EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF A SON OF THE HILLS.

I have oftentimes thought, what, I dare say, has been thought again and again by thousands before I was born, and will be thought by as many millions after I have ceased both to think and speak—I have thought that, if any one were to give an exact transcript of his feelings and experience, in early life in particular—without any connecting link even, beyond that of time and place—such a written record could not fail to be exceedingly interesting. The novelty of the scene; the uncloyed character of the feelings; the harpy-clutching nature of the imagination; the variety of sources within and without, from which pleasure is derived and is derivable—all these form a mine of delightful insight, which has not, perhaps, ever yet been exhausted—a mine conducting to, and losing itself in, that far-away central darkness which precedes perception, recollection, existence. I remember—and it is an awful remembrance—the death of my grandmother when I was only four years old. There she lies in that bed. Alongside of that sheet, there are my mother and the minister kneeling in prayer. The whisper is conveyed to the minister's ear—"Sir, she has win to rest!" Oh, that sweet word rest!—rest negative, rest positive—rest from, rest in, rest amidst a sea of troubles—rest in an ocean of glorious happiness! "Sir, she has win to rest!" I can never forget the words, nor the look, nor the place, nor the all which then constituted me. The minister pauses in the middle of a sentence, he rises from his knees, and, taking my mother's hand in his, as well as mine in the other, he approaches the bed of death; but, O my soul, what an impression is made upon me! My grandmother—the figure with the short cloak over her shoulders, the check apron, the tobacco-box, and the short cutty-pipe—the speaking, conversing, kind-hearted figure—what is it now? Asleep!—but the eyes are open, and frightfully unmeaning. Asleep!—but the mouth is somewhat awry, and there is an expression unknown, intolerable, terrible, all over the countenance.

And this is death! I cannot stand it. I fly to the door—to the brae—to the hill. I dash my face, shoulders and all, into a bracken bush, and weep, weep, weep myself asleep. When I awake, it is a dream; I am amused with the white table-cloth, the bread and cheese, and wine bottle. I am amused with the plate, salt, and earth placed on the breast of the corpse. I am amused with the coffining; but, most of all—oh, delightful!—with the funeral—the well-dressed people—the numbers, the services of bun, shortbread, wine, and spirits; and above all, with various little bits and drops which fall to my share. I firmly believe I got fuddled on the occasion. Such is man; for men are but children of a larger growth. Now, there is only one event, circumstance, incident, firmly and fairly told—and it is interesting exceedingly: how interesting, then, would all the incidents and events of early life be, were they only narrated with equal faithfulness! So one may say; but, in so saying, they will be misled and mislead. There are few things which I remember so vividly as this. Death! I have seen thee since! Thou hast torn from me mother, brother, friend, and, above and beyond all, thou hast been betwixt these arms, murdering her whom my soul loved—the partner of my life—the mother of my babes—the balm of my soul—the glory, ornament, and boast of my existence; and yet, and yet my grandmother's death is more vividly imprinted on brain and heart than any other event of a similar nature. Proof impressions sell dear! and proof feelings—oh, how deep are the lines, how indelible the engravings! They are cut on steel with a graving tool of adamant. The heart and the brain must be reduced to their elemental dust, ere these impressions can wear out—and yet I was only four years and six months old!

I saw it—ay, and I see it still—a poor innocent lamb. I had kissed it, and hung about its neck on the sunny brae. People said it was not thriving: I would not believe it. It was my companion. I often fed it with milk; put my finger into its little toothless mouth, and made it lap the invigorating and nourishing liquid. It had no parent, no friend, in a manner, but me, and I was only five years old, in petticoats; a very semblance of humanity; a thing to be strode over in his path by mankind of ordinary stature. But there came a blight, a curse, a dreadful change, over my dear and endearing pet. It was torn—ay, dreadfully torn, by some nightly dog. When I first found it, it was scarcely alive, lying bleeding; its white, and soft, and smooth skin dragged in the mud, torn and untouchable. There was a knife applied; but not to cure; it was to kill, to put out of pain. I could not stand it; I went into convulsions, screamed, and almost tore myself to pieces. "My lamb! my wee lambie! my dear, dear sweety!"—but it had passed, and I was alone in my existence. But, oh! it was a fearful lesson which I had learned—a dreadful truth which I had ascertained. Youth, as well as age, is subject to death: dreadful!

