke the intended effect +was produced, and the rising disgust and horror transferred from the +revolting material image to the great moral evil. + +How could such a man pass from earth, and leave no trace behind him? +Mainly, I believe, from two several causes. As the minister of an +attached provincial congregation, a sense of duty, and the promptings of +a highly intellectual nature, to which exertion was enjoyment, led him +to study much and deeply; and he poured forth _viva voce_ his +full-volumed and ever-sparkling tide of eloquent idea, as freely and +richly as the nightingale, unconscious of a listener, pours forth her +melody in the shade. But, strangely diffident of his own powers, he +could not be made to believe that what so much impressed and delighted +the privileged few who surrounded him, was equally suited to impress +and delight the intellectual many outside; or that he was fitted to +speak through the press in tones which would compel the attention, not +merely of the religious, but also of the literary world. Further, +practising but little the art of elaborate composition, and master of a +spoken style more effective for the purposes of the pulpit than almost +any written one, save that of Chalmers, he failed, in all his attempts +in writing, to satisfy a fastidious taste, which he had suffered greatly +to outgrow his ability of production. And so he failed to leave any +adequate mark behind him. I find that for my stock of theological idea, +not directly derived from Scripture, I stand more indebted to two Scotch +theologians than to all other men of their profession and class. The one +of these was Thomas Chalmers--the other, Alexander Stewart: the one a +name known wherever the English language is spoken; while of the other +it is only remembered, and by comparatively a few, that the impression +did exist at the time of his death, that + + + "A mighty spirit was eclipsed--a power + Had passed from day to darkness, to whose hour + Of light no likeness was bequeathed--no name." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + + "See yonder poor o'er-labour'd wight, + So abject, mean, and vile, + Who begs a brother of the earth + To give him leave to toil; + And see his lordly _fellow-worm_ + The poor petition spurn."--BURNS. + + +Work failed me about the end of June 1828; and, acting on the advice of +a friend who believed that my style of cutting inscriptions could not +fail to secure for me a good many little jobs in the churchyards of +Inverness, I visited that place, and inserted a brief advertisement in +one of the newspapers, soliciting employment. I ventured to characterize +my style of engraving as neat and _correct_; laying especial emphasis on +the correctness, as a quality not very common among the stone-cutters of +the north. It was not a Scotch, but an English mason, who, when engaged, +at the instance of a bereaved widower, in recording on his wife's +tombstone that a "virtuous woman is a _crown_ to her husband," corrupted +the text, in his simplicity, by substituting "5s." for the "_crown_." +But even Scotch masons do make odd enough mistakes at times, especially +in the provinces; and I felt it would be something gained could I but +get an opportunity of showing the Inverness public that I had at least +English enough to avoid the commoner errors. My verses, thought I, are +at least tolerably correct: could I not get some one or two copies +introduced into the poet's corner of the _Inverness Courier_ or +_Journal_, and thus show that I have literature enough to be trusted +with the cutting of an epitaph on a gravestone? I had a letter of +introduction from a friend in Cromarty to one of the ministers of the +place, himself an author, and a person of influence with the proprietors +of the _Courier_; and, calculating on some amount of literary sympathy +from a man accustomed to court the public through the medium of the +press, I thought I might just venture on stating the case to him. I +first, however, wrote a brief address, in octo-syllabic quatrains, to +the river which flows through the town, and gives to it its name;--a +composition which has, I find, more of the advertisement in it than is +quite seemly, but which would have perhaps expressed less confidence had +it been written less under the influence of a shrinking timidity, that +tried to reassure itself by words of comfort and encouragement. + +I was informed that the minister's hour for receiving visitors of the +humbler class was between eleven and twelve at noon; and, with the +letter of introduction and my copy of verses in my pocket, I called at +the manse, and was shown into a little narrow ante-room, furnished with +two seats of deal that ran along the opposite walls. I found the place +occupied by some six or seven individuals--more than half their number +old withered women, in very shabby habiliments, who, as I soon learned +from a conversation which they kept up in a grave under-tone, about +weekly allowances, and the partialities of the session, were paupers. +The others were young men, who had apparently serious requests to prefer +anent marriage and baptism; for I saw that one of them was ever and anon +drawing from his breast-pocket a tattered copy of the Shorter Catechism, +and running over the questions; and I overheard another asking his +neighbour "who drew up the contract lines for him," and "where he had +got the whisky." The minister entered; and as he passed into the inner +room, we all rose. He stood for a moment in the doorway, and, beckoning +on one of the young men--him of the Catechism--they went in together, +and the door closed. They remained closeted together for about twenty +minutes or half an hour, and then the young man went out; and another +young man--he who had procured the contract lines and the whisky--took +his place. The interview in this second case, however, was much shorter +than the first; and a very few minutes served to despatch the business +of the third young man; and then the minister, coming to the doorway, +looked first at the old women and then at me, as if mentally determining +our respective claims to priority; and, mine at length prevailing--I +know not on what occult principle--I was beckoned in. I presented my +letter of introduction, which was graciously read; and though the nature +of the business did strike me as ludicrously out of keeping with the +place, and it did cost me some little trouble to suppress at one time a +burst of laughter, that would, of course, have been prodigiously +improper in the circumstances, I detailed to him in a few words my +little plan, and handed him my copy of verses. He read them aloud with +slow deliberation. + + + ODE TO THE NESS. + + Child of the lake! whose silvery gleam + Cheers the rough desert, dark and lone,[11]-- + A brown, deep, sullen, restless stream, + With ceaseless speed thou hurriest on. + And yet thy banks with flowers are gay; + The sun laughs on thy troubled breast; + And o'er thy tides the zephyrs play, + Though nought be thine of quiet rest.[12] + + Stream of the lake! to him who strays, + Lonely, thy winding marge along, + Not fraught with lore of other days, + And yet not all unblest in song-- + To him thou tell'st of busy men, + Who madly waste their present day. + Pursuing hopes, baseless as vain, + While life, untasted, glides away. + + Stream of the lake! why hasten on? + A boist'rous ocean spreads before, + Where dash dark tides, and wild winds moan, + And foam-wreaths skirt a cheerless shore, + Nor bending flowers, nor waving fields, + Nor aught of rest is there for thee; + But rest to thee no pleasure yields; + Then haste and join the stormy sea! + + Stream of the lake! of bloody men, + Who thirst the guilty fight to try-- + Who seek for joy in mortal pain, + Music in misery's thrilling cry-- + Thou tell'st: peace yields no joy to them, + Nor harmless Pleasure's golden smile; + Of evil deed the cheerless fame + Is all the meed that crowns their toil. + + Not such would prove if Pleasure shone-- + Stream of the deep and peaceful lake!-- + His course, whom Hardship urges on, + Through cheerless waste and thorny brake. + For, ah! each pleasing scene he loves, + And peace is all his heart's desire; + And, ah! of scenes where Pleasure roves, + And Peace, could gentle minstrel tire? + + Stream of the lake! for thee await + The tempests of an angry main; + A brighter hope, a happier fate, + He boasts, whose present course is pain. + Yes, even for him may death prepare + A home of pleasure, peace, and love; + Thus blessed by hope, little his care. + Though rough his present course may prove. + + +The minister paused as he concluded, and looked puzzled. "Pretty well, I +daresay," he said; "but I do not now read poetry. You, however, use a +word that is not English--'Thy winding _marge_ along.' Marge!--What is +marge?" "You will find it in Johnson," I said. "Ah, but we must not use +all the words we find in Johnson." "But the poets make frequent use of +it." "What poets?" "Spenser." "Too old--too old; no authority now," said +the minister. "But the Wartons also use it." "I don't know the Wartons." +"It occurs also," I iterated, "in one of the most finished sonnets of +Henry Kirke White." "What sonnet?" "That to the river Trent. + + + 'Once more, O Trent! along thy pebbly marge, + A pensive invalid, reduced and pale, + From the close sick-room newly set at large, + Woos to his woe-worn cheek the pleasant gale.' + + +It is, in short, one of the common English words of the poetic +vocabulary." Could a man in quest of patronage, and actually at the time +soliciting a favour, possibly contrive to say anything more imprudent? +And this, too, to a gentleman so much accustomed to be deferred to when +he took up his ground on the _Standards_, as sometimes to forget, +through the sheer force of habit, that he was not a standard himself! He +coloured to the eyes; and his condescending humility, which seemed, I +thought, rather too great for the occasion, and was of a kind which my +friend Mr. Stewart never used to exhibit, appeared somewhat ruffled. "I +have no acquaintance," he said, "with the editor of the _Courier_; we +take opposite sides on very important questions; and I cannot recommend +your verses to him; but call on Mr. ----; he is one of the proprietors; +and, with _my compliments_, state your case to him; he will be perhaps +able to assist you. Meanwhile, I wish you all success." The minister +hurried me out, and one of the withered old women was called in. "This," +I said to myself, as I stepped into the street, "is the sort of +patronage which letters of introduction procure for one. I don't think +I'll seek any more of it." + +Meeting on the street, however, with, two Cromarty friends, one of whom +was just going to call on the gentleman named by the minister, he +induced me to accompany him. The other said, as he took his separate +way, that having come to visit an old townsman settled in Inverness, a +man of some influence in the burgh, he would state my case to him; and +he was sure he would exert himself to procure me employment. I have +already referred to the remark of Burns. It is recorded by his brother +Gilbert, that the poet used often to say, "That he could not well +conceive a more mortifying picture of human life, than a man seeking +work;" and that the exquisite dirge, "Man was made to mourn," owes its +existence to the sentiment. The feeling is certainly a very depressing +one; and as on most other occasions work rather sought me than I the +work, I experienced more of it at this time than at any other period of +my life. I of course could hardly expect that people should die off and +require epitaphs merely to accommodate me. That demand of employment as +a right in all cases and circumstances, which the more extreme +"claims-of-labour men" do not scruple to urge, is the result of a sort +of indignant reaction on this feeling--a feeling which became poetry in +Burns and nonsense in the Communists; but which I experienced neither as +nonsense nor poetry, but simply as a depressing conviction that I was +one man too many in the world. The gentleman on whom I now called with +my friend was a person both of business habits and literary tastes; but +I saw that my poetic scheme rather damaged me in his estimation. The +English verse produced at this time in the far north was of a kind ill +fitted for the literary market, and usually published, or rather +printed--for published it never was--by that teasing subscription scheme +which so often robs men of good money, and gives them bad books in +exchange; and he seemed to set me down as one of the annoying +semi-beggar class;--rather a mistake, I should hope. He, however, +obligingly introduced me to a gentleman of literature and science, the +secretary of a society of the place, antiquarian and scientific in its +character, termed the "Northern Institution," and the honorary +conservator of its museum--an interesting miscellaneous collection which +I had previously seen, and in connexion with which I had formed my only +other scheme of getting into employment. + +I wrote that old English hand which has been revived of late by the +general rage for the mediaeval, but which at that time was one of the +lost arts, with much neatness; and could produce imitations of the +illuminated manuscripts that preceded our printed books, which even an +antiquary would have pronounced respectable. And, addressing the members +of the Northern Institution on the character and tendency of their +pursuits, in a somewhat lengthy piece of verse, written in what I least +intended to be the manner of Dryden, as exemplified in his middle-style +poems, such as the _Religio Laici_, I engrossed it in the old hand, and +now called on the Secretary, to request that he would present it at the +first meeting of the Society, which was to be held, I understood, in a +few days. The Secretary was busy at his desk; but he received me +politely, spoke approvingly of my work as an imitation of the old +manuscript, and obligingly, charged himself with its delivery at the +meeting: and so we parted for the time, not in the least aware that +there was a science which dealt with characters greatly more ancient +than those of the old manuscripts, and laden with profounder meanings, +in which we both took a deep interest, and regarding which we could have +exchanged facts and ideas with mutual pleasure and profit. The Secretary +of the Northern Institution at this time was Mr. George Anderson, the +well-known geologist, and joint author with his brother of the admirable +"Guide-Book to the Highlands," which bears their name. I never heard how +my address fared. It would, of course, have been tabled--looked at, I +suppose, for a few seconds by a member or two--and then set aside; and +it is probably still in the archives of the Institution, awaiting the +light of future ages, when its simulated antiquity shall have become +real. It was not written in a character to be read, nor, I fear, very +readable in any character; and so the members of the Institution must +have remained ignorant of all the wisdom I had found in their pursuits, +antiquarian and ethnological. The following forms an average specimen of +the production:-- + + + "Tis yours to trace + Each deep-fixed trait that marks the human race; + And as the Egyptian priests, with mystery fraught, + By signs, not words, of Sphynx, and Horus taught, + So, 'mid your stores, by _things_, not books, ye scan + The powers, scope, history, of the mind of man. + Yon chequered wall displays the arms of war + Of times remote, and nations distant far; + Alas! the club and brand but serve to show + How wide extends the reign of wrong and woe; + And tores uncouth, and feathery circlets, tell + In human hearts what gewgaw follies dwell. + Yes! all that man has framed his image bears; + And much of hate, and much of pride, appears. + "Pleasant it is each diverse step to scan, + By which the savage first assumes the man; + To mark what feelings sway his softening breast, + Or what strong passion triumphs o'er the rest. + Narrow of heart, or free, or brave, or base, + Ev'n in the infant we the man may trace; + And from the rude ungainly sires may know + Each striking trait the polished sons shall show. + Dependent on what moods assume the reign, + Science shall smile, or spread her stores in vain: + As coward fears, or generous passions sway, + Shall freedom reign, or heartless slaves obey. + "Not unto chance must aught of power be given,-- + A country's genius is the gift of Heaven. + What warms the poet's lays with generous fire, + To which no toil can reach, no art aspire? + Who taught the sage, with deepest wisdom fraught, + While scarce one pupil grasps the ponderous thought? + Nay, wherefore ask?--as Heaven the mind bestows, + A Napier calculates and a Thomson glows. + Now turn to where, beneath the city wall, + The sun's fierce rays in unbroke splendour fall; + Vacant and weak, there sits the idiot boy, + Of pain scarce conscious, scarce alive to joy; + A thousand busy sounds around him roar; + Trade wields the tool, and Commerce plies the oar; + But, all unheeding of the restless scene, + Of toil he nothing knows, and nought of gain: + The thoughts of common minds were strange to him, + Ev'n as to such a Napier's thoughts would seem. + Thus, as in men, in peopled states, we find + Unequal powers, and varied tones of mind: + Timid or dauntless, high of thought or low, + O'erwhelmed with phlegm, or fraught with fire they glow + And as the sculptor's art is better shown + In Parian marble than in porous stone, + Wreaths fresh or sear'd repay refinement's toil, + As genius owns or dulness stamps the soil. + Where isles of coral stud the southern main, + And painted kings and cinctured warriors reign, + Nations there are who native worth possess,-- + Whom every art shall court, each science bless: + And tribes there are, heavy of heart and slow, + On whom no coming age a change shall know." + + +There was, I suspect, a waste of effort in all this planning; but some +men seem destined to do things clumsily and ill, at many times the +expense which serves to secure success to the more adroit. I despatched +my Ode to the newspaper, accompanied by a letter of explanation; but it +fared as ill as my Address to the Institution; and a single line in +italics in the next number intimated that it was not to appear. And thus +both my schemes were, as they ought to be, knocked on the head. I have +not schemed any since. Strategy is, I fear, not my forte; and it is idle +to attempt doing in spite of nature what one has not been born to do +well. Besides, I began to be seriously dissatisfied with myself: there +seemed to be nothing absolutely wrong in a man who wanted honest +employment taking this way of showing he was capable of it; but I felt +the spirit within rise against it; and so I resolved to ask no more +favours of any one, even should poets' corners remain shut against me +for ever, or however little Institutions, literary or scientific, might +favour me with their notice. I strode along the streets, half an inch +taller on the strength of the resolution; and straightway, as if to +reward me for my magnanimity, an offer of employment came my way +unsolicited. I was addressed by the recruiting serjeant of a Highland +regiment, who asked me if I did not belong to the Aird? "No, not to the +Aird; to Cromarty," I replied. "Ah, to Cromarty--very fine place! But +would you not better bid adieu to Cromarty, and come along with me? We +have a capital grenadier company; and in our regiment a stout steady +man is always sure to get on." I thanked him, but declined his +invitation; and, with an apology on his part, which was not in the least +needed or expected, we parted. + +Though verse and old English failed me, the simple statement made by my +Cromarty friend to my townsman located in Inverness, that I was a good +workman, and wanted work, procured me at once the cutting of an +inscription, and two little jobs in Cromarty besides, which I was to +execute on my return home. The Inverness job was soon completed; but I +had the near prospect of another; and as the little bit of the public +that came my way approved of my cutting, I trusted employment would flow +in apace. I lodged with a worthy old widow, conscientious and devout, +and ever doing her humble work consciously in the eye of the Great +Taskmaster--one of a class of persons not at all so numerous in the +world as might be desirable, but sufficiently common to render it rather +a marvel that some of our modern masters of fiction should never have +chanced--judging from their writings--to come in contact with any of +them. She had an only son, a working cabinetmaker, who used occasionally +to annoy her by his silly jokes at serious things, and who was courting +at this time a sweetheart who had five hundred pounds in the bank--an +immensely large sum to a man in his circumstances. He had urged his suit +with such apparent success, that the marriage-day was fixed and at hand, +and the house which he had engaged as his future residence fully +furnished. And it was his prospective brother-in-law who was to be my +new employer, so soon as the wedding should leave him leisure enough to +furnish epitaphs for two tombstones recently placed in the family +burying-ground. The wedding-day arrived; and, to be out of the way of +the bustle and the pageant, I retired to the house of a neighbour, a +carpenter, whom I had obliged by a few lessons in practical geometry and +architectural drawing. The carpenter was at the wedding; and, with the +whole house to myself, I was engaged in writing, when up flew the door, +and in rushed my pupil the carpenter. "What has happened?" I asked. +"Happened!" said the carpenter,--"Happened!! The bride's away with +another man!! The bridegroom has taken to his bed, and raves like a +madman; and his poor old mother--good honest woman--is crying like a +child. Do come and see what can be done." I accompanied him to my +landlady's, where I found the bridegroom in a paroxysm of mingled grief +and rage, congratulating himself on his escape, and bemoaning his +unhappy disappointment, by turns. He lay athwart the bed, which he told +me in the morning he had quitted for the last time; but as I entered, he +half rose, and, seizing on a pair of new shoes which had been prepared +for the bride, and lay on a table beside him, he hurled them against the +wall, first the one and then the other, until they came rebounding back +across the room; and then, with an exclamation that need not be +repeated, he dashed himself down again. I did my best to comfort his +poor mother, who seemed to feel very keenly the slight done to her son, +and to anticipate with dread the scandal and gossip of which it would +render her humble household the subject. She seemed sensible, however, +that he had made an escape, and at once acquiesced in my suggestion, +that all that should now be done would be to get every expense her son +had been at in his preparations for housekeeping and the wedding +transferred to the shoulders of the other party. And such an arrangement +could, I thought, be easily effected through the bride's brother, who +seemed to be a reasonable man, and who would be aware also that a suit +at law could be instituted in the case against his sister; though in any +such suit I held it might be best for both parties not to engage. And at +the old woman's request, I set out with the carpenter to wait on the +bride's brother, in order to see whether he was not prepared for some +such arrangement as I suggested, and, besides, able to furnish us with +some explanation of the extraordinary step taken by the bride. + +We were overtaken, as we passed along the street, by a person who was, +he said, in search of us, and who now requested us to accompany him; +and, threading our way, under his guidance, through a few narrow lanes +that traverse the assemblage of houses on the west bank of the Ness, we +stopped at the door of an obscure alehouse. This, said our conductor, we +have found to be the retreat of the bride. He ushered us into a room +occupied by some eight or ten persons, drawn up on the opposite sides, +with a blank space between. On the one side sat the bride, a +high-coloured, buxom young girl, serene and erect as Britannia on the +halfpennies, and guarded by two stout fellows, masons or slaters +apparently, in their working dresses. They looked hard at the carpenter +and me as we entered, of course regarding us as the assailants against +whom they would have to maintain their prize. On the other side sat a +group of the bride's relatives--among the rest her brother--silent, and +all apparently very much grieved; while in the space between them there +stumped up and down a lame, sallow-complexioned oddity, in shabby black, +who seemed to be making a set oration, to which no one replied, about +the sacred claims of love, and the cruelty of interfering with the +affections of young people. Neither the carpenter nor myself felt any +inclination to debate with the orator, or fight with the guards, or yet +to interfere with the affections of the young lady; and so, calling out +the brother into another room, and expressing our regret at what had +happened, we stated our case, and found him, as we had expected, very +reasonable. We could not, however, treat for the absent bridegroom, nor +could he engage for his sister; and so we had to part without coming to +any agreement. There were points about the case which at first I could +not understand. My jilted acquaintance the cabinetmaker had not only +enjoyed the countenance of all his mistress's relatives, but he had been +also as well received by herself as lovers usually are: she had written +him kind letters, and accepted of his presents; and then, just as her +friends were sitting down to the marriage breakfast, she had eloped +with another man. The other man, however--a handsome fellow, but great +scamp--had a prior claim to her regards: he had been the lover of her +choice, though detested by her brother and all her friends, who were +sufficiently well acquainted with his character to know that he would +land her in ruin; and during his absence in the country, where he was +working as a slater, they had lent their influence and countenance to my +acquaintance the cabinetmaker, in order to get her married to a +comparatively safe man, out of the slater's reach. And, not very strong +of will, she had acquiesced in the arrangement. On the eve of the +marriage, however, the slater had come into town; and, exchanging +clothes with an acquaintance a Highland soldier, he had walked +unsuspected opposite her door, until, finding an opportunity of +conversing with her on the morning of the wedding-day, he had +represented her new lover as a silly, ill-shaped fellow, who had just +head enough to be mercenary, and himself as one of the most devoted and +disconsolate of lovers. And, his soft tongue and fine leg gaining the +day, she had left the marriage guests to enjoy their tea and toast +without her, and set off with him to the change-house. Ultimately the +affair ended ill for all parties. I lost my job, for I saw no more of +the bride's brother; the wrong-headed cabinetmaker, contrary to the +advice of his mother and her lodger, entered into a law-suit, in which +he got small damages and much vexation; and the slater and his mistress +broke out into such a course of dissipation after becoming man and wife, +that they and the five hundred pounds came to an end almost together. +Shortly after, my landlady and her son quitted the country for the +United States. So favourably had the poor woman impressed me as one of +the truly excellent, that I took a journey from Cromarty to Inverness--a +distance of nineteen miles--to bid her farewell; but I found, on my +arrival, her house shut up, and learned that she had left the place for +some sailing port on the west coast two days before. She was a humble +washerwoman; but I am convinced that in the other world, which she must +have entered long ere now, she ranks considerably higher! + +I waited on in Inverness, in the hope that, according to Burns, "my +brothers of the earth would give me leave to toil;" but the hope was a +vain one, as I succeeded in procuring no second job. There was no lack, +however, of the sort of employment which I could cut out for myself; but +the remuneration--only now in the process of being realized, and that +very slowly--had to be deferred to a distant day. I had to give more +than twelve years' _credit_ to the pursuits that engaged me: and as my +capital was small, it was rather a trying matter to be "kept so long out +of my wages." There is a wonderful group of what are now termed _osars_, +in the immediate neighbourhood of Inverness--a group to which that Queen +of Scottish tomhans, the picturesque Tomnahuirich, belongs, and to the +examination of which I devoted several days. But I learned only to state +the difficulty which they form--not to solve it; and now that Agassiz +has promulgated his glacial theory, and that traces of the great ice +agencies have been detected all over Scotland, the mystery of the +_osars_ remains a mystery still. I succeeded, however, in determining at +this time, that they belong to a later period than the boulder clay, +which I found underlying the great gravel formation of which they form a +part, in a section near Loch Ness that had been laid open shortly +before, in excavating for the great Caledonian Canal. And as all, or +almost all, the shells of the boulder clay are of species that still +live, we may infer that the mysterious osars were formed not very long +ere the introduction upon our planet of the inquisitive little creature +that has been puzzling himself--hitherto at least with no satisfactory +result--in attempting to account for their origin. I examined, too, with +some care, the old coast-line, so well developed in this neighbourhood +as to form one of the features of its striking scenery, and which must +be regarded as the geological memorial and representative of those +latter ages of the world in which the human epoch impinged on the old +Pre-Adamite periods. The magistrates of the place were engaged at the +time in doing their duty, like sensible men, as they were, in what I +could not help thinking a somewhat barbarous instance. The neat, well +proportioned, very uninteresting jail-spire of the burgh, about which, +in its integrity, no one cares anything, had been shaken by an +earthquake, which took place in the year 1816, into one of the greatest +curiosities in the kingdom. The earthquake, which, for a Scotch one, had +been unprecedentedly severe, especially in the line of the great +Caledonian Valley, had, by a strange vorticose motion, twisted round the +spire, so that, at the transverse line of displacement, the _panes_ and +corners of the octagonal broach which its top formed overshot their +proper positions fully seven inches. The corners were carried into +nearly the middle of the _panes_, as if some gigantic hand, in +attempting to twirl round the building by the spire, as one twirls round +a spinning top by the stalk or bole, had, from some failure in the +coherency of the masonry, succeeded in turning round only the part of +which it had laid hold. Sir Charles Lyell figures, in his "Principles," +similar shifts in stones of two obelisks in a Calabrian convent, and +subjoins the ingenious suggestion on the subject of Messrs. Darwin and +Mallet. And here was there a Scotch example of the same sort of +mysterious phenomena, not less curious than the Calabrian one, and +certainly unique in its character _as Scotch_, which, though the injured +building had already stood twelve years in its displaced condition, and +might stand for as many more as the hanging tower of Pisa, the +magistrates were laboriously effacing at the expense of the burgh. They +were completely successful too; and the jail spire was duly restored to +its state of original insignificance, as a fifth-rate piece of +ornamental masonry. But how very absurd, save, mayhap, here and there to +a geologist, must not these remarks appear! + +But my criticisms on the magistracy, however foolish, were silent +criticisms, and did harm to no one. About the time, however, in which I +was indulging in them, I imprudently exposed myself, by one of those +impulsive acts of which men repent at their leisure, to criticisms not +silent, and of a kind that occasionally _do_ harm. I had been piqued by +the rejection of my verses on the Ness. True, I had no high opinion of +their merit, deeming them little more than equal to the average verses +of provincial prints; but then I had intimated my scheme of getting them +printed to a few Cromarty friends, and was now weak enough to be annoyed +at the thought that my townsfolk would regard me as an incompetent +blockhead, who could not write rhymes good enough for a newspaper. And +so I rashly determined on appealing to the public in a small volume. Had +I known as much as in an after period about newspaper affairs, and the +mode in which copies of verses are often dealt with by editors and their +assistants--fatigued with nonsense, and at once hopeless of finding +grain in the enormous heaps of chaff submitted to them, and too much +occupied to seek for it, even should they believe in its occurrence in +the form of single seeds sparsely scattered--I would have thought less +of the matter. As the case was, however, I hastily collected from among +my piles of manuscripts, some fifteen or twenty pieces in verse, written +chiefly during the preceding six years, and put them into the hands of +the printer of the _Inverness Courier_. It would have been a greatly +wiser act, as I soon came to see, had I put them into the fire instead; +but my choice of a printing-office secured to me at least one +advantage--it brought me acquainted with one of the ablest and most +accomplished of Scotch editors--the gentleman who now owns and still +conducts the _Courier_; and, besides, having once crossed the Rubicon, I +felt all my native obstinacy stirred up to make good a position for +myself, despite of failures and reverses on the further side. It is an +advantage in some cases to be committed. The clear large type of the +_Courier_ office did, however, show me many a blemish in my verse that +had escaped me before, and broke off associations which--curiously +linked with the manuscripts--had given to the stanzas and passages which +they contained charms of tone and colour not their own. I began to find, +too, that my humble accomplishment of verse was too narrow to contain my +thinking;--the thinking ability had been growing, but not the ability of +poetic expression; nay, much of the thinking seemed to be of a kind not +suited for poetic purposes at all;--and though it was of course far +better that I should come to know this in time, than that, like some, +even superior men, I should persist in wasting, in inefficient verse, +the hours in which vigorous prose might be produced, it was at least +quite mortifying enough to make the discovery with half a volume of +metre committed to type, and in the hands of the printer. Resolving, +however, that my humble name should not appear in the title-page, I went +on with my volume. My new friend the editor kindly inserted, from time +to time, copies of its verses in the columns of his paper, and strove to +excite some degree of interest and expectation regarding it; but my +recent discovery had thoroughly sobered me, and I awaited the +publication of my volume not much elated by the honour done me, and as +little sanguine respecting its ultimate success as well might be. And +ere I quitted Inverness, a sad bereavement, which greatly narrowed the +circle of my best-loved friends, threw very much into the background all +my thoughts regarding it. + +On quitting Cromarty, I had left my uncle James labouring under an +attack of rheumatic fever; but though he had just entered his grand +climacteric, he was still a vigorous and active man, and I could not +doubt that he had strength of constitution enough to throw it off. He +had failed to rally, however; and after returning one evening from a +long exploratory walk, I found in my lodgings a note awaiting me, +intimating his death. The blow fell with stunning effect. Ever since the +death of my father, my two uncles had faithfully occupied his place; +and James, of a franker and less reserved temper than Alexander, and +more tolerant of my boyish follies, had, though I sincerely loved the +other, laid stronger hold on my affections. He was of a genial +disposition, too, that always remained sanguine in the cast of its hopes +and anticipations; and he had unwittingly flattered my vanity by taking +me pretty much at my own estimate--overweeningly high, of course, like +that of almost all young men, but mayhap necessary, in the character of +a force, to make headway in the face of obstruction and difficulty. +Uncle James, like _Le Balafre_ in the novel, would have "ventured his +nephew against the wight Wallace." I immediately set out for Cromarty; +and, curious as it may seem, found grief so companionable, that the four +hours which I spent by the way seemed hardly equal to one. I retained, +however, only a confused recollection of my journey, remembering little +more than that, when passing at midnight along the dreary Maolbuie, I +saw the moon in her wane, rising red and lightless out of the distant +sea; and that, lying, as it were, prostrate on the horizon, she reminded +me of some o'ermatched wrestler thrown helplessly on the ground. + +On reaching home, I found my mother, late as the hour was, still up, and +engaged in making a dead-dress for the body. "There is a letter from the +south, with a black seal, awaiting you," she said; "I fear you have also +lost your friend William Ross." I opened the letter, and found her +surmise too well founded. It was a farewell letter, written in feeble +characters, but in no feeble spirit; and a brief postscript, added by a +comrade, intimated the death of the writer. "This," wrote the dying man, +with a hand fast forgetting its cunning, "is, to all human probability, +my last letter; but the thought gives me little trouble; for my hope of +salvation is in the blood of Jesus. Farewell, my sincerest friend!" +There is a provision through which nature sets limits to both physical +and mental suffering. A man partially stunned by a violent blow is +sometimes conscious that it is followed by other blows, rather from +seeing than from feeling them; his capacity of suffering has been +exhausted by the first; and the others that fall upon him, though they +may injure, fail to pain. And so also it is with strokes that fall on +the affections. In other circumstances, I would have grieved for the +death of my friend, but my mind was already occupied to the full by the +death of my uncle; and, though I _saw_ the new stroke, several days +elapsed ere _I could feel_ it. My friend, after half a lifetime of +decline, had sunk suddenly. A comrade who lived with him--a stout, +florid lad--had been seized by the same insidious malady as his own, +about a twelvemonth before; and, previously unacquainted with sickness, +in him the progress of the disease had been rapid, and his sufferings +were so great, that he was incapacitated for work several months ere his +death. But my poor friend, though sinking at the time, wrought for both: +he was able to prosecute his employments--which, according to Bacon, +"required rather the finger than the arm"--in even the latter stages of +his complaint; and after supporting and tending his dying comrade till +he sank, he himself suddenly broke down and died. And thus perished +unknown, and in the prime of his days, a man of sterling principle and +fine genius. I found employment enough for the few weeks which still +remained of the working season of this year, in hewing a tombstone for +my uncle James, on which I inscribed an epitaph of a few lines, that had +the merit of being true. It characterized the deceased--"James +Wright"--as "an honest, warm-hearted man, who had the happiness of +living without reproach, and of dying without fear." + +FOOTNOTES: + +[11] Loch Ness. + +[12] This portrait of the Ness is, I fear, scarce true to the ordinary +character of the river. I had visited it during the previous winter, and +walked a few miles along its sides, when the tract of country through +which it flows lay bleached and verdureless, and steeped in the soaking +rain of weeks, and the stream itself, big in flood, roared from bank to +brae in its shallower reaches, or boiled sullen and turbid in many a +circling eddy in its darker pools. And my description somewhat +incongruously unites a sunlit summer landscape, rich in flower and +foliage, with the brown wintry river. