which none but pedestrians know. Much--all depends on the character of
the wanderer; he must have known what it is to commune with his own
thoughts and feelings, and be satisfied with them even as with the
converse of a chosen friend. Not that he must always, in the solitudes
that await him, be in a meditative mood, for ideas and emotions will of
themselves arise, and he will only have to enjoy the pleasures which his
own being spontaneously affords. It would indeed be a hopeless thing, if
we were always to be on the stretch for happiness. Intellect,
Imagination, and Feeling, all work of their own free-will, and not at
the order of any taskmaster. A rill soon becomes a stream--a stream a
river--a river a loch--and a loch a sea. So it is with the current
within the spirit. It carries us along, without either oar or sail,
increasing in depth, breadth, and swiftness, yet all the while the easy
work of our own wonderful minds. While we seem only to see or hear, we
are thinking and feeling far beyond the mere notices given by the
senses; and years afterwards we find that we have been laying up
treasures, in our most heedless moments, of imagery, and connecting
together trains of thought that arise in startling beauty, almost
without cause or any traceable origin. The Pedestrian, too, must not
only love his own society, but the society of any other human beings, if
blameless and not impure, among whom his lot may for a short season be
cast. He must rejoice in all the forms and shows of life, however simple
they may be, however humble, however low; and be able to find food for
his thoughts beside the ingle of the loneliest hut, where the inmates
sit with few words, and will rather be spoken to than speak to the
stranger. In such places he will be delighted--perhaps surprised--to
find in uncorrupted strength all the primary elements of human
character. He will find that his knowledge may be wider than theirs, and
better ordered, but that it rests on the same foundation, and
comprehends the same matter. There will be no want of sympathies between
him and them; and what he knows best, and loves most, will seldom fail
to be that also which they listen to with greatest interest, and
respecting which there is the closest communion between the minds of
stranger and host. He may know the courses of the stars according to the
revelation of science--they may have studied them only as simple
shepherds, "whose hearts were gladdened" walking on the mountain-top.
But they know--as he does--who sowed the stars in heaven, and that their
silent courses are all adjusted by the hand of the Most High.
Oh! blessed, thrice blessed years of youth! would we choose to live over
again all your forgotten and unforgotten nights and days! Blessed,
thrice blessed we call you, although, as we then felt, often darkened
almost into insanity by self-sown sorrows springing out of our restless
soul. No, we would not again face such troubles, not even for the
glorious apparitions that familiarly haunted us in glens and forests, on
mountains and on the great sea. But all, or nearly all, that did once so
grievously disturb, we can lay in the depths of the past, so that
scarcely a ghastly voice is heard, a ghastly face beheld; while all
that so charmed of yore, or nearly all, although no longer the daily
companions of our life, still survive to be recalled at solemn hours,
and with a "beauty still more beauteous" to reinvest the earth, which
neither sin nor sorrow can rob of its enchantments. We can still travel
with the solitary mountain-stream from its source to the sea, and see
new visions at every vista of its winding waters. The waterfall flows
not with its own monotonous voice of a day or an hour, but like a choral
anthem pealing with the hymns of many years. In the heart of the blind
mist on the mountain-ranges we can now sit alone, surrounded by a world
of images, over which time holds no power but to consecrate or
solemnise. Solitude we can deepen by a single volition, and by a single
volition let in upon it the stir and noise of the world and life. Why,
therefore, should we complain, or why lament the inevitable loss or
change that time brings with it to all that breathe? Beneath the shadow
of the tree we can yet repose, and tranquillise our spirit by its
rustle, or by the "green light" uncheckered by one stirring leaf. From
sunrise to sunset, we can lie below the old mossy tower, till the
darkness that shuts out the day, hides not the visions that glide round
the ruined battlements. Cheerful as in a city can we traverse the
houseless moor; and although not a ship be on the sea, we can set sail
on the wings of imagination, and when wearied, sink down on savage or
serene isle, and let drop our anchor below the moon and stars.