There she sits in loveliness—there, there, in the midst of that hazel bush, snug in her retreat, her yellow bill projecting over the brow of her nest: smooth, black, and glittering are her feathers, and her eye is the very balmy south of expression. Yet there is a watchfulness and a timidity in her attitude and movement—she is not at ease, for that eye has caught mine, as they protrude upon her betwixt two separated branches; and, after two or three hesitating stirs, she is out—off—away; but perched on a neighbouring bough, to mark and watch my proceedings. And he, too, is there; he, her companion and helpmate; he who was singing, or rather whistling, so loud on that tall and overtopping birch; he who was making the setting sunlight glad with his music—who was, doubtless, chanting of courtship, and love, and union, and progeny. Yes! he has left his branch and his sun; he has dropped down from his elevation, to inquire into the cause of that sudden chuckle, by which his lady bird has alarmed him. There are four eyes upon me now, and all my proceedings are registered in two beating bosoms. But the nest is full—it is full of life—of young life—of the gorling in its hair, and incipient tail—of yellow gaping bills, all thrust upwards, and crying, as loud as attitude and cheep can do, "Give, give, give!" Surely Solomon had never seen a blackbird's nest with young, else he had given it a place amongst his "gives!" This was my first nest. It was discovered when I was only five years old; it was visited every day and every hour; the young ones grew apace; they feathered into blackness; they hopped from their abode; they flew, or were essaying to do so, when—O world! world! why, why, is it so with thee!—destruction came in a night, and the feathers of my young ones were strewed around their once happy and crowded abode. There had been other eyes upon them than mine. Yes! eyes to which the night is as noonday—vile, green, elongated eyes, and sharp, penetrating, and unsparing teeth, and claws, stretched, crooked, and clutching; and, in short, the cat had devoured the whole family!—not one was left to the distracted parents. I shall never, never forget their fluttering movements, their chirpings, their restlessness, their ruffled feathers, and all but human speech. There was revenge in my young bosom—mad and terrible revenge. I snatched up the murderer—all unconscious as she was of her fault. I ran with her, like a fury, to a deep pool in the burn. I dashed her headlong into the waters—from which, of course, she readily escaped, and, eyeing me with a look of extreme surprise from the further bank, immediately vanished into the house. Though we were great friends before this event—and I would gladly have renewed our intercourse afterwards, when my passion had subsided—yet Pussy never forgave me, at least I know that she never trusted me, for I could never catch her again.

That's the pool—the very bumbling pool, where we bathed, and stood beneath the cascade, for a whole summer's day. There were more than one or two either—there were many of us; for we collected as the day advanced, and still those who were retreating, upon encountering those who were advancing, would turn with them again, and renew their immersions. It was summer—and such summer as youth (for I was only six) alone can experience—it was one long blaze of noontide radiance. The sun stationary, as in the valley of Jehosophat; the trees, green, leafy, shady, rejoicing; the very cattle dancing in upon the cooling element; and the grasshopper still dumb. The heat was intense, yet not overpowering; for we were naked—naked as were Adam and Eve prior to sin and shame—naked as is Apollo Belvidere, or the Venus de Medicis. We were Nature's children, and she was kind to us; she gave us air that was balm; sunbeams that wooed us from the pool; and water again that enticed us from the open air! What a day it was of fun and frolic, and splash, and squatter, and confusion! Now jumping from the brow into the deep; now standing beneath the Grey Mare's Tail, the flashing cascade; now laving—like Diana on Actæon—the water from the pool on each other's limbs and faces; now circling along the green bank, in sportive chase and mimic fray, and again couching neck deep in the pool. But the awful dinnle is on the breeze; the black south hath advanced rapidly upon meridian day; the white and swollen clouds have boiled up into spongy foam; and there runs a light blue vapour over the inky cloud beneath. Hist!—whisht!—it's thunner! and, ere many minutes have escaped, we are each quaking every limb at our own firesides.