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + + "This while my notion's ta'en a sklent, + To try my fate in guid black prent; + But still the mair I'm that way bent, + Something cries, Hoolie! + I red you, honest man, tak tent; + Ye'll shaw your folly."--BURNS. + + +My volume of verse passed but slowly through the press; and as I had +begun to look rather ruefully forward to its appearance, there was no +anxiety evinced on my part to urge it on. At length, however, all the +pieces were thrown into type; and I followed them up by a tail-piece in +prose, formed somewhat on the model of the preface of Pope--for I was a +great admirer, at the time, of the English written by the "wits of Queen +Anne"--in which I gave serious expression to the suspicion that, as a +writer of verse, I had mistaken my vocation. + + + "It is more than possible," I said, "that I have completely failed + in poetry. It may appear that, while grasping at originality of + description and sentiment, and striving to attain propriety of + expression, I have only been depicting common images, and embodying + obvious thoughts, and this, too, in inelegant language. Yet even in + this case, though disappointed, I shall not be without my sources + of comfort. The pleasure which I enjoy in composing verses is quite + independent of other men's opinions of them; and I expect to feel + as happy as ever in this amusement, even though assured that others + could find no pleasure in reading what I had found so much in + writing. It is no small solace to reflect, that the fable of the + dog and shadow cannot apply to me, since my predilection for poetry + has not prevented me from acquiring the skill of at least the + common mechanic. I am not more ignorant of masonry and architecture + than many professors of these arts who never measured a stanza. + There is also some satisfaction in reflecting that, unlike some + would-be satirists I have not assailed private character; and + that, though men may deride me as an unskilful poet, they cannot + justly detest me as a bad or ill-natured man. Nay, I shall possibly + have the pleasure of repaying those who may be merry at my expense, + in their own coin. An ill-conditioned critic is always a more + pitiable sort of person than an unsuccessful versifier; and the + desire of showing one's own discernment at the expense of one's + neighbour, a greatly worse thing than the simple wish, however + divorced from the ability, of affording him harmless pleasure. + Further, it would, I think, not be difficult to show that my + mistake in supposing myself a poet is not a whit more ridiculous, + and infinitely less mischievous, than many of those into which + myriads of my fellow-men are falling every day. I have seen the + vicious attempting to teach morals, and the weak to unfold + mysteries. I have seen men set up for freethinkers who were born + not to think at all. To conclude, there will surely be cause for + self-gratulation in reflecting that, by becoming an author, I have + only lost a few pounds, not gained the reputation of being a mean + fellow, who had teased all his acquaintance until they had + subscribed for a worthless book; and that the severest remark of + the severest critic can only be, 'a certain anonymous rhymer is no + poet.'" + + +As, notwithstanding the blank in the title-page, the authorship of my +volume would be known in Cromarty and its neighbourhood, I set myself to +see whether I could not, meanwhile, prepare for the press something +better suited to make an impression in my favour. In tossing the bar or +throwing the stone, the competitor who begins with a rather indifferent +cast is never very unfavourably judged if he immediately mend it by +giving a better; and I resolved on mending my cast, if I could, by +writing for the _Inverness Courier_--which was now open to me, through +the kindness of the editor--a series of carefully prepared letters on +some popular subject. In the days of Goldsmith, the herring-fishing +employed, as he tells us in one of his essays, "all Grub Street." In the +north of Scotland this fishery was a popular theme little more than +twenty years ago. The welfare of whole communities depended in no slight +degree on its success: it formed the basis of many a calculation, and +the subject of many an investment; and it was all the more suitable for +my purpose from the circumstance that there was no Grub Street in that +part of the world to employ itself about it. It was, in at least all +its better aspects, a fresh subject; and I deemed myself more thoroughly +acquainted with it than at least most of the men who were skilful +enough, as _litterateurs_, to communicate their knowledge in writing. I +knew the peculiarities of fishermen as a class, and the effects of this +special branch of their profession on their character: I had seen them +pursuing their employments amid the sublime of nature, and had +occasionally taken a share in their work; and, further, I was acquainted +with not a few antique traditions of the fishermen of other ages, in +which, as in the narratives of most seafaring men, there mingled with a +certain amount of real incident, curious snatches of the supernatural. +In short, the subject was one on which, as I knew a good deal regarding +it that was not generally known, I was in some degree qualified to +write; and so I occupied my leisure in casting my facts respecting it +into a series of letters, of which the first appeared in the _Courier_ a +fortnight after my volume of verse was laid on the tables of the north +country booksellers. + +I had first gone out to sea to assist in catching herrings about ten +years before; and I now described, in one of my letters, as truthfully +as I could, those features of the scene to which I had been introduced +on that occasion, which had struck me as novel and peculiar. And what +had been strange to me proved equally so, I found, to the readers of the +_Courier_. My letters attracted attention, and were republished in my +behalf by the proprietors of the paper, "in consequence," said my friend +the editor, in a note which he kindly attached to the pamphlet which +they formed, "of the interest they had excited in the northern +counties."[13] Their modicum of success, lowly as was their subject, +compared with that of some of my more ambitious verses, taught me my +proper course. Let it be my business, I said, to know what is not +generally known;--let me qualify myself to stand as an interpreter +between nature and the public: while I strive to narrate as pleasingly +and describe as vividly as I can, let truth, not fiction, be my walk; +and if I succeed in uniting the novel to the true, in provinces of more +general interest than the very humble one in which I have now partially +succeeded, I shall succeed also in establishing myself in a position +which, if not lofty, will yield me at least more solid footing than that +to which I might attain as a mere _litterateur_ who, mayhap, pleased for +a little, but added nothing to the general fund. The resolution was, I +think, a good one; would that it had been better kept! The following +extracts may serve to show that, humble as my new subject may be deemed, +it gave considerable scope for description of a kind not often +associated with herrings, even when they employed all Grub Street:-- + + + "As the night gradually darkened, the sky assumed a dead and leaden + hue: the sea, roughened by the rising breeze, reflected its deeper + hues with an intensity approaching to black, and seemed a dark + uneven pavement, that absorbed every ray of the remaining light. A + calm silvery patch, some fifteen or twenty yards in extent, came + moving slowly through the black. It seemed merely a patch of water + coated with oil; but, obedient to some other moving power than that + of either tide or wind, it sailed aslant our line of buoys, a + stone-cast from our bows--lengthened itself along the line to + thrice its former extent--paused as if for a moment--and then three + of the buoys, after erecting themselves on their narrower base, + with a sudden jerk slowly sank. 'One--two--three buoys!' exclaimed + one of the fishermen, reckoning them as they disappeared;--'_there_ + are ten barrels for us secure.' A few moments were suffered to + elapse: and then, unfixing the haulser from the stem, and bringing + it aft to the stern, we commenced hauling. The nets approached the + gunwale. The first three appeared, from the phosphoric light of the + water, as if bursting into flames of a pale green colour. Here and + there a herring glittered bright in the meshes, or went darting + away through the pitchy darkness, visible for a moment by its own + light. The fourth net was brighter than any of the others, and + glittered through the waves while it was yet several fathoms away: + the pale green seemed as if mingled with broken sheets of snow, + that--flickering amid the mass of light--appeared, with every tug + given by the fishermen, to shift, dissipate, and again form; and + there streamed from it into the surrounding gloom myriads of green + rays, an instant seen and then lost--the retreating fish that had + avoided the meshes, but had lingered, until disturbed, beside their + entangled companions. It contained a considerable body of herrings. + As we raised them over the gunwale, they felt warm to the hand, for + in the middle of a large shoal even the temperature of the water is + raised--a fact well known to every herring fisherman; and in + shaking them out of the meshes, the ear became sensible of a + shrill, chirping sound, like that of the mouse, but much fainter--a + ceaseless cheep, cheep, cheep, occasioned apparently--for no true + fish is furnished with organs of sound--by a sudden escape from the + air-bladder. The shoal, a small one, had spread over only three of + the nets--the three whose buoys had so suddenly disappeared; and + most of the others had but their mere sprinkling of fish, some + dozen or two in a net; but so thickly had they lain in the + fortunate three, that the entire haul consisted of rather more than + twelve barrels. + + * * * * * + + We started up about midnight, and saw an open sea, as before; but + the scene had considerably changed since we had lain down. The + breeze had died into a calm; the heavens, no longer dark and grey, + were glowing with stars; and the sea, from the smoothness of the + surface, appeared a second sky, as bright and starry as the other; + with this difference, however, that all its stars seemed to be + comets! the slightly tremulous motion of the surface elongated the + reflected images, and gave to each its tail. There was no visible + line of division at the horizon. Where the hills rose high along + the coast, and appeared as if doubled by their undulating strip of + shadow, what might be deemed a dense hank of cloud lay sleeping in + the heavens, just where the upper and nether firmaments met; but + its presence rendered the illusion none the less complete: the + outline of the boat lay dark around us, like the fragment of some + broken planet suspended in middle space, far from the earth and + every star; and all around we saw extended the complete + sphere--unhidden above from Orion to the Pole, and visible beneath + from the Pole to Orion. Certainly sublime scenery possesses in + itself no virtue potent enough to develop the faculties, or the + mind of the fisherman would not have so long lain asleep. There is + no profession whose recollections should rise into purer poetry + than his; but if the mirror bear not its previous amalgam of taste + and genius, what does it matter though the scene which sheds upon + it its many-coloured light should be rich in grandeur and beauty? + There is no corresponding image produced: the susceptibility of + reflecting the landscape is never imparted by the landscape itself, + whether to the mind or to the glass. There is no class of + recollections more illusory than those which associate--as if they + existed in the relation of cause and effect--some piece of striking + scenery with some sudden development of the intellect or + imagination. The eyes open, and there is an external beauty seen; + but it is not the external beauty that has opened the eyes. + + * * * * * + + "It was still a dead calm--calm to blackness; when, in about an + hour after sunrise, what seemed light fitful airs began to play on + the surface, imparting to it, in irregular patches, a tint of grey. + First one patch would form, then a second beside it, then a third, + and then for miles around, the surface, else so silvery, would seem + frosted over with grey: the apparent breeze appeared as if + propagating itself from one central point. In a few seconds after, + all would be calm as at first; and then from some other centre the + patches of grey would again form and widen, till the whole Firth + seemed covered by them. A peculiar poppling noise, as if a + thunder-shower was beating the surface with its multitudinous + drops, rose around our boat; the water seemed sprinkled with an + infinity of points of silver, that for an instant glittered to the + sun, and then resigned their places to other quick glancing points, + that in turn were succeeded by yet others. The herrings by + millions, and thousands of millions, were at play around us, + leaping a few inches into the air, and then falling and + disappearing, to rise and leap again. Shoal rose beyond shoal, till + the whole bank of Gulliam seemed beaten into foam, and the low + poppling sounds were multiplied into a roar, like that of the wind + through some tall wood, that might be heard in the calm for miles. + And again, the shoals extending around us seemed to cover, for + hundreds of square miles, the vast Moray Firth. But though they + played beside our buoys by thousands, not a herring swam so low as + the upper baulk of our drift. One of the fishermen took up a stone, + and, flinging it right over our second buoy into the middle of the + shoal, the fish disappeared from the surface for several fathoms + around. 'Ah, there they go,' he exclaimed, 'if they go but low + enough. Four years ago I startled thirty barrels of light fish into + my drift just by throwing a stone among them.' I know not what + effect the stone might have had on this occasion; but on hauling + our nets for the third and last time, we found we had captured + about eight barrels of fish; and then hoisting sail--for a light + breeze from the east had sprung up--we made for the shore with a + cargo of twenty barrels." + + +Meanwhile the newspaper critics of the south were giving expression to +all sorts of judgments on my verses. It was intimated in the title of +the volume that they had been "written in the leisure hours of a +journeyman mason;" and the intimation seemed to furnish most of my +reviewers with the proper cue for dealing with them. "The time has gone +by," said one, "when a literary mechanic used to be regarded as a +phenomenon: were a second Burns to spring up now, he would not be +entitled to so much praise as the first." "It is our duty to tell this +writer," said another, "that he will make more in a week by his trowel +than in half a century by his pen." "We are glad to understand," said a +third--very judiciously, however--"that our author has the good sense to +rely more on his chisel than on the Muses." The lessons taught were of a +sufficiently varied, but, on the whole, rather contradictory character. +By one writer I was told that I was a dull, correct fellow, who had +written a book in which there was nothing amusing and nothing absurd. +Another, however, cheered my forlorn spirits by assuring me that I was a +"man of genius, whose poems, with much that was faulty, contained also +much that was interesting." A third was sure I had "no chance whatever +of being known beyond the limits of my native place," and that my "book +exhibited none, or next to none, of those indications which sanction the +expectation of better things to come;" while a fourth, of a more +sanguine vein, found in my work the evidence of "gifts of Nature, which +the stimulus of encouragement, and the tempering lights of experience, +might hereafter develop, and direct to the achievement of something +truly wonderful." There were two names in particular that my little +volume used to suggest to the newspaper reviewers. The Tam o'Shanter and +Souter Johnnie of the ingenious Thorn were in course of being exhibited +at the time; and it was known that Thorn had wrought as a journeyman +mason: and there was a rather slim poet called Sillery, the author of +several forgotten volumes of verse, one of which had issued from the +press contemporaneously with mine, who, as he had a little money, and +was said to treat his literary friends very luxuriously, was praised +beyond measure by the newspaper critics, especially by those of the +Scottish capital. And Thom as a mason, and Sillery as a poet, were +placed repeatedly before me. One critic, who was sure I would never come +to anything, magnanimously remarked, however, that as he bore me no ill +will, he would be glad to find himself mistaken; nay, that it would give +him "unfeigned pleasure to learn I had attained to the well-merited fame +of even Mr. Thom himself." And another, after deprecating the undue +severity so often shown by the bred writer to the working man, and +asserting that the "journeyman mason" was in this instance, +notwithstanding his treatment, a man of fair parts, ended by remarking, +that it was of course not even every man of merit who could expect to +attain to the "high poetic eminence and celebrity of a Charles Doyne +Sillery." + +All this, however, was criticism at a distance, and disturbed me but +little when engaged in toiling in the churchyard, or in enjoying my +quiet evening walks. But it became more formidable when, on one +occasion, it came to beard me in my den. + +The place was visited by an itinerant lecturer on elocution--one Walsh, +who, as his art was not in great request among the quiet ladies and busy +gentlemen of Cromarty, failed to draw houses; till at length there +appeared one morning, placarded on post and pillar, an intimation to the +effect, that Mr. Walsh would that evening deliver an elaborate criticism +on the lately-published volume of "Poems written in the leisure hours of +a Journeyman Mason," and select from it a portion of his evening +readings. The intimation drew a good house; and, curious to know what +was awaiting me, I paid my shilling, with the others, and got into a +corner. First in the entertainment there came a wearisome dissertation +on harmonic inflections, double emphasis, the echoing words, and the +monotones. But, to borrow from Meg Dods, "Oh, what a style of language!" +The elocutionist, evidently an untaught and grossly ignorant man, had +not an idea of composition. Syntax, grammar, and good sense, were set +at nought in every sentence; but then, on the other hand, the +inflections were carefully maintained, and went rising and falling over +the nonsense beneath, like the wave of some shallow bay over a bottom of +mud and comminuted sea-weed. After the dissertation we were gratified by +a few recitations. "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the "Razor Seller," and "My +Name is Norval," were given in great force. And then came the critique. +"Ladies and gentlemen," said the reviewer, "we cannot expect much from a +journeyman mason in the poetry line. Right poetry needs teaching. No man +can be a proper poet unless he be an elocutionist; for, unless he be an +elocutionist, how can he make his verses emphatic in the right places, +or manage the harmonic inflexes, or deal with the rhetorical pauses? And +now, ladies and gentlemen, I'll show you, from various passages in this +book, that the untaught journeyman mason who made it never took lessons +in elocution. I'll first read you a passage from a piece of verse called +the 'Death of Gardiner'--the person meant being the late Colonel +Gardiner, I suppose. The beginning of the piece is about the running +away of Johnnie Cope's men:"-- + + + * * * * * + + "Yet in that craven, dread-struck host, + One val'rous heart beat keen and high; + In that dark hour of shameful flight, + One stayed behind to die! + Deep gash'd by many a felon blow, + He sleeps where fought the vanquish'd van-- + Of silver'd locks and furrow'd brow, + A venerable man. + E'en when his thousand warriors fled-- + Their low-born valour quail'd and gone-- + He--the meek leader of that band-- + Remained, and fought alone. + He stood; fierce foemen throng'd around; + The hollow death-groans of despair. + The clashing sword, the cleaving axe, + The murd'rous dirk were there. + Valour more stark, or hands more strong, + Ne'er urged the brand or launch'd the spear + But what were these to that old man! + God was his only fear. + + He stood where adverse thousands throng'd. + And long that warrior fought and well;-- + Bravely he fought, firmly he stood, + Till where he stood he fell. + He fell--he breathed one patriot prayer. + Then to his God his soul resign'd: + Not leaving of earth's many sons + A better man behind. + His valour, his high scorn of death, + To fame's proud meed no impulse owed; + His was a pure, unsullied zeal, + For Britain and for God. + He fell--he died;--the savage foe + Trod careless o'er the noble clay; + Yet not in vain that champion fought, + In that disastrous fray. + On bigot creeds and felon swords + Partial success may fondly smile, + Till bleeds the patriot's honest heart, + And flames the martyr's pile. + Yet not in vain the patriot bleeds; + Yet not in vain the martyr dies; + From ashes mute, and voiceless blood, + What stirring memories rise! + The scoffer owns the bigot's creed, + Though keen the secret gibe may be; + The sceptic seeks the tyrant's dome. + And bends the ready knee. + But oh! in dark oppression's day. + When flares the torch, when flames the sword. + Who are the brave in freedom's cause? + The men who fear the Lord."[14] + + +"Now, ladies and gentlemen," continued the critic, "this is very bad +poetry. I defy any elocutionist to read it satisfactorily with the +inflexes. And, besides, only see how full it is of tautology. Let us +take but one of the verses:--'He fell--he died!' To fall in battle +means, as we all know, to die in battle;--to die in battle is exactly +the same thing as to fall in battle. To say 'he fell--he died,' is +therefore just tantamount to saying that he fell, he fell, or that he +died, he died, and is bad poetry, and tautology. And this is one of the +effects of ignorance, and a want of right education." Here, however, a +low grumbling sound, gradually shaping itself into words, interrupted +the lecturer. There was a worthy old captain among the audience, who had +not given himself very much to the study of elocution or the +_belles-lettres_; he had been too much occupied in his younger days in +dealing at close quarters with the French under Howe and Nelson, to +leave him much time for the niceties of recitation or criticism. But the +brave old man bore a genial, generous heart; and the strictures of the +elocutionist, emitted, as all saw, in the presence of the assailed +author, jarred on his feelings. "It was not gentlemanly," he said, "to +attack in that way an inoffensive man: it was wrong. The poems were, he +was told, very good poems. He knew good judges that thought so; and +unprovoked remarks on them, such as those of the lecturer, ought not to +be permitted." The lecturer replied, and in glibness and fluency would +have been greatly an overmatch for the worthy captain; but a storm of +hisses backed the old veteran, and the critic gave way. As his remarks +were, he said, not to the taste of the audience--though he was taking +only the ordinary critical liberty--he would go on to the readings. And +with a few extracts, read without note or comment, the entertainment of +the evening concluded. There was nothing very formidable in the critique +of Walsh; but, having no great powers of face, I felt it rather +unpleasant to be stared at in my quiet corner by every one in the room, +and looked, I daresay, very much put out; and the sympathy and +condolence of such of my townsfolk as comforted me in the state of +supposed annihilation and nothingness to which his criticism had reduced +me, were just a little annoying. Poor Walsh, however, had he but known +what threatened him, would have been considerably less at ease than his +victim. + +The cousin Walter introduced to the reader in an early chapter as the +companion of one of my Highland journeys, had grown up into a handsome +and very powerful young man. One might have guessed his stature at about +five feet ten or so, but it in reality somewhat exceeded six feet: he +had amazing length and strength of arm; and such was his structure of +bone, that, as he tucked up his sleeve to send a bowl along the town +links, or to fling the hammer or throw the stone, the knobbed +protuberances of the wrist, with the sinews rising sharp over them, +reminded one rather of the framework of a horse's leg, than of that of a +human arm. And Walter, though a fine, sweet-tempered fellow, had shown, +oftener than once or twice, that he could make a very formidable use of +his great strength. Some of the later instances had been rather +interesting in their kind. There had been a large Dutch transport, laden +with troops, forced by stress of weather into the bay shortly before, +and a handsome young soldier of the party--a native of Northern +Germany, named Wolf--had, I know not how, scraped acquaintance with +Walter. Wolf, who, like many of his country-folk, was a great reader, +and intimately acquainted, through German translations, with the +Waverley Novels, had taken all his ideas of Scotland and its people from +the descriptions of Scott; and in Walter, as handsome as he was robust, +he found the _beau-ideal_ of a Scottish hero. He was a man cast in +exactly the model of the Harry Bertrams, Halbert Glendinnings, and +Quentin Durwards of the novelist. For the short time the vessel lay in +the harbour, Wolf and Walter were inseparable. Walter knew a little, +mainly at second hand, through his cousin, about the heroes of Scott; +and Wolf delighted to converse with him in his broken English about +Balfour of Burley, Rob Roy, and Vich Ian Vohr: and ever and anon would +he urge him to exhibit before him some feat of strength or agility--a +call to which Walter was never slow to respond. There was a serjeant +among the troops--a Dutchman, regarded as their strongest man, who used +to pride himself much on his prowess; and who, on hearing Wolf's +description of Walter, expressed a wish to be introduced to him. Wolf +soon found the means of gratifying the serjeant. The strong Dutchman +stretched out his hand, and, on getting hold of Walter's, grasped it +very hard. Walter saw his design, and returned the grasp with such +overmastering firmness, that the hand became powerless within his. "Ah!" +exclaimed the Dutchman, in his broken English, shaking his fingers, and +blowing upon them, "me no try squeeze hand with you again; you very +_very_ strong man." Wolf for a minute after stood laughing and clapping +his hands, as if the victory were his, not Walter's. When at length the +day arrived on which the transport was to sail, the two friends seemed +as unwilling to part as if they had been attached for years. Walter +presented Wolf with a favourite snuff-box; Wolf gave Walter his fine +German pipe. + +Before I had risen on the morning of the day succeeding that in which I +had been demolished by the elocutionist, Cousin Walter made his way to +my bedside, with a storm on his brow dark as midnight. "Is it true, +Hugh," he inquired, "that the lecturer Walsh ridiculed you and your +poems in the Council House last night?" "Oh, and what of that?" I said; +"who cares anything for the ridicule of a blockhead?" "Ay," said Walter, +"that's always your way; but _I_ care for it! Had I been there last +night, I would have sent the puppy through the window, to criticize +among the nettles in the yard. But there's no time lost: I shall wait on +him when it grows dark this evening, and give him a lesson in good +manners." "Not for your life, Walter!" I exclaimed. "Oh," said Walter, +"I shall give Walsh all manner of fair play." "Fair play!" I rejoined; +"you cannot give Walsh fair play; you are an overmatch for five Walshes. +If you meddle with him at all, you will kill the poor slim man at a +blow, and then not only will you be apprehended for manslaughter--mayhap +for murder--but it will also be said that I was mean enough to set you +on to do what I had not courage enough to do myself. You _must_ give up +all thoughts of meddling with Walsh." In short, I at length partially +succeeded in convincing Walter that he might do me a great mischief by +assaulting my critic; but so little confident was I of his seeing the +matter in its proper light, that when the lecturer, unable to get +audiences, quitted the place, and Walter had no longer opportunity of +avenging my cause, I felt a load of anxiety taken from off my mind. + +There reached Cromarty shortly after, a criticism that differed +considerably from that of Walsh, and restored the shaken confidence of +some of my acquaintance. The other criticisms which had appeared in +newspapers, critical journals, and literary gazettes, had been evidently +the work of small men; and, feeble and commonplace in their style and +thinking, they carried with them no weight--for who cares anything for +the judgment, on one's writings, of men who themselves cannot write? +But here, at length, was there a critique eloquently and powerfully +written. It was, however, at least as extravagant in its praise as the +others in their censure. The friendly critic knew nothing of the author +he commended; but he had, I suppose, first seen the deprecatory +criticisms, and then glanced his eye over the volume which they +condemned; and finding it considerably better than it was said to be, he +had rushed into generous praise, and described it as really a great deal +better than it was. After an extravagantly high estimate of the powers +of its author, he went on to say--"Nor, in making these observations, do +we speak relatively, or desire to be understood as merely saying that +the poems before us are remarkable productions to emanate from a +'journeyman mason.' That this is indeed the case, no one who reads them +can doubt; but in characterizing the poetical talent they display, our +observations are meant to be quite absolute; and we aver, without fear +of contradiction, that the pieces contained in the humble volume before +us bear the stamp and impress of no ordinary genius; that they are +bespangled with gems of genuine poetry; and that their unpretending +author well deserves--what he will doubtless obtain--the countenance and +support of a discerning public. Nature is not an aristocrat To the +plough-boy following his team a-field--to the shepherd tending his +flocks in the wilderness--or to the rude cutter of stone, cramped over +his rough occupation in the wooden shed--she sometimes dispenses her +richest and rarest gifts as liberally as to the proud patrician, or the +titled representative of a long line of illustrious ancestry. She is no +respecter of persons; and all other distinctions yield to the title +which her favours confer. The names, be they ever so humble, which she +illustrates, need no other decoration to recommend them; and hence, even +that of our 'journeyman mason' may yet be destined to take its place +with those of men who, like him, first poured their 'wood-notes wild' in +the humblest and lowliest sphere of life, but, raised into deathless +song, have become familiar as household words to all who love and admire +the unsophisticated productions of native genius." The late Dr. James +Browne of Edinburgh, author of the "History of the Highlands," and +working Editor of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," was, as I afterwards +learned, the writer of this over-eulogistic, but certainly, in the +circumstances, generous critique. + +Ultimately I found my circle of friends very considerably enlarged by +the publication of my Verses and Letters. Mr. Isaac Forsyth of Elgin, +the brother and biographer of the well-known Joseph Forsyth, whose +classical volume on Italy still holds its place as perhaps the best work +to which the traveller of taste in that country can commit himself, +exerted himself, as the most influential of north-country booksellers, +with disinterested kindness in my behalf. The late Sir Thomas Dick +Lauder, too, resident at that time at his seat of Relugas in Moray, lent +me, unsolicited, his influence; and, distinguished by his fine taste and +literary ability, he ventured to pledge both in my favour. I also +received much kindness from the late Miss Dunbar of Boath--a literary +lady of the high type of the last age, and acquainted in the best +literary circles, who, now late in life, admitted amid her select +friends one friend more, and cheered me with many a kind letter, and +invited my frequent visits to her hospitable mansion. If, in my course +as a working man, I never incurred pecuniary obligation, and never spent +a shilling for which I had not previously laboured, it was certainly not +from want of opportunity afforded me. Miss Dunbar meant what she said, +and oftener than once did she press her purse on my acceptance. I +received much kindness, too, from the late Principal Baird. The +venerable Principal, when on one of his Highland journeys--benevolently +undertaken in behalf of an educational scheme of the General Assembly, +in the service of which he travelled, after he was turned of seventy, +more than eight thousand miles--had perused my Verses and Letters; and, +expressing a strong desire to know their author, my friend the editor of +the _Courier_ despatched one of his apprentices to Cromarty, to say that +he thought the opportunity of meeting with such a man ought not to be +neglected. I accordingly went up to Inverness, and had an interview with +Dr. Baird. I had known him previously by name as one of the +correspondents of Burns, and the editor of the best edition of the poems +of Michael Bruce; and, though aware at the time that his estimate of +what I had done was by much too high, I yet felt flattered by his +notice. He urged me to quit the north for Edinburgh. The capital +furnished, he said, the proper field for a literary man in Scotland. +What between the employment furnished by the newspapers and the +magazines, he was sure I would effect a lodgment, and work my way up; +and until I gave the thing a fair trial, I would, of course, come and +live with him. I felt sincerely grateful for his kindness, but declined +the invitation. I did think it possible, that in some subordinate +capacity--as a concocter of paragraphs, or an abridger of Parliamentary +debates, or even as a writer of occasional articles--I might find more +remunerative employment than as a stone-mason. But though I might +acquaint myself in a large town, when occupied in this way, with the +world of books, I questioned whether I could enjoy equal opportunities +of acquainting myself with the occult and the new in natural science, as +when plying my labours in the provinces as a mechanic. And so I +determined that, instead of casting myself on an exhausting literary +occupation, in which I would have to draw incessantly on the stock of +fact and reflection which I had already accumulated, I should continue +for at least several years more to purchase independence by my labours +as a mason, and employ my leisure hours in adding to my fund, gleaned +from original observation, and in walks not previously trodden. + +The venerable Principal set me upon a piece of literary taskwork, which, +save for his advice, I