^lUBRARYQ^ .^WEUNIVERJ/A "^XiUONVSOl^ ^lOSANCEl O ;cOFCAUF0£^ '^AHvaani^ > amehnivers/a. =3 ^TJUONVSOl^ ^ajAiNrt-] 5.WEUNIVERJ//J o ^MEl)NIVER5y/v ^lOSANCn^^ ^lOSANCElf/^ •J?U3NVS01^ ^/Sa3AINn-3WV^ -^^•lIBRARYQCv -}^HIBRAR\ "^Aa^AiNn-jyvv* '%ojiiv3jo>' '^.wojiivdj ^.OFCALIFORj^ ^OFCAIIFO ^OAavaan- ^lUBRARYQ^ -j^lUBRARY-Oc. ,\V\tUNIVERS/A ^lOSANCEL ^^ %oimi^'^ Aavaan-# ^.OFCAIIFO/?^ %. < &Aavj UBRAHYQc. - vru.li v/j)>v/ lages, bridges striding across the streams, granaries rising on the shores, and harbours abutting into the sea. We are reminded of a coinitry in its vigorous manhood ; but turning to where the northern Sutor descends towards the west, the eye meets with only a di-eary waste of sand, which the sea winds have heaped in the lapse of ages over the original soil. We think of the wide extended deserts of Africa and the East ; and when from some of the larger hollows we look round us and see only hills of barren sand, with here and there a dingy, rocky-looking flat, which was once vegetable soil, but which can no longer support 48 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. vegetable life, we almost fancy that, having anticipated the flight of time by many centuries, we have arrived at the old age of creation, and witness the earth in its dotage. Let us survey the landscape a second time ; — not merely in its pictorial aspect, nor as connected Avith the commoner associations which link it to its present inhabitants, but as antiquaries of the world, — as stu- dents of those wonderfid monuments of nature, on which she has traced her hieroglyphical inscriptions of plants and animals that impart to us the history, not of a former age, but of a former creation. Geology is the most poetical of all sciences ; and its various facts, as they present themselves to the human mind, possess a more overpowering immensity than even those of Astronomy itself. Forwhile the Astronomer can car- ry about witli him in his imagination, a little portable Orrery of the whole solar system, the Geologist is op- pressed by a weight of rocks and mountains, and of strata piled over strata which all his diligence in form- ing theories, l:^as not yet enabled him completely to arrange. He is no mere intellectual mechanician, who calculates and reasons on the movements of a piece of natural clockwork ; the objects with which he is chiefly conversant, have no ascertained forms, or known proportions, that he may conceive of them as abstract figures, or substitute a set of models in their places ; his province, in at least all its outer skirts, is still a terra incognita, which he cannot conceive of as a whole ; and the walks w hich intersect it are so in- volved and irregular that, like those of an artificial wilderness, they seem to double its extent. The opera- THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. 49 tions of his latest eras, as his science exists in time, terminate long before history begins ; while, as it exists in space, he has to grapple with the immense globe itself, with all its oceans, and all its continents. Goethe finely remarks, that the ideas and feelings of the schoolboy who tells his fellows that the world is round, are widely different in depth and sublimity from those experienced by the wanderer of Ithaca, when he spoke of the unlimited earth, and the unmeasurable and infinite sea. There is a happy combination in the scene before us of the more pleasing features of a lowland and of an alpine country ; yonder is the gigantic Ben-Wevis with all his attendant hills, and yonder a widely ex- tended champaign with its comparatively level fields, and its long flat tracts of woodland and moor. That mountainous ridge towards the north forms part of the Highlands ; immediately beneath it is the low country ; and not more exactly may we trace the boundaries of these several districts from their very opposite aspects of scenery, than from their geological character. Wherever the scene presents a bold high outline, we find only primary rock, wherever it sinks below a certain level, and exhibits a softer and less diversified contour we find only secondary. And the two districts belong to very different eras ; for when the higher with its granites and its micaceous schists, must liave existed as a chain of islands, the ■widely spread archipelago of some former world, the lower, with all its shales, its clays, and its sandstones, was shrouded in the prolific womb of the sea. I remember one day early in winter, about six D 50 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD, years ago, that a dense bank of mist came rolling in Ijetween the Sutors, like a huge wave, and enveloped the entire frith, and the lower lands by which it is skirted, in one extended mantle of moisture and gloom. I ascended the hill ; on its sides the trees were dank and dripping ; and the cloud which as I advanced seemed to open only a few yards before me, came closing a few yards behind ; but on the summit all was clear ; and so different was the state of the atmosphere in this upper region from that which obtained in the fog below, that a keen frost was binding up the pools, and glazing the sward. The billows of mist seemed break- ing against the sides of the eminence ; the sun, as it hung cold and distant in the south, was throwing its beams athwart the surface of this upper ocean,' — light- ing the slow roll of its waves as they rose and fell to the breeze, and casting its tinge of red on the snowy summits of the far hills, which presented, now as of old, the appearance of a group of islands. Ben We\'is and its satellites rose abruptly to the west ; — a broad strait separated it from two lesser islands, which, like leviathans, raising, and but barely raising themselves above the surface, heaved their flat backs a little over the line ; the peaks of Ben-Vaichaird, diminished by distance, were seen occupying the south ; and far to the north I could descry some of the loftier hills of Sutherland, and the Ord-liill of Caithness. I have since often thought of this singular scene in connection with some of the bolder theories of the geologist. I have conceived of it as an apparition, in these latter days, of the scenery of a darkly remote period; a period ■\\"hen these cold and barren summits were covered with THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. 51 the luxuriant vegetation of a tropical climate ; — with flowering shrubs, and palms, and huge ferns; and when every little bay on their shores was enlivened by fleets of nautili spreading tlieir tiny sails to the wind, and pre- senting their colours of pearl and azure to the sun. But, from the pinnacles of the building restored in this way, to at least a pictorial entireness, we must descend to its ruins, and see whether, from its broken sculptm-es, and its half defaced inscriptions, we cannot trace some faint, imperfect outline of its history. And first, in a little bay to the east of the town, we find beds of a greyish stratified claystone which have been laid bare by the sea. They lie in an angle of about twenty with the horizon ; and we find that they are thickly interspersed with flattened nodules of an ellp- tical or circular form. On breaking these across, we ascertain that they are composed of either an Imperfect limestone, or an indurated clay, and see that, in the centi'e of each, there is a broken line of deep black, in the direction of which they separate more easily than in any other. We commence splitting them up. Here, in the heart of this solid mass, are the remains of a fish, scaled like the coal-fish or haddock, which seem to have been subjected to such immense pressure that the form can no longer be traced ; but, here are the bones of the head, and there the finsj and the scales appear scarcely less entire than when they covered the living animal. In this second nodide we meet with the broken exuviae of a fish of a different species, which, instead of being scaled like the other, seems roughened in the same way as the dog-fish, or the shark. Here is a confused, bituminous looking 52 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD, mass that lias miicli the appearance of a toad^ or frog ; here there are a numher of shining plates like those of the tortoise ; and here an assemblage of what seem to have been bones, — see, there is the jaw bone of some miknown animal, thickly set with sharp hooked teeth, and there a large oval plate, like an ancient buckler, which seems to have formed part of the scull. — To what era of the world's history can we refer these truly interesting remains, buried as they are, ex- cept ^^■here disinterred by the waves, under vast rocks of sandstone, and huge masses of clay ? For several yards farther to the east the beach is so covered by shingle and stones that we see no more of the strata till we reach a low promontory almost im- mediately under the southern Sutor, where we find a thick bed of red sandstone, and then a thin layer of stratified clay. We pass over the edges of succeeding layers. First over alternate strata of red and yellow- ish sandstone, with here and there an aluminous vein containing nodules of a calcareous stone prettily vari- egated with browii and yellow ; then there occurs a slender strip of limestone ; then a thick bed of breccia composed of waterworn pebbles held together by a coarse gritty cement ; and then we arrive at the hard granitic rock of the hill. From where the latter bounds on the breccia to the bed of sandstone nearest the to^vn, there is rather more than a hundred and forty yards, and from the almost vertical position of the strata, for they incline in an angle of about eighty, we have merely to pass along their edges to gain an acquaint- ■ance with them, which could only be acquired were they still reposing on the planes of their original depo- IHE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. 53 sitlon, by sinking a shaft more than a hundred yards in depth. We may conceive of the advantage which this circumstance presents to us from the ease whicli we find in running the eye over hooks arranged on the shelves of a library, contrasted with the trouble which they give us in taking them up one after one when they are packed in a deep chesL As we ad- vance onwards ath-\^'art the granitic rock of the hill, the precipices gradually become higher and more ab- rupt. And so distorted and broken are the almost vertical strata, that they remind us, from their splintery state, of sheets of glass which, when half molten, had been plunged into water ; and from their curves and involutions, of the uncouth intricacies of Runic sculp- ture. Still, as we proceed, the crags become more shattered, the curves more frequent, the precipices more loftv ; we see the foot prints of earthquake and conflagration still more and more distinctly impressed, until, reaching the south eastern extremity of the hill, we find it bordered by large masses of hornblende, a mineral supposed, by at least the older geologists, to connect primary rocks with those of volcanic origin. The ]\Ioray-Frith stretches beyond. Turning the extreme point of the hill, we pass beneath the precipices towards the west. Observe as we advance that there occur among the rounded pebbles of the shore, masses of a greyish coloured basalt, nodules of limestone, much hollowed by little testaceous animals that, like the conies of scripture, make their houses in the rocks, and flakes of a black bituminous shale which bear the impressions of shells, and ^^■hat were once scales of fish. But from whence 54 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. come tliey ? Not, it is ob'S'ious, from the -o-all of grani- tic precipices that frowns over us, nor from the cliffs of hornblende that line the shore below, nor yet from the hard quartzose skerries that raise their forests of algae to the surface of the shallows. They belong to to a very different formation, and have been propelled in the lapse of years, and by the waves of a thousand tempests, from the profounder depths of the frith be- yond. Observe towards the north east, immediately under the northern Sutor, two little rocks which, jutting out of the sea, seem to rise and fall with the heave of the tide, and which, at this distance of about five miles, might be so readily mistaken for two fishing boats rowng along the shore. Observe too in an opposite direction, and at nearly an equal distance, a similar, but rather larger group of boat-like skerries that seem anchored in the bay of Eathie. These outlying rocks form part of a vast ridge of what Geologists term the Lias formation, composed of ledges of lime- stone alternating with beds of bituminous shale, and broken by irregular veins of basalt. It runs for about ten miles in a line nearly parallel to that of the coast, from whence it inclines in an angle of about thirty ; but except in the bay of ShandA\-ick, and immediately under the hill of Eathie, where it appears at low ebb, and in these ledges Avhich raise themselves to the sur- face about half a mile from the shore, it lies hidden beneath the waters of the frith. — Let us explore its various phenomena where it rests against the cliffs of the hill. After crossing the upper line of beach with its huge boulders of gneiss, and its banks of rounded pebbles. THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. oo we arrive at a large bed of dark coloured bituminous slate^ which when thro^^'n into the fire burns with a violent flame without suffering any marked diminution of bulk, and emits a strong sulphurous odour. A ledge of limestone separates it from a lower bed of the same inflammable mineral, which is in turn separated from a bed that lies still lower, by a similar ledge ; and though the sea debars a more extensive survey, we can sec a third ledge roughened with dulce and tangle standing out of the shallows beyond. Let us examine more minutely : we find that the bituminous beds, like the stra-tified clays of the little bay, are interspersed \vith nodules of limestone, rich with the spoils of both the animal and vegetable worlds ; but these oc- cur m much greater abundance, and are more equally sprea-d throughout the entire mass. Every nodule, even the smallest, every layer of the shale, every splinter which we detach from the ledges, abound with organic remains, so heaped together, and yet so equally dif ftised throughout, that it would seem as if one half the matter of the immense deposition on which we tread existed at one time either as plants or testacea. We stand in tlie midst of a charnel house of the old world, — a charnel house, not merely of perished indi- viduals, but of extinct tribes. Here are the broken and involved spirals of a whole catacomb of ammon- ites, and here the tapering and pointed cylinder of an embalmed belamite. Myriads of microscopic shells lie embedded in the stony recesses of this block of lime ; and so charged is yonder ledge ^\^th animal matter, that it still yields, when struck by the hammer, the heavy, fetid odour of corruption and decay. Yonder 56 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE -WORLD. mass seems almost entirely composed of little striated bivalves ; and we may mark just beside it the remains of a Avholc community of shells of a ruder form and larger size, that still retain the curved irregularities of the outer surface, and the prismatic colours of the pearl ^A'ithin. See here is the large fleshy leaf of some plant resembling the aloe ; — here is a piece of fossil wood with its forked branches, and its accidental globosities, — its seed vessels charged with lime, and its thick glossy bark passing into coal ; — and here, — here is actually a piece of charcoal ; — has it glowed in the household lire of some pre-adamite hind or shepherd ? Nay, observe that there run athwart the beds, in every possible direction, veins of a vitreous basalt, Avhich must have been forced upwards in some darkly remote period from the molten depths below ; observe too, that the very limestone seems to have changed its natm'e under the influence of the extreme heat, presenting, wherever it leans against the basalt, the appearance of white marble. What need of in- troducing the domestic fire, with its puny agency, when wo can command the fires and lavas of the volcano ! But let us quit this wonderful city of the dead, with all its reclining obelisks, and all its sculptured tumuli, the memorials of a race that exist only in their tombs. And yet, ere we go, it ^\'ere v,'e\\, perhaps, to indulge in some of those serious thoughts which we so naturally associate with the solitary burying ground, and the mutilated remains of the departed. Let us once more look round us and say whether, of all men, the Geo- logist docs not stand most in need of the Bible, how- THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. 57 ever much he may contemn it in the pride of specu- lation. We tread on the remains of organized and sentient creatures which, though more numerous at one period than the whole family of man, have long- since ceased to exist ; the indi\iduals perished one after one, tlieir remains served only to elevate the tioor on -which their descendants pursued the various instincts of their nature, and then sunk, like the others, to form a still higher layer of soil ; and now that the whole race has passed from the earth, and we see the animals of a different tribe occupying their places,- what survives of them but a mass of inert and sense- less matter, never again to be animated by the myste- rious spirit of vitality, — that spirit -\^hich dissipated in the air, or diffused in the ocean, can, like the sweet sounds and pleasant odours of the past, be neither gathered up nor recalled. And ! how dark the analogy which would lead us to anticipate a similar fate for ourselves ! As individuals, we are but of yesterday ; to-morrow we shall be laid in our graves, and the tread of the coming generation shall be over our heads. Nay, have we not seen a terrible disease sweep away, in a few years, more than eighty millions of the race to which -we belong ; and can we think of this and say, that a time may not come when, like the fossils of these beds, our whole species shall be mingled with the soil ; and when, though the sun may look dowTi in his strength on our pleasant dwel- lings and our green fields, there shall be silence in all our borders, and desolation in all our gates, and we shall have no thought of that past which it is now our delight to recall, and no portion in that 58 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. future which it is now our very nature to anticipate. Surely it is well to believe that a widely different des- tiny awaits us ; that the God who endowed us with those wonderful powers, which enable us to live in every departed era, every coming period, has given us to possess these powers for ever ; that not only does he number the hairs of our heads, but that his cares are extended to even our very remains ; that our very bones, instead of being left, like the exuvise around us, to form the rocks and clays of a future Avorld, shall, like those in the valley of vision, be again clothed with mviscle and sinew, and that our bodies, animated by the warmth and vigour of life, shall again connect our souls to the matter existing around us, and be obedient to every impulse of the will. It is surely no time, AA'hen we walk amid the dark ceme- teries of a departed world, and see the cold blank shadows of the tombs falling drearily athwart the way, — it is surely no time to extinguish the light given us to shine so fully and so cheerfully on our own proper path, merely because its beams do not enlighten the recesses that yawn around us. And oh ! what more unworthy of reasonable men than to reject so consoling a revelation on no juster quarrel, than that when it unveils to us much of what could not other^nse be known, and without the knowledge of which we could not be other than unhappy, it leaves to the invigorat- ing exercises of our own po^'ers, whatever, in the "wide circle of creation, lies fully within their grasp. And now let us ascend once more to the top of the eminence ; — one other short excursion and we shall have gathered the materials of the earlier portion of THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. 59 our history. The secondary basin of this part of the country extends in one direction from the Ordhill of Caithness to the eastern extremity of Loch Ness^ and in another from near Elgin to the little Highland vil- lage of Contin. Observe how the distant mountains of Sutherland and Ross, on the one hand, and of In- verness and Moray, on tlie other, rise around it as its proper shores ; — here advancing in huge promontories, there receding into spacious bays. Observe, too, that its continuity is broken by three immense ca^•ities, — the friths of Moray, Cromarty, and Dornoch ; and that there runs through it, in directly the line of the great Caledonian valley, a chain of hills of a widely differ- ent character from the shales and sandstones out of which they arise, and 'VA'hich at their bases seem so disturbed and broken. The two Sutors of Cromarty form the last links in the chain towards the north ; the hill of Eathie juts up beyond ; directly over it is the heathy ridge which terminates at Rosemarkie ; the eminence at Fortrose, and the precipices of the Crag- wood rise still farther to the south ; we see next in the series the miniature Sutors of Munlochy, and the wooded pyramid at Kessock ; and the line terminates with the blue dun of Craig Phadric, and the loftier hill behind, which connects it in this direction to the mountains of the valley. Mark the granitic texture of these hills, especially such of them as rise towards the north ; observe carefully the strange contortions of their almost vertical strata ; the veins of pure granite which in some places intersect them ; the huge masses of hornblende which lie scattered on their shores ; the extreme steepness of the angle in which the softer 60 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. stone of the basin leans on either side against their lower declivities ; the continuity of the ridge of lias which runs in a line so parallel to their bases^ — with its charcoal, its basalts, and its altered limestones ;— and then say whether the appearances exhibited by the face of any country can testify with more over- powering evidence of the agency of the volcano and the earthquake. Observe, too, that this interesting chain constitutes a mere elongation of the still loftier ridge ^diich forms the northern ^^'all of the great val- ley ; take into account the immense depth of the lakes and friths Avhich occupy almost the entire length of the latter, and in how rectilinear a direction it runs across the island ; connect these appearances with the facts, that the waves of Loch Ness undulated in strange S}Tnpathy with the reeling towers and crashing walls of Lisbon during the great earthquake of 1755, and that in the earthquake of 1816 the tremor was more violent in the tract of country by Avhicli the valley is bounded, than in any other, — apparently on the same principle which, when we press a cracked pipkin be- tA\"een our hands, renders the motion greatest in the line of the crack ; — weigh the amount of evidence thus presented, and then say whether we may not infer that the long hollow line of the valley, from where we lose it in the depths of the German Ocean, to where it disappears amid the waves of the Atlantic, is but the upper part of an immense fissure in the crust of the earth, the eifect of some terrible convulsion, and tliat the chain of hills which we now see stretching before us in dim perspective, forms part of the materials THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. Gl which were heaved up at its formation from out its dark and hidden profundities. And now that wc have completed our circuit, and collected oiu- data, let us again recall the landscape of the earliest period of our history. All the lower lands disappear, the hills of the central chain descend, the higher mountains exist as a group of islands, fer- tile in the plants and trees, and peopled by the ani- mals of an earlier creation ; and at the bottom of the sea which environs their bases the strata of the se- condary deposition are forming in slow and regular succession. In this remote period the fish of the little bay darkened their various banks and shallows, intent on the preservation of the species, or explored their forests of tangle in pursuit of their prey ; the ammon- ite raised its sails to the wind as it passed from sea to sea ; the tortoise enjoyed its life of a century under trees whose buds burst into life at the approach of summer, and shrunk in the chills of autumn ; the pine matured its cones on the heights above, and the oyster ripened its pearl in the ooze below. Nature had esta- blished her fixed laws, and found prompt obedience throughout all her provinces, even the most remote. She had then, as now, divided her empire between the contending principles of production and decay ; gene- ration succeeded generation ; the living inhabited the place of the dead ; there was the imperfection of in- fancy, the full maturity of middle life, the decline of old age ; vapours arose ; rains descended ; winds dark- ened the sea ; waves whitened the shore ; the pebbles of the stream became water-worn and smooth ; the decaying tree fell athwart the swollen cm-rent, and 62 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. was borne out to the ocean ; tLe spoils of every pre- ceding tempest were covered by the mtccIc of the tempests which succeeded ; the broken fragments of every earlier generation were buried beneath the re- mains of the generation which flourished after ; and thus, under the operations of the commoner laws, hills became less lofty, and the depths of the sea less pro- found, until the agency of a new succession of causes produced a new series of effects. Let us first remark that the various depositions which now form the secondary strata of the basin, and which we find every where so displaced and broken, must wiginally have occupied extensive and continuous planes ; and though somewhat modified in form by the chance irregularities of the floor on ^^'hich they rested their position must of necessity have been nearly horizontal. The alternate layers of sandstone and clay had settled at a remoter period, — the lias at a more recent ; and over all were spread the waters of the sea, like tliose of a lake in early spring Avhen they rise above its plane of yet unbroken ice. And, like the ice too, this lower firmament separated the waters above from tlie waters below. But the ele- ment which composed the under fluid differed widely from that of the upper ; — it was a sterner, a fiercer, a more resistless. The sea may rise at the call of the winds and engulf a navy, but what, save tlie fire which rages in the internal recesses of the earth, can awaken the earthquake and the Aolcano, and swallow up whole cities, ^vith the hills which had towered over them ? In some remote epoch a terrible convul- sion, or rather series of convulsions took place. The THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. G3 ice of the secondary deposition^ like that of the Baltic during the gales of April, was suddenly broken up. The under strata, which had been entombed for ages, were forced through the upper in huge half molten masses, that heaved their broken ridges into the air. The two Sutors, the hill of Eathie, the various emi- nences of the chain, till where it merges in the wall of the great valley, seem to have mounted from the abyss at this period, like those chiefs which rise from among the people when some overwhelming revolu- tion has broken up the older formations of society ; and at their feet we find what were the superior strata trampled and broken into every complexity of disar- rangement ; — in some places thrown otf in a nearly vertical angle, in others striding over the back of some hidden mass, which, when ascending to the surface, was arrested by the way, — here sinking abruptly into the sea, there frowning in a sudden precipice over the shore, yonder thrusting up their sharp ledges through the soil. Even the central cluster of islands, now a group of lofty mountains, shared in the convulsion ; — they were heaved upwards into a higher and colder region, and the sides of the great valley which divides them from sea to sea were torn asunder in the ascent. But what imagination can conceive of all the circum- stances of grandeur which must have attended so sub- lime a revolution ; when the lower rocks, glowing like the moon as she rises amid a sea of vapour, raised their immense heads above the crust that for ages had accumulated over them ; and the granitic band that had interposed its huge barrier between the eastern and Avestern oceans was snapped asunder like the 64 THE ANTIQUARY OF THE WORLD. magic girdle of Florimel, or tlie %vitlis of Delilah. We fail in recalling, amid the brightness and tranquillity of a scene so lovely as that which now lies spread before us, the heave of earthquakes, the bursting of flames, the roar of waves, the rush of cataracts, lands rising, seas receding, the yaA\Tiing of valleys, the up- heaving of hills, and thickening over the whole, the canopy of a mingled darkness of smoke, ashes, and vapour. 65 CHAPTER V. The wild sea, baited by the fierce north east, So roard, so madly raged, so proudly swell'd. As it would thunder full into our streets. Armstrong. There rises directly over the town of Cromarty^ to the height of nearly a hundred feet, a green sloping bank, in some places covered with wood, in others laid out into gardens and fields. We may trace it at a glance all along the shores of the frith, from where it merges into the southern Sutor, till where it sinks, at the upper extremity of the hay of UdoU ; and, fronting it on the opposite side, we may see a similar enscarpment, winding along the various curves and in- dentations of the coast, — now retiring far into the country along the edge of the bay of Nigg, — now abutting into the frith, near the village of Invergordon. The friths of Moray and Dornoch are commanded by resembling ramparts of bank of a nearly corresponding elevation, and a thorough identity of character ; and, as in the frith of Cromarty, the space between their bases and the shore is occupied by a strip of level country, which in some places encroaches on the sea in the form of long low promontories, and is hollowed out in otliers to nearly the base of the enscarpment. Whenever we examine, we find data to conclude, that in some remote era, — remote, though but of yes- £ 66 THE OLD COAST LINE. terday compared with the unmeasured periods of the preceding chapter, this continuous hank formed the line of coast, and that the plain at its base Avas every where covered hy the waters of the sea. We see headlands, rounded as if by the waves, advancing, the one beyond the other, into the waving fields, and richly -swarded meadows of this lower terrace, and receding bays with their grassy unbeaten shores com- paratively abrupt at the entrance, and reclining in a flatter angle A\'ithin. We may find too, every where under the vegetable soil of the terrace, alternate layers of sand and water-wom pebbles, and occasionally, though of rarer occurrence, beds of shells of the ex- isting species, and the bones of fish. In the valley of Munlochy the remains of oyster beds, which could not have been formed in less tlian two fathoms of ^vater, have been discovered a full half mile from the sea ; beds of cockles still more extensive, and the bones of a porpoise have been dug up among the fields which border on the bay of Nigg ; similar appearances occur in the vicinity of Tain ; and in digging a well, about thirty years ago, in the ^A'estern part of the to\A'n of Cromarty, there ^^'as found in the gravel a large fir tree, which, from the rounded appearance of the trunk and branches, seemed to have been at one time ex- posed to the action of the waves. In a burying ground of the town, which lies embosomed in an angle of the bank, the sexton sometimes finds the dilapidated spoils of our commoner shellfish mingling with the ruins of a nobler animal ; and in another inflection of the bank, which lies a short half mile to the east of the towai, there is a vast accumulation of drift peat, many feet THE OLD COAST LINE. 67 in thickness, and the remains of huge trees. Let us examine the contents of the latter inflection. — Our histor}^ Hke that of our species, has its obscure middle period of -which no records exist ; and it is interesting to remark how, in striding across the chasm, we leave on the further edge the extinct animals of a former creation, to find on the nearer, those wliich still in- habit our seas ; and quit at once the palms and gi- gantic testaeea of the tropics, for the mosses and lichens of a cold and weeping climate. Let us first remark that nearly opposite to the in- flection of the bank, but fully three hundred yards lower down, there is a similar inflection of the shore, which serves as a kind of natural wear in detaining wrack and tangle, and in A\hicli we sometimes find, after storms from the north-east, accumulations of sea weed many yards in extent, and several feet in depth. Let us observe too that the inflection of the bank must have formed just such a similar wear, and that the green swampy slope, covered with trees, which Ave see rising in its centre, occupies relatively the same place which the weed does in the angle of the shore. Somewhat more than thirty years ago this slope was laid open by a water spout to the depth of twelve feet, when it was discovered to be composed mostly of vegetable remains, — part of the i-uins, perhaps, of one of those forests, which covered, at one time, almost the entire surface of the island, and sheltered the naked inhabitants from the legions of Agricola. Huge trees from two to four feet in diameter, and so entirely de- cayed that they oflfered scarcely more resistance to the tool than banks of common clay, were seen to 68 THE OLD COAST LINE. stretch across the bottom of the newly formed chasm_, or to protiiide from its sides ; the soil in Avhich they were embedded was a black solid peat-moss^ (com- posed mostly of bark and branches) alternating at various depths with layers of sand and gravel ; and in masses of a fetid unctuous earth, which seemed en- dowed with a stronger preservative quality than even the moss itself, there were found the leaves of plants, so little decayed that the species could still be dis- tinguished, stalks of what seemed to have been either grass or straw, and whole handfulls of hazel nuts. I have even found in this unctuous substance the frag- ments of some of our less fragile insects, — those sheathes which cover the wings of the green beetle, and the remains of a little fly of a deep jet colour, but burnished like the darker feathers of the magpie, with a shade of crimson and green. It is not yet four years since there were dug out of it, about nine feet from the surface, three huge oaken planks, which had evidently been fashioned by the hand of man ; and in the bottom of the chasm, which is now fast filling up, there were found, about fourteen years before, frag- ments of the bones and horns of deer, and the horn of an elk, I have not unfrequently amused myself in this place of bogs and quagmires by associating its contents with the landscapes of a wide forest, in- habited by wild animals which are now only to be found in the wastes of Norway and the Ukraine, or by men nearly as wild, who, with implements like those of the South Sea islands, are making their first rude essays in the arts. Sometimes too, to vary the scene, I can connect the ruins before me with the devasta- THE OLD COAST LINE. 69 tions of some signal inundation, Avliicli, after destroy- ing forests and the dwellings of men, and surprising the roe and the elk in their lairs, covered our friths and hays ■\^'ith the spoils of the ravaged country. The era of the upper coast line we find it impossible to fix ; but there are grounds enough from which to conclude that it must have been remote, — so remote, perhaps, as to lie beyond the beginnings of our more authentic histories. We see, in the vicinity of Tain, one of the oldest ruins of the province situated far below the base of the enscarpment ; and meet in the neighbourhood of Kessock, at a still lower level, with old Celtic cairns and tumuli. It is a well established fact too, that, for at least the last three hundred years, the sea, instead of receding, has been gradually en- croaching on the shores of tlie bay of Cromarty ; and that the place formerly occupied by the old borough, is now covered every tide by nearly two fathoms of water. — The waters of full flood retired from the old coast line ; — there was a low ebb, and they are now again returning. Is it not supposed by astronomers that the sun of our system, accompanied by the orbs that ceaselessly ■\A'heel round it, is itself revolving round some unknown centre, though the history of human observation be spread over too brief a space to enable us to ascei'tain its progress in the vast circle ? Were the life of man to be measured by centm'ies instead of seasons, w^e might \vitness something of this kind in the phenomena of the tides : — We might see in them as it were cycle enclosing cycle in this way, — the ebb and flow of every twelve hours repeated on 70 THE OLD TOWN. an immensely extended scale in periods of more than a thousand years. The last vestige of what is still termed Old Cromarty disappeared about eighteen years ago, when a row of large stones, which had evidently fonned the founda- tion line of a fence, was carried away by some work- men employed in erecting a bulwark. But the few traditions connected with it are not yet entirely effaced. A fisherman of the last centviry is said to have found among the title deeds of his cottage, a very old piece of parchment, with a profusion of tufts of wool brist- ling on one of its sides, and bearing in rude antique characters on the other a detail of the measurement and boundaries of a garden which had occupied the 'identical spot on which he usually anchored his skiff. I am old enough to have conversed with men who re- membered to have seen a piece of corn land, and a belt of planting below two properties in the eastern part of the town, that are now bounded by the sea. I reckon among mv acquaintance an elderly person, who when sailing along the shore about half a century ago, in the company of a very old man, heard the lat- ter remark, that he was now guiding the helm where, sixty years before, he had guided the plough. Of Elspat Hood, a native of Cromarty, who died in the year 1701, it is said that she attained to the extraor- dinary age of 120 years, and that in her recollection, which embraced the latter part of the sixteenth cen- tury, the Clach Malacha, a large stone covered with sea weed, whose base only partially dries during the ebb of Spring and Lammas tides,, and which lies a full THE OLD TOWN. 71 quarter of a mile from the shore, was surrounded Ijy corn fiekls and clumps of wood. And it is a not less curious circumstance than any of these, that about ninety years ago, after a violent night storm from the north-east, the beach below the town was found in the morning strewed over with luiman bones, which, with several blocks of hewn stone had been washed by the surf out of what had been formerly a burying place. The bones were carried to the churchyard, and buried beneath the eastern gable of the church ; and one of the stones, — the confer stone of a ponderous cornice, is still to be seen on the shore. In the friths of Beauly and Dornoch the sea seems to have en- croached to fully as great an extent as in the bay of Cromarty. Below the town of Tain a strip of land, which the militia of the county have frequented for drill and parade, has been s^\•ept away within the recol- lection of some of the older inhabitants; and there may be traced at low water, (says Carey in his notes to Craig Phadrig) on the range of shore that stretches from the ferry of Kessock to nearly Redcastle, tlie remains of sepulcliral cairns, which must have been raised before the places they occupy were invaded by the sea, and which, when laid open, have been found to contain beams of wood, urns, and human bones. — But it is full time that man, the proper inhabitant of the countrv, should be more thoroughly introdviced into this portion of its history. We feel comparatively little interest in the hurricane or the earthquake which ravages only a desert, where there is no intelligent mind to be moved by the majesty of power, or the sublimity of danger ; on the other hand, there is no event, how- 72 THE STORMS OF THE FIVE WINTERS. ever trivial in itself, wliicli may not be deemed of im- portance if it operates on human character and human passion. It is not much more than twenty years since a se- ries of violent storms from the hostile north-east, which came on at almost regular intervals for five successive winters, seemed to threaten the modern town of Cromarty, with the fate of the ancient. The tides rose higher than tides had ever been known to rise before ; and as the soil exposed to the action of the Avaves was gradually disappearing, instead of the gentle slope with which the land formerly merged into the beach, its boundaries were marked out by a dark abrupt line resembling a turf wall. Some of the peo- ple whose houses bordered on the sea looked ex- ceedingly grave, and affirmed there was no danger whatever ; those who lived higher up thought dif- ferently, and pitied their poor neighbours from the bottom of tlieir hearts. The consternation was height- ened too by a prophecy of Thomas the Rhymer, handed down for centuries, but little thought of be- fore. It was predicted, it is said, by the old wizard, that Cromarty should be twice destroyed by the sea, and that fish should be caught in abundance on the Castle-hill, — a rovmded projection of the enscarpment which rises behind the houses. Man owes much of his ingenuity to his misfortunes ; and who does not know tliat, were he less weak and less exposed as an animal, he would be much less pow- erful as a rational creature. On principles so obvious, these storms had the effect of converting not a few of the townsfolks into builders and aroliitectSc In the DONALD miller's WARS WITH THE SEA. 73 eastern suburb of the town, where the land presents a low yet projecting front to the waves, the shore is hemmed in by walls and bulwarks which might be mistaken by a stranger approaching the place by sea, for a chain of little forts. They were erected during the wars of the five winters by the proprietors of the gardens and houses behind ; and the enemy, against whom they had to maintain them, was the sea. At first the contest seemed wellnigh hopeless; — week after week was spent in thro\\'ing up a single bulwark, and an assault of a few hours demolished the whole line. But skill and perseverance prevailed at last ; — the storms are all blown over, but the gardens and houses still remain. Of the many who built and planned during this war, the most indefatigable, the most skil- ful, the most successfid, was Donald Miller. Donald was a true Scotchman. He was bred a shoe- maker ; and painfully did he toil late and early for about twenty-five years with one solitary object in view, which, daring all that time, he had never lost sight of, — no, not for a single moment. And what was that one ? — independence, — a competency suffici- ent to set him above the necessity of further toil ; and thisheatlength achieved without doing aught, for which the severest censor could accuse him of meanness. The amount of his savings did not exceed four hundred pounds ; but, rightly deeming himself wealthy, for he had not learned to love money for its own sake, he shut up his shop. His father, dying soon after, he succeeded to one of the snuggest, though most peril- ously situated little properties, within the throe cor- ners of Cromarty, — the sea bounding it on the one side, 74 DONALD miller's WARS WITH THE SEA. and a stream^ small and scanty during the droughts of summer, hut sometimes more than sufficiently formid- able in winter, sweeping past it on the other. The se- ries of storms came on, and Donald found he had gained nothing by shutting up his shop. He had built a bidwark in the old, lumbering, Crom- arty style of the last century, and confined the wander- ings of the stream by two straight walls. Across the walls he had just thrown a wooden bridge, and croAvned the bulwark ■with a parapet, when on came the first of the storms, — a night of sleet and hurricane, — and lo ! in the morning, the bulwark lay utterly overthrown, and the bridge, as if it had marched to its assistance, lay beside it, half buried in sea ^\•rack. " Ah," ex- claimed the neighbours, " it would be well for us to be as sure of our summer's employment as Donald Miller, honest man ! Summer came ; the bridge strided over the stream as before ; the bulwark was built anew, and with such neatness and apparent strength, that no bulwark on the beach could compare with it. Again came winter ; and the second bulwark, with its proud parapet, and rock like strength, shared the fate of the first. Donald fairly took to his bed. He rose, however, with renewed vigour, and a third bulwark, more thoroughlyfinished than even the second, stretched ere the beginning of autumn, between his property and the sea. Throughout the whole of that summer, from grey morning to grey evening, there might be seen on the shore of Cromarty a decent-looking, elderly man, armed with lever and mattock, rolling stones, or rais- ing them from their beds in the sand, or fixing them together in a sloping wall^ — toiling as never labourer DONALD MILLER S WARS WITH THE SEA. 75 toiled, and ever and anon, as a nciglibour sauntered the way, straightening his weary back, and tendering the ready snuff-box. That decent-looking, elderly man was Donald Miller. But his toil was all in vain ; again came winter and the storms ; again had he be- taken himself to his bed, for his third bulwark had gone the way of the two others. With a resolution truly indomitable, he rose yet again, and erected a fourth bul\^-ark, which has now presented an unbroken front to the storms of twenty years. Though Donald had never studied mathematics as taught in books or the schools, he was a profound mathematiciannot\vithstanding. Experience had taught him the superiority of the sloping to the perpendiciUar wall in resisting the waves ; and he set himself to dis- cover that particular angle which, without being in- conveniently low, resists them best. Every new bul- wark was a new experiment made on principles which he had discovered in the long nights of ^vinter, when hanging over the fire, he converted the hearth-stone into a tablet, and, with a pencil of charcoal, scribbled it over with diagrams. But he could never get the sea to join issue with him by changing in the line of liis angles ; for, however deep he sunk his foundations, his insidious enemy contrived to get under them by wash- ing away the beach ; and then the whole wall tumbled into the cavity. Now, however, he had discovered a remedy. First he laid a row of large flat stones on their edges in the line of the foundation, and paved the whole of the beach below imtil it presented the appearance of a sloping street, — taking care that his pavement, by running in a steeper angle than the shore, 76 DONALD miller's WARS WITH THE SEA. sliould-, at its lower edge, base itself in the sand. Then, from the flat stones ■\^•hich formed the upper bomidary of the pavement, he built a ponderous wall which, ascending in the proper angle, rose to the level of the garden, and a neat firm parapet surmounted the whole. — Winter came, and the storms came ; but though the waves broke against the bulwark with as little re- morse as against the Sutors, not a stone moved out of its place. Donald had at length fairly triumphed over the sea. The progress of character is fully as interesting a study as the progress of art ; and both are curiously exemplified in the history of Donald Miller. Now that he had conquered his enemy, and might realize his long cherished dream of unbi'oken leisure, he found that constant employment had, through the force of habit, become essential to his comfort. His garden ■v^'as the very paragon of gardens ; and a single glance was sufficient to distinguish his furrow of potatoes •from every other furrow in the field ; but, now that his main occupation was gone, much time hung on his hands, notwithstanding his attentions to both. First, he set himself to build a wall quite round his property ; and a very neat one he did build, but unfortunately, when once erected, there was nothing to knock it down again. Then he white-washed his house, and built a new sty for his pig, the walls of which he also white-washed. Then he enclosed two little patches on the side of the stream, to serve as bleaching greens. Then he covered the upper part of his bidwark with a layer of soil, and sowed it with grass. Then he re- paired a well, the common property of the town. Then DONALD miller's WARS WITH THE SEA. 77 he constructed a patli for foot passengers on the side of a road, which, passing his garden on the south, leads to Cromarty House. His lahours for the good of the puhlic were ^n-etchedly recompensed, by, at least, his more immediate neighbours. They would dip their dirty pails into the well he had repaired, and tell him, when he hinted at the propriety of washing them, that they were no dirtier than they used to be. Their pigs would break into his bleaching greens, and furrow up the sward ^\ith their snouts ; and when he threat- ened to pound them, he would be told " how unthriv- ing a thing it was to keep the puir brutes aye in the fauld," and how impossible a thing " to watch them ilka time they gae'd out." Herd-boys would gallop their horses, and drive their cattle along the path he had formed for foot passengers exclusively, and when he stormed at the little fellows, they would canter past, and shout out, from what they deemed a safe distance, that their " horses and kye had as good a right to the road as himsel." Worse than all the rest, when he had finished whitening the walls of his pig- sty, and gone in for a few minutes to the house, a mischievous urchin, who had watched his opportunity, sallied across the bridge, and seizing on the brush, white-washed the roof also. Independent of the insult, nothing could be in worse taste; and yet, when the poor man preferred his complaint to the father of the urchin, tlie boor only deigned to mutter in reply, that " folk would liae nae peace, till tliree Lammas tides, joined intil ane, would come and roll up the Clack Malacha" (it weighs about twenty tons,) "frae its place i' the sea, till flood water mark." It seemed natural to infer, that, a tide potent 7o DONALD MILLER S WARS WITH THE SEA. enough to roll up the Clack Malacha, "\\'oukl demolish the bulwark, and concentrate the energies of Donald for, at least, another season. But Donald found employment, and the neighbom's were left undisturbed to live the life of their fathers without the intervention of the three Lammas tides. Some of the gentlemen farmers of the parish who reared fields of potatoes, which they sold out to the in- habitants in square portions of a hundred yards, be- sought Donald to superintend the measurement and the sale. The office was one of no emolument what- ever, but he accepted it Avith thanl:fulncss ; and though, when he had potatoes of his own to dispose of, he never failed to lower the market for the benefit of the poor, every one now, except the farmers, pronounced him rigid and nan'ow to a fault. On a dissolution of Parliament, Cromarty became the scene of an election, and the honourable member-apparent deeming it pro- per, as the thing had become customary, to white- wash the dingier houses of the tovni, and cover its dirtier lanes with gi'avel, Donald was requested to direct the im- provements. Proudly did he comply j and never be- fore did the same sumofe/ec^«ow -money whiten so many houses, and gravel so many lanes. Employment flowed in upon him from every quarter. If any of his ac- quaintance had a house to build, Donald was appointed inspector. If they had to be enfeoffed in their pro- perties Donald acted as bailie, and tendered the earth and stone with the gravity of a judge. He surveyed fields, suggested improvements, and grew old witliout either feeling or regretting it. Towards the close of his last, and almost only illness, he called for one of DONALD miller's WARS WITH THK SEA. 79 his friends, a carpenter, and gave orders for liis coffin ; he named the sempstress who was to be employed in making his shroud; he prescribed the manner in wliicli his lyke-wakc should be kept, and both the order of liis funeral, and the streets tlirough which it was to pass. He was particular in his injunctions to the sex- ton, that the bones of his father and mother should be placed directly above his coffin ; — and professing him- self to be alike happy that he had lived, and that he Avas going to die, he turned him to the wall, and ceased to breathe a few hours after. With all his rage for im- provement, he was a good old man of the good old school. Often has he stroked my head, and spoken to me of my father ; and Avhen, at an after period, he had learned that I set a value on M'hatever was antique and curious, he presented me with the fragment of a large black letter Bible which had once belonged to the Urquharts of Cromarty. 80 CHAPTER VI. All hail Macbeth ! thou shalt be king hereafter. Shakspearb. It isj perhaps^ not quite unworthy of remark, that not only is Cromarty the sole district of the kingdom whose annals ascend into the obscure ages of fable, but that the first passage of even its real history derives its chief interest, not from its importance as a fact, but from A\hat may be termed its chance union with a sublime fiction of poetry. Few, I daresay, have so much as dreamed of connecting either its name or scenery with the genius of Shakspeare, and yet they are linked to one of the most powerful of his achieve- ments as a poet, by the bonds of a natural association. The very first incident of its true history would have constituted, had the details been minvttely preserved, the early biography of the celebrated Macbeth ; who, according to our early historians, makes his first ap- pearance in public life as Thane of Cromarty, and Maormor, or great-man of Ross. But I am aware I do not derive from this circumstance any right to be- come his biographer. For though his character M-as probably formed at a time when he may be regarded as the legitimate property of the provincial annalist, no sooner is it exhibited in action than he is consigned over to the chroniclers of the kinadom. OUR EARLIER DATA. 81 For the earlier facts of our liistory tlie evidence is rather circumstantial than direct. We see it stamped on the face of the country, or inscribed on our older obelisks, or sometimes disinterred from out of hillocks of sand, or accumulations of moss ; but very rarely do we find it deposited in our archives. Let us ex- amine it ho^\•ever, wherever it presents itself, and strive, should it seem at all intelligible, to determine regarding its purport and amount. — Not more than sixty years ago a bank of blown sand, directly under the northern Sutor, which had been heaped over the soil ages before, was laid open by the winds of a stormy winter, when it was discovered that the nucleus on which it had originally formed, was composed of the bones of various animals of the chase, and the horns of deer. It is not much more than twelve years since there were dug up in the same sandy tract two earthen urns, — the one filled with ashes and fragments of half burned bones, the other with bits of a black bituminous-looking stone, somewhat resembling jet, which had been fashioned into beads, and little flat parallelograms, perforated edgewise ^^'itll four holes apiece. Nothing could be ruder than the workmanship : The urns were clumsily modelled by the hand, un- assisted bv a lathe ; the ornaments, rough and un- polished, and still bearing the marks of the tool, re- sembled nothing of modern production, except, per- haps, the toys which herd boys sometimes amuse their leisure in forming with the knife. We find remains such as these fraught with a more faithful evidence regarding the early state of our country than the black- letter pages of our chroniclers. They testify of a period F 82 THE FIONS OF KNOCK-FERRIL. when the chase formed, perhaps^ the sole emplo}Tnent of the few scattered inhabitants ; and of tlie practice so prevalent among savages of burying with their dead friends what they most loved when alive. It may be further remarked as a curious fact, and one from which we may infer that trinkets wrought in so un- couth a style could have belonged to only the first stage of society, that man's inventive powers receive their earliest impulse rather from his admiration of the beautiful, than his sense of the useful. He dis- plays a taste in ornament, and has learned to dye his skin, and to tatoo it with rude figures of the sun and moon, before he has become ingenious enough to dis- cover that he stands in need of a covering. There is a tradition of this part of the country which seems not a great deal more modern than the urns or their ornaments, and which bears the character of the savage nearly as distinctly impressed on it. On the summit of Knock -Ferril, a steep hill which rises a few miles to the west of Dingwall, there are the re- mains of one of those vitrified forts which so puzzle and interest the antiquary ; and which was originally constructed, says tradition, by a gigantic tribe of Fions, for the protection of their wives and children, when they themselves were engaged in hunting. It chanced in one of their excursions that a mean-spirited little fellow of the party, not much more than fifteen feet in height, was so distanced by his more active brethren, that, leaving them to follow out the chase, he returned home, and throwing himself down, much fatigued, on the side of the eminence, fell fast asleep, Garry, for so the unlucky hunter was called, was no favourite THE FIONS OF KNOCK-FERRIL. 83 with the women of the tribe ; — lie ^\■as spiritless and diminutive, and ill tempered ; and as they could make little else of liim that they cared for, they converted him into the butt of all their severer jokes, and less agreeable humours. On seeing that he had fallen asleep they stole out to where he lay, and after fasten- ing his long hair with pegs to the grass, awakened him with their shouts and their laughter. He strove to ex- tricate himself, but in vain ; until at length infuriated by their gibes, and the pain of his own exertions, he wrenched up his head, leaving half his locks behind him, and hurrying after them, set fire to the strong- hold into which they had rushed for shelter. The flames rose till they mounted over the roof, and broke out at every slit and opening ; but Garry, unmoved by the shrieks and groans of the sufferers within, held fast the door until all was silent ; when he fled into the remote Highlands, towards the west. The males of the tribe, who had, meanwhile, been engaged in hunting on that part of the northern Sutor which bears the name of tlie hill of Nigg, — alarmed by the vast column of smoke which they saw ascending from their dwelling, came pressing to the frith of Cromarty, and leaping across on their hunting spears, they hur- ried home. But they arrived to find only a huge pile of embers in which the very stones of the building were sputtering and bubbling with the intense heat like the contents of a boiling caldron. Wild with rage and astonishment, and yet collected enough to conclude that none but Garry could be the author of a deed so barbarous, they tracked him into a nameless High- land glen, which has ever since been known as Glen- 84 THE king's sons. Garry, and there tore him to pieces. And as all the women of the tribe had perished in the flames, there was an end^ AA'hen this forlorn and widowed generation had passed away, to the whole race of the Fions. The next incident of our history hears no other connection to this story, than that it belongs to a very early age, that of the Vikingr and Sea-King, and that we owe om* data regarding it not to written records, but to an interesting class of ancient remains, and to a doubtful and imperfect tradition. In this age, says the tradition, the Maormor of Ross was married to a daughter of the king of Denmark, and proved so barbarous a husband, that her father, to whom she at length found the means of escape, fitted out a fleet and army to avenge on him the cruelties inflicted on her. Three of her brothers accompanied the expedition ; but, on nearing the Scottish coast, a terrible storm arose, in which almost all the vessels of the fleet either foundered or were driven ashore, and the three princes were drowned. The ledge of rock at which this latter disaster is said to have taken place, and which has been described in a former chapter as that part of the Lias ridge which juts out of the bay of Shandwick, still bears the name of the King's-sons; a magnificent cave which opens among the cliflTs of the neighbouring shore is still known as the King's-cave ; and a path that winds to the summits of the precipices beside it, as the King's-path. The bodies of the princes, says the tradition, were interred, one at Shandwick, one at Hilton, and one at Nigg ; and the sculptured obe- lisks of these places, three very curious pieces of an- tiquity, are said to be monuments erected to their THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. 