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THE BOOK-HUNTER
[Illustration: Yours truly, J.H. Burton]
THE BOOK-HUNTER
etc.
by
JOHN HILL BURTON
D.C.L., LL.D.
Author of 'A History of Scotland,' 'The Scot Abroad,'
'The Reign of Queen Anne,' &c.
A New Edition
_With a Memoir of the Author_
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
MDCCCLXXXII
_All Rights reserved_
_PUBLISHER'S NOTE._
_The learned Author of 'THE BOOK-HUNTER,' very shortly before his death,
gave his consent that the Work should be reprinted._
_This has now been done from his own copy, with any slight additions or
emendations which it, or the notes of literary friends, supplied, and in
a form which, it is hoped, will be acceptable to all lovers of choice
books._
_A Memoir of Dr Burton, by his Widow, has been prefixed, and a copious
Index added._
_The portrait of the Author has been reproduced from a characteristic
photograph, and etched by Mr W.B. Hole, A.R.S.A. The View in the
Library, and the Vignettes of Craighouse and Dalmeny, have been drawn by
Miss Rose Burton, and engraved by Miss E.P. Burton._
45 GEORGE STREET,
EDINBURGH, _May 1882_.
_THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION._
The Author, in again laying his little book before the public, has taken
advantage of some suggestions kindly contributed by the critics who
reviewed the previous edition, and he has thus been enabled to correct a
few inaccuracies which they have courteously characterised as mere
errors of the press. Productions of this indefinite kind are apt to grow
in the hands of an author; and in the course of his revision he was
unable to resist the temptation to throw in a few additional touches
here and there, as to which he can only hope that they will not
deteriorate the volume in the eyes of those who thought well of it in
its old shape.
1863.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
_CONTENTS._
PAGE
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR, i
_THE BOOK-HUNTER._
Part I.--His Nature.
INTRODUCTORY, 1
A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS, 14
REMINISCENCES, 59
CLASSIFICATION, 62
THE PROWLER AND THE AUCTION-HAUNTER, 88
Part II.--His Functions.
THE HOBBY, 101
THE DESULTORY READER OR BOHEMIAN OF LITERATURE, 108
THE COLLECTOR AND THE SCHOLAR, 115
THE GLEANER AND HIS HARVEST, 124
PRETENDERS, 161
HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CREATION OF LIBRARIES, 168
THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE, 205
LIBRARIANS, 227
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, 233
Part III.--His Club.
CLUBS IN GENERAL, 243
THE STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK CLUBS, 251
THE ROXBURGHE CLUB, 265
SOME BOOK-CLUB MEN, 283
Part IV.--Book-Club Literature.
GENERALITIES, 311
JOHN SPALDING, 330
ROBERT WODROW, 338
THE EARLY NORTHERN SAINTS, 352
SERMONS IN STONES, 404
INDEX, 419
List of Illustrations.
PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR, _Frontispiece._
THE AVENUE, CRAIGHOUSE, i
CRAIGHOUSE, lix
DALMENY CHURCHYARD, civ
A NOOK IN THE AUTHOR'S LIBRARY, 1
[Illustration: _The Avenue, Craighouse._]
MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.
CHAPTER I.
ABERDEEN.
_Parentage--Patons--Grandholm--Jersey--"Peninsular War"--School and
schoolmasters--Flogging--College--Competition for bursaries--Home
life--Aunt and grand-aunt--Holiday rambles--Letter._
John Hill Burton, the subject of this notice, was born on the 22d of
August 1809, in the Gallowgate of Aberdeen. He was wont to style
himself, as in his childhood he had heard himself described, "The last
of the Gallowgate bairns;" the Gallowgate being an old part of Aberdeen
devoted chiefly to humble trade, no one, in modern times at least, even
distantly connected with gentility living there.