And 'tis well we are so spiritual; for the senses are of no use here,
and we must draw for amusement on our internal sources. A day-like night
we have often seen about midsummer, serenest of all among the Hebrides;
but a night-like day, such as this, ne'er before fell on us, and we
might as well be in the Heart o' Mid-Lothian. 'Tis a dungeon, and a dark
one--and we know not for what crime we have been condemned to solitary
confinement. Were it mere mist we should not mind; but the gloom is
palpable, and makes resistance to the hand. We did not think clouds
capable of such condensation--the blackness may be felt like velvet on a
hearse. Would that something would rustle--but no--all is breathlessly
still, and not a wind dares whistle. If there be anything visible or
audible hereabout, then are we stone-blind and stone-deaf. We have a
vision!
See! a great City in a mist! All is not shrouded--at intervals something
huge is beheld in the sky--what we know not, tower, temple, spire, dome,
or a pile of nameless structures--one after the other fading away, or
sinking and settling down into the gloom that grows deeper and deeper
like a night. The stream of life seems almost hushed in the blind blank,
yet you hear ever and anon, now here, now there, the slow sound of feet
moving to their own dull echoes, and lo! the Sun
"Looks through the horizontal misty air,
Shorn of his beams,"
like some great ghost. Ay, he _looks_! does he not? straight on _your_
face, as if you two were the only beings there--and were held _looking_
at each other in some strange communion. Surely you must sometimes have
felt that emotion, when the Luminary seemed no longer luminous, but a
dull-red brazen orb, sick unto the death--obscure the Shedder of Light
and the Giver of Life lifeless!
The Sea has sent a tide-borne wind to the City, and you almost start in
wonder to behold all the heavens clear of clouds (how beautiful was the
clearing!) and bending in a mighty blue bow, that brightly overarches
all the brightened habitations of men! The spires shoot up into the
sky--the domes tranquilly rest there--all the roofs glitter as with
diamonds, all the white walls are lustrous, save where, here and there,
some loftier range of buildings hangs its steadfast shadow o'er square
or street, magnifying the city, by means of separate multitudes of
structures, each town-like in itself, and the whole gathered together by
the outward eye, and the inward imagination, worthy indeed of the name
of Metropolis.
Let us sit down on this bench below the shadow of the Parthenon. The air
is now so rarified, that you can see not indistinctly the figure of a
man on Arthur's Seat. The Calton, though a city hill, is as green as the
Carter towering over the Border-forest. Not many years ago, no stone
edifice was on his unviolated verdure--he was a true rural Mount, where
the lassies bleached their claes, in a pure atmosphere, aloof from the
city smoke almost as the sides and summit of Arthur's Seat. Flocks of
sheep might have grazed here, had there been enclosures, and many milch
cows. But in their absence a pastoral character was given to the Hill by
its green silence, here and there broken by the songs and laughter of
those linen-bleaching lassies, and by the arm-in-arm strolling of lovers
in the morning light or the evening shade. Here married people used to
walk with their children, thinking and feeling themselves to be in the
country; and here elderly gentlemen, like ourselves, with gold-headed
canes or simple crutches, mused and meditated on the ongoings of the
noisy lower world. Such a Hill, so close to a great City, yet
undisturbed by it, and imbued at all times with a feeling of sweeter
peace, because of the immediate neighbourhood of the din and stir of
which its green recess high up in the blue air never partook, seems now,
in the mingled dream of imagination and memory, to have been a
super-urban Paradise! But a city cannot, ought not to be, controlled in
its growth; the natural beauty of this hill has had its day; now it is
broken all round with wide walks, along which you might drive chariots
abreast; broad flights of stone-stairs lead up along the once elastic
brae-turf; and its bosom is laden with towers and temples, monuments and
mausoleums. Along one side, where hanging gardens might have been,
magnificent as those of the old Babylon, stretches the macadamised Royal
Road to London, flanked by one receptacle for the quiet dead, and by
another for the unquiet living--a churchyard and a prison dying away in
a bridewell. But, making amends for such hideous deformities, with front
nobly looking to the cliffs, over a dell of dwellings seen dimly through
the smoke-mist, stands, sacred to the Muses, an Edifice that might have
pleased the eye of Pericles! Alas, immediately below one that would have
turned the brain of Palladio! Modern Athens indeed! Few are the Grecians
among thy architects; those who are not Goths are Picts--and the King
himself of the Painted People designed Nelson's Monument.