85 memory by their fotlier. In no part of Scotland do stones of this class so abomid as on the shores of the Moray Frith. And they have often attracted the notice, and employed the ingenuity of the antiquary ; but it still appears somewhat doubtful whether we are to regard them as of Celtic or of Scandinavian origin. It may ho. remarked, however, that though their style of sculpture resembles, in its general features, that exhi- bited in the ancient crosses of Wales, which are un- questionably British, and though they are described in a tradition current on the southern shore of the Moray Frith, as monuments raised by the inhabitants on the expulsion of the Danes, the amount of evidence seems to preponderate in the opposite direction ; when we consider that they are invariably found bordering on the sea ; that their design and workmanship dis- play a degree of taste and mechanical ability which the Celtse of North Britain seem never to have pos- sessed ; that the eastern shores of the German Ocean abound in similar monuments which, to a complexity of ornament not more decidedly Runic, add the Runic inscription ; and that the tradition just related which, wild as it may appear, can hardly be deemed less au- thentic than the one opposed to it, — seeing that it be- longs to a district still peopled by the old inhabitants of the country, whereas the other seems restricted to the lowlands of Moray, — assigns their erection, not to the natives, but to their rapacious and un- welcome visitors, the Danes. The reader may per- haps indulge me in a few descriptive notices of the three stones connected with the tradition ; — they all lie within six miles of Cromarty, and their weathered 86 THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. and mossy planes, roughened with complicated tracery and doubtful hieroglyphics, may be regarded as pages of provincial history, — as pages, however, which we must copy rather than translate. May I not urge, be- sides, that men who have visited Egypt to examine monuments not much more curious, have Avritten folios on their return ? The obelisk at Hilton, though perhaps the most elegant of its class in Scotland, is less Vnown than any of the other two, and it has fared more hardly. For, about two centuries ago it was taken down by some barbarous mason of Ross, who converted it into a tomb- stone, by erazing the neat mysterious hieroglyphics of one of the sides, and engraving on the place which they had occupied a rude shield and label, and the following laughable inscription ; no bad specimen, by the bye, of the taste and judgment which could de- stroy so interesting a monument, and of that fortuitous species of wit which lies within the reach of accident, and of accident alone. HE • THAT • LIVES • WEIL • DYES • WEIL • SAYS • SOLOMON THE ■ WISE. HEI R ■ L YES ■ ALEXANDER • DVFF • AND • HIS • THRIE • WIVES. The side of the obelisk which the chisel has spared, is surrounded by a broad border, embossed in a style of ornament that would hardly disgrace the frieze of an Athenian portico ; — the centre is thickly occupied by the figures of men, some on horseback, some afoot, — of Avild and tame animals, musical instruments, and weapons of war and of the chase. The stone of Shand- wick is still standing, and bears on the side which THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. 87 corresponds to the obliterated surface of the other, tlie figure of a large cross, composed of circular knobs wTOught into an involved and intricate species of fret- work which seems formed by the twisting of myriads of snakes. In the spaces on the sides of the shaft there are two huge, clumsy looking animals, the one resembling an elephant, the other a lion ; over each of these a St. Andrew seems leaning forward from his cross ; and on the reverse of the obelisk the sculp- ture represents processions, hunting scenes, and com- bats. — These, however, are but meagre notices ; — the obelisk at Nigg I shall describe more minutely as an average specimen of the class to which it belongs. It stands in the parish burying ground, beside the eastern gable of the church ; and bears on one of its sides, like the stone at Shandwick, a large cross which, it may be remarked, rather resembles that of the Greek than of the Roman church, and on the other a richly embossed frame, enclosing, like the border of the obe- lisk at Hilton, the figures of a crowded assemblage of men and animals. Beneath the arms of the cross the surface is divided into four oblong compartments, and there are three above ; one on each side, which fomi complete squares, and one atop which, like the pedi- ment of a portico, is of a triangular shape. In the lower angle of this upper compartment, two priest- like figures, attired in long garments, and furnished each with a book, incline forwards in the attitude of prayer ; and in the centre between them there is a cir- cular cake or wafer, which a dove, descending from above, holds in its bill. Two dogs seem starting to- wards the wafer from either side ; and directly under 88 THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. it there is a figure so much -weathered, that it may be deemed to represent, as fancy may determine, either a httle circular table, or the sacramental cup. — A pic- toi'ial record cannot be other than a doubtful one ; and it is difficult to decide whether tlie hieroglyphic of this department denotes the ghostly influence of the priest in delivering the soul from the e^dls of an intermediate state ; for, at a slight expense of conjectural analogy, we may premise that the mysterious dove descends in answer to the prayer of the tv^"o kneeling figures to deliver the little emblematical cake from the " power of the dog ;" — or, whether it may not represent a treaty of peace between rival chiefs whose previous hostility may be symbolized by the two fierce animals below, and their pacific intentions by the bird above, and who ratify the contract by an oath, solemnized over the book, the cup, and the wafer. A very few such ex- planations might tempt one to quote the well known story of the Professor of signs and the Aberdeen but- cher ; the weight of the evidence, however, rests ap- parently with those Avho adopt the last. We see the locks of the kneeling figures curling upon their shoul- ders in unclerical profusion ; while the presence of the two books, with the absence of any written in- scription, seem characteristic of the mutual memorial of tribes, Avho, though not wholly illiterate, possess no common language save the very doubtful language of symbol. If we hold further that the stone is of Scan- dinavian origin, — and it seems a rather difiicult matter to arrive at a different conclusion, we can hardly sup- pose that the natives should have left unmutilated the monument of a people so little beloved, had they had THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. 89 no part in what it records, or no interest in its preser- vation. We pass to the other compartments; — some of tliese and the plane of the cross are occupied by a species of fret-work exceedingly involved and compli- cated, but formed, notwithstanding, on regular mathe- matical figures. There are others which contain squares of elegantly arrayed tracery, designed in a style which we can almost identify with that of the border illuminations of our older manuscripts, or of the orna- ments, imitative of these, which occur in works printed during; the reigns of Elizabeth and James. But wliat seem the more curious compartments of the stone are embossed into rows of circular knobs, covered ovei', as if by basket work, Avith the intricate fold- ings of myriads of snakes ; and which may be either deemed to allude to the serpent and apple of the Fall, — thus placed in no inapt neighbourhood to the cross ; or to symbolize (for even the knobs may be supposed to consist wholly of serpents) that of which the serpent has ever been held emblematic, and which we cannot regard as less appositely intro- duced, — a complex wisdom, or an incomprehensible eternity. The hieroglyphics of the opposite side are in lower relief, and though the various fret-work of the bor- der is executed in a style of much elegance, the whole seems to owe less to the care of the sculptor. The centre is occupied by what, from its size, we may deem the chief figure of tlie group ; — it is that of a man attired in long garments, caressing a fawn ; and directly fronting him, there are the figures of a lamb 90 THE OBELISKS OF EASTER ROSS. and a harp. The whole is, perhaps, emblematical of peace, and may be supposed to tell the same story with the upper hieroglyphic of the reverse. In the space beneath there is the figure of a man furnished with cjTubals which he seems clashing with much glee, and that of a horse and its rider, surrounded by animals of the chase ; •\\-hile in the upper part of the stone there are dogs, deer, an armed huntsman, and suiTnounting the ■^^'hole, an eagle or raven. It may not be deemed unworthy of remark, that the style of the more complex ornaments of this stone very much resembles that which seems to obtain in the sculptures and tatooings of the New-Zealandcr. We see ex- hibited in both the same intricate regularity of pattern, and almost similar combinations of the same waving lines. And we are led to infer, that though the rude Scandinavian of perhaps nine centuries ago had travel- led a long stage in advance of the New-Zealander of our owTi times, he had yet his ideas of the beautiful cast in nearly the same mould. Is it not a truly wonderfvil fact, that man, in his advances towards the just and graceful in design, proceeds not from the simple to the complex, but from the complex to the simple ? The slope of the northern Sutor which fronts the town of Cromarty, terminates about a hundred and fifty feet above the level of the shore in a precipitous declivity sumiounted by a little gi-een knoll \A-hich, for the last six centuries has borne the name of Dunskaith. (i. e. the fort of mischief.) And in its immediate vici- nity there is a high lying farm, kno'nTi all over the coun- try as the farm of Castle-Craig. The prospect from the DUNSKAITH. 91 edge of tlie eminence is one of tlie finest in the king- dom, — snperior even to the one whicli I have at- tempted to describe in a previous chapter. We may survey the entire frith of Cromarty spread out be- fore us as in a map ; the town, thougli on the oppo- site shore, seems so completely under our view that we think of looking into its streets ; and yet the distance is sufficient to conceal all but what is pleas- ing in it. The eye in travelling over the country be- yond ascends delighted through the various regions of corn, and wood, and moor, and then expatiates un- fatigued amid a wilderness of blue-peaked hills. And where the land terminates towards the east we may see the dark abrupt cliffs of the southern Sutor flinging their shadows half way across the opening, and dis- tinguish among the lofty crags, which rise to oppose them, the jagged and serrated shelves of the Diamond- rock, — a tall beetling precipice which once bore, if we may trust to tradition, a wondrous gem in its forehead. Often, says the legend, has the benighted boatman gazed from amid the darkness, as he came rowing along the shore, on its clear beacon-like flame, which, streaming from the rock, threw a long fiery strip athwart the water ; and the mariners of other countries have enquired whether the hght which they saw shining so high among the cliff's, right over their mast, did not proceed from the shrine of some saint, or the cell of some liermit. But like the carbuncle of the Ward-hill of Hoy, of which the author of Wav- erly makes so poetical a use, " though it gleamed ruddy as a furnace to them who viewed it from be- neath, it ever became invisible to him whose daring 92 DUNSKAITH. foot had scaled the precipices from whence it darted its splendour." An old campaigner who fought under Abercromby has told me that he has listened to stories of tlie Diamond-rock of Cromarty amid the sand wastes of Egypt; but the jewel has long since disappeared, and we see only the rock. And now the eye after completing its circuit, rests on the eminence of Dunskaith ; — the site of a royal fortress erected by William the Lion, to repress, says Lord Hailes, in his Annals of Scotland, the oft recurring rebellions and disorders of Ross-shire. We can still trace the moat of the citadel, and part of an outwork which rises to- w^ards the hill ; but the walls have sunk into low grassy mounds, and the line of the outer moat has long since been effaced by the plough. — The disorders of Ross-shire seem to have outlived, by many ages, the fortress raised to suppress them. I need hardly ad- vert to a storv so well known as that of the i-obber of this province Avho nailed horse-shoes to the feet of the poor \vidow who had threatened him with the venge- ance of James I., and who, with twelve of his fol- lowers, was brought to Edinburgh by that monarch, to be horse-shoed in turn. Even so late as the reign of James VI. the clans of Ross are classed among the peculiarly obnoxious, in an Act for the punishment of theft, rief, and oppression. Between the times of Macbeth, and an age com- paratively recent, there occurs a wide chasm in the history of Cromarty. The Thane, magnified by the atmosphere of poetry which surrounds him, towers like a giant over the remoter brink of the gap, while, in apparent opposition to every law of perspective, the THE URQUHARTS OF CROMARTY. 03 people on its nearer edge seem diminished into pig- mies. And yet the Urquharts of Cromarty — though Sir Thomas, in his zeal for their honour, has dealt by them as the poets of ancient Greece did by the early history of their country — were a family of considerable antiquity and power. The editor of the second edition of Sir Thomas's J excel, which \\'as not published until the first had been more than a hundred years out of print, states in his advertisement that he had compared the genealogy of his author with another genealogy of the family in the possession of the Lord Lion of Scot- land, and that from the reign of Alexander IL to that of Charles L he had found them perfectly to agree. It is said too — and the testimony of an anonymous writer has need of some such corroboration — that in the old castle of Cromarty there were the initials of several of the earlier Urquharts united to dates of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The lands of the family extended from the farthest point of the southern Sutor to the hill of Kinbeakie, («'. e. end of the li^-ing) a tract which includes the parishes of Cromarty, Kirk-Michael, and Cullicuden ; and, prior to the imprisonment and exile of Sir Thomas, he was vested with the patronage of the chm-ches of these parishes, and the admiralty of the eastern coast of Scotland, from Caithness to Inverness. The first of his ancestors, whose story receives some shadow of confirmation from tradition, was a cotem- porary of Wallace and the Bruce, When ejected from his castle, he is said to have regained it from the English by a stratagem, and to have held it out with only forty men for about seven years. " During that 94 THE URQU HARTS OF CROMARTY, time/' says Sir Thomas, " liis lands Avere wasted and his woods hurnt ; and having nothing he could pro- perly call his own hut the moat hill of Cromarty, which he maintained in defiance of all the efforts of the enemy, he ■\A-as agnamed Gidielmus de monte alto. At length," continues the genealogist, " he was re- lieved by Sir William Wallace, who raised the siege after defeating the English in a little den or hollow about two miles from the town." Tradition, though silent respecting the siege, is more explicit than Sir Thomas in her details of the battle. Somewhat more than four miles to the south of Cromarty, and about the middle of the mountainous ridge which, stretching from tlie Sutors to the village of Rosemarkie, overhangs at the one edge the shores of the Moray Frith, and sinks on the other into a broken moor, there is a little wooded eminence. Like the ridge which it overtops, it sweeps gradually to- wards the east until it terminates in an abrupt preci- pice that overhangs the sea, and slopes upon the west into a marshy hollow, known to the elderly people of the last age and a very few of the present as Wcdlace- slack. The direct line of communication with the southern districts, to travellers who cross the frith at the narrow strait of Ardersier, passes within a few yards of the hollow. And when, sometime during the wars of Edward, a strong body of English troops were marching by this route to join another strong body encamped in the peninsula of Easter Ross, this circumstance is said to have pointed it out to Wallace as a fit place for forming an ambuscade. From the eminence which overtops it, the spectator can look THE URQUHAKTS OF CROMARTY. 95 down on a wide tract of country, while the ravine it- self is concealed by a fiat tubercle of the moor, which, to the traveller approaching from the south or west, seems the base of the eminence. The stratagem suc- ceeded ; the English, surprised and panic-struck, were defeated with much slaughter, six hundred being left dead in the scene of the attack ; and the survivors, closely pursued and Avholly unacquainted with the country, fled towards the north along the ridge of hill Avhich terminates at the bay of Cromarty. From the top of the ridge the two Sutors seem piled the one over the other, and so shut up the opening, that the bay within assumes the appeai-ance of a lake ; and the English deeming it such, pressed onward, in the hope that a continued tract of land stretched between them and their countrjTuen on the opposite shore. They were only undeceived when, on climbing the southern Sutor, where it rises behind the town, they saw an arm of the sea more than a mile in width, and skirted by abrupt and dizzy precipices, opening before them ; — an angiy enemy pressed upon them from behind. The spot is still pointed out where they are said to have made their final stand ; and a few shape- less hillocks, that may still be seen among the trees, are said to have been raised above the bodies of those who fell ; while the survivors, for they were soon beaten from this position, were either driven over the neighbouring precipices, or perished amid the waves of the frith. — Wallace, on another occasion, is said to have fled for refuge to a cave of the Sutors ; and his metrical historian, after narrating his exploits at Dun- otter and Aberdeen, describes him as having " At Cromartie richt monv Southron cndit." 96 WALLACE. Of all the liumbler poets of Scotland^ and where is there a country with more ! there is hardly one who has not sung in praise of Wallace. His exploit^, as we find it recorded in the Je\^xd, connected with the tradition of the cave, has been narrated by the muse of a provincial poet, who published a volume of poems at Inverness about five years ago ; and, in the lack of less questionable materials for this part of my history, I avail myself of his poem. Of old, when Scotia's chiefs of might Sought different sides ere closed the fight ; When sunk in heart our country lay, To wasting ills an easy prey, Domestic feud and foreign sway ; Foretold of Heaven, a patriot rose. Whom none could fly, and none oppose, AVhose heart ne'er lodged a selfish aim, Nor thought nor wish that vice could claim ; Of giant frame and giant mind, He tower'd the first of human kind. Nay, wanton Muse — though Wallace thought. Felt, dared, and died as patriot ought, Such praise as thine were ill aioplied To him, or mortal man beside. Save one ; — and Muse, in lay profane To name that one, were worse than vain. Thus ran the tale : — proud England's host Lay 'trench'd on Croma's winding coast, And rose the Urquliart's towers beneath Fierce shouts of wars, deep groans of death. The Wallace lieard ; — from IMoray's shore One little bark his warriors bore. But died the breeze, and rose the day, Ere gain'd that bark the destined liay ; When, lo ! these rocks a quay supplied, These va^^•^lm2 caves meet shades to hide. WALLACE. 97 Secure, wliere rank the nightshade grew, And patter'd thick the unwholesome dew, Patient of cold and gloom they lay, Till eve's last light had died away. It died away ; — in Croma's hall No flame glanced on the trophied wall, Nor sound of mirth nor revel free. Was heard where joy had wont to be. With day had ceased the siege's din, But still gaunt famine raged within. In chamber lone, on weary bed, That castle's wounded lord was laid ; His woe-worn lady watch'd beside. To pain devote, and grief, and gloom. No taper cheer'd the darksome room ; Yet to the wounded chieftain's sight Strange shapes were there, and sheets of light ; And oft he spoke, in jargon vain. Of ruthless deed, and tyrant reign. For maddening fever fir'd his brain. hark ! the warder's rousing call, — " Rise, warriors, rise', and man the wall ! " Starts up the chief, but rack'd with pain. And weak, he backward sinks again : " O Heaven, they come!" the lady cries, " The Southrons come, and Urquhart dies ! " Nay, 'tis not fever mocks his sight ; His broidered couch is red with light ; In light his lady stands confest, Her hands clasp'd on her heaving breast. And hark ; wild shouts assail the ear, Loud and more loud, near and more near They rise ! — hark, frequent rings the blade, On crested helm relentless laid ; Yells, groans, sharj) sounds of smitten mail. And war-cries load the midnight gale ; O hark ! like Heaven's own thunder high. Swells o'er the rest one ceaseless cry. 98 WALLACE. Racking the dull cold ear of night, " The Wallace ^vight ! — the Wallace wight !" Yes, gleams the sword of Wallace there. Unused his country's foes to spare ; Roars the red camp like funeral pyre. One wild, wide, wasteful sea of fire ; Glow red the low brow'd clouds of night. The wooded hill is bath'd m light, Gleams wave, and field, and turret height. Death's vassals dog the spoiler's horde. Burns in their front the unsparing sword ; The fir'd camp casts its volumes o'er ; Behind spreads wide a skiffless shore ; Fire, flood, and svv'ord, conspire to slay. How sad shall rest mom's early ray On blacken'd strand, and crimson'd main. On floods of gore, and hills of slain ; But iDright its cheering beams shall fall Where mirth whoops in the Urquharts' Plall. Tliere occurs in oui" narrative anotlier wide chasm, which extends from the times of Wallace to the reign of James IV. Like the earlier gap, however, it might be filled up by a recital of events, which, though thev belong properly to the history of the neighbouring districts, must have affected, in no slight degree, the interests and passions of the people of Cromarty. Among these we may reckon the descents on Ross by the Lords of the Isles, which terminated in the battles of Harlaw and Driemderfat, and that contest between the Macintoshes and Munros, ^^hich took place in the same century at the village of Clachnaherry. I might avail myself, too, on a similar principle, of the pilgrim- age of James IV. to the chapel of St. Dothus, near Tain. Who doubts that the people would have found THE FORAY OF THE CI.AXS. 99 much to admire in the sho^^•y hmnility of so gay a king ? But as all these events have, like the story of Macheth, been appropriated by the historians of the kingdom, they are already familiar to the general readei'. In an after age, Cromarty, like Tain, was honoured by a visit from royalty. I find it stated by Calderwood, that, in the year 1589, on the discovery of Huntly's conspiracy, and the discomfitvn-e of his followers at the Bridge of Dee, James VI. rode to Aberdeen, ostensibly with the intention of holding justice courts on the delinquents, but that deputing the business of trial to certain judges whom he in- structed to act with a lenity which the historian con- demns, he set out on a hunting expedition to Crom- arty, from which he returned after an absence of about twenty days. We find not a great deal less of the savage in the records of these latter times than in those of the darker periods which went before. Life and property seem to have been hardly more secure, especially in those hapless districts which, bordering on the High- lands, may be regarded as the battle fields on which needy barbarism, and the imperfectly formed vanguard of a slowly advancing civilization, contended for the mastery. Early in the reign of James IV. the lands of Cromarty were wasted by a combination of the neighbouring clans, headed by Hucheon Rose of Kilravock, Macintosh of Macintosh, and Fraser of Lovat; and so complete was the spoliation that the entire property of the inhabitants, to their very house- hold furniture, was carried away. Restitution A'l'as afterwards enforced by the Lords of Council. ^V'c 100 PATERHEMON. find it decreed in tlie Acta Dommor?(m Concilii for 1492, tliat Hucheon Rose of Kilravock do restore, content, and pay to Mr. Alexander Urqiihart, sheriff of Cromarty, and his tenants, the various items carried off by him and his accomplices, viz. six hundred cows, one hundred horses, one thousand sheep, four hun- dred goats, two hundred swine, and four hundred bolls of victual ; but how immense an amount of suffering must the foray have occasioned from which nothing could be subtracted by any after sentence of the law. Kilravock is said to have conciliated the justice-general on this occasion by resigning into his hands his grand-daughter, the heiress of Calder, then a child, and whose lands the wily magistrate secured to his family, by marrying her to one of his sons. There lived, in the succeeding reign, a proprietor of Cromarty who, from the number of his children, re- ceived, says the genealogist, the title, or agname, of Paterliemon. He had twenty-five sons, who arrived at manhood, and eleven daughters, who ripened into women, and were married. Seven of the sons lost their lives at the battle of Pinkie ; and there were some of the survivors who, settling in England, became the founders of families which, in the days of the Commonwealth, were possessed of considerable pro- perty and influence in Devonshire and Cumberland. Tradition tells the story of Paterliemon someM'hat differently. His children, Avhom it diminishes to twenty, are described as robust and very handsome men ; and he is said to have lived in the reign of Mary. On the visit of that princess to Inverness, and when, according to Buchanan, the Erasers and Mun- PATERHEMON. 101 ros, two of the most warlike clans of the country, Avere raised by their respective chieftains to defend her against the designs of Huntly, the Urquhart is said also to have marched to her assistance witli a strong body of his vassals, and accompanied by all his sons, momited on white horses. At the moment of his arrival Mary was engaged in reviewing the clans, and surrounded by the chiefs and her officers. The vener- able chieftain rode up to her, and, dismounting \\-ith all the ease of a galliard of five-and-twenty, presented to her, as his best gift, his little troop of children. There is yet a third edition of the story : — About the year 1652, one Richard Franck, a native of the sister kingdom, and as devoted an angler as Isaac Walton himself, made the tour of Scotland, and then published a book descriptive of what he had seen. His notice of Cromarty is mostly summed up in a curious little anecdote of the patriarch, which he pro- bably derived from some tradition current at the time of his visit. Sir Thomas he describes as his eldest son ; and the number of his children who arrived at maturity he has increased to forty. " He had thirty sons and ten daughters," says the tourist, " standing at once before him, and not one natural child amongst them." Having attained the extreme verge of human life, he began to consider himself as already dead j and in the exercise of an imagination, which the gene- alogist seems to have inherited with his lands, he derived comfort from the daily repetition of a kind of ceremony, ingenious enough to challenge a compari- son with anv rite of the Romish church. For every 102 PATERHEMON. evening about sunset, being brought out in his coucli to the base of a tower of the castle, he was raised up by pullieSj slowly and gently, to the battlements ; and the ascent he deemed emblematical of the resurrection. Or to employ the more graphic language of the tourist, — " The declining age of this venerable laird of Urquhart, for he had now reached the utmost limit of life, invited him to contemplate mortality, and to cruciate himself by fancying his cradle his sepulchre; therein, therefore, was he lodged night after night, and hauled up by pullies to the roof of his house, approach- ing, as near as the summits of its higher pinnacles would let him, to the beautiful battlements and suburbs of heaven." I find I must deA'ote one other chapter to the con- sideration of the interesting remains, which form almost the sole materials of this earlier portion of my history. But the class of these to which I am now about to turn, are to be found, not on the face of the country, but locked up in the minds of the inhabit- ants. And they are falling much more rapidly into decay ; — mouldering away in their hidden recesses, like bodies of the dead, while the others, which more resemble the green mound and the monumental ta- blet, bid fair to abide the enquiry of coming genera- tions. Those vestiges of ancient superstition, which are to be traced in the customs and manners of the common people, share, in a polite age, a very different fate from those impressions of it, if I may so express myself, which we find stamped upon matter. For when the just and liberal opinions which originate PATERHEMON. 103 with philosophers and men of -geiiivis are diffused over a whole people, a modification of the same good sense which leads the scholar to treasure up old beliefs and usages, serves to emancipate the peasant from their influence or observance. 104 CHAPTER VII. She darklins grapit for the hauks, And in the blue clue throws then. Burns. Violence may anticipate by many centuries the natural progress of decay. There are some of our Scottish cathedrals less entire than some of our old Picts' houses^ though the latter have been deserted for more than a thousand years, and the fonner for not more than three hundred. And the remark is not less applicable to the beliefs and usages of other ages, than to their more material remains. It is a curious fact, that we meet among the Protestants of Scotland with more marked traces of the Paganism of their earlier, than of the Popery of their later ancestors. For while Christianity seems to have been introduced into the country by slow degrees, and to have travel- led over it by almost imperceptible stages, — leaving the less obnoxious practices of the mythology which it supplanted to the natural course of decay, — it is matter of history that the doctrines of the Reformation overspread it in a single age, and that the observances of the old system were effaced, not by a gradual cur- rent of popular opinion, but by the hasty surges of popular resentment. The saint days of the priest REMAINS OF THE OLD MYTHOLOGY. 105 liave in consequence been long since forgotten, — the festivals of the Druid still survive. There is little risk of our mistaking these latter : — the rites of Halloween, and the festivities of Beltane, possess well authenticated genealogies. There are other usages, however, which bearing no less strongly the impress of Paganism, shew a more uncertain line- age. And regarding these, we find it difficult to de- termine whether they have come dowTi to us from the days of the old mythology, or have been produced in a later period by those sentiments of the human mind to ^\•hich every false religion owes its origin. The subject, though a curious, is no very tangible one. But should I attempt throwing together a few simple thoughts on it, in that wandering desultory style winch seems best to consort with its irregularity of outline, I trust I may calculate on the forbearance of the reader. I shall strive to be not very tedious, and shall choose a not very beaten path. Man was made for the ^^•orl(l, and the world for man. Hence we find that every faculty of the human mind has in the things which lie without some defi- nite object, or particular class of circumstances on which to operate. There is a thorough adaptation of that which acts to that which is acted upon, — of the moving power to the machine ; and woe be to him who deranges this admirable order, in the hope of rendering it more complete. It is prettily fabled by the Bramins, that souls are moulded by pairs, and then sent to the earth to be linked together in wed- lock, and that matches are unhappy merely in conse- quence of the parties disuniting by the way, and IOC) THE DEVOTIONAL SENTIMENT. choosing for themselves other consorts. One might find more in this fable than any Bramin ever found in it yet. There is a prospective connection of a similar kind formed between the powers of the mind and the objects on which these are to be employed, and should they be subsequently united to objects other than the legitimate, a wretchedness quite as real as that Avhich arises out of an ill-mated marriage is the infallible result. Were I asked to illustrate my meaning by an ex- ample or two, I do not know where I could find in- stances better suited to my purpose, than in the ima- ginative extravagancies of some of our wilder sectaries. There is no principle which so deals in unhappy mar- riages, and as unhappy divorces, as the fanatical, or that so ceaselessly employs itself in separating what Heaven has joined, and in joining what Heaven has separated. Man, I have said, was made for the world he lives in ; — I should have added, that he was in- tended also for another world. Fanaticism makes a someAvhat similar omission, only it is the other way. It forgets that he is as certainly a denizen of the pre- sent as an heir of the future ; that the same Being who has imparted to him the truly noble sentiment which leads him to anticipate a hereafter, has also bestowed upon him a thousand lesser faculties, which must be employed now ; and that if he prove untrue to even the minor end of his existence, and slight his proper, though subordinate employments, the powers which he thus separates from their legitimate objects must, from the very activity of their nature, run riot in the cloisters in which they arc shut up, and cast THE DEVOTIONAL SENTIMENT. 107 reproach by their excesses on the cause to which they are so unwisely dedicated. For it is one thing to condemn these to a Hfe of celibacy, and quite another to keep them chaste. We may shut them up, like a sisterhood of nuns, from the objects to Avhich they ought to have been united, but they will infallibly discover some less legitimate ones with which to con- nect themselves. Self-love, and the natural desire of distinction, — proper enough sentiments in their own sphere, — make but sad work in any other. The ima- gination which was so bountifully given us to raise its ingenious theories as a kind of scaffolding to philoso- phical discovery, is active to worse purpose when re- velling intoxicated amid the dim fields of prophecy, or behind the veil of the inner mysteries : — Reason itself, though a monarch in its own proper territories, can exert only a doubtful authority in the provinces which lie beyond. Indeed, the whole history of fa- naticism, from when St. Anthony retired into the deserts of Upper Egj-pt, to burrow in a cell like a fox-earth, do\^n to the times that witnessed some of the wilder heresiarchs of our own country, working what they had faith enough to deem miracles, is little else than a detail of the disorders occasioned by per- versions of this nature. There is an exhibition of phenomena equally cu- rious when the religious sentiment, instead of thus swallowing up all the others, is deprived of even its ovm proper object. I once saw a solitary hen bull- finch, that retired one spring into a dark corner of her cage, and laid an egg, over which she sat until it was addled. It is alwavs thus when the devotional 108 THE DEVOTIONAL SENTIMENT. sentiment is left to form a religion for itself. Encaged like the poor bullfinch, it proves fruitful in just a simi- lar way, and moping in its dark recesses, brings forth its pitiful abortions unassisted and alone, I have ever thought of the pantheons and mythological dic- tionaries of our libraries as a kind of museums, stored, like tliose of the anatomist, \\dth embryos and abortions. It must be remarked further, that the devotional sentiment operates in this way not only when its pro- per object is wanting, but even, should the mind be dark and uninformed, when that is present. Every false religion maybe regarded as a ^^■ild irregular production, springing out of that basis of sentiment (one of the very foundations of om* nature,) which, when rendered the subject of a right course of culture, and sowti with the good seed, proves the proper field of the true. But on this field, even when occupied in the better way, there may be the weeds of a rank indige- nous mythology shooting up below ; — a kind of subor- dinate superstition, which, in other circumstances, would have been not the underwood, but the forest. Hence our difficulty in fixing the genealogy of the Pagan-like usages to which I allude ; — there are two opposite sources, from either of which they may have sprung : — they may form a kind of undergrowth, thro-HTi up at no very early period by a soil occupied by beliefs tlie most serious and rational, or they may constitute the ancient and broken vestiges of an obso- lete and exploded mythology. I shall briefly describe a few of the more curious. I. People acquainted with seafaring men, and who occasionally accompany them in their voyages, cannot INTERESTING USAGES. 109 miss seeing tliem, when the sails are drooping against the mast, and the vessel lagging in her course, ear- nestly invoking the wind in a shrill tremulous whist- ling, — calling on it, in fact, in its own language ; and scarcely less confident of being answered than if pre- ferring a common request to one of their companions. I rarely sail in calm weather with my friends the Cro- marty fishermen, without seeing them thus employed, — their faces anxiously turned in the direction whence they expect the breeze ; now pausing, for a light un- certain air has begun to ruffle the water, and now re- suming the call still more solicitously than before, for it has died away. On thoughtlessly beginning to whistle one evening about twelve years ago, when our skiff was staggering under a closely-reefed foresail, I was instantly silenced by one of the fishermen with a " whisht, whisht, boy, we have more than wind enough already ;" and I remember being much struck for the first time by the singularity of the fact, that the winds should be as sincerely prayed to by our Scottish sea- men of the present day, as by the mariners of The- mistocles. There was another such practice common among the Cromarty fishermen of the last age, but it is now obsolete. It was termed soothing the waves. When beating up in stormy weather along a lee shore, it was customary for one of the men to take his place on the weather gunwale, and there continue waving his hand in a direction opposite to the sweep of the sea, in the belief that this species of appeal to it would induce it to lessen its force. We recognise in both these singular practices the workings of that religion natural to the heart, which, more vivid in its personifications 110 INTERESTING USAGES, than poetry itself, can address itself to every power of nature as to a sentient being endowed with a faculty of will, and able, just as it inclines^ either to aid or injure. The seaman's prayer to the winds, and the thirty thousand gods of the Greek, probably derive their origin from a similar source. II. Viewed in the light of reason, an oath owes its sacredness, not to any virtue in itself, but to the Great Being to whom it is so direct an appeal, and to the good and rational belief that He knows all things, and is the ultimate judge of all. But the same uninformed principle which can regard the winds and waves as possessed of a power independent of His, seems also to have conferred on the oath an influence and divi- nity exclusively its own. I have met with many among the more grossly superstitious, who deem it a kind of ordeal, somewhat similar to the nine plough- shares of the dark ages, which distinguishes between right and wrong, truth and falsehood, by some occult intrinsic virtue. The innocent person swears, and like the guiltless woman Avhen she had drunk the waters of jealousy, thrives none the worse ; — the guilty perjure themselves, and from that hour cease to prosper. It is a rather singular coincidence, and one which might lead us to believe in the existence of something analogous to principle in even the extra- vagancies, of human belief, that the only oath deemed binding on the gods of classical mythology, — the oath by the river Styx, v/as one of merely intrinsic power and virtue. Bacon, indeed, in his Wisdom of the An- cients, (a little book, but a great work,) has explained the fable as merely an ingenious allegory ; but who INTERESTING USAGES. Ill does not know that the Father of modern philo- sophy found half the Novum Organum in supersti- tions which existed before the days of Orpheus ? III. There seems to have once obtained in this part of the coimtry a belief that the natural sentiment of justice had its tutelary spirit, whichj like the Astrae of the Greeks, existed for it, and for it alone ; and which not only seconded the dictates of conscience, but even punished those by whom they were disre- garded. The creed of superstition is, however, rarely a well-defined one ; and this belief seems to have parta- ken fully as much as any of the others, of the obscurity in which it originated. The mysterious agent (the ob- ject of it) existed no one knew v.here, and effected its purposes no one knew how. But the traditions which illustrate it, narrate better than they define. Many years ago, says one of these, a woman of Tarbat was passing along the shores of Loch-Slin, M'ith a large web of linen on her back. There was a market held that morning at Tain, and she was bringing the web there to be sold. In those times it was quite as cus- tomary for fanners to rear the flax which supplied them with clothing, as the corn which furnished them A\ith food ; and it was of course necessary in some of the earlier processes of preparing the former, to leave it for whole weeks spread out on the fields, with little else to trust to for its protection than the honesty of their neighbours. To the neighbours of at least this woman the protection w^as incomplete ; — the very web she earned was composed of stolen lint. She had nearly reached the western extremity of the lake, when feeling fatigued, she seated herself bv the 112 INTERESTING USAGES. water edge, and laid down the Aveb beside her. But no sooner had it touched the earth than up it hounded three Scots ells into the air, and slowly unrolling fold after fold, until it had stretched itself out as when on the bleaching-green, it flew into the middle of the lake, and disappeared for ever. There are several other stories of the same class, but the one I'elated may serve as a specimen of the whole. IV. The evils which men dread, and the appear- ances which they cannot understand, are invariably appropriated by superstition ; if her power extend not over the terrible and the mysterious, she is without poAver at all. And not only does she claim whatever is inexplicable in the great world, but also in some cases what seems mysterious in the little ; some, for instance, of the more paradoxical phenomena of human nature. It has been stated to me as a mysterious, unaccountable fact, that persons who have been rescued from drowning regard their deliverers ever after with a dislike which bounds almost on enmity. I have heard it affirmed, too, that when the crew of some boat or vessel have perished, with the exception of only one individual, the relatives of the deceased invariably regard that one with a deep, irrepressible hatred ; and in both cases the feelings described are said to originate in some occult and supernatural cause. Alas! neither envy nor ingratitude lie out of our ordinary every-day walk. There occurs to me a little anecdote illustrative of this kind of apotheosis of the envious principle. Some fifty years ago there was a Cromarty boat A\recked on the rough shores of Eathie. All the crew perished, with the exception INTERESTING USAGES. 113 of one fisherman ; and the poor man was so perse- cuted by the relatives of the drownedj who even threatened his life^ that he was compelled, much against his inclination, to remove to Nairn. There, however, only a few years after, he was A^Tccked a second time, and, as in the first instance, proved the sole sur^•ivor of the crew. He A\'as again, therefore, subjected to a persecution similar to the one he had already endured ; and he was compelled to quit Nairn as he had before quitted Cromartj'. And in both cases the relatives of the deceased were deemed as entirely under the influence of a mysterious, irre- sistible impulse, A\'hich acted upon their minds from Avithout, as the Orestis of the dramatist when pur- sued by the furies. One may question, as has been already remarked, whether one sees, in those several instances, poly- theism, forming, and but barely forming, in the human mind, or the mutilated remnants of a long exploded mythology. The usages to which I have alluded, as more certain in their lineage, are perhaps less suited to employ speculation. But they are curious ; and the fact that they are fast sinking into an oblivion, out of Avhicli the diligence of no future excavator can restore them, seems of itself to give them a kind of claim to our notice. I pass over Beltane ; its fires in this part of the country have long since been extin- guished ; but to its half-surviving partner, Halloween, I shall devote a few pages ; and this the more readily, as it chances to be connected with a story of humble life which belongs to that period of my history at M'hich I nave now arrived. True, the festival itself n 114 RITES OF THE SCOTTISH HALLOWEEN. has already sat for its picture, and so admirable was the skill of the artist, that its very name recalls to us rather the masterly strokes of the transcript than the features of the original. But with all its truth and bcavity, the portrait is not yet complete. The Scottish Halloween, as held in the solitary farm-house and described by Burns, differed consider- ably from the Halloween of our villages and smaller towns. In tlie farm-house it was a night of predic- tion only ; in our towns and villages there were added a multitude of wild mischievous games which were tolerated at no other season, — a circumstance that seems to identify the festival Avitli those pauses of licence peculiar to the nonage of civil government, in which men are set free from the laws they are just learning to respect ; — partly it would seem as a re- ward for the deference which they have paid them, partly to serve them as a kind of breathing spaces in which to recover from the unwonted fatigue of being obedient. After nightfall, the young fellows of the town formed themselves into parties of ten or a dozen, and breaking into the gardens of the graver inhabitants, stole the best and heaviest of their cabbages. Convert- ing these into bludgeons, by stripping otf the lower leaves, they next scoured the streets and lanes, thump- ing at every door as they passed, until their uncouth weapons were beaten to pieces. When disanned in this way, all the parties imited into one, and provid- ing themselves with a cart, drove it before them, with the rapidity of a chaise and four, through the principal streets. Wo to the inadvertent female whom they encountered ! She was instantly laid hold of and RITES OF THE SCOTTISH HALLOWEEN. 115 placed aloft in the cart, — brothers, and cousins, and even sons, it is said, not unfrequeiitly assisting in the capture ; and then dragged back^^'ards and fonvftrds over the rough stones, amid shouts, and screams, and roars of laughter. The younkers ^\■ithin doors ■ttere meanwhile engaged in a manner somewhat less an- noying but not a whit less whimsical. The bent of their ingenuity for weeks before, had been turned to the accumulating of little hoards of apples, — all for this night; and now a large tub filled with water, was placed in the middle of the floor of some out- house, carefully dressed up for the occasion ; and into the tub every one of the party flung an apple. They then approached it by turns, and placing their hands on the edges, plunged for\A'ard to tish for the fruit with their teeth. I remember the main chance of success A\'as to thrust the head fearlessly into the tub, amid the booming of the water, taking especial care to press down one of the apples in a line with the mouth, and to seize it when jammed against the bottom. When the whole party, with their dripping locks and shining faces, would seem metamorphosed into so many mermaids, this sport usually gave place to another : — A small beam of wood was suspended from the ceiling by a cord, and when fairly balanced, an apple was fastened to the one end, and a lighted candle to the other. It was then whirled round, and the boys, in turn, as before, leaped up and bit at the fruit. Neitlier of these games were peculiar to the north of Scotland : we find it stated by Mr. Polewhele, in his Historical Views of Devonshire, that the Irish pea- sants assembled on the eve of La Samon (the 2d 116 THE CHARM OF THE EGG. November)^ to celebrate the festival of the sun, with many rites derived from Paganism, among which was the dipping for apples in a tub of water, and tlie catch- ing at an apple stuck on the one end of a kind of hanging beam. There belonged to the north of Scotland two Hal- loween rites of augmy, which have not been described by Bums ; and one of these, an elegant and beautiful charm, is not yet entirely out of repute. An ale-glass is filled with pure water, and into the water is drop- ped the white of an egg. The female, whose future fortunes are to be disclosed, (for the charm seems appropriated exclusively by the better sex) lays her hand on the glass's mouth, and holds it there for the space of about a minute. In that time the heavier parts of the ^vhite settle to the bottom, while the lighter shoot up into the water, from which they are distinguished by their opacity, into a variety of fan- tastic shapes, resembling towers, and domes, towns, fleets, and forests, or to speak more correctlj', into forms not very unlike those icicles which one sees during a severe frost at the edge of a waterfall. A resemblance is next traced, Avhich is termed reading the glass, between the images displayed in it and some objects of either art or nature ; and these are deemed to constitute a hieroglyphic of the person's future for- tunes. Thus, the ramparts of a fortress surmounted by streamers, a plain covered ^vitli armies, or the tents of an encampment, show that the female whose hand covered the glass is to be united to a soldier, and that her life is to be spent in camps and garrisons. A fleet of ships, a church or pulpit, a half-finished building. THE CHARM OF THE EGG. 117 a field stripped into furrows, a garden, a forest, — all these and fifty other scenes, afford symhols equally unequivocal. And there ai'e melancholy hierogly- phics, too, that speak of death when enquired at re- garding marriage ; — there are the solitary tomb, the fringed shroud, the coffin, and the scull and cross bones. " Ah," said a young girl whom I overheard a few years ago regretting the loss of a deceased com- panion, " Ah, I knew when she first took ill that there was little to hope. Last Halloween she and I ■went to Mrs. to break our eggs. Betsie's was first cast, and there rose under her hand an ugly scull. Mrs. said nothing, but reversed the glass, while poor Betsie laid her hand on it a second time, and then there rose a coffin. Mrs. called it a boat, and I said I saw the oars ; but Mrs. well kne^v what it meant, and so did I." 1 would fain see on canvass, in the Hall of our Northern Institution, a faithful transcript of the scene which first made me deem the charm of the egg an elegant one. Imagine a tall thin sibyl, her grey hair escaping from her coif, standing on the floor of a High- land cottage. She holds in her one hand a torch of mire fir, that flares, and smokes, and sputters like the torch of Hjiiien when it burns worst, a vessel of cry- stal that glitters to the flame, like the vase of St. John, is balanced in the other. Imagine further a yellow- haired sylph, half girl half woman, and rich in the blended loveliness of both, standing by the side of the prophetess. Her white fingers rest on the bony shoulder; and her eyes, full of an expression that seems to speak of a discovered secret, glance alter- 118 THE TWELFTH-RIG. iiately from the high sharp features of the slhyl to the picture in the glass. A still younger girl is bending forward with a roguish-looking smile ; three others are tittering behind ; and still farther in the back- ground there are two individuals of the rougher sex seated by the cottage fire : the one, a benevolent sil- ver-headed old man, regards the scene before him as interesting ; not from its ostensible connection with the future — that good-humoured smile betrays the sceptic — but from his deeming it a pleasing exhibition of human passion ; the other, a mere lad, has only glanced on it when it fades from before him, and he stands in the midst of ancient Rome, under the marble portico of a gorgeous temple. He beholds the area thronged with priests and warriors ; and in the midst, before the altar, he sees a dark -browed old man — one of the butclier-like augurs of ancient heathenism — who bends over his slaughtered victims, and judges of future events from the convulsions of the limbs, and the state and position of the entrails. Is not the first the more pleasing and elegant picture ! The other north country charm, which, of Celtic origin, bears evidently the impress of the romance and melancholy so predominant in the Celtic character, is only known and practised (if, indeed, still practised any where) in a i'ew places of the remote Highlands. The person who intends trying it must steal out unper- ceived to a field wliose furrows lie due south and north, and, entering at the western side, must proceed slowly over eleven ridges, and stand in the centre of the twelfth, when he will hear either low sobs and faint mournful shrieks which betoken his early death, or the sounds THE TWELFTH-RIG. 119 of music and dancing, ^^•llich foretell his marriage. But the charm is accounted dangerous, Ahout twelve years ago I spent an autumn in the mid-Highlands of Ross-shire, where 1 passed my Halloween, with nearly a dozen yomig people, at a farm house. We burned nuts, and ate apples ; and when we had exhausted our stock of both, some of us proposed to set out for the steading of a neighbouring farm, and rob the gar- den of its cabbages ; but the motion was over-ruled by the female members of the party ; for the night ^vas pitch dark, and the way rough ; and so we had recourse for amusement to story telling. Naturally enough, most of our stories were of Halloween rites and predictions ; and much was spoken regarding the charm of the rig. I had never heard of it before ; and, out of a frolic, I stole away to a field, whose furrows lay in the proper direction, and after pacing steadily across the ridges, until I had reached the middle of the twelfth, I stood and listened. But spirits were not abroad : — I heard only the wind groaning in the woods, and the deep sullen roar of the Conan. On my return I was greeted -with acclamations of wonder and terror, and it was remarked that I looked deadly pale, and had certainly heard something very terrible. " But whatever you may have been threatened with," said the author of the remark^, "you may congratulate yourself on your being among us in your right mind ; for there are instances of people returning from the twelfth rig raving mad ; and of others A^'ho ^vent to it as light of heart as you, who never returned at all." The MaccuUochs of the parish of Cropiarty, a fa- mily now extinct, were, for about two centuries, sub- 120 macculloch's courtship. stantialj respectable farmers. The first of this family, says tradition, was Alaster Macculloch, a native of the Highlands. When a boy he quitted the house of his widow mother, and wandered into the low country in quest of emplo}Tnent, which he at length succeeded in procuring in the parish of Cromarty, on the farm of an old wealthy tacksman. For the first few weeks he seemed to be one of the gloomiest little fellows ever bred among the solitudes of the hills ; — all the social feelings of his nature had been frozen within him ; but they began to flow apace ; and it was soon dis- covered that neither reserve nor melancholy formed any part of his real character. A little of the pride of the Celt he still retained ; when he attended Chapel he wore a gemmy suit of green tartan, and his father's dirk ahvays depended from his belt ; but, in every other respect he seemed a true Lowland Scot, and not one of his companions equalled him in sly humour, or could play oflT a practical joke with half the effect. His master was a widower, and the father of an only daughter, a laughing, warm hearted girl of nine- teen. She had more lovers than half the girls of the parish put together ; and when they avowed to her their very sincere attachment, she tendered them her very hearty thanks in return. But then one's affec- tions are not in one's own power ; and as certainly as they loved her just because they could not help it, so certainly was she indifferent to them from the same cause. Their number received one last accession in little Alaster the herd boy. He shared in the kind- ness of his young mistress, and his cattle shared in it too, with every living thing connected with her father macculloch's courtship. 121 or his farm ; but his love, his soul-engrossing love, lay silent within him, and young and sanguine as he was, almost without hope. Not that he was unhappy. He had the knack of dreaming when broad awake, and of making his dreams as pleasant as he willed them ; and so his passion rather increased than dimin- ished the amount of his happiness. It taught him, too, the very best species of politeness, — that of the lieart ; and young Lillias could not but help wondering where it was that the manners of the red-cheeked Highland boy had received so exquisite a polish, and why it was that she herself ^^■as so much the object of his quiet un- obtrusive attentions. When night released him from la- bour, he would take up his seat in some dark corner of the house, that commanded a full view of the fire, and there would he sit for whole hours, gazing on the fea- tures of his mistress. A fine woman looks well by any light, even by that of a peat fire ; and fine wo- men, it is said, know this ; but little thou:.dit the maiden of the farm house of the saint-like halo which, in the imagination of her silent worshipper, the red smoky flames shed around her. How could she even dream of it I The boy Alaster was fully five years younger than herself, and it surely could not be for- gotten that he herded her father's cattle. The inci- dent, however, which I am just going to relate gave her sufficient cause to think of him as a lover. The Halloween of the year 1560, was a very dif- ferent thing in the parish of Cromarty from that of the year 1 834. It is now as dark and opaque a night, unless it chance to be brightened by the moon, as any in the winter season ; it was then clear as the glass of 122 macculloch's courtship, a magician ; — people loolvsd tlirough it and saw tlie future. Late in October that year, Alaster overheard his mistress and one of her youtliful companions, — the daughter of a neighbouring farmer, talking over the rites of the coming night of frolic and prediction. " Will you really venture on throwing the clew ?" asked her companion, " the kiln, you ken, is dark and lonely ; and you ken too that there's mony a story no true if folk hav'na often been frightened." " Throw it ; — 0, surely," replied the other ; " who would think it worth while to harm the like o' me ; and be- sides, you can bide for me just a wee bittie aff. One would like, somehow, to know the name o' one's gude- man, or whether one is to get a gudeman at all." Alaster was a lover, and lovers are fertile in strata- gem. In the presence of his mistress he sought leave from the old man, her father, with whom he was a great favourite, to spend his Halloween at a cottage on a neighbouring farm, where there were several young people to meet ; and his request was readily granted. The long expected evening came ; and Alaster set out for the cottage, without any intention of reaching it for at least two hours. When he had proceeded a little way he turned back, creeped warily towards the kiln, climbed like a wild cat up the rough circular gable, entered by the chimney, and in a few seconds was snugly seated amid the ashes of the fur- nace. There he waited for a full hour, listening to the beatings of his own heart. At length a light foot- step was heard approaching ; the key was applied to the lock, and as the door opened, a square patch of moonshine fell upon the rude wall of the kiln. A tall macculloch's courtship. 