His father, William Kinninmont Burton, is believed to have been an only
son, and no kith or kin of his were ever seen or heard of by his
children. The only relic of their father's family possessed by them is a
somewhat interesting miniature on ivory, well painted in the
old-fashioned style, representing a not beautiful lady in antique
head-dress and costume, and marked on the back "Mary Burton." William
Kinninmont Burton held a commission in the army, though he had not been
originally intended for a military life. He was, it is supposed, engaged
in trade in London when the military enthusiasm, excited by the idea of
an invasion of Great Britain by Napoleon, fired him, like so many other
young men, into taking up arms as a volunteer. In the end of last
century he came to Aberdeen as a lieutenant in a regiment of
"Fencibles," or some such volunteer title, and there captivated the
affections of a beautiful young lady, Miss Eliza Paton, a daughter of
the laird of Grandholm, an estate four miles distant from Aberdeen. Of
this lady and of her family a few words must be said.
So small was the value of land in Scotland in the beginning of the
century, that it is safe to suppose the estate of Grandholm yielded less
than one-third of its present rental. The circumstances and social
position of the family were, besides, seriously lowered by the
extraordinary character of the then laird. John Paton, grandfather of
Dr Burton, was a man not devoid of talent, and of a strikingly handsome
gentlemanly appearance and manner. He married, early in life, a
beautiful Miss Lance, an Englishwoman, who, after bearing him ten
children in about as many years, fell into a weak state of health, of
mind as well as body. The laird nursed his wife devotedly for a long
period of years, cherishing her to the exclusion of all other persons or
interests. His children he regarded as the enemies of his adored wife,
and consequently of himself, and his conduct to them from first to last
was little less than brutal. When the enfeebled wife at last died, the
husband's grief verged on madness.
He would not allow her body to be buried in the ordinary manner, but
caused a tomb to be erected in a wood near the house of Grandholm, where
the corpse was placed in an open coffin, and where the bereaved husband
could go daily to bewail his loss. The distracted mourner rejected all
attentions from children, relatives, or friends, yet apparently dreaded
being left alone, for he advertised for a male companion or keeper to
bear him company. The writer has often heard Dr Burton amuse himself and
his audience by describing the extraordinary varieties of struggling
humanity who applied for the situation. Ultimately, it is believed, none
of them was selected, and the laird fled from his natural home, and from
that time till his death lived chiefly in London, leaving his large
young family to take care of themselves as they best could.
The three sons went successively to India or other foreign parts, and
died there, one of them leaving a son, whose family are the present
possessors of Grandholm.
Of the seven daughters--several of whom were very handsome--two only
were married, namely, Eliza, who became Mrs Burton, mother of the
historiographer; and Margaret, who espoused rather late in life a Dr
Brown, and continued as a widow to inhabit an old house belonging to the
Grandholm family in Old Aberdeen till June 1879, when she died at the
age of ninety-eight.
The young family, thus deserted by their natural protector, fell chiefly
under the authority of his eldest daughter, Mary--said, of all his
children, to most resemble the laird himself.
Among this lady's nephews and nieces there linger strange traditions of
the violence of her temper, and of the intensity of her loves and hates.
It is hardly necessary to say that none of the females at least of the
family received any particular education.
Mary was a woman of strong natural abilities, and of an excellent
business faculty. She managed the very small resources left at her
command with consummate skill, and in her later years made of Grandholm
a hospitable, cheerful, old-fashioned home for those whom it pleased her
to receive there. Her sister Eliza's marriage had not pleased her. There
was much to justify her objection to it; William Burton, not then
holding a commission, was entirely without pecuniary resources.
His strongest talent seems to have been for painting, and by such
occupation as he could get in drawing and painting in London he was
barely able to maintain himself. The old grandfather and his lieutenant,
aunt Mary, have been described to the writer in the darkest colours as
having constantly interposed between the true lovers, William Burton and
his beloved Eliza Paton, who, in spite of all advice to the contrary,
soon became his wife. What the laird of Grandholm and his daughter Mary
did was no doubt done in the harshest manner, but their actions
themselves seem hardly blamable. When William Burton found it impossible
to maintain his wife in London, she was received again into her paternal
home with her infant, William, John Hill Burton's elder brother. The
wife, of course, earnestly and constantly desired to rejoin her husband.
