the best products of the Scottish brain. There, year after year, are
to be found the pictures of Mr Noel Paton--some, of the truest
pathos, like the "Home from the Crimea;" or that group of ladies and
children in the cellar at Cawnpore, listening to the footsteps of
deliverers, whom they conceive to be destroyers; or "Luther at
Erfurt," the gray morning light breaking in on him as he is with fear
and trembling working out his own salvation--and the world's. We
have these, but we have at times others quite different from these,
and of a much lower scale of excellence, although hugely admired by
the young people aforesaid--pictures in which attire is painted
instead of passion; where the merit consists in exquisite renderings
of unimportant details--jewels, tassels, and dagger hilts; where a
landscape is sacrificed to a bunch of ferns, a tragic situation to
the pattern on the lady's zone, or the slashed jacket and purple
leggings of the knight. Then there are Mr Drummond's pictures from
Scottish history and ballad poetry--a string of wild moss-troopers
riding over into England to lift cattle; John Knox on his wedding-day
leading his wife home to his quaint dwelling in the Canongate; the
wild lurid Grassmarket, crowded with rioters, crimson with
torchlight, spectators filling every window of the tall houses, while
Porteous is being carried to his death--the Castle standing high
above the tumult against the blue midnight and the stars; or the
death procession of Montrose--the hero seated on hurdle, not on
battle-steed, with beard untrimmed, hair dishevelled, dragged through
the crowded street by the city hangman and his horses, yet proud of
aspect, as if the slogans of Inverlochy were ringing in his ears, and
flashing on his enemies on the balcony above him the fires of his
disdain. Then there are Mr Harvey's solemn twilight moors, and
covenanting scenes of marriage, baptism, and funeral. [Sidenote: Mr
Macculloch's pictures.] And drawing the eye with a stronger
fascination--because they represent the places in which we are about
to wander--the landscapes of Horatio Macculloch--stretches of Border
moorland, with solitary gray peels on which the watery sunbeam
strikes, a thread of smoke rising far off from the gipsy's fire; Loch
Scavaig in its wrath, the thunder gloom blackening on the peaks of
Cuchullin, the fierce rain crashing down on white rock and shingly
shore; sunset on Loch Ard, the mountains hanging inverted in the
golden mirror, a plump of water-fowl starting from the reeds in the
foreground, and shaking the splendour into dripping wrinkles and
widening rings; Ben Cruachan wearing his streak of snow at
mid-summer, and looking down on Kilchurn Castle and the winding Awe.
He is the most national of the northern landscape-painters; and
although he can, on occasion, paint grasses and flowers, and the
shimmer of reed-blades in the wind, he loves vast desolate spaces,
the silence of the Highland wilderness where the wild deer roam, the
shore on which subsides the last curl of the indolent wave. He loves
the tall crag wet and gleaming in the sunlight, the rain-cloud on the
moor, blotting out the distance, the setting sun raying out lances of
flame from behind the stormy clouds--clouds torn, but torn into gold,
and flushed with a brassy radiance.
[Sidenote: The General Assembly]
May is an exciting month in Edinburgh, for, towards its close, the
Assemblies of the Established and Free Churches meet. For a
fortnight or so the clerical element predominates in the city. Every
presbytery in Scotland sends up its representative to the metropolis,
and an astonishing number of black coats and white neckcloths flit
about the streets. At high noon the gaiety of Princes Street is
subdued with innumerable suits of sable. Ecclesiastical newspapers
let the world wag as it pleases, so intent are they on the debates.