123 figure stepped timidly for\A'ard, and stood in the stream of faint light. It was Alaster's young mistress. She looked fearfully round her, and then producing a small clue of yarn, she threw it towards Alaster, and immediately began to wind.* He suffered it to turn round and round among the aslies, and then cautiously laid hold ou it. " Wha hands?" said his mistress, in a low startled whisper, looking, as she spoke, over her shoulder towards the door ; " Alaster Macculloch," Avas the reply ; and in a moment she had vanished like a spectre. Soon after the tread of two persons was heard approaching the door. It was now Alas- ter's turn to tremble. " Ah !" he thought, " I shall be discovered, and my stratagem shall come to worse than nothing." " An' did ye hear ony thing when you came out yon gate ?" said one of the persons without. " naething, lass, naething," replied the other, in a voice whose faintest echoes would have been recognised by the lover within, " steek too the door an' lock it ; — its a foolish conceit." The door was accordingly locked, and Alaster left to find his way out in the manner he had entered. It was late that night before he returned from the cottage to which, after leaving the kiln, he had gone. Next day he saw" his mistress. She by no means ex- hibited her most amiable phasis of character, for she was cold and distant, and not a little cross. In short, it was evident she had a quarrel with destiny. This mood, however, soon changed for the one natural to her ; years passed away, and suitor after suitor was * See Burns's Halloween. 124 macculloch's courtship. rejected by the maiden, until, in her twenty-fourtli year, Alaster Macculloch paid her his addresses. He was not then a little herd boy, but a tall, handsome, young man of nineteen, who, active and faithful, was entrusted by his master with the sole management of his farm. A belief in destiny often becomes a destiny of itself; and it became such to Alaster's mistress. How could the predestined husband be other than a successful lover. In a few weeks they were married ; and when the old man was gathered to his fathers, his son-in-law succeeded to his well-stocked farm. 125 CHAPTER VIII. Subtill muldrie wrocht mony day agone. Gavin Douglass. As house after Louse in the old town of Cromarty was yielding its place to the sea, the inhabitants were engaged in building new dwellings for themselves, in the fields behind. A second town was thus formed, the greater part of which has since also disappeared, though under the influence of causes less violent than those which annihilated the first. Shortly after the Union, the trade of the place, mIucIi, prior to that event, had been pretty considerable, fell into decay, and the town gradually dwindled in size and import- ance until about the year 1750, when it had sunk into an inconsiderable village. After this period, however, trade began to revive, and the to\\ii again to increase ; and as the old site was deemed inconveniently distant from the harbour, it was changed for the present. The main street of this second town, which is still used as a road, and bears the name of the Old Causeway, is situated about two hundred yards to the east of the houses, and is now boimded by the fences of gardens and fields, with here and there an antique-looking, high- gabled domicile rising over it. A row of large trees, which have sprung up since the disappearance of the town, rims alonir one of the fences. ]26 A SCOTTISH TOWN OF THE 17tH CENTURY. About the beginning of the last century the Old Cause way presented an aspect which^ though a little less rural than at present, was still more picturesque. An irregular line of houses thrust forward their gables on either side, like two parties of ill-trained cavalry drawn up for the charge ; — some jutted forward, others slunk backward, some slanted sideways, as if meditating a retreat, others, as if more decided, seem- ed in the act of turning round. They varied in size and character, from tlie little sod-covered cottage, with round moor stones sticking out of its mud walls, like sculls in the famous pyramid of Malta, to the tall narrow house of three stories, with its court and gate- way. Between every two buildings there intervened a deep narrow close, bounded by the back of one te- nement, and the front of another, and terminating in a little oblong garden, fringed with a deep border of nettles, and bearing in the centre plots of cabbage and parsnips ; — the latter being a root much used before the introduction of the potato. Here and there a gigantic ash or elm sprung out of the fence, and shot its ponderous arms over the houses. A low door, somewhat under five feet, and a few stone steps which descended from the level of the soil to that of the floor, (for the latter was invariably sunk from one to three feet beneath the former,) gave access to each of the meaner class of buildings. One little window, with the sill scarcely raised above the pavement, fronted the street, another, still smaller and equally low, opened to the close. They admitted through their unbevelled apertures and diminutive panes of brownish yellow a sort of uncertain tAvilight, A SCOTTISH TOWN OF THE ITtH CENTURY. 127 which lasted in the brighter kind of weather from sunrise to near sunset, and then gave place to total darkness. An immense chimney, designed for the drying of fish, which formed the staple food of the poorer inhabitants, stretched from the edge of the window in the gable to near the opposite wall, and on the huge black lintel were inscribed, in rude cha- racters, the name of the builder of the tenement, and that of his wife, with the date of the erection. The walls, naked and uneven, were hollowed in several places into little square recesses, termed boicels ; and at a height of not more than six feet above the floor, which was formed of clay and stone, and marvellously uneven, were the bare rafters varnished over with smoke. The larger houses were built in a style much supe- rior to this, but in one equally characteristic of the age and country. A taste for ornamental masonry was more prevalent in our Scottish villages about the beginning of the seventeenth century than at present. Palladio began to be studied about that period, by a few architects of the southern parts of the kingdom, and some of our provincial builders had picked up from them an imperfect acquaintance with the old classical style of architecture ; but as they could avail themselves of only a few of its forms, and knew no- thing of its proportions, they became, all unwittingly, the founders of a kind of school of their own. And some of the houses of the old town were no bad spe- cimens of this half Grecian, half Gothic school. The high, narrow gables, jagged like the teeth of a saw, the diminutive, heavily-framed windows, and cham- 128 A SCOTTISH TOWN OF THE 17tH CENTUUY. fered rybats, remained unaltered ; but there were stuck round the low doors^ which still retained their Gothic proportions^ imitations of Palladio's simpler door-pieceSj and huge Grecian cornices, more than sufficiently massy for a hall twenty feet in height, with circular pateras designed in the same taste, and roughened with vile imitations of the vine and laurel, adorned the better rooms ■within. The closes leading to buildings of this superior class, were lintelled at the entrance, and over each lintel there was fixed a tablet of stone, bearing the arms and name of the proprietor. A large house of this kind, on the eastern side of the street, was haunted, it was said, by a green lady, one of the old Scottish spectres, who flourished before the introduction of shrouds and dead linens ; and another on the opposite side, by a capricious brownie, who disarranged the pieces of furniture and the platters every night the domestics set them in order, and set them in order every night they were left disarranged. Directly in the middle of the street stood the town's cross, over the low-browed entrance of a stone vault, furnished with seats also of stone. The formidable Jongs depended from one of the abutments. A little higher up was the gaol, an antique ruinous structure with stone floors and a roof of ponderous grey slate. The manse, a mean-looking house of two low storeys, with very small windoA^'S, and bearing above the door the initials of the first Protestant minister of the pa- rish, nearly fronted it ; while the only shop of the place was situated so much lower down, that, like the houses of the former town, it was carried a\^'ay by the sea durinjr a violent storm from the north-east. There THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. 120 mingled ^\•itll the other houses a clue proportion of rootless tenements, with their red, weather-wasted gables, and melancholy-looking unframed windoA\'s and doors ; and, as trade decayed, even the more entire began to fall to pieces, and to show, like so many mouldering cai'casses, their bare ribs through the thatch. Such ivas the old town of Cromarty in the year 1720. Directly behind the site of the old town, the ground, as described in a previous chapter, rises abruptly from the level to the height of nearly a hundred feet, after which it forms a kind of tableland of considerable extent, and then sweeps gently to the top of the hill. A deep ravine, with a little stream running through it, intersects the rising ground at nearly right angles with the front it presents to the houses ; and on the eastern angle, towering over the ravine on the one side, and the edge of the bank on the other, stood the old castle of Cromarty. It was a massy, time-\\'orn building, rising, in some places, to the height of six storeys, battlemented at the top, and roofed with grey stone. One immense turret jutted out from the corner which occupied the extreme point of the angle ; and looking down from an altitude of at least one hundred and sixty feet on the little stream, and the straggling row of trees which sprung up at its edge, commanded both sides of the declivity, and the town below. Other turrets of smaller size, but pierced like the larger one with rows of little circular apertures, which, in the earlier ages, had given egress to the for- midable bolt, and in the more recent, when the cross- bow was thrown aside for the petronel, to the still I 130 THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. more formidable bullet, were placed by pairs on the several projections that stood out from the main body of the building, and were connected by hanging bartizans. There is a tradition that sometime in the seventeenth century a party of Highlanders, engaged in some predatory enterprize, approached so near the castle on this side, that their leader, when in the act of raising his arm to direct their march, Avas shot at from one of the turrets and killed, and that the party, wrapping up the body in their plaids, carried it away. The front of the castle opened to the la^vn, from which it was divided by a dry moat, nearly filled Avith rubbish, and a high wall indented with embrasures, and pierced by an arched gate way. Within was a small court, flagged with stone, and bounded on one of the sides by a projection from the main building, bartizaned and turreted like all the others, but only three storeys in height, and so completely fallen into decay that the roof and all the floors had disappeared. From the level of the court a flight of stone steps led to the vaults below ; another flight of greater breadth, and bordered on both sides by an antique balustrade, ascended to the entrance ; and the architect, aware of the importance of this part of the building, had so contrived it, that a full score of loop-holes in the several turrets and outjets which commanded the court, opened directly on the landing place. Round the entrance itself there jutted a broad, grotesquely proportioned moulding, somewhat resembling an old fashioned picture frame, and directly over it there was a square tablet of dark blue stone, bearing in high relief the arms of the old proprietors ; but the storms of at least five THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. 131 centuries had defaced all the nicer strokes of the chisel, and the lady with her palm and dagger^ the hoars' heads, and the grey-hounds, were transformed into so many attenuated spectres of their former selves ; — no unappropriate emblem of the altered fortunes of the house. The windows, small and narrow, and barred with iron, were thinly sprinkled over the front ; and from the lintel of each there rose a triangular cap of stone, fretted at the edges, and terminating at the top in two knobs fashioned into the rude semblance of thistles. Initials and dates of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were inscribed in raised charac- ters on these triangular tablets. The aspect of the whole pile was one of extreme antiquity. Flocks of, crows and jays that had built their nests in the recesses of the huge tusked cornices which ran along the bar- tizans, wheeled ceaselessly around the gables and the turrets, awakening with . their clamorous cries the echoes of the roof. The walls, grey and weather- stained, were tapestried in some places with sheets of ivy; and an ash sapling, which had struck its roots into the crevices of the outer wall, rose like a banner over the half dilapidated gateway. The castle for several years before its demolition, was tenanted by only an old female domestic, and a little girl whom she had hired to sleep with her. I have been told by the latter, who, at the time I knew her, was turned of seventy, that two threshers could have plied their flails within the huge chimney of the kitchen ; and that in the great liall, an immense dark chamber lined with oak, a party of a hundred men had exercised at the pike. The lower vaults she had 132 THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. never the temerity to explore ; they were dark and gousty, she said, and the slits which opened into them were nearly filled np with long rank grass. Some of her stories of the castle associated well with the fan- tastic character of its architecture, and the ages of violence and superstition which had j)assed over it. A female domestic mIio had lived in it before the woman she was acquainted with, and who was fool- hardy enough to sleep in it alone, was frightened one night out of her Avits, and never again so far recovered them as to be able to tell for what. At times there would echo through the upper apartments a series of noises, as if a very weighty man \A'as pacing the floors ; and " 0," said my informant, " if you coidd but have heard the shrieks and moans, and long whistlings, that would come sounding in the stormy evenings of winter, from the chimneys and the turrets. Often have I listened to them as I lay a-hed, aa ith the clothes drawn over my face." Her companion was sitting one day in a little chamber at the foot of the great stair, when hearing a tapping against the steps, she opened the door. The light was imperfect, — it was always twilight in the old castle, but she saw, she said, as distinctly as ever she saw any thing, a small white animal resembling a rabbit, rolling from step to step, head over heels, and dissolving, as it bounded over the last step, into a WTeath of smoke. On another occa- sion, a person of Cromarty, when passing along the front of the building in a morning of summer, was horrified by the apparition of a very diminutive, grey headed, grey bearded old man, with a withered mea- gre face scarcely digger than one's fist, that seemed THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. 133 seated at one of the windows. On returning by the same path about half an hour after, and just as the sun was rising out of the frith, he saw the same figure WTinging its hands over a little cairn in a neigh- bouring thicket, but he had not courage enough to go up to it. The scene of all these terrors has long since disap- peared ; the plough and roller have passed over its foundations ; and, \Aith the exception of a few imper- fectly preserved traditions, all that it recorded of an ancient and interesting, tliough unfortunate family, with its silent, though impressive narratives of the un- settled lives, rude manners, uncouth tastes, and war- like habits of our ancestors, has also perished. It was pulled doA^Ti by a proprietor of Cromarty, who had purchased the property a few years before ; and as he was engaged at the time in building a set of offices, and a wall to his orchard, the materials it furnished proved a saving to him of several pounds. He was a man of taste, too, as well as of prudence, and by smoothinj: do«-n the eminence on which the buildine: had stood, and then sowing it with grass, he bestowed upon it, for its former wild aspect, so workmanlike an appearance, that one might almost suppose he had made the whole of it himself. Two curious pieces of sculpture \\ere, by some accident, preserved entire in the general AVTeck. In a vaulted passage which leads from the modern house to the road, there is a stone slab about five feet in length, and nearly two in breadth, which once served as a lintel to one of the two chim- neys of the great hall. It bears, in low relief, the figures of hares and deer sorelv beset bv dogs, and 1 34 THE OLD CASTLE OF THE URQUHARTS. surrounded by a thicket of grapes and tendrils. The huntsman stands in the centre, attired in a sort of loose coat that reaches to his knees, "with his horn in one hand, and his hunting spear in the other, and wearing the mustachios and peaked beard of the reign of Mary. The lintel of the second chimney, a still more interesting relic, is now in Kinbeakie cottage, parish of Resolis ; and a good lithographic print of it may be seen in the museum of the Northern Institu- tion, Inverness ; — but of it more anon. AU the other sculptures of the castle, including several rude piecevS of Gothic statuary, were destroyed by the \^orkmen. An old stone dial which had stood in front of the gate, was dug up by the writer, out of a corner of the lawn, about twelve years ago, and is now in his possession. When entire it indicated the hour in no fewer than nineteen different places, and though sorely mutilated and divested of all its gnomons, it is still entire enough to show that the mathematical ability of the artist must have been of no ordinarv kind. It was probably cut under the inspection of Sir Thomas, who, among his other accomplishments, A^as a skilful geometrician. ~ " The old castle of Cromarty," says the statistical account of the parish," -v^as pulled down in the year ] 772, Several urns, composed of earthern ware, were dug out of the bank immediately around the building, with several coffins of stone. The urns were placed in square recesses formed of flags, and when touched by the labourers, instantly mouldered away, nor was it possible to get up one of them entire. They were filled with ashes mixed with fragments of half burned bones. The coffins contained human skeletons, some of HEREDITARY SHERIFFSHIP. 13a which waiitetl the head, while among the others which were entire, were some of a very uncommon size, measuring seven feet in length." The old proprietors of the castle, among the other privileges derived to them as chiefs of a wide district of country, and the system of government which oh- tajned during the ages in which they flourished, were liereditary Sheriffs of Cromarty, and vested with the power of pit and gallows. The highest knoll of tlie southern Sutor is still termed the Gallow-hill, from its having been a place of execution ; and a low cairn nearly hidden by a thicket of furze, which still occu- pies its summit, retains the name of the gallows. It is said that the person last sentenced to die at this place was a poor Highlander, who had in- sulted the sheriffj, and that, when in the act of mounting the ladder, he was pardoned at the re- quest of the Sheriff's lad}^ At a remoter period the usual scene of execution was a little eminence in the western part of the town, directly above the harbour, where there is a small circular hollow still known to the children of the place as the Witch's Hole; and in which, says tradition, a woman accused of witchcraft was burnt for her alleged crime sometime in the reign of Charles II. The Court-hill, an artificial mound of earth, on which, at least in the earlier ages, the cases of the sheriffdom were tried and decided, was situated several hundred yards nearer the old town. Some of the sentences passed at this place are said to have been flagrantly unjust. There is one Sherifl' in particular, whom tradition describes as a cruel, op- pressive man, alike regardless of the rights and lives 136 HEREDITARY SHERIFFSHIP, of his poor vassals ; and there are tAVO brief anecdotes of him whicli still survive. A man named Macculloch/ a tenant on the Cromarty estate (probablj' the same person introduced to the reader in the foregoing chai^ter ) was deprived of a cow through the injustice of one of the laird's retainers, and going directly to the castle, disposed rather to be energetic than polite, he made his complaint more in the tone of one who had a right to demand, than in the usual style of submission. The laird, after hearing him patiently, called for the key of the dungeon, and, going out, beckoned on Macculloch to follow. He did so ; they descended a flight of stone steps together, and came to a massy oak door, which the laird opened ; when suddenly, and v\ithout uttering a syllable, he laid hold of his tenant with the in- tention of thrusting him in. But he had mistaken his man, the grasp was returned with one of more than equal firmness, and a struggle ensued, in which Mac- culloch, a bold, powerful Highlander, had so decidedly the advantage, that he forced the laird into his om'H dungeon, and then locking the door, carried away the key in his pocket. — The other anecdote is of a sterner cast : A poor vassal had been condemned on the Court-hill under circumstances more than usually un- just ; and the laird, after sentence had been executed on the eminence at the Witch's Hole, was returning homewards through the town, surrounded by his re- tainers, when he was accosted in a tone of prophecy, by an old man, one of the Hossacks of Cromarty; who, though bed-ridden for years before, had crawled to a seat by the way side to wait his coming up. Tradi- tion has preserved the words which follow as those in HEREDITARY SHERIFFSHIP. 137 which he concluded his prediction ; but tlicy stand no less in need of a commentary than the obscurest prophecies of Merlin, or Thomas the Rhymer : — " Laird, laird, what mayna skaith i' the brock, maun skaith i' the stock." The seer is said to have meant that the injustice of the father would be visited on the children. The recollection of these stories was curiously re- vived in Cromarty in the spring of 1829; when a labourer employed in digging a pit on the eminence above the harbour, and ^\•ithin a few yards of the Witch' s Hole, sirvicWils mattock through a human scull, which immediately fell in pieces. A pair of shin bones lay directly below it, and on digging a little further there were found the remains of two several skeletons and a second scull. From the manner in which the bones were blended together, it seemed evident that the bodies had been tlu'own into the same hole, with their heads turned in opposite directions, either out of carelessness or in studied contempt. And they had, apparently, lain undisturbed in this place for centuries. A child by pressing its foot against the scull which had been raised entire, crushed it to pieces like the other ; and the whole of the bones .had become so light and porous, that, when first seen by the ■\VTiter, some of the smaller fragments were tumbling over the sward before a light breeze, like withered leaves, or pieces of fungous wood. 138 CHAPTER IX. He was a veray parfit, gentil knight. Chaucer. Of Sir Thomas Urquhart very little is known but wliat is related by himself, and though as much an egotist as most men^ he has related but little of a kind avail- able to the biographer. But there are characters of so original a cast that their more prominent features may be hit off by a few strokes ; and Sir Thomas's is decidedly of this class. It is impossible to mistake the small dark profile he has left us^ small and dark though it be, for the profile of any mind except his own. He was born in 1613, the eldest son of Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, and of Christian, daugh- ter of Alexander Lord Elphinston. Of his earlier years there is not a single anecdote, nor is there any thing known of either the manner or place in which he pursued his studies. Prior to the death of his fa- ther, and, as he himself expresses it, " before his brains were yet ripened for eminent undertakings," he made the tour of Europe. In travelling through France, Spain, and Italy, he was repeatedly complimented on the fluency ^^•ith A\'hich he spoke the languages of these countries, and advised by some of the people to pass himself for a native. But he was too true a pa- triot to relish the proposal. He had not less honour, he said, by his own poor country than could be de- SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 130 rived from any country whatever ; for, Ilo^^■ever much it might be surpassed in riches and fertihty, — in lio- nesty, valour, and learning it had no superior. And this assertion he maintained, at the sword's point, in single combat three several times, and at each time discomfited his antagonist. He boasts, on another occasion, that not in all the fights in which he had ever been engaged, did he yield an inch breadth to the enemy before the day of Worcester battle. In the spring of 1641 he was knighted at White- hall by Charles I., and his father dying soon after, he succeeded to the lands of Cromarty. Never was there a pi'oprietor less in danger of sinking into the easy apathetical indolence of the mere country gentleman ; for, impressed with a belief that he was born to enlarge the limits of all science, he applied himself to the study of every branch of human learning, and, having mas- tered what was already known, and finding the amount but little, he seriously set himself to add to it. And first, as learning can be communicated only by the aid of languages, " Avords being the signs of things," he deemed it evident that, if language be imperfect, learn- ing must of necessity be so likewise ; quite on the principle that a defect in the carved figure of a signet cannot fail of being- transmitted to the image formed by it on the wax. The result of his enquiries on this subject differed only a very little from the conclusion which, when pursuing a similar course of study, the celebrated Lord Monboddo arrived at more than a hundred years after. His Lordship believed that all languages, except the Greek, are a sort of vulgar dia- lects which have grown up rather through accident than 14-0 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. design, and exhibit, in consequence, little else than a tissue of defects both in sound and sense. Greek, however, he deemed a perfect language ; and he ac- counted for its superiority by supposing that, in some early age of the world, it had been constructed on philosophical principles, out of one of the old jargons, by a society of ingenious grammarians, who afterwards taught it to the common people. Sir Thomas went a little further ; for, not excepting even the Greek, he condemned every language, ancient and modern, andsethimself to achieve what, according to Monboddo, had been already achieved b_v tlie grammarians of Greece. And hence his ingenious but unfortunate work " The Universal Language." " A tree," he thus reasoned, " is known by its leaves, a stone by its grit, a flower by tlie smell, meats by the taste, music by the ear, colours by the eye," and, in short, all the several natures of things by the qualities or aspects M'ith wliicli they address themselves to the senses or tlie intellect. And it is from these obvious traits of similarity or difference that the several classes are portioned by the associative faculty into the corresponding cells of the understanding. But it is not thus with words in any of the existing languages. Things the most opposite in nature are often repre- sented by signs so similar that they can hardly be distinguished, and things of the same class by signs entirely different. Language is thus formed so loosely and unskilfully, that the associative faculty cannot be brought to bear on it ; — one great cause why foreign languages are so difficult to learn, and when once learned, so readily forgotten. And there is a radical SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 1-tl defect in the alphabets of all languages, for in all, ■without exception, do the nominal number of letters fall far short of the real, — a single character being arbitrarily made to represent a variety of sounds. Hence it happens that the people of one country can- not acquaint themselves by books alone with the idiom of another. The words, too, proper to express with- out circumvolution all the midtiform ideas of the hu- man mind, are not to be found in any one tongue, and though the better languages have borrowed largely from each other to supply their several deficiencies, even the more perfect are still very incomplete. Hence the main difficultv of translation. Some lanjiuages are fluent without exactness. Hence an unprofitable wordiness, devoid of force and precision. Others, comparatively concise, are harsh and inharmonious. Hence, perhaps, the grand cause why some of the civilized nations (the Dutch for instance) though other- wise ingenious, make but few advances, compared Avith others, in philology and the Belles Lettrcs. These, concluded Sir Thomas, are the great defects of language. In a perfect language, then, it is funda- mentally necessary that there be classes of resembling words to represent the classes of resembling things, — that every idea have its sign, and every simple sound its alphabetical character. It is necessary, too, that there beacomplete union of SAveetness, energy, and precision. — Setting himself down in the old castle of Cromarty to labour on these principles, for the benefit of all mankind, and the glory of his country, he constructed his Universal Tongue. There is little difiiculty, when we remember AAhere he An-ote, in tracing the origin of 142 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. liis metaplior^ when he says of the existing languages, that though they may be improved in structure "by the striking out of new lights and doors, the outjetting of kernels, and the erecting of prickets and barbicans," they are yet restricted to a certain base, beyond which they must not be enlarged. In his own language the base was fitted to the superstructure. His alphabet consisted of ten vowels, and twenty-five consonants. His radical classes of words amounted to two hundred and fifty, and, to use his own allegory, were the denizens of so many cities, divided into streets, which were again subdivided into lanes, the lanes into houses, the houses into storeys, and the storeys into apartments. It was impossible that the natives of one city should be confounded with those of another ; and by prying into their component letters and syllables, the street, lane, house, storey, and apartment of every citizen, could be ascertained without a possibility of mistake. Simple ideas were expressed by monosyllables, and every added syllable expressed an added idea. So musical was this language, that for poetical composi- tion it surpassed every other ; so concise, that the weightiest thoughts could be expressed in it by a few syllables, in some instances by a single word ; so pre- cise, that even sounds and colours could be expressed by it in all their varieties of tone and shade ; and so comprehensive, that there was no word in any lan- guage, either living or dead, that could not be translated into it, without sutfering the slightest change of mean- ing. And with all its rich variety of phrase, so com- pletely was it adapted to the associative faculty, that it was possible for a boy of ten years thoroughly SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 143 to master it in the short space of tlirec months. — The entire work, consisting of a preface, grammar, and lexicon, was comprized in a manuscript of twelve himdred folio pages. Laborious as this work must have proved, it was only one of a hundred great works completed by Sir Thomas before he had attained his thirty-eighth year, and in a style so exquisitely original, that neither in subject nor manner had he been anticipated in so much as one of them. He had designed, and in part digested, four hundred more. A complete list of these, with such a description of each as I have here attempted of his Universal Language, would be, per- haps, one of the greatest literary curiosities ever ex- hibited to the world ; but so unfortunate was he, as an author, that the very names of the greater number of the works he finished have died with himself, while the names of his projected ones were, probably, never known to any one else. He prepared for the press a Treatise on Arithmetic intended to remedy some defects in the existing system. The invention of what he terms the " Trissotctrail Trigonometry for the facilitating of calculations by representations of letters and syllables," was the subject of a second treatise ; and the proving of the Equipollencie and Op- position both of Plain and Modal Enunciations, by rules of Geometry (I use his own language, for I am not scholar enough to render it into common English) he achieved in a third. A fourth laid open the pro- founder recesses of the Metaphysics by a continued Geographical Allegory. 1\\ Blackwood's Magazine for 1820, in a short critique on the J excel, it is stated that 144 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. the -vmter had "good reasons to believe Sir Thomas to be the real author of that singular production^ A Centuri/ of Names, and Scantlings of Inventions, the credit or discredit of which was dishonestly assumed by the Marquis of Worcester." The reasons are not given ; but if intrinsic evidence be allowed to weigh any thing, either this little tract was ^\•ritten by Sir Thomas, or, what is much less probable, the world, nay, the same age and island, have produced tAvo Sir Thomases. Some little weight, too, may be attached to the fact, that many of his manuscripts were lost in the city of Worcester, near which place, judging from his title, it is probable that the Marquis resided ; and that the "Century of Names" was not published until 16G3, two years after death had disarmed poor Sir Thomas of his sword and his pen, and rendered him in- sensible to both his country's honour and his own. If in reality the author of this piece, he must be re- garded, it is said, as the prime inventor of the steam engine. But the merit of the most curious of all his treatises no one has ventured to dispute with him, — a work entitled "The True Pedigree and Lineal Descent of the Ancient and Honourable Family of Urquhart." It re- cords the names of all the fathers of the family, from the days of Adam to those of Sir Thomas ; and may be regarded as forming no bad specimen of the in- verted climax, — beginning with God, the creator of all things, and ending with the genealogist himself. One of his ancestors he has married (for he was a pro- fessed lover of the useful) to a daughter of what the AbbePluchc deemed an Egyptian symbol of husbandry. SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 145 and another to a descendant of what Bacon regarded as a personification of human fortitude. In his notice of the arms of the family he has surpassed all the heralds who have flourished before or since. The first whose bearings he describes is Esormon, sovereign prince of Achaia, the father of all such as bear the name of Urquhartj and the fifth from Japhet by lineal descent. His arms were three banners, three ships, and three ladies in a field, or ; the crest, a young lady holding in her right hand a brandished sword, and in her left a branch of myrtle ; the supporters, two Javanites at- tired after the soldier habit of Acliaia ; and the motto Tai/ra -i] r^jot, a ^lo^sa ra, these three are worthy to behold. Heraldry and Greek were alike anticipated by the genius of this family. The device of Esormon was changed about six hundred years after, under the following very remarkable circumstances. Molin, a celebrated descendant of this prince, and a son-in- law of Deucalion and Pyrrha, accompanied Galethus, the iEneas of Scotland, to the scene of his first colony a province of Africa, which, in that age, as in the pre- sent, was infested with wild beasts. He excelled in hunt- ing ; and having in one morning killed three lions, he carried hometheir heads in a large basket, and presented it to his wife Panthea, then pregnant with her first child. Unconscious of what the basket contained, she raised the lid, and, filled with horror and astonishment by the apparition of the heads, she struck her hand against her left side, exclaiming, in the suddenness of her surprise, " Hercides ! what is this." By a Avonderful sraipathy, the likeness of the three heads, grim and horrible as they appeared in the basket, was impressed on the left side K 146 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. of the infant, who afterwards became a famous war- rior, and transferred to his shield the badge which nature had thus bestowed upon him. The external ornaments of the bearings remained unaltered until the days of Astorimon, who, after his victory over Ethus, changed tlie mvTtle branch of the lady for one of palm, and the original motto for Euvos/rai, roXoyi, xai sv':rp(x,rTi, mean, speak, and do well. Both the shield and the supporters underwent yet another change in the reign of Solvatious of Scotland, who, in admiration of an exploit achieved by the Urquhart and his two brothers, in the great Caledonian forest, converted the lions' heads into the heads of bears, and the armed Javan- ites of Esormon, into a brace of greyhounds. And such were the amis of the family in the days of Sir Thomas, as sheMu bv the curious stone lintel now at Kinbeakie. This singular relic, which has, pcrliaps, more of cha- racter impressed upon it than any other piece of sand- stone in the kingdom, is about five feet in length, by three ill breadth, and bears date A. M. 5612, a. c. 1651, On the lower and upper edges it is bordered by a plain moulding, and at the ends by belts of rich foliage, terminating in a chalice or vase. In the upper comer two knights in complete armour, on horseback, and with their lances couched, front each other, as if in the tilt yard. Two Sp-ens playing on harps occupy the lower. In the centre are the arms, — the charge on the shield three bears' heads, the supporters t\\-o grevhounds, leashed and collared, the crest a naked woman holding a dagger and palm, the helmet that of a knight, with the beaver partially raised, and so pro- fusely mantled that the drapery occupies more space than SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 147 the shield and supporters^ and the motto meane weiLj SPEAK WEIL, AND DOE WEIL. Su' Tliomas's initials, S. T.V.C., arc placed separately, one letter at the outer side of each supporter, one in the centre of the crest, and one heneath the label ; while the names of the more celebrated heroes of his genealogy, and the eras in A\'liich they flourished, occupy, in the following inscription, the space between the figures : — Anno AsTORiMONis, 2226. Anno Vocompotis, 3892. An- no MoLiNi, 3199. Anno Rodrici, 2958. Anno Chari, 2219. Anno Lutorci, 2000. Anno Esor- MONis, 3804. It is melancholy enough that this sin- gular exhibition of family pride should have been made in the same year in which the family received its death bloA\^,^the year of Worcester battle. During the eventful period which intervened be- tween the death of Sir Thomas's father and this un- fortunate year, he was too busily engaged vdth science and composition, to take an active part in the affairs of the kingdom. Nor does it appear that, at the commencement of the stru^jgle between the Scottish CO Presbyterians and the King, he had any very strong inclination to side with either. He was no Presby- terian himself, and indeed not a man to contend earnestly about religion of any kind. He hints some- uhat broadly in one of his treatises, that Tamerlane might possibly be in the right in supposing God to be best pleased with a diversity of worship. But though no Presbyterian, and lax in his religious opinions, he was a friend to civil liberty. He loved his country too well to be in the least desirous of seeing it sacri- ficed to the ambition of even a native prince ; and so 148 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. little friendly was he to despotism^ as to class in one sentence, the doctrine " de jure divino" vnXh "picefraudes" and "Apolitical whimsies/' and to state, as his earnest wish in another, that a free school and standing library should be established in every parish of Scotland. But if he liked ill the tyranny and intolerance of Kings and Episcopalians, he liked the tjTanny and intolerance of Presbyterian churchmen still worse. And there was a circumstance which render- ed the Consistorial government much less tolerable to him than the Monarchical. The Monarchical recognised him as a petty feudal prince, vested with a prerogative not a whit less kingly in his own little sphere, than that which it challenged for itself; while the Consis- torial pulled him dowTi to nearly the level of his vas- sals, and legislated after the same fashion for both. He found, too, that unfortunately for his peace, the churchmen were much nearer neighbours than the King. He Avas patron, and almost sole heritor of the churches of Cromarty, Kirk-Michael, and Cullicuden, and in desperate Avarfare did he involve himself -wdth all the three ministers at once. Two of them Avere bom vassals of the house ; an ancestor of one of these " had shelter on the land, by reason of slaughter com- mitted by him, when there Avas no refuge for him any where else in Scotland ;" and the other oAved his admission to his charge solely to the zeal of Sir Thomas, by whom he Avas inducted in opposition to the Avishes of both the people and the clergy. And both minis- ters, prior to their appointment, had faithfully promised, as became good vassals, to remain satisfied with the salaries of their immediate predecessors. I'heir party SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 149 triumplied, liowever, and tlie promise was forgotten. In virtue of a decree of Synod, they sued for an aug- mentation of stipend ; Sir Thomas resisted ; and to such extremities did they urge matters against him, as to " outlaw and declare him rehel, by open proclama- tion, at the market cross of the head town of his own shire." He joined issue with Mr. Gilbert Anderson, the minister of Cromarty, on a different question. The church, he regarded as exclusively his own property ; and the minister, who thought otherwise, having sanctioned one of his friends to erect a desk in it. Sir Thomas, who disliked the man, pulled it down. There was no second attempt made at placing it ; but for several sabbaths together, all the worst parts of Mr. Anderson's sermons were devoted entirely to the benefit of the knight ; who was by much too fond of panegyric not to be affected by censure. Even when a prisoner in the tower, and virtually stripped of all his possessions, he continued to speak of the " acconital bitterness" of the preacher in a style that shews how keenly he must have felt it. On the coronation of Charles II. at Scone, he quit-t ted the old castle, to which he was never again to return, and joined the Scottish army ; carrying with him, among his other luggage, three huge trunks filled with his hundred manuscripts. He states that on this occasion he " was his own paymaster, and took orders from himself." The army was heterogeneously com- posed of Presbyterians and Cavaliers ; men who had nothing in common but the cause which brought them together, and who, according to Sir Thomas, differed even in that. He has produced no fcAver than four 1.50 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. comparisons, all good, and all very original, to prove that the obnoxious Presbyterians were rebels at heart. They make use of kings, says he, as we do of card kings in playing at the hundred, discard them with- out ceremony, if there be any chance of having a bet- ter game without them ; — they deal by them as the French do by their Roy de la febve, or king of the bean, — first honour them by drinking their health, and then make them pay the reckoning ; or as players at nine-pins do by the king kyle, set them up to have the pleasiu-e of knocking them down again ; — or, finally, as the wassailers at Christmas serve their king of Misrule, invest them with their title for no other end than that they may countenance all the riots and disorders of the family. He accuses, too, some of the Presbyterian gentlemen, who had been commissioned to levy troops for the army, of the practices resorted to by the redoubtable Falstaff, when intrusted with a similar commission ; and of returning home\^'ards ■\\'hen matters came to the push, out of an unwillingness to " hazard their precious persons, lest they should seem to trust to the arm of flesh." Poor Sir Thomas himself was not one of the people who in such cir- cumstances are readiest at returning home. At anv rate he staid long enough on the disastrous field of Worcester to be taken prisoner. Indifferent, how- ever, to personal risk or suffering, he has detailed only the utter wo which befel liis hundred manuscripts. He had lodged, prior to the battle, in the house of a Mr. Spilsbury, " a very honest sort of man, who had an exceeding good woman to his wife ;" and his effects, consisting of " scarlet cloaks, buff suits, arms SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 151 of all sorts, and seven large portmantles full of pre- cious commodity/' were stored in an upper chamber. Three of the "portmantles," as has been said already, were filled with manuscripts in folio, " to the quantity of six score and eight quires and a half, divided into six hundred forty and two quinternions, the quintei- nion consisting of five sheets, and the quire of five and twenty." There were, besides, law paj)ers and bonds to the value of about three thousand pounds sterling. After the total rout of the king's forces, the soldiers of Cromwell went about ransacking the houses ; and two of them having broken into Mr. Spilsbury's house, and finding their way to the upper chamber, the scarlet cloaks, the buff suits, the seven " portmantles," and the hundred manuscripts fell a prey to their rapacity. The latter had wellnigh escaped, for at first the soldiers merely scattered them over the floor ; but reflecting, after they had left the chamber, on the many uses to Avhich they might be applied, they returned and bore them out to the street. Some they carried away with them, some they distributed among their comrades, and the people of the town gathered up the rest. One solitary quintemion, containing part of the preface to the Universal Language, found its way into the kennel, and was picked out two days after by a Mr. Brough- ton, a man of some learning, who restored it to Sir Thomas. His genealogy was rescued from the to- bacco pipes of a file of musketeers, by an officer of Colonel Pride's regiment, and also restored. But the rest he never saw. He was committed to the Tower, with some of the other Scottish gentlemen taken at Worcester ; and a body of English ti'oops were garri- 152 SIR THOMAS URQUHART. soned in the old castle. So oppressive were their exactions, that though he had previously derived from his lands an income of nearly a thousand pounds per annum, (no inconsiderable sum in the days of the Commonwealth,) not a single shilling found its way to the Tower. The ingenuity which had hitherto been taxed for the good of mankind and the glory of his country, had now to be exerted for himself. First he published his genealogy, to convince Cromwell and the Parliament that a family " which Saturn's scythe had not been able to mow in the progress of all former ages, ought not to be prematurely cut oif." But neither Cromwell nor the Parliament took any notice of his genealogy. Next he published, in a larger work, entitled the Jewel, a prospectus of his Universal Language. Crom- well thought there were languages enough already. He described his own stupendous powers of mind. Cromwell was not in the least astonished at their magnitude. He hinted at the vast discoveries with which he was yet to enrich the country. Cromwell left him to employ them in enriching himself. In short, notwithstanding the much he offered in exchange for liberty and his forfeited possessions, Cromwell tlisliked the bargain ; and so he remained a close pri- soner in the Tower. It must be confessed, that with all his ingenuity, he was little skilled to conciliate the favour of the men in power. They had beheaded Charles I. and he yet tells them how much he hated the Presbyterians for the manner in Avhich they had treated their unfortunate monarch ; and though they would fain have dealt with Charles II. after the same SIR THOMAS URQUHART. 153 fashion, lie assures them tliat in no virtue, moral or in- tellectual, was that prince inferior to any of his hundred and ten pi'edecessors. Besides the Genealogy and the Jewel, he published, when in the Tower, a transla- tion of the three first books of Rabelais, which has been described by a periodical critic as the " finest monument of his genius," and one of the most perfect transfusions of an author, from one language into an- other, that ever man accomplished." And it is re- marked, with a reference to this work, by Mr. Motteux, that Sir Thomas " possessed learning and fancy equal to the task which he had undertaken, and that his version preserves the very style and air of the origi- nal." What is knoAvn of the rest of his history may be summed up in a few words. Having found means to escape out of prison he fled to the Continent, and there died on the eve of the Restoration, (indeed, as is said, out of joy at the event,) in his foi-ty-eighth year. " The character of Sir Thomas Urqiihart/' says a modern critic, " was singvdar in the extreme. To all the bravery of the soldier and learning of the scholar, he added much of the knight-errant, and more of the visionaire and projector. Zealous for the honour of his country, and fully determined to wage war, both with his pen and his sword, against all the defaulters who disgraced it — credulous, yet sagacious — enterprising but rash, he appears to have chosen the Admirable Crichton as his pattern and model for imitation. For his learning, he may be denominated the Sir Walter Raleigh of Scotland, and his pedantry was the natural fruit of erudition deeply 1.5-i SIR THOMAS URQUHART. engrained in his mind. To this I may add, he pos- sessed a disposition prone to strike out new paths in knowledge, and a confidence in himself that nothing could weaken or disturb. In short, the characters of" the humourist, the bragadoccio, the schemer, the wit, the pedant, the patriot, the soldier, and the courtier, were all intermingled in his, and, together, formed a character which can hardly ever be equalled for ex- cess of singularity, or excess of humour — for ingeni- ous wisdom, or entertaining folly." He is described by another writer as " not only one of the most curious and -whimsical, but one of the most powerful also, of all the geniuses our part of the island has produced." He was unquestionably a very extraordinary man. There occur in some characters anomalies so striking, that, on their first appearance, they surprise even the most practised in the study of human nature. By a careful process of analysis, however, we may arrive, in most instances, at what may be regarded as the sim- ple elements which compose them, and see the mys- tery explained. But it is not thus with the character of Sir Thomas. Anomaly seems to have formed its very basis, and the more we analyze, the more inex- plicable it appears. It exhibits traits so opposite, and apparently so discordant, that the circumstance of their amazing contrariety renders him as decidedly an original as the Caliban of Shakspeare. His inventive powers seem to have been of the first order. The new chemical vocabulary, with all its philosophical ingenuity, is constructed on principles exactly similar to those which he divulged more than SIR THOMAS URQUHART- 155 n liuiiflrcd years prior to its invention, in the preface to his Universal Language. By what process could it be anticipated that the judgment which had enabled him to fix upon these principles, should have suffered him to urge in favour of that language the facility it afforded in the making of anagrams ! Asa scholar, he is perhaps not much overrated by the critic whose character of him I have just transcribed. It is re- marked of the Greek language by Monboddo, tliat " were there nothing else to convince him of its being a ^\-ork of philosophers and grammarians, its dual num- ber would, of itself be sufficient ; for, as certainly as the principles of body are the point, the line, and the surface, the principles of number are the monad and the duad, — though philosophers only are aware of the fact." His Lordship, in even this — one of the most refined of his specidations — was anticipated by Sir Thomas. He, too, regarded the duad, "■ not as number, but as a step towards number — as a medium between multitude and unity ;" and he has therefore assigned the dual its proper place in his Universal Language. And is it not strikingly anomalous, that, with all this learning, he should not only have failed to detect the silly fictions of the old chroniclers, but that he himself should have attempted to impose on the world with fictions equally extravagant ! We find him, at one time, seriously pleading with the English Parliament that he had a claim, as the undoubted head and representative of the family of Japhet, to be re- leased from the Tower. We see him at another pro- ducing solid and powerful arguments to prove that an union of the two kingdoms would be productive of 15G SIR THOMAS URQUHART. beneficial effects to both. When we look at his lite- rary character in one of its phases, and see how un- consciously he lays himself open to ridicule, we won- der how a writer of such general ingenuity should be so totally devoid of that sense of the incongruous which constitutes the perception of wit. But, viewing him in another, we find that he is a person of exquisite humour, and the most successful of all the translators of Rabelais. We are struck in some of his narratives (his narrative of the death of Crichton, for instance) by a style of description so gorgeously imaginative, that it seems to partake in no slight degree of the grandeur and elevation of Epic poetry. We turn over a few of the pages in which these occur, and find some of the meanest things in the language. And his moral character seems to have been equally an- omalous. He would sooner have died in prison than have concealed, by a single falsehood, the respect which he entertained for the exiled Prince, at the time he was fabricating a thousand for the honour of his family. Must we not regard him as a kind of in- tellectual monster — a sort of moral centaur I His character is wonderful, not in any of its single parts, but in its incongruity as a whole : — The horse is formed like other animals of the same species, and the man much like other men ; but it is truly mar- vellous to find them united, 157 CHAPTER X. Times Whose echo rings through Scotland to this Iiour. Wordsworth. Prior to the Reformation there were no fewer than six chapels in the parish of Cromarty. The site of one of these, though it still retains the name of the Old Kirk, is now a sand-bank, the haunt of the crab and the sea-urchin, and is covered every larger tide by about ten feet of water ; the plough has passed over the foundations of two of the others ; of tAVO more the only vestiges are a heap of loose stones, and a low grassy moinid ; and a few broken fragments of wall form the sole remains of the sixth and most en- tire. The very names of the first three have shared the fate of the buildings themselves ; two of the others were dedicated to St. Duddock and St. Bennet ; and two fine springs, on which even Time himself has been unable to effect any change, come bubbling out in the vicinity of the ruins, and bear the names of their respective saints. It is not yet twenty years since a thorn bush, which formed a little canopy over the spring of St. Bennet, would be covered anew every season with little pieces of rag, left on it as offerings to the saint, by sick people who came to drink of the water ; and near the chapel itself, which 158 THE REFORMATION, ■was perched like an ejTie, on a steep solitary ridge that overlooks the Moray Frithj there was a stone trough^ famous^ about eighty years before^ for A'irtues derived also from the saint, like those of the well. For if a child was carried aAvay by the fairies, and some mischievous unthriving imp left in its place, the parents had only to lay the changelhig in this trough, and, by some invisible process, their child would be immediately restored to them. It was termed the fairies' cradle ; and was destroyed shortly before the Rebellion of 1 745, by Mr. Gordon, the minister of the parish, and two of his elders. The last, and least dila- pidated of the chapels, was dedicated to St. Regrdus ; and there is a tradition, that at the Reformation a va- luable historical record, which had belonged to it — the woi'k probably of some literary monk or hermit, was carried away to France by the priest. I remem- ber a very old woman, who used to relate, that when a little girl, she chanced, when playing one day among the ruins, with a boy a few years older than herself, to discover a small square recess in the wall, in which th^re was a book ; but that she had only time to remark that the volume was a very tattered one, and apparently very old, and that there were beautiful red letters in it, M'hen the boy laying claim to it, forced it from her. What became of it afterguards she did not know, and unconscious of the interest which might have attached to it, never thought of making any en- quiry. There does not survive a single tradition of the cir- cumstances, which, in this part of the country, accom- panied the great event that consigned the six chapels THE REFORMATION. 159 to solitude and decay. One may amuse oneself, how- ever, in conceiving of the more interesting of these, and with history and a little knoAvledge of human na- tm'e for one's guide, run no great risk of conceiving amiss. The port of Cromarty was one of considerable trade for the age and country, and the people of the to\TO were Lowland Scots. A more inquisitive race live nowhere. First, there would come to them wild vague re])orts, hy means of the seamen and merchants, of the strange doctrines \A'hich had begun to disturb the continent, and the sister kingdom. Shreds of heretic semions would be whispered over their ale ; and stories brought from abroad, of the impositions of the priests, would be eeked out, in some instances, with little corroborative anecdotes, the fruit of an experi- ence acquired at home. For there were Whigs, even then, though under another name ; — a certain propor- tion of the people of Scotland being born such in every age of its independence. Then would come the story of the burning of good Patrick Hamilton, pensionary of the neighbouring abbey of Fearn ; and everybody would be exceedingly anxious to learn the particular nature of his crime. Statements of new doctrines, and objections urged against some of the old, would in consequence be eagerly listened to, and as eagerly repeated. Then there would come among them two or three serious, grave people, natives of the place, who would have acquired, when pursuing their occu- pations in the south, as merchants or mechanics, a knowledge, not merely speculative, of the new reli- gion. A traveller of a different cast would describe with much glee to groups of the younger inhabitants. 