would never have thought of producing, and of +which these autobiographic chapters are the late but legitimate +offspring. "Literary men," he said, "are sometimes spoken of as +consisting of two classes--the educated and the uneducated; but they +must all alike have an education before they can become literary men; +and the less ordinary the mode in which the education has been acquired, +the more interesting always is the story of it. I wish you to write for +me an account of yours." I accordingly wrote an autobiographic sketch +for the Principal, which brought up my story till my return, in 1825, +from the south country to my home in the north, and which, though +greatly overladen with reflection and remark, has preserved for me both +the thoughts and incidents of an early time more freshly than if they +had been suffered to exist till now as mere recollections in the memory. +I next set myself to record, in a somewhat elaborate form, the +traditions of my native place and the surrounding district; and, taking +the work very leisurely, not as labour, but as amusement--for my +labours, as at an earlier period, continued to be those of the +stone-cutter--a bulky volume grew up under my hands. I had laid down for +myself two rules. There is no more fatal error into which a working man +of a literary turn can fall, than the mistake of deeming himself too +good for his humble employments; and yet it is a mistake as common as it +is fatal. I had already seen several poor wretched mechanics, who, +believing themselves to be poets, and regarding the manual occupation by +which they could alone live in independence as beneath them, had become +in consequence little better than mendicants--too good to work for their +bread, but not too good virtually to beg it; and, looking upon them as +beacons of warning, I determined that, with God's help, I should give +their error a wide offing, and never associate the ideas of meanness +with an honest calling, or deem myself too good to be independent. And, +in the second place, as I saw that the notice, and more especially the +hospitalities, of persons in the upper walks, seemed to exercise a +deteriorating effect on even strong-minded men in circumstances such as +mine, I resolved rather to avoid than court the attentions from this +class which were now beginning to come my way. Johnson describes his +"Ortogrul of Basra" as a thoughtful and meditative man; and yet he tells +us, that after he had seen the palace of the Vizier, and "admired the +walls hung with golden tapestry, and the floors covered with silken +carpets, he despised the simple neatness of his own little habitation." +And the lesson of the fiction is, I fear, too obviously exemplified in +the real history of one of the strongest-minded men of the last +age--Robert Burns. The poet seems to have left much of his early +complacency in his humble home behind him, in the splendid mansions of +the men who, while they failed worthily to patronize him, injured him by +their hospitalities. I found it more difficult, however, to hold by this +second resolution than by the first. As I was not large enough to be +made a lion of, the invitations which came my way were usually those of +real kindness; and the advances of kindness I found it impossible always +to repel; and so it happened that I did at times find myself in company +in which the working man might be deemed misplaced and in danger. On two +several occasions, for instance, after declining previous invitations +not a few, I had to spend a week at a time, as the guest of my respected +friend Miss Dunbar of Boath; and my native place was visited by few +superior men that I had not to meet at some hospitable board. But I +trust I may say, that the temptation failed to injure me; and that on +such occasions I returned to my obscure employments and lowly home, +grateful for the kindness I had received, but in no degree discontented +with my lot. + +Miss Dunbar belonged, as I have said, to a type of literary lady now +well-nigh passed away, but of which we find frequent trace in the +epistolary literature of the last century. The class comes before us in +elegant and tasteful letters, indicative of minds imbued with +literature, though mayhap not ambitious of authorship, and that show +what ornaments their writers must have proved of the society to which +they belonged, and what delight they must have given to the circles in +which they more immediately moved. The Lady Russel, the Lady Luxborough, +the Countess of Pomfret, Mrs. Elizabeth Montague, &c. &c.,--names well +fixed in the epistolary literature of England, though unknown in the +walks of ordinary authorship--may be regarded as specimens of the class. +Even in the cases in which its members did become authoresses, and +produced songs and ballads instinct with genius, they seem to have had +but little of the author's ambition in them; and their songs, cast +carelessly upon the waters, have been found, after many days, preserved +rather by accident than design. The Lady Wardlaw, who produced the noble +ballad of "Hardyknute"--the Lady Ann Lindsay, who wrote "Auld Robin +Gray"--the Miss Blamire, whose "Nabob" is so charming a composition, +notwithstanding its unfortunately prosaic name--and the late Lady +Nairne, authoress of the "Land o' the Leal," "John Tod," and the "Laird +o' Cockpen"--are specimens of the class that fixed their names among the +poets with apparently as little effort or design as singing birds pour +forth their melodies. + +The north had, in the last age, its interesting group of ladies of this +type, of whom the central figure might be regarded as the late Mrs. +Elizabeth Rose of Kilravock, the correspondent of Burns, and the cousin +and associate of Henry Mackenzie, the "Man of Feeling." Mrs. Rose seems +to have been a lady of a singularly fine mind--though a little touched, +mayhap, by the prevailing sentimentalism of the age. The Mistress of +Harley, Miss Walton, might have kept exactly such journals as hers; but +the talent which they exhibited was certainly of a high order; and the +feeling, though cast in a somewhat artificial mould, was, I doubt not, +sincere. Portions of these journals I had an opportunity of perusing +when on my visit to my friend Miss Dunbar; and there is a copy of one of +them now in my possession. Another member of this group was the late +Mrs. Grant of Laggan--at the time when it existed unbroken, the mistress +of a remote Highland manse, and known but to her personal friends by +those earlier letters which form the first half of her "Letters from the +Mountains," and which, in ease and freshness, greatly surpass aught +which she produced after she began her career of authorship. Not a few +of her letters, and several of her poems, were addressed to my friend +Miss Dunbar. Some of the other members of the group were greatly younger +than Mrs. Grant and the Lady of Kilravock. And of these, one of the most +accomplished was the late Lady Gordon Cumming of Altyre, known to +scientific men by her geologic labours among the ichthyolitic formations +of Moray, and mother of the famous lion-hunter, Mr. Gordon Cumming. My +friend Miss Dunbar was at this time considerably advanced in life, and +her health far from good. She possessed, however, a singular buoyancy of +spirits, which years and frequent illness had failed to depress; and her +interest and enjoyment in nature and in books remained as high as when, +long before, her friend Mrs. Grant had addressed her as + + + "Helen, by every sympathy allied, + By love of virtue and by love of song, + Compassionate in youth and beauty's pride." + + +Her mind was imbued with literature, and stored with literary anecdote: +she conversed with elegance, giving interest to whatever she touched; +and, though she seemed never to have thought of authorship in her own +behalf, she wrote pleasingly and with great facility, in both prose and +verse. Her verses, usually of a humorous cast, ran trippingly off the +tongue, as if the words had dropped by some happy accident--for the +arrangement bore no mark of effort--into exactly the places where they +at once best brought out the writer's meaning, and addressed themselves +most pleasingly to the ear. The opening stanzas of a light _jeu +d'esprit_ on a young naval officer engaged in a lady-killing expedition +in Cromarty, dwell in my memory; and--first premising, by way of +explanation, that Miss Dunbar's brother, the late Baronet of Boath, was +a captain in the navy, and that the lady-killer was his first +lieutenant--I shall take the liberty of giving all I remember of the +piece, as a specimen of her easy style:-- + + + "In Cromarty Bay, + As the 'Driver' snug lay, + The Lieutenant would venture ashore + And, a figure to cut, + From the head to the foot + He was fashion and finery all o'er. + + A hat richly laced, + To the left side was placed, + Which made him look martial and bold; + His coat of true blue + Was spick and span new. + And the buttons were burnished with gold. + + His neckcloth well puffed. + Which six handkerchiefs stuffed, + And in colour with snow might have vied, + Was put on with great care, + As a bait for the fair, + And the ends in a love-knot were tied," &c. &c. + + +I greatly enjoyed my visits to this genial-hearted and accomplished +lady. No chilling condescensions on her part measured out to me my +distance: Miss Dunbar took at once the common ground of literary tastes +and pursuits; and if I did not feel my inferiority there, she took care +that I should feel it nowhere else. There was but one point on which we +differed. While hospitably extending to me every facility for visiting +the objects of scientific interest in her neighbourhood--such as those +sand-wastes of Culbin in which an ancient barony finds burial, and the +geologic sections presented by the banks of the Findhorn--she was yet +desirous to fix me down to literature as my proper walk; and I, on the +other hand, was equally desirous of escaping into science. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] I am reminded by the editor of the _Courier_, in a very kind +critique on the present volume, of a passage in the history of my little +work which had escaped my memory. "It had come," he states, "to the +knowledge of Sir Walter Scott, who endeavoured to procure a copy after +the limited impression was exhausted." + +[14] The following are the opening stanzas of the piece--quite as +obnoxious to criticism, I fear, as those selected by Walsh:-- + + + "Have ye not seen, on winter's eve, + When snow-rack dimm'd the welkin's face. + Borne wave-like, by the fitful breeze. + The snow-wreath shifting place? + Silent and slow as drifting wreath. + Ere day, the clans from Preston Hill + Moved downward to the vale beneath:-- + Dark was the scene and still! + In stormy autumn day, when sad + The boding peasant frets forlorn, + Have ye not seen the mountain stream + Bear down the standing corn? + At dawn, when Preston bog was cross'd, + Like mountain stream that bursts its banks. + Charged wild those Celtic hearts of fire. + On Cope's devoted ranks. + Have ye not seen, from lonesome waste, + The smoke-tower rising tall and slow, + O'erlooking, like a stately tree, + The russet plain below? + And have ye mark'd that pillar'd wreath, + When sudden struck by northern blast, + Amid the low and stunted heath, + In broken volumes cast? + At sunrise, as by northern blast + The pillar'd smoke is roll'd away. + Fled all that cloud of Saxon war. + In headlong disarray." + * * * + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + + "He who, with pocket hammer, smites the edge + Of luckless rock or prominent stone, disguised + In weather stains, or crusted o'er by nature + With her first growths--detaching by the stroke + A chip or splinter, to resolve his doubts; + And, with that ready answer satisfied, + The substance classes by some barbarous name. + And hurries on."--WORDSWORTH. + + +In the course of my two visits to Miss Dunbar, I had several +opportunities of examining the sand-wastes of Culbin, and of registering +some of the peculiarities which distinguish the arenaceous sub-aerial +formation from the arenaceous sub-aqueous one. Of the present surface of +the earth, considerably more than six millions of square miles are +occupied in Africa and Asia alone by sandy deserts. With but the +interruption of the narrow valley of the Nile, an enormous zone of arid +sand, full nine hundred miles across, stretches from the eastern coast +of Africa to within a few days' journey of the Chinese frontier: it is a +belt that girdles nearly half the globe;--a vast "ocean," according to +the Moors, "without water." The sandy deserts of the rainless districts +of Chili are also of great extent: and there are few countries in even +the higher latitudes that have not their tracts of arenaceous waste. +These sandy tracts, so common in the present scene of things, could not, +I argued, be restricted to the recent geologic periods. They must have +existed, like all the commoner phenomena of nature, under every +succeeding system in which the sun shone, and the winds blew, and +ocean-beds were upheaved to the air and the light, and the waves threw +upon the shore, from arenaceous sea-bottoms, their accumulations of +light sand. And I was now employed in acquainting myself with the marks +by which I might be able to distinguish sub-aerial from sub-aqueous +formations, among the ever-recurring sandstone beds of the geologic +deposits. I have spent, when thus engaged, very delightful hours amid +the waste. In pursuing one's education, it is always very pleasant to +get into those _forms_ that are not yet introduced into any school. + +One of the peculiarities of the sub-aerial formation which I at this +time detected struck me as curious. On approaching, among the +sand-hills, an open level space, covered thickly over with water-rolled +pebbles and gravel, I was surprised to see that, dry and hot as the day +was elsewhere, the little open space seemed to have been subjected to a +weighty dew or smart shower. The pebbles glistened bright in the sun, +and bore the darkened hue of recent wet. On examination, however, I +found that the rays were reflected, not from wetted, but from polished +surfaces. The light grains of sand, dashed against the pebbles by the +winds during a long series of years--grain after grain repeating its +minute blow, where, mayhap, millions of grains had struck before--had at +length given a resinous-looking, uneven polish to all their exposed +portions, while the portions covered up retained the dull unglossy coat +given them of old by the agencies of friction and water. I have not +heard the peculiarity described as a characteristic of the arenaceous +deserts; but though it seems to have escaped notice, it will, I doubt +not, be found to obtain wherever there are sands for the winds to waft +along, and hard pebbles against which the grains may be propelled. In +examining, many years after, a few specimens of silicified wood brought +from the Egyptian desert, I at once recognised on their flinty surfaces +the resinous-like gloss of the pebbles of Culbin; nor can I doubt that, +if geology has its sub-aerial formations of consolidated sand, they +will be found characterized by their polished pebbles. I marked several +other peculiarities of the formation. In some of the abrupter sections +laid open by the winds, tufts of the bent-grass (_Arundo +arenaria_--common here, as in all sandy wastes) that had been buried up +where they grew, might be distinctly traced, each upright in itself, but +rising tuft above tuft in the steep angle of the hillock which they had +originally covered. And though, from their dark colour, relieved against +the lighter hue of the sand, they reminded me of the carbonaceous +markings of sandstone of the Coal Measures, I recognised at least _their +arrangement_ as unique. It seems to be such an arrangement--sloping in +the general line, but upright in each of the tufts--as could take place +in only a sub-aerial formation. I observed further, that in frequent +instances there occurred on the surface of the sand, around decaying +tufts of the bent-grass, deeply-marked circles, as if drawn by a pair of +compasses or a trainer--effects apparently of eddy winds whirling round, +as on a pivot, the decayed plants; and yet further, that footprints, +especially those of rabbits and birds, were not unfrequent in the waste. +And as lines of stratification were, I found, distinctly preserved in +the formation, I deemed it not improbable that, in cases in which high +winds had arisen immediately after tracts of wet weather, and covered +with sand, rapidly dried on the heights, the damp beds in the hollows, +both the circular markings and the footprints might remain fixed in the +strata, to tell of their origin. I found in several places, in chasms +scooped out by a recent gale, pieces of the ancient soil laid bare, +which had been covered up by the sand-flood nearly two centuries before. +In one of the openings the marks of the ancient furrows were still +discernible; in another, the thin stratum of ferruginous soil had +apparently never been brought under the plough; and I found it charged +with roots of the common brake (_Pteris aquilina_), in a perfect state +of keeping, but black and brittle as coal. Beneath this layer of soil +lay a thin deposit of the stratified gravel of what is now known as the +later glacial period--the age of _osars_ and moraines; and beneath +all--for the underlying Old Red Sandstone of the district is not exposed +amid the level wastes of Culbin--rested the boulder clay, the memorial +of a time of submergence, when Scotland sat low in the sea as a wintry +archipelago of islands, brushed by frequent icebergs, and when +sub-arctic molluscs lived in her sounds and bays. A section of a few +feet in vertical extent presented me with four distinct periods. There +was, first, the period of the sand-flood, represented by the bar of +pale-sand; then, secondly, the period of cultivation and human +occupancy, represented by the dark plough-furrowed belt of hardened +soil; thirdly, there was the gravel; and, fourthly, the clay. And that +shallow section exhausted the historic ages, and more; for the double +band of gravel and clay belonged palpably to the geologic ages, ere man +had appeared on our planet. There had been found in the locality, only a +few years previous to this time, a considerable number of stone +arrow-heads--some of them only partially finished, and some of them +marred in the making, as if some fletcher of the stone age had carried +on his work on the spot; and all these memorials of a time long anterior +to the first beginnings of history in the island were restricted to the +stratum of hardened mould. + +I carried on my researches in this--what I may term the +chronological--direction, in connexion with the old-coast line, which, +as I have already said, is finely developed in the neighbourhood of +Cromarty on both sides of the Firth, and represented along the +precipices of the Sutors by its line of deep caves, into which the sea +never now enters. And it, too, pressed upon me the fact of the amazing +antiquity of the globe. I found that the caves hollowed by the +surf--when the sea stood from fifteen to five-and-twenty feet above its +present level, or, as I should perhaps rather say, when the land sat +that much lower--were deeper, on the average, by about one-third, than +those caves of the present coast-line that are still in the course of +being hollowed by the waves. And yet the waves have been breaking +against the present coast-line during the whole of the historic period. +The ancient wall of Antoninus, which stretched between the Firths of +Forth and Clyde, was built at its terminations with reference to the +existing levels; and ere Caesar landed in Britain, St. Michael's Mount +was connected with the mainland, as now, by a narrow neck of beach laid +bare by the ebb, across which, according to Diodorus Siculus, the +Cornish miners used to drive, at low water, their carts laden with tin. +If the sea has stood for two thousand six hundred years against the +present coast-line--and no geologist would fix his estimate of the term +lower--then must it have stood against the old line, ere it could have +excavated caves one-third deeper than the modern ones, three thousand +nine hundred years. And both sums united more than exhaust the Hebrew +chronology. Yet what a mere beginning of geologic history does not the +epoch of the old coast-line form! It is but a starting-point from the +recent period. Not a single shell seems to have become extinct during +the last six thousand years. The organisms which I found deeply embedded +in the soil beneath the old coast-line were exactly those which still +live in our seas; and I have been since told by Mr. Smith of Jordanhill, +one of our highest authorities on the subject, that he detected only +three shells of the period with which he was not familiar as existing +forms, and that he subsequently met with all three, in his dredging +expeditions, still alive. The six thousand years of human history form +but a portion of the geologic day that is passing over us: they do not +extend into the _yesterday_ of the globe, far less touch the myriads of +ages spread out beyond. Dr. Chalmers had taught, more than a quarter of +a century previous to this time, that the Scriptures do not fix the +antiquity of the earth. "If they fix anything," he said, "it is only the +antiquity of the human species." The Doctor, though not practically a +geologist at the time, had shrewdly weighed both the evidence adduced +and the scientific character of the men who adduced it, and arrived at a +conclusion, in consequence, which may now be safely regarded as the +final one. I, on the other hand, who knew comparatively little about the +standing of the geologists, or the weight which ought to attach to their +testimony, based my findings regarding the vast antiquity of the earth +on exactly the data on which they had founded theirs; and the more my +acquaintance with the geologic deposits has since extended, the firmer +have my convictions on the subject become, and the more pressing and +inevitable have I felt the ever-growing demand for longer and yet longer +periods for their formation. As certainly as the sun is the centre of +our system, must our earth have revolved around it for millions of +years. An American theologian, the author of a little book entitled the +"Epoch of Creation," in doing me the honour of referring to my +convictions on this subject, states, that I "betray indubitable tokens +of being spell-bound to the extent of infatuation, by the foregone +conclusion of" my "theory concerning the high antiquity of the earth, +and the succession of animal and vegetable creations." He adds further, +in an eloquent sentence, a page and a half long, that had I first +studied and credited my Bible, I would have failed to believe in +successive creations and the geologic chronology. I trust, however, I +may say I did first study and believe my Bible. But such is the +structure of the human mind, that, save when blinded by passion or +warped by prejudice, it must yield an involuntary consent to the force +of evidence; and I can now no more refuse believing, in opposition to +respectable theologians such as Mr. Granville Penn, Professor Moses +Stuart, and Mr. Eleazar Lord, that the earth is of an antiquity +incalculably vast, than I can refuse believing, in opposition to still +more respectable theologians, such as St. Augustine, Lactantius, and +Turretine, that it has antipodes, and moves round the sun. And further, +of this, men such as the Messrs. Penn, Stuart, and Lord may rest +assured, that what I believe in this matter now, all theologians, even +the weakest, will be content to believe fifty years hence. + +Sometimes a chance incident taught me an interesting geological lesson. +At the close of the year 1830, a tremendous hurricane from the south and +west, unequalled in the north of Scotland, from at least the time of the +great hurricane of Christmas 1806, blew down in a single hour four +thousand full-grown trees on the Hill of Cromarty. The vast gaps and +avenues which it opened in the wood above could be seen from the town; +and no sooner had it begun to take off than I set out for the scene of +its ravages. I had previously witnessed, from a sheltered hollow of the +old coast-line, the extraordinary appearance of the sea. It would seem +as if the very violence of the wind had kept down the waves. It brushed +off their tops as they were rising, and swept along the spray in one +dense cloud, white as driving snow, that rose high into the air as it +receded from the shore, and blotted out along the horizon the line +between sky and water. As I approached the wood, I met two poor little +girls of from eight to ten years, coming running and crying along the +road in a paroxysm of consternation; but, gathering heart on seeing me, +they stood to tell that when the storm was at its worst they were in the +midst of the falling trees. Setting out for the Hill on the first rising +of the wind, in the expectation of a rich harvest of withered boughs, +they had reached one of its most exposed ridges just as the gale had +attained to its extreme height, and the trees began to crash down around +them. Their little tear-bestained countenances still continued to show +how extreme the agony of their terror had been. They would run, they +said, for a few paces in one direction, until some huge pine would come +roaring down, and block up their path; when, turning with a shriek, they +would run for a few paces in another; and then, terrified by a similar +interruption, again strike off in a third. At length, after passing +nearly an hour in the extremest peril, and in at least all the fear +which the circumstances justified, they succeeded in making their way +unhurt to the outer skirts of the wood. Bewick would have found in the +incident the subject of a vignette that would have told its own story. +In getting into the thick of the trees, I was struck by the +extraordinary character of the scene presented. In some places, greatly +more than half their number lay stretched upon the ground. On the more +exposed prominences of the Hill, scarce a tree was left standing for +acres together: they covered the slopes; tree stretched over tree like +tiles on a roof, with here and there some shattered trunk whose top had +been blown off, and carried by the hurricane some fifteen or twenty +yards away, leaning in sad ruin over its fallen comrades. What, however, +formed the most striking, because less expected, parts of the scene, +were the tall walls of turf that stood up everywhere among the fallen +trees, like the ruins of dismantled cottages. The granitic gneiss of the +Hill is covered by a thick deposit of the red boulder clay of the +district, and the clay, in turn, by a thin layer of vegetable mould, +interlaced in every direction by the tree roots, which, arrested in +their downward progress by the stiff clay, are restricted to the upper +layer. And, save where here and there I found some tree snapped across +in the midst, or divested of its top, all the others had yielded at the +line between the boulder clay and the soil, and had torn up, as they +fell, vast walls of the felted turf, from fifteen to twenty feet in +length, by from ten to twelve feet in height. There were quite enough of +these walls standing up among the prostrate trees, to have formed a +score of the eastern Sultan's ruined villages; and they imparted to the +scene one of its strangest features. I have mentioned in an early +chapter, that the Hill had its dense thickets, which, from the gloom +that brooded in their recesses even at mid-day, were known to the boys +of the neighbouring town as the "dungeons." They had now fared, however, +in this terrible overturn, like dungeons elsewhere in times of +revolution, and were all swept away; and piles of prostrate trees--in +some instances ten or twelve in a single heap marked where they had +stood. In several localities, where they fell over swampy hollows, or +where deep-seated springs came gushing to the light, I found the water +partially dammed up, and saw that, were they to be left to cumber the +ground as the debris of forests destroyed by hurricanes in the earlier +ages of Scottish history would certainly have been left, the deep shade +and the moisture could not have failed to induce a total change in the +vegetation. I marked, too, the fallen trees all lying one way, in the +direction of the wind; and the thought at once struck me, that in this +recent scene of devastation I had the origin of full one-half of our +Scottish mosses exemplified. Some of the mosses of the south date from +the times of Roman invasion. Their lower tiers of trunks bear the mark +of the Roman axe; and in some instances, the sorely wasted axe itself--a +narrow, oblong tool, somewhat resembling that of the American +backwoodsman--has been found sticking in the buried stump Some of our +other mosses are of still more modern origin: there exist Scottish +mosses that seem to have been formed when Robert the Bruce felled the +woods and wasted the country of John of Lorn. But of the others, not a +few have palpably owed their origin to violent hurricanes, such as the +one which on this occasion ravaged the Hill of Cromarty. The trees which +form their lower stratum are broken across, or torn up by the roots, +_and their trunks all lie one way_. Much of the interest of a science +such as geology must consist in the ability of making dead deposits +represent living scenes; and from this hurricane I was enabled to +conceive, pictorially, if I may so express myself, of the origin of +those comparatively recent deposits of Scotland which, formed almost +exclusively of vegetable matter, contain, with rude works of art, and +occasionally remains of the early human inhabitants of the country, +skeletons of the wolf, the bear, and the beaver, with horns of the _bos +primigenius_ and _bos longifrons_, and of a gigantic variety of red +deer, unequalled in size by animals of the same species in these latter +ages. Occasionally I was enabled to vivify in this way even the ancient +deposits of the Lias, with their vast abundance of cephalopodous +mollusca--belemnites, ammonites, and nautili. My friend of the Cave had +become parish schoolmaster of Nigg; and his hospitable dwelling +furnished me with an excellent centre for exploring the geology of the +parish, especially its Liassic deposits at Shandwick, with their huge +gryphites and their numerous belemnites, of at least two species, +comparatively rare at Eathie--the _belemnite abreviatus_ and _belemnite +elongatus_. I had learned that these curious shells once formed part of +the internal framework of a mollusc more nearly akin to the +cuttle-fishes of the present day than aught else that now exists; and +the cuttle-fishes--not rare in at least one of their species (_loligo +vulgare_) in the Firth of Cromarty--I embraced every opportunity of +examining. I have seen from eighteen to twenty individuals of this +species enclosed at once in the inner chamber of one of our +salmon-wears. The greater number of these shoals I have ordinarily found +dead, and tinged with various shades of green, blue, and yellow--for it +is one of the characteristics of the creature to assume, when passing +into a state of decomposition, a succession of brilliant colours; but I +have seen from six to eight individuals of their number still alive in a +little pool beside the nets, and still retaining their original pink +tint, freckled with red. And these I have observed, as my shadow fell +across their little patch of water, darting from side to side in panic +terror within the narrow confines, emitting ink at almost every dart, +until the whole pool had become a deep solution of sepia. Some of my +most interesting recollections of the cuttle-fish are associated, +however, with the capture and dissection of a single specimen. The +creature, in swimming, darts through the water much in the manner that a +boy slides down an ice-crusted declivity, feet foremost;--the lower or +nether extremities go first, and the head behind: it follows its tail, +instead of being followed by it; and this curious peculiarity in its +mode of progression, though, of course, on the whole, the mode best +adapted to its conformation and instincts, sometimes proves fatal to it +in calm weather, when not a ripple breaks upon the pebbles, to warn that +the shore is near. An enemy appears: the creature ejects its cloud of +ink, like a sharp-shooter discharging his rifle ere he retreats; and +then, darting away, tail foremost, under cover of the cloud, it grounds +itself high upon the beach, and perishes there. I was walking, one very +calm day, along the Cromarty shore, a little to the west of the town, +when I heard a peculiar sound--a _squelch_, if I may employ such a +word--and saw that a large loligo, fully a foot and a half in length, +had thrown itself high and dry upon the beach. I laid hold of it by its +sheath or sack; and the loligo, in turn, laid hold of the pebbles, +apparently to render its abduction as difficult as possible, just as I +have seen a boy, when borne off against his will by a stronger than +himself, grasping fast to door-posts and furniture. The pebbles were +hard and smooth, but the creature raised them very readily with his +suckers. I subjected one of my hands to its grasp, and it seized fast +hold; but though the suckers were still employed, it made use of them on +a different principle. Around the circular rim of each there is a fringe +of minute thorns, hooked somewhat like those of the wild rose. In +clinging to the hard polished pebbles, these were overlapped by a fleshy +membrane, much in the manner that the cushions of a cat's paw overlap +its claws when the animal is in a state of tranquillity; and by means of +the projecting membrane, the hollow interior was rendered air-tight, and +the vacuum completed: but in dealing with the hand--a soft +substance--the thorns were laid bare, like the claws of a cat when +stretched out in anger, and at least a thousand minute prickles were +fixed in the skin at once. They failed to penetrate it, for they were +short, and individually not strong; but, acting together by hundreds, +they took at least a very firm hold. + +What follows may be deemed barbarous; but the men who gulp down at a +sitting half-a-hundred live oysters to gratify their taste, may surely +forgive me the destruction of a single mollusc to gratify my curiosity! +I cut open the sack of the creature with a sharp penknife, and laid bare +the viscera. What a sight for Harvey, when prosecuting, in the earlier +stages, his grand discovery of the circulation! _There_, in the centre, +was the yellow muscular heart, propelling into the transparent, tubular +arteries, the _yellow_ blood. Beat--beat--beat:--I could see the whole +as in a glass model; and all I lacked were powers of vision nice enough +to enable me to detect the fluid passing through the minuter arterial +branches, and then returning by the veins to the _two_ other hearts of +the creature; for, strange to say, it is furnished with three. There in +the midst I saw the yellow heart, and, lying altogether detached from +it, two other deep-coloured hearts at the sides. I cut a little deeper. +_There_ was the gizzard-like stomach, filled with fragments of minute +mussel and crab shells; and _there_, inserted in the spongy, conical, +yellowish-coloured liver, and somewhat resembling in form a Florence +flask, was the ink-bag distended, with its deep dark sepia--the +identical pigment sold under that name in our colour shops, and so +extensively used in landscape drawing by the limner. I then dissected +and laid open the circular or ring-like brain that surrounds the +creature's parrot-like beak, as if its _thinking_ part had no other +vocation than simply to take care of the mouth and its +pertinents--almost the sole employment, however, of not a few brains of +a considerably higher order. I next laid open the huge eyes. They were +curious organs, more simple in their structure than those of the true +fishes, but admirably adapted, I doubt not, for the purposes of seeing. +A camera obscura may be described as consisting of two parts--a lens in +front, and a darkened chamber behind; but in the eyes of fishes, as in +the brute and human eye, we find a third part added: there is a lens in +the middle, a darkened chamber behind, and a lighted chamber, or rather +vestibule, in front. Now, this lighted vestibule--the cornea--is +wanting in the eye of the cuttle-fish. The lens is placed in front, and +the darkened chamber behind. The construction of the organ is that of a +common camera obscura. I found something worthy of remark, too, on the +peculiar style in which the chamber is darkened. In the higher animals +it may be described as a chamber hung with black velvet--the _pigmentum +nigrum_ which covers it is of the deepest black; but in the cuttle-fish +it is a chamber hung with velvet, not of a black, but of a dark purple +hue--the _pigmentum nigrum_ is of a purplish red colour. There is +something interesting in marking this first departure from an invariable +condition of eyes of the more perfect structure, and in then tracing the +peculiarity downwards through almost every shade of colour, to the +emerald-like eye-specks of the pecten, and the still more rudimentary +red eye-specks of the star-fish. After examining the eyes, I next laid +open, in all its length, from the neck to the point of the sack, the +dorsal bone of the creature--its internal shell, I should rather say, +for bone it has none. The form of the shell in this species is that of a +feather, equally developed in the web on both sides. It gives rigidity +to the body, and furnishes the muscles with a fulcrum; and we find it +composed, like all other _shells_, of a mixture of animal matter and +carbonate of lime. Such was the lesson taught me in a single walk; and I +have recorded it at some length. The subject of it, the loligo, has been +described by some of our more distinguished naturalists, such as Kirby +in his Bridgewater Treatise, as "one of the most wonderful works of the +Creator;" and the reader