John Wilson, 1785-1854, a distinguished Scottish author, was born at
Paisley. When fifteen years of age, he entered the University of Glasgow;
but, three years later, he became a member of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Here he attained eminence both as a student, and as a proficient in
gymnastic games and exercises. Soon after graduating, he purchased an
estate near Lake Windermere, and became a companion of Wordsworth and
Southey; but he soon left his estate to reside in Edinburgh. In 1817, when
"Blackwood's Magazine" was established in opposition to the "Edinburgh
Review," he became chief contributor to that famous periodical. In its
pages, he won his chief fame as a writer. In 1820, he succeeded Dr. Thomas
Brown as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh;
this position he held for thirty years. His "Lights and Shadows of
Scottish Life" was published in 1822. This is a collection of pathetic and
beautiful tales of domestic life in Scotland. His contributions to
Blackwood appeared over the pseudonym of "Christopher North," or more
familiarly, "Kit North." Professor Wilson was a man of great physical
power and of striking appearance. In character, he was vehement and
impulsive; but his writings show that he possessed feelings of deep
tenderness.
###
The rite of baptism had not been performed for several months in the kirk
of Lanark. It was now the hottest time of persecution; and the inhabitants
of that parish found other places in which to worship God, and celebrate
the ordinances of religion. It was now the Sabbath day, and a small
congregation of about a hundred souls had met for divine service, in a
place more magnificent than any temple that human hands had ever built to
Deity. The congregation had not assembled to the toll of the bell, but
each heart knew the hour and observed it; for there are a hundred sundials
among the hills, woods, moors, and fields; and the shepherd and the
peasant see the hours passing by them in sunshine and shadow.
The church in which they were assembled, was hewn by God's hand out of the
eternal rock. A river rolled its way through a mighty chasm of cliffs,
several hundred feet high, of which the one side presented enormous
masses, and the other corresponding recesses, as if the great stone girdle
had been rent by a convulsion. The channel was overspread with prodigious
fragments of rocks or large loose stones, some of them smooth and bare,
others containing soil and verdure in their rents and fissures, and here
and there crowned with shrubs and trees. The eye could at once command a
long-stretching vista, seemingly closed and shut up at both extremities by
the coalescing cliffs. This majestic reach of river contained pools,
streams, and waterfalls innumerable; and when the water was low--which was
now the case, in the common drought--it was easy to walk up this scene
with the calm, blue sky overhead, an utter and sublime solitude.
On looking up, the soul was bowed down by the feeling of that prodigious
height of unscalable, and often overhanging, cliff. Between the channel
and the summit of the far extended precipices, were perpetually flying
rooks and wood pigeons, and now and then a hawk, filling the profound
abyss with their wild cawing, deep murmur, or shrilly shriek. Sometimes a
heron would stand erect and still, on some little stone island, or rise up
like a white cloud along the black walls of the chasm, and disappear.
Winged creatures alone could inhabit this region. The fox and wild cat
chose more accessible haunts. Yet, here came the persecuted Christians and
worshiped God, whose hand hung over their head those magnificent pillars
and arches, scooped out those galleries from the solid rock, and laid at
their feet the calm water, in its transparent beauty, in which they could
see themselves sitting, in reflected groups, with their Bibles in their
hands.
Here, upon a semicircular ledge of rocks, over a narrow chasm, of which
the tiny stream played in a murmuring waterfall, and divided the
congregation into two equal parts, sat about a hundred persons, all
devoutly listening to their minister, who stood before them on what might
he called a small, natural pulpit of living stone. Up to it there led a
short flight of steps, and over it waved the canopy of a tall, graceful
birch tree. The pulpit stood in the middle of the channel, directly facing
the congregation, and separated from them by the clear, deep, sparkling
pool, into which the scarce-heard water poured over the blackened rock.
The water, as it left the pool, separated into two streams, and flowed on
each side of that altar, thus placing it in an island, whose large, mossy
stones were richly embowered under the golden blossoms and green tresses
of the broom.
At the close of divine service, a row of maidens, all clothed in purest
white, came gliding off from the congregation, and, crossing the murmuring
stream on stepping stones, arranged themselves at the foot of the pulpit
with those who were about to be baptized. Their devout fathers, just as
though they had been in their own kirk, had been sitting there during
worship, and now stood up before the minister. The baptismal water, taken
from that pellucid pool, was lying, consecrated, in an appropriate
receptacle, formed by the upright stones that composed one side of the
pulpit, and the holy rite proceeded.
Some of the younger ones in that semicircle kept gazing down into the
pool, in which the whole scene was reflected; and now and then, in spite
of the grave looks and admonishing whispers of their elders, letting fall
a pebble into the water, that they might judge of its depth, from the
length of time that elapsed before the clear air bells lay sparkling on
the agitated surface. The rite was over, and the religious service of the
day closed by a psalm. The mighty rocks hemmed in the holy sound, and sent
it in a more compact volume, clear, sweet, and strong, up to heaven. When
the psalm ceased, an echo, like a spirit's voice, was heard dying away,
high up among the magnificent architecture of the cliffs; and once more
might be noticed in the silence, the reviving voice of the waterfall.