160 THE REFORMATION. the rare shows he had seen acted on the castle-hill of Cupar ; and producing a black letter copy of " The Thrie Estaites" of Davy Lindsay, he would set all his auditors a-laughing at the expense of the Church. One of the graver individuals, though less openly, and to a more staid audience, would also produce a book, said to be done into plain English, out of a very old tongue, by one Tindal, and still more severe on the poor priests than even " The Thrie Estaites." They would learn from this book that what they were be- ginning to deem a rational, but at the same time new religion, was in reality the old one ; and that Popery, with all its boasted antiquity, was by far the more modern of the two. In the meantime the priests of the chapels Avould be the angriest men in the parish ; — denouncing against all and sundry the fire and fagots of this world, and the fire without fagots of the next ; but one of them, a good honest man, neither the son of a cliurchman himself, nor yet burdened with a family of his own, would set himself, before excommunicating any one, to study the old, neAvly translated book, that he might be better able to cope with the malign ers of his Church. Before half com- pleting his studies, however, his discourses would be- gin to assume a very questionable aspect. Little would they contain regarding the Pope, and little conceraing the saints ; and more and more Avould he press upon his hearers the doctrines taught by the Apostles. Anon, however, he would assume a bolder style of language ; and sometimes conclude, after say- ing a great deal about the spiritual Babylon, and the man of sin, by praying for godly John Knox, and all THE REFORMATION. 161 the other ministers of the Evangel. In short, the honest priest would prove the rankest heretic in the whole parish. And thus ^vould matters go on from bad to worse. A few grey heads would be shaken at the general defection ; but these would be gradu- ally dropping away ; and the young themselves wovdd be growing old without changing their newly-acquired opinions. They would not all be good Christians ; — for every one should know that it is quite a possible thing to be a Protestant, sound enough for all the purposes of party, without being a Christian at all ; — but they would almost all be reformers ; and when the state would at length set itself to annihilate root and branch of the old establishment, and to build up a new one on the broad basis of the kingdom, not a parish in the whole of it would enter more cordially into the scheme than the parish of Cromarty. But however readily the people might have closed witli the doctrines of the Reformation, they continued to retain a good deal of the spirit of the old religion. Having made choice of a piece of land on the edge of the ridge Avhich rises behind the houses, as a proper site for their church, they began to collect the mate- rials. It so chanced, however, that the first few stones gathered for the purpose, being thrown down too near the edge of the declivity, rolled to the bottom ; the circumstance was deemed admonitory ; and tlie church, after due deliberation, was built at the base instead of the top of the ridge, on exactly the spot where the stones had rested. The first protestant minister of the parish was a Mr. Robert Williamson. His name occurs oftener than once in Calderwood's 1G2 OUTBREAKING AT ROSEMARKIE. Churcli History ; and liis initials, with those of his wife, are still to be seen on a flat triangular stone in the eastern part of the town, which bears date 1593. It is stated by Calderwood, that " Jesuits having libertie to passe thorough the countrey in 1583, du- rinti' the time of the Earle of Huntlie's lieutenantrie, great coldness of religion entered in Ross ;" and by an act of council passed five years after, this Robert Williamson, and " John Urquhart, tutor of Cromar- tie," were among the number empowered to urge matters to an extremity against them. There awaited Scotland a series of no light evils in the short-sighted policy which attempted to force upon her a religion she abhorred. The surplice and the service - book were introduced into her cliurches ; and the people, who would scarcely have bestirred themselves had merely their civil rights been invaded, began to dread that they could not, without being un- happy in more than the present world, conform to the religion of the state. And so they set themselves seriously to enquire whether the power of kings is not restricted to the present world only. They learned, in consequence, that not merely is such the case, but that it has yet other limitations ; and the more they sought to determine these, the more questionable did its grounds become. The spirit manifested on this occasion by the people of this part of the country, is happily exemplified by Spalding's narrative of a riot which took place at the Chanonry of Ross, in the spring of 1638. The service-book had been quietly esta- blished by the bishop two years before ; but the more thoroughly the people grew acquainted with it, the OUTBREAKING AT ROSEMARKIE. 163 more unpopular it became. At length, on the second Sunday of ]\Iarch^ just as the first bell had rung for sermon, but before the ringing of the second, a nume- rous party of schoolboys broke into the cathedral, and stripped it in a twinkling of all the service-books. Out they rushed in triumph, and, procuring a lighted coal and some brushwood, they marched off in a body to the low sandy promontory beneath the town, to make a bonfire of the whole set. But a sudden shower extinguishing the coal, instead of burning they tore the books into shreds, and flung the fragments into the sea. The bishop went on with his sermon ; but it was more than usually brief; and such were the feel- ings exhibited at its close by the people, that, taking hastily to his horse, he quitted the kingdom. " A very busy man was he esteemed," says the annalist, " in the bringing in of the service-book, and therefore durst he not, for fear of his life, return again to Scot- land." In short, the country was fully awakened ; and before the close of the foUoAving month, the Na- tional Covenant was subscribed in the shires of Ross, Cromarty, and Nairn. Some of the minor events Avhich took place in the sheriffdom of Cromarty, on the triim:iph of Presbyte- rianism, have been detailed, as recorded by Sir Thomas, in the foregoing chapter. Even on his own testimony, most men of the present day will not feel disposed to censure very severely the churchmen of his distiict. It must be confessed, however, that the principles of liberty, either civil or ecclesiastical, were but little undei-stood in Scotland in the middle of the seven- teenth century ; — the parties which divided it deem- 164 SIR JOHN URQUHART OF CRAIGFINTRIE. ing themselves too exclusively in the right to learn from the persecutions to which they were in turn suh- jectecl;, that the good old rule of doing as we would be done by, should influence the conduct of politicians as certainly as that of private men. And there is a simple fact which ought to convince us, however zea- lous for the honom- of our church, that the Presbyte- rian spiod of Ross, which Sir Thomas has termed " a promiscuous knot of unjust men," was by no means a very exemplary body. Five- sixths of its members conformed at the Restoration, and became curates ; and as they were notoriously intolerant as Episcopa- lians, it is not at all probable that they should have been strongly characterized by liberality during the previous period, when they had found it their interest to be Presbyterians. The restoration of Charles, and the appointment of Middleton as his commissioner for Scotland, were fol- lowed by the fatal act which overturned Presbyterian- ism, and set up Episcopacy in its place. It is stated by Wodrow, that Middleton, previous to the bringing in of this act, had been strengthened in the resolution which led to it by Mackenzie of Tarbat, and Urquhart of Cromarty ; and that the latter, Avho had lately " counterfeited the Protestor," ended miserably some time after. In Avhat manner he ended, however, is not stated by the historian, but tradition is more ex- plicit. On the death of Sir Thomas, he was succeeded by his brother Alexander, who survived him only a year, and dying without male issue, the estate passed to Sir John Urquhart of Craigfintrie, the head of a branch of the family which had sprung from the main THE OUSTED MINISTERS. 165 stock about a century before. This Sir John was the friend and counsellor of Middleton. About eleven years after the passing of the act he fell into a deep melanclioly, and destroyed himself with his own sword in one of the apartments of the old castle. The sword, it is said, was flung into a neighbouring draw-well by one of the domestics, and the stain left by his blood on the walls and floor of the apartment, was distinctly visible at the time the building was pulled douTi. So well was the deprecated act received by the time-serving Synod of Ross, that they nrged it into effect against one of their o^\^l body, more than a year before the ejection of the other non-conforming clergy- men. In a meeting of the Synod which took place in 1661, the person chosen as moderator was one Murdoch Mackenzie ; — a man so strong in his attach- ments, that he had previously sworn to the National Covenant no fewer than fourteen times, and he had now fallen as desperately in love with the Bishoprick of jMoray. One of his brethren, however, an unma- nageable, dangerous person, for he was uncompromis- ingly honest, and possessed of very considerable talent, stood directly in the way of his prefeniient. This member, the celebrated Mr. Hogg of Kiltearn, had not sworn to the Covenant half so often as his superior, the Moderator, but then so wrong-headed was he as to regard his few oaths as binding ; and he could not bring himself to like Prelacy any the better for its being espoused by the king. And so his expul- sion was evidently a matter of necessity. The Mode- rator had nothing to urge against his practice ; for no one could excel him in the art of living well ; but his 166 THE OUSTED MINISTERS, opinions lay more ■vntliin Lis reacli ; and no sooner had the synod met, than, singling him out, he demand- ed what his thoughts were of the Protestors — the party of Presbyterians who, about ten years before, had not taken part Avith the king against the Repub- licans. Mr. Hogg declined to answer ; and on being removed, that the synod might deliberate, the Mode- rator rose and addressed them. Their brother of Kiltearn, he said, A^-as certainly a great man — a very great man, but as certainly were the Protestors op- posed to the king ; and if any member of Synod took part A^ith them, whatever his character, it was e\'i- dently the duty of the other members to have him expelled. Mr. Hogg was then called in, and having refused, as was anticipated, judicially to disown the Protestors, sentence of deposition was passed against him. But the consciences of the men who thus dealt with him, betrayed in a very remarkable manner their real estimate of his conduct. It is stated by WodroAv, on the authority of an eye-witness, that sentence was passed with a peculiar air of veneration, as if they were ordaining him to some higher office ; and that the Moderator A\as so deprived of his self-possession as to remind him, in a consolatory speech, that " our Lord Jesus Christ had suffered great -WTong from the Scribes and Pharisees." Mackenzie received the reward of his zeal shortly after in an appointment to the Bishoprick of Moray ; and one Patcrson, a man of similar character, was ordained Bishop of Ross. On the order of council, issued in the autumn of 1662, for all ministers of parishes to attend the diocesan meetings, and take the THE OUSTED MINISTERS. IC? newly- framed oaths, and while in some of the south- ern districts of the kingdom only a few ministers at- tended, in the diocese of Ross there were but four absent, exclusive of Mr. Hogg. These four were, Mr. Hugh Anderson of Cromarty, Mr. John Mackilligen of Alness, Mr. Andrew Ross of Tain, and a Mr. Tho- mas Ross, whose parish is not named in the list. And they were all in consequence ejected from their charges in the winter following. Mr. Anderson, a nephew of Sir Thomas's opponent, Mr. Gilbert, \\ho was now dead, retired to Moray, accompanied by his bedral, who had resolved on sharing the fortunes of his pastor ; and they returned together a few years after to a small estate, the property of Mr^ Anderson, situated in the western extremity of the parish. Mr. Mackilligen remained at Alness, despite of the council and the bishops, who had enacted that no non-con- forming minister shovdd take up his abode within twenty miles of his former church. Mr, Ross of Tain resided within the bounds of the same Presbytery ; and Mr. Fi-aser of Brea, a young gentleman of Cro- niartj'shire, who was ordained to the ministry about ten years after the expulsion of the others, had his seat in the parish of Resolis. In short, as remarked by Wodrow, there was more genuine Presbyterianism to be found on the shores of the Bay of Cromarty, notwithstanding the general defection, than in any other part of the kingdom north of the Tay. And the current of popular feeling seems to have set in strongly in its favour about the year ICOC. To- wards the close of this year, Paterson the bishop, in a letter to his son, describes the temper of the country 168 THE OUSTED MINISTERS. about liim as very cloudy ; and complains of a change in the sentiments of many who had previously pro- fessed an attachment to Prelacy. Mr. Mackilligen, a faithful and active preacher of the forbidden doctrines^ seems to have given him so much trouble, that he even threatened to excommunicate him, but the mi- nister regarding liis threat in the proper light, replied to it by comparing him to Balaam the wicked prophet who Avent forth to curse Israel, and to Shimei the son of Gera, who cursed David. The joke spread, for as such was it regarded, and Paterson, Avho had only the sanctity of his office to oppose to the personal sanctity of his opponent, deemed it prudent to urge the threat no further: — He had the mortification of being laughed at for having urged it so far. There is a little hollow among the hills, about tlu^ee miles from the house of Fowlis, and not much farther from Alness, in the gorge of which the eye commands a wide prospect of the lower lands, and the Avhole Frith of Cromarty. It lies, too, on the extreme edge of the cultivated part of the country, for beyond there stretches only a brown uninhabited desert ; and in this hollow the neigh- bouring Presbyterians used to meet for the purpose of religious worship. On some occasions they Avere even bold enough to assemble in the villages. In the sum- mer of 1675, Mr. IMackilligen, assisted by his brethren of Tain and Cromarty, and the Laird of Brea, cele- brated the Communion at Obsdale, in the house of the Lady Dowager of Fowlis. There was an immense concourse of people ; and " so plentiful was the effu- sion of the Spirit," says the historian whom I have so often had occasion to quote, " that the oldest Christ- THE OUSTED MINISTERS. 169 ians present never witnessed the like." Indisputably^ even from natural causes^ the time must have been one of much excitement ; and who, that believes the Bible, will dare affirm that God cannot comfort his people by extraordinary manifestations, when deprived of the common comforts of earth for their adherence to him ? One poor man, who had gone to Obsdale merely out of curiosity, was so affected by ^hat he heard, that Avhen some of his neighbours blamed him for his temerity, and told him that the bishop would punish him for it by taking away his horse and cow, he assured them that in such a cause he was content to lose not merely all his \A'orldly goods but his head also. A party had been dispatched at the instance of the bishop, to take Mackilligen prisoner ; but, misin- foiTued regarding the place where the meeting held, they proceeded to his house at Alness, and spent so much time in pillaging his garden, that before they reached Obsdale he had got out of their way. But he fell into the hands of his enemy, the bishop, in the following year, and during his long imprisonment on the Bass, for to such was he sentenced, he contracted a disease of which he died. Mr. Ross of Tain, and Mr. Fraser of Brea, were apprehended shortly after, and disposed of in the same manner. Nor was it only a few clergynnen that suffered in this part of the country for their adherence to the church. Among the names of the individuals who, in the shires of Ross and Cromarty, were subjected to the iniquitous fine imposed by Middleton on the more rigid Presbyterians, I find the name of Sir Robert Munro of Fowlis, the head of a familv which 170 MR. FEASER OF BREA. ranks among the most ancient and lionom-able in the kingdom. Sir John Munro, son of Sir Robert^ suc- ceeded to the barony in IG68. His virtues, and the persecutions to which he "was subjected, are recorded by the pen of Doddridge : — " The eminent piety of tliis excellent person exposed him," says this Avriter, " to great sufferings in the cause of religion in those un- happy and infamous days, when the best friends to their country were treated as the worst friends to the government. His person was doomed to long im- prisonment for no pretended cause but what was found against him in the matters of his God ; and his estate, which was before considerable, was harassed by severe fines and confiscations, which reduced it to a diminution much more lionourable, indeed, than any augmentation could have been, but from which it has not recovered to this day-" But, perhaps, a brief narrative of the sufferings of a single individual may make a stronger impression on the reader than any general detail of those of the party. Mr. James Fraser of Brea was born in the western part of the shire of Cromarty, in the year 16'39. On the death of his father, whom he lost while in his infancy, he succeeded to the little pro- perty of about £lOO per annum, whose name, accor- ding to the fashion of Scotland, is attached to his own. His childhood was passed much like the childhood of most other people ; but with this difference, that those little attempts at crime which serve to identify the moral nature of children with the moral nature of men, and which, in our riper years, are commonly cither forgotten altosrethcr or regarded with an in- MR. FRASER OF BREA. 171 terest wliicli owes nought of its intensity to remorse, were considered by him as the acts of a creature account- able to the Great Judge for even its earHest derelictions from ^^rtue. But this trait belongs properly to his subsequent character. In his seventeenth year, after u youth spent unhappily, in a series of conflicts \\'ith himself, for he was cmbued ■with a love of forbidden ])loasures, and possessed of a conscience exquisitely tender, a change came over him, and he became one of the excellent few who live less for the present world than for the future. As he was not wedded by the prejudices of education to any set of religious opinions, he had, with only the Scriptures for his guide, to frame a creed for himself; and having come in contact, in Edinburgh, with some Quakers, he was wellnigh induced to join with them. But on more serious consideration, he found that some of their tenets were not quite in unison with those of the Bible. He attended, for some time after the Restora- tion, the preaching of the curates ; but profiting little by their doctrines, he deliberated whether he did right in hearing them, and concluded in the nega- tive, in the very year Avhen all such conclusions were declared treason by act of Parliament. In short, by dint of reasoning and reading, he landed full in Pres- byterianism, at a time when there was nothing to be gained by it, and a great deal to be lost. And not merely did he embrace it for himself, but deeming it the cause of God, he came forward in this season of wrong and suffering, when the bad opposed it, and the timid shrunk from it, to preach it to the people. He believed himself called to the ministerial office in a 172 MR. FRASER OF BREA. peculiar manner, by the Great Being who had fitted him for it ; and the simple fact that he did not, in Scotland at least, gain a single sixpence by all his preaching, until after the Revolution, ought surely to convince the most sceptical that he did not mistake on this occasion the suggestions of interest for those of duty. He began to preach the forbidden doctrines in the year 1G72 ; and he was married shortlv after to a lady to whom he had been long attached. The sufferings to which he had been subjected prior to his marriage affected only himself. He had been fined and exposed to ridicule ; and he had had to sub- mit to loss and imposition, out of a despair of finding redress from corrupt judges, whose decisions Avould have been prompted rather by the feelings with which they regarded his principles than by any consideration of the merits of his cause. No sooner, however, had he married, and become a preacher, tlian he was visited by evils greater in themselves, and which he felt all the more deeply from the circumstance that their effects were no longer confined to himself. He was summoned before councils for preaching without authority, and in the fields, and denounced and out- lawed for not daring to appear. But he persevered, notwithstanding, wandering under hiding from place to place, and preaching twice or thrice every week to all such as had courage enough to hear him. He was among the number intercommuned by public writ ; all the people of Scotland, even his own friends and relatives, being charged, imdcr the severest penalties, not to speak to him, or receive him into their houses, or minister even the slightest comfort MR. FRASER OF BREA. 173 to his person. And yet still did lie persevere on the strength of the argument urged by St. Peter before the Je\\4sh Sanhedrim, The lady he married ^^-as a person every way worthy of such a husband. " In her," I use his own simple and expressive language, " did I behold as in a glass the Lord's love to me ; and so effectually did she sweeten the sorrows of my pilgrimage, that I have often been too nearly led to exclaim. It is good for me to be here !" But she Avas lent him only for a short season. Four years after his marriage, when under hiding, word was brought him that she lay sick of a fever, and Imrrying home in " great horror and darkness of mind," he reached her bed-side only to find that she had departed, and that he was left alone. His sorrow at the bereavement oppressed, but it could not overwhelm him ; for, with an energy ren- dered more intense by a sense of desolateness, and a feeling that the world had become as nothing to him, he applied afresh to what he deemed his bounden duty, the preaching of the word. He was diligent in ministering to the comfort of many who ^vere less afflicted than himself; and enveloped in the very flames of persecution, he confirmed, by his exhorta- tions, such as were shrinking from their approach. So well was his character understood by the prelates, that he was one of three expressly named in an act of council, as pecuharly obnoxious, and a large sum of money was offered to any who would apprehend him. Great rewards, too, were promised on the same account by the archbishop of St. Andrews, out of his private purse ; and after a series of hair-breadth IT-i MR. FRASER OF BKEA. escapes, he at length fell into his hands, through the treachery ot" a servant. The questions put to him on his trial, with his replies to them, are given at full length by Wodrow. Without in the least compro- mising his principles, he yet availed himself of every legal argument which the circumstances of his case admitted ; and such was the ingenuity of his defence, that he was repeatedly complimented on the score of ability by the noblemen on the bench. He was charged, however, with a breach of good manners ; for, while he addressed his other judges with due respect, he replied to the accusations of the arch- bishop, as if they had been urged against him by merely a private individual. In ans\^'er to the charge, he confessed that he was but a rude man, and hinted, with some humour, that he had surely been brought before their lordships for some other purpose than to make proof of his breeding. And, after all, there was little courtesy lost between himself and the archbishop. He had been apprehended near midnight, and before sunrise next morning, the servant of the latter was seen standing at the prison gate, instructing the jailor that the prisoner should be confined apart, and none suffered to have access to him. When the court met, the archbishop strove to entrap him, Avith an eagerness which only served to defeat its object, into an avowal of the sentiments with which he regarded the king and his ministers ; and failing to elicit these, for the preacher Avas shrewd and sagacious, he represented him to the other members of council, as a person sin- gularly odious and criminal, and an enemy to every principle of civil government. He was a schismatic MR. FRASER OF BREA. 175 too, he afRmied, — a render asunder of the Cliurch of Christ ! To the charge that he was a preacher of sedi- tion, Mr. Fraser replied with apostolic fervour, that in " none of his discourses had he urged aught dis- loyal or traitorous ; but that as the Spirit enabled him, had he preached repentance towards God, and faith towards Jesus Christ, and no other thing but what was contained in the Prophets and the New Testa- ment. And so far," he added, " was, he from being tenified or ashamed to own himself a minister of Christ, that although of no despicable extraction, yet did he glory most to serve God in the gospel of his Son, and deem it the greatest honour to -v^'hich he had ever attained." After trial he was remanded to pri- son, and awakened next morning by the jailor, for he had slept soundly, that he might prepare for a journey to the Bass. He was escorted by the way by a party of twelve horsemen and thirty foot, and was delivered up on landing in the island to the custody of the go- vernor. Here a new series of sufferings awaited him, not perhaps so harassing in themselves as those to MJiich he had recently been subjected, — for punishment in such cases is often less severe tlian the train of perse- cution Avliich leads to it ; but he felt them the more deeply, because lie could no longer, from his situation, exert that energy of mind which had enabled liim to divest, on former occasions, an evil of more than half its strength, by meeting it, as it were, more than half ^^ ay. He had now to wait in passive expectation un- til the evil came. There were a number of other 176 MR. FRASER OF BREA. prisoners confined to the Bass, for their attachment to Presbyterianisra ; and the governor, a little-minded, capricious man, who loved to display the extent of his authority, by shewing how many he could render un- happy, would sometimes deny them all intercourse with each other, by closely confining them to their separate cells. At times, too, when permitted to asso- ciate together, some of the profaner officers would break in upon them, and annoy them with the fashion- able -wit and blasphemy of the period. A dissolute woman was appointed to wait upon them, and scan- dalous stories circulated at their expense ; all the let- ters brought them from the land were broken open and made sport of by the garrison ; they Avere neither allowed to eat nor worship together ; and though their provisions and water were generally of the A\'orst kind, they had sometimes to purchase them, — even the lat- ter, at an exorbitant price. But there were times at which the preacher could escape from all his petty vexations. In the higher part of the island there are ranges of solitary walks, which skirt the edge of the precipices, and command an extensive view of the neighbouring headlands and the ocean. On these, when his jailors were in their more tolerant moods, would he be permitted to saunter for whole hours ; indulging, as the waves were breaking many hundred feet beneath him, and the sea-fowls screaming over him, in a not unpleasing melancholy, — musing much on the future, with all its doubtful probabilities, or " looking back on the days of old, when he jo3fed with the wife of his youth." And there was a considerable MR. FRASER OF BREA. 177 part of his time spent more profitably in the study of Greek and Hebrew. He besides read divinity^ and \\Tote a treatise on faith, with several other miscella- nies : — and, at length, after an imprisonment of two years and a half, during which period his old enemy the archbishop had suffered the punishment which there was no law to inflict on him, he was set at liberty ; and he quitted his prison with not less zeal, and \\'ith more learnino- than he had brou^rht into it. He still deemed preaching as much his duty as be- fore, and the state regarded it as decidedly a crime ; and so he had to resume his wandering, unsettled life of peril and hardship ; " labouring to be of some use to every family he visited." Falling sick of an ague, contracted through his mode of living, he was cited before the council, at the instance of some of his old friends the bishops ; who, reckoning on his inability to appear on the day named, took this wixy of having him outlawed a second time. But they had miscal- culated ; for no sooner had he received the citation, than dragging himself from his bed, he set out on his journey to Edinburgh. Legal oppression he respected as little as he had done six years before ; but he was now differently circumstanced, — one of his friends, on his liberation from the Bass, having bound himself as his surety ; and sooner ^^ould he have died by the way than have subjected him to any loss. When the dav arrived, he presented himself at the bar of the council ; and defended himself with such ability and spirit, that his lay judges were on the eve of acquitting him. Not so the bishops ; and the matter, after some de- bate, being wholly referred to their judgment, he was M 178 -MR. FKASER OF BREA. sentenced to be imprisoned at Blackness, until lie liad paid a fine of five thousand mevks, and given security that he should not again preach in Scotland. To Blackness he was accordingly sent ; and there he remained in close confinement, and subjected, as he had been at the Bass, to the caprice of a t\Tannical governor, for about seven weeks ; when he Avas set at liberty, on condition that he should immediately quit the kingdom. He passed therefore into England ; and he soon found, for the Christian is a genuine cos- mopolite, " that a good Englishman was more truly his countrjTnan than a wicked Scot." He was much es- teemed by English people of his own persuasion ; and though he had at first resolved to forbear preaching, out of the dread of being reckoned a " barbarian," for he could not divest himself of his Scotticisms, he yielded to the solicitations of his ne\Ady-acquired friends ; and he soon attained among them, as he had done at home, the character of being a powerful and use- ful preacher. But bonds and imprisonment awaited him even here. On the execution of Russell and Sydney, he was arrested on the suspicion of being one of their confederates ; and on refusing to take what AAas termed the Oxford Oath, he was committed to Newgate, where he was kept for six months. But from his ])revious experience of the prisons of Scotland, he seems, Avith Goldsmith's sailor, to have deemed New- gate a much better sort of place than it is usually es- teemed ; — his apartment was large and lightsome, and the jailors were all very kind. Resuming, on his re- lease, his old mode of living, he continued to preach and study by turns, until the Revolution ; when, re- MR. FRASER OF BREA. 170 turning to Scotland, he was invited by the people of Culross to preside over them as their pastor ; — a fit pastor for a parish which, during the reign of Prelacy, had suifered and resisted more than almost any other in the kingdom. In this place he continued until his death ; grateful for all the mercies bestowed upon him, and few men could reckon them better ; but pe- culiarly grateful that in a season of hot persecution he had been enabled to take part with God. Nor were strong-minded men, like Fraser of Brea, the onlv persons who espoused this cause in the day of trouble, and dared to suffer for it. There is a quiet passive fortitude in the better kind of women, which lies concealed, as it ought, imder a cover of real gen- tleness and seeming timidity, until called forth by some occasion which renders it a duty to resist ; and this excellent spirit was exhibited during this period by at least one lady of Cromarty. She was a Mrs. Gordon, the wife of the parish minister ; — a lady who, at an extreme old age, retained much of the beauty of youth, — a smooth unwrinkled forehead, shaded by a ])rofusion of black glossy hair, without the slightest tinge of grey : And it was said of lier, so exquisite was her complexion, that, when drinking a glass of wine, her neck and throat would assume the ruddy hue of the liquid ; an imaginary circumstance, deemed characteristic at one time, by the common people of Scotland, of the higher order of beauties, and which is happily introduced by Allan Cunningham into one of the most pleasing of his ballads. " Fu' white white was her bonny neck, Twist wi'' the satin twine \ 180 LUGGIE. But ruddie niddie grew her hawse, While she sipp'd the bliiid red wine." Mrs. Gordon could scarcely liave attained her eighteenth year at the Revolution ; and yet she had been exposed to suffering on the score of religion, in the previous troubles. There vt^as a story among the people, that her ears had been cut off; it was even observed, that her tresses were always so arranged as to conceal the supposed mutilation ; and some of the wilder spirits of the place used to call her Luggie, in allusion to the story ; but she was too highly respected for the name to take. When a very old woman, she was one day combing her hair in the presence of a little girl, who was employed in dressing up the apart- ment in which she satj and who threw at her from time to time a very inquisitive glance. " Come here, Maggie," said the lady, who guessed the cause of her solicitude, " you are a cmious little girl, and have heard that I have lost my ears, — have you not ? Here they are, however," she continued, shading back her hair as she spoke, and displaying two very pretty ones, " wicked men once threatened to cut them off, and a knife was Avhet for the purpose, but God per- mitted them not." 181 CHAPTER XL A mighty good sort of man. BONNEL Thornton'. The Episcopalian minister of Cromarty was a I\lr. Bernard Mackenzie, a quiet, timid sort of man, witli little force of character, but, with what served his turn equally well, a good deal of cunning. He came to the parish in the full expectation of being torn to pieces, and with an aspect so wo-begone and mise- rable, for his very countenance told how unambitious lie was of being a martyr, that the people pitied in- stead of insulting him. And in the course of a few weeks he had not an ill ^^dsller among them, hoA\'ever disaffected some of them were to his chvu'ch. No one could be more conversant than the curate with the policy of submission ; or could become all things to all men with happier effect. The people, who like the great bulk of the people every where, were better acquainted with the duties of ministers than with their own, were liberal in giving advices, and no person could be more submissive in listening to these than the curate. Some of them, too, had found out the knack of being religious without being moral, and the curate was by much too polite to hint to them that tlte knack was a bad one. And thus he went on, suiting himself to every event, and borrowing the tone 182 THE CURATES. of his character from those whom it was his duty rather to lead than to follow, until the great event of the Revolution, which he also surmounted by taking the oath of allegiance that recognised William as king- both in fact and in law. With all his policy, ho->.vever, he could not help dying a feAv years after ; when he was succeeded by the old ejected minister, Mr= Hugh Anderson. The curate of the neighbouring parish of Nigg, — a Mr. James Mackenzie, was in some respects a diiFer- ent sort of person. He was nearly as quiet and sub- missive as his namesake of Cromarty, and he was not much more religious ; for when one Sunday morning he chanced to meet the girls of a fishing village returning home laden with shell-fish, he only told them that they should strive to divide the day so as to avail them- selves both of the church and the ebb. He was, how- ever, a simple benevolent sort of man who had no harm in him, and who never suspected it in others ; and so little Avas he given to notice what was passing aroiuid him, as to be ignorant even of the exact num- ber of his children, though it was known to every one «lse in the parish that they amounted to twenty. They were all sent out to nurse, as was customary at the period, and when the usual term had expired, and they were retm^ied to the manse, it proved a sad puzzle to the poor curate to recollect their names. On one occasion when the whole twenty had gathered round his table, there was a little, red-cheeked girl among them, who having succeeded in climbing to his knee, delighted him so much AA^ith her prattle, that after almost smothering her with kisses, he told her that THE CURATES. 183 "gin she were a bairn o' his, he would gie her a tocher o' three huiider merk mair nor any o' the lave." " Then hand ye gudeman/' said his wife, " for as sure as ye're sitting there, it's ye're ain Jenny." The de- scendants of the curate, as might be anticipated from the number of his children, are M'idely spread over the country, and exhibit almost every variety of for- tune, and cast of mind. One of them, a poor pauper, died a few years ago in the last extreme of destitution and wretchedness ; — another, an eminent Scottish lawver, now presides on the Bench. One of his elder sons was gi-andfather to the celebrated Henry Mac- kenzie of Edinburii'h, and the "Teat-great-grandchild of the little prattling Jenny is tlie Avriter of these chapters. The bvdk of the people of Nigg had just as little religion as their pastor. Every Sunday forenoon they attended church, but the evenmg of the day was de- voted to the common athletic games of the country. A robust active young fellow, named Donald Roy, was deemed their best club-player ; and, as the game was a popular one, his Sabbath evenings were usually spent at the club. He was a farmer and the owner of a small herd of black cattle. On returning home one Sabbath evening, after vanquishing the most skil- ful of his competitors, he found the carcass of one of liis best cattle lying across the threshold, where she had dropped down a few minutes before. Next Sab- bath he headed the club-players as usual, and en re- turning at the same hour, he found the dead body of a second cow lying in exactly the same place. " Can it be possible," thought he, " that the Whigs are in 184 DONALD ROY OF NIGG. the right after all !" A challenge^ hov/ever, had been given to the club-players of a neighbouring parish, and as the game was to be played out on the following Sabbath, he could not bring himself to resolve the question. When the day came, Donald played be- yond all praise, and, elated by the victory which his exertions had at length secm'ed to his parish, he was striding homewards through a green lane, when a fine cow Avhicli he had purchased only a few days before, came pressing through the fence, and flinging herself down before him, expired at his feet ^vith a deep hor- rible bellow. " This is God's judgment," exclaimed Donald, " the Whigamores are in the right ; — I have taken his day, and he takes »«/ cattle." He never after played at the club ; and, such was the change effected on his character, that at the Revolution he was ordained an elder of the church, and he became afterwards one of the most notable worthies of the north. There are several stories still extant regard- ing him, which show that he must have latterly be- longed to that extraordinary class of men (now ex- tinct) who, living as it were on the extreme verge of the natural world, and seeing far into the world of spirits, had in their times of darkness to do battle with the worst inmates of the latter, and saw in their seasons of light the extreme bounds of the distant and the future. This class comprised at one time some of tlie staunchcst champions of the Covenant, and we find at its head the celebrated Donald Cargill and Alexander Peden. Some of the stories told of Donald Roy, and which serve to identify him with this class, are worthy of DONALD ROY OF NIGG. 185 being preserved. On one occasion, it is said, that when walking after nightfall on a solitary road, he was distressed by a series of blasphemous thoughts, which came pouring into his mind, despite of all his exertions to exclude them. Still, however, he strug- gled manfully, and was gradually working himself into a better frame, when looking downwards he saw what seemed to be a little black dog trotting by his side. " Ah," he exclaimed, " and so I have got company ; I might have guessed so sooner." The thing growled as he spoke, and bounding a few yards before him, emitted an intensely bright jet of flame, which came streaming alone: the road until it seemed to hiss and crackle beneath his feet. On he went, however, with- out turning to the right hand or the left, and the thing bounding away as before, stood, and emitted a second jet. " No, no, it winna do," said the imperturbable Donald, " ye first tried to loose my haud o' my Mas- ter, and ve would now fain gie me a fleg ; but I ken baith him and you owre weel for that." The appear- ance, however, went on bounding and emitting flame bv turns, until he had reached the outer limits of his farm, when it vanished. About seventy years after the Revolution, he was engaged in A\-hat is termed p-oofing the stacks of a corn-yard, on the hilly farm of Castle-Craig. There were two other men with him employed in handing down and threshing the sheaves. The day was ex- ceedingly boisterous, and towards evening there came on a heavy snow storm. " Our elder," said one of the men to his companion, " will hae deep stepping home through the snaw thraves ; he would better 186 DONALD ROY OF NIGG. stay at the Craig, — will you no ask liim ?" " Man, look," said the other, " what is he about ? — look — look \" At a little distance, in a waste corner of the barn, sat the elder, his broad blue bonnet dra-\A'n over his broAV, his eyes fixed on the wall ; and ever and anon would he raise his hands and then clasp them together, as if witnessing some scene of intense and terrible interest. At times, too, he would mutter to himself like a deranged person ; and the men, who had dropped their flails, and stood looking at him, could hear him exclaiming in a rapid but subdued tone of voice, " Let her drive — let her drive ; dinna baud her side to the sea." Then striking his palms together, he shouted out, " She's o'er — she's o'er, — the puir wives o' Dunskaitli ! — but God's will be done." " Elder," said one of the men, " are ye no weel ? — ye wald better gang in till the house." " No," said Donald, " let's awa to the burn o' Nigg ;— ^there has been ill enough come o' this sad night already,— let's awa to the burn or there'll be more." And rising from his seat with all the alacrity of his club-playing days, though he was now turned of ninety, he strode out into the stoi-m, followed by the two men. " What's that ?" asked one of the men, pointing as he reached the burn, to apiece of red tartan whicii projected from the edge of an immense wreath, " Od ! but it's our Jenny's brottie sticking out o' the snaw : — An, ! here's Jenny hersel." The poor woman, who had been visiting a friend at the other end of the parish, had set out for Castle-Craig at the beginning of the storm, and, exhausted with cold and fatigue, had sunk down at the side of the stream a foAv minutes before. PONALD ROY OF NIGG. 187 She was carried to the nearest cottage, and soon re- covered. And the following morning afforded a sad explanation of the darker vision, — the wreck of a Dunskaith boat, and the dead bodies of some of the crew being found on the beach below the Craig, A grand-daughter of the elder who ■v'l'as married to a respectable Cromarty tradesman, was seized in her thirtieth year by a dangerous fever, and her life de- spaired of. At the very crisis of the disease her hus- band was called by urgent business to the parish of Tarbet. On passing through Nigg, he waited on Donald, and informing him of her illness, expressed his fears that he would not again see her in life. " Step in on your coming back," said the elder, " and dinna tine heart, — for she's in gude hands." The husband's journey was a hurried one, and in less than three hours after, he had returned to the cottage of Donald, \^ho came out to meet him. " Come in Robert," he said, " and cool 3'oursel ; ye hae travelled OAvre hard ; — come in man, and dinna be sae distressed, for there's nae cause. Kettie will get o'er this, and live to see the youngest o' her bairns settled in the world, and doing for themselves." And his prediction was ac- complished to the very letter. The husband, on his return, found that the fever had greatly abated, in a very remarkable manner, a few hours before ; and in less than a week after his wife had perfectly recovered. More than forty years from this time, and when the writer was a little kilted urchin of five summers, he has stood by her knee listening to her stories of Donald Roy. " And uoaa," has she said, after nar- rating this one, " all my bairns are doins; for them- 188 DONALD ROY OF NIGG. selves^ as the good man prophesied, and I have lived to tell of him to you, my little curious boy, the bairn of my youngest bairn." I have little of the pride of family in my disposition ; and, indeed, cannot plume myself much on the score of descent, for, for the last two hundred years, my ancestors have been merely shrewd honest people, who loved their country too well to do it any discredit ; but I am unable to resist the temptation of shewing that I can claim kindred Avith the good old seer of Nigg, and the Addison of Scot- land. There is a still more wonderful story told of Donald Roy than any of these. On one of the days of pre- paration set apart by the Scottish church previous to the dispensation of the sacrament, it is still customary in the north of Scotland for the elders to address the people in set speeches on their experience of the truth of religion. The day dedicated to this purpose is termed the day of the men ; and so popular are its duties, that there are none of the other days which the clergjTuen might not more safely set aside. When there is a lack of necessary talent among the elders of a parish, they are called dumb elders, and their places are supplied on the day of the men, by the more gifted worthies of the parishes adjoining. Such a lack occurred about a century ago in the eldership of Urray, a semi-Highland parish, near Dingwall; — and at the request of the minister to the Session of Nigg, that some of the Nigg elders, who, at that time, were the most famous in the country, should come and officiate in the room of his own, Donald Roy and three other men were despatched to Urray. DONALD ROY OF NIGG. 189 They readied the confines of the parish towards evening, and when passing the house of a gentleman, one of the heritors, they were greeted by tlie house- keeper, a woman of Nigg, who insisted on their turn- ing aside and spending the evening with her. Her mistress, she said, was a staunch Roman CathoHc, but one of the best creatures that ever lived, and, if the thing was possible, a Christian ; — her master was a kind, good-natured man, of no religion at all ; she was a great favourite with both, and was very sure that any of her friends would be made heartily welcome to the best their hall afforded. Donald's companions would have declined the invitation, as beneath the dignity of men of independence, and elders of the churcli, but he himself, though quite as much a Whig as any of them, joined with the woman in urging them to accept of it. " Sure I am," he said, " we have been sent here for some special end, and let us not siiffer a silly pride to turn us back without our en'and." There was one of the rooms of the house converted by the lady into a kind of chapel, A small altar Avas placed in tlie centre ; the walls were holloA\'ed into twelve niches, occupied by little brass images of the Apostles. The lady was on the eve of retiring to this place, to her evening devotions, when the housekeeper came to inform her of her guests, and to request that they should be permitted to worship together, after the manner of their church, in one of the outhouses. Leave was granted, and the lady retired to her room. Instead, however, of kneeling before the altar, as usual, she seated herself at a window. And first there rose from the outhouse a low mellow strain of 190 DONALD ROY OF NIGG. music, swelling and sinking alternately, like the mur- murs of the night wind echoing through the apartments of an old castle. When it had ceased she could hear the fainter and more monotonous sounds of reading. Anon there Avas a short pause, and then a scarcely audible whisper, which heightened, however, as the speaker proceeded. Donald Roy was engaged in ])rayer. There ^vere two wax tapers burning on the altar, and as the prayer waxed louder the flames be- gan to stream from the -wicks, as if exposed to a strong current of air, and the saints to tremble in their niches. The lady turned hastily from the window, and as she turned, one of the images toppling over, fell upon the lioor ; another and another succeeded, until the whole twelve were overthrown. When the prayer had ceased, the elders were summoned to attend the lady. " Let us take our Bibles v.ith us," said Donald, " Dagon has gotten a wearifu' fa', and the ark o' the Bible is to be set up in his place." And so it was ; — they found the lady prepared to become a willing convert to its doctrines ; and on the following morn- ing the twelve images were flung into the Conan. Rather more than twenty years ago a fisherman when dragging for salmon in a pool of this river, drew ashore a little brass figure, so richly gilt that, for some time, it was supposed to be of gold ; and the incident was deemed by the country people an indubitable proof of the truth of the story. Donald Roy died in the month of January, 1774, in the lOytli year of his age, and the 86th of his eldership, and his death and character were recorded in the newspapers of the time. In bearing him com- THE BREAKING OF THE BURGH. l!ll puny into an age so recent, I have wandered far from the era of the curates, and must now return. Their time-serving dogmas seem to have liad no very height- ening etfect on the morals of the burghers of Cro- marty. Prior to the year 1670, the town was a royal burgh, and sent its commissioner to the Convention, and its representative to Parliament. For tlie ten years previous, however, its provost and bailies had set themselves Avith the most perfect unanimity to convert its revenues into gin and brandy, the favourite liquors of the period ; and then to contract heavy debts on its various properties, that they might carry on the process on a more extensive scale. And in this year, when the whole was absorbed, they made over their lands to Sir John Urquhart, the proprietor, " in consideration," says the document in which the transaction is recorded, " of his having instantly ad- vanced, paid, and delivered to them 5000 merks Scots, for outredding them of their necessary and most urgent affairs." The burgh was disfranchised shortly after by an act of the Privy Council, in answer to a petition from Sir John and the burghers. There is a tradition, that in the previous ten years of license, in which the leading men of Cromarty \\'ere so suc- cessful in imitating the leading men of the kingdom, the council met regularly once a day in the little vaulted cell beneath the cross, to discuss the affairs of the burgh, and so sorely woidd they be exhausted, it is said, by a press of business and the brandy, that it Avas generally found necessary to carry them home at night. But it was all for the good of the place ; and so pcrsevcringly were they devoted to its welfare. y 192 GEORGE EARL OF CROMARTIE. tliat their last meeting was prolonged for three days together. Sir John did not long enjoy this accession to his property, — destroying himself in a fit of melancholy, as has heen related in the foregoing chapter, three years after. He was succeeded hy his son Jonathan, — the last of the Urquharts of Cromarty ; for, finding tlie revenues of his house much dilapidated by the misfortunes of Sir Thomas, and perceiving that all his father's exertions had failed to improve them, he brought the estate to sale, when it was purchased by Sir George Mackenzie of Tarhat. This accomplished courtier and able man, was the scion of a family which, in little more than a century had buoyed itself up by mere dint of talent, from a state of comparative ob- scurity, into affluence and eminence. The founder, Roderick Mackenzie, was second son to Colin of Kin- tail, a Highland chieftain of the sixteenth century, and whose eldest son, Kenneth, carried on the line of Sea- forth. Rodeiick, who, says Douglas in his Scottish Peerage, was a man of singular prudence and courage, and highly instrumental in civilizing the northern parts of the. kingdom, was knighted by James VI., and left two sons, John and Kenneth. John, the elder, was created a baronet in the succeeding reign, and bequeathed at his death his lands to his son George of Tarbat, the purchaser of the lands of Cromarty ; Kenneth, the younger, was founder of the family of Rose-Avoch, and father of the too celebrated Sir George Mackenzie of Dundee, George, tlie son of John, was born in the castle of Loch Slin, near Tain, in the year 1630; and devoted a long life GEORGE EARL OF CROMARTIE. 193 to tlie study of human affairs, and the la^^'s and anti- quities of the kingdom. He was one of tliose wary politicians who, according to Dryden, neither love nor hate, but are honest as far as honesty is expedient, and never glaringly vicious, because it is impolitic to be Avicked over much. And never was there a man more thoroughly conversant with the intrigues of a court, or more skilful in availing himself of every chance combination of circumstances. Despite of the various changes which took place in the government of the country, he rose gradually into eminence and ])ower during the reigns of Charles and James, and reached, in the reign of Anne, when he was made secretary of state, and Earl of Cromartie, the apex of his ambition. He foimd leisure, in the course of a very busy life, to write two historical dissertations of great research, — the one a vindication of Robert III. of Scotland from the charge of bastardy, the other an account of the GowTie conspiracy. He wrote, besides, a Synopsis Apocalyptica, and a short, but masterly treatise on peat-moss, which is quoted and praised by Mr. Rennie of Kilsyth, in his elaborate essay. He is the wTitcr, too, of a curious letter on the second sight, addressed to the Honourable Robert Boyle, and which may be found in the fifth volume of Pepys' Memoiis. On his death, which took place in 1714, his eldest son John succeeded to his titles, and the lands of I Tarbat, and his second son. Sir Kenneth, to the estate | of Cromarty. Some time ago, when on a journey in Easter Ross, cM/^adj^ I had to take shelter from a sudden shower in an old ^U-rrtr^-L^ ruinous building, which had once been the dwelling- N 194 GEORGE EARL OF CROMARTIE. house of Lord Croraartie's chamberlain. The roof Avas not yet gone, but the floors had fallen, and the windows were divested of the frames. Miscellaneous heaps of rubbish were spread over the pavement ; and in one of tlie corners there was a pile of tattered pa- pers, partially glued to the floor and to each other by the rain, which pattered upon them throiigh the crevices of the roof. The first I examined was Avritten in a cramp old hand, and bore date 1G82. At the bottom was the name of the writer, George Mackenzie. The next, which was dated nineteen years later, was in the same hand, but still more cramp. It was signed Tarbat. The third was scarcely legible, but I could decipher the word Cromartie, appended to it as a sig- nature. Alas ! I exclaimed, for the sagacious states- man. He was, I perceive, growing great, and becom- ing old together ; and I doubt much Avhether the Iionours of his age, when united to its infirmities, were iialf so productive of happiness as the hopes and high spirits of his youth. And what now is the result of all his busy hours, if they were not completely satis- factory then ? Here are a few sybiline-like leaves, — the sole records, perhaps, of his common, every-day affairs ; his literary labours fill a few inches of the shelves of our older libraries ; and a few unnoticed pages in the more prolix histories of our country tell all the rest. Life would not be A\orth one's accept- ance if it led to nothing better ; and yet of all the mere men of the world who ever designed sagaciously, and laboured indcfatigably, how very few have been so fortunate as the Earl of Cromartie ! There was no very immediate effect produced by the THE UNION. lij.) Revolution in tlie parish of Cromarty, and, indeed, but little in the north of Scotland. The Episcopalian clergjTiien in this quarter, were quite as unwilling to relinquish their livings, as the Preshytcrians had been twenty-eight years before ; and setting themselves to reconcile, as they best could, their interest with what they deemed their duty, they professed their Avilling- ness to recognise William as their hing mfact, tliough not in late. To meet this sophism, William de- manded, in what was termed the Assurance Oath, a recognition of his authority, as not only actual but legitimate; and a hundred Episcopal ministers, who complied by taking the oath, were allowed to retain their livings, without being restricted to the jurisdic- tion of courts of Presbytery. So large a proportion of these fell to the share of the northern counties, that in that part of the kingdom which extends from the frith of Beauly to John o' Groats, and from sea to sea, there was only one presbytery, consisting, for several years after the Revolution, of only eight cler- g}Tnen. The next political event of importance which agi- tated the kingdom, was the Union. And there M'as at least one of the people of Cromarty, who regarded it with no ver}' complacent feeling. He was a Mr, Wil- liam Morrison, the parish schoolmaster. I have seen a manuscript of 230 pages, written by this person, be- tween the years 1710 and 1713, containing a full detail of his religious experience ; and as a good deal of his religion consisted in finding fault, and a good deal more in the vagaries of a wild imagination, though the residue seems to have been sincere, he has intro- 196 THE UNION. dijced into his pages much foreign matter, of a kind highly interesting to the local antiquary. He was one of that class who read the Bible in a way it can he made to prove any thing ; and he deemed it directlv opposed not only to the Union and the Abjuration Oath of the succeeding reign, but to the very act of toleration which secured to the poor curates the privi- lege of being like himself the open opponents of both. " May Ave not truly account," says he, " for the dead- ness and carnality of the Church at this present time (1712) by the great hand many of its members had in carrying on the late Union, of sorrowful memorv, whereby our countrey's power to act for herself, both as to religion and libertie, is hung under the belt of idolatrous England. Wo unto thee, Scotland, for thou hast sold thy birth-right. Wo unto thee for the too too much Erastian-like obedience of the most part of thy Church, to the laws of the men of this generation, — men who having established a tolleration for all sorts of wickedness, have set up Baal's altars beside the altars of the Lord. Wo unto thee for that Shib- boleth, the oath of abjuration, which the Lord hath j)ermitted to try thy pulse to see how it did beat to- wards him. Alreadie hath thy Church, through its unvaliant, faint, cowardly, and, I am bold to say, un- godly spirit, suffered woful encroachments to be made on Christ's truths in this kingdom, and yet all under a biassing pretence of witt and policy, — leaving not onlv hoofs in Egypt, but also many of the best of the flock of God's revealed injunctions. Art thou not discouraged and beaten back, Church ! from thy duty, by the sounding of the shaking leaf of a parlia- THE UNION. 