will perhaps remember how fraught with +importance to natural science an incident similar to the one related +proved in the life of the youthful Cuvier. It was when passing his +twenty-second year on the sea-coast, near Fiquainville, that this +greatest of modern naturalists was led, by finding a cuttle-fish +stranded on the beach, which he afterwards dissected, to study the +anatomy and character of the mollusca. To me, however, the lesson +served merely to vivify the dead deposits of the Oolitic system, as +represented by the Lias of Cromarty and Ross. The middle and later ages +of the great secondary division were peculiarly ages of the +cephalopodous molluscs: their belemnites, ammonites, nautili, baculites, +hamites, turrilites, and scaphites, belonged to the great natural +class--singularly rich in its extinct orders and genera, though +comparatively poor in its existing ones--which we find represented by +the cuttle-fish; and when engaged in disinterring the remains of the +earlier-born members of the family--ammonites, belemnites, and +nautili--from amid the shales of Eathie or the mud-stones of Shandwick, +the incident of the loligo has enabled me to conceive of them, not as +mere dead remains, but as the living inhabitants of primaeval seas, +stirred by the diurnal tides, and lighted up by the sun. + +When pursuing my researches amid the deposits of the Lias, I was +conducted to an interesting discovery. There are two great systems of +hills in the north of Scotland--an older and a newer--that bisect each +other like the furrows of a field that had first been ploughed across +and then diagonally. The diagonal furrows, as the last drawn, are still +very entire. The great Caledonian Valley, open from sea to sea, is the +most remarkable of these; but the parallel valleys of the Nairn, of the +Findhorn, and of the Spey, are all well-defined furrows; nor are the +mountain ridges which separate them less definitely ranged in continuous +lines. The ridges and furrows of the earlier ploughing are, on the +contrary, as might be anticipated, broken and interrupted: the effacing +plough has passed over them: and yet there are certain localities in +which we find the fragments of this earlier system sufficiently entire +to form one of the main features of the landscape. In passing through +the upper reaches of the Moray Firth, and along the Caledonian Valley, +the cross furrows may be seen branching off to the west, and existing as +the valleys of Loch Fleet, of the Dornoch Firth, of the Firth of +Cromarty, of the Bay of Munlochy, of the Firth of Beauty, and, as we +enter the Highlands proper, as Glen Urquhart, Glen Morrison, Glen Garry, +Loch Arkaig, and Loch Eil. The diagonal system--represented by the great +valley itself, and known as the system of Ben Nevis and the Ord of +Caithness in our own country, and, according to De Beaumont, as that of +Mount Pilate and Cote d'Or on the Continent--was upheaved after the +close of the Oolitic ages. It was not until at least the period of the +Weald that its "hills had been formed and its mountains brought forth;" +and in the line of the Moray Firth the Lias and Oolite lie uptilted, at +steep angles, against the sides of its long ranges of precipice. It is +not so easy determining the age of the older system. No formation occurs +in the north of Scotland between the Lias and the Old Red Sandstone: the +vast Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic deposits are represented by a +wide gap; and all that can be said regarding the older hills is, that +they disturbed and bore up with them the Old Red Sandstone; but that as +there lay at their bases, at the time of their upheaval, no more modern +rock to be disturbed, it seems impossible definitely to fix their era. +Neither does there appear among their estuaries or valleys any trace of +the Oolitic deposits. Existing, in all probability, during even the +times of the Lias, as the sub-aerial framework of Oolitic Scotland--as +the framework on which the Oolitic vegetables grew--no deposit of the +system could of course have taken place over them. I had not yet, +however, formed any very definite idea regarding the two systems, or +ascertained that they belonged apparently to a different time; and +finding the Lias upheaved against the steeper sides of the Moray +Firth--one of the huge furrows of the more modern system--I repeatedly +sought to find it uptilted also against the shores of the Cromarty +Firth--one of the furrows of the greatly more ancient one. I had, +however, prosecuted the search in a somewhat desultory manner; and as in +the autumn of 1830 a pause of a few days took place in my professional +labours between the completing of one piece of work and the +commencement of another, I resolved on devoting the time to a thorough +survey of the Cromarty Firth, in the hope of detecting the Lias. I began +my search at the granitic gneiss of the Hill, and, proceeding westwards, +passed in succession, in the ascending order, over the uptilted beds of +the lower Old Red Sandstone, from the Great Conglomerate base of the +system, till I reached the middle member of the deposit, which consists, +in this locality, of alternate beds of limestone, sandstone, and +stratified clay, and which we find represented in Caithness by the +extensively developed flag-stones. And then, the rock disappearing, I +passed over a pebbly beach mottled with boulders; and in a little bay +not half a mile distant from the town, I again found the rock laid bare. + +I had long before observed that the rock rose to the surface in this +little bay; I had even employed, when a boy, pieces of its stratified +clay as slate-pencil; but I had yet failed minutely to examine it. I was +now, however, struck by its resemblance, in all save colour, to the +Lias. The strata lay at a low angle: they were composed of an +argillaceous shale, and abounded in limestone nodules; and, save that +both shale and nodules bore, instead of the deep Liassic grey, an +olivaceous tint, I might have almost supposed I had fallen on a +continuation of some of the Eathie beds. I laid open a nodule with a +blow of the hammer, and my heart leaped up when I saw that it enclosed +an organism. A dark, ill-defined, bituminous mass occupied the centre; +but I could distinguish what seemed to be spines and small ichthyic +bones projecting from its edges; and when I subjected them to the +scrutiny of the glass, unlike those mere chance resemblances which +sometimes deceive for a moment the eye, the more distinct and +unequivocal did their forms become. I laid open a second nodule. It +contained a group of glittering rhomboidal scales, with a few cerebral +plates, and a jaw bristling with teeth. A third nodule also supplied its +organism, in a well-defined ichthyolite, covered with minute, +finely-striated scales, and furnished with a sharp spine in the +anterior edge of every fin. I eagerly wrought on, and disinterred, in +the course of a single tide, specimens enough to cover a museum table; +and it was with intense delight that, as the ripple of the advancing +tide was rising against the pebbles, and covering up the ichthyolitic +beds, I carried them to the higher slopes of the beach, and, seated on a +boulder, began carefully to examine them in detail with a common +botanist's microscope. But not a plate, spine, or scale, could I detect +among their organisms, identical with the ichthyic remains of the Lias. +I had got amid the remains of an entirely different and incalculably +more ancient creation. My new-found organisms represented, not the +first, but merely the second age of vertebrate existence on our planet; +but as the remains of the earlier age exist as the mere detached teeth +and spines of placoids, which, though they give full evidence of the +_existence_ of the fishes to which they belong, throw scarce any light +on their structure, it is from the ganoids of this second age that the +palaeontologist can with certainty know under what peculiarities of form, +and associated with what varieties of mechanism, vertebral life existed +in the earlier ages of the world. In my new-found deposit--to which I +soon added, however, within the limits of the parish, some six or eight +deposits more, all charged with the same ichthyic remains--I found I had +work enough before me for the patient study of years. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + + "They lay aside their private cares, + To mend the Kirk and State affairs; + They'll talk o' patronage and priests, + Wi' kindling fury in their breasts; + Or tell what new taxation 's comin', + An' ferlie at the folk in _Lon'on_."--BURNS. + + +We had, as I have already stated, no Dissenters in the parish of +Cromarty. What were known as the Haldanes' people, had tried to effect a +lodgment among us in the town, but without success: in the course of +several years they failed to acquire more than six or eight members; and +these were not of the more solid people, but marked as an eccentric +class, fond of argument, and possessed by a rage for the novel and the +extreme. The leading teachers of the party were a retired English +merchant and an ex-blacksmith, who, quitting the forge in middle life, +had pursued the ordinary studies to no very great effect, and become a +preacher. And both were, I believe, good men, but by no means prudent +missionaries. They said very strong things against the Church of +Scotland, in a place where the Church of Scotland was much respected; +and it was observed, that while they did not do a great deal to convert +the irreligious to Christianity, they were exceedingly zealous in their +endeavours to make the religious Baptists. Much to my annoyance in my +younger days, they used to waylay Uncle Sandy on his return from the +Hill, on evenings when I had gone to get some lessons from him regarding +sand-worms, or razor-fish, or the sea-hare, and engage him in long +controversies about infant baptism and Church Establishments. The +matters which they discussed were greatly too high for me, nor was I by +any means an attentive listener; but I picked up enough to know that +Uncle Sandy, though a man of slow speech, held stiffly to the +Establishment scheme of Knox, and the defence of Presbyterianism; and it +did not require any particularly nice perceptive powers to observe that +both his antagonists and himself used at times to get pretty warm, and +to talk tolerably loud--louder, at least, than was at all necessary in +the quiet evening woods. I remember, too, that in urging him to quit the +National Church for theirs, they usually employed language borrowed from +the Revelations; and that, calling his Church _Babylon_, they bade him +come out of her, that he might not be a partaker of her plagues. Uncle +Sandy had seen too much of the world, and read and heard too much of +controversy, to be out of measure shocked by the phrase; but with a +decent farmer of the parish the hard words of the proselytizers did them +a mischief. The retired merchant had urged him to quit the +Establishment; and the farmer had replied by asking, in his simplicity, +whether he thought he ought to leave his Church to sink in that way? +"Yes," exclaimed the merchant, with great emphasis; "leave her to sink +to her place--the lowest hell!" This was terrible: the decent farmer +opened his huge eyes at hearing what he deemed a bold blasphemy. The +Church of which the Baptist spoke was, in Cromarty at least, the Church +of the _outed_ Mr. Hugh Anderson, who gave up his all in the time of the +persecution, for conscience' sake; it was the Church of Mr. Gordon, +whose ministry had been so signally countenanced during the period of +the great revival; it was the Church of devout Mr. Monro, and of worthy +Mr. Smith, and of many a godly elder and God-fearing member who had held +by Christ the Head; and yet here was it denounced as a Church whose +true place was hell. The farmer turned away, sick of the controversy; +and the imprudent speech of the retired merchant flew like wildfire over +the parish. "Surely," says Bacon, "princes have need, in tender matters +and ticklish times, to beware what they say, especially in those short +speeches which fly about like darts, and are thought to be shot out of +their secret intentions." Princes are, however, not the only men who +would do well to beware of short speeches. The short speech of the +merchant ruined the Baptist cause in Cromarty; and the two missionaries +might, on its delivery, have just done, if they but knew the position to +which it reduced them, what they were content to do a few years +after--pack up their moveables and quit the place. + +Having for years no antagonists to contend with outside the pale of the +Establishment, it was of course natural that we should find opponents +within. But during the incumbency of Mr. Smith--the minister of the +parish for the first one-and-twenty years of my life--even these were +wanting; and we passed a very quiet time, undisturbed by controversy of +any kind, political or ecclesiastical. Nor were the first few years of +Mr. Stewart's incumbency less quiet. The Catholic Relief Bill was a +pebble cast into the pool, but a very minute one; and the ripple which +it raised caused scarce any agitation. Mr. Stewart did not see his way +clearly through all the difficulties of the measure; but, influenced in +part by some of his brethren in the neighbourhood, he at length made up +his mind to petition against it; and to his petition, praying that no +concessions should be made to the Papists, greatly more than +nineteen-twentieths of the male parishioners affixed their names. The +few individuals who kept aloof were chiefly lads of an extra-liberal +turn, devoid, like most extreme politicians, of the ordinary +ecclesiastical sympathies of their countryfolk; and as I cultivated no +acquaintance with them, and was more ecclesiastical than political in my +leanings, I had the satisfaction of finding myself standing, in +opposition to all my friends, on the Catholic Relief measure, in a +respectable minority of one. Even Uncle Sandy, after some little demur, +and an explosion against the Irish Establishment, set off and signed the +petition. I failed, however, to see that I was in the wrong. With the +two great facts of the Irish Union and the Irish Church before me, I +could not petition against Roman Catholic Emancipation. I felt, too, +that were I myself a Roman Catholic, I would listen to no Protestant +argument until what I held to be justice had first been done me. I would +have at once inferred that a religion associated with what I deemed +injustice was a false, not a true, religion; and, on the strength of the +inference, would have rejected it without further inquiry; and could I +fail to believe that what I myself would have done in the circumstances, +many Roman Catholics were actually doing? And believing I could defend +my position, which was certainly not an obtrusive one, and was at times +assailed in conversation by my friends, in a way that showed, as I +thought, they did not understand it, I sat down and wrote an elaborate +letter on the subject, addressed to the editor of the _Inverness +Courier_; in which, as I afterwards found, I was happy enough to +anticipate in some points the line taken up, in his famous emancipation +speech, by a man whom I had early learned to recognise as the greatest +and wisest of Scottish ministers--the late Dr. Chalmers. On glancing +over my letter, however, and then looking round me on the good men among +my townsfolk--including my uncle and my minister--with whom it would +have the effect of placing me in more decided antagonism than any mere +refusal to sign their petition, I resolved, instead of dropping it into +the post-office, to drop it into the fire, which I accordingly did; and +so the matter took end; and what I had to say in my own defence, and in +that of emancipation, was in consequence never said. + +This, however, was but the mere shadow of a controversy; it was merely +a possible controversy, strangled in the birth. But some three years +after, the parish was agitated by a dire ecclesiastical dispute, which +set us all together by the ears. The place had not only its parish +church, but also its Gaelic chapel, which, though on the ordinary +foundation of a chapel of ease, was endowed, and under the patronage of +the crown. It had been built about sixty years previous, by a benevolent +proprietor of the lands of Cromarty--"George Ross, the Scotch +agent"--whom Junius ironically described as the "trusted friend and +worthy confidant of Lord Mansfield;" and who, whatever the satirist may +have thought of either, was in reality a man worthy the friendship of +the accomplished and philosophic lawyer. Cromarty, originally a Lowland +settlement, had had from the Reformation down till the latter quarter of +the last century no Gaelic place of worship. On the breaking up of the +feudal system, however, the Highlanders began to drop into the place in +quest of employment; and George Ross, affected by their uncared-for +religious condition, built for them, at his own expense, a chapel, and +had influence enough to get an endowment for its minister from the +Government. Government retained the patronage in its own hands; and as +the Highlanders consisted of but labourers and farm servants, and the +workers in a hempen manufactory, and had no manner of influence, their +wishes were not always consulted in the choice of a minister. About the +time of Mr. Stewart's appointment, through the late Sir Robert Peel, who +had courteously yielded to the wishes of the English congregation, the +Gaelic people had got a minister presented to them whom they would +scarcely have chosen for themselves, but who had, notwithstanding, +popular points about him. Though not of high talent, he was frank and +genial, and visited often, and conversed much; and at length the +Highlanders came to regard him as the very _beau-ideal_ of a minister. +He and Mr. Stewart belonged to the antagonist parties in the Church. Mr. +Stewart took his place in the old Presbyterian section, under Chalmers +and Thomson; while the Gaelic minister held by Drs. Inglis and Cook: and +so thoroughly were their respective congregations influenced by their +views, that at the Disruption in 1843, while considerably more than +nine-tenths of the English-speaking parishioners closed their connexion +with the State, and became Free Churchmen, at least an equal proportion +of the chapel Highlanders clung to the Establishment. Curiously enough, +however, there arose a controversy between the congregations at this +time, in which each seemed, in relation to the general question at +issue, to take the part proper to the other. + +I do not think the English congregation were in any degree jealous of +the Gaelic one. The English contained the _elite_ of the place--all its +men of property and influence, from its merchants and heritors, down to +the humblest of the class that afterwards became its ten-pound +franchise-holders; whereas the Gaelic people were, as I have said, +simply poor labourers and weavers: and if the sense of superiority did +at times show itself on the more potent side, it was only among the +lowlier people of the English congregation. When, on a certain occasion, +a stranger fell asleep in the middle of one of Mr. Stewart's best +sermons, and snored louder than was seemly, an individual beside him was +heard muttering, in a low whisper, that the man ought to be sent up to +"_the Gaelic_," for he was not fit to be among them; and there might be +a few other similar manifestations; but the parties were not on a +sufficiently equal level to enact the part of those rival congregations +that are for ever bemoaning the shortcomings each of the other, and that +in their days of fasting and humiliation have the sins of their +neighbours at least as strongly before them as their own. But if the +English congregation were not jealous of the Gaelic one, the Gaelic one, +as was perhaps natural in their circumstances, were, I am afraid, +jealous of the English: they were poor people, they used sometimes to +say, but their souls were as precious as those of richer folk, and they +were surely as well entitled to have their just rights as the English +people--axioms which, I believe, no one in the other congregation +disputed, or even canvassed at all. We were, however, all roused one +morning to consider the case, by learning that on the previous day the +minister of the Gaelic chapel had petitioned the Presbytery of the +district, either to be assigned a parish within the bounds of the parish +of Cromarty, or to have the charge erected into a collegiate one, and +his half of it, of course, rendered coordinate with Mr. Stewart's. + +The English people were at once very angry, and very much alarmed. As +the two congregations were scattered all over the same piece of +territory, it would be impossible to cut it up into two parishes, +without separating between a portion of Mr. Stewart's people and their +minister, and making them the parishioners of a man whom they had not +yet learned to like; and, on the other hand, by erecting the charge into +a collegiate one, the minister whom they had not yet learned to like +would acquire as real a jurisdiction over them as that possessed by the +minister of their choice. Or--as the case was somewhat quaintly stated +by one of themselves--by the one alternative "the Gaelic man would +become whole minister to the half of them, and by the other, half +minister to the whole of them." And so they determined on making a +vigorous resistance. Mr. Stewart himself, too, liked the move of his +neighbour the Gaelic minister exceedingly ill. He was not desirous, he +said, to have a colleague thrust upon him in his charge, to keep him +right on Moderate principles--a benefit for which he had not bargained +when he accepted the presentation; nor yet, as the other alternative, +did he wish to see his living child, the parish, divided into two, and +the half of it given to the strange claimant that was not its parent. +There was another account, too, on which he disliked the movement: the +two great parties in the Church were equally represented at this time in +the Presbytery;--they had their three members apiece; and he, of +course, saw that the introduction of the Gaelic minister into it would +have the effect of casting the balance in favour of Moderatism. And so, +as both minister and people were equally in earnest, counter petitions +were soon got up, praying the Presbytery, as a first step in the +process, that copies of the Gaelic minister's document should be served +upon them. The Presbytery decided, in terms of their prayer, that copies +should be served; and the Gaelic minister, on the somewhat extreme +ground that the people had no right to appear in the business at all, +appealed to the General Assembly. And so the people had next to petition +that venerable court in behalf of what they deemed their imperilled +rights; while the Gaelic congregation, under the full impression that +their overbearing English neighbours were treating them "as if they had +no souls," got up a counter petition, virtually to the effect that the +parish might be either cut in two, and the half of it given to their +minister, or that he might be at least made second minister to every man +in it. The minister, however, finding at the General Assembly that the +ecclesiastical party on whose support he had relied were opposed _in +toto_ to the erection of chapels of ease into regular charges, and that +the peculiarities of the case were such as to cut off all chance of his +being supported by their opponents, fell from his appeal, and the case +was never called in Court. Some of our Cromarty fisher-folk, who were +staunch on the English side, though they could not quite see the merits, +had rather a different version of the business. "The Gaelic man had no +sooner entered the Kirk o' the General Assembly," they said, "than the +maister of the Assembly rose, and, speaking very rough, said, 'Ye +contrarious rascal, what tak's you here? What are ye aye troubling that +decent lad Mr. Stewart for? I'm sure he's no meddling wi' you! Get about +your business, ye contrarious rascal!'" + +I took an active part in this controversy; wrote petitions and +statements for my brother parishioners, with paragraphs for the local +newspapers, and a long letter for the _Caledonian Mercury_, in reply to +a tissue of misrepresentation which appeared in that print, from the pen +of one of the Gaelic minister's legal agents; and, finally, I replied to +a pamphlet by the same hand, which, though miserable as a piece of +writing--for it resembled no other composition ever produced, save, +mayhap, a very badly-written law paper--contained statements which I +deemed it necessary to meet. And such were my first attempts in the +rough field of ecclesiastical controversy--a field into which +inclination would never have led me, but which has certainly lain very +much in my way, and in which I have spent many a laborious hour. My +first pieces were rather stiffly written, somewhat on the perilous model +of Junius; but as it was hardly possible to write so ill as my opponent, +I could appeal to even his friends whether it was quite right of him to +call me illiterate and untaught, in prose so much worse than my own. +Chiefly by getting the laughers now and then on my side, I succeeded in +making him angry; and he replied to my jokes by _calling names_--a +phrase, by the way, which, forgetting his Watts' Hymns, and failing to +consult his Johnson, he characterized as not English. I was, he said, a +"shallow, pretending ninny;" an "impudent illiterate lad;" "a fanatic" +and a "frantic person;" the "low underling of a faction," and "Peter the +Hermit;" and, finally, as the sum-total of the whole he assured me that +I stood in _his_ "estimation the most ignoble and despised in the whole +range of the human species." This was frightful! but I not only outlived +it all, but learned, I fear, after in this way first tasting blood, to +experience a rather too keen delight in the anger of an antagonist. I +may add, that when, some two or three years after the period of this +controversy, the General Assembly admitted what were known as the +Parliamentary ministers, and the ministers of chapels of ease, to a seat +in the church courts, neither my townsmen nor myself saw aught to +challenge in the arrangement. It contained none of the elements which +had provoked our hostility in the Cromarty chapel case: it did not make +over the people of one minister to the charge of another, whom they +would never have chosen for themselves; but, without encroaching on +popular rights, equalized, on the Presbyterian scheme, the standing of +ministers and the claims of congregations. + +The next matter which engaged my townsfolk was a considerably more +serious one. When, in 1831, cholera first threatened the shores of +Britain, the Bay of Cromarty was appointed by Government one of the +quarantine ports; and we became familiar with the sight, at first deemed +sufficiently startling, of fleets of vessels lying in the upper +roadstead, with the yellow flag waving from their mast-tops. The +disease, however, failed to find its way ashore; and, when, in the +summer of the following year, it was introduced into the north of +Scotland, it went stalking around the town and parish for several +months, without visiting either. It greatly more than decimated the +villages of Portmahomak and Inver, and bore heavily on the parishes of +Nigg and Urquhart, with the towns of Inverness, Nairn, Avoch, Dingwall, +and Rosemarkie; in fine, the quarantine seaport town that seemed at +first to be most in danger from the disease, appeared latterly to be +almost the only place of any size in the locality exempted from its +ravages. It approached, however, alarmingly near. The opening of the +Cromarty Firth is little more than a mile across; a glass of the +ordinary power enables one to count every pane in the windows of the +dwellings that mottle its northern shore, and to distinguish their +inhabitants; and yet among these dwellings cholera was raging; and we +could see, in at least one instance, a dead body borne forth by two +persons on a hand-barrow, and buried in a neighbouring sand-bank. +Stories, too, of the sad fate of individuals with whom the townsfolk +were acquainted, and who had resided in well-known localities, told +among them with powerful effect. Such was the general panic in the +infected places, that the bodies of the dead were no longer carried to +the churchyard, but huddled up in solitary holes and corners; and the +pictures suggested to the fancy, of familiar faces lying uncoffined in +the ground beside some lonely wood, or in some dark morass or heathy +moor, were fraught to many with a terror stronger than that of death. We +knew that the corpse of a young robust fisherman, who used occasionally +to act as one of the Cromarty ferrymen, and with whose appearance, in +consequence, every one was familiar, lay festering in a sand-bank; that +the iron frame of a brawny blacksmith was decomposing in a mossy hole +beside a thorn-bush; that half the inhabitants of the little fishing +village of Inver were strewn in shallow furrows along the arid waste +which surrounded their dwellings; that houses divested of their tenants, +and become foul dens of contagion, had been set on fire and burnt to the +ground; and that around the infected fishing-hamlets of Hilton and +Balintore the country-people had drawn a sort of _barriere sanitaire_, +and cooped up within the limits of their respective villages the +wretched inhabitants. And in the general consternation--a consternation +much more extreme than that evinced when the disease actually visited +the place--it was asked by the townsfolk whether _they_ ought not so +long as the place remained uninfected, to draw a similar _cordon_ round +themselves. A public meeting was accordingly held, to deliberate on the +best means of shutting themselves in; and at the meeting almost all the +adult male inhabitants attended, with the exception of the gentlemen in +the commission of the peace, and the town officials, who, though quite +prepared to wink hard at our irregularities, failed to see that, on any +grounds tenable in the eye of the law, they themselves could take a +share in them. + +Our meeting at first threatened to be stormy. The extra Liberals, who, +in the previous ecclesiastical struggle, had taken part to a man with +the Gaelic people, as they did, in the subsequent church controversy, +with the Court of Session, began by an attack on the Town Justices. We +might all see now, said a Liberal writer lad who addressed us, how +little these people were our friends. Now when the place was threatened +by the pestilence, they would do nothing for us; they would not even so +much as countenance our meeting; we saw there was not one of them +present: in short, they cared nothing at all about us, or whether we +died or lived. But he and his friends would stand by us to the last; +nay, while the magistrates were evidently afraid, with all their wealth, +to move in the matter, terrified, no doubt, by the prosecutions for +damages which might be instituted against them were they to stop the +highways, and turn back travellers, he himself, though far from rich, +would be our security against all legal processes whatever. This, of +course, was very noble; all the more noble from the circumstance that +the speaker could not, as the _Gazette_ informed us, meet his own actual +liabilities at the time, and was yet fully prepared, notwithstanding, to +meet all our possible ones. Up started, however, almost ere he had done +speaking, a friend of the Justices, and made so angry a speech in their +defence, that the meeting threatened to fall into two parties, and +explode in a squabble. I rose in the extremity, and, though unhappily no +orator, addressed my townsfolk in a few homely sentences. Cholera, I +reminded them, was too evidently of neither party; and the magistrates +were, I was sure, nearly as much frightened as we were. But they really +could do nothing for us. In matters of life and death, however, when +laws and magistrates failed to protect quiet people, the people were +justified in asserting the natural right to protect themselves; and, +whatever laws and lawyers might urge to the contrary, that right was now +ours. In a neighbouring county, the inhabitants of certain infected +villages were already fairly shut up amid their dwellings by the +countryfolk around, who could themselves show a clean bill of health; +and we, if in the circumstances of these villagers, would very possibly +be treated after the same manner. And what remained to us in our actual +circumstances was just to anticipate the process of being ourselves +bottled in, by bottling the country out. The town, situated on a +promontory, and approachable at only a few points, could easily be +guarded; and instead of squabbling about the merits of Justices of the +Peace--very likely somewhat Conservative in their leanings--or of +spirited Reformers who would like very well to be Justices of the Peace +also, and would doubtless make very excellent ones, I thought it would +be far better for us immediately to form ourselves into a Defence +Association, and proceed to regulate our watches and set our guards. My +short speech was remarkably well received. There was a poor man +immediately beside me, who was in great dread of cholera, and who +actually proved one of its first victims in the place--for in little +more than a week after he was in his grave--who backed me by an +especially vigorous Hear, hear!