Many recent winters have made me cry, What has become of winter? I wished Government would fit out an expedition to go in quest of him. He must have been couching somewhere, the funny old rogue, behind the Pole; he must have been coquetting with the beauties of Greenland or Nova Zembla. He has, last season, condescended to give us a glimpse of his icy beard and hoary temples. Oh, I like the old fellow dearly!—but it is the old fellow only. As to him of modern times, I know not what to make of him—a blustering, blubbering, braggadocio; making darkness his pavilion, for no other purpose than to throw pailfuls of water on the heads of women and children; letting out his colds and influenzas from his Baltic bags, and terrifying our citizens with "auld wives," broken slates, and shivered tiles. But my winter of 1794—what a delightful companion he was! He did his work genteelly; his drift was a matter of a few hours; but they were hours of vigorous and terrible exertion. Some ten score of sheep, and some twenty shepherds, perished within a limited range, in one wild and outrageous night. It was, indeed, sublime—even to me, a youth of eight years of age, it was fearfully sublime. Can anything be more beautiful than falling and newly-fallen snow. There you see it above, and to a great height, shaping into varied and convolving forms. It nears, it nears, it nears, and lights in your little hand, a feathery diamond, a crystallized vapour, an evanescent loveliness! But the tempest has sounded an assail, and the broadened flakes are comminuted into blinding drift—the earth beneath blows up to heaven, whilst the heaven thunders its vengeance upon the earth. The restless snow whirls, eddies, rises, disperses, accumulates. Man cannot breathe in the thick and toiling atmosphere. The wreaths swell into rounded and polished forms, and, on a sudden, disappear. The air has cleared, has stilled, and the sharp and consolidating frost has commenced. What a sea of celestial brightness! The earth wrapped in an alabaster mantle, the folds of which are the folds of beauty and enchantment. Days of glory, and nights of splendour. The moon, in her own blue heaven, contracted to a small circumference of clear, gaseous light; the hills, the hollows, the valleys, the muirs, the mosses, the woodlands, the rocky eminences, the houses, the churchyards, the gardens, the whole of external nature beneath her, giving up again into the biting and twinkling air an arrowy radiance of far-spread light. Here and there the course of a mountain torrent, or of a winding river, marked with a jagged and broken line of black. The bay of the house-dog heard far off—the sound of the curlers' sport, composed of a mixture of moanings—the "sweep," the "guard," the "stroke," the homebred and hearty shout and guffaw—the Babel mixture of noises, coming softened and attuned from the distant pond. It is the "how-dum-dead" of winter. Christmas has passed, with its happiness wished and enjoyed—it is the last night of the year; long and fondly-expected Hogmanay! We are abroad, amongst the farm-houses and cottars' huts—we pass nothing that emits smoke. Our disguises are fearful, even to ourselves, as we encounter each other unexpectedly at corners. Cakes, cheese, and all manner of eatables are ours, even to profusion. And who would not endure much of life, to have such exquisite fan renewed!

But my first trout!—killed—fairly landed out of the water—dancing about in all its speckled beauty on the green bank: this was indeed an event—this was an achievement of no ordinary interest. Fishing! to thee I owe more of exquisite enjoyment than to any other amusement whatever. I am a mountain child—born, and nursed, and trotted about from my cradle on the winding banks of a bonny burn, through whose waters there looked up eyes, and there waved fins and tails. I have taken, again and again, in after life, the wings of the morning, and have made my dwelling with the stunted thorn, the corbie nest, the croaking raven, the willie-wagtail, and the plover, and the snipe, and the lapwing. I have seen mist—glorious mist!—in all its fantastic shapes, and openings and closings, from the dense crawling blanket of wet to the bright, sun-penetrated, rent, and dispersing tatterment of haze. I have studied all manner of cloud, from the swollen, puffed up, and rolling castellation, to the smooth, level, and widespread overshadowing. The breezes have been my companions all along. I could scan their merits and demerits with a fisher's eye, from the rough and sudden puff, urging the pool into ridges of ripple, to the steady, soft, and balmy breath that merely brought the surface into a slight commotion. Burns, too, I have studied, and streams, and gullets, and weils, and clay-brows, and bumbling pools. I have fished in the Caple with Willie Herdman. (See Blackwood, volume sixth.) I have fished in the Turrit with Stoddart. (See his admirable book on Angling.) But the true happiness of a fisher is solitude. Oh, for a fine morning in April, fresh, breezy, and dark!—a mountain glen, through which the Dar or the Brawn threads its mazy descent; the bottom clear, and purified by a recent flood; the waters not yet completely subsided—something betwixt clear and muddy—a light blue, and a still lighter brown.