197 ment of the worms of the earth, tliat creep, peep, and cry, appearing out of their holes and dens in this time of Scotland's dark niglit, wlien only such creatures come abroad in their native shapes and coloiu's. For if the sun did now as clearly shine on the land as at former times, they would not so appear. It is in the night time that evil spirits and wild beasts seize on folk, and cry in the streets to ticg and flichter them ; and such as they find most feared and apprehensive they haunt most. And so, Scotland, is thy Church afFeared and flichtered with the scriekings and worry- inss of an evil Parliament." 198 CHAPTER XII. Give us, for our abstractions, solid facts, — For our disputes, plain pictures. Wordsworth. Religion never operates on the human mind without stamping upon it the more prominent traits of its own character^ and very rarely without being impressed in turn (if I may so speak) with some of the peculiar traits of every individual mind on which it acts. Like a chemical test applied to a heterogeneous mixture, it meets much that it must necessarily repel, and much also ■\\ith wliich it amalgamates. And we find it not only accommodating itself in this way to the peculiarities of character, hut in many instances even adding a new force to these. In the mind of the deep thinker it is moulded into a sublime and living- philosophy, and he cannot subsist under its influence without thinking more deeply, and becoming moi'e truly a philosopher than before. And what does it ])rove to the ignorant and credulous man ? — no super- stition certainly, and yet so exceedingly akin to su- perstition in some of its aspects and effects, that it lends, apparently as such, an indirect sanction to the more harmless of his other beliefs, — the wonders of Revelation moulding themselves into a kind of corro- borate evidence of whatever else of the supernatural IMPORTANT EVENTS WHICH AFFECT, &C. 190 he had previously credited. It imparts a higher tone of ecstacy to the raptures of the enthusiast — furnishes tlic visionary witli his brightest dreams — gives a more intense gaiety to the joyous — a deeper gravity to the serious — and not unfrequently a darker gloom to the melancholy. Like the most fervent of its apostles, and in much the same degree, it becomes all things to all men. And if this hold true in individual charac- ter, its truth is not less strikingly apparent in the character of an age or country. The schoolmaster of Cromarty and the elder of Nigg belonged each to a numerous class ; and the very brief sketches of these men, which I have attempted in the foregoing chap- ter, may properly enough be regarded rather as na- tional than individual. No one who has perused the more popular vM'itings of the Covenanters, — Naphtali, the Hind let Loose, the Tracts of Peter Walker, and the older editions of the Scots Worthies, — will fail of recognising, in my quotation from IMorrison, the self same spirit which animated the ^\'riters of these vol- umes, or be disposed to question the propriety of classing Donald Roy ^^■ith our Cargills, Pedens, and Rutherfords. The aspect of religion, when thus amalgamated v/ith the enthusiasm or the superstitions of a country, is always in accordance to the direction which that enthusiasm has taken, or to tlie peculiar cast of these superstitions, or to the nature of tlie circumstances and events by which they were modified or produced. These last (circumstances and events) must be re- garded as primary agents in this process of amalga- mation ; and they may be divided into three distinct 200 IMPORTANT EVENTS WHICH AFFECT classes. In the first are great political convulsions wliicli agitate and unsettle the minds of whole com- munities, — exercising their hopes, their fears, and their imaginations — stirring up their prejudices, and which fix their attention and employ their thoughts on the same set of objects. In CA'ery period of the history of every country, there exists a certain quan- tum of superstition and enthusiasm, — a certain pro- portion of the men who see visions and dream dreams ; but in times of quiet, when eveiy visionary has his own distinct province assigned him by some little chance peculiar to himself, the quantum is variously directed ; and thus, flowing in a thousand obscure channels, can have no marked effect on the body of a people. But it is not thus in times of convulsion, when all men look one way, are interested in the same events, and direct their energies on the same objects. The quantum increased by the M'orkings of these storms of the people flows also in one channel ; and thus, to a force accumulating in all its details^ there is added a collective impetus. Hence its over- mastering power. No one acquainted with English history need be reminded of the times of the Com- monwealth, when, through an atmosphere of light- ning and tempest, whole hordes of visionaries gazed on what they deemed a still brighter, but more placid future, and called each one on his own sect to rejoice in the prospect. And the first French Revolution was productive of similar effects. I need not refer, in proof of the assertion, to the singular interest elicited in our own country by the wild predictions of Bro- thers, or to the many soberer dreamers who were THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 201 led, by the general excitement and portentous events of the period^ to interpret amiss a surer word of pro- ])liecy. No one intimate enough with human nature to recognise its impulses and passions in their various disguises of belief and opinion, can be ignorant that there is a superstition of scepticism as surely as of credulity, or fail of identifying the wild infidelity of the French CommonA\'ealth with the almost equally ^\ild fanaticism of the English. The second class of circumstances includes famine, pestilence, and persecution ; and, in particular, the effects of the last are strikingly singular. In the others, the mind^ unsettled by suffering and terror, ceases to deduce the evils which are overwhelming it from the old fixed causes which govern the universe, and sends out imagination in quest of the new. De- mons are abroad — death itself becomes a living spirit, A'oices of lamentation are heard in the air — spectres seen on the earth. The very prostration of the mind, however, (if I may so speak) sets limits to its delvi- sions ; the inventive powers are rather passive than active ; but it is not so in seasons of persecution, A\hen our felloAv creature, man, is the visible cause of the evils to which we are subjected, and the com- bative principle, maddened by oppression, is roused into an almost preternatural activity. Hence, and from the energy of excitement, and the melancholy of suffering, the persecuted enthusiast becomes more en- thusiastical, and the superstitions of the credulous as- sume a darker aspect. Even the true religion seems impressed \A'ith a new character. As Solomon has A\ell expressed it, " Wise men become mad ;" and, seen 202 IMPORTANT EVENTS WHICH AFFECT through the medium of their disturbed imaginations, the common traits of character and of circumstance are exaggerated into the supernatural. The oppression which is grinding them to the earth assumes, for their destruction, a visible form, and a miraculous control over the laws of nature. The evil spirit is no longer formidable merely from his power of biassing the will, and obliterating the better feelings of the heart ; for, assuming a still more terrible character, and a real and tangible shape, he assails them in their hiding places — the cavern and the desert. Even their hu- man enemies, charmed against the stroke of sword and bullet, are rendered invulnerable by the same power. And there are miracles wrought also in their behalf. Their places of hiding are discovered by the persecutor, but a sudden blindness falls on him, and he cannot avail himself of the discovery. They are pursued on the hill side by a troop of horse, but, when exhausted in the flight, a thick cloud is dropped over them, and they escape. The enemy is removed by judgments sudden and fearful. Their curse be- comes terribly potent. There is a power given them of reading the inmost thoughts of the heart; — they have visions of the distant — revelations of the future. These, however, are but the traits of a comparativel}' sober enthusiasm, which persecution cannot goad alto- gether into madness. In some of the wilder instances we see even the moral principle unsettled. The Huguenots of Languedoc, when driven to their moun- tains by tlic intolerance of Louis XIV, were headed by two leaders, a young man whom they named David, and a prophetess whom they termed the Great Mary. THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 203 These leaders exercised over them a despotic autho- lity, and when any of them proved refractory, they were condemned by the prophetess without form of trial, and put to deatli by their infatuated companions. A few vears after the battle of Bothwell Bridge, a small party of Covenanters, of whom the greater part, says ^Valker, " were serious and very gracious souls, thougli they then stumbled and fell," assembled in a moor near Stirling, and burnt their Bibles. Is it not ]>robable that the terrible feuds which convulsed Jeru- salem during the siege of Titus, aggravating in a ten- fold degree the horrors of war and famine, were in part the effects of a similar phrensy ? The third class of circumstances is of a quieter, but not less influential character. When a false religion gives place in any country to the true, there is com- monly a mass of what may be termed neutral super- stitions which survive the change. Thor and Woden are dethroned and forgotten, but the witch, and the fairy, and the seer, the ghost of the departed, and the wraith of the dying, the spirits of the moor and the forest, of the sea and the river, remain as potent as before. The great national colossuses of heathenism are prostrated before the genius of Christianity, but the little idols of the household can be vanquished by only philosophy and tlie arts. For religion, as has been already remarked, instead of militating against the minor superstitions, lends them, in at least the darker ages, the support of what seems a corroborative evidence. And as, from natural causes, they must still be receiving fresh accessions of strength in every country where tliey have taken root, and which re- 204 IMPORTANT EVENTS WHICH AFFECT mains unvisited by the arts, the testimony of the hea- then fathers regarding them, is confirmed by what is deemed the experience of the Christian children. The visions of the seer are as distinct as ever, the witch as mahgnant, the spectre as terrible. Enthusiasm and Superstition go hand in hand together as before, and, under the supposed sanction of a surer creed. The one works miracles, the other inspires a belief in them ; — the one predicts, the other traces the prediction to its fulfilment; — the one calls up the spirits of the dead, the other sees them appear, even though uncalled. From a peculiar circumstance in the past state of this country, its traditional history presents us both with the appearance assumed by superstition when thus connected with religion, and with the very similar aspect which it bears when left to itself. The coun- try had its two distinct tribes of people, believers in nearly the same superstitions, but as unlike, as can well be imagined, in their degree of religious feeling. No Pagan of the past ages could differ more in this respect from the Christians of the present, than the clansmen of the Highland host did from the poor Covenanters, on \A'hom they were turned loose by the Archbishop of St. Andrews. And yet neither Peden nor Cargill nor any of the prophets of the Covenant, were favoured with clearer revelations of the future, than some of the Highland seers. What Avas deemed prophecy in the one class was reckoned, indeed, merely the second sight in the other ; but there seems to be little danger of error in referring what are evi- dently the same effects to the same causes. Donald Roy's vision of the foundering boat, and of the woman THE RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 205 perishing in tlie snow, is quite in character with the visions of the seers. Peden was forty miles from Bothwell Bridge on the day of the hattle, but he saw liis friends " fleeing and falHng before the enemy, with tlie hanging and hashing, and the blood running like Mater." " Oh the monzics, the monzies," he ex- claimed on another occasion, when fortelling a bloody invasion of the French which was to depopulate the oountrv, " see how they run ! see how they ran ! they are at our fire sides slaying men, women, and children." But there is no lack of such instances, nor of the stories of second sight with which they may be so clearly identified. The tracts of Peter Walker, and the lives of the Scots Worthies abound with the former ; some very striking specimens of the latter may be found in Pepys' correspondence with Lord Rea. Kenneth Ore, a Highlander of Ross-shire, Avho lived sometime in the seventeenth century, may be regarded as the Peden of the class whom I have de- scribed as superstitious without religion. He is said to have served as a field labourer with a wealthy clans- man, who resided somewhere near Brahan Castle, and to have made himself so formidable to the clansman's wife by his shrewd sarcastic humour that she resolved on destroying him by poison. With this design slie mixed a preparation of noxious herbs with his food, when he was one day employed in digging turf in a solitary morass, and brought it to him in a pitcher. She found him lying asleep on one of those conical fairy hillocks which abound in some parts of the Highlands, and her courage failing her, instead of awakening him. 206 KENNETH ORE. slie set down the pitcher by his side, and returned home. He awoke shortly after, and, seeing the food, would have begun to his repast, but feeling something press coldly against his heart he opened his waistcoat, and found a beautiful smooth stone, resembling a pearl, but much larger, which had apparently been dropped into his breast while he slept. He gazed at it in ad- miration, and became conscious as he gazed that a strange faculty of seeing the future as distinctly as the present, and men's real designs and motives as clearly as their actions, was miraculously imparted to him. And it was well for him that he should have become so knowing at such a crisis ; for the first secret he became acquainted with Avas that of the treachery practised against him by his mistress. But he derived little advantage from the faculty ever after, for he led, it is said, till extreme old age, an unsettled, unhappy kind of life, — wandering from place to place, a prophet only of evil, or of little trifling events fitted to attract notice merely from the cir- cumstance of their having been foretold. There was a time of evil, he said, coming over the Highlands, when all things would appear fair and pro- mising, and yet be both bad in themselves, and the V beginnings of what would prove worse. A road would > be opened among the hills from sea to sea, and a bridge / built over every stream ; but the people would be de- generating as their country was growing better ; there would be ministers among them Avithout grace, and maidens without shame ; and the clans would have become so heartless that they Avould flee out of their country before an army of sheep. Moss and muir KENNETH ORE. 207 would be converted into corn land, and' yet liunger press as sorely on the poor as ever. Darker days would follow, for there would arise a terrible ])erse- cution, during which a ford in the river Oickel, at the head of the Dornoch Frith, would render a passage over the dead bodies of men, attired in the plaid and bonnet ; and on the hill of Finnbheim, in Sutherland- shire, a raven would drink her full of human blood three times a-day for three successive days. The greater part of this prophecy belongs to the future ; but almost all his minor ones are said to haA'e met their fulfilment. He predicted, it is affii-med, that there would be dram shops at the end of almost ever_y fvirrow ; that a cow would calve on the top of the old tower of Fairburn ; that a fox would rear a litter of cubs on the hearth-stone of Castle Downie ; that another animal of the same species, but white as snow, would be killed on the western coast of Sutherland- shire ; that a wild deer would be taken alive at For- trose Point ; that a rivulet in Western Ross would be dried up in winter ; and that there would be a deaf Seaforth. But it would be much easier to prove that these events have really taken place than that they have been foretold. Some of his other prophecies are nearly as equivocal, it has been remarked, as the responses of the old oracles, and true merely in the letter, or in some hidden meaning which could be eli- cited by only the events which they anticipated. He predicted, it is said, that the ancient Chanonry of Ross, which is still standing, would fall "full of Mackenzies;" and as the floor of the building has been used, time im- memorial, as a burying place by several powerful 208 KENNETH ORE. families of tliis name, it is supposed that the propliecy cannot fail, in this way, of meeting its accomplishment. He predicted, too, that a huge natural arch near the Stonehead of Assynt would he thrown down, and with so terrible a crash that the cattle of Led-more, a pro- prietor who lived twenty miles inland, would break from their fastenings at the noise. It so happened, however, says the story, that some of Led-more's cattle, which were gi'azing on the lands of another pro- prietor, were housed Avithin a few hundred yards of the arch when it fell. — The prophet, shortly before his death, is said to have flung the white stone into a lake, uttering, as his last prediction, that it would he found many years after, and when all his prophecies would be fulfilled, by a lame, hump-backed mendi- cant. There is a superstitious belief which, in the extent to which it has been received, ranks next in place to that enthusiasm which inspired the visionary and the prophet ; and it was alike common in the past age to the Highlander and the Presbyterian. I allude to the belief that evil spirits have a power of assuming visible forms in which to tempt and affright the good, and sometimes destroy the bad, — a belief as old, at least, as the days of St. Punstan, perhaps much older. For it seems probable that Satan is merely a succes- sor in the class of stories which illustrates this belief in the infernal deities ; — indeed, in some of our more ancient Scottish traditions, nearly the old designation of one of these is retained. The victims of Flowden were summoned at the cross of Edinburgh in the name of Platcock. There is but one story of this THOMAS HOGG AND THE MAN-HORSE. 209 class which I at present remember in the writings of Walker^ — that of Peden in the cave of Galloway ; the author of Waverley, hoA\'ever, in referring to the story, attests the prevalence of the belief: — The auto- biographies of Methodists of the last century abound with such ; they form, too, in this part of the country, (for the story of Donald Roy and the dog, is but one of a thousand), the most numerous class of our tradi- tions. Out of this multitudinous class I shall select, by way of specimen, two stories ^^'hicll belong to the low country party, and two others peculiar to the Highlands. Not much more than thirty years ago a Cromarty fisherman of a staid serious character, who had been visiting a friend in the upper part of the parish, was returning home, after nightfall, by the Inverness road. The night was still and calm, and a thick mantle of dull yellowish clouds, which descended on every side from the centre to the horizon, so obscured the light of moon, though at full, that beyond the hedges, which bounded the road, all objects seemed blended together without colour or outline. The fisherman was pacing along in one of his happiest moods ; his mind occu- pied by serious thoughts, tempered by the feelings of a genial devotion, when the stillness was suddenly broken by a combination of the most discordant sounds he had everheard. At first he supposed that a pack of hounds had opened in full cry in the field beside him ; and then, for the sounds sunk as suddenly as thev had risen, that they were ranging the moors on the opposite side of the hill. Anon there was a fresh burst as if the whole pack was baying at him through 210 THOMAS HOGG AND THE MAN-HORSE. the hedge. He thrust his hand into his pocket, and drew out a handful of crumbs, the residue of his last sea stock ; but as he held them out to the supposed dogs, instead of open throats and glaring eyes, he saw only the appearance of a man, and the sounds ceased. '' Ah," thought he, " here is the keeper of the pack ; — I am safe." He resumed his walk homewards, the figure keeping pace with him as he went, until, reach- ing a gap in the hedge, he saw it turning towards the road. He paused to wait its coming up ; but what was his astonishment and horror to see it grooving taller and taller as it neared the gap, and then drop- ping on all fours, assume the form of a horse. He hurried onwards ; the horse hurried too. He stood still J- the horse likewise stood. He walked at his ordinary pace ; the horse walked also, taking step for step with him without either outstripping him or falling behind. It seemed an ugly misshapen animal, bristling all over with black shaggy hair, and lame of a foot. It accompanied him until he reached the gate of a burying ground, which lies about two hundred }'ards without the town ; where he was blinded for a moment by Avhat seemed an intensely bright fiasli of lightening ; and, on recovering his sight, he found that h^ Mas alone. — There is a much older, but very similar story told of a man of Ferindonald, who, when on a night journey, is said to have encountered the evil one, in five different shapes, and to have lost his senses through fright a few hours after ; but this story, unlike the one related, could be rationally enough accounted for by supposing the man to have lost his senses a few hours before. THE WATCHMEN OP CULLICUDEN. 211 The parishes of Cullicuden and Kiltearn^ are situ- ated on opposite sides of the hay of Cromarty ; and their respective manses, at the beginning of the last century, nearly fronted each other ; the ^^'aters of the hay flowing between. Their clergymen, at that pe- riod, were much famed for the sanctity of their lives, and their diligence in the duties of their profession ; and, from the similarity of their characters, they be- came strongly attached. They were both hard stu- dents ; and for at least two hours after midnight the lights in their closet A\indows would be seen as if twinkling at each other across the frith. When the light of the one was extinguished, the other regarded it as a signal to retire to rest. " But how now," thought the minister of Kiltearn, as one night, in an- swer to the accustomed sign, he dropped the extin- guisher on his candle, " how now, are the sleeping watchmen to fulfil their duties ! Would it not be bet- ter that, like sentinels, we should relieve each other Ijy turns. There would tl^en be at all times %vithin the bounds appointed us, open eyes and a praying heart." He imparted the thought to his friend ; and ever after, as long as they lived, the one minister never retired to bed until the casement of the other had given evidence that he had risen to relieve him. A few years after this arrangement had taken place, a parishioner of Cullicuden, who had been detained by business till a late hour in some of the neighbouring parishes, was vvalking homewards over the solitary Mulbuoy, when he was joined by a stranger gentle- man, who seemed journeymg in the same direction, and entered with him into conversation. He found 212 THE WATCHMEN OF CULLICUBEN. him to be one of the most intelligent, amusing men he had ever met with. He seemed to know every thing ; and though he was evidently no friend to the Church, he did nothing worse than laugh at it. The man of Cullicuden felt more than half inclined to laugh at it too, and more than half convinced by the ludicrous stories of the stranger, that its observances were merely good jokes. In this mood they reached the extreme edge of the Mulbuoy, where it borders on Cullicuden, when the stranger made a full stop. " Our road nms this way," said the man. " Ah," replied the stranger, " but I cannot accompany you : see you that ?" pointing, as he spoke, to a faint twinkling light on the opposite side of the bay, — " The watchman is stationed there, and I dare not come a step farther." It was only from this confession that the Cullicuden man learned the true character of his companion. The merely superstitious stories of this class are ge- nerally of a wilder and more imaginative cast than those which have sprung up within the pale of the Church ; and the chief actor in them is presented to us in a more imposing attitude, and in some instances bears rather a better character. Somewhat less than a century ago, (I am wretchedly xmcertain in my dates) the ancient castle of Ardvrock in AssjTit was tenanted by a dowager lady, — a wicked old woman, who had a smgular knack of setting the people in her neighbourhood together by the ears. A gentleman who lived with his wife at a little distance from the castle, was lucky enough to escape for the first few years ; but on the birth of a child his jealousy was awakened by some insinuations dropped by the old THE LADY OP ARDVROCK. 213 lady, and he taxed his wife with infidelity, and even threatened to destroy the infant. The poor woman in her distress wrote to two of her brothers, Avho re- sided in a distant part of the county ; and in a few days after they both ahghted at her gate. They re- monstrated with her husband, but to no effect. " We have but one resource," said the younger brother, Avho had been a traveller, and had spent some }'ears in Italy ; " let us pass this evening in the manner we have passed so many happy ones before, and visit to- morrow the old lady of Ardvrock. I will confront her Avith perhaps as clever a person as herself; and what- ever else may come of our visit, we shall at least ar- rive at the truth." On the morrow they accordingly set out for the castle, — a grey, whinstone building, standing partly on a low moory promontory, and partly out of a narrow strip of lake, which occupies a deep hollow between two hills. The lady received them with much seeming kindness, and replied to their en- quiries on the point which mainly interested them, with much apparent candour. " You can have no objection," said the younger brother to her, "that we put the matter to a proof, by calling in a mutual ac- quaintance." She replied in the negative. The party were seated in the low browed hall of the castle, a large, rude chamber, roofed and floored with stone, and furnished with a row of narrow, unglazed win- dows, which opened to the lake. The day was calm, and the sun riding over-head in a deep blue sky, un- speckled by a cloud. The younger brother rose from his seat on the reply of the lady, and bending towards the floor, began to write upon it with his finger, and 214 THE LADY OF ABDVROCK. to mutter in a strange language, — and as he wrote and muttered, the waters of the lake began to heave and swellj and a deep fleece of vapour, that rose from the surface like an exhalation, to spread over the face of the heavens. At length, a tall black figure, as indis- tinct as the shadow of a man by moonlight, was seen standing beside the wall. " Now," said the brother to the husband, ''put your questions to that, but make haste;" and the latter, as bidden, enquired of the spectre, in a brief tremulous whisper, whether his wife had been faithful to him. The figure replied in the affirmative : as it spoke, a huge Avave from the lake came dashing against the wall of the castle, breaking in at the hall windows ; a tremendous stonn of wind and hail burst upon the roof and the turrets, and the floor seemed to sink and rise beneath their feet like the deck of a ship in a tempest. " He will not away from us without his bountith," said the brother to the lady, — " whom can you best spare ?" She tottered to the door, and as she opened it, a little orphan girl, one of the household, came rushing into the hall, as if scarred by the tempest. The lady pointed to the girl: " No, not the orphan," exclaimed the appear- ance, " I dare not take her." Another immense wave from the lake came rushing in at the windows, half filling the apartment, and the whole building seemed topling over. " Then take the old witch herself," shouted out the elder brother, pointing to the lady — " take her." — " Oh, she is mine already," said the shadow, but her term is hardly out yet ; I take Avith me, however, one your sister Avill miss more." It dis- appeared as it spoke, without, as it seemed, accom- THE LADY OF BALCONIE. 215 plisliing its threat ; but the party, on their return home, found that the infant, whose birth had been rendered the occasion of so much disquiet, had died at the very time the spectre had vanished. It is said, too, that for five years after, the grain produced in Assynt was black and shrivelled, and that the herrings forsook the lochs. At the end of that period, the cas- tle of Ardvrock was consumed by fire, kindled no one knew how ; and luckily, as it would seem, for the country, the wicked lady perished in the flames ; for after her death things went on in their natural course, — the corn ripened as before, and the herrings re- turned to the lochs. — The other Highland story of this class is, if possible, of a still wilder character. The river Auldgrande, after pursuing a winding- course of about six miles through the mountainous pa- rish of Kiltearn, falls into the upper part of the frith of Cromarty. For a considerable distance it runs through a precipitous gulf of great depth, and so near do the sides approach to each other, that herd boys have been known to climb across on the trees, which jutting out on either edge, interweave their branches over the centre. In many places the river is wholly invisible ; its voice, however, is ever lifted up in a A\ild, sepulchral wailing, that seems the lament of an imprisoned spirit. In one part there is a bridge thrown over the chasm. " And here," says Dr. Robertson, in his statistical account of the parish, " the observer, if he can look down on the gulf below without any uneasy sensation, will be gratified by a view equally awful and astonishing. The wildness of the steep and rugged rocks ; the gloomy horror of the 216 THE LADY OF BALCONIE. cliffs and caverns, inaccessible to mortal tread, and where the genial rays of the sun never yet penetrated ; the \^'aterfalls \\-hich are heard pouring douni in dif- ferent places of the precipice, with sounds various in proportion to their distances ; the hoarse and hollow murmuring of the river, which runs at the depth of one hundred and thirty feet below the surface of the earth ; the fine groves of pines which majestically climb the sides of a beautiful eminence, that rises im- mediately from the brink of the chasm; — all these ob- jects cannot be contemplated Avithout exciting emotions of \A'onder and admiration in the mind of every be- holder." The house and lands of Balconie, a beautiful High- land property, lie Avithin a few miles of the chasm. There is a tradition that, about two centuries ago, the proprietor was married to a lady of very retired habits ; and who, though little known beyond her narrow circle of acquaintance, was regarded within that circle with a feeling of mingled fear and respect. She was singularly reserved ; and it was said she spent more of her waking hours in solitary rambles on the banks of the Auldgrande, in places where no one else Avould choose to be alone, than in the house of Balconie. Of a sudden, however, she became more social, and seemed solicitous to obtain the friendship of one of her own maids, a simple Highland girl ; but there was a mysterious wildness about her, which the change in her manners had not removed ; and her new com- panion was always oppressed, wlien left alone Avith her, by a fearful sin-inking of the heart, as if she were in the presence of a creature of another Avovld. One THE LADY OF BALCONIE. 217 day in particular the girl felt more than usually agita- ted by this feeling ; the lady was silent and melan- choly ; there was a fearful meaning in her eyes, an expression in her countenance of grieved anxiety ; at times, too, she would seem as if battling with her feelings ; and a smile that spoke sadder things than even her melancholy, would pass over her features. Towards evening she proposed to her companion a walk to the chasm. They reached it just as the sun was sinking beneath the hill, and flinging his last gleam on the topmost houghs of the birches and hazels which formed a screen over the opening. All beneath was dark as midnight. " Let us approach nearer the edge," said the lady, speaking for the first time since she had quitted the house. " no Ma'am, not nearer," said the terrified girl, '' the sun is almost set, and sad sights have been seen in the (/uUi/ after nightfall." " Psha," said the lady, " how can you believe such stories ! come, I will show you a path which leads to the water. It is one of the finest places in the world ; I have seen it athousand times, and must see it again to night. Come," she continued, grasping her by the arm, " 1 desire it much." " No, lady, no," exclaimed the terrified girl struggling to extricate herself, and not more startled by the proposal than by the almost fiendish expression of mingled anger and fear which now shaded the fea- tures of her mistress, " I shall swoon with terror and fall over." " Nay wretch, there is no escape," replied the lady, in a voice heightened almost to a scream, as she dragged her, despite of her exertions, to\\ards the chasm. " Suffer me, Ma'am, to accompany you," said 218 THE LADY OF BALCONIE. a strong masculine voice from behind, " your surety, you may remember, must be a Aulling one ;" the girl turned round, and saw a dark looking man standing beside her ; and the lady, quitting her grasp, clasped her hands in agony on her breast ; and then, with an expression of passive despair, suffered the stranger to lead her towards the chasm. Twice did she turn round as if to address the girl, but though her lips moved, no sound escaped them. On reaching the precipice she turned yet a third time, and untying from her belt a bunch of household keys, she flung them up the bank ; and taking what seemed a farewell look of the setting sun, for the whole had happened in so brief a space, that the sun's upper disk still peeped over the hill, she disappeared with her companion behind the nearer edge of the gulf. The keys struck, in falling, against a block of granite, and sinking into it as if it were a mass of melted wax, left an impres- sion which is still pointed out to the curious visitor. The girl stood rooted to the spot in utter amazement. On returning home, and communicating her strange story, the husband of the lady, accompanied by every member of the household, rushed out towards the chasm ; and its perilous edge became a scene of shouts, and cries, and the gleaming of torches. But, though the search was prolonged for whole days, and by an eager and still increasing party, it proved fruitless. There lay the stone impressed by the keys ; a little further away was the sheer descent of tlie chasm ; a shrub, half uprooted, hung dangling from the brink, and there was a faint line drawn along the green mould of the precipice a few yards lower down ; but there THE LADY OF BALCONIE. 219 Avas nought to be seen of tlie lady. The river below was hidden by a projecting crag, but the Highlanders could hear it fretting and growling over the pointed rocks, like a wild beast in its den ; and as they listened and thought of the lady, the blood curdled at their hearts. At length the search was relinquished, and they re- turned to their homes to A\'onder, and surmise, and tax their memories, though in vain, for a parallel instance. Months and years passed away, and the mystery ^A-as at length assigned its owti little niche among the mul- titudinous events of the past. About ten years after, a middle aged Highlander, the servant of a maiden lady who resided near the Auldgrande, was engaged one day in fishing in the river, a little below where it issues from the chasm. He was a shrewd blunt fellow, not more than sufiiciently honest, but brave and warm hearted. His mistress was a stingy old woman, who trusted him only when she could not help it. He was more than usually successful this day in his fishing ; and picking out some of the best of the fish for his mother, a very old Avoman who lived in the neighbourhood, he hid them under a bush, and then set out for his mistress with the rest. " Are you quite sure, Donald," en- quired the old lady, as she turned over the contents of his basket, " that this is the whole of your fishing ? — where have you hid the rest ?" " Not one more, ladv, could I find in the burn." " Oh Donald," said the lady. " No, lady," reiterated Donald, " devil a one." And then oft' he went to the bush, to bring away the fish appropriated to his mother. But the 220 THE LADY OF BALCONIE. whole had disappeared. A faintly marked track, spangled with scales, remained to show that they had been dragged by some animal along the grass in the direction of the chasm. The track went winding over grass and stone along the edge of the stream, and struck off, as the banks contracted and became more steep and precipitous, by a beaten path which ran along the edge of the crags at nearly the level of the water. Donald pursued it Avith the resolution of tracing the animal to its den. The channel narrowed as he proceeded ; the stream wliich, as he entered the chasm, was eddying beneath him in rings of a mossy bro^^Ti, became one milky strip of white, and, in the language of the poet, "boiled, and wheeled, and foamed, and thundered through ;" the precipices, on either hand^ beetled, iu some places, so high over his head as to shut out the sky, while in others, where they receded, he could barely catch a glimpse of it through a thick screen of leaves and bushes, Avhose boughs meeting midway, seemed twisted together like pieces of basket work. From the more than twilight gloom of the place, the track he pm'sucd seemed almost lost, and he was quite on the eve of giving up the pursuit, A\'hen, turning an abrupt angle of the rock, he found the path terminate in an immense cavern. As he entered, two gigantic dogs, which had been sleeping one on each side of the opening, rose lazily from their beds, and yawning as they turned up their slow heavy eyes to his face, laid themselves do^vii again. A little farther on there was a chair and table of iron apparently much corroded by THE LADY OF BALCONIE. 221 the (lamps of the cavern. Donald's fish, and a large mass of leaven prepared for haking, lay on the table ; in the chair sat the lady of Balconie. Their astonishment was mutual. " Donald," exclaimed the lady, " what brings you here ?" " I come in (juest of my fish," said Donald, " but, lady^ what keeps you here ? Come away Avith me, and I will bring you home ; and you will be lady of Balco- nie yet." " No no," she replied, " that day is past ; I am fixed to this seat, and all the Highlands could not raise me from it. — Besides, look at these dogs. — why have you come here. The fish you have de- nied to your mistress in the name of my jailor, and his they have become ; but how are you yourself to escape?" Donald looked at the dogs. They had again risen from their beds, and were now eying him with a keen vigilant expression, very unlike that with which they had regarded him on his entrance. He scratched his head. " Deed mem," he said, " I dinna weel ken ; — I maun first durk the twa tykes, I'm thinking." " No," said the lady, " there is but one way ; — be on the alert." She laid hold of the mass of leaven which lay on the table, flung a piece to each of the dogs, and waved her hand for Donald to quit the cave. Away he sprung ; stood for a moment, as he reached the path, to bid farewell to the lady ; and, after a long and dangerous scramble among the precipices, for the way seemed narrower, and steeper, and slipprier, tlian when he had passed by it to the cave, he emerged from the chasm just as the evening was beginning to darken into night. And no one, since the adventure of Donald, has seen aught of the lady of Balconie. 222 CHAPTER XIII. The silent earth Of what it hokU shall speak, and every grave Be as a volume, shut, yet capable Of yielding its contents to ear and eye. Wordsworth. In tlie woods to the east of Cromarty^ and occupying the summit of a green insulated eminence, is the ancient burying ground and chapel of St. Regulus. Bounding the south there is a deep narrow ravine, through which there runs a small tinkling streamlet, whose voice, scarcely heard during the droughts of summer, becomes hoarser and louder towards the close of autumn. The sides of the eminence are covered with wood, which, overtopping the summit, forms a wall of foliage that encloses the burying ground except on the east, where a little opening aflbrds a view of the northern Sutor over the tops of trees which have not climbed high enough to complete the fence. In this burying ground the dead of a few of the more ancient families of the town and parish are still interred ; but by far the greater part of it is occupied by nameless tenants whose descendants are vmknown, and whose bones have mouldered undisturbed for centuries. The jsurface is covered by a short yellow moss, which is gradually encroaching on the low flat stones of the THE ^TORY OF JOHN FEDDES. 223 flead, blotting out the unheeded memorials which tell US that the inhabitants of this solitary spot were once men, and that they are now dust, — tliat they lived, and that they died, and that they shall live again. Nearly about the middle of the burying ground there is a low flat stone, over which time is silently draw- ing the green veil of oblivion. It bears date 1C,90, and testifies, in a rude inscription, that it covers the remains of Paul Feddes, and his son John, with those of their respective wives. Concerning Paul, tradi- tion is silent ; of John Feddcs, his son, an interesting anecdote is still preserved. Sometime early in the eigh- teenth century, or rather, perhaps, about thecloseof the seventeenth, he became enamoured of Jean Gallic, one of the wealthiest, and most beautiful young women of her day, in this part of the country. The attachment was not mutual, for Jean's affections were already fixed on a young man, who, both in fortune and ele- gance of manners was superior, beyond comparison, to the tall, red-haired boatman, whose chief merit lay in a kind, brave heart, a clear head, and a strong arm. John, tliough by no means a dissipated character, had been accustomed to regard money as merely the price of independence, and he had sacrificed but little to the graces. His love-suit succeeded as might have been expected ; the advances he made were treated with contempt, and the day was fixed when his mistress was to be married to his rival. He became sad and melancholy, and late on the evening which preceded the marriage day, he was seen traversing the woods which suiTounded the old castle ; frequently stopping as he went^ and, by wild and singular gestures, giving 224 THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES. evidence of an unsettled mind. In the morning after he was no where to be found. His disappearance, Avith the frightful conjectures to which it gave rise, threw a gloom over the spirits of the townsfolks, and affected the gaiety of the marriage party ; it was re- membered, ever amid the festivities of the bridal, that John Feddes had had a kind, warm heart ; and it was in no enviable frame that the bride, as her maidens conducted her to her chamber, caught a glimpse of several twinkling lights that were moving beneath the brow of the distant Sutor. She could not ask the cause of an appearance so unusual ; her fears too surely suggested that her unfortunate lover had des- troyed himself ; and that his friends and kinsfolks kept that night a painful vigil in searching after tlie body. But the search was in vain, though every copse and cavern, and the base of every precipice within several miles of the town was visited; and though during the succeeding winter every wreath of sea-weed which the night storms had rolled upon the beach, was approached with a fearful, yet solici- tous feeling, scarcely ever associated with bunches of sea-weed before. Years passed away, and, except by a few friends, the kind enterprizing boatman was for- gotten. In the meantime it was discovered, both by herself and the neighbours, that Jean Gallic was unfortunate in her husband. He had prior to his marriage, when one of the gayest, and most dashing young fellows in the village, formed habits of idleness and intemperance which he could not, or would not shake off; and Jean had to learn that a very gallant lover may prove a THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES. 225 very indifferent husband, and that a very fine fellow may care for no one but himself. He was selfish and careless in the last degree ; and, unfortunately, as his carelessness was of the active kind, he engaged in ex- tensive business, to the details of which he paid no attention, but amused himself with wild vague specula- tions, which, joined to his habits of intemperance, in the course of a few years stripped him of all the pro- perty which had belonged to himself and his wife. In proportion as his means decreased he became more worthless, and more selfishly bent on the gratification of his appetites; and he had squandered almost his last shilling, when, after a violent fit of intemperance, he was seized by a fever, which, in a few days, termin- ated in death ; and thus, five years after the disap- pearance of John Feddes, Jean Gallie found herself a poor widow, with scarce any means of subsistence, and without one pleasing thought connected with the memory of her husband. A few days after the interment, a Cromarty vessel was lying at anchor before sunrise, near the mouth of the Spey. The master, who had been one of Feddes' most intimate friends, was seated near the stern, em- ployed in angling for cod and ling. Between his ves- sel and the shore, a boat appeared, in the grey light of morning, stretching along the beach under a light and well trimmed sail. She had passed him nearly half a mile, when the helmsman slackened the sheet, which liadbeen close hauled, and suddenly, changing the tack, bore away right before the wind. In a few minutes the boat dashed along side. All the crew, except the helmsman, had been lying asleep upon the beams, p 226 THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES. and now started up alarmed by the shock. " How, skipper/' said one of them^ rubbing his eyes^ " how, in the name of wonder, have we gone so far out of our course ? What brings us^ here ?" " You come from Cromarty," said the skipper, directing his speech to the master, who, starting at the sound from his seat, riung himself half over the gunwale to catch a glimpse of the speaker. " John Feddes," he exclaimed, "■ by all that is miraculous I" " You come from Cromarty, do you not ?" reiterated the skipper ; " Ah, Willie Mouat ! Is that you ?" The friends were soon seated in the snug little cabin of the vessel ; and John, apparently the least curious of the two, entered, at the other's request, into a detail of the particulars of his life for the five preceding years. " You know, Mouat," he said, " how I felt and what I suffered for the last six months I was in Cromarty. Early in that period I had formed the determination of quitting my native country for ever ; but I was a weak foolish fellow, and so I con- tinued to linger, like an unhappy ghost, week after week, and month after month, hoping against hope, until the night which preceded the wedding day of Jean Gallie. Captain Robinson was then on the coast, unloading a cargo of Hollands. I had made it my business to see him ; and, after some little conversation, for we were old acquaintance, I broached to him my intention of leaving Scotland. It is well, said he ; for friendship sake I will give you a passage to Flushing, and, if it fits your inclination, a berth in the privateer I am now fitting out for cruising along the coast of Spanish America. I find the free trade does not suit THE STORY OP JOHN FEDDES. 227 me ; — it has no scope. I considered liis proposals^, and liked them hugely. There was, indeed, some risk of being knocked on the head in the cruising affair, but that weighed little with me ; I really believe that, at the time, I would as lief have run to a blow as avoided one ; — so I closed with him, and the night and hour were fixed when he should land his boat for me in the hope of the Sutors. The evening of that night came, and I felt impatient to be gone. You Avonder how I could leave so many excellent friends without so much as bidding them farewell. I have since won- dered at it myself; but my mind was filled, at the time, with one engrossing object, and I could think of nothing else. Positively, I was mad. I remember passing Jean's house on that evening, and of catching a glimpse of her through the window. She was so engaged in preparing a piece of dress, which I suppose was to be worn on the ensuing day, that she did not observe me. I cannot tell you how I felt, — indeed I do not know ; for I have scarcely any recollection of what I did or thought until a few hours after, when I found myself aboard of Robinson's lugger, spanking down the frith. It is now five years since, and, in that time, I have both given and received some hard blows, and have been both poor and rich. Little more than a month ago I left Flushing for Banff, where I intend taking up my abode, and where I am now on the eve of purchasing a snug little property." " Nay," said Mouat, " you must come to Cromarty." " To Cromarty, no, no, that will scarcely do." " But hear me, Feddes ; — Jean Gallic is a widow." There was a long pause. " Well, poor young thing," said 228 THE STORY OF JOHN FEDDES. John at length with a sigh, " I should feel sorry for that, I trust she is in easy circumstances V " You shall hear." The reader has already anticipated Mouat's narra- tive. During the recital of the first part of it, John, who had thrown himself on the bacl< of his chair, continued rocking backwards and forwards with the best counterfeited indifference in the world. It was evident that Jean Gallic was nothing to him. As the story proceeded, he drew himself up leisurely, and with finnness, until he sat bolt upright, and the mo- tion ceased. Mouat described the selfishness of Jean's husband, and his disgusting intemperance. He spoke of the confusion of his affairs. He hinted at his cru- elty to Jean when he had squandered all. John could act no longer, — he clenched his fist and sprung from his seat. " Sit down, man," said Mouat, " and hear me out, — the fellow is dead." — "And the poor widow?" said John. " Is, I believe, nearly destitute ; — you have heard of the box of broad pieces left her by her father ; — she has few of them now." " Well, if she has'nt, I have ; that's all : — When do you sail for Cromarty ?" " To morrow, my dear fellow, and you go along with me ; do you not ?" Almost any one could supply the concluding part of my narrative. Soon after John had arrived at his native town, Jean Gallie became the wife of one who, in almost every point of character, was the reverse of her first husband; and she lived long and happily with him. Here the novelist would stop ; but I write from the burying ground of St. Regulus, and the tomb-stone of my ancestor is at my feet. Yet why ANDREW LINDSAY. 229 should it be told that John Feddes experienced the misery of living too long, — that, in his ninetieth year, he found himself almost alone in the world ; for, of his children, some had wandered into foreign parts^, where they either died or forgot their father, and some he saw carried to the gi'ave. One of his daughters remained with him, and outlived him. She was the widow of a bold enterprizing man, who lay buried with his two brothers, one of whom had sailed round the world with Anson, in the depths of the ocean ; and her orphan child, who, of a similar character, shared, nearly fifty years after, a similar fate, was the father of the writer. A very few paces from the burying ground of John Feddes, there is a large rude stone reared on two shapeless balusters, and inscribed with a brief record of the four last generations of the Lindsays of Crom- arty, — an old family now extinct. In its early days this family was one of the most affluent in the burgh, and had its friendships and marriages among the aris- tocracy of the country ; but it gradually sunk as it became older, and, in the year 1729, its last scion was a little ragged boy of about ten years of age, who lived, with his widow mother, in one of the rooms of a huge dilapidated house at the foot of the chapel hill. Di- lapidated as it was, it formed the sole remnant of all the possessions of the Lindsays. Andrew, for so the boy was called, was a high spirited, unlucky little fellow, too careless of the school and of his book to be much a favourite with the schoolmaster, but ex- ceedingly popular among his play fellows, and the projector of one half the pieces of petty mischief with 230 ANDREW LINDSAY. which they annoyed the village. But, about the end of the year 1731, his character became the subject of a change, which, after unfixing almost all its old traits, and producing a temporary chaos, set, at length, much better ones in their places. He broke off from his old companions, grew thoughtful and melancholy, and fond of solitude, read much in his Bible, took long journeys to hear the sermons of the more celebrated ministers of other parishes, and became the constant and attentive auditor of the clergyman of his own. He felt comfortless and unhappy. Like the hero of that most popular of all allegories, the Pilgrim's Pro- gress, " he stood, clothed in rags, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a burden on his back. And opening the book, he read thereon, and, as he read, he wept and trembled, and, not being able to contain himself, he broke out into a lamentable cry, saying, what shall I do ? " Indeed, the whole history of Andrew Lindsay, from the time of his con- version to his death, is so exact a counterpart of the journey of Christian, from the day on which he quitted the city of destruction until he had entered the river, that, in tracing his course, I shall occasionally refer to the allegory ; regarding it as the well known chart of an imperfectly known country. All other allegories are mere mediums of instruction, and owe their chief merit to their transparency as such ; but it is not thus with the dream of Bunyan, which, through its intrinsic interest alone, has become more generally known than even the truths which are couched under it. Sometime in the year 1732, a pious Scottish clergy- man who resided in England, — a Mr. Davidson of ANDREW LINDSAY. 231 Denham^ in Essex, visited some of his friends avIio lived in Cromarty. He was crossing the frith, at this time, on a Sabbath morning, to attend the celebration of the Supper in a neighbouring church, wlien a person pointed out to him a thoughtful looking little boy, who sat at the other end of the boat. " It is Andrew Lindsay," said the person, " a poor young thing seek- ing anxiously after the truth." " I had no opportu- nity of conversing with him," says Mr. Davidson in his printed tract, " but I could not observe without thankfulness a poor child, on a cold morning, crossing the sea to hear the word, without shoe or stocking, or any thing to cover his head from the inclemency of the weather." He saw him again when in church, — his eyes fixed steadfastly on the preacher, and the expression of his countenance varying with the tone of the discourse. Feeling much interested in him, he had no sooner returned to Cromarty, than he waited upon him at his mother's, and succeeded in engaging him in a long and interesting conversation, which he has recorded at considerable length. " How did it happen, my little fellow," said he, " that you went so far from home last week to hear sermon, when the season was so cold, and you had neither shoes nor stockings ?" The boy replied in a bashful, unassuming manner, that he was in that state of natiu-e which is contrasted by our Saviour with that better state of grace, the denizens of which can alone inherit the kingdom of heaven. But, though conscious that such was the case, he was quite unaifected, he said, by a sense of his danger. He was anxious, there- fore, to pursue those means by which such a sense 232 ANDREW LINDSAY. might be a^^■akened in him ; and the word preached was one of these. For how, he continued, unless I be oppressed by the weight of the evil which rests upon me, and the woe and misery which it must necessarily entail on the future, how can I value or seek after the only Saviour ? " But Avhat," said Mr. Davidson, " if God himself has engaged to work this affecting sense of sin in the heart ?" — " Has he so promisd ?" eagerly enquired the boy. The clergyman took out his Bible, and read to him the remarkable text in John, in which our Saviour intimates the coming of the Spirit to con- vince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- ment Andrew's countenance brightened as he lis- tened, and, losing his timidity in the excitement of the moment, he took the book out of Mr. Da\adson's hand, and, for several minutes, contemplated the pas- sage in silence. " Do you ever pray ?" enquired Mr. Davidson ; Andrew shut the book, and, hanging down his head, timidly replied in the negative. " What ! not pray ! Do you go so far from home to attend sermons, and yet not bow the knee to God in prayer ?" — " Ah^" he answered, " I do bow the knee perhaps six or seven times a day, but I cannot call that praying to God. — I want the spirit of prayer; I often ask I hardly know what, and with scarce any desire to re- ceive ; and, often when a half sense of my condition has compelled me to kneel, a vicious wandering ima- gination carries me away, and I rise again, not knowing what I have said." — " Oh," rejoined the clergyman, "only persist: — But tell me, was it your ordinary practice in past years, to attend sermons as yovi do ANDREW LINDSAY. 233 now ?" — " No, Sir, quite the reverse ; — once or twice in a season, perhaps, I went to church, but I used to quit it through weariness ere the service was half com- pleted." — " And how do you account for the change ?" " I cannot account for it ; — I only know, that formerly I had no heart to go and hear of God at any time, and that now I dare not keep away." Mr. Davidson then enquired whether he had ever conversed on these mat- ters with Mr. Gordon, the minister of the parish, but was asked with much simplicity, in return, what Mr. Gordon would think of a poor boy like him presuming to call on him ? "I have many doubts and uncertain- ties," said he, " but I am afraid to ask any one to solve them. Once, indeed, but only once, I plucked up resolution enough to enquire of a friend how I might glorify God ? He bade me obey God's com- mandments, for that was the way to glorify him, and I now see the value of the advice ; but I see, also, that only through faith in Jesus Christ can fallen man acquire an ability to profit by it." " This last answer, so much above his years," says Mr. Davidson, " occasioned my asking him how he had become so intimately acquainted with these truths? He modestly answered, ' I hear Mr. Gordon preach,' as if he had said, my knowledge bears no proportion to the advantages I enjoy." And thus ended the con- ference ; for, after exhorting him to be much in secret prayer, and to testify to the world the excellence of what he sought after, by being a diligent scholar and a dutiful son, Mr. Davidson bade him farewell. The poor little fellow was wandering, at this period, over that middle space^ which lies between the devoted 234 ANDREW LINDSAY. city and the wicket gate ; struggling, at times, in the deep mire of the slough, at times journeying heside the hanging hiU. He had received, however, the roll from Evangelist, and saw the shining light of the wicket becoming clearer and brighter as he ad- vanced. About half a year from the time of this conversation, Mr. Davidson had again occasion to visit Cromarty ; he called on Andrew, and was struck, in the moment he saw him, by a remarkable change in his appear- ance. Formerly, the expression of his countenance, though interesting, was profoundly melancholy ; it was now lighted up by a quiet tranquil joy ; and, though modest and unassuming as before, he was less timid. He had passed the wicket. He felt he had become one of the family of God ; and found a new prin- ciple implanted within him, which so operated on his affections, that he now hated the evil he had previ- ously loved, and was enamoured of the good he had formerly rejected. Standing, as Bacon has beautifully expressed it, on the "^'vantage ground of truth," he could overlook the wdndings of the track on which he had lately journeyed, not knowing whither he went. "I see," said he to Mr. Davidson, "that the very bent of my mind was contrary to God, — especially to the way of salvation by Christ, and that I could no more get rid of tins disposition through any effort of my own, than I could pull the sun out of the heavens. I see, too, that not only were all my ordinary actions tainted by sin, but that even my religious duties were sins also. And yet, out of these actions and duties, was I accumulating to myself a righteousness ANDREW LINDSAY. 