--and the answering Hear, hears, of the +meeting bore down all reply. We accordingly at once formed our Defence +Association; and ere midnight our rounds and stations were marked out, +and our watches set. All power passed at once out of the hands of the +magistrates; but the worthy men themselves said very little about it; +and we had the satisfaction of knowing that their families--especially +their wives and daughters--were very friendly indeed both to the +Association and the temporary suspension of the law, and that, on both +their own account and ours, they wished us all manner of success. + +We kept guard for several days. All vagabonds and trampers were turned +back without remorse; but there was a respectable class of travellers +from whom there was less danger to be apprehended; and with these we +found it somewhat difficult to deal. I would have admitted them at once; +but the majority of the Association demurred;--to do that would be, +according to Corporal Trim, to "set one man greatly over the head of +another;" and it was ultimately agreed that, instead of at once +admitting them, they should be first brought into a wooden building +fitted up for the purpose, and thoroughly fumigated with sulphur and +chloride of lime. I know not with whom the expedient first originated: +it was said to have been suggested by some medical man who knew a great +deal about cholera. And though, for my own part, I could not see how the +demon of the disease was to be expelled by the steam of a little sulphur +and chloride, as the evil spirit in Tobit was expelled by the smoke of +the fish's liver, it seemed to satisfy the Association wonderfully well; +and a stranger well smoked came to be regarded as safe. There was a day +at hand which promised an unusual amount of smoking. The agitation of +the Reform Bill had commenced;--a great court of appeal was on that day +to hold at Cromarty; and it was known that both a Whig and Tory party +from Inverness, in which cholera was raging at the time, would to a +certainty attend it. What, it was asked, were we to do with the +politicians--the formidable bankers, factors, and lawyers--who would +form, we knew, the Inverness cavalcade? Individually, the question +seemed to be asked under a sort of foreboding terror, that calculated +consequences; but when the Association came to ask it collectively, and +to answer it in a body, it was in a bold tone, that set fear at +defiance. And so it was resolved, _nem. con._, that the Inverness +politicians should be smoked like the others. My turn to mount guard had +come round on the previous night at twelve o'clock; but I had calculated +on being off the station ere the Inverness people came up. Unluckily, +however, instead of being appointed a simple sentry, I was made officer +for the night. It was the duty assigned to me to walk round the several +posts, and see that the various sentinels were keeping a smart outlook, +which I did very faithfully; but when the term of my watch had expired, +I found no relieving officer coming up to take my place. The prudent man +appointed on the occasion was, I feared, tiding over the coming +difficulty in some quiet corner; but I continued my rounds, maugre the +suspicion, in the hope of his appearance. And as I approached one of the +most important stations--that on the great highway which connects the +town of Cromarty with Kessock Ferry, _there_ was the Whig portion of the +Inverness cavalcade just coming up. The newly-appointed sentinel stood +aside, to let his officer deal with the Whig gentlemen, as, of course, +best became both their quality and _his_ official standing. I would +rather have been elsewhere; but I at once brought the procession to a +stand. A man of high spirit and influence--a banker, and very much a +Whig--at once addressed me with a stern--"By what authority, Sir?" By +the authority, I replied, of five hundred able-bodied men in the +neighbouring town, associated for the protection of themselves and their +families. "Protection against what?" "Protection against the +pestilence;--you come from an infected place." "Do you know what you are +doing, Sir?" said the banker fiercely. "Yes; doing what the law cannot +do for us, but what we have determined to do for ourselves." The banker +grew pale with anger; and he was afterwards heard to say, that had he +had a pistol at the time, he would have shot upon the spot the man who +stopped him; but not having a pistol, he could not shoot me; and so I +sent him and his party away under an escort, to be smoked. And as they +were somewhat obstreperous by the way, and knocked the hat of one of the +guards over his nose, they got, in the fumigating process, as I was +sorry to learn, a double portion of the sulphur and the chloride; and +came into court, to contend with the Tories, gasping for breath. I was +aware I acted on this occasion a very foolish part;--I ought to a +certainty to have run away on the approach of the Inverness cavalcade; +but the running away would have involved, according to Rochester, an +amount of moral courage which I did not possess. I fear, too. I must +admit, that the rough tones of the banker's address stirred up what had +long lain quietly enough in my veins--some of the wild buccaneering +blood of John Feddes and the old seafaring Millers; and so I weakly +remained at my post, and did what the Association deemed my duty. I +trust the banker did not recognise me, and that now, after the lapse of +more than twenty years, he will be inclined to extend to me his +forgiveness. I take this late opportunity of humbly begging his pardon, +and of assuring him, that at the very time I brought him to bay I was +heartily at one with him in his politics. But then my townsfolk, being +much frightened, were perfectly impartial in smoking Whigs and Tories +all alike; and I could bethink me of no eligible mode of exempting my +friends from a process of fumigation which was, I daresay, very +unpleasant, and in whose virtues my faith was assuredly not strong. + +When engaged, however, in keeping up our _cordon_ with apparent success, +cholera entered the place in a way on which it was impossible we could +have calculated. A Cromarty fisherman had died of the disease at Wick +rather more than a month previous, and the clothes known to have been in +contact with the body were burnt by the Wick authorities in the open +air. He had, however, a brother on the spot, who had stealthily +appropriated some of the better pieces of dress; and these he brought +home with him in a chest; though such was the dread with which he +regarded them that for more than four weeks he suffered the chest to lie +beside him unopened. At length, in an evil hour, the pieces of dress +were taken out, and, like the "goodly Babylonish garment" which wrought +the destruction of Achan and the discomfiture of the camp, they led, in +the first instance, to the death of the poor imprudent fisherman, and to +that of not a few of his townsfolk immediately after. He himself was +seized by cholera on the following day; in less than two days more he +was dead and buried; and the disease went creeping about the streets and +lanes for weeks after--here striking down a strong man in the full +vigour of middle life--there shortening, apparently by but a few months, +the span of some worn-out creature, already on the verge of the grave. +The visitation had its wildly picturesque accompaniments. Pitch and tar +were kept burning during the night in the openings of the infected +lanes; and the unsteady light flickered with ghastly effect on house and +wall, and tall chimney-top, and on the flitting figures of the watchers. +By day, the frequent coffins, borne to the grave by but a few bearers, +and the frequent smoke that rose outside the place from fires kindled to +consume the clothes of the infected, had their sad and startling effect; +a migration, too, of a considerable portion of the fisher population to +the caves of the hill, in which they continued to reside till the +disease left the town, formed a striking accompaniment of the +visitation; and yet, curiously enough, as the danger seemed to increase +the consternation lessened, and there was much less fear among the +people when the disease was actually ravaging the place, than when it +was merely stalking within sight around it. We soon became familiar, +too, with its direst horrors, and even learned to regard them as +comparatively ordinary and commonplace. I had read, about two years +before, the passage in Southey's "_Colloquies_," in which Sir Thomas +More is made to remark that modern Englishmen have no guarantee +whatever, in these latter times, that their shores shall not be visited, +as of old, by devastating plagues. "As touching the pestilence," says +Sir Thomas (or rather the poet in his name), "you fancy yourselves +secure because the plague has not appeared among you for the last +hundred and fifty years--a portion of time which, long as it may seem, +compared with the brief term of mortal existence, is as nothing in the +physical history of the globe. The importation of that scourge is as +possible now as it was in former times; and were it once imported, do +you suppose it would rage with less violence among the crowded +population of your metropolis than it did before the fire? What," he +adds, "if the sweating sickness, emphatically called the English +disease, were to show itself again? Can any cause be assigned why it is +not as likely to break out in the nineteenth century as in the +fifteenth?" And, striking as the passage is, I remembered perusing it +with that incredulous feeling, natural to men in a quiet time, which +leads them to draw so broad a line between the experience of history, if +of a comparatively remote age, or of a distant place, and their own +personal experience. In the loose sense of the sophist, it was contrary +to my experience that Britain should become the seat of any such fatal +and widely-devastating disease as used to ravage it of old. And yet, now +that I saw as terrible and unwonted an infliction as either the plague +or the sweating sickness decimating our towns and villages, and the +terrible scenes described by De Foe and Patrick Walker fully rivalled, +the feeling with which I came to regard it was one, not of strangeness, +but of familiarity. + +When thus unsuccessfully employed in keeping watch and ward against our +insidious enemy, the Reform Bill for Scotland passed the House of Lords, +and became the law of the land. I had watched with interest the growth +of the popular element in the country--had seen it gradually +strengthening, from the despotic times of Liverpool and Castlereagh, +through the middle period of Canning and Goderich, down till even +Wellington and Peel, men of iron as they were, had to yield to the +pressure from without, and to repeal first the Test and Corporation +Acts, and next to carry, against their own convictions, the great Roman +Catholic Emancipation measure. The people, during a season of +undisturbed peace, favourable to the growth of opinion, were becoming +more decidedly a power in the country than they had ever been before; +and of course, as one of the people, and in the belief, too, that the +influence of the many would be less selfishly exerted than that of the +few, I was pleased that it should be so, and looked forward to better +days. For myself personally I expected nothing. I had early come to see +that toil, physical or intellectual, was to be my portion throughout +life, and that through no possible improvement in the government of the +country could I be exempted from labouring for my bread. From State +patronage I never expected anything, and I have received from it about +as much as I ever expected. + +I was employed in labouring pretty hard for my bread one fine evening in +the summer of 1830--engaged in hewing with bare breast and arms, in the +neighbourhood of the harbour of Cromarty, a large tombstone, which, on +the following day, was to be carried across the ferry to a churchyard on +the opposite side of the Firth. A group of French fishermen, who had +gathered round me, were looking curiously at my mode of working, and, as +I thought, somewhat curiously at myself, as if speculating on the +physical powers of a man with whom there was at least a possibility of +their having one day to deal. They formed part of the crew of one of +those powerfully-manned French luggers which visit our northern coasts +every year, ostensibly with the design of prosecuting the herring +fishery, but which, supported mainly by large Government bounties, and +in but small part by their fishing speculations, are in reality kept up +by the State as a means of rearing sailors for the French navy. Their +lugger--an uncouth-looking vessel, representative rather of the +navigation of three centuries ago than of that of the present day--lay +stranded in the harbour beside us; and, their work over for the day, +they seemed as quiet and silent as the calm evening whose stillness they +were enjoying; when the letter-carrier of the place came up to where I +was working, and handed me, all damp from the press, a copy of the +_Inverness Courier_, which I owed to the kindness of its editor. I was +at once attracted by the heading, in capitals, of his leading +article--"Revolution in France--Flight of Charles X."--and pointed it +out to the Frenchmen. None of them understood English; but they could +here and there catch the meaning of the more important words, and, +exclaiming "_Revolution en France!!--Fuite de Charles X.!!_"--they +clustered round it in a state of the extremest excitement, gabbling +faster and louder than thrice as many Englishmen could have done in any +circumstances. At length, however, their resolution seemed taken: +curiously enough, their lugger bore the name of _"Charles X.;"_ and one +of them, laying hold of a large lump of chalk, repaired to the vessel's +stern, and by covering over the white-lead letters with the chalk, +effaced the royal name. Charles was virtually declared by the little bit +of France that sailed in the lugger, to be no longer king; and the +incident struck me, trivial as it may seem, as significantly +illustrative of the extreme slightness of that hold which the rulers of +modern France possess on the affections of their people. I returned to +my home as the evening darkened, more moved by this unexpected +revolution than by any other political event of my time--brimful of hope +for the cause of freedom all over the civilized world, and, in +especial--misled by a sort of _analogical experience_--sanguine in my +expectations for France. It had had, like our own country, its first +stormy revolution, in which its monarch had lost his head; and then its +Cromwell, and then its Restoration, and its easy, luxurious king, who, +like Charles II., had died in possession of the throne, and who had been +succeeded by a weak bigot brother, the very counterpart of James VII. +And now, after a comparatively orderly revolution like that of 1688, the +bigot had been dethroned, and the head of another branch of the royal +family called in to enact the part of William III. The historical +parallel seemed complete; and could I doubt that what would next follow +would be a long period of progressive improvement, in which the French +people would come to enjoy, as entirely as those of Britain, a +well-regulated freedom, under which revolutions would be unnecessary, +mayhap impossible? Was it not evident, too, that the success of the +French in their noble struggle would immediately act with beneficial +effect on the popular cause in our own country and everywhere else, and +greatly quicken the progress of reform? + +And so I continued to watch with interest the course of the Reform +Bill, and was delighted to see it, after a passage singularly stormy and +precarious, at length safely moored in port. In some of the measures, +too, to which it subsequently led, I greatly delighted, especially in +the emancipation of our negro slaves in the colonies. Nor could I join +many of my personal friends in their denunciation of that appropriation +measure, as it was termed--also an effect of the altered +constituency--which suppressed the Irish bishoprics. As I ventured to +tell my minister, who took the other side--if a Protestant Church +failed, after enjoying for three hundred years the benefits of a large +endowment, and every advantage of position which the statute-book could +confer, to erect herself into the Church of the many, it was high time +to commence dealing with her in her true character--as the Church of the +few. At home, however, within the narrow precincts of my native town, +there were effects of the measure which, though comparatively trifling, +I liked considerably worse than the suppression of the bishoprics. It +broke up the townsfolk into two portions--the one consisting of elderly +or middle-aged men, who had been in the commission of the peace ere the +passing of the bill, and who now, as it erected the town into a +parliamentary burgh, became our magistrates, in virtue of the support of +a majority of the voters; and a younger and weaker, but clever and very +active party, few of whom were yet in the commission of the peace, and +who, after standing unsuccessfully for the magistracy, became the +leaders of a patriotic opposition, which succeeded in rendering the seat +of justice a rather uneasy one in Cromarty. The younger men were staunch +Liberals, but great Moderates--the elder, sound Evangelicals, but +decidedly Conservative in their leanings; and as I held ecclesiastically +by the one party, and secularly by the other, I found my position, on +the whole, a rather anomalous one. Both parties got involved in +law-suits. When the Whig Members of Parliament for the county and burgh +came the way, they might be seen going about the streets arm-in-arm +with the young Whigs, which was, of course, a signal honour; and during +the heat of a contested election, young Whiggism, to show itself +grateful, succeeded in running off with a Conservative voter, whom it +had caught in his cups, and got itself involved in a law-suit in +consequence, which cost it several hundred pounds. The Conservatives, on +the other hand, also got entangled in an expensive law-suit. The town +had its annual fair, at which from fifty to a hundred children used to +buy gingerbread, and which had held for many years at the eastern end of +the town links. Through, however, some unexplained piece of strategy on +the part of the young Liberals, a market-day came round, on which the +gingerbread-women took their stand on a green a little above the +harbour; and, of course, where the gingerbread was, there the children +were gathered together; and the magistrates, astonished, visited the +spot in order to ascertain, if possible, the philosophy of the change. +They found the ground occupied by a talkative pedlar, who stood up +strongly for the young Liberals and the new side. The magistrates +straightway demanded the production of his license. The pedlar had none. +And so he was apprehended, and summarily tried, on a charge of +contravening the statute 55 Geo. III. cap. 71; and, being found guilty +of hawking without a license, he was committed to prison. The pedlar, +backed, it was understood, by the young Liberals, raised an action for +wrongous imprisonment; and, on the ground that the day on which he had +sold his goods was a fair or market-day, on which anybody might sell +anything, the magistrates were cast in damages. I liked the law-suits +very ill, and held that the young Liberals would have been more wisely +employed in making money by their shops and professions--secure that the +coveted honours would ultimately get into the wake of the good +bank-accounts--than that they should be engaged either in scattering +their own means in courts of law, or in impinging on the means of their +neighbours. And ultimately I found my proper political position as a +supporter in all ecclesiastical and municipal matters of my Conservative +townsmen, and a supporter in almost all the national ones of the Whigs; +whom, however, I always liked better, and deemed more virtuous, when +they were out of office than when they were in. + +On one occasion I even became political enough to stand for a +councillorship. My friends, chiefly through the death of elderly voters +and the rise of younger men, few of whom were Conservative, felt +themselves getting weak in the place; and fearing that they could not +otherwise secure a majority at the Council board, they urged me to stand +for one of the vacancies, which I accordingly did, and carried my +election by a swimming majority. And in duly attending the first meeting +of Council, I heard an eloquent speech from a gentleman in the +opposition, directed against the individuals who, as he finely expressed +it, "were wielding the destinies of his native town;" and saw, as the +only serious piece of business before the meeting, the Councillors +clubbing pennies a-piece, in order to defray, in the utter lack of town +funds, the expense of a ninepenny postage. And then, with, I fear, a +very inadequate sense of the responsibilities of my new office, I stayed +away from the Council board, and did nothing whatever in its behalf, +with astonishing perseverance and success, for three years together. And +thus began and terminated my municipal career--a career which, I must +confess, failed to secure for me the thanks of my constituency; but +then, on the other hand, I am not aware that the worthy people ever +seriously complained. There was absolutely nothing to do in the +councilship; and, unlike some of my brother office-bearers, the +requisite nothing I did, quietly and considerately, and very much at my +leisure, without any unnecessary display of stump-oratory, or of +anything else. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + + "Days passed; an' now my patient steps + That maiden's walks attend; + My vows had reach'd that maiden's ear, + Ay, an' she ca'd me friend. + An' I was bless'd as bless'd can be; + The fond, daft dreamer Hope + Ne'er dream'd o' happier days than mine, + Or joys o' ampler scope."--HENRISON'S SANG. + + +I used, as I have said, to have occasional visitors when working in the +churchyard. My minister has stood beside me for hours together, +discussing every sort of subject, from the misdeeds of the Moderate +divines--whom he liked all the worse for being brethren of his own +cloth--to the views of Isaac Taylor on the corruptions of Christianity +or the possibilities of the future state. Strangers, too, occasionally +came the way, desirous of being introduced to the natural curiosities of +the district, more especially to its geology; and I remember first +meeting in the churchyard, in this way, the late Sir Thomas Dick Lauder; +and of having the opportunity afforded me of questioning, mallet in +hand, the present distinguished Professor of Humanity in the Edinburgh +University,[15] respecting the nature of the cohesive agent in the +non-calcareous sandstone which I was engaged in hewing. I had sometimes +a different, but not less interesting, class of visitors. The town had +its small but very choice circle of accomplished intellectual ladies, +who, earlier in the century, would have been perhaps described as +members of the blue-stocking sisterhood; but the advancing intelligence +of the age had rendered the phrase obsolete; and they simply took their +place as well-informed, sensible women, whose acquaintance with the best +authors was regarded as in no degree disqualifying them from their +proper duties as wives or daughters. And my circle of acquaintance +included the entire class. I used to meet them at delightful +tea-parties, and sometimes borrowed a day from my work to conduct them +through the picturesque burn of Eathie, or the wild scenes of Cromarty +Hill, or to introduce them to the fossiliferous deposits of the Lias or +the Old Red Sandstone. And not unfrequently their evening walks used to +terminate where I wrought, in the old chapel of St. Regulus, or in the +parish burying-ground, beside a sweet wooded dell known as the "Ladies' +Walk;" and my labours for the day closed in what I always very much +relished--a conversation on the last good book, or on some new organism, +recently disinterred, of the Secondary or Palaeozoic period. + +I had been hewing, about this time, in the upper part of my uncle's +garden, and had just closed my work for the evening, when I was visited +by one of my lady friends, accompanied by a stranger lady, who had come +to see a curious old dial-stone which I had dug out of the earth long +before, when a boy, and which had originally belonged to the ancient +Castle-garden of Cromarty. I was standing with them beside the dial, +which I had placed in my uncle's garden, and remarking, that as it +exhibited in its structure no little mathematical skill, it had probably +been cut under the eye of the eccentric but accomplished Sir Thomas +Urquhart; when a third lady, greatly younger than the others, and whom I +had never seen before, came hurriedly tripping down the garden-walk, +and, addressing the other two apparently quite in a flurry--"O, come, +come away," she said, "I have been seeking you ever so long." "Is this +you, L----?" was the staid reply: "Why, what now?--you have run yourself +out of breath." The young lady was, I saw, very pretty; and though in +her nineteenth year at the time, her light and somewhat _petite_ figure, +and the waxen clearness of her complexion, which resembled rather that +of a fair child than of a grown woman, made her look from three to four +years younger. And as if in some degree still a child, her two lady +friends seemed to regard her. She stayed with them scarce a minute ere +she tripped off again; nor did I observe that she favoured me with a +single glance. But what else could be expected by an ungainly, +dust-besprinkled mechanic in his shirt sleeves, and with a leathern +apron before him? Nor _did_ the mechanic expect aught else; and when +informed long after, by one whose testimony was conclusive on the point, +that he had been pointed out to the young lady by some such +distinguished name as "the Cromarty Poet," and that she had come up to +her friends somewhat in a flurry, simply that she might have a nearer +look of him, he received the intelligence somewhat with surprise. All +the first interviews in all the novels I ever read are of a more +romantic and less homely cast than the special interview just related; +but I know not a more curious one. + +Only a few evenings after, I met the same young lady, in circumstances +of which the writer of a tale might have made a little more. I was +sauntering, just as the sun was sinking, along one of my favourite walks +on the Hill--a tree-skirted glade--now looking out through the openings +on the ever fresh beauties of the Cromarty Firth, with its promontories, +and bays, and long lines of winding shore, and anon marking how redly +the slant light fell through intersticial gaps on pale lichened trunks +and huge boughs, in the deeper recesses of the wood--when I found myself +unexpectedly in the presence of the young lady of the previous evening. +She was sauntering through the wood as leisurely as myself--now and then +dipping into a rather bulky volume which she carried, that had not in +the least the look of a novel, and which, as I subsequently ascertained, +was an elaborate essay on Causation. We, of course, passed each other +on our several ways without sign of recognition. Quickening her pace, +however, she was soon out of sight; and I just thought, on one or two +occasions afterwards, of the apparition that had been presented as she +passed, as much in keeping with the adjuncts--the picturesque forest and +the gorgeous sunset. It would not be easy, I thought, were the large +book but away, to furnish a very lovely scene with a more suitable +figure. Shortly after, I began to meet the young lady at the charming +tea-parties of the place. Her father, a worthy man, who, from +unfortunate speculations in business, had met with severe losses, was at +this time several years dead; and his widow had come to reside in +Cromarty, on a somewhat limited income, derived from property of her +own. Liberally assisted, however, by relations in England, she had been +enabled to send her daughter to Edinburgh, where the young lady received +all the advantages which a first-rate education could confer. By some +lucky chance, she was there boarded, with a few other ladies, in early +womanhood, in the family of Mr. George Thomson, the well-known +correspondent of Burns; and passed under his roof some of her happiest +years. Mr. Thomson--himself an enthusiast in art--strove to inoculate +the youthful inmates of his house with the same fervour, and to develop +whatever seeds of taste or genius might be found in them; and, +characterized till the close of a life extended far beyond the ordinary +term, by the fine chivalrous manners of the thorough gentleman of the +old school, his influence over his young friends was very great, and his +endeavours, in at least some of the instances, very successful. And in +none, perhaps, was he more so than in the case of the young lady of my +narrative. From Edinburgh she went to reside with the friends in England +to whose kindness she had been so largely indebted; and with them she +might have permanently remained, to enjoy the advantages of superior +position. She was at an age, however, which rarely occupies itself in +adjusting the balance of temporal advantage; and her only brother having +been admitted, through the interest of her friends, as a pupil into +Christ's Hospital, she preferred returning to her widowed mother, left +solitary in consequence, though with the prospect of being obliged to +add to her resources by taking a few of the children of the town as +day-pupils. + +Her claim to take her place in the intellectual circle of the burgh was +soon recognised. I found that, misled by the extreme youthfulness of her +appearance, and a marked juvenility of manner, I had greatly mistaken +the young lady. That she should be accomplished in the ordinary sense of +the term--that she should draw, play, and sing well--would be what I +should have expected; but I was not prepared to find that, mere girl as +she seemed, she should have a decided turn, not for the lighter, but for +the severer walks of literature, and should have already acquired the +ability of giving expression to her thoughts in a style formed on the +best English models, and not in the least like that of a young lady. The +original shyness wore away, and we became great friends. I was nearly +ten years her senior, and had read a great many more books than she; +and, finding me a sort of dictionary of fact, ready of access, and with +explanatory notes attached, that became long or short just as she +pleased to draw them out by her queries, she had, in the course of her +amateur studies, frequent occasion to consult me. There were, she saw, +several ladies of her acquaintance, who used occasionally to converse +with me in the churchyard; but in order to make assurance doubly sure +respecting the perfect propriety of such a proceeding on her part, she +took the laudable precaution of stating the case to her mother's +landlord, a thoroughly sensible man, one of the magistrates of the +burgh, and an elder of the kirk; and he at once certified that there was +no lady of the place who might not converse, without remark, as often +and as long as she pleased with me. And so, fully justified, both by the +example of her friends--all very judicious women, some of them only a +few years older than herself--and by the deliberate judgment of a very +sensible man, the magistrate and elder--my young lady friend learned to +visit me in the churchyard, just like the other ladies; and, latterly +at least, considerably oftener than any of them. We used to converse on +all manner of subjects connected with the _belles-lettres_ and the +philosophy of mind, with, so far as I can at present remember, only one +marked exception. On that mysterious affection which sometimes springs +up between persons of the opposite sexes when thrown much +together--though occasionally discussed by the metaphysicians, and much +sung by the poets--we by no chance ever touched. Love formed the one +solitary subject which, from some curious contingency, invariably +escaped us. + +And yet, latterly at least, I had begun to think about it a good deal. +Nature had not fashioned me one of the sort of people who fall in love +at first sight. I had even made up my mind to live a bachelor life, +without being very much impressed by the magnitude of the sacrifice; but +I daresay it did mean something, that in my solitary walks for the +preceding fourteen or fifteen years, a female companion often walked in +fancy by my side, with whom I exchanged many a thought, and gave +expression to many a feeling, and to whom I pointed out many a beauty in +the landscape, and communicated many a curious fact, and whose +understanding was as vigorous as her taste was faultless and her +feelings exquisite. One of the English essayists--the elder Moore--has +drawn a very perfect personage of this airy character (not, however, of +the softer, but of the masculine sex), under the name of the "maid's +husband;" and described him as one of the most formidable rivals that +the ordinary lover of flesh and blood can possibly encounter. My +day-dream lady--a person that may be termed with equal propriety the +"bachelor's wife,"--has not been so distinctly recognised; but she +occupies a large place in our literature, as the mistress of all the +poets who ever wrote on love without actually experiencing it, from the +days of Cowley down to those of Henry Kirke White; and her presence +serves always to intimate a heart capable of occupation, but still +unoccupied. I find the bachelor's wife delicately drawn in one the +posthumous poems of poor Alexander Bethune, as a "fair being"--the +frequent subject of his day-dreams-- + + + "Whose soft voice + Should be the sweetest music to his ear, + Awakening all the chords of harmony; + Whose eye should speak a language to his soul, + More eloquent than aught which Greece or Rome + Could boast of in its best and happiest days; + Whose smile should be his rich reward for toil; + Whose pure transparent cheek, when press'd to his, + Should calm the fever of his troubled thoughts, + And woo his spirit to those fields Elysian-- + The paradise which strong affection guards." + + +It may be always predicated of these bachelors' wives, that they never +closely resemble in their lineaments any living woman: poor Bethune's +would not have exhibited a single feature of any of his fair neighbours, +the lasses of Upper Rankeillour or Newburgh. Were the case otherwise, +the dream maiden would be greatly in danger of being displaced by the +real one whom she resembled; and it was a most significant event, which, +notwithstanding my inexperience, I learned by and bye to understand, +that about this time my old companion, the "bachelor's wife," utterly +forsook me, and that a vision of my young friend took her place. I can +honestly aver, that I entertained not a single hope that the feeling +should be mutual. On whatever other head my vanity may have flattered +me, it certainly never did so on the score of personal appearance. My +personal strength was, I knew, considerably above the average of that of +my fellows, and at this time my activity also; but I was perfectly +conscious that, on the other hand, my good looks rather fell below than +rose above the medial line. And so, while I suspected, as I well might, +that, as in the famous fairy story, "Beauty" had made a conquest of the +"Beast," I had not the most distant expectation that the "Beast" would, +in turn, make a conquest of "Beauty." My young friend had, I knew, +several admirers--men who were younger and dressed better, and who, as +they had all chosen the liberal professions, had fairer prospects than +I; and as for the item of good looks, had she set her affections on even +the least likely of them, I could have addressed him, with perfect +sincerity, in the words of the old ballad:-- + + + "Nae wonder, nae wonder, Gil Morrice, + My lady lo'es ye weel: + The fairest part o' my body + Is blacker than thy heel." + + +Strange to say, however, much about the time that I made my discovery, +my young friend succeeded in making a discovery also;--the maid's +husband shared on her part the same fate as the bachelor's wife did on +mine; and her visits to the churchyard suddenly ceased. + +A twelvemonth had passed ere we succeeded in finding all this out; but +the young lady's mother had seen the danger somewhat earlier; and +deeming, as was quite right and proper, an operative mason no very +fitting mate for her daughter, my opportunities of meeting my friend at +_conversazione_ or tea-party had become few. I, however, took my usual +evening walk through the woods of the Hill; and as my friend's +avocations set her free at the same delightful hour, and as she also was +a walker on the Hill, we did sometimes meet, and witness together, from +amid the deeper solitudes of its bosky slopes, the sun sinking behind +the distant Ben Wevis. These were very happy evenings; the hour we +passed together always seemed exceedingly short; but, to make amends for +its briefness, there were at length few working days in the milder +season of which it did not form the terminal one;--from the +circumstance, of course, that the similarity of our tastes for natural +scenery led us always into the same lonely walks about the same +delicious sun-set hour. For months together, even during this second +stage of our friendship, there was one interesting subject on which we +never talked. At length, however, we came to a mutual understanding. It +was settled that we should remain for three years more in Scotland on +the existing terms; and if during that time there should open to me no +suitable field of exertion at home, we should then quit the country for +America, and share together in a strange land whatever fate might be in +store for us. My young friend was considerably more sanguine than I. I +had laid faithfully before her those defects of character which rendered +me a rather inefficient man-at-arms for contending in my own behalf in +the battle of life. Inured to labour, and to the hardships of the bothie +and the barrack, I believed that in the backwoods, where I would have to +lift my axe on great trees, I might get on with my clearing and my crops +like most of my neighbours; but then the backwoods would, I feared, be +no place for her; and as for effectually pushing my way in the +long-peopled portions of the United States, among one of the most +vigorous and energetic races in the world, I could not see that I was in +the least fitted for that. She, however, thought otherwise. The tender +passion is always a strangely exaggerative one. Lodged in the male mind, +it gives to the object on which it rests all that is excellent in woman, +and in the female mind imparts to its object all that is noble in man; +and my friend had come to regard me as fitted by nature either to head +an army or lead a college, and to deem it one of the weaknesses of my +character, that I myself could not take an equally favourable view. +There was, however, one profession of which, measuring myself as +carefully as I could, I deemed myself capable: I saw men whom I regarded +as not my superiors in natural talent, and even possessed of no greater +command of the pen, occupying respectable places in the periodical +literature of the day, as the editors of Scotch newspapers, provincial, +and even metropolitan, and deriving from their labours incomes of from +one to three hundred pounds per annum; and were my abilities, such as +they were, to be fairly set by sample before the public, and so brought +into the literary market, they might, I thought, possibly lead to my +engagement as a newspaper editor. And so, as a first step in the +process, I resolved on publishing my volume of traditional history--a +work on which I had bestowed considerable care, and which, regarded as a +specimen of what I could do as a _litterateur_, would, I believed, show +not inadequately my ability of treating at least those lighter subjects +with which newspaper editors are occasionally called on to deal. + +Nearly two of the three twelvemonths passed by, however, and I was still +an operative mason. With all my solicitude, I could not give myself +heartily to seek work of the kind which I saw newspaper editors had at +that time to do. It might be quite well enough, I thought, for the +lawyer to be a special pleader. With special pleadings equally extreme +on the opposite sides of a case, and a qualified judge to hold the +balance between, the cause of truth and justice might be even more +thoroughly served than if the antagonist agents were to set themselves +to be as impartial and equal-handed as the magistrate himself. But I +could not extend the same tolerance to the special pleading of the +newspaper editor. I saw that, to many of the readers of his paper, the +editor did not hold the place of a law-agent, but of a judge: it was his +part to submit to them, therefore, not ingenious pleadings, but, to the +best of his judgment, honest decisions. And not only did no place +present itself for me in the editorial field, but I really could see no +place in it that, with the views which I entertained on this head, I +would not scruple to occupy. I saw no party cause for which I could +honestly plead. My ecclesiastical friends had, with a few exceptions, +cast themselves into the Conservative ranks; and there I could not +follow them. The Liberals, on the other hand, being in office at the +time, had become at least as like their old opponents as their former +selves, and I could by no means defend all that _they_ were doing. In +Radicalism I had no faith; and Chartism--with my recollection of the +kind of treatment which I had received from the workmen of the south +still strongly impressed on my mind--I thoroughly detested. And so I +began seriously to think of the backwoods of America. But there was +another destiny in store for me. My native town, up till this time, +though a place of considerable trade, was unfurnished with a branch +bank; but on the representation of some of its more extensive traders, +and of the proprietors of the neighbouring lands, the Commercial Bank of +Scotland had agreed to make it the scene of one of its agencies, and +arranged with a sagacious and successful merchant and shipowner of the +place to act as its agent. It had fixed, too, on a young man as its +accountant, at the suggestion of a neighbouring proprietor; and I heard +of the projected bank simply as a piece of news of interest to the town +and its neighbourhood, but, of course, without special bearing on any +concern of