The father and sister declined to facilitate her doing so by paying the
expense of her return journey, concluding that if her husband was unable
to meet that outlay, he was not in a position to maintain her beside
himself.
After some six or eight years of mutual longing for each other's
society, separated by the distance of London from Aberdeen, William
Burton succeeded in exchanging his position in the Fencibles for a
lieutenancy in a line regiment under orders for India. There also he
went unaccompanied by his wife. After brief service in India he had to
return home in ill health. Then at last the husband and wife were
reunited; first to live together for a time in Aberdeen--afterwards to
go with their two sons to Jersey.
The eldest son, William, ten years older than John, afterwards went into
the Indian army, and died in India, leaving a son and daughter.
John Hill Burton's earliest recollections dated from his stay with his
parents in garrison in Jersey. This must have been about the year 1811
or 1812, when he was therefore two or three years old. He used to say he
remembered the relieving of guard in Jersey; that he had an infantine
recollection of a military guard-room by night; and remembered a "Lady
Fanny," the wife, as he believed, of the colonel of the regiment, who
showed some slight kindness towards him and other garrison children.
The greatest adventure of Dr Burton's unadventurous life occurred when
he was returning with his parents from Jersey, in a troop-ship. The
vessel was chased by a French privateer, and for some time the little
family had reason to fear becoming inmates of a French prison. It was
this incident which Dr Burton used in his later life to say entitled him
to assert that he had been in the Peninsular War. The homeward journey
from Jersey was to Aberdeen, which it is believed Lieutenant Burton and
his family never left again till his death. His failing health obliged
him to retire from active service on the half-pay of a lieutenant. His
wife, from some writings to be hereafter mentioned, seems also to have
enjoyed an allowance of £40 per annum from her father.
Besides William and John Hill, there were born in Aberdeen to William
Burton and Eliza Paton three sons--two of whom died early, one of them
being accidentally drowned in the Don at Grandholm--and one daughter.
The surviving brother of Dr Burton is a retired medical officer of the
East India Company. The sister, Mary, remains unmarried.
The little household established in Aberdeen about the year 1812 knew
the woes of failing health and narrow means, part of the latter doled
out to them by an unwilling hand. Lieutenant Burton's health continued
to decline till his death, about the year 1819. His son John was then
ten years old, and had begun his school education.
His recollections of schools and schoolmasters were vivid and
picturesque. The one schoolmaster--almost the only teacher--to whom he
acknowledged any obligation, was James Melvin. To him, he was wont to
say, he owed his good Scotch knowledge of Latin; and he delighted even
till the end of his life in dwelling on Dr Melvin's methods of teaching,
and on the fine spirit of generous emulation and eagerness for knowledge
which inspired his pupils.
Both before and after the time of his studies under Dr Melvin he had
experience of schoolmasters of a different type. The tales of flogging
under these pedagogues were so absolutely sickening, that Dr Burton's
family used to beg him to stop his narrations to spare their feelings.
He had beheld, though he had never undergone, the old-fashioned process
of flogging by _heezing up_ the culprit on the back of the
school-porter, so as to bring his bare back close to the master's lash.
The trembling victim, anticipating such punishment, used to be sent to
summon the porter. He frequently returned with a half-sobbing message,
"Please, sir, _he says_ he's not in." The fiction did not lead to
escape. Cromar was the name of the chief executioner in these scenes.
Detested by his pupils, he was a victim to every sort of petty
persecution from them, so that cruelty acted and reacted between him and
them. On one memorable occasion he flogged John Burton with such
violence as to cause to himself an internal rupture.