Not a shepherd, nor a sheep, nor a living creature within sight—nothing but the sound of the passing stream, and the plash of the hooked and landing trout. A whole immensity of unexhausted stream unfurled before me; the day yet in its nonage; my pockets stuffed with stomach store; my mind at ease; my tongue ever and anon repeating, audibly—"Now for it, this will do, there he has it, this way, sir, this way; nay, no tricks upon travellers—out, out you must come—so, so, my pretty fellow, take it gently, take it gently!" But I am forgetting my first trout in the thousand and tens of thousands which have succeeded it. I had a knife—I know not how I got it; perhaps I bought it at a Thornhill fair, with a sixpence which the guidman of Auchincairn gave me as my fairing, or perhaps—but no matter; as Wordsworth would say, "I had a knife!" and this knife was my humble servant in all manner of duties; it was, in fact, my slave; it would cut bourtree, and fashion scout guns; it would make saugh whistles; it would fashion bows and arrows; it would pare cheese, and open hazel nuts; it was more generally useful than Hudibras' sword—and I felt its value. In fact, what was I without my knife? A soldier without his gun, a fiddler without his fiddle, a tailor without his shears. And yet this very knife, dear and useful as it was to me, I parted with—I gave it away, I fairly bartered it for a bait-hook with a horse-hair line attached to it. But then I had seen, and seen it for the first time, a trout caught with this very hook and line. Having a hook and line, I cut myself, from an adjoining wood, a rowan-tree fishing-rod, which might serve a double purpose, protecting me from the witches, and aiding me in catching trout. Away I went, "owre muirs and mosses mony o'," to the glorious Caple, of which I had heard much. I baited my hook with some difficulty; for worms, whatever boys may be, are not fond of the sport. I stood alongside of the deep black pool. I saw the deception alight in the water, and heard the plump; it sank, and sank, by a certain law, which philosophers have named gravitation; it became first pale-white, then yellow, then almost red, as it sank away into the dark profundity of mossy water. It lay still and motionless for a few instants. At last it moved; ye powers! it cuts the water like an edged instrument—it pulls—pulls strongly. The top of the rod touches the surface of the pool—something must be done—I am all trepidation. But, by mere strength of pulling and of tackle, a large yellow-wamed, black-backed fellow lies panting on the sand bank at the foot of the pool.

I ran home with all possible rapidity; and displayed, on a very large pewter plate, my first trout, to my kind and affectionate parent. My happiness was completed.

The woods!—I was born in the woods; man lives originally in the primeval forests, with the exception, perhaps, of the Arab, the Babylonian, and Egyptian; wherever there was sufficient soil and suitable climate, there was wood, from Lapland to Capetown, from the Bay of Biscay to the Yellow Sea. The American forests still exist, where even the axe of European civilization has not reached them. There woods are natural to man; he turns to them as to something, he cannot well tell how or why, congenial to his nature. At least so I have felt it, and feel it still in my recollections of early life. Plantations are stiff and artificial, generally consisting of a dense field of regular similarity; but natural wood, the offspring of our own soil, the indigenous plants of Scotland—the birch, for example, with its bending and elegant twigs, its white stem, and grateful fragrance; the eternal oak, with its leafy shade; the tough ash, with its pointed leaf; the lowly hazel, with its straight stems and fragrant nuts; the saugh, the willow, the thorn-sloe, the haw, the elder, the bourtree, the crabtree, the briar, and the bramble—all these consociate lovingly, and actually did consociate around, and almost over, the humble but snug cot where I first drew breath. There, my first herald of day was the song of the linnet, thrush, or blackbird; there, my first efforts were made in gaining the top of some little ash or birch; there, my first riches consisted in a few pints of ripened and browned nuts, kept in the leg of a footless stocking, against the ensuing Halloween. But Halloween has now become a mere name—et preterea nihil, still stat nominis umbra, sufficient to make me recollect with delight the exquisite pleasure which I enjoyed in anticipating as well as in observing this festival. The crabtree yielded its reddest and ripest fruit for the occasion; a casual apple was hooked over the hedge of the castle orchard for the same purpose; but, above and beyond all, nuts were gathered, dried and stored away into sly corners and out-of-the-way places. What amusement so delightful as nut-gathering! There they hang to the afternoon sun, brown and ready to escape from their husks or shells. There are twosome clusters, and threesome clusters; and if you could reach without shaking that topmost branch (but there is the difficulty and the danger), you may even secure a twelvesome cluster—a glorious knot of lovely associates, that would crumble from their abodes into your hands like dried leaves! You pass on from bush to bush; but you have been anticipated. Will or Tam, or Jock or Jamie, or all four, have been there before you, and have left you nothing but a scanty gleaning. Here and there, you are enabled to extract from the centre of a leafy shade, an ill-ripened, because an unsound, single nut, which serves no better purpose than to break your jaws with its emptiness, in cracking it. But you push away into the interior—the terra incognita of the woodland; and, standing out by itself, aired and sunned all over, you find a little branch of scroggs, stinted and ill-leaved, but really covered all over with the most exquisite fruitage. Long, large, are the nuts you have thus acquired; and you chuckle inwardly, as you contemplate a prize which has been reserved for your exclusive use. With what despatch are cluster after cluster accumulated into handfuls, and then again into pocketfuls, and then, at last, into cap, hat, or bonnetfuls, till you become a kind of shellicoat, a walking nuttery, a thing of husks and kernels! The voice of your companions is loud and frequent, in the language of inquiry into the state of your success; but you preserve a deep silence, or answer prevaricatingly, by, "you have got a few—not many—very bad place this," &c. &c. At last you come upon them with the astonishment of display, and expose your treasure with ineffable feelings of triumph. You have distanced them all. Your Halloween fortune is made—you are a happy being.