But who can be querulous on such a day? Weigh all its defects, designed
and undesigned, and is not Edinburgh yet a noble city? Arthur's Seat!
how like a lion! The magnificent range of Salisbury Crags, on which a
battery might be built to blow the whole inhabitation to atoms! Our
friend here, the Calton, with his mural crown! Our Castle on his Cliff!
gloriously hung round with national histories along all his battlements!
Do they not embosom him in a style of grandeur worthy, if such it be, of
a "City of Palaces?" Call all things by their right names, in heaven
and on earth. Palaces they are not--nor are they built of marble; but
they are stately houses, framed of stone from Craig-Leith quarry, almost
as pale as the Parian; and when the sun looks fitfully through the
storm, or as now, serenely through the calm, richer than Parian in the
tempestuous or the peaceful light. Never beheld we the city wearing such
a majestic metropolitan aspect.
"Ay, proudly fling thy white arms to the sea,
Queen of the unconquer'd North!"
How near the Firth! Gloriously does it supply the want of a river. It is
a river, though seeming, and sweeping into, the sea; but a river that
man may never bridge; and though still now as the sky, we wish you saw
it in its magnificent madness, when brought on the roarings of the
stormful tide
"Breaks the long wave that at the Pole began."
Coast-cities alone are Queens. All inland are but Tributaries. Earth's
empiry belongs to the Power that sees its shadow in the sea. Two
separate Cities, not twins--but one of ancient and one of modern
birth--how harmoniously, in spite of form and features characteristically
different, do they coalesce into one Capital! This miracle, methinks, is
wrought by the Spirit of Nature on the World of Art. Her great features
subdue almost into similarity a Whole constructed of such various
elements, for it is all felt to be kindred with those guardian cliffs.
Those eternal heights hold the Double City together in an amity that
breathes over both the same national look--the impression of the same
national soul. In the olden time, the city gathered herself almost under
the very wing of the Castle; for in her heroic heart she ever heard,
unalarmed but watchful, the alarums of war, and that cliff, under
heaven, was on earth the rock of her salvation. But now the foundation
of that rock, whence yet the tranquil burgher hears the morning and the
evening bugle, is beautified by gardens that love its pensive shadow,
for it tames the light to flowers by rude feet untrodden, and yielding
garlands for the brows of perpetual peace. Thence elegance and grace
arose; and while antiquity breathes over that wilderness of antique
structures picturesquely huddled along the blue line of sky--as Wilkie
once finely said, like the spine of some enormous animal; yet all along
this side of that unrivered and mound-divided dell, now shines a new
world of radiant dwellings, declaring by their regular but not
monotonous magnificence, that the same people, whose "perfervid genius"
preserved them by war unhumbled among the nations in days of darkness,
have now drawn a strength as invincible from the beautiful arts which
have been cultivated by peace in the days of light.
And is the spirit of the inhabitation there worthy of the place
inhabited? We are a Scotsman. And the great English Moralist has asked,
where may a Scotsman be found who loves not the honour or the glory of
his country better than truth? We are that Scotsman--though for our
country would we die. Yet dearer too than life is to us the honour--if
not the glory of our country; and had we a thousand lives, proudly would
we lay them all down in the dust rather than give--or see given--one
single stain
"Unto the silver cross, to Scotland dear,"
on which as yet no stain appears save those glorious weather-stains,
that have fallen on its folds from the clouds of war and the storms of
battle. Sufficient praise to the spirit of our land, that she knows how
to love, admire, and rival--not in vain--the spirit of high-hearted and
heroic England. Long as we and that other noble Isle
"Set as an emerald in the casing sea,"
in triple union breathe as one,
"Then come against us the whole world in arms,
And we will meet them!"