235 which I meant to barter for the favour of God ; and, though he was at much pains with me in scattering the hoard in which I trusted, yet, after every fresh dispersal, woiUd I set myself to gather anew. — When passing the wicket, he had been shot at from the castle. He was conscious that a power, detached from his mind, had been operating upon it ; for, as it fluctuated on its natural balance between gaiety and depression, he had felt this power weighing it into despair as it sunk towards the lower extreme, and urging it into presumption as it ascended to\Aards the vipper. He had seen, also, the rarities at the house of the Inter- preter. Religion had communicated to him the art of thinking. It first inspired him with abelief in God, and an anxious desire to know what was his character ; and, as he read his Bible, and heard sermons, his mental facul- ties, like the wheels of a newly completed engine, felt, for the first time the impulse of a moving power, and be- gan to revolve. It next stirred him up to stand sentinel over the various workings of his mind, and, as he stood and pondered, he became a skilful metaphysician, with- out so much as knowing the name of the science. As a last step in the process, it brought him acquainted with those countless analogies by which the natural world is rendered the best of all commentaries on the moral. " I am unable," said he to his friend the cler- gyman, " to describe the state of my soul as I see it, but I am somewhat helped to conceive of it by the springs which rise by the way side, as I pass west- ward from the town, along the edge of the bay. They contain only a scanty supply of water, and are matted 236 ANDREW LINDSAY. over with grass and weeds ; but even now in August, when the fierce heat has dried up all the larger pools, that scanty supply does not fail them. On disentang- ling the weeds I see the water sparkling beneath. It is thus, I trust, with ray heart. The life of God is often veiled in it by the rank luxuriance of evil thoughts, but, when a new manifestation draws these aside, I can catch a glimpse of what they conceal. I can hope, too, that, as the love of Christ is unchangeable, this element of life will continue to spring up in my soul, however dry and arid the atmosphere which sur- rounds it. Bunyan has described a green pleasant valley be- sprinkled with lilies, which lies between the palace of the virgins, and the valley of the shadow of death. " It is blessed," says he, " with an exceedingly fertile soil, and there have been many labouring men who have been fortunate enough to get estates in it." Andrew was one of these. He was humble, and un- obtrusive, and but little confident in himself, — a true freeman of the valley of humiliation. Though no longer the leader of his schoolfellows ; for he had now so little influence among them, that he could not pre- vail on so much as one of them to folloAV him, he was much happier than before. Leaving them at their wild games, he would retire to his solitudes, and there hold converse with the Deity in prayer, or seek out in meditation some of the countless parallelisms of the two great works which had been spread out before him, — Creation, and the Bible. He was no longer a leader even to himself. " I have been taught," said ANDREW LINDSAY. 237 lie, "by experience, that my heart is too stubborn a thing for my owti management, and have so given it up to the management of Christ." — Mr. Davidson saw liim, for the last time, about the beginning of the year 1 740, Avhen he complained to him of being exposed to many sore temptations. He had met with wild beasts, and had to contend with giants, — he had been astonished amid the gloom of the dark valley, and be- wildered in the mists of the enchanted ground. The interesting little tract from which I have drawn nearly all the materials of my memoir, and which, at the time of its first appearance passed through several editions, and was printed more recently at Edinburgh by the publishers for the Sabbath schools, concludes with a brief notice of this conference. The rest of Andrew's story may be told in a very few words. He lived virtuously and happily, supporting himself by the labour of his hands, without either seeking after wealth, or attaining it ; he bore a good name, though not a celebrated one, and lived respected, and died regretted. It is recorded on his tomb-stone, in an epitaph whose only merit is its truth, that " he was truly pious from a child, — his whole life and conversation agreeable thereto;" and that his death took place in 1769, in the fiftieth year of his age. I am aware that in thus tracing the course of my townsman, I lay myself open to a charge of fanati- cism. I shall venture, however, on committing myself still further. One night, towards the close of last autumn, I visited the old chapel of St. Regulus. The moon, nearly at 238 ANDREW LINDSAY. full, was riding high over head in a troubled sky, pouring its light by fits, as the clouds passed, on the grey ruins, and the mossy, tilt-like hillocks, which had been raised ages before over the beds of the sleepers. The deep, dark shadows of the tombs seemed stamped upon the sward, forming, as one might imagine, a kind of general epitaph on the dead, but inscribed, like the hand-writing on the wall, in the characters of a strange tongue. A low breeze was creeping through the long withered grass at my feet ; a shower of yellow leaves came rustling, from time to time, from an old gnarled elm that shot out its branches over the burying ground, — and, after twinkling a few seconds in their descent, silently took up their places among the rest of the departed ; the rush of the stream sounded hoarse and mournful from the bottom of the ravine, like a voice from the depths of the sepulchre ; there was a low, monotonous mur- mur, the mingled utterance of a thousand sounds of earth, air, and water, each one inaudible in itself; and, at intervals, the deep, hollow roar of waves came echoing from the caves of the distant promontory, a certain presage of coming tempest. I was much im- pressed by the melancholy of the scene. I reckoned the tombs one by one. I pronounced the names of the tenants. I called to remembrance the various narratives of their loves, and their animosities, their joys, and their sorrows. I felt, and there was a pain- fid intensity in the feeling, that the gates of death had, indeed, closed over them, and shut them out from the world for ever. I constrasted the many centuries ANDREW LINDSAY. 239 which had rolled away ere they had heen called into ex- istence, and the ages which had passed since theirdepar- ture, with the little brief space between, — that space in which the Jordan of their hopes and fears had leaped from its source, and after winding through the cares, and toils, and disappointments of life, had fallen into the dead sea of the grave ; and as I mused and pon- dered, — as the flood of thought came rushing over me, my heart seemed dying within me, for I felt that, as one of this hapless race, vanity of vanity was written on all my pursuits, and all my enjojTnents, and that death, as a curse, was denounced against me. But there was one tomb which I had not reckoned, one name which I had not pronounced, one story which I had not remembered. I had not thought of the tomb, the name, the story of that sleeper of hope, who had lived in the world as if he were not of the world, and had died in the full belief that because God was his friend, death could not be his enemy. My eye at length rested on the burial ground of the Lindsavs, and the feeling of deep despondency which had weighed on my spirits was dissipated as if by a charm. I saw time as the dark vestibule of eternity ; — the gate of death which separates the porch from the main building, seemed to revolve on its hinges, and light broke in as it opened ; for the hall beyond was not a place of gloom and horror, nor strewed, as I had im- agined, with the bones of dead men. I felt that the sleeper below had, indeed, lived well ; the world had passed from him as from the others, but he had wisely fixed his affections, not on the transitory things, of the 240 ANDREW LINDSAY. world, but on objects as immortal as bis own soul; and as I mused on bis life, and bis deatb, on tbe quiet and com- fort of tbe one, and tbe bigb joy of tbe otber, I won- dered bow it Avas that men could deem it wisdom to pursue an opposite course. — I could not, at tbat time, regard Lindsay as a fanatic, nor am I asbamed to confess tbat I bave not since cbanged my opinion. 241 CHAPTER XIV Around swells mony a grassy heap, Stan's mony a sculjitur'd stane ; An' yet in a' this peopled field, No being thinks but ane. Axon. The ruins of the old chapel of St. Regulus occupy the edge of a nan-ow, projecting angle, in which the bury- ing ground terminates towards the east. Accident and decay seem to have wrought their worst upon them. The greater part of the front wall has been swallowed up, piece meal, by the ravine, whicli, from the con- tinual action of the stream, and the rains, and snows of so many winters, has been gi-adually widening and deepening, untU it has, at length, reached the site of the building, and is now scooping out what was once the floor. The other walls have found enemies nearly as potent as the stream and the seasons, in the little urchins of the town, who, for the last two centuries, have been amusing themselves, generation after gene- ration, in tearing out the stones, and rolling them down the sides of the eminence. What is now, how- ever, only a broken edged ruin, and a few shapeless mounds, was, three hundred years ago, a picturesque looking, high gabled house, of one storey, perforated by a range of narrow, slit-like windows, and roofed Q 242 THE CHAPEL OF ST. REGULUS, Avith ponderous grey slate. A rude stone cross sur- mounted the eastern gable. Attached to the gable which fronted the west, there was a building roofed over like the chapel, but much superior to it in its style of masonr3^ It was the tomb of the Urquharts. A single tier of hewn ashlar, with a sloping basement, and surmounted by a Gothic moulding, are now almost its only remains ; but from the line of the foundation, which we can still trace on the sward, we see that it was laid out in the fonu of a square, with a double buttress rising at each of the angles. The area within is occupied by a mouldy, half dilapidated vault, par- tially filled with bones, and the rubbish of the chapel. A few yards farther away, and nearly level with. the grass, there is an uncouth imitation of the human figure with the hands folded on the breast. It bears the name of the burnt cook ; and from time imme- morial the children of the place spit on it as they pass. But though tradition bears evidence to the an- tiquity of the practice, it gives no account of its origin, or, AA'hat might, perhaps, prove the same thing, of the character of the poor cook ; which we may infer, howevei', from the nature of the observance, to have been a bad one. I find it stated by Mr. Brady in his Clavis Calendaria, that, so late as the last century, it was customary, in some places of England, to spit every time they named the Devil. Viewed from the ruins, the tombstones of the bury- ing ground seem clustered together beneath the fence of trees which overtops the eminence on the west. I have compared them, in some of my imaginative moods, to a covey of waterfowl sleeping beside the long rank THE CHAPEL OP ST. REGULUS. 243 grass and rushes of a lake. They are mostly all fashioned in that heavy, grotesque style of sculpture, which, after the Reformation had pulled down hoth the patterns and the patrons of the stone-cutter, suc- ceeded, in this part of the country, to the lighter, and more elegant style of the time of the Jameses. The centre of the stones are occupied by the rude sem- blances of sculls and cross-bones, dead-bells and sand-glasses, shovels and sceptres, coffins and armorial bearings ; while the inscriptions, rude and uncouth as the figures, run in continuous lines round the margins. They tell us, though with as little variety as elegance of phrase, that there is nothing certain in life except its termination ; and, taken collectively, read us a striking lesson on the vicissitudes of human affairs. For we learn from them that we have before us the burial places of no fewer than seven landed pro- prietors, none of whose families now inherit their estates. One of the inscriptions, and but only one, has some little merit as a composition. It is simple and modest ; and may be regarded, besides, as a specimen of the language and orthography of Cromarty in the reign of Charles II. It runs thus : — HEIR • LVES ■ AT • REST • AN • FAITHFVL • ONE • •WHOM ' GOD • HAITH • PLEASIT • TO • CAL • VPON • HIR • LYE • SHEE • LIVED • BOTH • POOR • AND ■ IVST . AND • EY • IN • GOD ■ SHEE • PVT • HIR • TRVST • GOD'S • LAWES • OBYED • TO • SIN • WAS LEATH • NO ■ DOVBT • SHEE ' DYED ■ ANE ■ HAPPIE • DATH - lANET • IONSton ■ 1679 . On the northern side of the burying ground there is a low stone, sculptured like most of the others, but broken by some accident into three pieces. A few 244 MACLEOD THE SMUGGLER. stinted shrubs of broom spread their tiny branches and bright blossoms over the figures ; they are obscured, besides, by rank tufts of moss, and patches of lichens ; but, despite of neglect and accident, enough of the inscription remains legible, to tell us that 'vve stand on the burial place of one John Macleod, a merchant of Cromarty. He kept, besides, the principal inn of the place. He had an only son, a tall, and very powerful man, who was engaged, as he himself had been in his earlier days, in the free trade, and who, for a series of years, had set the officers of the Revenue at defiance. Sometime late in the reign of Queen Anne, he had succeeded in landing part of a cargo among the rocks of the hill of Cromarty, and in transporting it, night after night, from the caverns in which he had first secreted it, to a vault in his father's house, which opened into the cellar. After concealing the enti'ance, he had seated himself beside the old man at the kitchen fire, when two Revenue officers entered the apartment, and, tak- ing their places beside a table, called for liquor. Macleod drew his bonnet hastily over his brow, and edging away from the small iron lamp AA'hich lighted the kitchen, mufRed himself up in the folds of his dreadnought greatcoat. His father supplied the of- ficers. " Where is Walter, your son ?" inquired the better dressed of tlie two, a tall, thin man, equipped in a three cornered hat, and a blue coat seamed with gold lace ; " I trust he does not still sail the Swacker." " Maybe no," said the old man dryly. " For I have just had intelligence," continued the officer, " that she was captured this morning by Captain Manton, after firing on hor Majesty's liug ; and it will go pretty MACLEOD THE SMUGGLER. 245 hard, I can tell you, with some of the crew." A third Revenue officer now entered the kitchen, and going up to the table whispered something to the two others. "Please Mr. Macleod," said the former speaker to the innkeeper, " bring us a light, and the key of your cellar." " And wherefore that ?" inqiured the old man, " shew me your ^^'arrant. What wovdd ye do with the key ?" " Nay sir, no trifling," you brought here last night three cart loads of Geneva, and stored them up in a vault below your cellar ; — the key and a light." There was no sign, however, of procuring either. " Away," he continued, turning to the ofiicer who had last entered, " away for a candle and a sledge hammer." He was just quitting the room when the younger Macleod rose from his seat, and came forAvard. " Look ye, gentlemen," he said in a tone of portentous coolness," I shall take it upon me to settle this affair, you and I have met before now, and are a little acquainted. The man who first moves out of tliis place in the direction of the cellar, shall never move afterwards in any direction at all." He thrust his hand, as he spoke, beneath the folds of his greatcoat, and seemed extricating some weapon from his belt. " In upon him lads," shouted out the tall olRcer, " devil though he be, he is but one ; the rest are all captured." In a moment two of the officers had thrown themselves upon him ; the third laid hold of his father. A tremendous struggle ensued ; — the lamp Avas overturned and extinguished. The smug- gler, with a Herculean effort, shook off both his assail- ants, and as they rushed in again to close with him, he dealt one of them so terrible a blow that he rolled. 246 MACLEOD THE SMUGGLER, stunned and senseless, on the floor. The elder Macleod, a hale old man, had extricated himself at the same moment, and mistaking, in the imperfect light, his son for one of the officers, and the fallen officer for his son, he seized on the kitchen poker, and just as the champion had succeeded in mastering his other opponent, he struck at him from behind, and felled him in an instant. In less than half an hour he was dead. The unfortunate old man did not long survive him ; for after enduring, for a few days, the horrors of mingled grief and remorse, his anguish of mind terminated in insanity, and he died in the course of the month. For some time after the house he had inhabited lay without a tenant, and stories were circulated among the townsfolks of its being haunted. One David Hood, a tailor of the place, was frightened almost out of his wits, in passing it on a coarse winter night, when neither fire nor candle in the Avhole range of houses on either side, shewed him that there was any body awake in town but himself. A fearful noise seemed to proceed from one of the lower rooms, as if a party of men were engaged in some desperate struggle ; — he could hear the dashing of furniture against the floor, and the blows of the assailants ; and after a dull hollow sound twiae repeated, there was a fearful shriek, and a mournful exclamation in the voice of the de- ceased shopkeeper, " I have murdered my son ! I have murdered my son I" The house was occupied, notwithstanding, some years after, though little to'the comfort of the tenants. Often were they wakened at midnight, it is said, by noises as if every piece of fur- MACLEOD THE SMUGGLER. 247 niture in the apartment was huddled into the middle of the floors; though in the morning not a chair or table would be found displaced; at times, too, it would seem as if some person heavily booted was traversing the rooms overhead ; and some of the inmates, as they lay a-bed, have seen clenched fists shaken at them from out- side the windo\AS, and pale, threatening faces looking in upon them through half open doors. There is one of the stories which, but for a single circumstance, I would deem more authentic, not merely than any of the others, but than most of the class to which it belongs. It was communicated to me by a sensible and honest man, — a man, too, of very general infor- mation. He saw, he said, what he seriously believed to be the apparition of the younger Macleod ; but as he was a child of only six years at the time, his testi- mony may, perhaps, be more rationally regarded as curiously illustrative of the force of imagination at a very early age, than as containing any legitimate proof of the reality of such appearances. He had a sister, a few years older than himself, who attended some of the younger members of the family, which tenanted, about sixty years ago, the house once occupied by the shop- keeper. One Sunday forenoon, Avhen all the inmates had gone to church except the girl and her charge, he stole in to see her, and then amused himself in wandering from room to room, gazing at the furniture and the pictures. He at length reached one of the garrets, and was turning over a heap of old magazines in quest of the prints, when he observed something darken the door, and looking uj), found himself in the presence of what seemed to be a very tall, broad-shouldered 248 THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. man, with a pale, ghastly countenance, and wrapped up in a brown, dreadnought greatcoat. A good deal surprised, but not at all alarmed, for he had no thought at the time that the appearance was other than natural, he stepped down stairs and told his sister that there was a "muckle big man in the top of the house." She immediately called in a party of the neighbours, ■v\-ho, emboldened by the day light, explored every room and closet from the garrets to the cellar, but they saw neither the tall man, nor the dreadnought greatcoat. The old enclosure of the burying ground, which seems originally to have been an earthen wall, has now sunk into a grassy mound, and on the southern and western sides some of the largest trees of the fence, — a fine stately ash, fluted like a Grecian column, a huge elm roughened over with immense wens, and a low bushy larch with a bent, twisted trunk, and weeping branches, spring directly out of it. At one place we see a flat tombstone lying a few yards out- side the mound. The trees which shoot up on every side, fling so deep agioom over it during the summer and autumn months, that we can scarcely decipher the epitaph ; and in winter it is not unfrequently buried under a wreath of withered leaves. By dint of some little pains, however, we come to learn from the dar- kened and half dilapidated inscription, that the tenant below was one Alexander Wood, a native of Cromarty, who died in the year 1690 ; and that he was interred in this place at his own especial desire. His wife and some of his children have taken up their places beside him; — thus lying apart like a family of hermits; THE STOKY OF SANDY WOOD. 24-9 while his story, which^ almost too wild for tradition itself, is yet as authentic as most pieces of ^Titten history, atfords a curious explanation of the circum- stance which directed their choice. Wood was a man of strong passions, sparingly gifted with common sense, and exceedingly superstitious. No one could be kinder to one's friends or relatives, or more hospitable to a stranger ; but Avhen once of- fended, he Mas implacable. He had but little in his power either as a friend or an enemy, — his course through the world lying barely beyond the bleak edge of poverty. If a neighbour, however, dropped in by accident at meal time, he would not be suffered to quit his house until he had shared with him his simple fare. There was benevolence in tbe very grasp of his hand, and the twinkle of his eye, and in the little set speech, still preserved by tradition, in which lie used to address his wife every time an old or mutilated beggar came to his door : — " Alms, gudewife," he would say, " alms to the cripple, and the bHu', and the broken dowTi." When injured or insulted,, however, and certainly no one could do either without being very much in the WTong, there was a toad-like malignity in his nature, which would come leaping out like the reptile from its hole, and no power on earth could shut it up again. He would sit hatching his venom for days and weeks together with aslow, tedious, unoperative kind of per- severance, that achieved notliing. He was full of an- ecdote, and, in all his stories, human natm-e was ex- hibited in only its brightest lights, and its deepest shadows, without the slightest mixture of that medium tint which gives colour to its working, every-day suit. 250 THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. Whatever was bad in the better class^ he transferred to the worse^ and vice versa ; and thus not even his narratives of the supernatural were less true to nature and factj than his narratives of mere men and women. And he dealt with the two classes of stories after one fashion^ — ^lending the same firm belief to both alike. In the house adjoining the one in which he resided, there lived a stout little man, a shoemaker, famous in the village for his great wit, and his very considerable knavery. His jokes were mostly practical, and some of the best of them were exceedingly akin to felonies. Poor Wood could not understand his wit, but, in his simplicity of heart, he deemed him honest, and would fain have prevailed on the neighbours to think so too. He knew it, he said, by his very look. Their gardens, like their houses, lay contiguous, and were separated from each other, not by a fence, but by four undressed stones laid in a line. Year after year was the garden of Wood becoming less productive ; and he had a strange misgiving, but the tiling was too absurd to be spoken of, that it was growing smaller every season by the breadth of a whole row of cabbages. On the one side, liowever, were the back walls of his own and his neighbour's tenements ; the four large stones stretched along the other; and nothing, surely, could be less likely than that either the stones or the houses should take it into tlieir heads to rob him of his pro- perty. But the more he strove to exclude the idea, the more it pressed upon him. He measured and remea- sured to convince himself that it was a false one, and found that he had fallen on just the means of establish- ing its truth : The garden was actually growing smaller. THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. 251 But how ? Just because it was bewitched ! It was shrinking into itself under the force of some potent enchantment, like a piece of plaiding in the fulling mill. No hypothesis could be more congenial ; and he would have held by it, perhaps, until his dying day, had it not been struck down by one of those chance discov- eries which destroy so many beautiful systems, and spoil so much ingenious philosoplij', quite in the way that Newton's apple struck down the vortices of Des- cartes. He was lying a-bed one morning in spring, about daybreak, when his attention was excited by a strange noise which seemed to proceed from the garden. Had he heard it two hours earlier, he would have wrapped up his head in the bed-clothes and lain still ; but now, that the cock had crown, it could not, he concluded, be other than natural. Hastily throwing on part of his clothes, he stole warily to a back window, and saw, between him and the faint light that Avas beginning to peep out in the east, the figure of a man, armed with a lever, tugging at the stones. Two had already been shifted a ftdl yard nearer the houses, and the figure was straining over a third. Wood crept stealth- ily out at the window, crawled on all fours to the in- truder, and, tripping up his heels, laid him across his lever. It was his knavish neighbour the shoemaker. A scene of noisy contention ensued ; groups of half- dressed toAvnsfolks, looming horrible in their shirts and nightcaps through the grey of morning, came issuing through the lanes and the closes ; and the combatants were dragged asunder. And well was it for the shoe- maker that it happened so ; for Wood, though in his 252 THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. sixtieth year, M-as strong enough, and more than angry enough, to have torn him to pieces. Now, however, that the warfare had to be carried on by words, the case was quite reversed. " Neehours," said the shoemaker, who had the double advantage of being exceedingly plausible, and decidedly in the wrong, " I'm desperately ill used this morning — desperately ill used ; — He would baith rob and murder me. I lang jaloused ye see, that my wee bit o' a yard was growing littler and littler ilka season ; and, though no verra ready to suspect folk, I just thought I would keep watch, and see wha was shifting the mark stanes. Weel, and I did ; — late and early did I watch for mair now than a fortnight ; and wha did I see this morning through the back win- nock but auld Sandy Wood there in his verra sark, — 0, it's no him that has ony thought o' his end ! po- king the stones wi a lang kebar, intil the verra heart o' my grun'. " See," said he, pointing to the one that had not yet been moved, " see if he hasna shifted it a lang ell ; and only notice the craft o' the body in tir- ring up the yird about the lave, as if tliey had been a' moved frae my side. Weel, I came out and chal- lenged him, as wha widna ? — says I, Sawney my man, that's no honest ; I'll no bear that ; and nae mair had I time to say, when up he flew at me like a wuU cat, and if it was'na for yoursels, I daresay he would hae throttled me. Look how I'm bleedan ; — and only till him, — look till the cankart deceitfid bodie, if he has one word to put in for himsel." There was truth in, at least, the last assertion, foi- poor Wood, mute with rage and astonishment, stood THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. 253 listening, in utter helplessness, to the astounding charge of the shoemaker, — almost the very charge he himself had to prefer. Twice did he spring forward to grapple with him, but the neighbours held him back, and every time he essayed to speak, his words, massed and tangled together, like wreaths of sea-weed in a hurricane, actually stuck in his throat. He continued to rage for three days after, and when the eruption had at length subsided, all his former resentments were found to be swallowed up, like the lesser craters of a volcano, in the gulf of one immense hatred. His house, as has been said, lay contiguous to the house of the shoemaker, and he could not avoid see- ing him every time he went out and came in, a cir- cumstance which he, at first, deemed rather gratifying than otherwise. It prevented his hatred from be- coming vapid by setting it a-working at least ten times a-day, as a musket would a barrel of ale if discharged into the bung hole. Its frequency, however, at length sickened him, and he had employed a mason to build a stone wall, which, by stretching from side to side of the close, was to shut up the view, when he sickened in right earnest, and at the end of a few days found himself a-djang. Still, however, he was possessed by his one engrossing resentment. It mingled with all his thoughts of the past and the future ; and not only was he to carry it with him to the world to which he was going, but also to leave it behind him as a legacy to his children. Among his many other beliefs, there was a superstition, handed down from the times of the monks, that at the day of final doom all the people of the sheriffdom were to be judged on the moor of 2.54 THE STORY OF SANDY WOOD. Navity; and both the judgment and the scene of it, he had indissolubly associated with the shoemaker and the four stones. Experience had taught him the im- portance of securing a first hearing for his story ; for was his neighbour, he concluded, to be before hand with him, he would have as slight a chance of being righted at Navity as in his own garden. After brood- ing over the matter for a Avhole day he called his friends and children round his bed, and raised himself on his elbow to address them. " I'm wearing awa, bairns and neebours," he said, " and it vexes me sair that that wi'etched bodie should see me going afore him. Mind Jock, that ye'll build the dike, and make it heigh, heigh, and stobbie on the top ; and keep him out o' my lykewake, for should hebut step in at the door, I'll rise, Jock, frae the verra straiking board, and do murder. Dinna let him so muckle as look on my coffin. I've been ponder- ing a' this day about the fearfu' meeting at Navity, and the march-stanes ; and I'll tell you, Jock, how we'll match him. Bury me ayont the saint's dike, on the Navity side, and dinna lay me deep. Ye ken the bonny green hillock, spreckled o'er wi' gowans and puddock flowers ; bury me there, Jock, and yoursel, and the auld wife may just, when your hour comes^ tak up your places beside me. We'll a' get up the first tout, — the ane helping the other ; and I'se wad a' I'm worth i' the warld, we'll be half way up at Navity afore the shochlan, short-legged bodie \\ins o'er the dike." Such was the dying injunction of Sandy Wood ; and his tombstone still remains to testify that' it was religiously attended to. An Englishman who THE STOBY OF SANDY WOOD. 255 came to reside in the parish, nearl}' an age after, and to whom the story had been imparted in a rather im- perfect manner, was sliocked by what he deemed his unfair policy. The litigants, he said, should start to- gether ; he was certain it would be so in England, where a fair field was all that would be given to St. Dunstan himself, though he fought with the devil. And that it might be so here he buried the tombstone of Wood in an immense heap of clay and gravel. It would keep him down, he said, until the little fellow would have clambered over the wall. The townsfolks, however, who were better acquainted with the merits of the case, shovclled'the heap aside; and it now forms two little hillocks which overtop the stone, and Avhicli, from the nature of the soil, are still more scantily covered with verdure than any part of the surrounding bank. 256 CHAPTER XV. Like a timeless birth the womb of fate Bore a new death of unrecorded date, And doubtful name. Montgomery. In the history of every community there are periods of" comparative quiet, when the great machine of society performs all its various movements so smoothly and regidarly, that there is nothing to remind us of its heing in motion. And who has not remarked that when an unlooked for accident sets it a-jarring, hy breaking up some minor wlieel or axis, there follows a whole series of disasters, — pressing the one upon the other, with stroke after stroke, until, stunned by the repeti- tion, we begin to tremble lest the machine itself be falling into pieces. We live, perhaps, in some quiet village, and we see our neighbours, the inhabitants, moving noiselessly around us, — the young [rising up to maturity, the old descending slowly to the grave. Death for a whole series of years draughts out his usual number of conscripts from among only the weak and the aged ; and there is no irregular impressment of the young and vigorous in the way of accident. Anon, however, there succeeds a series of disasters. One of the villagers topples over a precipice, one is engulfed in a morass, one is torn to pieces by the wheels of an engine, one perishes in fording a river, THE ECONOMY OF ACCIDENT. 257 one falls by the hand of an enemy, one dies by his own. And then in a fe\v months, perhaps, the old order of things is again established, and all goes on regularly as before. In the phenomena of even the inanimate world Ave see marks of a similar economy. Whoever has mused for a single half hour by the side of a VAaterfall, must have remarked that, without any ap- parent change in the volume of the stream, the waters descend at one time louder and more furious, at another gentler and more subdued. Whoever has listened to the bowlings of the night wind must have heard it sinking, at intervals, into long hollow pauses, and then rising and sweeping onwards, gust after gust. Whoever has stood on the sea shore during a tempest must have observed that the waves roll towards their iron barrier in alternate serieses of greater and lesser, — now fretting ineti'ectually against it, now thunder- ing irresistibly over. But between the irregularities of the inanimate world, and those of the rational, there exists one striking ditierence. We may assign na- tural causes for the alternate rises and falls of the \Ainds and waters ; but it is not thus in most instances \nth those ebbs and flows, and gusts and pauses, which occur in the world of man. They set our reason- ings at defiance, and we can refer them to only the wiU of the Deity. We can only say regarding them, that the climax is a favourite figure in the book of Pro- vidence ; — that God speaks to us in his dispensations, and in the more eloquent turns of his discourse, piles up instance upon instance, with sublime and impres- sive profusion. To the people of Scotland the \\ hole of the scven- H 258 THE ECONOMY OF ACCIDENT. teenth century was occupied by one continuous series of suffering and disaster. And though we can assign causes for every one of the evils which compose the series, just as we can assign causes for every single ac- cident which befalls the villagers, or for the repeated attacks and intervening pauses of the hurricane, it is a rather different matter to account for the series itself. In flinging a die we may chance on any one certain number as readily as on any other ; but it would be a rare occurrence, indeed, should the same number turn up twenty times together. And is there nothing singular in the fact, that, for a whole century, a nation should be invariably unfortunate in every change with which it was visited, and meet with oidy disaster in all its undertakings. There turned up an unlucky number at every cast of the die. Even when the shout of the persecutor, and the groans of his victim, had ceased to echo among our rocks and caverns, the very elements arrayed themselves against the people, and wasting famine, and exterminating pestilence did the work of the priest and the tyrant. I am acquainted with no writer who has described this last infliction of the series so graphically, and with such power, as Peter Walker in his life of Cargill. Other contemporary historians looked down on this part of their theme from the high places of society ; — they were the soldiers of a well victualled garrison, situated in the midst of a wasted country, and sympathized but little in the misery that approached them no nearer than the outer gate. But it was not thus with the poor Pedlar ; — he was barred out among the sufferers, and exposed to the evils which he so feelingly describes. THE BLACK YEARS. 25f) One night in the month of August^ 1694, a cold cast wind, accompanied by a dense sulphurous fog, passed over the country, and the half filled corn was struck with mildew. It shrunk and whitened in the sun, till the fields seemed as if sprinkled with flour, and where the fog had remained longest — for in some places it stood up like a chain of hills during the greater part of the night — the more disastrous were it effects. From this unfortunate year till the year 1701, the land seemed as if struck with barrenness, and such was the change in the climate, that the seasons of summer and winter were cold and gloomy in nearly the same degree. The wonted heat of the smi was withholden, the very cattle became stunted and meagre^ the moors and thickets were nearly di- vested of their feathered inhabitants, and scarcely a fly or any other insect was to be seen even in the be- ginning of autumn. November and December, and in some places January and February, became the months of harvest ; and labouring people contracted diseases which terminated in death, when employed in cutting down the corn among ice and snow. Of the scanty produce of the fields much was left to rot on the ground, and much of what was canied home proved unfit for the sustenance of cither man or beast. There is a tradition that a fanner of Cromarty employed his children, during the whole Avinter of 1694, in picking out the sounder grains of corn from a blasted heap, the sole product of his farm, to serve for seed in the ensuing spring. In the meantirne the country began to groan under famine. The little portions of meal which were 260 THE BLACK YEARS. brought to market were invariably disposed of, and at an exorbitant price, before half the people were sup- plied ; " and then/' says Walker, " there would en- sue a screaming, and clapping of hands among the women." " How shall we go home," he has heard them exclaim, " and see our children dying of hunger ? — they have had no food for these two days, and we have nothing to give them." There was many " a black and pale face in Scotland," and many of the labouring poor, ashamed to beg, and too honest to steal, shut themselves up in their comfortless houses, and would sit with their eyes fixed on the floor, till their very sight failed them. The savings of the careful and industrious were soon dissipated ; and many who were in easy circumstances when the scar- city came on, were sunk in abject poverty ere it had passed away. Human nature is a sad thing when subjected to the test of circumstances so trying. As the famine increased, people came to be so wrapped up in their own sufferings, that Avives thought not of their husbands, nor husbands of their wives, parents of their children, nor children of their parents." " And their staff of bread," says the Pedlar, "was so utterly broken, that when they ate they were neither satisfied nor nourished. They could think of nothing but food, and being wholly unconcerned whether they went to heaven or hell, the success of the gospel came to a stand." The pestilence, which accompanied this terrible visitation, broke out in November, 1694, when many of the people were seized by " strange fevers, and sore fluxes of a most infectious nature," which defied the THE BLACK YEARS. 261 utmost power of medicine. " For the oldest pli3'si- cians/' says Walker, " had never seen the like be- fore, and could make no help." In the parish of West Calder out of nine hundred " examinable persons" three hundred were swept away ; and in Livingston in a little village called the Craigs, inhabited by only six or eight families, there were thirty corpses in the space of a few days. In the parish of Resolis, whole villages were depopulated, and the foundations of the houses, for they were never inhabited afterwards, can still be pointed out by old men of the place. So violent were the effects of the disease, that people, who in the evening were in apparent health, would be found lying dead in their houses next morning, " the head resting on the hand, and the face and arms not irafrequently gnawed by the rats." The living were wearied with burying the dead ; bodies were drawn on sledges to the place of interment, and many got neither colhn nor winding sheet. " I was one of four," says the Pedlar, " who carried the corpse of a young woman a mile of way ; and when we came to the grave, an honest poor man came and said — " you must go and help me to bury my son ; he has lain dead these two days." We went, and had two miles to carry the corpse, many neighbours looking on us, but none coming to assist. I was credibly informed," he continues, "that in the north, two sisters, on a Monday morning, were found carrying their brother on a baiTow with bearing ropes, resting themselves many times, and none offering to help them." There is a tradition that in one of the villages of Resolis the sole survivor was an idiot, and that his mother was 262 PROGRESS OF THE PESTILENCE. the last person who died m it of the disease. He waited beside the corpse for several days, and then taking it up on his shoulders he carried it to a neigh- bouring village, and left it standing upright beside a garden wall. Such were the suiferings of the people of Scotland in the seventeenth century, and such the phenomena of character which these sufferings elicited. We our- selves have seen nearly the same process repeated in the nineteenth, and — so in\'ariably fixed are the prin- ciples of human nature, and the succession, in even the moral world, of cause and effect, — with nearly the same results. The study of mind cannot be pro- secuted in quite the same manner as the study of mat- ter. We cannot subject human character, like an earth or a metal, to the test of experiments which may be varied or repeated at pleasure ; on the contrary, many of itsmost interesting traits are developed only by causes over which we have no control. But may we not re- gard the whole world as an immense laboratory, in which the Deity is the grand chemist, and his dispen- sations of Providence a course of experiments ? Into this laboratory we are admitted, both as subjects to be acted upon, and as spectators ; and, though we cannot in either capacity materially alter the course of the exhibition, we may acquire much wholesome know- ledge by registrating the circumstances of each process, and its various results. In the year 1817 a new and terrible pestilence broke out in a densely peopled district of Hindostan. During the twelve succeeding years it was " going to and fro, and walking up and down" in that immense PROGRESS OF THE PESTILENCE. 263 tract of country which intervenes between British In- dia, and the Russian dominions in Europe. It passed from province to province^, and city to city. Muki- tudes " Avhich no man could number," stood waiting its approach in anxiety and terror, a few sohtary mourners gazed at it from behind. It journeyed by the liighways, and strewed them with carcasses. It coursed along the rivers, and vessels were seen drifting in the cuiTent y\-iih their dead. It overtook the caravan in the desert, and the merchant fell from his camel. It followed armies to the field of battle, struck down their standards, and broke up their array. It scaled the great wall of China, forded the Tigris and the Euphrates, threaded with the mountaineer the passes of the frozen Caucasus, and traversed with the mariner the wide expanse of the Indian Ocean. Vainly was it deprecated with the rites of every religion, exorcised in the name of every god. The Bramin saw it rolling onwards, more terrible than the car of Juggernaut, and sought refuge in his temple, but the wheel passed over him, and he died. The wild Tartar raised his war-cry to scare it away, and then, rushing into a darkened corner of his hut, prostrated himself before his idol, and expired. The Dervise ascended the highest tower of his mosque to call upon Allah and the prophet, but it grappled with him ere he had half repeated his prayer, and he toppled over the battle- ments. The priest unlocked his relics, and then, grasping his crucifix, hied to the bedside of the dpng, but, as he doled out the consolations of his faith, the pest seized on his vitals, and he sunk howling where he had kneeled. And alas for the philosopher ! 264 THE QUARANTINE. Silent and listless he awaited its coming ; and had the fountains of tlie great deep been broken up^ — had its proud waves come rolling, as of old, over vdde ex- tended continents, — foaming around the summit of the hills, and prostrating with equal ease the grass of the field and the oaks of the forest, he could not have met the inundation with a less effective resistance. — It swept away in its desolating progress fifty millions of the human species. In the spring of 1831 the disease entered the Rus- sian dominions, and in a few brief months, after de- vastating the inland provinces, began to ravage the shores of the Baltic. The harbours, as is usual in the summer season, were crowded Avith vessels from every port of Britain ; and the infection spread among the seamen. To guard against its introduction into this country a rigid system of quarantine w"as established by the Government ; and the bay of Cromarty was one of the places appointed for the reception of vessels until their term of restriction should have expired. The whole eastern coast of Britain could not have afforded a better station ; as, from the security and great extent of the bay, entire fleets can lie in it safe from every tempest, and at a distance of more than two miles from any shore. On a calm and beautifid evening in the month of July, 1831, a little fleet of square rigged vessels were espied in the offing, slowly advancing towards the bay. They were borne onwards by the tide, which, when flowing, rushes with much impetuosity through the narrow opening, and, as they passed under the northern Sutor, there M'as seen from the shore, relieved by the THE QUARANTINE. 2fi5 dark cliffs vhicli frowned over them, a pale yellow flag drooping from the mast-head of each. As they advanced further on, the tide began to recede. The foremost was towed by lier boats to the common an- clioring ground ; and the burden of a Danish song, in which all the rowers joined, was heard echoing over the waves with a cadence so extremely melancholy, that, associating in the minds of the townispeople with ideas of death and disease, it seemed a coronach of lamentation poured out over the dead and the expiring. The other vessels threw out their anchors opposite tlie town ; — groups of people, their countenances shaded bv anxiety, sauntered along the beach ; and children ran about, shouting at the full pitch of their voices, that tlie ships of the plague had got up as far as the ferry. As the evening darkened, little glimmering lights, like stars of the third magnitude, twinkled on the mast heads from whence the j'ellow flags had lately depended ; and never did astrologer experience greater dismay when gazing at the two comets, the fiery and the pale, which preceded those years of pestilence and conflagration that wasted the capital of England, than some of the people of Cromarty did when gazing at these lights. Day after day vessels from the Baltic came sailing up the bay, and the fears of the people, exposed to so continual a friction, began to wear out. The first terror, however, had been communicated to the nearer parishes, and from them to the more remote ; and so on it went, escorted by a train of vagabond stories that, like felons flpng from justice, assumed new as- pects at every stage. The whole country talked of 266 THE QUARANTINE. nothing but Cholera and the Quarantine port. Such of the shopkeepers of Cromarty as were most in the good graces of the country women who come to town laden with the produce of the dairy and hen-cot, and return with their Httle parcels of the luxuries of the grocer, experienced a marked falling away in their trade. Occasionally, however, a few of the more courageous housewives might be seen creeping warily along our streets ; but, in coming in by the road which passes along the edge of the bay, they invariably struck up the hill, if the wind blew from off the quarantine ves- sels, and winding by a circuitous route among the fields and cottages, entered the town on the opposite side. A lad who ran errands to a neighbouring burgh found that few of the inhabitants were so desperately devoted to business as to incur the risk of receiving the mes- sages he brought them ; and, from the inconvenient distance at which he Avas held by even the less cauti- ous, he entertained serious thoughts of providing him- self with a speaking trumpet. Our poor fishermen, too, fared but badly in the little villages of the frith where they went to sell their fish. It was asserted, on the very best authority, by the villagers, that dead bodies were flung out every day over the sides of the quarantine vessels, and might be seen, bloated by the water, and tanned yellow by disease, drifting along the surface of the bay. Who could eat fish in such circumstances ? There was one person, indeed, who remarked to them, that he might perhaps venture on eating a haddock or whiting ; but no man in his senses, he said, would venture on eating a cod. He himself had once found a bunch of furze in the stomach of a THE QUARANTINE. 267 fish of this species, and what might that throat not contrive to swallow that had swallowed a bunch of furze ? The very fishermen themselves added to the general terror by their wild stories. They were row- ing homewards one morning, they said, in the grey uncertain light which precedes sunrise, along the rough edge of the northern Sutor, when, after doubling one of the rocky promontories which jut into the sea from beneath the crags of the hill, they saw a gigantic fig- ure wholly attired in white, winding slowly along the beach. It was much taller than any man, or as Cowley would have perhaps described it, than the shadow of any man in the evening ; and, at intervals, after glid- ing round the base of some inaccessible clifi", it would remain stationary for a few seconds, as if gazing wist- fully upoii the sea. No one ivho believed this appari- tion to be other than a wreath of vapour, entertained at the time the slightest doubt of its portending the visitation of some terrible pestilence, which was to desolate the country. About eighty or a hundred years ago the port of Cromarty was occupied, as in 1831, by a fleet per- forming quarantine. Of course none of the towns- people recollected the circumstance ; but a whole host of traditions connected with it, which had been imparted to them by their fathers, and had lain asleep in the recesses of some of their memories for a full half century, were awakened at this time, and sent wan- dering over the town, like so many ghosts. A crew of fishermen, it is said, either in ignorance or con- tempt of the quarantine laws, boarded one of the ves- 268 THE QUARANTINE. sels; and aboard were they compelled to remain for six tedious vveeks^ exposed to the double hardship of getting a great deal to drink and I'ery little to eat. Another vessel entered the bay deeply laden but every morning, for the time she remained there, she was seen to sit lighter on the water, and when she quitted it on her return to Flushing, she had scarcely ballast enough aboard to render the voyage practicable. Gin and tobacco were rife in Cromarty for twelve months thereafter. A third vessel carried with her into the bay the disease to guard against which the quarantine had been established ; and opposite the place where the fleet lately lay, there are a few little mounds on a patch of level sward, still known to children of the town as the Dutchmen's graves. About fifty years ago, when the present harbour of Cromarty was in building, a poor half witted man, one of the labourers employed in quarrying stone, was told one day by some of his companions, that a considerable sum of money had been deposited in this place with the bodies. In the evening he staid on some pretext in the quarry, until the other workmen had gone home, and then repairing to the graves, with his shovel and pick-axe, he laid one of them open ; but, instead of the expected treasure, he found only human bones and wasted fragments of woollen cloth. Next morn- ing he was seized by a putrid fever, and died a few days after. Miss Seward tells a story of quite a simi- lar character in one of her letters ; but in the case of the Cromarty labourer no person suifered from his imprudence except himself; whereas, in the one nar- THE CHOLERA. 2G9 rated by Miss Seward, a malignant disease was intro- duced into a village, near which the graves were opened, which swept away seventy of the inhabitants. In a central part of the church-yard of Nigg there is a rude undressed stone, near which the sexton never ventures to open a grave. A wild apocryphal tradition connects the erection of this stone with the times of the quarantine fleet. The plague, as the story goes, was brought to the place by one of the vessels, and was slowly flying along the ground, disengaged from every vehicle of infection, in the shape of a little yel- low cloud. The whole country was alarmed, and groups of people were to be seen on every eminence, watching, with anxious horror, the progress of the little cloud. They were relieved, however, from their fears and the plague by a bold ingenious man of Nigg, whose name has ungratefully been suflered to die. This person having ])rovided himself with an immense g of linen, fashioned somewhat in the manner of a fowler's net, cautiously approached the yellow cloud, and, with a skill which could have owed nothing to practice, he succeeded in inclosing the whole of it in the bag. He then secured it by wrapping it up carefully, fold after fold, and fastening it down with pin after pin'; and, when the linen was gradually changing, as if under the hands of the dyer, from white to yellow, he consigned it to the church-yard, where it has slept ever since : — But to our narrative. The cholera was at length introduced into Britain, and shortly after into Ireland ; — not, however, at any of the quarantine ports, but at places where scarcely any precautions had been taken to exclude it, or any 270 THE CHOLERA. danger apprehended ; much in the manner that a be- leaguered garrison is sometimes surprised at some un- noticed bastion, or untented angle, after the main points of attack have withstood the utmost efforts of the besiegers. It had previously been remarked that the disease traversed the various countries it visited, at nearly the same pace with the inhabitants. In Persia, where there is little trade, and neither roads nor canals to facilitate intercourse, it was a whole year in passing over a distance of somewhat less than three hundred leagues ; while among the more active people of Russia it performed a journey of seven hundred in less than six months. In Britain it tra- velled tlirough the interior with the celerity of the mail, and voyaged along the coasts with the speed of the trading vessels ; and in a few weeks after its first appearance, it was ravaging the metropolis of England, and the southern shores of the Frith of Forth. It was introduced by some south country fishermen into the town of Wick, and a village of Sutherlandsliire, in the month of July, 1832 ; and from the latter place, in the following August, into the fishing villages of the peninsula of Easter Ross. It visited Inverness, Nairn, Avoch, Dingwall, Urquhart, and Rosemarkie, a few weeks after. I shall pass hurriedly over the sad story of its ravages. Were I to dwell on it to the extent of my information, and I know only a little, the reader might think I was misanthropically accimiulating into one gloomy heap, all that is terrible in the judgements of God, and all that is mean and feeble in the character of man. The pangs of the rack, of the boot, of the -f -■■^^ THE CHOLERA. 