But Halloween comes at last—Scotland's Halloween—Burns' Halloween—the Halloween of centuries upon centuries—of the Celt amidst his mountains, the Saxon in his valley, the Druid in his woods, King James the First in his palace—and old Janet Smith in her humble cottage. It was at Janet Smith's that I held the first Halloween of which I have any distinct recollection. There was a kind of couthiness about old Janet, which made her hearth the resort of all the young lads and lasses, boys and girls, around. On Halloween, Janet had on her best head-gear, her check apron, and clean neck napkin.

We had such burning of nuts, such pu'ing of stocks, such singing of songs, such gibing, laughing, cracking, tale-telling, and, to crown all, such a gallant bowl of punch, made from a sonsy greybeard, which the young men had taken care to store previously with the needful, that I went home half crazy, and, my mother affirmed, continued so for several days to come.

Ye gods! what superstitious notions peopled my brain ever since! I recollect such fears about the invisible world becoming visible—I walked amidst a multitude of unseen terrors, ever ready to burst the casement of immateriality, and to stand, naked, confessed, in material semblance, before me. There was the fairy, the inhabitant of the green unploughed knowe, the green-coated imp, intent on child-stealing, or rather barter, and jingling her bridle through the high air on Halloween; there was the ghost, awful, solemn, and admonishing, pointing with the finger to buried treasure or murder glen; there was the wraith, little less terrible, and clothed in a well-known presence, prognosticating death or sore affliction; there was the death-watch, distinctly heard tick, ticking, all night long, in the bed-post; there were the blue lights seen in round spots on the bed-head, on the very night when three lads and three lasses perished in the boat; there was the muckle deil himself, driving in a post-chaise, over the "chaise-craig," or panting, like a bull-dog, at the nightly traveller's feet; and, over and above all these, was "Will o' the Wisp," skipping about from one side of the moss to the other, and always placing itself betwixt you and your home.

"D'ye see that?" said my cousin, Nelly Laurie, a girl of eighteen, to me, when my years could be reckoned by the number of the muses.

"What! what is it!" I exclaimed; and my attention was directed towards a moss, or morass, through which our footpath lay, on our way home, about ten o'clock of a dark, damp, and cloudy night.

"There! there it's again!"

There is something in the word "it" most indefinitely terrific. Had she said he or she, or even that ghost, or that wraith, or that bogle, it would not have been half so startling; but "it"—do you see it?—see a thing without a name, a definition—a mere object, shorn of its accidents or qualities! This is indeed most awful. With fear and trembling, I lifted up mine eyes, and beheld—O mercy, mercy!—a light in the middle of the moss, where no light should have been; and it was floating and playing about, blue as indigo, and making the darkness around it visible. My joints relaxed, and I fell to the earth, incapable of motion. I was a mere bundle of loose and unconnected bones, sinews, and muscles. My cousin stood over me, incapable of deciding what would be done; at last, it was discovered that to advance homewards was better than to retrograde, as we were already more than half-way on our course. I was instructed to repeat, and to continue repeating, aloud, the Lord's prayer; whilst she, on whose shoulders I lay like a dead sheep, continued to give audible note to the tune of the twenty-third psalm. It was, indeed, an odd concert for the devil, or his emissary, Mr. William yclept "of the Wisp," to listen to; for, whilst I was roaring out, in perfect desperation, "Our Father which art in Heaven," she was articulating, in a clear and overpowering tone, "The Lord's my shepherd;" whilst I slipt into "Hallowed be thy name," she advanced with, "I'll not want—he makes me down to lie!"—and, sure enough, down both of us lay, with a vengeance, in the midst of a moss-hole, into which, from terror and the darkness of the night, we had inadvertently plunged. "What's the meaning of all this, sirs!" exclaimed a well-known voice. It was my mother's, God bless her! I clung to her like grim death, and never quitted my hold till I was snugly lodged above the fire, near to the lamp, and with dog, cat, my cousin, and my mother, betwixt me and the dark doorway passage! I did not get a sound sleep for months and years afterwards! Such are thy miseries, unhallowed, unmanly superstition! Disease may relax the body and enervate the whole frame; but thou art the disease of the soul, the fever of the brain. Misfortunes may be borne—pain must be endured till it is cured—but superstition such as this, is neither endurable nor curable. I am not yet completely cured of it, now that I have entered my sixtieth year. Were you to send me into an empty, dark church, at midnight, and through a surrounding churchyard, peopled with the bodies of the dead, I durst not go, though you gave me large sums of money. And is my judgment or reason in fault? Not at all; it is my feelings, my moral nature; my very blood has got such a blue tinge that I verily believe it would look like the blue ink I am writing with, were it caught in a tea-cup! Sir Walter Scott was bit, too, and so are nine-tenths of the living, though they won't allow it. It has now become, like latent heat, an unseen agency; but it still acts, and powerfully, on civilized, and even learned man!

Seeking of birds' nests is a glorious amusement, and the knowledge of a large amount of these is a possession to be boasted of. I know of a linnet's nest, says one—and I of a robin's, says another—I of shilfa's, says a third; but a fourth party comes in with his mavis, and all competition is at an end. The mavis is indeed a Scottish nightingale; he sings so mellow, and so varied—his brown spreckled breast turned up to the rising or the setting sun, he pours o'er the woodland a whole concert of harmony; and then he awakens into competition the blackbird, with his Æolian whistle; the green and grey linnet, with their sharp and sweet tweedle-twee; the goldfinch, with his scarlet hood and song of flame; and the lark on the far-off fell, with his minstrelsy of heaven's border. But what to a boy, a boy of eight or nine, is all this song and sunshine, in comparison with the fact—"I know of five birds' nests!" Why, this annunciation is enough to settle your doom—you may almost apprehend assassination, so much must you be envied. But true it is, and of verity; I once knew five birds' nests—all containing eggs or young. Oh, I remember them as it were only of yesterday. Time has only engraved, with a tool of adamant, the impression deeper and deeper. There was the snug and pendulous abode of the little kitty-wren. It was beneath the brow of the burn, covered over from winds and rains by the incumbent bank and brushwood. It was a plum-pudding, with a hole made by your thumb on one side; a stationary football, composed of all things soft and comfortable, covered on the outside with fog or moss, and in the inside lined with the down of feathers; and there were from sixteen to twenty little blue peas in it; and the little hen sat on them daily, and opposed her little bill vigorously to my intrusive finger. She was not afraid—not she! she fought manfully, "pro aris et focis;" if not, as the Romans say, "manibus pedibusque;" nor, as the savage Saxons say, "tooth and nail," nor, as the shepherd of Ettrick says, "knees and elbows an' a',"—still she fought with the instruments with which nature had endowed her, with her bill and her little claws, and she fought it most vigorously. O Nature! thou art a fearful mystery of wisdom—thou makest the meekest and most timid natures bold as lions when their progeny are concerned. Look at the hen—poor chucky, that scrapes her pittance from the doorway or dunghill, whom the veriest whelp which can bark and tumble over will scare into wing and screech—put the hen on eggs, give her an infant brood, show her danger from dog, man, bear, or lion—who's afraid? Not she at least; she will dance on the nose of the mastiff, she will fly in the face of humanity, whether in the shape of man, woman, boy, or child. The warrior looks fierce in his regimentals and armour; but what cares she for guns, bayonets, swords, and pistols? Not a peppercorn! Her young ones are behind her, and she will meet the armed monster, with foot, bill, wing, and with a fearful intonation of terrifying sounds. No Highland regiment, even at Prestonpans, ever set up a more alarming battle shout. She is never conquered—like Achilles, she is "invincible;" but so soon as her progeny need no more her care or her protection—so soon as they have been pecked into estrangement, and sent to scrape and provide for themselves—she resumes all her mild and feminine qualities—she is plain "chucky" again! The linnet's nest is covered with scales of a silky whiteness—the fine thin laminæ which cover the bark of the oak, of that very tree in the cleft of whose branches her nursery is fixed. Inside of this little nicely-proportioned cup, there are five beautifully-spotted eggs—a white ground with a grey spot, flung over the whole shell with a most charming regularity. And there is a nest in that stone wall which surrounds the plantation—it is that of the stone-chatter—filthy, unsonsy bird, fit companion for the yellow yeldring, which conceals her treasure 'neath a tuft of grass on the bent, and is trodden under foot. They are both deserving of all detestation; the one for drinking every May morning of the devil's-blood, and the other for many an impertinent jest and chatter. Let them perish in one day—let their eggs be blown, and hung up as ornaments in strings along the brow of the household looking-glass, or smashed to atoms by the stroke of an urchin previously blinded.