What is a people without pride? But let them know that its root rests on
noble pillars; and in the whole range of strength and stateliness, what
pillars are there stronger and statelier than those glorious two--Genius
and Liberty? Here valour has fought--here philosophy has meditated--here
poetry has sung. Are not our living yet as brave as our dead? All wisdom
has not perished with the sages to whom we have built or are building
monumental tombs. The muses yet love to breathe the pure mountain-air of
Caledon. And have we not amongst us one myriad-minded man, whose name,
without offence to that high-priest of nature, or his devoutest
worshippers, may flow from our lips even when they utter that of
SHAKESPEARE?
The Queen of the North has evaporated--and we again have a glimpse of
the Highlands. But where's the Sun? We know not in what airt to look for
him, for who knows but it may now be afternoon? It is almost dark enough
for evening--and if it be not far on in the day, then we shall have
thunder. What saith our repeater? One o'clock. Usually the brightest
hour of all the twelve--but anything but bright at this moment. Can
there be an eclipse going on--an earthquake at his toilette--or merely a
brewing of storm? Let us consult our almanac. No eclipse set down for
to-day--the old earthquake dwells in the neighbourhood of Comrie, and
has never been known to journey thus far north--besides, he has for some
years been bed-ridden; argal, there is about to be a storm. What a fool
of a land-tortoise were we to crawl up to the top of a mountain, when we
might have taken our choice of half-a-dozen glens with cottages in them
every other mile, and a village at the end of each with a comfortable
Change-house! And up which of its sides, pray, was it that we crawled?
Not this one--for it is as steep as a church--and we never in our life
peeped over the brink of an uglier abyss. Ay, Mister Merlin, 'tis wise
of you to be flying home into your crevice--put your head below your
wing, and do cease that cry.--Croak! croak! croak! Where is the sooty
sinner? We hear he is on the wing--but he either sees or smells us,
probably both, and the horrid gurgle in his throat is choked by some
cloud. Surely that was the sughing of wings! A Bird! alighting within
fifty yards of us--and, from his mode of folding his wings--an Eagle!
This is too much--within fifty yards of an Eagle on his own
mountain-top. Is he blind? Age darkens even an Eagle's eyes--but he is
not old, for his plumage is perfect--and we see the glare of his
far-keekers as he turns his head over his shoulder and regards his eyrie
on the cliff. We would not shoot him for a thousand a-year for life. Not
old--how do we know that? Because he is a creature who is young at a
hundred--so says Audubon--Swainson--our brother James--and all
shepherds. Little suspects he who is lying so near him with his Crutch.
Our snuffy suit is of a colour with the storm-stained granite--and if he
walk this way he will get a buffet. And he _is_ walking this way--his
head up, and his tail down,--not hopping like a filthy raven--but one
foot before the other--like a man--like a King. We do not altogether
like it--it is rather alarming--he may not be an Eagle after all--but
something worse--"Hurra! ye Sky-scraper! Christopher is upon you! take
that, and that, and that"--all one tumbling scream, there he goes,
Crutch and all, over the edge of the Cliff. Dashed to death--but
impossible for us to get the body. Whew! dashed to death indeed! There
he wheels, all on fire, round the thunder gloom. Is it electric matter
in the atmosphere--or fear and wrath that illumine his wings?
We wish we were safe down. There is no wind here yet--none to speak of;
but there is wind enough, to all appearance, in the region towards the
west. The main body of the clouds is falling back on the reserve--and
observing that movement the right wing deploys; as for the left, it is
broken, and its retreat will soon be a flight. Fear is contagious--the
whole army has fallen into irremediable disorder--has abandoned its
commanding position--and in an hour will be self-driven into the sea. We
call that a Panic.