The offence which led to this unmeasured punishment was "looking
impudent!"--and the look of supposed impudence was produced by a
temporarily swollen lip; but the swollen lip was the effect of a single
combat with a schoolfellow; and fighting was so rife, and so severely
repressed, that it appeared less dangerous to meet the consequences of
the supposed impertinent face than those of the battle. The unfortunate
pupil of course continued to grimace, and the wretched schoolmaster to
flog, till the pupil streamed with blood, and the master sat down from
sheer exhaustion and an injury from which he never recovered.
Before John Hill Burton had completed his course at the grammar school
he gained a bursary by competition, and began his studies at Marischal
College. The open competition for bursaries at Aberdeen was a subject
on which he delighted to talk, often with tears of enthusiasm in his
eyes. The entire impartiality, the complete openness of these
competitions to the whole world, the spectacle of high learning freely
offered to whoever could by merit earn it, seemed to Dr Burton, to his
life's end, as fine a subject of contemplation as any the world could
offer. During his last illness, a friend, who knew his strong interest
in his Alma Mater, presented him with Mr M'Lean's 'Life at a Northern
University.' He read it with the utmost delight, often reading passages
aloud with great emotion, on account of the vivid picture they presented
of the scenes of his youth. It was a rough hard life that of an Aberdeen
College student fifty or sixty years ago.
Mr M'Lean says of his fellow-students: "As the most of them came from
the country--generally from the Highlands and Western Islands of
Scotland--they brought with them all their native roughness and
coarseness of manners. The great majority of those who had spent their
lives in town frequented the neighbouring university,[1] where the
entrance and other examinations were not nearly so severe. In general,
the great bulk of the students were far behind in good manners, and that
polish which a large town always gives. Their secluded habits when at
college, and their intercourse only with their own number, prevented any
improvement in this matter. On the whole, their conduct in the class,
and their behaviour towards some of the professors, were anything but
gentlemanly."[2]
[Footnote 1: Marischal College. Mr M'Lean's descriptions refer to
King's; but the two colleges, close together, must have been pretty
similar in their manners and customs even before they were, as they now
are, formally united.]
[Footnote 2: Life in a Northern University. By Neil M'Lean, author of
'Memoirs of Marshal Keith,' 'Romance of the Seal and Whale Fishing,'
&c., &c. Glasgow; John S. Marr & Sons: London; Simpkin, Marshall, & Co.
1874.]
Another quotation from Mr M'Lean may be allowed, as embodying the
descriptions often given by Dr Burton of the motley crew of competitors
for the scholarships and bursaries dispensed by the university: "Gazing
round the room, I noted that my competitors consisted of raw-boned
red-haired Highlandmen, fresh from their native hills, with all their
rusticity about them. All the northern counties had sent their quota to
swell the number, and even the Orkney and Shetland Islands were
represented. Many rosy-faced young fellows were also to be seen, who had
left their country occupations for a little, and who, if
unsuccessful"--_i.e._, in gaining a bursary--"would return to them, and
work in their leisure hours at their favourite classics until another
competition came round. Here and there were to be seen a few rather
better dressed than the rest; whilst amongst the crowd the eye rested on
many a studious, thin, cadaverous, hard-worked face, which made you look
again, and feel in your heart that there sat a bursar. A more motley
crowd, as respects age, dress, and features, could scarcely be found
anywhere; and yet over all there was an intellectual, manly look, a look
of innocence and unacquaintance with the low ways of the world."[3]
[Footnote 3: Life in a Northern University.]
Among this motley crowd John Hill Burton was no model student. He took
his full share of the rough sport so well described in the 'Northern
University'--wrenched off door-knockers and house-bells, transplanted
sign-boards, &c. He was but a schoolboy in years when he left school for
college, and his mother was frequently obliged to provide him with a
private tutor, not so much to assist him in his studies as to keep him
from idleness during his hours at home. Home was, during these years,
for a time sad, and was always quiet. During his father's lifetime it
was diversified by frequent changes of abode within a very narrow
circuit.