Rocky-featured elders from the far north come up interested in some
kirk dispute; and junior counsel waste the midnight oil preparing for
appearance at the bar of the House. The opening of the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland is attended with a pomp and
circumstance which seems a little at variance with Presbyterian
quietude of tone and contempt of sacerdotal vanities. Her Majesty's
Lord High Commissioner resides at Holyrood, and on the morning of the
day on which the Assembly opens he holds his first levee. People
rush to warm themselves in the dim reflection of the royal sunshine,
and return with faces happy and elate. On the morning the Assembly
opens, the military line the streets from Holyrood to the Assembly
Hall. A regimental band and a troop of lancers wait outside the
palace gates while the procession is slowly getting itself into
order. The important moment at length arrives. The Commissioner has
taken his seat in the carriage. Out bursts the brass band, piercing
every ear; the lancers caracole; an orderly rides with eager spur;
the long train of carriages begins to crawl forward in an
intermittent manner, with many a dreary pause. At last the head of
the procession appears along the peopled way. First come, in hired
carriages, the city councillors, clothed in scarlet robes, and with
cocked hats upon their heads. The very mothers that bore them could
not recognise them now. They pass on silent with dignity. Then
comes a troop of halberdiers in mediæval costume, and looking for all
the world as if the Kings, Jacks, and Knaves had walked out of a pack
of cards. Then comes a carriage full of magistrates, wearing their
gold chains of office over their scarlet cloaks, and eyeing sternly
the small boy in the crowd who, from a natural sense of humour, has
given vent to an irreverent observation. Then comes the band; then a
squadron of lancers, whose horses the music seems to affect; then a
carriage occupied with high legal personages, with powder in their
hair, and rapiers by their sides, which they could not draw for their
lives. Then comes the private carriage of his Grace, surrounded by
lancers, whose mercurial steeds plunge and rear, and back and sidle,
and scatter the mob as they come prancing broadside on to the
pavement, smiting sparks of fire from the kerbstones with their iron
hoofs. Thereafter, Tom, Jack, and Harry, for every cab, carriage,
and omnibus of the line of route is now allowed to fall in--and so,
attended by halberdiers, and soldiers, and a brass band, her
Majesty's Commissioner goes to open the General Assembly of the
Church of Scotland. As his Grace has to attend all the sittings of
the reverend court, the Government, it is said, generally selects for
the office a nobleman slightly dull of hearing. The Commissioner has
no power, he has no voice in the deliberations; but he is
indispensable, as a corporation mace is indispensable at a
corporation meeting. While the debate is going on below, and two
reverend fathers are passionately throttling each other, he is not
unfrequently seen, with spectacles on nose, placidly perusing the
_Times_. He is allowed two thousand pounds a year, and his duty is
to spend it. [Sidenote: The Commissioner's levee.] He keeps open
table for the assembled clergymen. He holds a grand evening levee,
to which several hundred people are invited. If you are lucky enough
to receive a card of invitation, you fall into the line of carriages
opposite the Register House about eight o'clock, you are off the High
School at nine, ten peals from the church-spires when you are at the
end of Regent Terrace, and by eleven your name is being shouted by
gorgeous lackeys--whose income is probably as great as your
own--through the corridors of Holyrood as you advance towards the
presence. When you arrive you find that the country parson, with his
wife and daughter, have been before you, and you are a lucky man if,
for refreshment, you can secure a bit of remainder sponge-cake and a
glass of lukewarm sherry. On the last occasion of the Commissioner's
levee the newspapers inform me that seventeen hundred invitations
were issued. Think of it--seventeen hundred persons on that evening
bowed before the Shadow of Majesty, and then backed in their
gracefulest manner. On that evening the Shadow of Majesty performed
seventeen hundred genuflections! I do not grudge the Lord
Commissioner his two thousand pounds. Verily, the labourer is worthy
of his hire. The vale of life is not without its advantages.