Glory be to the corps that covers the retreat. We see now the cause of
that retrograde movement. In the north-west, "far off its coming shone,"
and "in numbers without number numberless," lo! the adverse Host! Thrown
out in front, the beautiful rifle brigade comes fleetly on, extending in
open order along the vast plain between the aerial Pine-mountains to yon
Fire-cliffs. The enemy marches in masses--the space between the
divisions now widening and now narrowing--and as sure as we are alive we
hear the sound of trumpets. The routed army has rallied and
reappears--and, hark, on the extreme left a cannonade. Never before had
the Unholy Alliance a finer park of artillery--and now its fire opens
from the great battery in the centre, and the hurly-burly is general far
and wide over the whole field of battle.
But these lead drops dancing on our bonnet tell us to take up our crutch
and be off--for there it is sticking--by-and-by the waters will be in
flood, and we may have to pass a night on the mountain. Down we go.
We do not call this the same side of the mountain we crawled up? There,
all was purple except what was green--and we were happy to be a
heather-legged body, occasionally skipping like a grasshopper on turf.
Here, all rocks save stones. Get out of the way, ye ptarmigans. We hate
shingle from the bottom of our ---- oh dear! oh dear! but _this_ is
painful--sliddering on shingle away down what is anything but an
inclined plane--feet foremost--accompanied with rattling debris--at
railroad speed--every twenty yards or so dislodging a stone as big as
oneself, who instantly joins the procession, and there they go hopping
and jumping along with us, some before, some at each side, and, we
shudder to think of it, some behind--well somersetted over our head,
thou Grey Wacke--but mercy on us, and forgive us our sins, for if this
lasts, in another minute we are all at the bottom of that pond of pitch.
Take care of yourself, O'Bronte!
Here we are--sitting! How we were brought to assume this rather uneasy
posture we do not pretend to say. We confine ourselves to the fact.
Sitting beside a Tarn. Our escape appears to have been little less than
miraculous, and must have been mainly owing, under Providence, to the
Crutch. Who's laughing? 'Tis you, you old Witch, in hood and cloak,
crouching on the cliff as if you were warming your hands at the fire.
Hold your tongue--and you may sit there to all eternity if you
choose--you cloud-ridden hag! No--there will be a blow-up some day--as
there evidently has been here before now; but no more Geology--from the
tarn, who is a 'tarnation deep 'un, runs a rill, and he offers to be our
guide down to the Low Country.
Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green
serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable
to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No
sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had
wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were
nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we
have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all
over the really moun_taineous_ region of the Highlands, every glen has
its own indescribable kind of day--all vaguely comprehended under the
One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists,
meeting in the evening after a long absence--having, perhaps, parted
that morning--on comparing notes lose their temper, and have been even
known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of
a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature.
Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he
would have used the minnow--and in the huge hollow behind our friends to
the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook--though it is
not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let
us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you
there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf?
Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on
the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of
most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot.
Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may
kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot--an innocent. We
remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago--and he was not
young then--they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was
terrified--for we are duly sensible of the _outre tout ensemble_ we must
have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red
eyes--he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it--our
Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining--and moaning--and,
good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in
supplication--"Dinna kill me--dinna kill me--'am silly--'am silly--and
folk say 'am auld--auld--auld." The harmless creature is convinced we
are not going to kill him--takes from our hand what he calls his
fishing-rod and tackle--and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat--ony meat--ony
meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we
shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say
the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the
Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this--a drop of water on
the brain will do it--so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all
that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of
howl--and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by
mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a
saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!"
This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so
congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is
familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage
were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close.
Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in
the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a
morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost
as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which
we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness
often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among
the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed
by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question
the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their
coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are
happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning
youth.
'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that
a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings
of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no
reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the
remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent
with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green
wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools
there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but
each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that
above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which
the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its
grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits
swimming in the distant clouds.
God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what
Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most
lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a
look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and
think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee
and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may
lay our hands on it and bless it--and promise, as thou art growing up
here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the
Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches--and
whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven.