Seeing Europe with Famous Authors Volume II Part 6

said she. This touch--his seat behind the pillar, and Burns himself nodding in sermon time, or keenly observant of profane things--brought him before us to the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right before Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the good woman could not tell it. This was the last thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record; and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some money which my companion offered her, because I had already paid her what she deemed sufficient.

At the railway station we spent more than a weary hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the only conveyance to be had, and drove about a mile to the village, where we established ourselves at the Loudoun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauchline, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fas.h.i.+on of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene of one of Burns's most characteristic productions, "The Holy Fair."

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village street, stands Posie Nansie's inn, where the "Jolly Beggars" congregated. The latter is a two-story, red-stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old-fas.h.i.+oned windows, and may well have stood for centuries--tho seventy or eighty years ago, when Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might have been something better than a beggar's alehouse....

[Burns's farm of] Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just before we reached the farm, the driver stopt to point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which he said was Burns's "Lousie Thorn"; and I devoutly plucked a branch, altho I have really forgotten where or how this ill.u.s.trious shrub has been celebrated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and almost immediately came to the farmhouse of Moss Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the high-road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and considerably overshadowed by trees.

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as being damp and unwholesome; but I do not see why, outside of the cottage walls, it should possess so evil a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoying, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to one who does, not know the grimy secrets of the interior; and the summer afternoon was now so bright that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of suns.h.i.+ne over it.

Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which the driver told us was that in which Burns, turned up the mouse's nest. It is the enclosure, nearest to the cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the ground was whitened with an immense number of daisies--daisies, daisies everywhere; and in answer to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field where Burns ran his plowshare over the daisy. If so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these "wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be precious to many friends in our own country as coming from Burns's farm, and being of the same race and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an amaranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. Prom Moss Giel we drove through a variety of pleasant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by their connection with Burns.

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw Miss Alexander, the La.s.s of Ballochmyle. It was on a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses from bank to bank, high in air, over a deep gorge of the road; so that the young lady may have appeared to Burns like a creature between earth and sky, and compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But, in honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns's eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic mixture which other poets find in her.

Our driver pointed out the course taken by the La.s.s of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tradition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no such interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to breathe their vows: the river flowing over its pebbly bed, sometimes gleaming into the suns.h.i.+ne, sometimes hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs.

Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable; and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish off the scenery and causes a woeful diminution in the beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted edifices; altho there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on both sides of the Ayr, which is here broad and stately, and bordered with dwellings that look from their windows directly down into the pa.s.sing tide.

I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a venerable structure of four gray arches, which must have bestridden the stream ever since the early days of Scottish history. These are the "Two Briggs of Ayr," whose midnight conversation was overheard by Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep between....

The next morning wore a lowering aspect, as if it felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. It is now a public-house; and, of course, we alighted and entered its little sitting-room, which, as we at present see it, is a neat apartment, with the modern improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much overscribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other woodwork of the room, is cut and carved with initial letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I have seldom (tho I do not personally adopt this mode of ill.u.s.trating my humble name) felt inclined to ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes.

On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture by Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, which are probably a recent subst.i.tute for the ordinary flagstones of a peasant's cottage. There is but one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of Robert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now went. It has a floor of flagstones, even ruder than those of Shakespeare's house--tho, perhaps, not so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have been trampling. A new window has been opened through the wall, toward the road; but on the opposite side is the little original window, of only four small panes, through which came the first daylight that shone upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, opposite the fireplace, is a recess, containing a bed, which can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of all places in the world, Providence was pleased to deposit the germ of the richest human life which mankind then had within its circ.u.mference.

These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole sum and substance of Burns's birthplace: for there were no chambers, nor even attics; and the thatched roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting-room, the height of which was that of the whole house. The cottage, however, is attached to another edifice of the same size and description, as these little habitations often are; and, moreover, a splendid addition has been made to it, since the poet's renown began to draw visitors to the wayside alehouse. The old woman of the house led us, through an entry, and showed a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure but marvelously large and splendid as compared with what might be antic.i.p.ated from the outward aspect of the cottage. It contained a bust of Burns, and was hung round with pictures and engravings, princ.i.p.ally ill.u.s.trative of his life and poems. In this part of the house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco-smoke; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whisky is here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who profest to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor.