_STIRLING AND THE NORTH._
Edinburgh and Stirling are spinster sisters, who were both in their
youth beloved by Scottish kings; but Stirling is the more wrinkled in
feature, the more old-fashioned in attire, and not nearly so well to
do in the world. She smacks more of the antique time, and wears the
ornaments given her by royal lovers--sadly broken and worn now, and
not calculated to yield much if brought to the hammer--more
ostentatiously in the public eye than does Edinburgh. On the whole,
perhaps, her stock of these red sandstone gew-gaws is the more
numerous. In many respects there is a striking likeness between the
two cities. Between them they in a manner monopolise Scottish
history; kings dwelt in both--in and around both may yet be seen
traces of battle. Both have castles towering to heaven from the
crests of up-piled rocks; both towns are hilly, rising terrace above
terrace. The country around Stirling is interesting from its natural
beauty no less than from its historical associations. Many battles
were fought in the seeing of the castle towers. Stirling Bridge,
Carron, Bannockburn, Sauchieburn, Sheriffmuir, Falkirk--these
battle-fields lie in the immediate vicinity. From the field of
Bannockburn you obtain the finest view of Stirling. The Ochills are
around you. Yonder sleeps the Abbey Craig, where, on a summer day,
Wight Wallace sat. You behold the houses climbing up, picturesque,
smoke-feathered; and the wonderful rock, in which the grace of the
lily and the strength of the hills are mingled, and on which the
castle sits as proudly as ever did rose on its stem. Eastward from
the castle ramparts stretches a great plain, bounded on either side
by mountains, and before you the vast fertility dies into distance,
flat as the ocean when winds are asleep. It is through this plain
that the Forth has drawn her glittering coils--a silvery entanglement
of loops and links--a watery labyrinth--which Macneil has sung in no
ignoble numbers, and which every summer the whole world flocks to
see. Turn round, look in the opposite direction, and the aspect of
the country has entirely changed. It undulates like a rolling sea.
Heights swell up into the blackness of pines, and then sink away into
valleys of fertile green. At your feet the Bridge of Allan sleeps in
azure smoke--the most fashionable of all the Scottish _spas_,
wherein, by hundreds of invalids, the last new novel is being
diligently perused. Beyond are the classic woods of Keir; and ten
miles farther, what see you? A multitude of blue mountains climbing
the heavens! The heart leaps up to greet them--the ramparts of a
land of romance, from the mouths of whose glens broke of old the
foray of the freebooter; and with a chief in front, with banner and
pibroch in the wind, the terror of the Highland war. Stirling, like
a huge brooch, clasps Highlands and Lowlands together.
[Sidenote: View from Stirling.]
Standing on the ramparts of Stirling Castle, the spectator cannot
help noticing an unsightly excresence of stone and lime rising on the
brow of the Abbey Craig. This is the Wallace Tower. Designed to
commemorate the war for independence, the building is making but slow
progress. It is maintained by charitable contributions, like a
lying-in hospital. It is a big beggar man, like O'Connell. It is
tormented by an eternal lack of pence, like Mr Dick Swiveller. It
sends round the hat as frequently as ever did Mr Leigh Hunt. The
Wallace Monument, like the Scottish Rights' Association, sprang from
the desire--a good deal stronger a few years ago than now--to
preserve in Scotland something of a separate national existence.
Scotland and England were married at the Union; but by many Scotsmen
it is considered more dignified that, while appearing as "one flesh"
on great public occasions, the two countries should live in separate
apartments, see their own circles of friends, and spend their time as
to each other it may seem fit. Whether any good could arise from
such a state of matters it is needless to inquire--such a state of
matters being a plain impossibility. It is apparent that through
intimate connexion, community of interest, the presence of one common
government, and in a thousand other ways, Time is crumbling down
Scotland and England into--Britain. [Sidenote: Narrowness of
Scottish feeling.] We may storm against this from platforms, declaim
passionately against it in "Lays of the Cavaliers," lift up our
voices and weep over it in "Braemar Ballads," but necessity cares
little for these things, and quietly does her work. In Scotland one
is continually coming into contact with an unreasonable prejudice
against English manners, institutions, and forms of thought; and in
her expression of these prejudices Scotland is frequently neither
great nor dignified. There is a narrowness and touchiness about her
which is more frequently found in villages than in great cities. She
continually suspects that the Englishman is about to touch her
thistle rudely, or to take liberties with her unicorn. Some eight
years ago, when lecturing in Edinburgh, Mr Thackeray was hissed for
making an allusion to Queen Mary. The audience knew perfectly well
that the great satirist was correct in what he stated; but being an
Englishman it was impertinent in him to speak the truth about a
Scottish Queen in the presence of Scotsmen. When, on the other hand,
an English orator comes amongst us, whether as Lord Rector at one of
our universities, or the deliverer of an inaugural address at the
Philosophical Institution in Edinburgh, and winds up his harangue
with flowing allusions to Wallace, Bruce, Burns, our blue hills, John
Knox, Caledonia stern and wild, the garb of old Gaul--the closing
sentences are lost to the reporters in the frantic cheers of the
audience. Several years ago the Scottish Rights' Association, headed
by the most chivalric nobleman, and by the best poet in Scotland,
surrounded by a score of merchant princes, assembled in the City Hall
of Glasgow, and for a whole night held high jubilee. The patriotic
fervours, the eloquent speeches, the volleys of cheers, did not so
much as break a single tea-cup or appoint a new policeman. Even the
eloquent gentleman who volunteered to lay down his head at Carlisle
in support of the good cause has never been asked to implement his
promise. The patriot's head is of more use to himself than it can
possibly be to any one else. [Sidenote: University reform] And does
not this same prejudice against England, this indisposition to yield
up ancient importance, this standing upon petty dignity, live in the
cry for Scottish University reform? Is not this the heart of the
matter--because England has universities, rich with gifts of princes
and the bequests of the charitable, should not Scotland have
richly-endowed universities also? In nature the ball fits into the
socket more or less perfectly; and the Scottish universities are what
the wants and requirements of the Scottish people have made them. We
cannot grow in a day an Oxford or a Cambridge on this northern soil;
and could Scotsmen forget that they are Scotsmen they would see that
it is not desirable so to do. Our universities have sent forth for
generations physicians, lawyers, divines, properly enough qualified
to fulfil their respective duties; and if every ten years or so some
half-dozen young men appear with an appetite for a higher education
than Scotland can give, and with means to gratify it, what then? In
England there are universities able and willing to supply their
wants. Their doors stand open to the Scottish youth. Admitting that
we could by governmental interference or otherwise make our Scottish
universities equal to Oxford or Cambridge in wealth and erudition,
would we benefit thereby the half-dozen ambitious Scottish youth?
Not one whit. Far better that they should conclude their education
at an English university--in that wider confluence of the streams of
society--amid those elder traditions of learning and civility.
And yet this erection of the Wallace Tower on the Abbey Craig has a
deeper significance than its promoters are in the least degree aware
of. There _is_ a certain propriety in the building of a Wallace
Monument. Scotland has been united to England, and is beginning to
lose remembrance of her independence and separate history--just as
the matron in her conjoint duties and interests begins to grow
unfamiliar with the events of her girlhood, and with the sound of her
maiden name. It is only when the memory of a hero ceases to be a
living power in the hearts of men that they think of raising a
monument to him. Monuments are for the dead, not for the living.
When we hear that some venerable sheik has taken to call public
meetings in Mecca, to deliver speeches, and to issue subscription
lists for the purpose of raising a monument to Mohammed, and that
these efforts are successful, we shall be quite right in thinking
that the crescent is in its wane. Although the subscribers think it
something quite other, the building of the Wallace Monument is a
bidding farewell to Scottish nationality.
[Sidenote: Doune Castle.]
It is from Stirling that I start on my summer journey, and the
greater portion of it I purpose to perform on foot. There is a
railway now to Callander, whereby time is saved and enjoyment
destroyed--but the railway I shall in nowise patronise, meaning to
abide by the old coach road. In a short time you are beyond the
Bridge of Allan, beyond the woods of Keir, and holding straight on to
Dunblane. Reaching it, you pause for a little on the old bridge to
look at the artificial waterfall, and the ruined cathedral on the
rising ground across the stream, and the walks which Bishop Leighton
paced. There is really not much to detain one in the little gray
city, and pressing on, you reach Doune, basking on the hill-side.
Possibly the reader may never have heard of Doune, yet it has its
lions. What are these? Look at the great bulk of the ruined castle!
These towers, rising from miles of summer foliage into fair sunlight,
a great Duke of Albany beheld for a moment, with a shock of long-past
happiness and home, as he laid down his head on the block at
Stirling. Rage and shame filled the last heave of the heart, the axe
flashed, and----. As you go down the steep town road, there is an
old-fashioned garden, and a well close to the wall. Look into it
steadily--you observe a shadow on the sandy bottom, and the twinkle
of a fin. 'Tis a trout--a blind one, which has dwelt, the people
will tell you, in its watery cage, for ten years back. It is
considered a most respectable inhabitant, and the urchin daring to
angle for it would hardly escape whipping. You may leave Doune now.