It was whilst engaged in robbery of this kind, that I was first checked by the tears and entreaties of Mary—of my dear cousin, Mary Morison. Alas! poor Mary! thou wast mild, beautiful, kind, merciful; yet thy days have been numbered, and thou art gone—

and I, a lubber fiend in comparison with thy beauty and gentleness—I, a personification of cruelty and horror in comparison with thee—I am still alive, and thinking of thee—whilst thou art not even dust—"etiam periere ruinæ." Forty-five years confound even dust, and reduce to a fearful nonentity all that smiled, and charmed, and inspired. But of this enough—this way madness lies.

That was a terrible conflagration at Miramichi. I think I hear it crashing, thundering, crackling on; before it the wild beasts, the serpents, the cattle—man! poor, houseless, helpless, smoke-enveloped, and perishing man. The reason why I can conceive so vividly of this awful and comparatively recent visitation is this—I was accustomed to "set muirburn" when a boy of nine or ten. The primeval heath of our mountains was strong, bushy; and, when dry in spring, exceedingly inflammable. I was a mountain child; for, on one side of my dwelling the heather withered and bloomed up to the door; and when one thinks of the "bonny blooming heather," it is quite refreshing; it blooms when all things around it are withering, during the later months of harvest; but then, oh, then, it puts on such a russet robe of beauty—a dark evening cloud tipped and tinged with red—a mantle of black velvet spangled with gold; and its fragrance is honey steeped in myrrh. Yet when withered in March and April, it is an object of aversion to the sheep farmer, who prefers green grass and tender sward; and he issues to impatient boyhood the sentence of destruction. Peat follows peat, kindled at one end, and held by the other; the hillside or the level muir swarm with matches; carefully is the ignition communicated to the dry and widespread heath; from spot to spot—in lines and in circles—it extends and unites—the wind is up, and one continuous blaze is the almost immediate consequence. It is night, dark night—the clouds above catch and reflect the uncertain gleam. The heathfowl wing their terrified flight—through, above, and beneath the rolling and outspreading smoke. The flame gathers into a point; and, at the more advanced part of the curvature, the force and blaze is terrible. A thousand tongues of fire shoot up into the density, and immediately disappear. Who now so venturous as to dash headlong through the hottest flame, and to recover from beneath the choking night his former position? There goes—a hat—a cap—a bonnet! They have taken up their position in the pathway of the devouring flood of fire—and who so brave, so daring, as to extricate his own property from instant destruction? Hurrah! hurrah! from a score of throats, mixes with the thunder, the crackle, the roll—all is power, novelty, ecstasy; bare heads and bare feet dance and show conspicuously upon the still smoking turf. Here an adder is seen writhing and twisting in the agonies of death. There a half-burned hat evinces the fun and the folly of its owner. But, oh, horrible! what is that on the edge of vision, in the dim and hazy distance; it comes forward, bounding, turning, and bellowing, fearful and paralysing; it is the bull himself escaped from his fold, and maddened by the smoke and blazing atmosphere. He comes down upon the charge, tail erect, and head down, tossing all that is solid under his feet, and looking through the scattered earth with eyes glaring as well as reflecting fire. Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Wallace, Wellington, never entered a field of battle with such a terrific presence. He seems as if he had just escaped from a Roman or Spanish arena. He is desperately infuriated; and woe be to him who shall be overtaken by this muscular tornado in his weakness and his fears! We are off! diffugimus! We are nowhere to be found. One has made for a distant wall surrounding the heather park, and is in the act of climbing it. The bull is in full chase, armed with two short but powerful horns. The fugitive has just laid hold of an upper stone to assist his ascent; but the faithless help has given way; stone and he are lying alongside of the dyke. The bull is in full scent. The noise has directed him. He nears—he nears—he nears! My God! the urchin's life is not worth two minutes' purchase.