271 tliumbscrew, — all that the Dommican or the savage has inflicted on the heretic or the Avhite man, were rea- lized in the tortures of this dreadful disease. Utter de- bility, intense thirst, excruciating cramps of the limbs, and an unimpaired intellect, were its chief characteristics. And the last was surely not the least terrible. Amid the ruins of the body, from which it was so soon to part, the melancholy spirit looked back upon the past with regret, and on the future with teiTor. Or even if amid its intense sufferings it " laid hold on the hope that faileth not ;" ■with what feelings must it have re- garded the deserted cottage, when the friends on whom it had trusted proved unfaithful, — or, more melancholy still, on the affectionate wife or the duti- ful child, struck down by the bed side in agonies as mortal as its own. In the villages of Ross the disease assumed a more terrible aspect than it had yet presented in any other part of Britain. In the little village of Portmahomack one fifth of the inhabitants were swept away ; in the still smaller village of Inver, one half. So abject was the poverty of the people, that, in some instances, there was not a candle in any house in a whole village ; and when the disease seized on the inmates in the night time, they had to grapple in darkness with its fierce pains and mortal terrors, and their friends, in the vain attempt to assist them, had to grope round their beds. Before morning the}' were, in most cases, beyond the reach of medicine. The infection spread with frightful rapidity. At Inver, though the popula- tion did not much exceed a hundred persons, eleven bodies were committed to the earth, without shroud 272 THE CHOLERA. or coffin, in one day ; in two days after they had buried nineteen more. Many of the survivors tied from the village, and took shelter, some in the Avoods, some among the hollows of an extensive tract of sand hills. But the pest followed them to their hiding places, and they expired in the open air. Whole families were found lying dead on their cottage floors. In one in- stance, an infant, the only survivor, lay grovelling on the body of its mother, — the sole mourner in a charnel house of the pestilence. Rows of cottages, entirely divested of their inhabitants, Avere set on fire and burnt to the ground. The horrors of the times of Peter Walker were more than realized. Two young per- sons, a lad and his sister, were seen digging a grave for their father in the church-yard of Nigg ; and then carrying the corpse to it on a cart, no one venturing to assist them. The body of a man who died in a cottage beside the ferry of Cromarty, Avas borne to a hole, hurriedly scooped out of a neighbouring sand- bank, by his brother and his AA'ife. During the whole of the preceding day, the unfortunate woman was seen from the opposite shore, flitting around the cottage like an unhappy ghost ; — during the aaIioIc of the pre- ceding night had she Avatched alone by the dead. The coffin lay beside the door, the corpse in the middle of the apartment. — Never shall I forget the scene I Avitnessed fi'om the old chapel of St. Regulus on the evening of the following Sabbath. It was one of those lovely evenings Avhich Ave so naturally associate AAith ideas of human enjoyment ; — when, from some sloping eminence, Ave look over the sunlit woods, and fields, and cottages of a Avide THE CHOLERA, 273 extent of country^ and dream tliat the inhabitants are as happy as the scene is beautiful. The sky was without a cloud, and the sea without a \VTinkle. The rocks and sand hills on the opposite shore lay glistening in the sun, each with its deep patch of sha- dow resting by its side ; and the effect of the whole^ compared with the aspect it had presented a few hours before, was as if it had been raised on its gi'ound work of sea and sky from the low to the high relief of the sculptor. There were boats drawn up on the beach, and a line of houses behind ; — but where were the in- habitants ? No smoke rose from the chimneys ; the doors and windows were fast closed ; not one solitary lounger sauntered about the harbour or the shore ; the fearful inanity of death and desertion pervaded the whole scene. Suddenly, however, the eye caught a little dark speck moving hurriedly along the road which leads to the ferry. It was a man on horseback. He reached the cottages of the boatmen, and flung himself from his horse ; but no one came at his call to row him across. He unloosed a skiff from her moorings, and set himself to tug at the oar. The skiff flew athwart the bay. The watchmen stationed on the shore of Cromarty moved down to prevent her land- ing. There was a loud cry passed from man to man ; a medical gentleman came running to the beach, he leapt into the skiff, and laying hold of an oar as if he were a common boatman, she again shot across the bay. A case of cholera had just ocurred in the parish of Nigg. I never before felt so strongly the force of contrast. There is a short poem of the present age which presents the reader with a terrible picture of a s 27-i THE CHOLERA. cloak of utter darkness spread over the earth, and the whole race of man perishing beneath its folds, like in- sects of Autumn in the chills of a night of October. There is another modern poem, less wild, but not less sublime, in which we see, as in the mirror of a magician, the sxm dying in the heavens, and the evening of an eternal night closing around the last of our species. I trust I am able in some degree to appreciate the merits of both ; and yet, since witnessing the scene I have so feebly attempted to describe, I am led to think that the earth, if wholly divested of its inhabitants, would present a more melancholy aspect, should it still retain its fertility and beauty, than if A\'rapped up in a pall of darkness, surrounded by dead planets and extinguished suns. 275 CHAPTER XVI. He sat upon a rock and bobbed for whale. Kenrick. On the fourth Tuesday of Novemher every year there is a kind of market held at Cromarty, which, for the last eighty years, has been gradually d\^indling in im- portance ; and is now attended by only the children of the place, and a few elderly people, who supply them with toys and sweetmeats. Early in the last century, however, it was one of the most considerable in this part of the country ; and the circumstance of its gradual decline is curiously connected with the great change which has taken place since that period in the manners and habits of the people. It flourished as long as the Highlander legislated for himself and his neighbour on the good old principle so happily described by the poet,* and sunk into decay when he had flung down his broadsAvord, and become amenable to the laws of the kingdom. The town of Cromarty, as may be seen by consulting the map, is situated on the extre- mity of a narrow promontory, skirted on three of its ' For why, because the good old rule Sufticeth them, the simple ])lan. That they should take who have the power And they should keep who can. 276 MARTINMAS MARKET. sides by the sea, and bordered on the fourtli by the barren uninhabited waste described in a previous chapter. And though these are defects in the situa- tion of a market of the present day, — which ought al- ways to be held in some central point of the interior, that commands a wide circumference of country, — about a century ago they were positive advantages. It was an important circumstance that the merchants who attended the fair could convey their goods to it by sea, without passing through any part of the High- lands ; and the extent of moor which separated it by so broad a line from the seats of even the nearer clans, afforded them no slight protection when they had arrived at it. For further security the fair was held directly beneath the walls of the old castle, in the gorge of a deep, wooded ravine, which now forms part of the pleasure grounds of Cromarty House. The progress of this market, from what it was once to what it is at present, was strongly indicative of several other curious changes which were taking place in the country. — The first achievement of commerce is the establishment of a market. In a semi-barbar- ous age the trader journeys from one district to another, and finds only, in a whole kingdom, that demand for his merchandise, which, when in an after period, civilisation has introduced her artificial wants among the people, may be found in a single province. So late as the year 1730, one solitary shopkeeper more than supplied the people of Cromarty with their few, every-daynecessaries of foreign manufacture or produce ; — I say more than supplied them, for in summer and autumn he travelled the country as a pedlar. For their occasional luxuries THE HERRING-DROVE. 277 and finery they trusted to the traders of the fair. Times changed, however, and the shopkeeper wholly supplanted the travelling merchant ; hut the fair con- tinued to be frequented, till a later period, by another class of merchants, who dealt in various articles, the produce or manufacture of the country. Among these were a set of dealers who sold a kind of rude harness for horses and oxen, made of ropes, of hair and twisted birch ; a second set who dealt in a kind of conical shaped carts, made of basket work ; and a third who supplied the house builders of the period with split lath for thatched roofs and partitions. In time, how- ever, the harness-maker, cart-AVTight, and house- carpenter of modern times, dealt by these artists as the shopkeeper had done by the fair merchant. The broguer or maker of Highland shoes kept the field in spite of the regular shoemaker, half a century later, and disappeared only about five years ago. The dealer in home-grov\Ti lint frequented it until last sea- son ; but the low wages, and sixteen-hour-per-day emplo^Tnent of the south country weaver, were gra- dually midermining his trade, and the steam loom seems to have given it its death blow. Prior to the Revolution, and as late as the reign of Queen Anne, Cromarty drove a considerable trade in herrings. About the middle of July every year, im- mense bodies of this fish came swimming up the Moray Frith ; and after they had spawned on a range of banks not more than eight miles from the town, quitted it for the main sea, in the beginning of September. In the better fishing seasons they filled the bays and creeks of the coast, swimming, in some instances, as 278 THE HERRING-DROVE. high as the ferries of Fowlis and Ardersier. There is a tradition that, shortly after the Union, a shoal of many hundi-ed barrels pursued by a body of Avhales and porpoises, were stranded in a little bay of Cro- marty, a few hundred yards to the east of the town. The beach was covered with them to the depth of several feet, and salt and casks failed the packers, when only an inconsiderable part of the shoal was cured. The residue was carried away for manure by tlie neighbouring farmers ; and so great was the quantity used in this way, and the stench they caused so oifensive, that it was feared disease would have ensued. The season in which this took place is still spoken of as the " harst of the Herring-drove." About thirty years ago some masons in digging a foundation in the eastern extremity of the town, dis- covered the site of a packing-yard of this period ; and threw out a quantity of scales, which glittered as bright as if they had been stripped from the fish only a few weeks before. Near this place, in the memory of men still living, there stood a little square building, two storeys in height, and with only a single room on each floor. The lower was dark and damp, and had the appearance of a cellar or storehouse ; the upper was lighted on three sides, and finished in a manner that shewed both the wealth and taste of the builder. A rich stucco cornice divided the walls from the ceiling. The former were neatly pannelled, the centre of the latter was occupied by a massy, circular pateras, round which a shoal of herrings, exquisitely relieved, were swimming in a sea of plaster. This building was the cellar and counting-room of Urquhart of Greenhill, a THE WHALE-FISHERS. 270 rich herring merchant and landed proprietor, and a descendant of the old Urquharts of Cromarty. In a fishing season late in this period, two men of the place who, like most of the other inhahitants, were both trades-folks and fishermen, were engaged one morning in discussing the merits of an anker of Hol- lands which had been landed from a Dutch lugger a few evenings before. They nodded to each other across the table with increasing heartiness and good ^vill, until, at length, their heads almost met ; and, as quaich after quaich was alternately emptied and replenished, they began to find that the contents of the anker were best nearest the bottom. They were interrupted, however, before they had fully ascertained the fact, by the women of the house tapping at the window, and calling them out to see something extra- ordinary ; and, on going to the door, they saw a whole plump of whales blowing, and tumbling, and pursuing one another in a long line up the bay. A sudden thought struck one of the men : " It would be gran fun, Charlie, man," said he, addressing his companion, to hook one o' yon chields on Nannie Fizzle's crook." " Ay, if we had but bait," rejoined the other ; " but here's a gay fresh codling on Nannie's hake, an' the yawl lies on the tap o'the fu sea." The crook, a chain about six feet in length, with a hook at one end, and a large ring at the other, and which, when in its proper place, hung in Nannie's chimney to suspend her pots over the fire, was accordingly baited with the cod, and fastened to a rope ; and the two men, tumbling into their yawl, rowed out to the cossmee. Like the giant of the epigram, they sat bobbing for whale ; but the 280 THE WHALE-FISHERS. plump had gone high up the frith ; and, too impatient to wait its retm-n, they hollowed to a friend to row out his skiff for them ; and, leaving their own at anchor with the crook hanging over the stern, they returned to Nannie Fizzle's ; where they soon forgot both the yawl and the whales. They were not long, however, in being reminded of them. A person came bellowing to the window, " Charlie, Willie, the yawl ! the yawl ! and, on stag- gering out, they saw the unfortunate yawl darting down the frith with twice the velocity of a king's cut- ter in a fresh breeze. Ever and anon she would dance, and wheel, and plunge, and then shoot off in a straight line. One of the whales had swallowed the crook. The little skiff was launched and manned ; but the Hollands had done its work; one of. the poor fellows tumbled over the thaft, the other snapped his oar ; — all was confusion. Luckily, however, the rope fas- tened to the crook broke at the ring ; and the yawl, after gradually losing way, began to drift towards the shore. The adventure was bruited all over the town ; and every one laughed at the whale-fishers except Nannie Fizzle, avIio was inconsolable for the loss of her crook. It was rumoured a few weeks after, that the car- cass of a whale had been cast ashore in the frith of Beauly, near Redcastle, and the two fishermen set off together to the place, in the hope of identifying the carcass with the fish in which they had enfeofied them- selves at the expense of Nannie Fizzle. The day of the journey chanced to be also that of a Redcastle market ; and, as they approached the place, they were THE WHALE-FISHERS. 281 encountered by parties of Highlanders hurr\dng to the fair. Most of them had heard of the huge fish, but none of them of the crook. When the Cromarty men came up to the carcass, they found it surrounded by half the people of the fair, who were gazing, and won- dering, and pacing it from head to tail, and poking at it with sticks and broadswords. " It is our property every inch," said one of the men, coming forward to the fish, " we hooked it three weeks ago on the coss- mee, but it broke otf ; and Ave have now come here to take possession. It carried away our tackle, a chain and a hook. Lend me your dirk, honest man," he continued, addressing a Highlander, " we shall cut it out, and make good our claim." " ay, nae doubt," said the Highlander, as he obligingly handed him the weapon ; " but och, its no me that would like to eat her, for she maun be a filthy meat." The crowd pressed roimd to witness the dissection, which ended on the Cromarty man pulling out the crook from among the entrails, and holding it up in triumph. " Did I no tell you," he exclaimed, " the fish is ours be^yond dis- pute." " Then," said a smart looking httle pedlar, who had just joined the throng, " ye have made the best o' this day's market. I'se warrant your fishing worth a the plaiding sold to-day." The Highlanders stared. " For what is it worth," asked a tacksman of the place. " Oh look there, look there," replied the pedlar, tapping the blubber with his elwand, " ulzie clear as usquebaugh. I'se be bound it's as richly worth foiu- hunder punds Scots, as ony twa stans on the fair." This piece of mischievous information entirely 282 THE FLIGHT OF THE DROVE. altered tlie circumstances of the case as it regarded the two fishermen ; for the tacksman laid claim to the fish on his own behalf and the laird's ; and, as he could back his arguments with a full score of broad- swords, the men were at length fain to content them- selves with being permitted to carry away with them Nannie Fizzle's crook. The mishap of the whale fishers was followed by a much greater mishap, — the total failure of the herring fishery. The herring is one of the most eccentric little fishes that frequents our seas. For many years together it visits regularly in its season some particular frith or bay ; — fishing villages spring up on the shores, harbours are built for the reception of vessels ; and the fisherman and merchant calculate on their usual quantum of fish, with as much confidence as the far- mer on his average quantum of grain. At length, however, there comes a season, as mild and pleasant as any that have preceded it, in which the herring does not visit the frith. On each evening the fisher- man casts out his nets on the accustomed bank, on each morning he draws them in again, but with all the meshes as brown and open as when he flung them out ; in the following season he is equally un- successful ; and ere the shoal returns to its accustomed haunts, the harbour has become a ruin, and the vil- lage a heap of green mounds. It happened thus late in the reign of Queen Anne, with the herring trade of the Moray Frith. After a busy and successful fish- ing, the shoal, as usual, left the frith in a single night ; preparations ^^'ere made for the ensuing season ; the THE FLIGHT OF THE DROVE. 283 season came, but not the herrings ; and for more than half a century from this time, Cromarty derived scarcely any benefit from its herring fishery. My townsfolks in this age, — an age in wliich every extraordinary effect was coupled with a supernatural cause, were too ingenious to account for the failure of the trade, by a simple reference to the natural history of the herring ; and two stories relating to it still sur- vive, which shew them to have been strangely acute in rendering a reason, and not a little credulous in forming a belief. Great quantities of fish had been caught and brought ashore on a Saturday ; and the packers continued to work during the night ; yet, on the Sunday morning, much still remained to be done. The weather was sultry, and the fish were becoming soft ; and as the work was deemed one of necessity, the minister of the parish did not hinder them from going on with it throughout the Sabbath. Towards evening he paid them a visit ; and as they had been prevented from attending church, he made them a short serious address. They soon, however, became impatient ; the diligent began to work, the mischie- vous to pelt him "vvith filth ; and the good man abruptly concluded his exhortation by praying that the besom of judgement would come and sweep every hemng out of the frith. On the following Monday, the boats went to sea as usual, but returned empty ; on the Tuesday they were not more successful ; and it was concluded that the shoal had gone off for the season ; but it proved not for the season merely ; for another and another came, and still no herrings were caught. In short, the prayer, as the story goes, was so fully 284 THE FLIGHT OF THE DROVE. answered, that none of the unlucky packers witnessed the return of the shoaL The other, a still wilder story, accounts for its flight in a different manner. Tradition, who is even a more credulous naturalist than historian, affirms that herrings have a strong antipathy to human blood, especially when spilt in a quarrel. On the last day of the fishing, the nets belonging to two boats became entangled ; the crew that first hauled applied the knife to their neighbours' baulks and meshes, and with little trouble or damage to them- selves, succeeded in unravelling their own. A quarrel was the consequence ; and one of the ancient modes of naval warfare, the only one eligible in their circum- stances, was resorted to. They fought leaning over the gunwales of their respective boats. Blood was spilt, unfortunately spilt in the sea ; the affronted her- rings took their departure, and for more than half a century, were not the cause in even {he remotest de- gree, of any quarrel which took place on the Moray Frith or its shores. One of the combatants, Mdio dis- tinguished himself either by doing or suffenng in this unlucky fray, bore ever after the designation of the " bloody •" and there are men still living who remem- ber to have seen him. The failure of the herring trade was followed by that of Urquhart of Greenhill. He is said to have been a shrewd industrious man, of great force of cha- racter, and admirably fitted by nature and habit, had he lived in better times, to have restored the dilapi- dated fortunes of his house. During the reign of William, he was adding ship to ship, and field to field. URQUHART OF GREENHILL. 285 until about the year 1700, when he was possessed of nearly of one-half the lands of the parish, and of no fewer than five three-masted vessels, besides others of a smaller size. But it Avas his lot to speculate in an unfortunate age ; and having, with all the other merchants of Scotland, suffered severely from the Union, the failure of the herring fishery completed his ruin. He sunk by inches ; striving to the very last, \\'ith a proud heart and a bitter spirit, against the evils which assailed him. All his ships were at length either knocked doAvn by the hammer of the auctioneer, or broken up by the maul of the carpenter, except one; and this one, when returning homewards from some port of the continent, was driven ashore in a violent night storm on the rocky coast of Cadboll, and beaten to pieces before morning. It was with difiiculty the crew was saved. One of them, a raw young fellow, a much better herdsman than sailor, escaped to his friends, full of the wild scenes he had just witnessed ; and set himself to relate to them the particulars of his voyage ; — it Avas his first and his last. Smooth water and easy sailing may be delineated in common lan- guage ; he warmed, however, as the narrative pro- ceeded. He described the gathering of the tempest, the darkening of the night, the dashing of the waves, the howlhig of the winds, and the rolling of the ves- sel ; but being unfortunately no master of climax, lan- guage failed him in the concluding scene, w^here there were rocks, and breakers, and midnight darkness, and a huge ship wallowing in foam, like a Avounded boar in the toils of the hunters. " Oh !" exclaimed the sailor herdsman, " I can think o' nae likening to that 286 URQUHART OF GREENHILL. puir ship, and the awfu' crags, and awfu' jaws, except the nowt i' the byre, when they break their fastenings i' the mirk night, and rout and gore, and rout and gore, till the verra roof tree shakes wi' the brattle." I do not know what the people of the present age may think of the comparison, but I can assure them, it was deemed a piece of very excellent humour in the good year 1712. Greenhill's remark, when informed of the disaster, had more of philosophy in it, " A weal," said he, taking a deliberate pinch of snuff, and then handing the box to his informant, " I have lang wars- tied wi' the warld, and fain would I have got on the tap o't; but I may be just as weel as I am. Diel haet can harm me now, if Macleod, honest man, doesna put me to the law for dinting the Swallow against the march-stanes o' Cadboll." One other passage relating to this branch of the fa- mily of the Urquharts, and I have done. It has pro- duced in a lady of Aberdeenshire, one of the most pleasing poetesses of our age or country ; — not, how- ever, one of the most celebrated. Her exquisite little pieces, combining with singular felicity the simplicity and pathos of the old ballad with the refinement and ele- gance of our classical poets, have been Hung as care- lessly into the world as the rich plumes of the birds of the tropics on the plains and forests of the soTith. But they have not lain altogetlier unnoticed. The nameless little foundlings have been picked out from among the crowd, and introduced into the best com- pany on the score of merit alone. — The genealogist was of a very different spirit from his relative ; he would have inscribed his name on the face of the sun. POEM. 287 could he have but climbed to it ; — but may not there be something to regret in even the more amiable ex- treme. The prophecies of that sibyl who committed her wT-itings to the loose leaves of the forest^ were lost to the world on the first slight breeze. I present the reader with a pleasing little poem of this desceftdant of the Urqviliarts, in which, thougli perhaps not one of the most finished of her pieces, he will find some- thing better than mere finish. It may not be quite new to him, having found its way into Macdiarmid's Scrap-Book, and several other collections of merit ; but he may peruse it with fresh interest, as the pro- duction of a relative of Sir Thomas, who seems to have inherited all his genius, undebased by any mix- ture of his eccentricity. ON HEARING A LIVELY PIECE OF MUSIC, A moment pause, ye British fair, While pleasure ''s phantom ye pursue, And say if dance and sprightly air Suit with the name of Waterloo. Dearly bought the victory, Chasten'd should the triumph be ; Midst the laurels she has won, Britain weeps for many a son. Veird in clouds the morning rose. Nature seem'd to mourn the day, Which consign 'd before its close Thousands to their kindred clay. How unfit for courtly ball. Or the giddy festival. Was the grinj and ghastly view. Ere' evening closed on Waterloo. See the Highland warrior rushing. First in danger, on the foe, Till the life blood, stemless gushing, Lays the plaided hero low. His native pipe's heart thrilling sound. Mid war's infernal concert drown'd. Cannot sooth his last adieu. Nor wake his sleep on Waterloo. Crashing o'er the cuirassier. See the foaming charger flying. Trampling in his wild career, All alike, the dead and dying. See the bullets pierce his side. See, amid a crimson tide, Helmet, horse, and rider too, Roll on bloody Waterloo. Shall sights like these the dance inspire. Or wake the jocund notes of mirth ! Oh, shiver'd l)e the recreant lyre. That gave the base idea birth ! Other sounds, T ween, were there, Other music rent the air, Other Waltz the warriors knew, "When they closed at Waterloo, Forbear, till time with lenient hand, Has heal'd the wounds of recent sorrow. And let the picture distant stand. The softening hue of years to borrow. When our race has pass'd aivay, Hands unborn may wake the lay, And give to joy alone the view, Of victory at Waterloo. 289 CHAPTER XVII. He whom my restless gratitude has sought So long in vain. Thomson. Early in the month of April 1734-, three Cromarty boatmen, connected with the Customhouse, were journeying along the miserable road which at this period winded between the capital of the Highlands and that of the kingdom. They had already travelled since morning more than thirty miles through the wild Highlands of Inverness-shire, and were now toiling along the steep side of an uninhabited valley of Bade- noch. A dark sluggish morass, with a surface as level as a sheet of water, occupied the bottom of the valley ; a few scattered tufts of withered grass were mottled over it, but the unsolid, sooty-coloured spaces between were as bare of vegetation as banks of sea-mud left by the receding tide. On either hand, a series of dreary mountains thrust up their jagged and naked summits into the middle sky. A scanty covering of heath was thrown over their bases, except where the frequent streams of loose debris which had fallen from above, were spread over them. Higher up, the heath alto- gether disappeared, and the eye rested on what seemed an endless file of bare gloomy cliffs, partially covered M'ith snoM'. 290 SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. The evening, for day was fast drawing to a close, was as melancholy as the scene. A dense volume of grey clouds were spread over the valley like a ceiling, and seemed descending along the cliffs, — some of the loftiest had already disappeared. There was scarcely any wind, hut at times a wreath of vapour would come rolling into a lower region of the valley, as if shot out from the volume ahove ; and the thin bleak air was filled with small specks of snow, so light and fleecy, that they seemed scarcely to descend, but, when caught by the half perceptible breeze, went sailing past the boatmen in long horizontal lines. It was evident there impended over them one of those terrible snow storms which sometimes overwhelm the hapless traveller in these solitudes ; — the house in which they were io pass the night was still nearly ten miles away. The gloom of evening, deepened by the coming storm, was closing around them as they entered one of the wildest recesses of the valley, an immense pre- cipitous hollow scooped out of the side of one of the hills ; the wind began to howl through the cliffs, and the thickening flakes of snow to beat against their faces. " It will be a terrible night, lads, in the Moray Frith," said the foremost traveller, a broad-shouldered, deep-chested, strong-looking man, of about five feet eight ; " I would ill like to hae to beat up through the drift along the rough shores o' Cadboll. It was in just such a night as this, ten year ago, that old Walter Hogg went down in the Red Sally." — " It will be as terrible a night, I'm feared, just where we are in the black strath o' Badenoch," said one of the men behind, who seemed much fatigued ; " I wish SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 291 we were a' safe i' tlie clachan." — " Hoot, man," said Sandy Wright, the first speaker, " it canna now be muckle mair nor sax miles afore us, an' we'll hae the tail o' the gloamin for half an hour yet. But, gude safe us ! Avhat's that ?" he exclaimed, pointing to a little figure that seemed sitting by the side of the road, about twenty yards before him ; " it's surely a fairy." The figure rose from its seat, and came up, stagger- ing, apparently from extreme weakness, to meet them. It was a boy scarcely more than ten years of age. " my puir boy," said Sandy Wright, " what can hae taken ve here in a night like this ?" — " I was soing to Edinburg|i to my friends," replied the bo}^, " for my mother died and left me among the freme ; but I'm tired, tired, and canna walk farther ; and I'll be lost, I'm feared, in the yowndrift!' — " That ye winna, my puir bairn," said the boatman, " if I can help it ; " gi'es a baud o' your ban'," grasping, as he spoke, the extended hand of the boy, " dinna tine heart, an' lean on me as muckle's ye can." But the poor little fellow was already exhausted, and, after a vain at- tempt to proceed, the boatman had to carry him on his back. The storm burst out in all its fury ; and the travellers, half suffocated and more than half blinded, had to grope onwards along the rough road, still more roughened by the snow-wreaths that were gathering over it. They stopped at every fiercer blast, and turned their backs to the storm to recover breath ; and every few yards they advanced, they had to stoop to the earth to ascertain the direction of their path, by catching the outline of the nearer objects between them and the sky. After many a stumble and fall. 292 SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. however, and many a groan and exclamation from tlie two boatmen behind, who were welhiigh worn out, they all reached the clachan in safety about two hours after nightfall. The inmates were seated round an immense peat fire, placed, according to the custom of the country, in the middle of the floor. They made way for the travellers ; and Sandy Wright, drawing his seat nearer the fire, began to chaff the hands and feet of the boy, who was almost insensible from cold and fatigue, " Bring us a mutchkin o' brandy here," said the boat- man, " to drive out the cauld fra our hearts ; an', as supper canna be ready for a while yet, get me a piece for the boy. He has had a narrow escape, puir little fellow ; an' may be there's some that would miss him, lanerly as he seems. Only hear how the win' roars on the gable, an' rattles at the "winnocks and the door. ! it's an awfu' night in the Moray Frith." " It's no gude," continued the boatman, as he ten- dered a half glass of the brandy and a cake of bread to his protege, " it's no gude to be ill to boys. My own loon, Willie, that's the liftenant now, learned me a lesson o' that. He was a wild roytous laddie, fu' o' droll mischief, an' desperately fond o' cocks, doos, an' rabbits. He had a doo's nest out in the Crook-burn Wood ; but he was muckle in the dread o' fighting Rob Moffat, the gamekeeper ; and, on the day it was ripe for harrying, what did he do but set himself to watch Rob, at his house at the Mains. He saw him setting off to the hill, as he thought, M'i' his gun an' his twa dogs ; an' then awa sneaks he to the burn, thinking himsel out o' Rob's danger. He could SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 29o climb like a cat, an' so up he clamb to the nest, an' then wi' his bonnet in his teeth, an' the twa doos in his bonnet, he drapped down fra branch to branch ; but what would ye think ! the first thing he met at the bottom was muckle Rob. The cankered, quar- relsome wretch raged like a perfect madman, an' lay- ing hold on the twa birds by the feet, he dawded them about Willie's face, till they were baith massa- cred. It was an ill-hearted cruel thing; an', had I been there, I would hae tauld him sae on the deafest side o' his head, lang though he be. Willie came hame wi' his chatFts a' swelled an' bluidy, an' the greet, puir cliield, in his throat, for he was as muckle vexed as hurt. He was but a thin slip o' a callant at the time ; but he had a high spirit, an', just out o' the liealey, awa he went in young Captain Robinson'>> lugger, an' did na come near the place, though he sent his mither pennies now an' then by the Campvere traders, for about five years. Weel, back he came at last, a stalwart young fallow o' sax feet, wi' a grip that would spin the bluid out at the craps o' a chield's fingers ; an', 0, we w^ere a' glad to see him ! ' Mi- ther,' said he, ' is fighting Rob Moffat at the Mains yet ?' ' 0, ay,' quo' she. ' Weel, then, I think I'll ■call on him in the morning,' says he, ' an' clear aff" an old score wi' him,' an' his face grew black as he spoke. We baith kent what was working wi' him ; an', after bedtime, his mither, puir body, gied up a' the length o' the Mains to warn Rob to keep out o' the way. An' weel did he do that, for for the three weeks that Willie staid at hame wi' us, not a bit o' 294 SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. him was to be seen at either kirk or market. — Puir Willie ! he has got fighting enough sinsyne." Sandy Wright shared with the boy his supper and his bed ; and^ on setting out on the following morn- ing, he brought him along Avith him, despite the re- monstrances of the other boatmen, who dreaded his proving an incumbrance. The story of the little fel- low, though simple, was very affecting. His mother, a poor widow, had lived, for the five preceding years, in the vicinity of Inverness, supporting herself and her boy by her skill as a sempstress. As early as his sixth year, he had shown a predilection for reading ; and, with the anxious solicitude of a Scottish mother, she had wrought late and early to keep him at school. But her efforts were above her strength, and, after a sore struggle of nearly four years, she at length sunk under them. " Oh," said the boy to his companion, " often would she stop in the middle of her work, and lay her hand on her breast, and then she would ask me what would I do when she would be dead, — and we would both greet. Her fingers grew white and sma', and she couldna sit up at nights as before ; but her cheeks were redder and bonnier than ever, and I thought that she surely wouldna die. She has told me, that she was'na eighteen years older than mysel. Often, often when I waukened in the morning, she would be greetin at my bedside ; and I mind one day, when I brought home the first prize from school, that she drew me till her, an' told me wi' the tear in her e'e, that the day would come, when her head would be low, that my father's gran' friends, who were SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 295 ashamed o' her because she was poor, would be proud that I was connected wi' them. She soon couklna hold up her head at all, and if it wasna for a neigh- bour woman, ■^^•ho hadna muckle to spare, we would have starved. I couklna go to the school, for I needed to stay and watch by her bedside, and do things in the house ; and it vexed her more that she was keep- ing me from my learning, than that hersel was sae ill. But I used to read chapters to her out of the Bible. One day when she was sick, sick, two neighbour women came in, and she called me to her and told me that ^hen she would be dead, I would need to go to Edinburgh, for I had no friends any where else. Her own friends weve there, she said, but they were poor and couklna do muckle for me ; and my father's friends Avere there too, and they were gran' and rich, though they wadna own her. She told me no to be feared by the Avay, for that Providence kent every bit o't, and He would make folk to be kind to me ; and then she kissed me, and gi'at, and bade me go to the school. When I came out she was lying Avi' a white cloth on her face, and the bed Avas all AA'hite. She was dead, dead, and I could do nothing but greet a' that night, and she was dead still. I'm now travel- ling to Edinburgh, as she bade me, and folk are kind to me just as she said ; and I have letters to shoAV me the way to my mither's friends Avhen I reach the town, for I can read write." Such was the narrative of the poor boy. Throughout the Avhole of the journey, Sandy Wright was as a father to him. He shared AAitli him his meals and his bed, and usually for the last half dozen 296* SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. miles of every stage^ he carried liim on his back. On reaching the Queensfcrry, however^ the boatman found that his money was wellnigh expended. I must just try and get him across, thought he, without paying the fare. The boat had reached the middle of the ferry, when one of the ferrymen, a large gruff-looking fellow, began to collect the freight. He passed along the passengers one after one, and made a dead stand at the boy. " Oh," said Sandy Wright, avIio sat by him, " dinna stop at the boy ; — it's a puir orphan ; see, here's my groat." The ferryman still held out his hand. "' It's a puir orphan," reiterated the boatman, " we found him bewildered" on the bursting out o' the last storm, in a dismal habitless glen o' Badenoch, an' taen him wi' us a' the "w^ay ; for he's going to seek his friends at Edinburgh ; surely ye'll no grudge him a passage." The ferryman, without deigning him a reply, plucked off the boy's bonnet, the boatman in- stantly twitched it out of his hand. " Hoot, hoot, hoot," he exclaimed, " the puir fatherless and mother- less boy ! — ye'l] no do that. Take tent, my man," he added, for the ferryman seemed doggedly resolved on exacting the hire, " take tent ; we little ken what may come o' oursels yet, forby our bairns." " By , boatman, or whatever ye be," said the ferryman, " I'll hae either the fare or the fare's worth, tliough it should be his jacket ;" and he again laid hold on the boy, who began to cry. Sandy Wright rose from his seat in a towering passion. " Look ye, my man," said he, as he seized him by the collar, with a grasp that would have pulled a bull to the ground, " little bauds me from pitching ye out o'er the gunwale. Only SAXDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 297 crack a finger on the poor thing, an' I'll knock ye down, man, though ye Avere as muckle as a bullock. Shame, shame ye for a man, — ye hae nae mair natu- ral feeling than a sealchies bubble."* The cry of shame, shame, was echoed from the other passengers, and the surly ferryman gave up the point. " An' now, my boy," said the boatman, as they reached the head of what is now Leith Walk, "I hae business to do at the Customhouse, an' some monev to get ; but I maun first try and find out your friends for ye. Look at the letters an' tell me the street an' the number where they put up." The boy untied his little bundle, which contained a Few shirts and stockings, a parcel of papers, and a small box. — " What's a' the papers about ?" enquired the boatman, " an' what hae ye in the wee box ?" " My mither," said the boy, "bade me be sure to keep the papers, for they tell of her marriage to my father ; and the box bauds her A^ed- ding ring. She could have got money for it when she was sick and no able to work, but she would sooner starve, she said, than part wi' it ; and I widna like to part wi' it either, to onybodie but yoursel, — but if ye would take it ?" He opened the box and passed it to his companion. It contained a valuable diamond ring. " No, no, my boy," said the boatman, " that Avidna do ; the ring's a bonny ring, an' something bye ordinar, though I be no judge ; but, blessings on your heart ! tak ye care o't, an' part wi't on no account to ony bodiej — Hae ye found out the direction?" The * Sea-nettle. 298 SANDY WEIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. boy named some place in the vicinity of the Grass- market, and in a few minutes they were both walking up the High Street. • " 0, yonder's my aunt/' exclaimed the boy, point- ing to a young woman who was coming down the street ; " yonder's my mither's sister ; and away he sprung to meet her. She immediately recognised and welcomed him ; and he introduced the boatman to her, as the kind friend who had rescued him from the snow-storm and the ferryman. She related in a few words the story of the boy's parents. His father had been a dissipated young man of good family^ whose follies had separated him from his friends ; and the difference he had rendered irreconcilable by marrying a low born but industrious and virtuous young woman, who, despite of her birth, was deserving of a better husband. In a few years he had sunk into indigence and contempt ; and, in the midst of a wretchedness, which would have been still more complete had it not been for the efforts of his wife, he was seized by a fever of which he died. " Two of his brothers," said the woman, " who are gentlemen of the law, were lately enquiring about the boy, and will, I hope, in- terest themselves in his behalf." In this hope the boatman cordially acquiesced. " An' now, my boy," said he, as he bade him farewell, " I have just one groat left yet ; — here it is ; better in your pocket than wi' the gruff carle at the ferry. It's an honest groat any how ; an' I'm sure I wish it luck." Eighteen years elapsed before Sandy Wright again visited Edinburgh. He had quitted it a robust, power- ful man of forty-seven, aud he returned to it a grey- SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 299 licaded old man of sixty-five. His humble fortunes, too, were sadlj' in the wane. His son, William, a gallant young fellow, Avho had risen in a few j'ears on the score of merit alone, from the forecastle to a lieu- tenancy, had headed, under Admiral Vernon, some desperate enterprize, from which he never returned : and the boatman himself, when on the eve of retiring on a small pension, from his long service in the Cus- tomhouse, was dismissed without a shilling, on the charge of having connived at the escape of a smuggler. He was slightly acquainted Avith one of the inferior clerks in the Edinburgh Customhouse ; and, in the slender hope that this person might use his influence inliis behalf, and that that influence might prove power- ful enough to get him reinstated, he had now travel- led from Cromarty to Edinburgh, a weary journey of nearly two hundred miles. He had visited the clerk, M'ho had given him scarcely any encouragement, and he was now waiting for him in a street near George's Square, where he had promised to meet him in less than half an hour. But more than two hours had elapsed ; and Sandy Wright, fatigued and melancholy, was sauntering slo\A'Iy along the street, musing on his altered circumstances, v,hen a gentleman, who had passed him with the quick hurried step of a person engaged in business, stopped abruptly a few yards away, and returning at a much slower pace, eyed him steadfastly as he repassed. He again came forward and stood. " Are you not Mr. Wright ?" he enquired. " My name, sir, is Sandy Wright," said the boatman, touching his bonnet. The face of the stranger glowed with pleasure, and grasping him by the hand, " Oh, •300 SANDY AVRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN, my good kind friend Sandy Wright !" he exclaimed, " often, often have I enquired after you, but no one could tell me where you resided, or %\'hether you were living or dead. Come along with me ; — my house is in the next square. What I not remember me ; ah, but it will be ill with me v/hen I cease to remember you. I am Hamilton, an advocate, — but you will scarcely know me as that." The boatman accompanied him to an elegant house in George's Square, and was ushered into a splendid apartment, where there sat a Madonna-looking young lady engaged in reading. " Who of all the world have I found," said the advocate to the lady, " but good Sandy Wright, the kind brave man who rescued me when perishing in the snow, and who was so true a friend to me when I had no friend besides." The lady welcomed the boatman with one of her most fascinating smiles, and held out her hand. " How happy I am," she said, "■ that we should have met with you. Often has Mr. Hamilton told me of your kind- ness to him, and regretted that he should have no opportunity of acknowledging it," The boatman made one of his best bo^^'s, but he had no Avords for so fine a lady. The advocate enquired kindly after his concerns, and was told of his dismissal from the Customhouse. " I'll vouch," he exclaimed, " it was for nothing ■ an honest man should be ashamed of." — " Oh, only a slight matter, Mr. Hamilton," said the boatman, " an' troth, I couldna wcel do other than what I did though I should hae to do't o'er again. Captain Robinson o' the Free Trade was on the coast o' CadboU last harst, SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 301 about the time o' the Equinoxal, unlading a cargo o' Hollands, whan on came the storm, an' he had to rira tor Cromarty to avoid shipwreck. His loading was mostly out, except a few orra kegs that might just make his lugger seizable if folk gied a wee owre strict. If he could but show, however, that he had been at the Isle o' Mann, an' had been forced into the Frith by mere stress o' weather, fra his even course to Flush- ing, it would set him clear out o' our danger. I had a strong liking to the Captain, for he had been unco kind to my poor Willie, that's dead now ; an' when he tauld our officer that he had been at Mann, an' the officer asked for proof, I contrived to slide twa Manks baubees intil his ban', an' he held them out till him just in a careless way, as if he had plenty proof be- sides. Weel, this did, an' the puir chield wan off; but hardly was he down the Frith, when out came the haill story. Him they couldna harm, but me they could ; an', after muckle ill words, (an' I had to bear them a', for I'm an auld failed man now,) instead o' getting retired on a pension for ray forty years' ser- vice, I was turned aff Avithout a shilling. I have an acquaintance in the Customhouse here, Mr. Scrabster the clerk, an' I came up ance errand to Edinburgh in the hope that he might do something for me ; but he's no verra able I'm thinking, an' I'm feared no verra willing ; an' so, Mr. Hamilton, I just canna help it. My day, o' course o' nature, canna be verra lang, an' Providence, that has aye carried me through as yet, winna surely let me stick now." — " Ah, no, my poor friend," said the advocate. " Make up yoiu" mind. 302 SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. however^ to stay for a few weeks with Helen and me, and I shall try in the meantime what my little influ- ence will do for you at the Customhouse." A fortnight passed away very agreeably to the boat- man. Mrs. Hamilton, a fascinating young creature of very superior mental endowments, was quite delighted with his character and his stories : — the latter opened to her a new chapter in her favourite volume — the book of human life ; and the advocate, a man of high talent and a benevolent heart, seemed to regard him with the feelings of an affectionate son. At length, however, he began to weary sadly of what he termed the life of a gentleman, and to sigh after his little smoky cottage, and " the puir auld wife." " Just remain with us one week longer," said the advocate, '^'^and I shall learn in that time the result of my ap- plication. You are not now quite so active a man as when you carried me ten miles through the snow, and frightened the tall ferryman, and so I shall secure for you a passage in one of the Leitli traders." In a few days after, when the boatman was in the middle of one of his most interesting stories, and Mrs. Hamilton hugely delighted, the advocate entered the apartment, his eyes beaming with pleasure, and a packet in his hand. " This is from London," he said, as he handed it to the lady ; " it intimates to us, that one Alexander Wright, a Customhouse boatman, is to retire from the service on a pension of twenty pounds per annum." — But why dwell longer on the story ? Sandy Wright parted from his kind friends, and returned to Cro- marty, where he died in the spring of 1769, in the SANDY WRIGHT AND THE PUIR ORPHAN. 303 82(1 year of his age. " Folk hae aye to learn," he used to say, " an', for my own part, I was a saxty year auld scholar afore I kent the meaning o' the verse, — ' Cast thy bread on the waters, and thou shalt find it after many days.' " 304 CHAPTER XVIII. I'll give thee a wind. Shakspeare. For about thirty years after the failure of the herring fishery, the population of the towii of Cromarty gra- dually decreased. Many of the young men became sailors and went into foreign parts, from whence few of them returned. One of them served in the unfor- tunate expedition of Vernon, and left his bones under the walls of Carthagena ; another, after sailing round the world with Anson, died on his passage home- wards, when within sight of the white cliffs of Eng- land ; a third was barbarously murdered on the high seas by the notorious Captain James Lo\\Tie. Such of the townspeople as had made choice of the common mechanical professions, plied their respective trades in the fishing towns of the north of Scotland ; and I have seen, among old family papers, letters of these emi- grants WTitten from Lerwick, Kirkwall, and Storna- way. As the population gradually decreased in this way, hovise after house became tenantless and fell into decay ; until the main street was skirted by roofless tenements, and the town's cross, which bears date 1578, was bounded by a stone wall on the one side, and a hawthorn hedge on the other. TARBAT NESS. 305 The domestic economy of tlie people, who still con- tinued to inhabit the town, differed considerably from what it had been when their circumstances were more prosperous. There was now no just division of labour among them, — working people of all the different de- nominations encroaching each on the bounds of the others' profession. Fishermen wrought as labourers, tradesfolks as fishermen, and both as fanners. In the latter part of spring and the two first months of sum- mer, the townspeople spent their evenings in angling, with rods and hand-lines, in their boats, or from the rocks at the entrance of the bay ; towards the end of July, they formed themselves into parties of eight or ten persons, and sailed to Tarbet-Ness, a fishing sta- tion of the Moray Frith, where they remained for several weeks storing up fish for winter. At night they converted their sails into tents, ranged in the manner of an encampment, at the edge of the little bay where they moored their boats. The long, low promontory of Tarbat Ness, forms the north-eastern extremity of Ross-shire. Etymolo- gists derive its name from the practice which pre- vailed among mariners in this country, during the in- fancy of navigation, of drawing their light shallops across the necks of such promontories, instead of sail- ing round thein. On a moor of this headland may be traced the vestiges of an encampment, which some deem Roman, and others Danish ; and there is a cave among the low rocks by which it is skirted, which, ac- cording to tradition, communicates with another cave on the coast of Caithness. The scenery of Tarbat Ness is of that character which Addison deemed the 306 TARBAT NESS. most sublime ; but it bas sometbing more to recom- mend it than a mere expansiveness, in whicb no ob- ject, tree, bouse, or mountain, contracts tbe view of tbe vast arcb of heaven, or the huge circle of earth. Instead of a low plain, bounded by the sky, there is here a wide expanse of ocean encircling a narrow headland, — brown, sterile, solitary, edged with rock, and studded with fragments of stone. On the one hand, the mountains of Sutherland are seen rising out of the sea like a volume of blue clouds ; on the other, at a still greater distance, the hills of Moray stretch along the horizon, in a long undulating strip, so faintly defined in the outline, that they seem almost to min- gle with the firmament. Instead, however, of con- tracting the prospect, they serve as a scale to measure the immense space in which they are included. Space, — wide, measiu-eless, interminable space, in which he who contemplates it finds himself lost, and is oppressed by a sense of his own littleness, is at all times the circumstance to which the scene owes most of its power ; but it is only during the storms of winter, when the firmament in all its vastness seems converted into a hall of the tempest, and the earth, in all its ex- tent, into a gymnasium for contending elements, that the scene assumes its full sublimity and grandeur. On the north a chain of alternate currents and whirl- pools howl, and bellow, and toss, and rage, as if wrestling with the hurricane ; on the east the huge waves of the German ocean come rolling against the rocky barrier, encircling it with a broad line of foam, and joining their voices of tlumder to the roar of cur- rent and whirlpool ; cloud after cloud sweeps along TARBAT NESS, 307 the brown promontory, flinging on it their burdens as they pass ; the sea-gull shrieks over it as he beats his wings against the gale ; the distant hills seem blotted from the landscape ; occasionally a solitary bark^ half enveloped in cloud and spray, with its dark sails furled to the yfirds, and its topmasts loAvered to the deck, comes drifting over the foam ; and the mariner, an- xious, afraid, and tied to the helm, looks wistfully over the waves for the headlands of the distant haven. A party of Cromarty tradesfolks, who had prose- cuted the fishing on the promontory of Tarbat Ness, for part of the summer and autumn of 1738, had been less successful that season than most of their neigh- bours, and they had lingered for several days on the station, after the tents of the encampment had been struck, and the boats had sailed for home. At length, however, a day was fixed for their return, but when it arrived the wind had set in strongly from the south- west ; and, instead of prosecuting their voyage, they were compelled to haul up their boat to the site of the encampment. The storm continued for more than t\\'o weeks, accompanied by heavy showers, which extinguished their fire, and so satm'ated the cover of their tent, that the water dropped on their faces as they lay folded in the straw and blankets with which they had covered the floor. Their provisions, too, except the salted fish, which they had secured in bar- rels, began to fail them ; and they became exceed- ingly anxious for a change of wind. But the storm seemed to mock at their anxiety. Night after night were they awakened by the rain pattering against the sail, and when they raised its edge every succeeding 308 STINE BHEAG o' TARBAT. mornings tliey saw the sea whitened by t}ie gale, and clouds laden with water rolling heavily from the south- west. Not more than a mile from the tent there was an inhabited cottage. The solitary tenant, an elderly woman, still known to tradition as Stine Bheag o' Tarbat, was famous at this time as one in league with Satan, and much consulted by seafaring men when A^'indbound in any of the neighbouring ports. Her history, as related by her neighbours, formed, like the histories of all the other witches of Scotland, a strange medley of the very terrible and the very ludicrous. A shipmaster, who had unwittingly offended her, had moored his vessel one evening within the rocky bav of Portmahomack, a haven of Tarbat ; but on going on deck next morning, he found that the vessel had been conveyed during the night over the rocks and the beach, a broad strip of meadow, two cornfields, and a large moor, into a deep muddy ditch ; and there would she have lain till now, had he not found means to conciliate the witch, who, on the following night, transported her to her former moorings. With all this power, however, only a few weeks after, a farmer of the parish, \A'hom she had long annoyed in the shape of a black beetle, succeeded in laying hold of her as she hummed round his bonnet, and confined her for four days in his snuff-box. Shortly before the arrival of the Cromarty men, a small sloop had been weather-bound for a few days in a neighbouring port ; and the master applied to Stine for a Avind. Part of his cargo consisted of fo- reign spirits ; and on taking leave of the witch he STINE BHEAG O' TARBAT. 309 brought with him two empty bottles, which he pro- raised to fill, and send to her by the ship-boy. It was evening, however, before he reached the vessel ; and the boy would not venture on carrying the bottles by night to her cottage ; in the following morning they were forgotten in the hurry of sailing. The -Hand blew directly oif the land, and from what the master deemed the very best point of the compass ; the vessel scudded down the fiith before it, under a tight sail ; it freshened as the land receded, and the mainsail was lowered reef after reef; before evening it had increa- sed into a hurricane. The mavSter stood by the helm, and in casting an anxious glance at the binnacle, to ascertain his course, his eye caught the two bottles of Stine Bheag. " Ah, witch !" he muttered, " I must get rid of thee ;" and taking up one of the bottles he raised his arm to throw it over the side, when he was interrupted by a hoarse croaking above head, aaid on looking up he saw two ravens hovering round the vane. The bottle was replaced. An immense wave came rolling behind in the wake of the vessel ; it neared ; it struck the stern, and rushing over the deck, -washed every tiling before it, spars, coops, cordage ; but only the bottles were carried overboard. In the moment they rose to the surface the ravens darted upon them, like sea-gulls on a shoal of coal fish ; and the master, as the vessel swept along, could see them bearing them away. The hurricane gradually subsided into a moderate breeze, and the rest of the voyage was neither rough nor unprosperous ; but the shipmaster, it was said, religiously determined never again to pur- chase a wind. And the Cromartv men, who had 310 STINE BHEAG O' TARBAT. lieard the story, were so much of the master's opinion, that it was not until the second week after the wind had set in to the southwest, and when all their provi- sions Avere expended, that they resolved on risking a visit to Stine Bheag. One of them, a tall robust young fellow, named Macglashan, accompanied by two others, after col- lecting all the placks and boddles of the party, (little jjieces of copper coin, with the head of Charles II. on one side, and the Scotch thistle on the other,) set out for the hovel of the witch. It was situated on the shore of a little sandy bay, which opens into the Dor- noch Frith, and was one of a range, four in number, three of which were now deserted. The roof of one had fallen in ; the two others, with their doors ajar, the casements of the vdndows bleached white by the sea winds, and with wreaths of chickweed mantling over the sloping sides, and depending from the eaves, seemed very dwellings of desolation. From the door and window of the inhabited hovel, which joined to the one that had fallen, and which in appearance was as ruinous and weather-beaten as either of the other two, there issued dense volumes of smoke, accompa- nied by a heavy oppressive scent, occasioned appa- rently by the combustion of some marine vegetable. This range had been inhabited about ten years before by a crew of fishermen, and their families ; one of them was the husband, another the son of Stine Bheag. The son, it is said, had chanced to come upon her when she was engaged in some of her orgies, and had told his father of what he had seen. They deli- berated on delating her as a witch before tlie presby- STINE BHEAG O' TARBAT. 