We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and gave the old woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short drive farther brought us within sight of the monument, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance of the ornamental grounds within which the former is enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclosure, but were forced to wait a considerable time; because the old man, the regular superintendent of the spot, had gone to a.s.sist at the laying of the corner-stone of a new kirk. He appeared anon, and admitted us, but immediately hurried away to be present at the ceremonies, leaving us locked up with Burns.

The enclosure around the monument is beautifully laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly provided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with loving care. The monument stands on an elevated site, and consists of a ma.s.sive bas.e.m.e.nt-story, three-sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian temple--a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pillars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beautiful in itself; tho I know not what peculiar appropriateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish rural poet.

The door of the bas.e.m.e.nt-story stood open; and, entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness can not be good. In the center of the room stood a gla.s.s case, in which were deposited the two volumes of the little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, when they pledged their troth to one another. It is poorly printed, on coa.r.s.e paper. A verse of Scripture, referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's own hand; and fastened to one of the covers is a lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had been carried to America by one of her relatives, but was sent back to be fitly treasured here.

There is a staircase within the monument, by which we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs of Doon; the scene of Tam O'Shanter's misadventure being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of Tam and Sutor Wat--ponderous stonework enough, yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living warmth and jovial hilarity. Prom this part of the garden, too, we again beheld the old Briggs of Doon, over which Tam galloped in such imminent and awful peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with one high, graceful arch, ivy-grown, and shadowed all over and around with foliage.

When we had waited a good while, the old gardener came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer at laying the corner-stone of the new kirk. He now gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three minutes' walk of the monument. A few steps ascend from the roadside, through a gate, into the old graveyard, in the midst of which stands the kirk. The edifice is wholly roofless, but the side-walls and gable-ends are quite entire, tho portions of them are evidently modern restorations. Never was there a plainer little church, or one with smaller architectural pretension; no New England meetinghouse has more simplicity in its very self, tho poetry and fun have clambered and cl.u.s.tered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is difficult to see it as it actually exists. By the by, I do not understand why Satan and an a.s.sembly of witches should hold their revels within a consecrated precinct; but the weird scene has so established itself in the world's imaginative faith that it must be accepted as an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason to the contrary.

Possibly, some carnal minister, some priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dispelled the consecration of the holy edifice, by his pretense of prayer, and thus made it the resort of unhappy ghosts and sorcerers and devils.

The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the witches used it as a dancing-hall; for it is divided in the midst by a wall of stone masonry, and each compartment has been converted into a family burial-place. The name on one of the monuments is Crawfurd; the other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel that these good people, whoever they may be, had no business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that belongs to the world, and where their presence jars with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our own precincts, too--from that inalienable possession which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to the domain of imagination.

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering how large a s.p.a.ce it fills in our imagination before we see it. I paced its length, outside of the wall, and found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tam O'Shanter, blazing with devilish light, as he approached along the road from Ayr; and there is a small and square one, on the side nearest the road, into which he might have peered, as he sat on horseback. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, standing on the ground, had not the opening been walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material are gray and irregular.

The road from Ayr pa.s.ses Alloway Kirk, and crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerving much from a straight line. To reach the old bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after pa.s.sing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply toward the river. The new bridge is within a minute's walk of the monument; and we went thither, and leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene; altho this might have been even lovelier, if a kindly sun had shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its high arch, through which we had a picture of the river and the green banks beyond, was absolutely the most picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever blest my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, and the boughs dipping into the water! The memory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and wild, in accordance with their native melody.... We shall appreciate him better as a poet, hereafter; for there is no writer whose life, as a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced. Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth for us in everything that he wrote; and, like his countrymen, we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his actual voice.

HIGHLAND MARY'S HOME AND GRAVE [Footnote: From "A Literary Pilgrimage."

By arrangement with, and by permission of, the publishers, J. B.

Lippincott Co. Copyright, 1895.]

BY THEODORE F. WOLFE.