mine. Receiving, however, one winter morning, an invitation +to breakfast with the future agent--Mr. Ross--I was not a little +surprised, after we had taken a quiet cup of tea together, and beaten +over half-a-dozen several subjects, to be offered by him the +accountantship of the branch bank. After a pause of a full half-minute, +I said that the walk was one in which I had no experience whatever--that +even the little knowledge of figures which I had acquired at school had +been suffered to fade and get dim in my mind from want of practice--and +that I feared I would make but a very indifferent accountant. I shall +undertake for you, said Mr. Ross, and do my best to assist you. All you +have to do at present is just to signify your acceptance of the offer +made. I referred to the young man who, I understood, had been already +nominated accountant. Mr. Ross stated that, being wholly a stranger to +him, and as the office was one of great trust, he had, as the +responsible party, sought the security of a guarantee, which the +gentleman who had recommended the young man declined to give; and so his +recommendation had fallen to the ground. "But _I_ can give you no +guarantee," I said. "From you," rejoined Mr. Ross, "none shall ever be +asked." And such was one of the more special _Providences_ of my life; +for why should I give it a humbler name? + +In a few days after, I had taken leave of my young friend in good hope, +and was tossing in an old and somewhat crazy coasting vessel, on my way +to the parent bank at Edinburgh, to receive there the instructions +necessary to the branch accountant. I had wrought as an operative mason, +including my term of apprenticeship, for fifteen years--no +inconsiderable portion of the more active part of a man's life; but the +time was not altogether lost. I enjoyed in these years fully the average +amount of happiness, and learned to know more of the Scottish people +than is generally known. Let me add--for it seems to be very much the +fashion of the time to draw dolorous pictures of the condition of the +labouring classes--that from the close of the first year in which I +wrought as a journeyman up till I took final leave of the mallet and +chisel, I never knew what it was to want a shilling; that my two uncles, +my grandfather, and the mason with whom I served my apprenticeship--all +working men--had had a similar experience; and that it was the +experience of my father also. I cannot doubt that deserving mechanics +may, in exceptional cases, be exposed to want; but I can as little doubt +that the cases _are_ exceptional, and that much of the suffering of the +class is a consequence either of improvidence on the part of the +competently skilled, or of a course of trifling during the term of +apprenticeship--quite as common as trifling at school--that always lands +those who indulge in it in the hapless position of the inferior workman. +I trust I may further add, that I was an honest mechanic. It was one of +the maxims of Uncle James, that as the Jews, restricted by law to their +forty stripes, always fell short of the legal number by one, lest they +should by any accident exceed it, so a working man, in order to balance +any disturbing element of selfishness in his disposition, should bring +his charges for work done, slightly but sensibly within what he deemed +the proper mark, and so give, as he used to express himself, his +"customers the cast of the baulk." I do think I acted up to the maxim; +and that, without injuring my brother workmen by lowering their prices, +I never yet charged an employer for a piece of work that, fairly +measured and valued, would not be rated at a slightly higher sum than +that at which it stood in my account. + +I had quitted Cromarty for the south late in November, and landed at +Leith on a bleak December morning, just in time to escape a tremendous +storm of wind and rain from the west, which, had it caught the smack in +which I sailed on the Firth, would have driven us all back to +Fraserburgh, and, as the vessel was hardly sea-worthy at the time, +perhaps a great deal further. The passage had been stormy; and a very +noble, but rather unsocial fellow-passenger--a fine specimen of the +golden eagle--had been sea-sick, and evidently very uncomfortable, for +the greater part of the way. The eagle must have been accustomed to +motion a great deal more rapid than that of the vessel, but it was +motion of a different kind; and so he fared as persons do who never feel +a qualm when hurried along a railway at the rate of forty miles an hour, +but who yet get very squeamish in a tossing boat, that creeps through a +rough sea at a speed not exceeding, in the same period of time, from +four to five knots. The day preceding the storm was leaden-hued and +sombre, and so calm, that though the little wind there was blew the +right way, it carried us on, from the first light of morning, when we +found ourselves abreast of the Bass, to only near Inchkeith; for when +night fell, we saw the May light twinkling dimly far astern, and that of +the Inch rising bright and high right a-head. I spent the greater part +of the day on deck, marking, as they came into view, the various +objects--hill, and island, and seaport town, of which I had lost sight +nearly ten years before; feeling the while, not without some craven +shrinkings, that having got to the end, in the journey of life, of one +very definite stage, with its peculiar scenery and sets of objects, I +was just on the eve of entering upon another stage, in which the scenery +and objects would be all unfamiliar and new. I was now two years turned +of thirty; and though I could not hold that any very great amount of +natural endowment was essentially necessary to the bank accountant, I +knew that most men turned of thirty might in vain attempt acquiring the +ability even of heading a pin with the necessary adroitness, and that I +might fail, on the same principle, to pass muster as an accountant. I +determined, however, obstinately to set myself to acquire, whatever +might be the result; and entered Edinburgh in something like spirits on +the strength of the resolution. I had transmitted the manuscript of my +legendary work, several months before, to Sir Thomas Dick Lauder; and as +he was now on terms, in its behalf, with Mr. Adam Black, the well-known +publisher, I took the liberty of waiting on him, to see how the +negotiation was speeding. He received me with great kindness; hospitably +urged that I should live with him, so long as I resided in Edinburgh, in +his noble mansion, the Grange House; and, as an inducement, introduced +me to his library, full charged with the best editions of the best +authors, and enriched with many a rare volume and curious manuscript. +"Here," he said, "Robertson the historian penned his last work--the +_Disquisition_; and here," opening the door of an adjoining room, "he +died." I, of course, declined the invitation. The Grange House, with its +books, and its pictures, and its hospitable master, so rich in anecdote, +and so full of the literary sympathies, would have been no place for a +poor pupil-accountant, too sure that he was to be stupid, but not the +less determined on being busy. Besides, on calling immediately after at +the bank, I found that I would have to quit Edinburgh on the morrow for +some country agency, in which I might be initiated into the system of +book-keeping proper to a branch bank and where the business transacted +would be of a kind similar to what might be expected in Cromarty. Sir +Thomas, however, kindly got Mr. Black to meet me at dinner; and, in the +course of the evening, that enterprising bookseller agreed to undertake +the publication of my work, on terms which the nameless author of a +volume somewhat local in its character, and very local in its name, +might well regard as liberal. + +Linlithgow was the place fixed on by the parent bank as the scene of my +initiation into the mysteries of branch banking; and, taking my passage +in one of the track-boats which at that time plied on the Canal between +Edinburgh and Glasgow, I reached the fine old burgh as the brief winter +day was coming to a close, and was seated next morning at my desk, not a +hundred yards from the spot on which Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh had taken +his stand when he shot the good Regent. I was, as I had anticipated, +very stupid; and must have looked, I suppose, even more obtuse than I +actually was: for my temporary superior the agent, having gone to +Edinburgh a few days after my arrival, gave expression, in the head +bank, to the conviction that it would be in vain attempting making "yon +man" an accountant. Altogether deficient in the cleverness that can +promptly master isolated details, when in ignorance of their bearing on +the general scheme to which they belong, I could literally do nothing +until I had got a hold of the system; which, locked up in the ponderous +tomes of the agency, for some little time eluded my grasp. At length, +however, it gradually unrolled itself before me in all its nice +proportions, as one of perhaps the completest forms of "book-keeping" +which the wit of man has yet devised; and I then found that the details +which, when I had approached them as if from the outside, had repulsed +and beaten me back, could, like the outworks of a fortress, be commanded +from the centre with the utmost ease. Just as I had reached this stage, +the regular accountant of the branch was called away to an appointment +in one of the joint stock banks of England; and the agent, again going +into Edinburgh on business, left me for the greater part of a day in +direction of the agency. Little more than a fortnight had elapsed since +he had given his unfavourable verdict; and he was now asked how, in the +absence of the accountant, he could have got away from his charge. He +had left _me_ in the office, he said. "What! the _Incompetent_?" "O, +that," he replied, "is all a mistake; the Incompetent has already +mastered our system." The mechanical ability, however, came but slowly; +and I never acquired the facility, in running up columns of summations, +of the early-taught accountant; though, making up by diligence what I +wanted in speed, I found, after my first few weeks of labour in +Linlithgow, that I could give as of old an occasional hour to literature +and geology. The proof-sheets of my book began to drop in upon me, +demanding revision; and to a quarry in the neighbourhood of the town, +rich in the organisms of the Mountain Limestone, and overflown by a bed +of basalt so regularly columnar, that one of the legends of the district +attributed its formation to the "ancient Pechts," I was able to devote, +not without profit, the evenings of several Saturdays. I formed, at this +time, my first acquaintance with the Palaeozoic shells, as they occur in +the rock--an acquaintance which has since been extended in some measure +through the Silurian deposits, Upper and Lower; and these shells, though +marked, in the immensely extended ages of the division to which they +belong, by specific, and even generic variety, I have found exhibiting +throughout a unique family type or pattern, as entirely different from +the family type of the Secondary shells as both are different from the +family types of the Tertiary and the existing ones. Each of the three +great periods of creation had its own peculiar fashion; and after having +acquainted myself with the fashions of the second and third periods, I +was now peculiarly interested in the acquaintance which I was enabled to +commence with that of the first and earliest also. I found, too, in a +bed of trap beside the Edinburgh road, scarce half a mile to the east +of the town, numerous pieces of carbonized lignite, which still retained +the woody structure--probably the broken remains of some forest of the +Carboniferous period, enveloped in some ancient lava bed, that had +rolled over its shrubs and trees, annihilating all save the fragments of +charcoal, which, locked up in its viscid recesses, had resisted the +agency that dissipated the more exposed embers into gas. I had found, in +like manner, when residing at Conon-side and Inverness, fragments of +charcoal locked up in the glassy vesicular stone of the old vitrified +forts of Craig Phadrig and Knock Farril, and existing as the sole +representatives of the vast masses of fuel which must have been employed +in fusing the ponderous walls of these unique fortalices. And I was now +interested to find exactly the same phenomena among the _vitrified_ +rocks of the Coal Measures. Brief as the days were, I had always a +twilight hour to myself in Linlithgow; and as the evenings were fine for +the season, the old Royal Park of the place, with its noble church, its +massive palace, and its sweet lake, still mottled by the hereditary +swans whose progenitors had sailed over its waters in the days when +James IV. worshipped in the spectre aisle, formed a delightful place of +retreat, little frequented by the inhabitants of the town, but only all +the more my own in consequence; and in which I used to feel the fatigue +of the day's figuring and calculation drop away into the cool breezy +air, like cobwebs from an unfolded banner, as I climbed among the ruins, +or sauntered along the grassy shores of the loch. My stay at Linlithgow +was somewhat prolonged, by the removal, first of the accountant of the +branch, and then of its agent, who was called south to undertake the +management of a newly-erected English bank; but I lost nothing by the +delay. An admirable man of business, one of the officials of the parent +bank in Edinburgh (now its agent in Kirkcaldy, and recently provost of +the place), was sent temporarily to conduct the business of the agency; +and I saw, under him, how a comparative stranger arrived at his +conclusions respecting the standing and solvency of the various +customers with whom, in behalf of the parent institute, he was called on +to deal. And, finally, my brief term of apprenticeship expired--about +two months in all--I returned to Cromarty; and, as the opening of the +agency there waited only my arrival, straightway commenced my new course +as an accountant. My minister, when he first saw me seated at the desk, +pronounced me "at length fairly caught;" and I must confess I did feel +as if my latter days were destined to differ from my earlier ones, well +nigh as much as those of Peter of old, who, when he was "young, girded +himself, and walked whither he would, but who, when old, was girded by +others, and carried whither he would not." + +Two long years had to pass from this time ere my young friend and I +could be united--for such were the terms on which we had to secure the +consent of her mother; but, with our union in the vista, we could meet +more freely than before; and the time passed not unpleasantly away. For +the first six months of my new employment, I found myself unable to make +my old use of the leisure hours which, I found, I could still command. +There was nothing very intellectual, in the higher sense of the term, in +recording the bank's transactions, or in summing up columns of figures, +or in doing business over the counter; and yet the fatigue induced was a +fatigue, not of sinew and muscle, but of nerve and brain, which, if it +did not quite disqualify me for my former intellectual amusements, at +least greatly disinclined me towards them, and rendered me a +considerably more indolent sort of person than either before or since. +It is asserted by artists of discriminating eye, that the human hand +bears an expression stamped upon it by the general character, as surely +as the human face; and I certainly used to be struck, during this +transition period, by the relaxed and idle expression that had on the +sudden been assumed by mine. And the slackened hands represented, I too +surely felt, a slackened mind. The unintellectual toils of the +labouring man have been occasionally represented as less favourable to +mental cultivation than the semi-intellectual employments of that class +immediately above him, to which our clerks, shopmen, and humbler +accountants belong; but it will be found that exactly the reverse is the +case, and that, though a certain conventional gentility of manner and +appearance on the side of the somewhat higher class may serve to conceal +the fact, it is on the part of the labouring man that the real advantage +lies. The mercantile accountant or law-clerk, bent over his desk, his +faculties concentrated on his columns of figures, or on the pages which +he has been carefully engrossing, and unable to proceed one step in his +work without devoting to it all his attention, is in greatly less +favourable circumstances than the ploughman or operative mechanic, whose +mind is free though his body labours, and who thus finds, in the very +rudeness of his employments, a compensation for their humble and +laborious character. And it will be found that the humbler of the two +classes is much more largely represented in our literature than the +class by one degree less humble. Ranged against the poor clerk of +Nottingham, Henry Kirke White, and the still more hapless Edinburgh +engrossing clerk, Robert Fergusson, with a very few others, we find in +our literature a numerous and vigorous phalanx, composed of men such as +the Ayrshire Ploughman, the Ettrick Shepherd, the Fifeshire Foresters, +the sailors Dampier and Falconer--Bunyan, Bloomfield, Ramsay, Tannahill, +Alexander Wilson, John Clare, Allan Cunningham, and Ebenezer Elliot. And +I was taught at this time to recognise the simple principle on which the +greater advantages lie on the side of the humbler class. Gradually, +however, as I became more inured to sedentary life, my mind recovered +its spring, and my old ability returned of employing my leisure hours, +as before, in intellectual exertion. Meanwhile my legendary volume +issued from the press, and was, with a few exceptions, very favourably +received by the critics. Leigh Hunt gave it a kind and genial notice in +his _Journal_; it was characterized by Robert Chambers not less +favourably in _his_; and Dr. Hetherington, the future historian of the +Church of Scotland and of the Westminster Assembly of Divines--at that +time a licentiate of the Church--made it the subject of an elaborate and +very friendly critique in the _Presbyterian Review_. Nor was I less +gratified by the terms in which it was spoken of by the late Baron Hume, +the nephew and residuary legatee of the historian--himself very much a +critic of the old school--in a note to a north-country friend. He +described it as a work "written in an English style which" he "had begun +to regard as one of the lost arts." But it attained to no great +popularity. For being popular, its subjects were too local, and its +treatment of them perhaps too quiet. My publishers tell me, however, +that it not only continues to sell, but moves off considerably better in +its later editions that it did on its first appearance. + +The branch bank furnished me with an entirely new and curious field of +observation, and formed a very admirable school. For the cultivation of +a shrewd common sense, a bank office is one of perhaps the best schools +in the world. Mere cleverness serves often only to befool its possessor. +He gets entangled among his own ingenuities, and is caught as in a net. +But ingenuities, plausibilities, special pleadings, all that make the +stump-orator great, must be brushed aside by the banker. The question +with him comes always to be a sternly naked one:--Is, or is not, Mr. +---- a person fit to be trusted with the bank's money? Is his sense of +monetary obligations nice, or obtuse? Is his judgment good, or the +contrary? Are his speculations sound, or precarious? What are his +resources?--what his liabilities? Is he facile in lending the use of his +name? Does he float on wind bills, as boys swim on bladders? or is his +paper representative of only real business transactions? Such are the +topics which, in the recesses of his own mind, the banker is called on +to discuss; and he must discuss them, not merely plausibly or +ingeniously, but solidly and truly; seeing that error, however +illustrated or adorned, or however capable of being brilliantly defended +in speech or pamphlet, is sure always with him to take the form of +pecuniary loss. My superior in the agency--Mr. Ross, a good and +honourable-minded man, of sense and experience--was admirably fitted for +calculations of this kind; and I learned, both in his behalf, and from +the pleasure which I derived from the exercise, to take no little +interest in them also. It was agreeable to mark the moral effects of a +well-conducted agency such as his. However humbly honesty and good sense +may be rated in the great world generally, they always, when united, +bear premium in a judiciously managed bank office. It was interesting +enough, too, to see quiet silent men, like "honest Farmer Flamburgh," +getting wealthy, mainly because, though void of display, they were not +wanting in integrity and judgment; and clever unscrupulous fellows, like +"Ephraim Jenkinson," who "spoke to good purpose," becoming poor, very +much because, with all their smartness, they lacked sense and principle. +It was worthy of being noted, too, that in looking around from my +peculiar point of view on the agricultural classes, I found the farmers, +on really good farms, usually thriving, if not themselves in fault, +however high their rents; and that, on the other hand, farmers on +sterile farms were _not_ thriving, however moderate the demands of the +landlord. It was more melancholy, but not less instructive, to learn, +from authorities whose evidence could not be questioned--bills paid by +small instalments, or lying under protest--that the small-farm system, +so excellent in a past age, was getting rather unsuited for the +energetic competition of the present one; and that the _small_ +farmers--a comparatively comfortable class some sixty or eighty years +before, who used to give dowries to their daughters, and leave +well-stocked farms to their sons--were falling into straitened +circumstances, and becoming, however respectable elsewhere, not very +good men in the bank. It was interesting, too, to mark the character +and capabilities of the various branches of trade carried on in the +place--how the business of its shopkeepers fell always into a very few +hands, leaving to the greater number, possessed, apparently, of the same +advantages as their thriving compeers, only a mere show of custom--how +precarious in its nature the fishing trade always is, especially the +herring fishery, not more from the uncertainty of the fishings +themselves, than from the fluctuations of the markets--and how in the +pork trade of the place a judicious use of the bank's money enabled the +curers to trade virtually on a doubled capital, and to realize, with the +deduction of the bank discounts, doubled profits. In a few months my +acquaintance with the character and circumstances of the business men of +the district became tolerably extensive, and essentially correct; and on +two several occasions, when my superior left me for a time to conduct +the entire business of the agency, I was fortunate enough not to +discount for him a single bad bill. The implicit confidence reposed in +me by so good and sagacious a man was certainly quite enough of itself +to set me on my metal. There was, however, at least one item in my +calculations in which I almost always found myself incorrect: I found I +could predict every bankruptcy in the district; but I usually fell short +from ten to eighteen months of the period in which the event actually +took place. I could pretty nearly determine the time when the +difficulties and entanglements which I saw _ought_ to have produced +their proper effects, and landed in failure; but I missed taking into +account the desperate efforts which men of energetic temperament make in +such circumstances, and which, to the signal injury of their friends and +the loss of their creditors, succeed usually in staving off the +catastrophe for a season. In short, the school of the branch bank was a +very admirable school; and I profited so much by its teachings, that +when questions connected with banking are forced on the notice of the +public, and my brother editors have to apply for articles on the +subject to literary bankers, I find I can write my banking articles for +myself. + +The seasons passed by; the two years of probation came to a close, like +all that had gone before; and after a long, and, in its earlier stages, +anxious courtship of in all five years, I received from the hand of Mr. +Ross that of my young friend, in her mother's house, and was united to +her by my minister, Mr. Stewart. And then, setting out, immediately +after the ceremony, for the southern side of the Moray Firth, we spent +two happy days together in Elgin; and, under the guidance of one of the +most respected citizens of the place, my kind friend Mr. Isaac Forsyth, +visited the more interesting objects connected with the town or its +neighbourhood. He introduced us to the Elgin Cathedral;--to the +veritable John Shanks, the eccentric keeper of the building, who could +never hear of the Wolf of Badenoch, who had burnt it four hundred years +before, without flying into a rage, and becoming what the dead man would +have deemed libellous;--to the font, too, under a dripping vault of +ribbed stone, in which an insane mother used to sing to sleep the poor +infant, who, afterwards becoming Lieutenant-General Anderson, built for +poor paupers like his mother, and poor children such as he himself had +once been, the princely institution which bears his name. And then, +after passing from the stone font to the institution itself, with its +happy children, and its very unhappy old men and women, Mr. Forsyth +conveyed us to the pastoral, semi-Highland valley of Pluscardine, with +its beautiful wood-embosomed priory--one of perhaps the finest and most +symmetrical specimens of the unornamented Gothic of the times of +Alexander II. to be seen anywhere in Scotland. Finally, after passing a +delightful evening at his hospitable board, and meeting, among other +guests, my friend Mr. Patrick Duff--the author of the "Geology of +Moray"--I returned with my young wife to Cromarty, and found her mother, +Mr. Ross, Mr. Stewart, and a party of friends, waiting for us in the +house which my father had built for himself forty years before, but +which it had been his destiny never to inhabit. It formed our home for +the three following years. The subjoined verses--prose, I suspect, +rather than poetry, for the mood in which they were written was too +earnest a one to be imaginative--I introduce, as representative of my +feelings at this time: they were written previous to my marriage, on one +of the blank pages of a pocket-Bible, with which I presented my future +wife:-- + + + TO LYDIA. + + Lydia, since ill by sordid gift + Were love like mine express'd, + Take Heaven's best boon, this Sacred Book, + From him who loves thee best. + Love strong as that I bear to thee + Were sure unaptly told + By dying flowers, or lifeless gems, + Or soul-ensnaring gold. + + I know 'twas He who formed this heart + Who seeks this heart to guide; + For why?--He bids me love thee more + Than all on earth beside.[16] + Yes, Lydia, bids me cleave to thee, + As long this heart has cleaved: + Would, dearest, that His other laws + Were half so well received! + + Full many a change, my only love, + On human life attends; + And at the cold sepulchral stone + Th' uncertain vista ends. + How best to bear each various change, + Should weal or woe befall, + To love, live, die, this Sacred Book, + Lydia, it tells us all. + + Oh, much-beloved, our coming day + To us is all unknown, + But sure we stand a broader mark + Than they who stand alone. + _One_ knows it all: not His an eye, + Like ours, obscured and dim; + And knowing us, He gives this book, + That we may know of Him. + + His words, my love, are gracious words, + And gracious thoughts express: + He cares e'en for each little bird + That wings the blue abyss. + Of coming wants and woes He thought, + Ere want or woe began; + And took to Him a human heart. + That He might feel for man. + + Then oh! my first, my only love, + The kindliest, dearest, best! + On Him may all our hopes repose,-- + On Him our wishes rest. + His be the future's doubtful day, + Let Joy or grief befall: + In life or death, in weal or woe, + Our God, our guide, our all. + + +FOOTNOTES: + +[15] Professor Pillans. + +[16] "For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall +cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + + "Life is a drama of a few brief acts; + The actors shift, the scene is often changed, + Pauses and revolutions intervene, + The mind is set to many a varied tune. + And jars and plays in harmony by turns." + ALEXANDER BETHUNE. + + +Though my wife continued, after our marriage, to teach a few pupils, the +united earnings of the household did not much exceed a hundred pounds +per annum--not quite so large a sum as I had used to think it a few +years before; and so I set myself to try whether I could not turn my +leisure hours to some account, by writing for the periodicals. My old +inability of pressing for work continued to be as embarrassing as ever, +and, save for a chance engagement of no very promising kind, which +presented itself to me unsolicited about this time, I might have failed +in procuring the employment which I sought. An ingenious self-taught +mechanic--the late Mr. John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed--after +making good his upward way from his original place at the compositor's +frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in the +beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of "Border Tales," +which, as he possessed the story-telling ability, met with considerable +success. He did not live, however, to complete the first yearly volume; +the forty-ninth weekly number intimated his death; but as the +publication had been a not unprofitable one, the publisher resolved on +carrying it on; and it was stated in a brief notice, which embodied a +few particulars of Mr. Wilson's biography, that, his materials being +unexhausted, "tales yet untold lay in reserve, to keep alive his +memory." And in the name of Wilson the publication was kept up for, I +believe, five years. It reckoned among its contributors the two +Bethunes, John and Alexander, and the late Professor Gillespie of St. +Andrews, with several other writers, none of whom seem to have been +indebted to any original matter collected by its first editor; and I, +who, at the publisher's request, wrote for it, during the first year of +my marriage, tales enough to fill an ordinary volume, had certainly to +provide all my materials for myself. The whole brought me about +twenty-five pounds--a considerable addition to the previous hundred and +odds of the household, but, for the work done, as inadequate a +remuneration as ever poor writer got in the days of Grub Street. My +tales, however, though an English critic did me the honour of selecting +one of them as the best in the monthly part in which it appeared, were +not of the highest order: it took a great deal of writing to earn the +three guineas, which were the stipulated wages for filling a weekly +number; and though poor Wilson may have been a fine enough fellow in his +way, one had no great encouragement to do one's very best, in order to +"keep alive his memory." In all such matters, according to Sir Walter +Scott and the old proverb, "every herring should hang by its own head." + +I can show, however, that at least one of my contributions _did_ gain +Wilson some little credit. In the perilous attempt to bring out, in the +dramatic form, the characters of two of our national poets--Burns and +Fergusson--I wrote for the "Tales" a series of "Recollections," drawn +ostensibly from the memory of one who had been personally acquainted +with them both, but in reality based on my own conceptions of the men, +as exhibited in their lives and writings. And in an elaborate life of +Fergusson, lately published, I find a borrowed extract from my +contribution, and an approving reference to the whole, coupled with a +piece of information entirely new to me. "These Recollections," says the +biographer, "are truly interesting and touching, _and were the result of +various communications made to Mr. Wilson_, whose pains-taking +researches I have had frequent occasion to verify in the course of my +own." Alas, no! Poor Wilson was more than a twelvemonth in his grave ere +the idea of producing these "Recollections" first struck the writer--a +person to whom no communications on the subject were ever made by any +one, and who, unassisted save by one of the biographies of the +poet--that in Chambers' "Lives of Illustrious Scotsmen,"--wrote full two +hundred miles from the scene of his sad and brief career. The same +individual who, in Mr. Wilson's behalf, is so complimentary to my +"pains-taking research," is, I find, very severe on one of Fergusson's +previous biographers--the scholarly Dr. Irving, author of the Life of +Buchanan, and the Lives of the older Scottish Poets--a gentleman who, +whatever his estimate of the poor poet may have been, would have spared +no labour in elucidating the various incidents which composed his +history. The man of research is roughly treated, and a compliment +awarded to the diligence of the man of none. But it is always thus with +Fame. + + + "Some she disgraced, and some with honours crown'd; + Unlike successes equal merits found: + So her blind sister, fickle Fortune, reigns. + And, undiscerning, scatters crowns and chains." + + +In the memoir of John Bethune by his brother Alexander, the reader is +told that he was much depressed and disappointed, about a twelvemonth or +so previous to his decease, by the rejection of several of his stories +in succession, which were returned to him, "with an editor's sentence of +death passed upon them." I know not whether it was by the editor of the +"Tales of the Borders" that sentence in the case was passed; but I know +he sentenced some of mine, which were, I daresay, not very good, though +well-nigh equal, I thought, to most of his own Instead, however, of +yielding to depression, like poor Bethune, I simply resolved to write +for him no more; and straightway made an offer of my services to Mr. +Robert Chambers, by whom they were accepted; and during the two +following years I occasionally contributed to his _Journal_, on greatly +more liberal terms than those on which I had laboured for the other +periodical, and with my name attached to my several articles. I must be +permitted to avail myself of the present opportunity of acknowledging +the kindness of Mr. Chambers. There is perhaps no other writer of the +present day who has done so much to encourage struggling talent as this +gentleman. I have for many years observed that publications, however +obscure, in which he finds aught really praiseworthy, are secure always +of getting, in his widely-circulated periodical, a kind approving +word--that his criticisms invariably bear the stamp of a benevolent +nature, which experiences more of pleasure in the recognition of merit +than in the detection of defect--that his kindness does not stop with +these cheering notices, for he finds time, in the course of a very busy +life, to write many a note of encouragement and advice to obscure men in +whom he recognises a spirit superior to their condition--and that the +compositions of writers of this meritorious class, when submitted to him +editorially, rarely fail, if really suitable for his journal, to find a +place in it, or to be remunerated on a scale that invariably bears +reference to the value of the communications--not to the circumstances +of their authors. + +I can scarce speak of my contributions to the periodicals at this time +as forming any part of my education. I acquired, in their composition, a +somewhat readier command of the pen than before; but they, of course, +tended rather to the dissipation of previous stores than to the +accumulation of new ones; nor did they give exercise to those higher +faculties of mind which I deemed it most my interest to cultivate. My +real education at the time was that in which I was gradually becoming +initiated behind the bank-counter, as my experience of the business of +the district extended; and that which I contrived to pick up in my +leisure evenings along the shores. A rich ichthyolitic deposit of the +Old Red Sandstone lies, as I have already said, within less than half a +mile of the town of Cromarty; and when fatigued with my calculations in +the bank, I used to find it delightful relaxation to lay open its fish +by scores, and to study their peculiarities as exhibited in their +various states of keeping, until I at length became able to determine +their several genera and species from even the minutest fragments. The +number of ichthyolites which that deposit of itself furnished--a patch +little more than forty yards square--seemed altogether astonishing: it +supplied me with specimens at almost every visit, for ten years +together; nor, though, after I left Cromarty for Edinburgh, it was often +explored by geologic tourists, and by a few cultivators of science in +the place, was it wholly exhausted for ten years more. The ganoids of +the second age of vertebrate existence must have congregated as thickly +upon that spot in the times of the Lower Old Red Sandstone, as herrings +ever do now, in their season, on the best fishing-banks of Caithness or +the Moray Firth. I was for some time greatly puzzled in my attempts to +restore these ancient fishes, by the peculiarities of their +organization. It was in vain I examined every species of fish caught by +the fishermen of the place, from the dog-fish and the skate to the +herring and the mackerel. I could find in our recent fishes no such +scales of enamelled bone as those which had covered the _Dipterians_ and +the _Celacanths_; and no such plate-encased animals as the various +species of _Coccosteus_ or _Pterichthys_. On the other hand, with the +exception of a double line of vertebral processes in the _Coccosteus_, I +could find in the