31 1 tcry of Tain, but ere they had come to a full determi- nation, they unluckily went to sea. Stine was not idle ; — there arose a terrible hurricane, and the boat was driven on a quicksand, where she was swallowed up, with all her crew. The widows, disturbed by su- pernatural sights and noises, deserted their cottages soon after, and Stine Bkeog became the sole tenant of the range. Macglashan walked up to the door, which hung half open, and tapped against it, but the sound was lost in a loud crackling noise, resembling a ceaseless v.iploy- ment in the second. Roderick was not to be baulked so. There was a window in the apartment which, had the walls been of stone, would scarcely have afforded a passage to an ordinary-sized cat, but luckily they were of turf. Into this opening, he insinuated first his head, next his shoulders, and wriggling from side to side until the whole wall heaved with the commotion, he wormed himself into liberty ; and then set off for the church of Cromarty, without bonnet, coat, or waistcoat. An angry man was Roderick ; and the anger which he well knew would gain him nothing if wreaked on the gudewife, was boiling up against the captain and Mr. Simpson. He entered the church, and in a moment every eye in it was turned on him. The schoolmaster, a thin serious- looking person, sat in the precenter's desk, with his writing materials before him, to take down the names of the voters, hundreds of whom thronged the body of the church. Captain Urquhart, in an attitude be- tween sitting and standing, occupied one of the oppo- site pews ; about half a dozen of his servants lounged behind him. He was a formidable-looking, dark- complexioned, square-shouldered man, of about fifty ; and over his harsh, weather-beaten features, which 362 EODERICK AND THE CAPTAIN. were in some little degree the reverse of engaging at any time, the occasion of the meeting seemed to have flmig a darker expression than was common to them. As Roderick advanced, he started up as if to recon- noitre so terrible an apparition. Roderick's shirt and breeches were stained by the damp mouldy turf of the window, his face had not escaped, and instead of being marked by its usual expression of quiet good nature, it had a portentous ferocity, which seemed to indicate a man not rashly to be meddled with. " In the name of wonder, what brings you here in such a plight ?" was the question put to him by an acquaintance in the aisle, " I come here," said Roderick, in a voice suf- ficiently audible all over the building, " to gie my vote as a free member o' the kirk, in the election o' this day; an' as for the particular plight," lowering his tone into a whisper, " speer o' that at the gude- wife." — " And whom do you vote for ?" said the schoolmaster, "for the time is up; — there are two candidates, Simpson and Henderson." — " For honest Mr. Henderson," said the fanner, " an' ill be his luck this day who votes for ae Roman out o' the fear o' anither, or lets the luve o' warld's gear stan' atween him an' his conscience." The captain grasped his stick ; Roderick clenched his fist. " Look ye. Cap- tain," he continued, " after flinging awa, for the sake o' the puir kirk, the bonny riggs o' Drumonorie, an' I ken I have done it, ye needna think to daunt me Avi' a kent. Come out. Captain, yoursel, or any twa o' your gang, an' in this quarrel I shall bide the Avarst. Nay, man, glower as ye list ; I'm no obliged to be fcart though ye choose to be angry." The shout of AIK. HENDERSON. 363 " No Popish patron — no Popish patron/' which shook the very roof that stretched over the heads of the hundreds who joined in it^ served as a kind of chorus to this fearless defiance. The Captain suffered his stick to slip through his fingers, until the knob rested on his pahn, and then striding over the pew, he walked out of church. In less than half an hour after, the popular candidate was declared duly elected, and at Whitsunday first Roderick was ejected from his farm. His character, however, as a man of probitv, and a skilful farmer, was so well established through- out the country, that he suffered less on the occasion than almost any other person would have done. He died many years after, the tacksman of Peddieston, possessed of ingear and outgear, and a very consider- able sum of money, with which he had the temerity to intrust a new-fangled kind of money borrower, termed a bank. After all they had achieved and all they had suffer- ed on this occasion, the people, of Cromarty were un- fortunate in their minister. He was a person of con- siderable talent, and an amiable disposition ; and be- loved by every class of his parishioners. The young spoke well of him for his good nature, and the old for the deference which he paid to the opinions of his lay advisers. He was, besides, deeply read in theology, and acquainted Avith the various workings of religion in the various constitutions of mind. But of all his friends and advisers, there were none sufficiently ac- quainted with his character to give him the advice which he most needed. He was naturally amiable and unas- suming, and when he became a convert to Christ- 364 MR. HENDERSON. ianity, scarcely any change took place in liis external conduct. He continued to act from principle in the manner he had previously acted from the natural bent of his disposition. For the first few years he was much impressed by a sense of the importance of spi- ritual concerns ; and he became a minister of the church that he might press their importance upon others ; but there are ebbs and flo\\'s of the mind in its moral as certainly as in its intellectual operations ; and that flow of zeal which characterizes the young convert^ is very often succeeded by a temporary ebb, during which he sinks into comparative indifference. It was thus with Henderson. His first impressions became faint, and he continued to walk the round of his duties, rather from their having become matters of custom to him, and that it was necessary for him to maintain the character of being consistent, than from a due sense of their importance. He continued, too, to instruct his people by delineations of character and expositions of doctrine ; but his knowledge of the first 'lA'as the result of studies which he had ceased to prosecute, and in which he himself had been both the student and the thing studied, and the efficacy of the latter was neutralized by their having become to him less the objects of serious belief than of metaphysical speculation. His peculiar character, too, with all its seeming advantages of natural constitution, was per- haps as much exposed to evil as others of a less amiable stamp. There are passions and dispositions so unequivocally bad, that even indifference itself is roused to oppose them, but when the cuiTent of nature and the course of duty seem to run parallel, we suffer MR. HENDERSON. 365 ourselves to be borne away by the stream, and arc seldom watchful to ascertain whether the parallelism be alike exact in every stage of our progress. Hen- derson's character precluded both suspicion and advice. What were the feelings of his people, when, on summoning the elders of the church, he told them, that having formed an improper connection with a girl of the place, he had become a disgrace to the order to Avhich he belonged. He was expelled from his office, and, after remaining in town until a neighbouring clcrgjTiian had dealt to him the censures of the church, from the piUpit wliich lie himself had lately occupied, and in presence of a congregation which had once listened to him with pleasure, and now beheld him with tears, he went away, no one knew whitlier, and ^\as never again seen in Cromarty. About twenty years after, a young lad, a native of tlie place, was journeying, after nightfall, between Elgin and Banff, when he was joined by two persons M'ho were travelling in the same direction, and entered into conversation with them. One of them seemed to be a plain country farmer ; the other was evidently a man of education and breeding. The farmer, with a curiosity deemed characteristic of Scotchmen of a certain class, questioned him about the cause of his journey, and his place of residence ; the other seemed less curious ; but no sooner had he learned that he was a native of Cromarty, than he became the more inquisitive of the two ; and his numberless inquiries regarding the people of the town, showed that at some period he had been intimately acquainted ^ith them. But many of those after whom he inquired, had been 366 MR. HENDERSON. long dead, or had removed from the place years be- fore= The lad, whose curiosity was excited, was mus- tering up courage to ask him whether he had not at some time or other resided in Cromarty, when the stranger, hastily seizing his hand with the cordiality of an old friend, hade him farewell, and turning off at a cross road, left him to the company of the farmer. " Who is that gentleman ?" was his first question. " The Mr. Henderson," wasthe reply, "who atonetime was minister of Cromarty." The lad learned further, that he supported himself as a country schoolmaster, and was a devout excellent man, charitable and ten- der to others, but severe to himself beyond the pre- cedents of Reformed churches. " I wish," said the farmer, " you had seen him by day. He has the grey locks and bent frame of old age, though he is not yet turned of fifty. There is a hill in a solitary part of the country on which he frequently spends the long winter nights in prayer and meditation. A little be- low the summit there is a path which runs quite round the hill, and which can be seen a full mile away, that has been hollowed out by his feet." 367 CHAPTER XXII. O many are the poets that are sown By Nature ; men endowed with highest gifts, The vision and the faculty divine. Yet wanting the accomplishment of verse. Wordsworth. During even the early part of last century^ there Avere a few of the mechanics of Cromarty conversant, in some Httle degree with books and the pen. They had their libraries, of from ten to twenty volumes, of sermons and controversial divinity, purchased at auc- tions, or from the booksellers of the south ; and I have seen letters and diaries written by them wliich would have done no discredit to the mechanics of a more literary age. Donald Sandison's library consisted of nearly a hundred volumes ; and his son, whom I re- member a very old man, and Avho at one time had been the friend and companion of the unfortunate Ferguson, had made so good a use of his opportunities of improvement, that in his latter days, when his sight had begun to fail him, he used to bring with him to church a copy of Beza's Latin New Testament, which happened to be printed in a clearer type than his English one. The people in general, however, were little acquainted with the better literary models. So late as the year 1750, a copy of Milton's Paradise •3G8 THE LITERATI OF CROMARTY. Lost, which had heen brought to town by a sailor, was the occasion of much curiovis criticism amono' them ; some of them alleging that it was heterodox, and ought to be burnt, others deeming it prophetic ; one man affirmed it to be a romance, another said it was merely a poem ; but a Mr. Tliomas Hood, a shop- keeper of the place, set the matter at rest, by remark- ing, that it seemed to him to be a great book, full of mystery, like the Revelations of St. John, but certainly no book for the reading of simple unlearned people like him or them. And yet, at even this period, Cro- marty had its makers of books and writers of verses ; men of a studious imitative turn, — prototypes in some respects of those provincial poets of our own times, who became famous for nearly half an age in almost an entire county. A few brief notices of the more remarkable of my townsmen of this first class, may prove not unacceptable to the reader ; for, of all imi- tators, the poetical imitator is the most eccentric ; — though his verses be imitations, his character is an original. On the southern sliore of the bay of Cromarty, about two miles to the west of the town, there stood, ninety years ago, a meal mill, and the cottage of the miller. The road leading to the country passed in front, be- tween the mill and the beach ; a ridge of low hills, intei'sected by deep narrow ravines, and covered with bushes of birch and hazel, rose directly behind. — A stragglingline of aklors marked the course of the stream that turned the mill wheel ; two gigantic elms, which rose out of the fence of a little garden, spread their uinis over the cottage. The vicAv of the neighbouring JOHNIE O' THE SHORE. 369 t'arm-steadings was shut out by tlie windings of the shore, and the ledge behind ; and, to the traveller who passed along the road in front, and saw no other human dwelling nearer him than the little speck -like houses Avhich mottled the opposite shore of the bay, this one seemed to occupy one of the most secluded spots in the parish. Its inmates, at this pei'iod, were John Williamson, the miller, or, as he was more commonly termed, Johnie o' the shore, and his sister Margaret, — two of the best and most eccentric people of their day in the country side. John was a poet and a Christian, and much valued by all the serious and all the intelligent people of the place ; his sister, who was remarkable in the little circle of her acquaintance, for the acuteness of her judgment in nice points of divin- ity, was scarcely less esteemed. The duties of John's profession left him much lei- sure to write and to pray. During the droughts of summer, his mill pond would be dried up for months together ; and in these seasons he used to retire almost every day to a green hillock in the vicinity of his cot- tage, which commands an extensive view of the bay and the opposite coast ; and there, in a grassy opening among the bushes, would he remain until sunset, with only the Bible and his pen for his companions. He was so much attached to this spot, that he has been lieard to say there was no place in which he thought he could so patiently wait the Resurrection ; and he inti- mated to his friends his wish of being buried in it ; but, on his death-bed, he changed his mind, and requested to be laid beside his mother. It is now covered by a fir wood, and roughened by thickets of furze and juniper, 2a 370 JOHNIE O' THE SHORE. but enough may still be seen to justify his choice. On one side it descends somewhat abruptly into a narrow ravine, through the bottom of whicli there runs a little tinkling streamlet, on the other, it slopes gently to- wards the shore. We look on the one hand, and see through the chance vistas which have been opened in the wood, the country rising above us in long undula- tions of surface, like waves of the sea after a storm, and variegated with fields, liedge-rows, and clumps of copse wood. On the other, the wide expanse of the bay lies stretched at our feet, viith all its winding shores, and blue jutting headlands : «'e look down on the rower as he passes, and hear the notes of his song, and the measured dash of his oars ; and, when the winds are abroad, we see them travelling black over the water before they wave the branches that spread over our heads. Many of the poet's happiest moments were passed in the solitude of this retreat ; and from the experience derived in it, though one of the most be- nevolent of men, and at times one of the most sociable, Avhenever he wished to be happy he sought to be alone. In going to church every Sabbath, instead of following the road, he used invariably to strike across the beach, and walk by the edge of the sea ; and, on reaching the church-yard, he always retired into some solitary cornel', to ponder in silence among the graves. To a person of so serious a cast, a life of solitude and self- examination cannot be a happy, unless it be a blame- less one ; and Johnie o' the shore was one of the rigidly just. Like the Pharisees, he tithed mint, and anise, and cumin, but, unlike the Pharisees, he did not ne- glect the weiji'htier matters of the law. It is recorded JOHNIE O' THE SHORE. 371 of him, tliatj on descending one evening from his hil- lock, he saw his only cow browsing on the grass plot of a neighbour, and that, after having her milked as usual, he despatched his sister with the milk to the owner of the grass. Ninety years ago, the Press had not found its way into the north of Scotland, and the people were unacquainted with the scheme of publishing by subscription. The writings, therefore, of Johnie o' the shore, like those of the ancients before the invention of printing, existed only in manuscript ; and, like these, too, they have suffered from the Goths. A closely written fragment of about eighty pages, which once composed part of a bulky quarto volume, is now all that survives of them, though, at his death, they formed of themselves a little library. One of the volumes, written wholly in prose, and which, it is said, detailed minutely all the incidents of his life, with his thoughts on God and Heaven, the world and himself, fell into the hands of a distant re- lative, who resided somewhere in Easter-Ross. It must have been no small curiosity in its way ; and for some time I was flattered by the hope that it still ex- isted, and might be recovered ; but I have come to find that it has shared the fate of all his other volumes. The existing fragment is now in my possession. It bears date 1743, and is occupied mostly with hymns, catechisms, and prayers. His models for the hymns seem to have been furnished by our Scotch version of the Psalms ; his catechisms were formed, some on the catechisms of Craig and the Palatine, some on that of the Assembly Divines ; his prayers remind me of those which are still to be heard in the churches of our 372 JOHNIE O' THE SHORE. nortlieni parishes on " the day of the men." Some of his larger poems are alphahetical acrostics; — the first line of the first stanza of each, beginning with the letter A, and the first line in the last, with the letter Z. Most of them, ho^^'ever, and the fact is a singular one, for John and his sister were staunch Presbyte- rians, are commemorative of the festival days of the English church. There are hymns for Passion Friday, for Christ's Incarnation-day, for Circumcision-day, and for Christmas : — a proof that he must have had little in him of that abhorrence of Prelacy which character- ized most of the Presbyterians of his time. And he seems, too, to have been of a more tolerating spirit : and, in the simple benevolence of his heart, to have come nearer the truth on some points than men who were more skilful reasoners, and more deeply learned. " There are some people," remarks the querist in one of his catechisms, " who say that those who have never heard of Christ cannot be saved ? " It is surely not our business," is the reply, " to search into the deep things of God, except so far as he is pleased to reveal them ; and, as he has not revealed to us that he con- demns all those ^^'ho have not heard of Christ, it is rash to say so, and uncharitable besides." One of the most curious poems in the manuscript, is a little piece entitled " An Imagination on the Thunder-claps." It was v.Titten before the discoveries of Franklin, and so the imagination is rather a wild one, — not wilder, however, than some of the soberest speculations of the ancients on the same phenomena. The green hillock, on this occasion, appears to have been both his Obsenatory and his Parnassus ; — he JOHNIE O' THE SHORE. 373 seems to have watched upon it every change of the heavens and earth, from the first rishig of the thunder clouds, until they had broken into a deluge, and a blue sky looked down on the red tumbling of streams as they leaped over the ridges, or came rushing from out the ravines. Though quite serious himself, his uncouth phraseology will hardly fail in eliciting the smile of the reader. AN IMAGINATION ON THE THUNDER-CLAPS. Lo I pillars great of waf ry clouds On firmament appear. And mounting up with curled heads, Towards the north do steer. East wind the same doth contradict, And round and round they run ; And earth and sea are dark below. And blackness hides the sun. Like wrestling tides that in the bay Do bubble, boil, and foam, When seas grow angry at the wind. And boatmen long for home ; Ev'n so the black and heavy clouds Do fierce together jar. They meet, and rage, and toss, and whirl, And break, and broken are. Up to the place where fire abides. These wat'ry clouds have gone ; And waters press upon the fire. And fire the waters upon. And lo the fire breaks through the cloud. And clouds do raise their voice, Like rivers toss'd o'er mighty rocks, Or stormy ocean's noise. 374 MEGGIE O' THE SHORE. They roar, and roll, and hills do shake. And heavens do seem to rend ; And should the fierce and shining fire Down upon earth descend, Like clay would be the hardest rocks. Like flax the strongest brass. And all the pride and strength of man Like pride and strength of grass. And now the broken clouds fall dovm In ffrq/f rain from on high ; And many streams do rise and roar. That heretofore were dry. And when the red speat \vill be o'er. And wild storm pass'd away. Rough stones mil lie upon the fields. And heaps of sand and clay. But I with all my sins am spar'd. These fields to turn and tread ; Which surely had not been the case If Jesus had not died. Quod JOHNIE O' THE ShORE. Johnie's sister Margaret (after liis death she seems to have fallen heir to his title, for she then became Meggie o' the Shore) survived her brother for many years, and died at an extreme old age, about the year 1785. The mill, on its falling into other hands, was throAvn down, and rebuilt a full half mile farther to the west, but the cottage ^■^■as spared for Meggie. She liad always been characterized bj' the extreme neat- ness of her dress, and her personal cleanliness, her taste in arranging the homely furniture of her cottage, and her hospitality : and now, though the death of her brother had rendered her as poor as it is possible for MEGGIE O' THE SHORE. 375 n contented person to become, she ■\\-as as much marked by her neatness, and as hospitable as ever. On one occasion, a christian friend who had come to visit liev, was so charmed with her conversation, as to prolonns- men were for sofne time rather doubtful about their meaning. At length, however, they learned that the Whigs meant the people, and the Tories those who wished to live by them, and yet call them names. The townspeople, therefore, became Whigs to a man ; execrated the Holy Alliance, and the massacre at Manchester; drunk liealths to Queen Caroline and Henry Brougham ; and though they petitioned against Catholic emancipation, for, like most Scotch folks, they had too thorough a respect for their grand- 406 WHIGGISM OF THE PEOPLE. fathers to be wholly consistent, they were yet shrewd enough to enquire whether any one had ever boasted of his country because the great men opposed to that measure were his countrymen. The Reform Bill, how- ever, set them all right again, by turning them full in the wake of their old leaders ; and yet, no sooner was Whiggism entrusted with the keys of office, than they began to make discoveries which had the effect of considerably modifying the tone of their politics. They began to discover, — will it be believed ! that all men are not born equal ; and that there exists an Aristo- cracy in the very economy of nature. It was not merely the choice of his countrymen that made Washington a great general, or Franklin a profound statesman. They have also begun to discover, that a good Whig may be a dishonest man ; — nay, that one may be at once Whig and Tory ; a Tory to his servants and de- pendents, a Whig to his superiors and his country. For my own part I am a Whig, — a born Whig ; but no similarity of political principle will ever lead me to put any confidence in the man to whom I could not entrust my private concerns ; and as for the Whiggism that horse-whipped the poor woman who was picking a few withered sticks out of its hedge, it may wear the laurel leaf and the blue ribbon in any way it pleases, but I assure it, it wo'nt be of my party. 407 CHAPTER XXIV. To a mj-steriously consorted pair This place is consecrate ; to Death and Life, And to the best affections that proceed From their conjunction. Wordsworth. Were I to see a person determined on becoming a hermit, through a disgust of that tame aspect of man- ners and low tone of feeling which seem the charac- teristics of what is termed civilized society, I woiUd advise him, instead of retiring into a desert, to take up his place of residence in a country church-yard. Mere solitude cannot surely separate one's thoughts from one's experience ; on the contrary, it will only lead one to think the more of it ; for the less a man has to engage him in the present, the more will he live in the past. And besides, from the very constitution of our nature, what we have seen and felt on any occa- sion, will be remembered all the more vividly if the sight was hateful or unpleasant to us, and the feeling one of pain. What has annoyed and disgusted us in the city A\'ill haunt us in the desert. But though it be thus impossible for us to shut our eyes on the so- ciety of men, it is quite in our power, by changing our place of observation, to view the denizens of this so- ciety in a ditferent phasis; and I am of opinion that their aspect appears nowhere more interesting than when viewed from a country church-yard. The field of 408 THE ITINERANT SCULPTOR. graves is a place quite beyond the precincts of the mo- notonous every-day world ; its more interesting visitors do not seem the people of common every-day life. Grief, like love^ is a credulous passion ; its thoughts and language are the thoughts and language of poetry ; its saddest realities glow Avith the hues of romance; it lives in a world of its own^, peopled with hopes and fears which have become spiritual existences ; and, while it imparts the splendours of Elysium to the scenes of the past, and the gloom of Tartarus to those of the future, it thinks, amid its tears, of a far different future, which has become the present to those whom it mourns, and in which the enjoyments of the past are more than doubled. What wonder then that the more interesting visitors of the church -yard should seem a different class of beings from the people of common life. Instead of hearing them enquire in the manner of the modern Sadducee, whether there be angel or spirit, we see, that not only do they believe in the separate existence of the soul, but also, in many in- stances, in what is told of its occasional visits from the world of the departed to the world of men. Instead of being compelled to hate them for their apathy and indifference, we find that they are susceptible of grief, and have been softened by bereavement into tender- ness and sympathy ; — by the sadness of the counte- nance, says Solomon, the heart is made better. Instead of having to deplore their low scorn of religion, we perceive that their only hope and solace is in accor- dance to its sanction. What is still better, we find a reciprocity of feeling awakened in ourselves. Without having recourse to the phantasies of poetry, we are THE ITINERANT SCULPTOR, 409 transported to tlie regions of romance ; without ima- gining any tiling higher of our brethren of mankind than is really to be found among them, our better sympa- thies are awakened in their behalf; without abstract- ing ourselves from the intluence of example we are incited to the practice of virtue. There is no personage of real life who can be more properly regarded as a hermit of the church-yard than the itinerant sculptor, who wanders from one country burying ground to another, recording on his tablets of stone the tears of the living, and the worth of the dead. If possessed of a common portion of feeling and ima- gination, he cannot fail of deeming his profession a school of benevolence and poetry. For my own part, I have seldom thrown aside the hammer and trowel of the stone mason, for the chisel of the itinerant sculptor, without receiving some fresh confirmation of the opinion. How often have I suffered my mallet to rest on the unfinished epitaph, when listening to some friend of the buried expatiating with all the eloquence of grief on the mysterious warning, and the sad death- bed, on the worth that had departed, and the sorrow that remained behind I How often, forgetting that I was merely an auditor, have I so identified myself with the mourner, as to feel my heart swell, and my eyes becoming moist ! Even the very aspect of a soli- tary church-yard seems conducive to habits of thought and feeling, I have risen from my employment to mark the shadow of tombstone and burial mound creeping over the sward at my feet, and have been rendered serious by the rcfiection, that as those gno- mons of the dead marked out no line of hours, though 410 KIRK jMICHAEL. the hours passed as the shadows moved, so, in that eternity in \\'hich even the dead exist, tliere is a name- less tide of continuity, hut no division of time. I have become sad, when looking on the green mounds around me, I have regarded them as waves of triumph which time and death had rolled over the wreck of man ; and the feeling has been deepened, when looking do^Ti with the eye of imagination through this motionless sea of graves, I have marked the sad remains of both tlie long departed, and the recent dead, thickly strewed over the bottom. — I have grieved above the half soiled shroud of her for whom the tears of bereavement had not yet been dried up, and sighed over the mouldering bones of him whose very name had long since perished from the earth. Not long ago I wrought for about a week in the burying ground of Kirk Michael, a ruinous chapel in the eastern extremity of the parish of Resolis, and distant about six miles from the to^ni of Cromarty. It is a pleasant solitary spot, lying on the sweep of a gentle declivity. The sea flows to v^athin a few yards of the loA^er wall, but the beach is so level, and so little exposed to the winds, that even in the time of tempest there is heard within its precincts only a faint rippling murmur, scarcely loud enough to awaken the echoes of the ruin. Ocean seems to muffle his waves in approaching this field of the dead. A To^y of elms springs out of the fence, and half encircles the building in the centre. Standing beside the mouldering walls of the latter, the foreground of the scene appears thickly sprinkled over with graves and tablets ; and we see the green moss creeping round the rude sculp- KIRK MICHAEL. 411 tures of a primitive age, imparting lightness and beauty to that on \^hich the chisel had bestowed quite an op- posite character. The flake-like leaves and gnarled trunks of the elms fill up what a painter would term the midground of the picture ; and seen from between the boughs^ the bay of Cromarty, shut in by the Su- tors, so as to present the appearance of a luige lake, and the toA\Ti beyond half enveloped in blue smoke, — the windoAvs sparkling through the cloud like spangles on a belt of azure, occupy the distance. The AA'estern gable of the ruin is still entire, though the very foundations of part of the walls can no longer be traced on the sward, and it is topped by a belfrey of hcAMi stone, in which the dead bell K?, still suspended. From the spires and balls with which the cornice is surmounted, the moss and lichens which bristle over the mouldings, and the stalks of ragweed which shoot out here and there from between the joints, the belfrey, though designed in a barbarous style of architecture, is rich in the true picturesque. It furnished me, \\\\exs. the wind blew from the east, with an agreeable mu- sic, not, indeed, either gay or very varied, but of a character which suited well with that of the place. I \\TOUght directly under it, and frequently paused in my labours to hearken the blast moaning amid its spires, and whistling through its apertures ; and have occa- sionally been startled by the mingling death-like tones produced by the hammer, when forced by the wind against the sides of the bell. I was one day listening to this music, when, by one of those freaks which fling the light of recollection upon the dark recesses of the past, much in the manner that I have seen a child throwing the gleam of a mirror from the sunshine into 4<12 THE apprentice's dream. the shade, there were hrought before me the circum- stances of a dream, deemed prophetic of the death of him wliose epitaph I was then inscribing. It was one of tliose auguries of contingency which, according to Bacon, men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss. In the latter part of 1822 a young lad, a mason's apprentice, was employed with his master in -s^-orking within the policies of Pointzfield, — a gentleman's seat about amile from the burying-ground. He wished much to visit the tombs and chapel, but could find no op- portunity, for the day had so shortened that his em- ploTOients engaged him from the first peep of light in tlie morning, until half an hour after sunset. And perhaps the wish was the occasion of the dream. He had no sooner fallen asleep, after the fatigues of the day, than he found himself approaching the chapel, as he thought, in one of the finest of midsummer even- ings. The whole western heavens were suffused with tlie blush of sunset, — the hills, the woods, the fields, the sea, all the limbs and members of the great frame of nature seemed enveloped in a mantle of beauty. He reached the burying-ground, and deemed it the loveliest spot he had ever seen. The tombs were finished after the most exquisite designs, chastely Grecian, or richly Gothic ; and myriads of flowering shrubs winded around the urns, and shaded the tablets in every disposition of beauty. There was a profusion of roses, mingled with large spreading flowers of a vivid blue. The building seemed entire, but it was so encrusted with moss and lichens as to present an ap- pearance of extreme antiquity ; on the Avestern gable there was fixed a huge gnomon of bronze. Suddenly THE WILD-WIFE. 413 a low breeze began to moan through the shrubs and bushes, the heavens became overcast, and the dreamer turning towards the building, with a sensation of fear, beheld the gnomon revolving slowly as on an axis, until the point rested on the sward. He fled the place, and when floundering on in darkness and teiTor, as he thought, through a morass that stretches beyond the southern wall of the chapel, he awoke. Onlv five weeks elapsed from the evening of his dream, until he followed to this burying-ground the corpse of a relative, and saw that the open grave occupied the identical spot on which the point of the gnomon had rested. During the course of the week which I spent in the burying-ground, I became acquainted with several inte- resting traditions connected with its inhabitants. There are some of these which shew how very unlike the beliefs entertained in the ages which have departed, are to those deemed rational in the present ; others which render it evident that though men at different eras think and believe differently, human nature always remains the same. The follo^^■ing partakes in part of the character of both. There lived, about a century ago, in the upper part of the parish of Cromarty, an elderly female of that disposition of mind which Bacon describes as one of the very errors of human nature. Her faculties of enjo>Tnent and suffering seemed connected by some invisible tie to the fortunes of her neighbours ; but this tie, unlike that of sympathy, which binds plea- sure to pleasure, and sorrow to sorrow, by a strange perversity united to each other the opposite feelings. 414 THE WILD-WIFE. She was liappy wlien the people around her were un- fortunate, and miserable when they prospered. So de- cided a misanthropy was met by a kindred feelinw in those acquainted with her ; nor was she regarded with only that abhorrence which attaches to the evil wish, and the malignant intention, but also with the contempt due to that impotency of malice which can only wish and intend. Her sphere of mischief, however, though limited by her circumstances, was occupied to its utmost boundary ; and she frequently made up for her want of power by an ingenuity, derived from what seemed in her an almost instinctive knowledge of the Aveak- nesses of human nature. It was difficult to tell how she effected her schemes, but certain it was that in her neighbourhood lovers became estranged, and families divided. Late in the autumn of her last year, she formed one of a band of reapers employed in cutting down the crops of a Cromarty farmer. Her partner on the ridge ■s^'as a poor widow, who had re- cently lost her husband, and Avho, though Avasted by grief and sickness, AA'as noAV toiling for her three help- less orphans. Every person on the field pitied her but one ; and the malice of even that one, perverted as her dispositions AAere, Avould, probably, liaA^e been disarmed by the helplessness of its object, had it not chanced, that, about five 3'ears before, Avhen the poor woman and her deceased husband Avere on the eA'e of their marriage, she had attempted to break off the match, by casting some foul aspersions on her character. Those whom the Avicked injure, says the adage, they never forgive ; and Avith a demoniac abuse of her knoAvledge THE WILD-WIFE. 415 of the dispositions of tlic people with whom she wrought, she strained beyond her strength to get a- liead of them, knowing that a competition \\ouId ne- cessarily take place, in AA'hich, she trusted, the widow would either have to relinqiiish her employment, as above her strength, or so exhaust herself in the contest as to relapse into sickness. The expected struggle en- sued, but, to the surprise of every one, the widow kept up her place in the foremost rank until evening, when she appeared less fatigued than almost any of the party. The ■\\Tetch who had occasioned it, and who had fal- len behind all the others, seemed dreadfully agitated for the two last hours it continued ; and she was heard by the persons who bound up the sheaves, mut- tering, the whole time, words, apparently, of fearful meaning, which, however, were drowned amid the rustling of the corn, and the hurry and confusion of the competition. Next morning she alone of all the reapers was absent ; and she was found by the widow, Mho seemed the only one solicitous to know what had become of her, and who first entered her hovel to enquire after her, tossing in the delirium of a fever. The poor woman, though shocked and terrified by her ravings, and her agony, tended her till within half an hour of midnight, when she expired. At that late hour a solitary traveller was passing the road which winds along the southern shore of the bay. The moon, in her last quarter, had just risen over the hill on her right, and, half veiled by three strips of cloud, rather resembled a heap of ignited charcoal seen through the bars of a grate, than the orb which only a few nights before had enabled the reaper to 416 THE WILD-WIFE. prosecute his employments until near morning. The blocks of granite scattered over the neighbouring beach, and bleached and polished by tlie AA'aves, were relieved by the moonshine, and resembled flocks of sheep ru- minating on a meadow ; but not a single ray rested on the sea beyond, or the path or fields before ; — the beam slided ineffectual along the level ; — it was light looking at darkness. On a sudden, the traveller be- came conscious of that strange mysterious emotion which, according to the creed of the demonologist, in- dicates the presence or near approach of an evil spirit. He felt his M'hole frame as if creeping together, and his liair bristling on his head, and, filled with a strange horror, he heard, through the dead stillness of the night, a faint, uncertain noise, like that of a sudden breeze rustling through a wood at the close of autumn. He blessed himself, and stood still. A tall figure, indistinct in the darkness, came gliding along the road from the east, and enquired of him, as it floated past, in a voice hollow and agitated, Avhether it could not reach Kirk-Michael before midnight ? " No liv- ing person could," answered the traveller ; and the appearance, groaning at the reply, was out of sight in a moment. The sounds still continued as if a multi- tude of leaves were falling from the boughs of a forest, and striking with a pattering sound on the heaps congregated beneath, when another figure came up, taller, but even less distinct, than the former. It bore the appearance of a man on horseback. — " Shall I reach Kirk -Michael before midnight ?" was the query again put to the terrified traveller ; but before he could reply to it the appearance had vanished in GORDON OF NEWHALL. 417 the distance ; and a sliriek of torment and despair, which seemed re-echoed by the A'cry firmament, roused him into a more intense feehng of" horror. The moon shone out with supernatural brightness ; the noise, which had ceased for a moment, returned, but the sounds were different, for they now seemed to be those of faint laughters, and low indistinct mutterings in the tone of ridicule, and the gigantic rider of a pale horse, with the appearance of a female bent double before him, and accompanied b}' two dogs, one of which tugged at the head, and the other at the feet of the appearance, was seen approaching from the A^-est. As this terrible apparition passed the traveller, the moon shone full on the face of the figure on the horse, and he distinctly perceived, though the features seemed convulsed ■\\ith agony, that they '\\ere those of the female ^\"ho, unknown to him, had expired a fcAV min- utes before. None of the other stories are of so ter- rible a character. Attached to the eastern gable of the ruin, there is a tomb which encloses several monuments, among the rest a plain slab of marble bearing an epitaph, the comjxtsition of which would reflect no disgrace on the pen of Pope. Like most of the other tablets of this burying ground it has its history. Somewhat more tlian fifty years ago, the proprietor of Newhall, an es- tate in the neighboui'hood, was a young man of very superior powers of mind, and both a gentleman and a scholar. When on a visit at the house of his uncle, the proprietor of Invergorden, he was suddenly taken ill, and died a few hours after, leaving behind him a sister, who entertained for him the warmest affection, 2 D 418 GORDON OF NEWHALL. and the vvliole of his tenants, who were much attached to hmi, to regret his loss. He was buried in the fa- mily vault of his uncle, who did not long survive him ; and whose estate, including the vault, was sold soon after by the next of kin ; a circumstance which aggra- vated, in no slight degree, the grief of his sister. There was one gloomy idea that continually occupied her mind, — the idea that even the dust of her brother had, like the very earth and stones of the vaidt, become the property of a stranger. Sleeping or waking the interior of this vault was continually before her. I have seen it. — It is a damp, melancholy apartment of stone, so dimly lighted that the eye cannot ascertain its extent, with the sides hollowed into recesses, partly occupied by the dead, and a few rusty iron lamps sus- pended from the ceiling, — resembling in the darkness a family of vampire bats clinging to the roof of a cav- ern. A green hillock covered with moss and daisies, would have supplied the imagination of the mourner with a more pleasing image, and would have associated better with the character of the dead. His sister \^'as the wife of a gentleman who was at that time the proprietor of Braelanguil. One evening, about half a year after the sale of her uncle's propert}', she was prevailed upon by her husband to quit her apartment, to which she had been confined for months before, and walk with, him to the neighbouring wood. She spoke of the virtues and talents of the deceased, the only theme from which she could derive any j^lea- sure ; and she found that evening in her companion a more deep and tender sjonpathy than usual. The walk was insensibly prolonged, and she was only awakened GORDON OF NEWHALL. 419 from licr reverie of tenderness and sorrow^ by finding herself among the graves of Kirk Michael. The door of her husband's burying ground lay open. On enter- ing it she perceived that a fresh grave had been added to the number of those which had previously occupied the space, and that one of the niches in the wall was filled up by a new slab of marble. It was the grave and monument of her brother. The body had been removed from the vaidt, and reinterred in this place by her consort ; and it would perhaps be difiicidt to decide whether the more delicate satisfaction was de- rived by the sister or the husband from the walk of this evening. — The epitaph is as follows : What science crown 'd him, or what genius blest. No flattering pencil bids this stone attest ; Yet may it witness with a purer pride. How many virtues sunk when Gordon died. Clear truth and nature, noble rays of mind, Open as day, that lieamed on all mankind ; Warm to oblige, too gentle to offend, He never made a foe nor lost a friend. Nor yet from fortune's height, or learning's shade. It boasts the tribute to his memory paid ; But that around, in grateful sorrow steep'd. The humble tenants of the cottage wept ; Those simple hearts that shrink from grandeur's blaze, Those artless tongues that know not how to praise, Feel and record the worth that hallow here A friend's remembrance, and a sister's tear. 420 CHAPTER XXV. Scotland has her Munros. Defoe. Half way between the chapel and the northern wall of the bui-ying ground^ there is a square^ altar-like monument of hewn ashlar, enclosing in one of the sides a tablet of grey freestone. It was erected about sixty years ago by a baronet of Fowlis, to the memory of his aunt, Mrs Gordon of Ardoch, a woman whose sin- gular excellence of character is recorded by the pen of Dodridge. She was the only sister of three brothers, — men who ranked among the best and bravest of their age, and all of whom died in the service of their country, — two in the field of battle, the other when pursuing a flying enemy. The eldest of this family was Sir Robert Munro, twenty-seventh Baronet of Fowlis, aman whose achieve- ments, as recorded by even the sober pen of Dodridge, seem fitted to associate rather with ideas derived from the high conceptions of poetry and romance, than with those which we usually acquire from our expe- rience of real life. He was a person of calm wisdom, determined courage, and unassimiing piety. On quit- ting the University, which he did when very young, he passed into Flanders, where he served for several years under Marlborough, and became intimate with the celebrated James Gardiner, then a Cornet of SIR ROBERT MUNRO, 421 Dragoons. Tliis intimacy ripened into a friendship which did not terminate until death, — perhaps not even then. On the peace of 1712 he returned to Scotland; — the Rebellion broke out three years after. At the head of his clan, and in union with the good Earl of Sutherland, he so harassed a body of three thousand Highlanders, who, under the Earlof Seaforth, were on the march to join the insurgents at Perth, that the junction A^'as retarded for nearly two months ; a delay which seems to have decided the fate of the Stuarts in Scotland. In the following year he was appointed one of the Commissioners of enquiry into the forfeited estates of the attainted ; and he exerted himself in this office in erecting parishes in the remote Highlands, which derived their stipends from the con- fiscated lands. In this manner, says his biogi-apher, new presbyteries were formed in counties where the discipline and worship of Protestant Churches had be- fore no footing. It is added, that by his influence with government he did eminent service to the wives and children of the proscribed. He was for thirty years a member of Parliament, and distinguished him- self as a liberal and consistent Whig, — the friend both of the people and of the king. In the year 1740, when the country was on the eve of what he deemed a just war, though he had arrived at an age at which the soldier commonly begins to think of retiring from the fatigues of the military life, he quitted the business of the senate for the dangers of the field, and passed a second time into Flanders. He now held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and such was his influence over the soldiers under him, and such their admiration 422 SIR ROBERT MUNRO. of his character^ that his spirit and high sense of hon- our seemed to pervade the whole regiment. When a guard was granted to the people of Flanders for the protection of their property, they prayed that it should be composed of Sir Robert's Highlanders; and the Elector Palatine, through his Envoy at the English court, tendered to George I. his thanks for this excel- lent regiment ; for the sake of whose Lieutenant-Colo- nel, it was added, he would for the future always es- teem a Scotchman. The life of Sir Robert resembled a well wrought drama, whose scenes become doubly interesting as it hastens to a close. In the battle of Fontenoy he was among the first in the field, and having obtained leave that his Highlanders should fight after the manner of their country, he surprised the whole army by a display of extraordinary, yet admirable tactics, directed against the enemy with the most invincible courage. He dis- lodged from a battery, which he was ordered to at- tack, a force superior to his own, and found the main body of the French, who were deeply entrenched be- yond it, preparing to fire. Commanding his men to prostrate themselves to avoid the shot, he raised them when the enemy were in the act of reloading, and rushed down upon the latter with so irresistible a charge as forced them precipitately through their lines. Then retreating, according to the manner of High- landers, he again brought them to the charge as be- fore, and with similar effect. And this manoeuvre of alternate flight and attack was frequently repeated during the day. When, after the battle had become general, the English began to give ground before the SIR ROBERT MUNRO. 423 superior force of the enemy, Sir Robert's regiment formed the rear giiard in the retreat. A strong body of French horse came galloping u}) behind^ but, when within a few yards of the Highlanders, the latter turned suddenly round, and received them with a fire so well directed and effectual, that nearly one half of them were dismounted. The rest, wheeling about, rode off, and did not again return to the attack. It was ob- served, that during the course of this day, when the Highlanders had thrown themselves on the ground immediately as the enemy had levelled their pieces for firing, there was one person of the regiment who, instead of prostrating himself with the others, stood erect, exposed to the whole volley. That one was Sir Robert Munro. The circumstances of his death, which took place about eight months after at the battle of Falku'k, were adapted to display still more his indo- mitable heroism of character. He had recently been promoted to the command of a regiment, which, unlike his brave Highlanders at Fontenoy, deserted him in the moment of attack, and left him enclosed by the enemy. Defending himself with his half pike against six of their number, two of whom he killed, he was not ovei-powered, though alone, until a seventh co- ming up shot him dead with a musket. His younger brother who accompanied the regiment, and who had been borne along by the current of the retreat, re- turned in time only to witness his fate and to share it. The present age is not, even in the Highlands, the fige of tradition ; and that spirit which led Scotchmen of the last century to regard the achievements of the brave and excellent of their countrvmen, as reflecting 424< SIR ROBERT MUNRO. honour on themselves, is fast evaporating, leaving be- hind it a residuum of apathetical indiiference, alike un- congenial to the growth of courage, and the interests of morality. The achievements of Sir Robert are almost forgotten by the grandchildren of men who would have deemed it happiness to have purchased his life at the expense of their own. It has been told me by a friend, who, about forty years ago, resided, for some time, in the vicinity of Fowlis, that he could have collected, at that period, anecdotes of him from among his tenantry, sufficient to have filled a volume. They were all of one cliaracter : — tints of varied, but unequivocal beauty, which animated into the colour and semblance of life, the faint outline of heroism traced out by Dodridge. There wasan old man who used to sit by my friend for hours together, nar- rating the exploits of Sir Robert. He was a tall, up- right, grev-haired Highlander, of a ^\'arm heart, and keen, imbending spirit ; and he had fought at Det- tington, Fontenoy, Culloden, and Quebec. One day, when describing the closing scene in the life of his almost idolized chief, after pouring out his curse on the dastards who had deserted him, he started from his seat, and grasping his staff as he burst into tears, exclaimed in a voice almost smothered by emotion, " Ochon, ochon, had his ain folk been there ! ! " The following anecdote of Sir Robert, which I owe to tradition, sets his character in a very amiable light. On his return from Flanders in 1712, he was intro- duced to a Miss Jean Seymour, a beautiful English lady. The young soldier was smitten by her appearance, and had the happiness of perceiving that he had sue- SIR ROBERT MUNRO. 425 ceeded in at least attracting licr notice. So happy an introduction was followed up into intimacy, and, at length, what had been only a casual impression on either side, ■was ripened into a mutual passion of no ordinary warmth and delicacy. On Sir Robert's quit- ting England for the north he arranged with his mis- tress the plan of a regular correspondence, and wrote to her immediately on his arrival at Fowlis. After waiting for a reply with all the impatience of the lover, he sent off a second letter complaining of her neglect, which had no better success, and shortly after a third, which shared the fate of the two others. The inference seemed too obvious to be missed, and he strove to forget Miss Seymour. He hunted, he fished, he visited his several friends, he involved him- self in a multiplicity of concerns, but all to no purpose, she still continued the engrossing object of his affec- tions, and after a few months stay in the Highlands, during which his very character seemed to have un- dergone a radical change for the worse, he again re- turned to England. When waiting on a friend in London, he was ushered precipitately into the midst of a fashionable party, and found himself in the pre- sence of his mistress. She seemed much startled by the rencounter ; the blood mounted to her cheeks ; but suppressing her emotion by a strong effort, she turned to the lady who sat next her, and began to converse on some common topic of the day. Sir Robert retired, and beckoning on his friend, entreated him to procure for him an interview with Miss Sey- mour. This was effected, and an explanation ensued. The lady had not received a single letter, and forming. 426 SIR ROBERT MUNRO. at length, from the seeming neglect of her lover, an opinion of him similar to that from which she herself was suffering in his esteem, she attempted to banish him from her affections, an attempt, however, in which she had been scarcely more successful than Sir Robert. They were gi-atified to find that they had not been mistaken in their first impressions of each other, and parted more attached, and more convinced that the attachment was mutual than ever. In less than a month after Miss Seymour became Lady Munro. Sir Robert succeeded in tracing all his letters to one point, a kind of post office in the confines of In- verness-shire. There was a proprietor in this neigh- bourhood, who was deeply engaged in the interests of the Stuarts, and decidedly hostile to Sir Robert, the scion of a family which had distinguished itself from the first dawn of the Reformation, in the cause of civil and religious liberty. There was, therefore, little difficultv in assigning an author to the contrivance ; but Sir Robert was satisfied in barely tracing it to a discovery ; for, squaring his principles of honour rather by the morals of the New Testament, than by the dogmas of that code which regards death as the only expiation of insult or injury, he was no duellist. An opportunity, however, soon occurred of his avenging himself in a manner agreeable to his character and principles. On the breaking out of the rebellion of 1715, the person who had so wantonly sported Avitli his happiness joined with the Earl of Mar, and, after the failure of the enterprize, was among the number of the proscribed. Sir Robert's influence with the government, and the pecuHar office to which he was BABBLE HANAH. 427 appointed, gave him considerable power over the con- fiscated property, and this power he exerted to its ut- most in behalf of the wdfe and children of the man by whom he had been injured. " Tell your husband/' said he to the lady, " that I have now repaid him for the interest he took in my correspondence with Miss Se}Tnour." Sir Robert's second brother, (the other, as has been related, died ^vith him at Falkirk), was killed, about seven months after the battle, in the Highlands of Lochaber. His only sister survived him for nearly twenty years, "a striking example (I use the language of Dodridge) of profound submission and fortitude, mingled with the most tender sensibility of temper." She was the wife of a Mr. Gordon of Ardoch, (now Pointzfield), whom she survived for several years ; and her latter days were spent in Cromarty ; where there are still a few elderly people who remember her, and speak of her many virtues, and mild, condescend- ing manners, with a feeling bordering on enthusiasm. There was a poor, half-witted girl who lived in her neighbourhood, known, among the to\\aispeople, bythe name of Babble Hanah. The word in Italics is a Scottish phrase applied to persons of an idiotical cast of mind; and yet, though poor Hanah had no claim to dispute the propriety of its application in her own case, her faint glimmering of reason proved quite sufficient to light her on the best possible track of life. She had learned from revelation of the immortality of the soul, and the two states of the future ; and experience had taught even her, what, indeed, it would teach every one, did every one but attend to its lessons, that there 428 BABBLE HANAH. is a radical depravity in tlie nature of man^ and a con- tinual succession of e\'il in the course of life. She had learned, too, that she ■\\'as one of the least v.ise of a class of creatures exceedingly foolish at best, and that to escape from evil needed much wisdom. She A\-as, therefore, earnest in her prayers to the Great Spirit who was so very kind to her, and to even those feeble animals, who, though they enjoy no boon of after life, have a wisdom to provide for the winter, and to dig their houses in the rocks, that in this world he Avould direct her walk agreeable to his own will, and render her wiser in the world to come. Socrates could have taught all this to Xenophon and Plato, but God only could have taught it to Hanah. The people of the place, with dispositions like those of the great bulk of people in every place, were much more dis- posed to laugh at the poor thing for what she wanted, than to form right estimates of the value of M'hat she had. Not so Lady Ardoch ; Hanah was one of her friends. Her house was a place where, in the language of Scripture, "prayer was wont to be made ;" and no one was a more regular attendant on the meet- ings held for this ])urpose, than her friend the half- witted girl. The poor thing always sat at her feet, and was termed by her, her own Hanah. Years, however, began to weigh down the frame of the good lady, and after passing through all the gradations of bodily decay with a mind which seemed to brighten and grow stronger as it neared to eternity, she at length slept with her fathers. Hanah betrayed no emotion of grief; she spoke to no one of the friend she had lost; but she moped and pined away, and CONCLUSION. 42f) became indifferent to every thing ; and a few months after, -vvlien on her death-bed, she told a friend of the deceased, wlio had come to visit her, that she was going to the country of Lady Ardocli. The story of Babble Hanah half completes my Traditional History, and of some histories the half is better than the whole ; mine is, perhaps, one of these; and so, before sotting myself to write any more of Cromarty or its inhabitants, I deem it prudent to ascertain whetlier I may not liavc written enough on the subject already. The dark periods of doubt and dissertation are passed through ; there are stirring times before me, and many a story of the witch, and the fairy, and the chui'chyard spectre, that have been consigned to the burial vaults of the past. Possibly enough, ho^^ever, the great bulk of our north-country stories may be unworthy of being resuscitated, and were it otherwise it is but too probable that the indi- vidual on whom circumstances have conferred an ability of penetrating to where they are laid, is yet unable to re-animate them ; for it is one thing to restore tlie dead to life, and quite another merely to rake up their ashes. What I have written is now submitted to the public as data on which its decision on these points may be grounded ; and sure I am that that decision, whether favourable or otherwise, cannot be other than just. T. CONSTABLE, PRINTER 1, THISTLE STREET, EDINBURGH. fiU3NV-S01^ "^AHMINamV** '^LHV«fln-^^{^ » •- F ^ MUBRARY<9/:_, -^l-UBRARYQc. ^OFCAUfOR^ ^^^WtUNIVtKJ/^ ^lOS-/ 5MEUNIVER%. ^lOS/ Tf o I 6 ^WEUNIVER% «3 f ^ME•l)NIVERS'//) I ^10SANCEI% '%a3A!Nft3WV^ ^10SANCEI% ^l-UBRARYQr^ '^OJIWJJO^^ ^OFCAIIFO%, ^^Aavaan# -^tllBR/ evtUBRARYOc^ cOFCAllFORto -i^-UBRARYO^ ^^OJITVDJO'? 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