There is no stronger proof of the transcending power of the genius of Burns than is found in the fact that, by a bare half-dozen of his stanzas, an humble dairy servant--else unheard of outside her parish and forgotten at her death--is immortalized as a peeress of Petrarch's Laura and Dante's Beatrice, and has been for a century loved and mourned of all the world. We owe much of our tenderest poesy to the heroines whose charms have attuned the fancy and aroused the impa.s.sioned muse of enamoured bards; readers have always exhibited a natural avidity to realize the personality of the beings who inspired the tender lays--prompted often by mere curiosity, but more often by a desire to appreciate the tastes and motives of the poets themselves. How little is known of Highland Mary, the most famous heroine of modern song, is shown by the brief, coherent, and often contradictory allusions to her which the biographies of the plowman-poet contain. This paper--prepared during a sojourn in "The Land of Burns"--while it adds a little to our meager knowledge of Mary Campbell, aims to present consecutively and congruously so much as may be known of her brief life, her relation to the bard, and her sad, heroic death.

She first saw the light in 1764, at Ardrossan, on the coast, fifteen miles northward from the "auld town of Ayr." Her parentage was of the humblest, her father being a sailor before the mast, and the poor dwelling which sheltered her was in no way superior to the meanest of those we find to-day on the narrow streets of her village. From her birthplace we see, across the Firth of Clyde, the beetling mountains of the Highlands, where she afterward dwells and southward the great ma.s.s of Ailsa Craig looming, a gigantic pyramid, out of the sea. Mary was named for her aunt, wife of Peter McPherson, a s.h.i.+p-carpenter of Greenock, in whose house Mary died. In her infancy her family removed to the vicinage of Dunoon, on the western sh.o.r.e of the Firth, eight miles below Greenock, leaving the oldest daughter at Ardrossan. Mary grew to young womanhood near Dunoon then returned to Ayrs.h.i.+re, and found occupation at Coilsfield, near Tarbolton, where her acquaintance with Burns soon began. He told a lady that he first saw Mary while walking in the woods of Coilsfield: and first spoke with her at a rustic merrymaking, and "having the luck to win her regards from other suitors," they speedily became intimate. At this period of life Burn's "eternal propensity to fall into love" was unusually active, even for him, and his pa.s.sion for Mary (at this time) was one of several which engaged his heart in the interval between the reign of Ellison Begbie--"the la.s.s of the twa sparkling, roguish een"--and that of "Bonnie Jean." Mary subsequently became a servant in the house of Burn's landlord, Gavin Hamilton, a lawyer of Mauchline, who had early recognized the genius of the bard and admitted him to an intimate friends.h.i.+p, despite his inferior condition....

Within a stone's-throw of Mary dwelt Jean Armour, and when the former returned to Coilsfield, he promptly fell in love with Jean, and solaced himself with her more buxom and compliant charms. It was a year or so later, when his intercourse with Jean had burdened him with grief and shame, that the tender and romantic affection for Mary came into his life. She was yet at Coilsfield, and while he was in hiding--his heart tortured by the apparent perfidy of Jean and all the countryside condemning his misconduct--his intimacy with Mary was renewed; his quickened vision now discerned her endearing attributes, her trust and sympathy were precious in his distress, and awoke in him an affection such as he never felt for any other woman. During a few brief weeks the lovers spent their evenings and Sabbaths together, loitering amid the

"Banks and braes and streams around The Castle of Montgomery,"

talking of the golden days that were to be theirs when present troubles were past; then came the parting which the world will never forget, and Mary relinquished her service and went to her parents at Campbelltown--a port of Cantyre behind "Arran's mountain isle." Of this parting Burns says, in a letter to Thomson, "We met by appointment on the second Sunday of May, in a sequestered spot on the Ayr, where we spent the day in taking farewell before she should embark for the West Highlands to prepare for our projected change of life." Lovers of Burns linger over this final parting, and detail the impressive ceremonials with which the pair solemnized their betrothal: they stood on either side of a brook, they laved their hands in the water and scattered it in the air to symbolize the purity of their intentions; clasping hands above an open Bible, they swore to be true to each other forever, then exchanged Bibles, and parted never to meet more.

It is not strange that when death had left him nothing of her but her poor little Bible, a tress of her golden hair, and a tender memory of her love, the recollection of this farewell remained in his soul forever. He has pictured it in the exquisite lines of "Highland Mary"

and "To Mary in Heaven." In the monument at Alloway--between the "auld haunted kirk" and the bridge where Maggie lost her tail--we are shown a memento of the parting; it is the Bible which Burns gave to Mary and above which their vows were said. At Mary's death it pa.s.sed to her sister, at Ardrossan, who bequeathed it to her son William Anderson; subsequently it was carried to America by one of the family, whence it has been recovered to be treasured here. It is a pocket edition in two volumes, to one of which is attached a lock of poor Mary's s.h.i.+ning hair....