A Duke of Albany lost his head in the view of its castle, a blind
trout lives in its well, and visitors feel more interested in the
trout than in the duke. The country in the immediate vicinity of
Doune is somewhat bare and unpromising, but as you advance it
improves, and a few miles on, the road skirts the Teith, the sweetest
voiced of all the Scottish streams. The Roman centurion heard that
pebbly murmur on his march even as you now hear it. The river, like
all beautiful things, is coquettish, and just when you come to love
her music, she sweeps away into the darkness of the woods and leaves
you companionless on the dusty road. Never mind, you will meet her
again at Callander, and there, for a whole summer day, you can lean
on the bridge and listen to her singing. Callander is one of the
prettiest of Highland villages. It was sunset as I approached it
first, years ago. Beautiful the long crooked street of white-washed
houses dressed in rosy colours. Prettily-dressed children were
walking or running about. The empty coach was standing at the door
of the hotel, and the smoking horses were being led up and down. And
right in front stood King Benledi, clothed in imperial purple, the
spokes of splendour from the sinking sun raying far away into heaven
from behind his mighty shoulders.
[Sidenote: Callander.]
Callander sits like a watcher at the opening of the glens, and is a
rendezvous of tourists. To the right is the Pass of Leny--well
worthy of a visit. You ascend a steep path, birch-trees on right and
left; the stream comes brawling down, sleeping for a moment in black
pools beloved by anglers, and then hasting on in foam and fury to
meet her sister in the Vale of Menteith below. When you have climbed
the pass, you enter on a green treeless waste, and soon approach Loch
Lubnaig, with the great shadow of a hill blackening across it. The
loch is perhaps cheerful enough when the sun is shining on it, but
the sun in that melancholy region is but seldom seen. Beside the
road is an old churchyard, for which no one seems to care--the
tombstones being submerged in a sea of rank grass. The loch of the
rueful countenance will not be visited on the present occasion. My
course lies round the left flank of Benledi, straight on for the
Trosachs and Loch Katrine. Leaving Callander, you cross the waters
of the Leny--changed now from the fury that, with raised voice and
streaming tresses, leaped from rock to rock in the glen above--and
walk into the country made immortal by the "Lady of the Lake." Every
step you take is in the footsteps of Apollo: speech at once becomes
song. There is Coilantogle Ford; Loch Venachar, yonder, is
glittering away in windy sunshine to the bounding hills. Passing the
lake you come on a spot where the hill-side drops suddenly down on
the road. On this hill-side Vich Alpine's warriors started out of
the ferns at the whistle of their chief; and if you travelled on the
coach, the driver would repeat half the poem with curious variations,
and point out the identical rock against which Fitz-James
leaned--rock on which a dozen eyeglasses are at once levelled in
wonder and admiration. The loveliest sight on the route to the
Trosachs is about to present itself. [Sidenote: Loch Achray--the
Trosachs.] At a turn of the road Loch Achray is before you. Beyond
expression beautiful is that smiling lake, mirroring the hills,
whether bare and green or plumaged with woods from base to crest.
Fair azure gem in a setting of mountains! the traveller--even if a
bagman--cannot but pause to drink in its fairy beauty; cannot but
remember it when far away amid other scenes and associations. At
every step the scenery grows wilder. Loch Achray disappears. High
in upper air tower the summits of Ben-Aan and Ben-Venue. You pass
through the gorge of the Trosachs, whose rocky walls, born in
earthquake and fiery deluge, the fanciful summer has been dressing
these thousand years, clothing their feet with drooping ferns and
rods of foxglove bells, blackening their breasts with pines,
feathering their pinnacles with airy birches, that dance in the
breeze like plumage on a warrior's helm. The wind here becomes a
musician. Echo sits babbling beneath the rock. The gorge, too, is
but the prelude to a finer charm; for before you are aware, doubling
her beauty with surprise, there breaks on the right the silver sheet
of Loch Katrine, with a dozen woody islands, sleeping peacefully on
their shadows.
[Sidenote: Inversneyd]