ancient fishes no internal skeleton: they had +apparently worn all their bones outside, where the crustaceans wear +their shells, and were furnished inside with but frameworks of +perishable cartilage. It seemed somewhat strange, too, that the +geologists who occasionally came my way--some of them men of +eminence--seemed to know even less about my Old Red fishes and their +peculiarities of structure, than I did myself. I had represented the +various species of the deposit simply by numerals, which not a few of +the specimens of my collection still retain on their faded labels; and +waited on until some one should come the way learned enough to +substitute for my provisional figures words by which to designate them; +but the necessary learning seemed wanting, and I at length came to find +that I had got into a _terra incognita_ in the geological field, the +greater portion of whose organisms were still unconnected with human +language. They had no representatives among the vocables. + +I formed my first imperfect acquaintance with the recent ganoidal fishes +in 1836, from a perusal of the late Dr. Hibbert's paper on the deposit +of Burdiehouse, which I owed to the kindness of Mr. George Anderson. Dr. +Hibbert, in illustrating the fishes of the Coal Measures, figured and +briefly described the Lepidosteus of the American rivers as a still +surviving fish of the early type; but his description of the animal, +though supplemented shortly after by that of Dr. Buckland in his +Bridgewater Treatise, carried me but a little way. I saw that two of the +Old Red genera--_Osteolepis_ and _Diplopterus_--resembled the American +fish externally. It will be seen that the first-mentioned of these +ancient ichthyolites bears a name compounded, though, in the reverse +order, of exactly the same words. But while I found the skeleton of the +Lepidosteus described as remarkably hard and solid, I could detect in +the _Osteolepis_ and its kindred genus no trace of internal skeleton at +all The Cephalaspean genera, too--_Coccosteus_ and +_Pterichthys_--greatly puzzled me: I could find no living analogues for +them; and so, in my often-repeated attempts at restoration, I had to +build them up plate by plate, as a child sets up its dissected map or +picture bit by bit--every new specimen that turned up furnishing a key +for some part previously unknown--until at length, after many an +abortive effort, the creatures rose up before me in their strange, +unwonted proportions, as they had lived, untold ages before, in the +primaeval seas. The extraordinary form of _Pterichthys_ filled me with +astonishment; and with its arched carpace and flat plastron restored +before me, I leaped to the conclusion, that as the recent Lepidosteus, +with its ancient representatives of the Old Red Sandstone, were sauroid +fishes--strange connecting links between fishes and alligators--so the +_Pterichthys_ was a Chelonian fish--a connecting link between the fish +and the tortoise. A gurnard--insinuated so far through the shell of a +small tortoise as to suffer its head to protrude from the anterior +opening, furnished with oar-like paddles instead of pectoral fins, and +with its caudal fin clipped to a point--would, I found, form no +inadequate representative of this strangest of fishes. And when, some +years after, I had the pleasure of introducing it to the notice of +Agassiz, I found that, with all his world-wide experience of its class, +it was as much an object of wonder to him as it had been to myself. "It +is impossible," we find him saying, in his great work, "to see aught +more bizarre in all creation than the _Pterichthyan_ genus: the same +astonishment that Cuvier felt in examining the Plesiosaurus, I myself +experienced, when Mr. H. Miller, the first discoverer of these fossils, +showed me the specimens which he had detected in the Old Red Sandstone +of Cromarty." And there were peculiarities about the _Coccosteus_ that +scarce less excited my wonder than the general form of the +_Pterichthys_, and which, when I first ventured to describe them, were +regarded by the higher authorities in Palaeontology as mere blunders on +the part of the observer. I have, however, since succeeded in +demonstrating that, if blunders at all--which I greatly doubt, for +Nature makes very few--it was Nature herself that was in error, not the +observer. In this strange _Coccostean_ genus, Nature _did_ place a group +of opposing teeth in each ramus of the lower jaw, just in the line of +the symphysis--an arrangement unique, so far as is yet known, in the +vertebrate division of creation, and which must have rendered the mouth +of these creatures an extraordinary combination of the horizontal mouth +proper to the vertebrata, and of the vertical mouth proper to the +crustaceans. It was favourable to the integrity of my work of +restoration, that the press was not waiting for me, and that when +portions of the creatures on which I wrought were wanting, or plates +turned up whose places I was unable to determine, I could lay aside my +self-imposed task for the time, and only resume it when some new-found +specimen supplied me with the materials requisite for carrying it on. +And so the restorations which I completed in 1840, and published in +1841, were found, by our highest authorities in 1848, after they had +been set aside for nearly six years, to be essentially the true ones +after all. I see, however, that one of the most fanciful and monstrous +of all the interim restorations of _Pterichthys_ given to the +world--that made by Mr. Joseph Dinkel in 1844 for the late Dr. Mantell, +and published in the "Medals of Creation," has been reproduced in the +recent illustrated edition of the "Vestiges of Creation." But the +ingenious author of that work could scarce act prudently were he to +stake the soundness of his hypothesis on the integrity of the +restoration. For my own part, I consent, if it can be shown that the +_Pterichthys_ which once lived and moved on this ancient globe of ours +ever either rose or sunk into the _Pterichthys_ of Mr. Dinkel, freely +and fully to confess, not only the possibility, but also the +_actuality_, of the transmutation of both species and genera. I am +first, however, prepared to demonstrate, before any competent jury of +Palaeontologists in the world, that not a single plate or scale of Mr. +Dinkel's restoration represents those of the fish which he professed to +restore; that the same judgment applies equally to his restoration of +_Coccosteus_; and that, instead of reproducing in his figures the true +forms of ancient Cephalaspeans, he has merely given, instead, the +likeness of things that never were "in the heaven above, or in the +earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth." + +The place in the geologic scale, as certainly as the forms and +characters, of these ancient fishes, had to be determined. Mr. George +Anderson had informed me, as early as 1834, that some of them were +identical with the ichthyolites of the Gamrie deposit; but then the +place of the Gamrie deposit was still to fix. It had been recently +referred to the same geological horizon as the Carboniferous Limestone, +and was regarded as lying unconformable to the Old Red Sandstone of the +district in which it occurs; but, wholly dissatisfied with the evidence +adduced, I continued my search, and, though the process was a slow one, +saw the position of the Cromarty beds gradually approximating towards +determination. It was not, however, until the autumn of 1837 that I got +them fairly fixed down to the Old Red Sandstone, and not until the +winter of 1839 that I was able conclusively to demonstrate their place +in the base of the system, little more than a hundred feet, and in one +part not more than eighty feet, above the upper strata of the Great +Conglomerate. I had often wished, during my explorations, to be able to +extend my field of observation into the neighbouring counties, in order +to determine whether I could not possess myself, at a distance, of the +evidence which, for a time at least, I failed to find at home; but my +daily engagements in the bank fixed me down to Cromarty and its +neighbourhood; and I found myself somewhat in the circumstances of a +tolerably lively beetle stuck on a pin, that, though able, with a little +exertion, to spin round its centre, is yet wholly unable to quit it. I +acquired, however, at the close of 1837, in the late Dr. John Malcolmson +of Madras, a noble auxiliary, who could expatiate freely over the +regions virtually barred against me. He had been led to visit Cromarty +by a brief description of its geology, rather picturesque than +scientific, which had appeared in my legendary volume; and after I had +introduced him to its ichthyolitic beds on both sides of the Hill and +at Eathie, and acquainted him with their character and organisms, he set +himself to trace out the resembling deposits of the neighbouring shires +of Banff, Moray, and Nairn. And in little more than a fortnight he had +detected the ichthyolites in numerous localities all over an Old Red +Sandstone tract, which extends from the primary districts of Banff to +near the field of Culloden. The Old Red Sandstone of the north, hitherto +deemed so poor in fossils, he found--with the Cromarty deposits as his +key--teeming with organic remains. In the spring of 1838, Dr. Malcolmson +visited England and the Continent, and introduced some of my +Cephalaspean fossils to the notice of Agassiz, and some of the evidence +which I had laid before him regarding their place in the scale, to Mr. +(now Sir Roderick) Murchison. And I had the honour, in consequence, of +corresponding with both these distinguished men; and the satisfaction of +knowing, that by both, the fruit of my labours was deemed important. I +observe that Humboldt, in his "Cosmos," specially refers to the judgment +of Agassiz on the extraordinary character of the new zoological link +with which I had furnished him; and I find Murchison, in his great work +on the Silurian System, published in 1839, laying no little emphasis on +the stratigraphical fact. After referring to the previously formed +opinion that the Gamrie deposit, with its ichthyolites, was not an Old +Red one, he goes on to say--"On the other hand, I have recently been +informed by Dr. Malcolmson, that Mr. Miller of Cromarty (who has made +some highly interesting discoveries near that place) pointed out to him +nodules resembling those of Gamrie, and containing similar fishes, in +highly-inclined strata, which are interpolated in, and completely +subordinate to, the great mass of Old Red Sandstone of Ross and +Cromarty. This important observation will, I trust, be soon communicated +to the Geological Society, for it strengthens the inference of M. +Agassiz respecting the epoch during which the _Cheiracanthus_ and +_Cheirolepis_ lived." All this will, I am afraid, appear tolerably weak +to the reader, and somewhat more than tolerably tedious. Let him +remember, however, that the only merit to which I lay claim in the case +is that of patient research--a merit in which whoever wills may rival or +surpass me; and that this humble faculty of patience, when rightly +directed, may lead to more extraordinary developments of idea than even +genius itself. What I had been slowly deciphering were the _ideas_ of +God as developed in the mechanism and framework of His creatures, during +the second age of vertebrate existence; and one portion of my inquiries +determined the date of these ideas, and another their character. + +Many of the best sections of the Sutors and the adjacent hills, with +their associated deposits, cannot be examined without boat; and so I +purchased for a few pounds a light little yawl, furnished with mast and +sail, and that rowed four oars, to enable me to carry out my +explorations. It made me free of the Cromarty and Moray Firths for some +six or eight miles from the town, and afforded me many a pleasant +evening's excursion to the deep-sea caves and skerries, and the +picturesque surf-wasted stacks of the granitic wall of rock which runs +in the Ben Nevis line of elevation, from Shadwick on the east to the +Scarfs Crag on the west. I know not a richer tract for the geologist. +Independently of the interest that attaches to its sorely-contorted +granitic gneiss--which seems, as Murchison shrewdly remarks, to have +been protruded through the sedimentary deposits in a solid state, as a +fractured bone is sometimes protruded through the integuments--there +occurs along the range three several deposits of the Old Red +ichthyolites, and three several deposits of the Lias, besides the +sub-aqueous ones, with two insulated skerries, which I am inclined to +regard as outliers of the Oolite. These last occur in the form of +half-tide rocks, very dangerous to the mariner, which lie a full +half-mile from the shore, and can be visited with safety only at low +water during dead calms, when no ground swell comes rolling in from the +sea. I have set out as early as two o'clock in a fine summer morning +for these skerries, and, after spending several hours upon them, have +been seated at the bank desk before ten; but these were mornings of very +hard work. It was the long Saturday afternoons that were my favourite +seasons of explorations; and when the weather was fine, my wife would +often accompany me in these excursions; and we not unfrequently anchored +our skiff in some rocky bay, or over some fishing bank, and, provided +with rods and lines, caught, ere our return, a basket of rock-cod or +coal-fish for supper, that always seemed of finer flavour than the fish +supplied us in the market. These were happy holidays. Shelley predicates +of a day of exquisite beauty, that it would continue to "live like joy +in memory." I do retain recollections of these evenings spent in my +little skiff--recollections mingled with a well-remembered imagery of +blue seas and purple hills, and a sun-lit town in the distance, and tall +wood-crested precipices nearer at hand, which flung lengthened shadows +across shore and sea--that not merely represent enjoyments which have +been, but that, in certain moods of the mind, take the form of enjoyment +still. They are favoured spots in the chequered retrospect of the past, +on which the sunshine of memory falls more brightly than on most of the +others. + +When thus employed, there broke out very unexpectedly, a second war with +the Liberal Moderates of the town, in which, unwillingly rather than +otherwise, I had ultimately to engage. The sacrament of the Supper is +celebrated in most of the parish churches of the north of Scotland only +once a year; and, as many of the congregations worship at that time in +the open air, the summer and autumn seasons are usually selected for the +"occasion," as best fitted for open-air meetings. As, however, the +celebration is preceded and followed by week-day preachings, and as on +one of these week-days--the Thursday preceding the Sacramental +Sabbath--no work is done, kirk-sessions usually avoid fixing their +sacrament in a busy time, such as the time of harvest in the rural +districts, or of the herring-fishing in the seaport towns; and as the +parish of Cromarty has both its rural population and its fishing one, +the kirk-session of the place have to avoid both periods. And so the +early part of July, ere the herring-fishing or the harvest comes on, is +the time usually fixed upon for the Cromarty sacrament. In this year, +however (1838), it so chanced that the day appointed for the Queen's +coronation proved coincident with the sacramental Thursday, and the +Liberal Moderate party urged upon the Session that the preparations for +the sacrament should give way to the rejoicings for the coronation. We +had not been much accustomed to rejoicings of the kind in the north +since the good old times when respectable Tory gentlemen used to show +themselves drunk in public on the King's birthday, in order to +demonstrate their loyalty: the coronation days of both George IV. and +William IV. had passed off as quietly as Sabbaths; and the Session, +holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their +young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got +home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms, +refused to alter their day. Believing that, though essentially in the +right, they were yet politically in the wrong, and that a plausible case +might be made out against them by the newspaper press, I waited on my +minister, and urged him to give way to the Liberals, and have his +preparation-day changed from Thursday to Friday. He seemed quite willing +enough to act on the suggestion; nay, he had made a similar one, he told +me, to his Session; but the devout eldership, strong in the precedents +of centuries, had declined to subordinate the religious services of the +Kirk to the wassail and merriment sanctioned by the State. And so they +determined on keeping their day of sacramental preparation on the +Thursday, as their fathers had done. Meanwhile, the Liberals held what +was very properly termed a public meeting, seeing that, though the +public had failed to attend it, the public had been quite at liberty to +do so, nay, had even been specially invited; and there appeared in the +provincial newspapers a long report of its proceedings, including five +speeches--all written by a legal gentleman--in which it was designated a +meeting of the inhabitants of the town and parish of Cromarty. The +resolutions were, of course, of the most enthusiastically loyal +character. There was not a member of the meeting who was not prepared to +spend upon himself the last drop of his bottle of port in her Majesty's +behalf. Thursday came--the Thursday of the sacrament and of the +coronation; and, with ninety-nine hundredths of the church-going portion +of my townsfolk, I went to church as usual. The parochial resolutioners, +amounting in all to ten, were, I can honestly avouch, scarce at all +missed in a congregation of nearly as many hundreds. About mid-day, +however, we could hear the muffled report of their carronades; and, +shortly after the service was over, and we had returned to our homes, +there passed through the streets a forlorn little group of individuals, +that looked exceedingly like a press-gang, but was in reality intended +for a procession. Though joined by a proprietor from a neighbouring +parish, a lawyer from a neighbouring burgh, a small coast-guard party, +with its commanding officer, and two half-pay Episcopalian officers +besides, the number who walked, including boys, did not exceed +twenty-five persons; and of these, as I have said, only ten were +parishioners. The processionists had a noble dinner in the head inn of +the place--merrier than even dinners of celebration usually are, as it +was, of course, loyalty and public spirit to ignore the special claim +upon the day asserted by the Church; and the darkening evening saw a +splendid bonfire blazing from the brae-head. And the Liberal newspapers +south and north taking part with the processionists, in many a paragraph +and short leader, represented their frolic--for such it was, and a very +foolish one--as a splendid triumph of the people of Cromarty over +Presbyterial bigotry and clerical domination. Nay, so bad did the case +of my minister and his Session appear, thus placed in opposition to at +once the people and the Queen, that the papers on the other side failed +to take it up. A well-written letter on the subject by my wife, which +fairly stated the facts, was refused admission into even the +ecclesiastico-Conservative journal, specially patronized, at the time, +by the Scottish Church; and my minister's friends and brethren in the +south could do little else than marvel at what they deemed his wondrous +imprudence. + +I had anticipated, from the first, that his position was to be a bad +one; but I ill liked to see him with his back to the wall. And though I +had determined, on the rejection of my counsel, to take no part in the +quarrel, I now resolved to try whether I could not render it evident +that he was really not at issue with his people, but with merely a very +inconsiderable clique among them, who had never liked him; and that it +was much a joke to describe him as disaffected to his sovereign, simply +because he had held his preparation services on the day of her +coronation. In order to make good my first point, I took the +unpardonable liberty of giving the names in full, in a letter which +appeared in our northern newspapers, of every individual who walked in +the procession, and represented themselves as the people; and challenged +the addition of even a single name to a list ludicrously brief. And in +making good the second, I fairly succeeded, as there were not a few +comical circumstances in the transaction, in getting the laughers on my +side. The clique was amazingly angry, and wrote not very bright letters, +which appeared as advertisements in the newspapers, and paid duty to +make evident the fact. There was a shallow and very ignorant young +shoemaker in the place, named Chaucer, a native of the south of +Scotland, who represented himself as the grandson of the old poet of the +days of Edward III., and wrote particularly wretched doggrel to make +good his claim. And, having a quarrel with the kirk-session, in a +certain delicate department, he had joined the processionists, and +celebrated their achievements in a ballad entirely worthy of them. And +it was perhaps the severest cut of all, that the recognised leader of +the band pronounced Chaucer the younger a greatly better poet than me. +There were representations, too, made to my superiors in the banking +department at Edinburgh, which procured me a reprimand, though a gentle +one; but my superior in Cromarty--Mr. Ross--as wise and good a man as +any in the direction, and thoroughly acquainted with the merits of the +case, was wholly on my side. I am afraid the reader may deem all this +very foolish, and hold that I would have been better employed among the +rocks, in determining the true relations of their various beds, and the +character of their organisms, than in bickering in a petty village +quarrel, and making myself enemies. And yet, man being what he is, I +fear an ability of efficient squabbling is a greatly more marketable one +than any ability whatever of extending the boundaries of natural +science. At least so it was, that while my geological researches did +nothing for me at this time, my letter in the procession controversy +procured for me the offer of a newspaper editorship. But though, in a +pecuniary point of view, I should have considerably bettered my +circumstances by closing with it, I found I could not do so without +assuming the character of the special pleader, and giving myself to the +advocacy of views and principles which I really did not hold; and so I +at once declined the office, as one for which I did not deem myself +suited, and could not in conscience undertake. + +I found about this time more congenial employment, though, of course, it +occupied only my leisure hours, in writing the memoir of a townsman--the +late Mr. William Forsyth, of Cromarty--at the request of his relation +and son in-law, my friend Mr. Isaac Forsyth, of Elgin. William Forsyth +had been a grown man ere the abolition of the hereditary jurisdictions; +and from the massiveness and excellence of his character, and his high +standing as a merchant, in a part of the country in which merchants at +the time were few, he had succeeded, within the precincts of the town, +to not a little of the power of the hereditary Sheriff of the district; +and after acting for more than half a century as a laborious Justice of +the Peace, and succeeding in making up more quarrels than most country +lawyers have an opportunity of fomenting--for the age was a rude and +combative one, and the merchant ever a peace-maker--he lived long enough +to see Liberty-and-Equality Clubs and Processions, and died about the +close of the first war of the French Revolution. It was an important +half-century in Scotland--though it exhibits but a narrow, inconspicuous +front in the history of the country--that intervened between the times +of the hereditary jurisdictions and the Liberty-and-Equality Clubs. It +was specially the period during which popular opinion began to assume +its potency, and in which the Scotland of the past merged, in +consequence, into the very dissimilar Scotland of the present. And I +derived much pleasure in tracing some of the more striking features of +this transition age in the biography of Mr. Forsyth. My little work was +printed, but not published, and distributed by Mr. Forsyth of Elgin +among the friends of the family, as perhaps a better and more adequate +memorial of a worthy and able man than could be placed over his grave. +It was on the occasion of the death of his last-surviving child--the +late Mrs. Mackenzie of Cromarty, a lady from whom I had received much +kindness, and under whose hospitable roof I had the opportunity afforded +me of meeting not a few superior men--that my memoir was undertaken; and +I regarded it as a fitting tribute to a worthy family just passed away, +at once deserving of being remembered for its own sake, and to which I +owed a debt of gratitude. + +In the spring of 1839, a sad bereavement darkened my household, and for +a time left me little heart to pursue my wonted amusements, literary or +scientific. We had been visited, ten months after our marriage, by a +little girl, whose presence had added not a little to our happiness; +home became more emphatically such from the presence of the child, that +in a few months had learned so well to know its mother, and in a few +more to take its stand in the nurse's arms, at an upper window that +commanded the street, and to recognise and make signs to its father as +he approached the house. Its few little words, too, had a fascinating +interest to our ears;--our own names, lisped in a language of its own, +every time we approached; and the simple Scotch vocable "awa, awa," +which it knew how to employ in such plaintive tones as we retired, and +that used to come back upon us in recollection, like an echo from the +grave, when, its brief visit over, it had left us for ever, and its fair +face and silken hair lay in darkness amid the clods of the churchyard. +In how short a time had it laid hold of our affections! Two brief years +before, and we knew it not; and now it seemed as if the void which it +left in our hearts the whole world could not fill. We buried it beside +the old chapel of St. Regulus, with the deep rich woods all around, save +where an opening in front commands the distant land and the blue sea; +and where the daisies which it had learned to love, mottled, starlike, +the mossy mounds; and where birds, whose songs its ear had become +skilful enough to distinguish, pour their notes over its little grave. +The following simple but truthful stanzas, which I found among its +mother's papers, seem to have been written in this place--sweetest of +burying grounds--a few weeks after its burial, when a chill and backward +spring, that had scowled upon its lingering illness, broke out at once +into genial summer:-- + + + Thou'rt "awa, awa," from thy mother's side, + And "awa, awa," from thy father's knee; + Thou'rt "awa" from our blessing, our care, our caressing, + But "awa" from our hearts thou'lt never be. + + All things, dear child, that were wont to please thee + Are round thee here in beauty bright,-- + There's music rare in the cloudless air, + And the earth is teeming with living delight. + + Thou'rt "awa, awa," from the bursting spring time, + Tho' o'er thy head its green boughs wave; + The lambs are leaving their little footprints + Upon the turf of thy new-made grave. + + And art thou "awa," and "awa" for ever, + That little face,--that tender frame,-- + That voice which first, in sweetest accent + Call'd me the mother's thrilling name, + + That head of nature's finest moulding,-- + Those eyes, the deep night ether's blue + Where sensibility its shadows + Of ever-changing meaning throw? + + Thy sweetness, patience under suffering, + All promised us an opening day + Most fair, and told that to subdue thee + Would need but love's most gentle sway. + + Ah me! 'twas here I thought to lead thee, + And tell thee what are life and death, + And raise thy serious thought's first waking + To Him who holds our every breath. + + And does my selfish heart then grudge thee, + That angels are thy teachers now,-- + That glory from thy Saviour's presence + Kindles the crown upon thy brow? + + O no! to me earth must be lonelier, + Wanting thy voice, thy hand, thy love; + Yet dost thou dawn a star of promise, + Mild beacon to the world above. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + + "All for the church, and a little less for the State."--BELHAVEN. + + +I had taken no very deep interest in the Voluntary controversy. There +was, I thought, a good deal of over-statement and exaggeration on both +sides. On the one hand, the Voluntaries failed to convince me that a +State endowment for ecclesiastical purposes is in itself in any degree a +bad thing. I had direct experience to the contrary. I had evidence the +most unequivocal that in various parts of the country it was a very +excellent thing indeed. It had been a very excellent thing, for +instance, in the parish of Cromarty, ever since the Revolution, down to +the death of Mr. Smith--in reality a valuable patrimony of the people +there; for it had supplied the parish, free of cost, with a series of +popular and excellent ministers, whom otherwise the parishioners would +have had to pay for themselves. And it had now given us my friend Mr. +Stewart, one of the ablest and honestest ministers in Scotland, or +elsewhere, whether Established or Dissenting. And these facts, which +were but specimens of a numerous class, had a tangibility and solidity +about them which influenced me more than all the theoretic reasonings +pressed on my attention about the mischief done to the Church by the +over-kindness of Constantine, or the corrupting effects of State favour. +But then I could as little agree with some of my friends on the +endowment side, that the Establishment, even in Scotland, was everywhere +of value, as with some of the Voluntaries that it was nowhere of any. I +had resided for months together in various parts of the country, where +it would have mattered not a farthing to any one save the minister and +his family, though the Establishment had been struck down at a blow. +Religion and morals would have no more suffered by the annihilation of +the minister's stipend, than by the suppression of the pension of some +retired supervisor or superannuated officer of customs. Nor could I +forget, that the only religion, or appearance of religion, that existed +in parties of workmen among which I had been employed (as in the south +of Scotland, for instance), was to be found among their Dissenters--most +of them, at the time, asserters of the Voluntary principle. If the other +workmen were reckoned, statistically at least, adherents of the +Establishment, it was not because they either benefited by it or cared +for it, but only somewhat in the way that, according to the popular +English belief, persons born at sea are held to belong to the parish of +Stepney. Further, I did not in the least like the sort of company into +which the Voluntary controversy had introduced the good men on both +sides; it gave a common cause to the Voluntary and the Infidel, and drew +them cordially together; and, on the other hand, placed side by side, on +terms portentously friendly, the pious asserter of endowments and the +irreligious old Tory. There was religion on both sides of the +controversy, but a religious controversy it was not. + +The position of my grandmother's family, including of course Uncles +James and Sandy, was a sort of midway one between the Secession and the +Establishment. My grandmother had quitted the family of Donald Roy long +ere he had been compelled, very unwillingly, to leave the Church; and as +no forced settlements had taken place in the parish into which she had +removed, and as its ministers had been all men of the right stamp, she +had done what Donald himself had been so desirous to do--remained an +attached member of the Establishment. One of her sisters had, however, +married in Nigg; and she and her husband, following Donald into the +ranks of the Secession, had reared one of their boys to the ministry, +who became, in course of time, the respected minister of the +congregation which his great-grandfather had founded. And, as the +contemporary and first cousin of my uncles, the minister used to call +upon them every time he came to town; and my uncle James, in turn (Uncle +Sandy very rarely went to the country), never missed, when in Nigg or +its neighbourhood, to repay his visits. There was thus a good deal of +intercourse kept up between the families, not without effect. Most of +the books of modern theology which my uncles read were Secession books, +recommended by their cousin; and the religious magazine for which they +subscribed was a Secession magazine. The latter bore, I remember, the +name of the "Christian Magazine, or Evangelical Repository." It was not +one of the brightest of periodicals, but a sound and solid one, with, as +my uncles held, a good deal of the old unction about it; and there was, +in especial, one of the contributors whose papers they used to pick out +as of peculiar excellence, and not unfrequently read a second time. They +bore the somewhat Greek-looking signature of _Leumas_, as if the writer +had been a brother or cousin-german of some of the old Christians to +whom Paul used to notify kind regards and good wishes at the end of his +epistles; but it was soon discovered that _Leumas_ was merely the proper +name Samuel reversed, though who the special Samuel was who turned his +signature to the right about, placing the wrong end foremost, and wrote +with all the concise weight and gravity of the old divines, my uncles +never knew. They had both passed away ere, in perusing the "Second +Gallery of Literary Portraits," I found myself introduced to worthy old +_Leumas_, also a denizen of the unseen world at the time, as the father +of the writer of that brilliant work--the Rev. George Gilfillan of +Dundee. This kind of writing had, of course, its proper effect on my +uncles, and, through them, on the family: it kept up our respect for the +Secession. The Established Church, too, was in those days a tolerably +faulty institution. My uncles took an interest in missions; and the +Church had none: nay, its deliberate decision against them--that of +1796--remained still unreversed. It had had, besides, its forced +settlements in our immediate neighbourhood; and Moderatism, wise and +politic in its generation, had perpetrated them by the hands of some of +the better ministers of the district, who had learned to do what they +themselves believed to be very wicked things, when their Church bade +them--a sort of professional license which my uncles could not in the +least understand. In short, the Secession better pleased them, in the +main, than the Establishment, though to the Establishment they continued +to adhere, and failed to see on what Seceder principle their old friends +were becoming Voluntaries. On the breaking out of the controversy, I +remembered all this; and, when told by good men of the Established +Church that well-nigh all the vital religion of the country was on our +side, and that it had left the Voluntary Seceders, though the good men +themselves honestly believed what they said, I could not. Further, the +heads of a conversation which I had overheard in my cousin the Seceder +minister's house when I was a very young boy, and to which it could have +been little suspected that I was listening--for I was playing at the +time on the floor--had taken a strong hold of my memory, and often +returned upon me at this period. My cousin and some of his elders were +mourning--very sincerely, I cannot doubt--over the decay of religion +among them: they were falling far short, they said, of the attainments +of their fathers; there were no Donald Roys among them now; and yet they +felt it to be a satisfaction, though a sad one, that the little religion +which there was in the district seemed to be all among themselves. And +now here was there exactly the same sort of conviction, equally strong, +on the other side. But with all that liberally-expressed charity which +forms one of the distinctive features of the present time, and is in +reality one of its best things, there is still a vast amount of +appreciation of this partial kind. Friends are seen in the Christian +aspect; opponents in the polemic one; and it is too often forgotten that +the friends have a polemic aspect to their opponents, and the opponents +a Christian aspect to their friends. And not only in the present, but at +all former periods, the case seems to have been the same. I am sometimes +half disposed to think, that either the Prophet Elijah, or the seven +thousand honest men who had not bowed the knee to Baal, must have been +dissenters. Had the Prophet been entirely at one in his views with the +seven thousand, it is not easy to conceive how he could have been wholly +ignorant of their existence. + +With all these latitudinarian convictions, however, I was thoroughly an +Establishment man. The revenues of the Scottish Church I regarded, as I +have said, as the patrimony of the Scottish people; and I looked forward +to a time when that unwarrantable appropriation of them, through which +the aristocracy had sought to extend its influence, but which had served +only greatly to reduce its power in the country, would come to an end. +What I specially wanted, in short, was, not the confiscation of the +people's patrimony, but simply its restoration from the Moderates and +the lairds. And in the enactment of the Veto law I saw the process of +restoration fairly begun. I would have much preferred seeing a good +broad anti-patronage agitation raised on the part of the Church. As +shrewdly shown at the time by the late Dr. M'Crie, such a course would +have been at once wiser and safer. But for such an agitation even the +Church's better ministers were not in the least