The writer has seen some half-dozen small houses, in a rather unlovely
suburb of Aberdeen, all within sight of each other, which had
successively been inhabited by Lieutenant Burton and his family; the
poor invalid craving for the real change which might have benefited his
health, and seeking relief, instead, in constant change of house. Mrs
Burton was entitled to an abode at Grandholm as well as her sisters, and
the little family went there occasionally, at least after Lieutenant
Burton's death. The place, which is a rather interesting one, filled a
considerable space in the affections of the children. Its inmates did
not. Clearly sister Eliza never was forgiven for her unfortunate
marriage. Affection for her husband and for his memory prevented her
apologising for it, and her children were not of the sort to apologise
for their existence. A series of petty slights, small unkindnesses,
imbittered the mind of the poverty-stricken widow against her unmarried
sisters, and her feeling was strongly inherited by her children.
A house in Old Aberdeen has been already mentioned as the abode of Mrs
Margaret Brown, Dr Burton's last surviving aunt. This quaint old house
had been purchased by Mrs Brown's grandmother, mother of the laird of
Grandholm, and at the beginning of the century was inhabited by her
maiden daughter Margaret, or, as she was oftener called, Peggy Paton.
This lady lived to the age of ninety, and at her death left her house
and fortune to her niece and name-daughter, Margaret Paton (Mrs Brown),
who in her turn adopted a grand-niece, the daughter already mentioned of
Dr Burton's eldest brother, William,--the same who, having nursed her
aged aunt till her death, in the last year of his life so tenderly
ministered to her uncle, the subject of this notice.
The second in the line of female owners of the old house, Peggy Paton,
was, for the outer world, what George Eliot calls "a charicter"--one of
those distinguishing features of country-town life which the march of
improvement has swept away: a lady by birth, but owing little to
schools or teachers, books or travel: a woman of strong natural
understanding and some wit, who loved her nightly rubber at whist, could
rap out an oath or a strong pleasantry, and whose quick estimates of men
and things became proverbs with the younger generation.
For her inner circle Peggy Paton was a most motherly old maid. She it
was who, when she found her niece Eliza _would_ marry Lieutenant Burton,
mediated between father and daughter, and arranged matters as well as
might be in an affair in which her good sense found much to disapprove,
and her heart much to excuse. Not only to her niece Margaret, her
adopted daughter, but also to her other nieces at Grandholm, motherless
by death, and fatherless by desertion, did she fill a mother's part as
far as these robust virgins would permit her. Sister Eliza's rough
little children, or rougher great boys, always found kindness in the
house in the Old Town, first in their grand-aunt's[4] time, and
afterwards in that of her successor, Mrs Brown. David, Dr Burton's
younger brother, was lovingly tended by them during part of the
lingering illness of which he died, and the youngest of Eliza Paton's
sons remained an inmate of Mrs Brown's house that he might continue his
education in Aberdeen, when his mother removed to Edinburgh.
[Footnote 4: It may not be counted indelicate, as it refers to a period
120 years gone by, to mention that Peggy Paton once had a lover, and
that this, her first lover, was no other than the son of that Moir of
Stoneywood, whose correspondence is so frequently quoted in Dr Burton's
'History of Scotland.' The young man was Peggy's first cousin, the
lairds of Grandholm and Stoneywood having married sisters--Mackenzie by
name. The laird of Stoneywood is known to posterity by his ingenious
achievement of ferrying the rebel army across the Dornoch Firth in small
fishing-boats collected by Stoneywood all along the coast. On the defeat
of the Pretender, and the suppression of the insurrection in 1746,
Stoneywood's estate was confiscated, and he fled to the Continent.
Family tradition adds that his escape was achieved by his disguising
himself as a miller and swimming across the Don from Stoneywood to
Grandholm, where the laird of Grandholm, who was of opposite politics,
had removed the ferry-boat, and saw but did not denounce his kinsman.