A visit to the scenes of the brief pa.s.sion of the pair is a pleasing incident of our Burns pilgrimage. Coilsfield House is somewhat changed since Mary dwelt beneath its roof--a great rambling edifice of gray weather-worn stone with a row of white pillars aligned along its facade, its ma.s.sive walls embowered in foliage and environed by the grand woods which Burns and Mary knew so well. It was then a seat of Colonel Hugh Montgomerie, a patron of Burns. The name Coilsfield is derived from Coila, the traditional appellation of the district. The grounds comprise a billowy expanse of wood and sward; great reaches of turf, dotted with trees already venerable when the lovers here had their tryst a hundred years ago, slope away from the mansion to the Faile and border its murmuring course to the Ayr. Here we trace with romantic interest the wanderings of the pair during the swift hours of that last day of parting love, their lingering way 'neath the "wild wood's thickening green," by the pebbled sh.o.r.e of Ayr to the brooklet where their vows were made, and thence along the Faile to the woodland shades of Coilsfield, where, at the close of that winged day, "pledging oft to meet again, they tore themselves asunder." Howitt found at Coilsfield a thorn-tree, called by all the country "Highland Mary's thorn," and believed to be the place of final parting; years ago the tree was notched and broken by souvenir seekers; if it be still in existence the present occupant of Coilsfield is unaware.....

Mary remained at Campbelltown during the summer of 1786. Coming to Greenock in the autumn, she found her brother sick of a malignant fever at the house of her aunt; bravely disregarding danger of contagion, she devoted herself to nursing him, and brought him to a safe convalescense only to be herself stricken by his malady and to rapidly sink and die, a sacrifice to her sisterly affection. By this time the success of his poems had determined Burns to remain in Scotland, and he returned to Moss Giel, where tidings of Mary's death reached him. His brother relates that when the letter was handed to him he went to the window and read it, then his face was observed to change suddenly, and he quickly went out without speaking. In June of the next year he made a solitary journey to the Highlands, apparently drawn by memory of Mary. If, indeed, he dropt a tear upon her neglected grave and visited her humble Highland home, we may almost forgive him the excesses of that tour, if not the renewed liaison with Jean which immediately preceded, and the amorous correspondence with "Clarinda" (Mrs. M'Lehose) which followed it.....

Poor Mary is laid in the burial-plot of her uncle in the west kirk-yard of Greenock, near Crawford Street; our pilgrimage in Burns-land may fitly end at her grave. A pathway, beaten by the feet of many reverent visitors, leads us to the spot. It is so pathetically different from the scenes she loved in life--the heather-clad slopes of her Highland home, the seclusion of the wooded braes where she loitered with her poet-lover. Scant foliage is about her; few birds sing above her here.

She lies by the wall; narrow streets hem in the enclosure; the air is sullied by smoke from factories and from steamers pa.s.sing within a stone's throw on the busy Clyde; the clanging of many hammers and the discordant din of machinery and traffic invade the place and sound in our ears as we muse above the ashes of the gentle la.s.sie.

For half a century her grave was unmarked and neglected; then, by subscription, a monument of marble, twelve feet in height, and of graceful proportions, was raised. It bears a sculptured medallion representing Burns and Mary, with clasped hands, plighting their troth.

Beneath is the simple inscription, read oft by eyes dim with tears:

Erected over the grave of Highland Mary 1842

"My Mary, dear departed shade, Where is thy place of blissful rest?"

THROUGH THE CALEDONIA Ca.n.a.l TO INVERNESS [Footnote: From "Notes on England." Published by Henry Holt & Co.]

BY HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE

In the luminous morning mist, amid a line of masts and rigging, the steamboat sailed down the Clyde to the sea. We proceeded along the indented and rugged coast from one bay to another. These bays, being almost entirely closed in, resemble lakes, and the large sheets of water mirror an amphitheater of green hills. All the corners and windings of the sh.o.r.e are strewn with white villas; the water is crowded with s.h.i.+ps; a height was pointed out to me whence three hundred sail may often be counted at a time; a three-decker floats in the distance like a swan among sea-mews. This vast s.p.a.ce spread forth and full of life, dilates the mind, one's chest expands more freely, one joyfully inhales the fresh and keen breeze. But the effect upon the nerves and the heart does not resemble that of the Mediterranean; this air and country, instead of pre-disposing to pleasure, dispose to action.