prepared. From 1712 to +1784--a period of seventy-two years--the General Assembly had yearly +raised its voice against the enactment of the patronage law of Queen +Anne, as an unconstitutional encroachment on those privileges of the +Church and those rights of the Scottish people which the Treaty of Union +had been framed to secure. But the half century which had passed, since +through the act of a Moderate majority the protest had been dropped, +had produced the natural effect. By much the greater part of even the +better ministers of the Church had been admitted into their offices +through the law of patronage; and, naturally grateful to the patrons who +had befriended them, they hesitated to make open war on the powers that +had been exerted in their own behalf. According to Solomon, the "gift" +had to a certain extent "destroyed the heart;" and so they were prepared +to take up merely a half-way position, which their predecessors, the old +popular divines, would have liked exceedingly ill. I could not avoid +seeing that, fixed in a sort of overtopped hollow, if I may so speak, +between the claims of patronage on the one hand, and the rights of the +people on the other, it was a most perilous position, singularly open to +misconception and misrepresentation on both sides; and as it virtually +stripped the patrons of half their power, and extended to the people +only half their rights, I was not a little afraid that the patrons might +be greatly more indignant than the people grateful, and that the Church +might, in consequence, find herself exposed to the wrath of very potent +enemies, and backed by the support of only lukewarm friends. But however +perilous and difficult as a post of occupation, it was, I could not +avoid believing, a position conscientiously taken up; nor could I doubt +that its grounds were strictly constitutional. The Church, in a case of +disputed settlement, might, I believed, have to forfeit the +temporalities if her decision differed from that of the law courts, but +only the temporalities connected with the case at issue; and these I +deemed worth risking in the popular behalf, seeing that they might be +regarded as already lost to the country in every case in which a parish +was assigned to a minister whom the parishioners refused to hear. It +rejoiced me, too, to see the revival of the old spirit in the Church; +and so I looked with an interest on the earlier stages of her struggle +with the law courts, greatly more intense than that with which any mere +political contest had ever inspired me. I saw with great anxiety +decision after decision go against her; first that of the Court of +Session in March 1838, and next that of the House of Lords in May 1839; +and then, with the original Auchterarder case of collision, I saw that +of Lethendy and Marnoch mixed up; and, as one entanglement succeeded +another, confusion becoming worse confounded. It was only when the +Church's hour of peril came that I learned to know how much I really +valued her, and how strong and numerous the associations were that bound +her to my affections. I had experienced at least the average amount of +interest in political measures whose tendency and principles I deemed +good in the main--such as the Reform Bill, the Catholic Emancipation +Act, and the Emancipation of the Negroes; but they had never cost me an +hour's sleep. Now, however, I felt more deeply; and for at least one +night, after reading the speech of Lord Brougham, and the decision of +the House of Lords in the Auchterarder case, I slept none. + +In truth, the position of the Church at this time seemed critical in the +extreme. Offended by the usage which she had received at the hands of +the Whigs, in her claims for endowments to her new chapels, and startled +by their general treatment of the Irish Establishment, and the +suppression of the ten bishoprics, she had thrown her influence into the +Tory scale, and had done much to produce that reaction against the +Liberal party in Scotland which took place during the Ministry of Lord +Melbourne. In the representation of at least one county in which he was +all-potent--Ross-shire--she had succeeded in substituting a Tory for a +Whig; and there were few districts in the kingdom in which she had not +very considerably increased the votes on the Tory, or, as it was termed, +Conservative side. The people, however, though they might, and did, +become quite indifferent enough to the Whigs, could not follow her into +the Tory ranks. They stood aloof--very suspicious, not without reason, +of her new political friends--no admirers of the newspapers which she +patronized, and not in the least able to perceive the nature of the +interest which she had begun to take in supernumerary bishops and the +Irish Establishment. And now, when once more in a position worthy of her +old character, and when her Tory friends--converted at once into the +bitterest and most ungenerous of enemies--were turning upon her to rend +her, she had at once to encounter the hostility of the Whigs, and the +indifferency of the people. Further, with but one, or at most two +exceptions, all the newspapers which she had patronized declared against +her, and were throughout the struggle the bitterest and most abusive of +her opponents. The Voluntaries, too, joined with redoubled vehemence in +the cry raised to drown her voice, and misinterpret and misrepresent her +claims. The general current of opinion ran strongly against her. My +minister, warmly interested in the success of the Non-Intrusion +principle, has told me, that for many months past I was the only man in +his parish that seemed thoroughly to sympathize with him; and I have no +doubt that the late Dr. George Cook was perfectly correct and truthful +when he about this time remarked, in one of his public addresses, that +he could scarce enter an inn or a stage-coach without finding +respectable men inveighing against the utter folly of the +Non-Intrusionists, and the worse than madness of the Church Courts. + +Could I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril? There was, I +believed, no other institution in the country half so valuable, or in +which the people had so large a stake. The Church was of right theirs--a +patrimony won for them by the blood of their fathers, during the +struggles and sufferings of more than a hundred years; and now that her +better ministers were trying, at least partially, to rescue that +patrimony for them from the hands of an aristocracy who, as a body at +least, had no spiritual interest in the Church--belonging, as most of +its members did, to a different communion--they were in danger of being +put down, unbacked by the popular support which in such a cause they +deserved. Could I not do something to bring up the people to their +assistance? I tossed wakefully throughout a long night, in which I +formed my plan of taking up the purely popular side of the question; and +in the morning I sat down to state my views to the people, in the form +of a letter addressed to Lord Brougham. I devoted to my new employment +every moment not imperatively demanded by my duties in the bank office, +and, in about a week after, was able to despatch the manuscript of my +pamphlet to the respected manager of the Commercial Bank--Mr. Robert +Paul--a gentleman from whom I had received much kindness when in +Edinburgh, and who, in the great ecclesiastical struggle, took decided +part with the Church. Mr. Paul brought it to his minister, the Rev. Mr. +Candlish of St. George's (now Dr. Candlish), who, recognising its +popular character, urged its immediate publication; and the manuscript +was accordingly put into the hands of Mr. Johnstone, the well-known +Church bookseller. Dr. Candlish had been one of a party of ministers and +elders of the Evangelical majority who had met in Edinburgh shortly +before, to take measures for the establishment of a newspaper. All the +Edinburgh press, with the exception of one newspaper, had declared +against the ecclesiastical party; and even that one rather received +articles and paragraphs in their behalf through the friendship of the +proprietor, than was itself on their side. There had been a larger +infusion of Whiggism among the Edinburgh Churchmen than in any other +part of the kingdom. They had seen very much, in consequence, that the +line taken by the Conservative portion of their friends, in addressing +the people through the press, had not been an efficient one;--their +friends had set themselves to make the people both good Conservatives +and good Churchmen, and of course had never got over the first point, +and never would; and what they now proposed was, to establish a paper +that, without supporting any of the old parties in the State, should be +as Liberal in its politics as in its Churchmanship. But there was a +preliminary point which they also could not get over. All the +ready-made editors of the kingdom, if I may so speak, had declared +against them; and for want of an editor, their meeting had succeeded in +originating, not the intended newspaper, but merely a formal +recognition, in a few resolutions, of its desirableness and importance. +On reading my pamphlet in manuscript, however, Dr. Candlish at once +concluded that the desiderated want was to be supplied by its writer. +Here, he said, is the editor we have been looking for. Meanwhile, my +little work issued from the press, and was successful. It ran rapidly +through four editions of a thousand copies each--the number, as I +subsequently ascertained, of a popular non-intrusion pamphlet that would +fairly _sell_--and was read pretty extensively by men who were not +Non-Intrusionists. Among these there were several members of the +Ministry of the time, including the late Lord Melbourne, who at first +regarded it, as I have been informed, as the composition, under a +popular form and a _nom de guerre_, of some of the Non-Intrusion leaders +in Edinburgh; and by the late Mr. O'Connell, who had no such suspicions, +and who, though he lacked sympathy, as he said, with the ecclesiastical +views which it advocated, enjoyed what he termed its "racy English," and +the position in which it placed the Noble Lord to whom it was addressed. +It was favourably noticed, too, by Mr. Gladstone, in his elaborate work +on Church Principles; and was, in short, both in the extent of its +circulation, and the circles into which it found its way, a very +successful pamphlet. + +So filled was my mind with our ecclesiastical controversy, that, while +yet unacquainted with the fate of my first _brochure_, I was busily +engaged with a second. A remarkable case of intrusion had occurred in +the district rather more than twenty years before; and after closing my +week's labours in the bank, I set out for the house of a friend in a +neighbouring parish on a Saturday evening, that I might attend the +deserted church on the following Sabbath, and glean from actual +observation the materials of a truthful description, which would, I +trusted, tell in the controversy. And as the case was one of those in +which truth proves stronger than fiction, what I had to describe was +really very curious; and my description received an extensive +circulation. I insert the passage entire, as properly a part of my +story. + + + "There were associations of a peculiarly high character connected + with this northern parish. For more than a thousand years it had + formed part of the patrimony of a truly noble family, celebrated by + Philip Doddridge for its great moral worth, and by Sir Walter Scott + for its high military genius; and through whose influence the light + of the Reformation had been introduced into this remote corner, at + a period when the neighbouring districts were enveloped in the + original darkness. In a later age it had been honoured by the fines + and proscriptions of Charles II.; and its minister--one of those + men of God whose names still live in the memory of the country, and + whose biography occupies no small space in the recorded history of + her 'worthies'--had rendered himself so obnoxious to the tyranny + and irreligion of the time, that he was ejected from his charge + more than a year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen + of the Church.[17] I approached the parish from the east. The day + was warm and pleasant; the scenery through which I passed, some of + the finest in Scotland. The mountains rose on the right, in huge + Titanic masses, that seemed to soften their purple and blue in the + clear sunshine, to the delicate tone of the deep sky beyond; and I + could see the yet unwasted snows of winter glittering, in little + detached masses, along their summits. The hills of the middle + region were feathered with wood; a forest of mingled oaks and + larches, which still blended the tender softness of spring with the + full foliage of summer, swept down to the path; the wide undulating + plain below was laid out into fields, mottled with cottages, and + waving with the yet unshot corn; and a noble arm of the sea winded + along the lower edge for nearly twenty miles, losing itself to the + west among blue hills and jutting headlands, and opening in the + east to the main ocean, through a magnificent gateway of rock. But + the little groups which I encountered at every turning of the path, + as they journeyed, with all the sober, well-marked decency of a + Scottish Sabbath morning, towards the church of a neighbouring + parish, interested me more than even the scenery. The clan which + inhabited this part of the country had borne a well-marked + character in Scottish story. Buchanan had described it as one of + the most fearless and warlike in the north. It served under the + Bruce at Bannockburn. It was the first to rise in arms to protect + Queen Mary, on her visit to Inverness, from the intended violence + of Huntly. It fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany, under + Gustavus Adolphus. It covered the retreat of the English at + Fontenoy; and presented an unbroken front to the enemy, after all + the other troops had quitted the field. And it was the descendants + of those very men who were now passing me on the road. The rugged, + robust form, half bone, half muscle--the springy firmness of the + tread--the grave, manly countenance--all gave indication that the + original characteristics survived in their full strength; and it + was a strength that inspired confidence, not fear. There were + grey-haired, patriarchal-looking men among the groups, whose very + air seemed impressed by a sense of the duties of the day; nor was + there aught that did not agree with the object of the journey, in + the appearance of even the youngest and least thoughtful. + + "As I proceeded, I came up with a few people who were travelling in + a contrary direction. A Secession meeting-house has lately sprung + up in the parish, and these formed part of the congregation. A + path, nearly obscured by grass and weeds, leads from the main road + to the parish church. It was with difficulty I could trace it, and + there were none to direct me, for I was now walking alone. The + parish burying-ground, thickly sprinkled with graves and + tombstones, surrounds the church. It is a quiet, solitary spot, of + great beauty, lying beside the sea-shore; and as service had not + yet commenced, I whiled away half an hour in sauntering among the + stones, and deciphering the inscriptions. I could trace in the rude + monuments of this retired little spot, a brief but interesting + history of the district. The older tablets, grey and shaggy with + the mosses and lichens of three centuries, bear, in their uncouth + semblances of the unwieldy battle-axe and double-handed sword of + ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of the earlier + time. But the more modern testify to the introduction of a + humanizing influence. They speak of a life after death, in the + "holy texts" described by the poet; or certify, in a quiet humility + of style which almost vouches for their truth, that the sleepers + below were "honest men, of blameless character, and who feared + God." There is one tombstone, however, more remarkable than all the + others. It lies beside the church-door, and testifies, in an + antique inscription, that it covers the remains of the + "GREAT.MAN.OF.GOD.AND.FAITHFUL.MINISTER.OF JESUS.CHRIST.," who had + endured persecution for the truth in the dark days of Charles and + his brother. He had outlived the tyranny of the Stuarts; and, + though worn by years and sufferings, had returned to his parish on + the Revolution, to end his course as it had begun. He saw, ere his + death, the law of patronage abolished, and the popular right + virtually secured; and, fearing lest his people might be led to + abuse the important privilege conferred upon them, and calculating + aright on the abiding influence of his own character among them, he + gave charge on his deathbed to dig his grave in the threshold of + the church, that they might regard him as a sentinel placed at the + door, and that his tombstone might speak to them as they passed out + and in. The inscription, which, after the lapse of nearly a century + and a half, is still perfectly legible, concludes with the + following remarkable words:--"THIS.STONE.SHALL.BEAR.WITNESS. + AGAINST.THE.PARISHIONERS.OF.KILTEARN.IF.THEY.BRING.ANE.UNGODLY. + MINISTER.IN.HERE." Could the imagination of a poet have originated + a more striking conception in connexion with a church deserted by + all its better people, and whose minister fattens on his hire, + useless and contented? + + "I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. There + were from eight to ten persons scattered over the pews below, and + seven in the galleries above; and these, as there were no more + '_Peter Clarks_' or '_Michael Tods_'[18] in the parish, composed + the entire congregation. I wrapped myself up in my plaid, and sat + down; and the service went on in the usual course; but it sounded + in my ears like a miserable mockery. The precentor sung almost + alone; and ere the clergyman had reached the middle of his + discourse, which he read in an unimpassioned, monotonous tone, + nearly one-half his skeleton congregation had fallen asleep; and + the drowsy, listless expression of the others showed that, for + every good purpose, they might have been asleep too. And Sabbath + after Sabbath has this unfortunate man gone the same tiresome + round, and with exactly the same effects, for the last twenty-three + years;--at no time regarded by the better clergymen of the district + as really their brother;--on no occasion recognised by the parish + as virtually its minister;--with a dreary vacancy and a few + indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone of the + Covenanter at the door. Against whom does the inscription testify? + for the people have escaped. Against the patron, the intruder, and + the law of Bolingbroke--the Dr. Robertsons of the last age, and the + Dr. Cooks of the present. It is well to learn from this hapless + parish the exact sense in which, in a different state of matters, + the Rev. Mr. Young would have been constituted minister of + Auchterarder. It is well, too, to learn, that there may be + vacancies in the Church where no blank appears in the Almanac." + + +On my return home from this journey, early on the following Monday, I +found a letter from Edinburgh awaiting me, requesting me to meet there +with the leading Non-Intrusionists. And so after describing, in the +given extract, the scene which I had just witnessed, and completing my +second pamphlet, I set out for Edinburgh, and saw for the first time +men with whose names I had been familiar during the course of the +Voluntary and Non-Intrusion controversies. And entering into their +plans, though with no little shrinking of heart, lest I should be found +unequal to the demands of a twice-a-week paper, that would have to +stand, in Ishmael's position, against almost the whole newspaper press +of the kingdom, I agreed to undertake the editorship of their projected +newspaper, the _Witness_. Save for the intense interest with which I +regarded the struggle, and the stake possessed in it, as I believed, by +the Scottish people, no consideration whatever would have induced me to +take a step so fraught, as I thought at the time, with peril and +discomfort. For full twenty years I had never been engaged in a quarrel +on my own account: all my quarrels, either directly or indirectly, were +ecclesiastical ones;--I had fought for my minister, or for my brother +parishioners: and fain now would I have lived at peace with all men; but +the editorship of a Non-Intrusion newspaper involved, as a portion of +its duties, war with all the world. I held, besides--not aware how very +much the spur of necessity quickens production--that its twice-a-week +demands would fully occupy all my time, and that I would have to resign, +in consequence, my favourite pursuit--geology. I had once hoped, +too--though of late years the hope had been becoming faint--to leave +some little mark behind me in the literature of my country; but the last +remains of the expectation had now to be resigned. The newspaper editor +writes in sand when the flood is coming in. If he but succeed in +influencing opinion for the present, he must be content to be forgotten +in the future. But believing the cause to be a good one, I prepared for +a life of strife, toil, and comparative obscurity. In counting the cost, +I very considerably exaggerated it; but I trust I may say that, in all +honesty, and with no sinister aim, or prospect of worldly advantage, I +_did_ count it, and fairly undertook to make the full sacrifice which +the cause demanded. + +It was arranged that our new paper should start with the new +twelvemonth (1840); and I meanwhile returned to Cromarty, to fulfil my +engagements with the bank till the close of its financial year, which in +the Commercial Bank offices takes place at the end of autumn. Shortly +after my return, Dr. Chalmers visited the place on the last of his +Church Extension journeys; and I heard, for the first time, that most +impressive of modern orators address a public meeting, and had a curious +illustration of the power which his "_deep mouth_" could communicate to +passages little suited, one might suppose, to call forth the vehemency +of his eloquence. In illustrating one of his points, he quoted from my +"Memoir of William Forsyth" a brief anecdote, set in description of a +kind which most men would have read quietly enough, but which, coming +from him, seemed instinct with the Homeric vigour and force. The +extraordinary impressiveness which he communicated to the passage served +to show me, better than aught else, how imperfectly great orators may be +represented by their written speeches. Admirable as the published +sermons and addresses of Dr. Chalmers are, they impart no adequate idea +of that wonderful power and impressiveness in which he excelled all +other British preachers.[19] + +I had been introduced to the Doctor in Edinburgh a few weeks before; +but on this occasion I saw rather more of him. He examined with curious +interest my collection of geological specimens, which already contained +not a few valuable fossils that could be seen nowhere else; and I had +the pleasure of spending the greater part of a day in visiting in his +company, by boat, some of the more striking scenes of the Cromarty +Sutors. I had long looked up to Chalmers as, on the whole, the man of +largest mind which the Church of Scotland had ever produced;--not more +intense or practical than Knox, but broader of faculty; nor yet fitted +by nature or accomplishment to make himself a more enduring name in +literature than Robertson, but greatly nobler in sentiment, and of a +larger grasp of general intellect. With any of our other Scottish +ministers it might be invidious to compare him; seeing that some of the +ablest of them are, like Henderson, little more than mere historic +portraits drawn by their contemporaries, but whose true intellectual +measure cannot, from the lack of the necessary materials on which to +form a judgment, be now taken anew; and that many of the others employed +fine faculties in work, literary and ministerial, which, though +important in its consequences, was scarce less ephemeral in its +character than even the labours of the newspaper editor. The mind of +Chalmers was emphatically a many-sided one. Few men ever came into +friendly contact with him, who did not find in it, if they had really +anything good in them, moral or intellectual, a side that suited +themselves; and I had been long struck by that union which his +intellect exhibited of a comprehensive philosophy with a true poetic +faculty, very exquisite in quality, though dissociated from what +Wordsworth terms the "accomplishment of verse." I had not a little +pleasure in contemplating him on this occasion as the _poet_ Chalmers. +The day was calm and clear; but there was a considerable swell rolling +in from the German Ocean, on which our little vessel rose and fell, and +which sent the surf high against the rocks. The sunshine played amid the +broken crags a-top, and amid the foliage of an overhanging wood; or +caught, half-way down, some projecting tuft of ivy; but the faces of the +steeper precipices were brown in the shade; and where the wave roared in +deep caves beneath, all was dark and chill. There were several members +of the party who attempted engaging the Doctor in conversation; but he +was in no conversational mood. It would seem as if the words addressed +to his ear failed at first to catch his attention, and that, with a +painful courtesy, he had to gather up their meaning from the remaining +echoes, and to reply to them doubtfully and monosyllabically, at the +least possible expense of mind. His face wore, meanwhile, an air of +dreamy enjoyment. He was busy, evidently, among the crags and bosky +hollows, and would have enjoyed himself more had he been alone. In the +middle of one noble precipice, that reared its tall pine-crested brow +more than a hundred yards overhead, there was a bush-covered shelf of +considerable size, but wholly inaccessible; for the rock dropped sheer +into it from above, and then sank perpendicularly from its outer edge to +the beach below; and the insulated shelf, in its green unapproachable +solitude, had evidently caught his eye. _It_ was the scene, I +said--taking the direction of his eye as the antecedent for the +_it_,--it was the scene, says tradition, of a sad tragedy during the +times of the persecution of Charles. A renegade chaplain, rather weak +than wicked, threw himself, in a state of wild despair, over the +precipice above; and his body, intercepted in its fall by that shelf, +lay unburied among the bushes for years after, until it had bleached +into a dry and whitened skeleton. Even as late as the last age, the +shelf continued to retain the name of the "Chaplain's Lair." I found +that my communication, chiming in with his train of cogitation at the +time, caught both his ear and mind; and his reply, though brief, was +expressive of the gratification which its snatch of incident had +conveyed. As our skiff sped on a few oar-lengths more, we disturbed a +flock of sea-gulls, that had been sporting in the sunshine over a shoal +of sillocks; and a few of them winged their way to a jutting crag that +rose immediately beside the shelf. I saw Chalmers' eye gleam as it +followed them. "Would you not like, Sir," he said, addressing himself to +my minister, who sat beside him--"Would you not like to be a sea-gull? I +think _I_ would. Sea-gulls are free of the three elements--earth, air, +and water. These birds were sailing but half a minute since without +boat, at once angling and dining, and now they are already rusticating +in the Chaplain's Lair. I think I could enjoy being a sea-gull." I saw +the Doctor once afterwards in a similar mood. When on a visit to him in +Burnt-island, in the following year, I marked, on approaching the shore +by boat, a solitary figure stationed on the sward-crested trap-rock +which juts into the sea immediately below the town; and after the time +spent in landing and walking round to the spot, there was the solitary +figure still, standing motionless as when first seen. It was +Chalmers--the same expression of dreamy enjoyment impressed on his +features as I had witnessed in the little skiff, and with his eyes +turned on the sea and the opposite land. It was a lovely morning. A +faint breeze had just begun to wrinkle in detached belts and patches the +mirror-like blackness of the previous calm, in which the broad Firth had +lain sleeping since day-break; and the sunlight danced on the new-raised +wavelets; while a thin long wreath of blue mist, which seemed coiling +its tail like a snake round the distant Inchkeith, was slowly raising +the folds of its dragon-like neck and head from off the Scottish +capital, dim in the distance, and unveiling fortalice, and tower, and +spire, and the noble curtain of blue hills behind. And there was +Chalmers, evidently enjoying the exquisiteness of the scene, as only by +the true poet scenery can be enjoyed. Those striking metaphors which so +abound in his writings, and which so often, without apparent effort, lay +the material world before the reader, show how thoroughly he must have +drunk in the beauties of nature; the images retained in his mind became, +like words to the ordinary man, the signs by which he thought, and, as +such, formed an important element in the power of his thinking. I have +seen his Astronomical Discourses disparagingly dealt with by a slim and +meagre critic, as if they had been but the chapters of a mere treatise +on astronomy--a thing which, of course, any ordinary man could +write--mayhap even the critic himself. The Astronomical Discourses, on +the other hand, no one could have written save Chalmers. Nominally a +series of sermons, they in reality represent, and in the present century +form perhaps the only worthy representatives of, that school of +philosophic poetry to which, in ancient literature, the work of +Lucretius belonged, and of which, in the literature of our own country, +the "Seasons" of Thomson, and Akenside's "Pleasures of the Imagination," +furnish adequate examples. He would, I suspect, be no discriminating +critic who would deal with the "Seasons" as if they formed merely the +journal of a naturalist, or by the poem of Akenside as if it were simply +a metaphysical treatise. + +The autumn of this year brought me an unexpected but very welcome +visitor, in my old Marcus' Cave friend Finlay; and when I visited all my +former haunts, to take leave of them ere I quitted the place for the +scene of my future labours, I had him to accompany me. Though for many +years a planter in Jamaica, his affections were still warm, and his +literary tastes unchanged. He was a writer, as of old, of sweet simple +verses, and as sedulous a reader as ever; and, had time permitted, we +found we could have kindled fires together in the caves, as we had done +more than twenty years before, and have ranged the shores for shell-fish +and crabs. He had had, however, in passing through life, his full share +of its cares and sorrows. A young lady to whom he had been engaged in +early youth had perished at sea, and he had remained single for her +sake. He had to struggle, too, in his business relations, with the +embarrassments incident to a sinking colony; and though a West Indian +climate was beginning to tell on his constitution, his circumstances +though tolerably easy, were not such as to permit his permanent +residence in Scotland. He returned in the following year to Jamaica; and +I saw, some time after, in a Kingston paper, an intimation of his +election to the Colonial House of Representatives, and the outline of a +well-toned sensible address to his constituents, in which he urged that +the sole hope of the colony lay in the education and mental elevation of +its negro population to the standard of the people at home. I have been +informed that the latter part of his life was, like that of many of the +Jamaica planters in their altered circumstances, pretty much a struggle; +and his health at length breaking down, in a climate little favourable +to Europeans, he died about three years ago--with the exception of my +friend of the Doocot Cave, now Free Church minister of Nigg, the last of +my Marcus' Cave companions. Their remains lie scattered over half the +globe. + +I closed my connexion with the bank at the termination of its financial +year; gave a few weeks very sedulously to geology, during which I was +fortunate enough to find specimens on which Agassiz has founded two of +his fossil species; got, at parting, an elegant breakfast-service of +plate from a kind and numerous circle of friends, of all shades of +politics and both sides of the Church; and was entertained at a public +dinner, at which I attempted a speech, that got on but indifferently, +though it looked quite well enough in my friend Mr. Carruthers' report, +and which was, I suppose, in some sort apologized for by the fiddlers, +who struck up at its close, "A man's a man for a' that." It was, I felt, +not the least gratifying part of the entertainment, that old Uncle Sandy +was present, and that his health was cordially drunk by the company in +the recognised character of my best and earliest friend. And then, +taking leave of my mother and uncle, of my respected minister, and my +honoured superior in the bank, Mr. Ross, I set out for Edinburgh, and in +a few days after was seated at the editorial desk--a point at which, for +the present, the story of my education must terminate. I wrote for my +paper during the first twelvemonth a series of geological chapters, +which were fortunate enough to attract the notice of the geologists of +the British Association, assembled that year at Glasgow, and which, in +the collected form, compose my little work on the Old Red Sandstone. The +paper itself rose rapidly in circulation, till it ultimately attained to +its place among what are known as our first-class Scottish newspapers; +and of its subscribers, perhaps a more considerable proportion of the +whole are men who have received a university education, than can be +reckoned by any other Scotch journal of the same number of readers. And +during the course of the first three years, my employers doubled my +salary. I am sensible, however, that these are but small achievements. +In looking back upon my youth, I see, methinks, a wild fruit tree, rich +in leaf and blossom; and it is mortifying enough to mark how very few of +the blossoms have set, and how diminutive and imperfectly formed the +fruit is into which even the productive few have been developed. A right +use of the opportunities of instruction afforded me in early youth would +have made me a scholar ere my twenty-fifth year, and have saved to me at +least ten of the best years of life--years which were spent in obscure +and humble occupations. But while my story must serve to show the evils +which result from truant carelessness in boyhood, and that what was +sport to the young lad may assume the form of serious misfortune to the +man, it may also serve to show, that much may be done by after diligence +to retrieve an early error of this kind--that life itself is a school, +and Nature always a fresh study--and that the man who keeps his eyes and +his mind open will always find fitting, though, it may be, hard +schoolmasters, to speed him on in his lifelong education. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[17] Thomas Hog of Kiltearn. See "Scots Worthies" or the +cheap-publication volumes of the Free Church for 1846. + +[18] Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a +population of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to the +_call_ of the obnoxious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder +case. + +[19] The following is the passage which was honoured on this occasion by +Chalmers, and which told, in his hands, with all the effect of the most +powerful acting:--"Saunders Macivor, the mate of the 'Elizabeth,' was a +grave and somewhat hard-favoured man, powerful in bone and muscle, even +after he had considerably turned his sixtieth year, and much respected +for his inflexible integrity and the depth of his religious feelings. +Both the mate and his devout wife were especial favourites with Mr. +Porteous of Kilmuir--a minister of the same class as the Pedens, +Renwicks, and Cargils of a former age; and on one occasion when the +sacrament was dispensed in his parish, and Saunders was absent on one of +his Continental voyages, Mrs. Macivor 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 doors. At +length, when she could lie still no longer, she arose, and crept 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 frae Holland! O, 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 driving onwards through spray +and darkness, along the northern shores of the Moray Firth. The fearful +skerries of Shandwick, where so many gallant vessels have perished, were +close at hand; and the increasing roll of the sea showed the gradual +shallowing of the water Macivor and his old townsman, Robert Hossack, +stood together at the binnacle. An immense wave came rolling behind, and +they had but barely time to clutch to the nearest hold, 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 butts +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 Macivor, addressing his companion: 'she floats +still' 'O, Saunders, Saunders!' exclaimed Robert, 'there was surely some +God's soul at work for us, or she would never have _cowed_ you.'" + + +_Edinburgh: Printed by M'Farlane & Erskine._ + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's My Schools and Schoolmasters, by Hugh Miller + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS *** + +***** This file should be named 30737.txt or 30737.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/0/7/3/30737/ + +Produced by Juliet Sutherland, David Garcia, Eric Hutton, +Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team +at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images +generously made available by The Internet Archive) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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