Just then, a large stone fell from the top of the cliff into the pool, a
loud voice was heard, and a plaid was hung over on the point of a
shepherd's staff. Their wakeful sentinel had descried danger, and this was
his warning. Forthwith, the congregation rose. There were paths, dangerous
to unpracticed feet, along the ledges of the rocks, leading up to several
caves and places of concealment. The more active and young assisted the
elder, more especially the old pastor, and the women with the infants; and
many minutes had not elapsed, till not a living creature was visible in
the channel of the stream, but all of them were hidden, or nearly so, in
the clefts and caverns.
The shepherd who had given the alarm, had lain down again instantly in his
plaid on the greensward, upon the summit of these precipices. A party of
soldiers was immediately upon him, and demanded what signals he had been
making, and to whom; when one of them, looking over the edge of the cliff,
exclaimed, "See, see! Humphrey, We have caught the whole tabernacle of the
Lord in a net at last. There they are, praising God among the stones of
the river Mouse. These are the Cartland Craigs. A noble cathedral!" "Fling
the lying sentinel over the cliffs. Here is a canting Covenanter for you,
deceiving honest soldiers on the very Sabbath day. Over with him, over
with him; out of the gallery into the pit." But the shepherd had vanished
like a shadow, and, mixing with the tall, green broom and bushes, was
making his unseen way toward a wood. "Satan has saved his servant; but
come, my lads, follow me. I know the way down into the bed of the stream,
and the steps up to Wallace's Cave. They are called, 'kittle nine stanes;'
The hunt's up. We'll all be in at the death. Halloo! my boys, halloo!"
The soldiers dashed down a less precipitous part of the wooded banks, a
little below the "craigs," and hurried up the channel. But when they
reached the altar where the old, gray-haired minister had been seen
standing, and the rocks that had been covered with people, all was silent
and solitary; not a creature to be seen. "Here is a Bible, dropped by some
of them," cried a soldier, and, with his foot, he spun it away into the
pool. "A bonnet, a bonnet," cried another; "now for the pretty, sanctified
face, that rolled its demure eyes below it." But after a few jests and
oaths, the soldiers stood still, eying with a kind of mysterious dread the
black and silent walls of the rocks that hemmed them in, and hearing only
the small voice of the stream that sent a profounder stillness through the
heart of that majestic solitude. "What if these cowardly Covenanters
should tumble down upon our heads pieces of rock, from their hiding
places! Advance, or retreat?"
There was no reply; for a slight fear was upon every man. Musket or
bayonet could be of little use to men obliged to clamber up rocks, along
slender paths, leading they know not where. And they were aware that armed
men nowadays worshiped God; men of iron hearts, who feared not the glitter
of the soldier's arms, neither barrel nor bayonet; men of long stride,
firm step, and broad breast, who, on the open field, would have overthrown
the marshaled line, and gone first and foremost, if a city had to be taken
by storm.
As the soldiers were standing together irresolute, a noise came upon their
ears like distant thunder, but even more appalling; and a slight current
of air, as if propelled by it, passed whispering along the sweetbriers,
and the broom, and the tresses of the birch trees. It came deepening, and
rolling, and roaring on; and the very Cartland Craigs shook to their
foundation, as if in an earthquake. "The Lord have mercy upon us! What is
this?" And down fell many of the miserable wretches on their knees, and
some on their faces, upon the sharp-pointed rocks. Now, it was like the
sound of many myriads of chariots rolling on their iron axles down the
strong channel of the torrent. The old, gray-haired minister issued from
the mouth of Wallace's Cave, and said, in a loud voice, "The Lord God
terrible reigneth!"
A waterspout had burst up among the moorlands, and the river, in its
power, was at hand. There it came, tumbling along into that long reach of
cliffs, and, in a moment, filled it with one mass of waves. Huge, agitated
clouds of foam rode on the surface of a blood-red torrent. An army must
have been swept off by that flood. The soldiers perished in a moment; but
high up in the cliffs, above the sweep of destruction, were the
Covenanters, men, women, and children, uttering prayers to God, unheard by
themselves, in the raging thunder.
NOTES.--Lanark is a small town in the valley of the Clyde, in Scotland. It
is thirty miles southwest from Edinburgh.
Mouse River flows to the Clyde from the hills north of Larmrk.
Covenanter.--Under Charles I., the Scotch were so oppressed that they
organized in resistance. The covenant was a famous paper, largely signed,
in which they agreed to continue in the profession of their faith, and
resist all errors.
Wallace's Cave.--William Wallace (b. 1270, d. 1305) was the foremost Scot
of his times. He was declared, in the absence of the king, guardian of the
kingdom. More than once was he outlawed and obliged to seek safety by
concealment in the woods and caves.