We enter a small vessel drawn by three horses, which transports us along the Crinan ca.n.a.l, between two banks of green turf. On the one side are rocks covered with brushwood; on the other, steep declivities of a gray or reddish tinge; this, indeed, is color at least, a pleasure for the eye, well mingled, matched, and blended tints. On the bank and amid the bushes are wild roses, and fragile plants with white tufts smile with a delicate and charming grace.

At the outlet from the ca.n.a.l we go on board a large steamer, and the sea opens out wider than ever. The sky is exceedingly clear and brilliant, and the waves break in the sunlight, quivering with reflections of molten tin. The vessel continues her course, leaving in her track a bubbling and boiling path; sea gulls follow unweariedly behind her. On both sides, islands, rocks, boldly-cut promontories stand in sharp relief in the pale azure; the scene changes every quarter of an hour.

But on rounding every point the infinite ocean reappears, mingling its almost flat line with the curve of the white sky.

The sun sets, we pa.s.s by Glencoe, and Ben Nevis appears sprinkled with snow; the bay becomes narrower, and the ma.s.s of water, confined amid barren mountains, a.s.sumes a tragic appearance. Human beings have come hither to little purpose. Nature remains indomitable and wild; one feels oneself upon a planet.

We disembark near Fort William; the dying twilight, the fading red rays on the horizon enable us to get a glimpse of a desolate country; acres of peat-bog, eminences rising from the valley between two ranges of huge mountains. A bird of prey screams amid the stillness. Here and there we see some wretched hovels; I am told that those on the heights are dens without windows, and from which the smoke escapes through a hole in the roof. Many of the old men are blind. What an unpropitious abode for man!

On the morrow we voyaged during four hours on the Caledonian ca.n.a.l amidst solitudes, a monotonous row of treeless mountains, enormous green eminences, dotted here and there with fallen stones. A few sheep of a dwarf breed crop the scanty herbage on the slopes; sometimes the winter is so severe that they die; in the distance we perceive a s.h.a.ggy ox, with savage eyes, the size of a small a.s.s. Both plants and animals perish, or are stunted. In order to make such a land yield anything it must first be replanted with trees, as has been done in Sutherlands.h.i.+re; a tree renews the soil; it also shelters crops, flocks and herds, and human beings.

The ca.n.a.l terminates in a series of lakes. Nothing is more n.o.ble than their aspect, nothing more touching. The water, embrowned by the peat, forms a vast s.h.i.+ning plain, surrounded by a circle of mountains. In proportion as we advance each mountain slowly grows upon us, becomes more conspicuous, stands forth with its form and physiognomy; the farther blue peaks melt the one behind the other, diminis.h.i.+ng toward the horizon, which they enclose. Thus they stand in position like an a.s.semblage of huge, mournful beings around the black water wherein they are mirrored, while above them and the lake, from time to time, the sun flashes through the shroud of clouds.

At last the solitude becomes less marked. The mountains are half-wooded at first, and then wholly so; they dwindle down; the widening valleys are covered with harvest; the fresh and green verdure of the herbage which supplies forage begins to clothe the hollows and the slopes. We enter Inverness, and we are surprised to find at almost the extreme north of Scotland, on the border of the Highlands, a pretty and lively modern town. It stretches along the two banks of a clear and rapid river. Many houses are newly-built; we note a church, a castle, an iron bridge. In every part are marks of cleanliness, forethought, and special care. The window-panes s.h.i.+ne, the frames have been painted; the bell-handles are of copper; there are flowers in the windows; the poorest nouses are freshly whitewashed. Well-drest ladies and carefully drest gentlemen walk along the streets. Even a desire to possess works of art is shown by Ionian pillars, specimens of pure Gothic, and other architectural gimcrackery, and these prove at least the search after improvement. The land itself is clearly of inferior quality; industry, order, economy and labor have done everything. How great the contrast between all this and the aspect of a small town on the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, so neglected and filthy, where the lower middle cla.s.s exist like worms in a worm-eaten beam!