The houses of Grandholm and Stoneywood are exactly opposite each other
on the two sides of the Don. Mrs Moir of Stoneywood did not immediately
follow her husband, but remained with her friends to bring up her
children, among them Miss Peggy's lover, who, soon after his engagement
to her, joined his father on the Continent and there died.]
For those who do not know Aberdeen, it may be proper to say that _Old_
Aberdeen is as entirely distinct from New Aberdeen as Edinburgh is from
Leith--in a different way. The distance between them is somewhat
greater, about two miles; and whereas New Aberdeen is a highly
prosperous commercial city, as entirely devoid of beauty or interest as
any city under the sun, Old Aberdeen is a sweet, still, little place,
hardly more than a village in size, in appearance utterly unlike any
other place in Scotland, resembling a little English cathedral
town,--the towers and spires of college and cathedral beautifully seen
through ancient trees from the windows of Miss Peggy Paton's old house,
to which that managing lady added a wing, and which possessed a good
flower and fruit garden, wherein grew plenty of gooseberries, ever Dr
Burton's favourite fruit. His birthday, 22d August, was, during his
mother's life, always celebrated by a family feast of them.
Such were the scenes and circumstances of Dr Burton's childhood and
early youth. As he grew old enough to begin those long walks which to
the end were the great pleasure of his life, he made acquaintance with
the beautiful scenery of the Upper Dee and Don. In holiday time his
mother used to give him a small sum of money, at most one pound, and
allow him to travel as far as the amount would take him. His legs were
almost always his only conveyance; throughout his life he entertained an
aversion to either riding or driving. His temper was too impatient, too
energetic, to allow him to enjoy progress without exertion. After
railways existed he sometimes used them in aid of his walking power; but
all horse vehicles were odious to him, partly by reason of an excessive
tenderness for animals. He could not bear to see a horse whipped, or any
living creature subjected to bodily pain.
Wonderful are the accounts the writer has heard of the duration of that
holiday pound: how Dr Burton and sometimes a chosen companion would
subsist day after day on twopence-worth of oatmeal, that by so doing
they might travel the farther; or how, having improvidently finished
their supply, they would walk some incredible distance without any food
at all, till they reached either their home or the house of some friend.
In these holiday rambles Dr Burton made the acquaintance of several
families either more or less related to him through his Grandholm
kindred, or willing, in the old Scotch fashion, to extend hospitality to
any wayfarer who needed it. In this way Dr Burton has described himself
as the guest of Mrs Gordon at Abergeldie, who, as he said, made a
request that when he came to visit her he would if possible arrive
before midnight. Invercauld, Glenkindie, Tough, and many other
country-houses, were visited in the same unceremonious way.
The letter here given was written to his mother during one of these
holiday rambles, when its writer was about twenty, and describes some of
the scenes of the wonderful flood of '29, so graphically described by
Sir Thomas Dick Lauder. The Colonel H. was the son of Dr Burton's
godfather, and a man of mature years at the time the Highlander and Dr
Burton describe him as having "run away." The writer can offer no
explanation of this rather amusing passage in the letter: it might
either be a mere joke or refer to some family quarrel of the Colonel's.
"LAKEFIELD, _8th September 1829_.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have just arrived at Lakefield in the midst of
determined and ceaseless rain. I expected of course to meet A.H.
here, but it seems he ran away the other day, and will by this time
be in Aberdeen. He wrote to Mrs Grant from Elgin, but she has not
yet heard of his arrival in Aberdeen.
"In my way here I ran a risk of being violently used for his sake.
As I was perambulating slowly the border of Loch Ness I met a tall,
gaunt-looking man, who eyed me rather suspiciously, and stretched
forth his hands in the attitude of one interrupting a stray sheep.
I looked at the being in my turn, and began to be a little
suspicious of his purpose, and to think of my dirk. The man
approached nearer still in the attitude of making a spring. When he
had come so close that I could hardly escape him, he roared out:
'Is't you 'at's the laad Colonel H. 'at's been runnan' awa'?' 'No,'
said I, 'I am not.'