Bravo! the summit is gained; the feet of the pursued are seen flying in mid air; he has sprung from the summit at least twenty feet; but the whole weight of the pursuing brute is upon the crazy structure; it gives way with a crash, and down rush stones over stones, and the poor maimed, bruised brute over all. What! Mr. Bull! are you satisfied?—why not continue the sport? But the game is up; Will has regained his mother's dwelling, and now lives to record this wonderful, this all but miraculous escape. Catch me setting muirburn again!

I was very unwilling, at the age of nine, to be sent to school—I had formed for myself a home society with which I was perfectly satisfied; but the decree had gone forth, and to school I must go, to learn Latin, conducted by a scholar of some standing. I had three miles to walk, but I would have wished them ten. Shakspeare shows the characters with whom time gallops, and, amongst others, with a thief who is to be hanged on a certain day—he might have mentioned a schoolboy, with shiny morning face, going unwillingly to school. When I came within sight of the large, many-windowed building, my heart beat sorely with alarm. All was new to me—the boys, the masters, the house, the grounds around it; in fact, I was about to pass into a new state of being. I was bursting the shell, and coming forth into real life. Hitherto I had seen nobody but the herd-callan, the Gibson family, my mother and her aunts. I was exceeding smart and mischievous, no doubt; but my sphere of operations was confined; now it was about to be enlarged—I must face three hundred boys and girls in the park or school play-ground of Wallacehall. All eyes would be turned upon me; my very dress would undergo a scrutiny; nor would I easily escape the seasoning welcome, a hearty drubbing: all this I anticipated, and all this and more I soon experienced. When I set up my face in the play-ground about half-past eight (nine being the school hour), all was commotion. Alas! how many are now motionless who were then active—still, who were then vociferous—cold, whose hearts were then beating warm and buoyant! When the disk of my countenance appeared at the entrance into the park or play-ground, I was immediately smoked. One fellow came up with the most affected good-nature, and hoped my mither was with me. I would be in great danger, he said, without her. A second one bid me tie my shoe, and, whilst I was stooping, hauled me heels over head. I had not fairly recovered my natural position, when I was hit on the side of my head with a ball, till my eyes glanced fire; anon, the drive, the crowd, the scramble carried me along with it completely off my feet. I was pelted, bruised, buffeted, and even kicked. Human nature could stand it no longer—my spirit, even that of the Devil, was awakened within me—I struck out around me with all my might, and at random—somebody's nose happened to come in the way of my knuckles, and it bled; he struck back again, and the blood sprang from my lips. A ring was formed—to it we went—I, running in upon him head and shoulders, "knees and elbows an' a'," laid him flat; unfair play was proclaimed—my antagonist was raised; but he was pale and breathless; he said he was hearted, and had almost fainted; so I got a cheap victory, and eternal glory! I took my place amongst the boys, unmolested and respected in future. I would twaddle through a pretty decent volume, about public and private education, and everybody but my bookseller would think I was speaking sense; but I will spare my reader and myself, and only add, in one sentence, that a public seminary, well conducted, is the best of all schools for the world—preparation for the buffetings, kickings, and jostlings of life.