"The man continued to eye me rather suspiciously, and then went
slowly away. I suppose he hoped to be rewarded for me. I have told
you that I got rain. When I was proceeding to Huntly, as you are
aware, in the coach, there came two or three heavy gusts of wind
from the hills, carrying along with it a sort of soft drizzle, but
nothing like rain, and the roads appeared dry. After I had passed
Keith, however, the whole country had a drenched and draggled
appearance, the burns were swollen, the corn was hanging like wet
hair, the trees were drooping and black, and the country people
themselves looked as if they had been held in water for the last
six months. A heavy and unceasing rain came on. The clouds grew
black and seemed to settle, everything had a ghastly and dismal
appearance. I met a man, and asked him if it always rained here.
'Ou ay, sir,' replied he, 'it's the parish o' _Rayne_.' I was
content with the answer, and asked nothing more. In a condition you
may easily imagine, I reached Elgin and dried myself. The rain
stopped, but the clouds did not clear. I went and visited the
cathedral, and wandered about the ruins for an hour or two. It is a
noble and beautiful building, but I will not begin to speak about
it, as the post leaves in a few minutes. On Saturday afternoon I
left Elgin for Forres, with the hope of better weather. During the
walk I could hardly persuade myself I was out of Aberdeenshire, the
country is so very like, but it is rather flatter. Next morning was
clear and cloudless, and the sun shone bright over a country
drenched and covered with water. I wished that day to reach
Inverness, but a new difficulty appeared. I was told that the
Findhorn was so swollen that no mortal man could get across. I saw
the boatman going to his ferry-house, and I followed him to see how
the matter stood. I soon came to a deep and rapid sweep of water,
which appeared to spread far beyond two narrow banks which might
have formerly bounded it. This I thought to be the Findhorn, but
ere I went many paces farther another sight met my eyes--the real
river itself dashing through the glen with an awful majesty, and
carrying roots, trees, and herbage of every description hurriedly
over its broad breast. In the midst of this scene of devastation
appeared the ruins of a noble bridge, nothing but the piers
remaining, and these dashing to pieces in the furious current. The
stream I had seen at first was the river flowing down the road. The
river fell in the evening, and I crossed the ferry. I had two days
of most delightful weather, and yesterday evening I had a sunset
and moonlight walk by the side of Loch Ness, among the most noble
scenery I ever beheld. The sky was perfectly clear, and without a
single cloud.
"I must now finish, as the post is going away. If you see Joseph
[_i.e._, the late Joseph Robertson, a constant companion and
attached friend], tell him I will write to him soon and have a deal
to say to him, particularly of my discovering a sculptured stone in
Elgin Cathedral. Notwithstanding the fineness of the evening, this
day is determinedly rainy. If you see any of the H.'s, give Mrs
Grant's compliments.--Adieu for the present; and I remain, my dear
mother, your affectionate and dutiful son,
"J. HILL BURTON."
The writer has heard many farther details of the excursion of which this
letter records the beginning. The temporary clearing up of the weather
referred to was but a hollow truce in the tremendous elemental warfare
of that memorable autumn. The flood described in the Findhorn was but a
faint precursor of the wave sixty feet high, which, a week or two later,
burst through the splendid girdle of rock which at Relugas confines that
loveliest of Scotch rivers, and spread over the fertile plain beneath,
changing it into a sea. At some points in Morayshire, the enormous
overflow of the rivers broke down the banks which bound the ocean, and
permanently changed the coast-line of the country. The most striking and
extraordinary part of Sir Thomas Dick Lauder's description of this flood
is an extract from the log of a sailing packet--a sea-going
vessel--which directed its course over and about the plain of Moray,
picking the inhabitants off the roofs of their houses, or such other
elevations as they could reach.
Dr Burton had the good fortune to see the Fall of Foyers during this
great flood, and had the temerity to cross its stream, which lay on his
road, upon a remaining parapet of the fallen bridge!