A summer in Skye, Volume 2 (of 2)

Glasgow, as most British readers are aware, is situated on both sides of the Clyde, some twenty or thirty miles above its junction with the sea. Its rapidity of growth is perhaps without a parallel in the kingdom. There are persons yet alive who remember when the river, now laden with shipping, was an angler's stream, in whose gravelly pools the trout played, and up whose rapids the salmon from the sea flashed like a sunbeam; and when the banks, now lined with warehouses and covered with merchandise of every description, really merited the name of the Broomy Law. Science and industry have worked wonders here. The stream, which a century ago hardly allowed the passage of a herring-boat or a coal-gabbert, bears on its bosom to-day ships from every clime, and mighty ocean steamers which have wrestled with the hurricanes of the Atlantic. Before reaching Glasgow the Clyde traverses one of the richest portions of Scotland, for in summer Clydesdale is one continued orchard. As you come down the stream towards the city, you have, away to the right, the mineral districts of Gartsherrie and Monkland—not superficially captivating regions. Everything there is grimed with coal-dust. Spring herself comes with a sooty face. The soil seems calcined. You cannot see that part of the world to advantage by day. With the night these innumerable furnaces and iron-works will rush out into vaster volume and wilder colour, and for miles the country will be illuminated—restless with mighty lights and shades. It is the Scottish Staffordshire. Moors of the covenant. On the other hand, away to the south-west stretch the dark and sterile moors of the covenant, with wild moss-haggs, treacherous marshes green as emerald, and dark mossy lochs, on whose margins the water-hen breeds—a land of plovers and curlews, in whose recesses, and in the heart of whose mists, the hunted people lay while the men of blood were hovering near—life and death depending on the cry and flutter of a desert bird, or the flash of a sunbeam along the stretches of the moor. In the middle of that melancholy waste stands the farm-house of Lochgoin, intimately connected with the history of the Covenanters. To this dwelling came Cameron and Peden and found shelter; here lies the notched sword of Captain John Paton, and the drum which was beaten at Drumclog by the hill-folk, and the banner that floated above their heads that day. And here, too, was written the "Scots Worthies," a book considerered by the austerer portion of the Scottish peasantry as next in sacredness to the Bible. And it has other charms this desolate country: over there by Mearns, Christopher North spent his glorious boyhood; in this region, too, Pollok was born, and fed his gloomy spirit on congenial scenes. Approaching the city, and immediately to the left, are the Cathkin Braes: and close by the village of Cathcart, past which the stream runs murmuring in its rocky bed, is the hill on which Mary stood and saw Moray shiver her army like a potsherd. The estuary of the Clyde. Below Glasgow, and westward, stretches the great valley of the Clyde. On the left is the ancient burgh of Renfrew; farther back Paisley and Johnston, covered with smoke; above all, Gleniffer Braes, greenly fair in sunlight; afar Neilston Pad, raising its flat summit to the sky, like a table spread for a feast of giants. On the right are the Kilpatrick Hills, terminating in the abrupt peak of Dumbuck; and beyond, the rock of Dumbarton, the ancient fortress, the rock of Ossian's song. It rises before you out of another world and state of things, with years of lamentation and battle wailing around it like sea-mews. By this time the river has widened to an estuary. Port-Glasgow, with its deserted piers, and Greenock, populous with ships, lie on the left. Mid-channel, Rosneath is gloomy with its woods; on the farther shore Helensburgh glitters like a silver thread; in front, a battlement of hills. You pass the point of Gourock, and are in the Highlands. From the opposite coast Loch Long stretches up into yon dark world of mountains. Yonder is Holy Loch, smallest and loveliest of them all. A league of sea is glittering like frosted silver between you and Dunoon. The mighty city, twenty miles away, loud with traffic, dingy with smoke, is the working Glasgow; here, nestling at the foot of mountains, stretching along the sunny crescents of bays, clothing beaked promontories with romantic villas, is another Glasgow keeping holiday the whole summer long. These villages are the pure wheat; the great city, with its strife and toil, its harass and heart-break—the chaff and husks from which it is winnowed. The city is the soil, this region the bright consummate flower. The merchant leaves behind him in the roar and vapour his manifold vexations, and appears here with his best face and happiest smile. Here no bills intrude, the fluctuations of stock appear not, commercial anxieties are unknown. In their places are donkey rides, the waving of light summer dresses, merry pic-nics, and boating parties at sunset on the splendid sea. Here are the "comforts of the Sautmarket" in the midst of legendary hills. When the tempest is brewing up among the mountains, and night comes down a deluge of wind and rain; when the sea-bird is driven athwart the gloom like a flake of foam severed from the wave, and the crimson eye of the Clock glares at intervals across the frith, you can draw the curtains, stir the fire, and beguile the hours with the smiling wisdom of Thackeray, if a bachelor; if a family man, "The Battle of Prague," or the overture to "Don Giovanni," zealously thumped by filial hands, will drown the storm without. Hugging the left shore, we have Largs before us, where long ago Haco and his berserkers found dishonourable graves. On the other side is Bute, fairest, most melancholy of all the islands of the Clyde. From its sheltered position it has an atmosphere soft as that of Italy, and is one huge hospital now. You turn out in the dog-days, your head surmounted with a straw-hat ample enough to throw a shadow round you, your nether man encased in linen ducks, and see invalids sitting everywhere in the sunniest spots like autumn flies, or wandering feebly about, wrapt in greatcoats, their chalk faces shawled to the nose. You are half-broiled, they shiver as if in an icy wind. Their bent figures take the splendour out of the sea and the glory out of the sunshine. They fill the summer air as with the earthy horror of a new-made grave. You feel that they hang on life feebly, and will drop with the yellow leaf. Beyond Bute are the Cumbraes, twin sisters born in one fiery hour; and afar Arran, with his precipices, purple-frowning on the level sea.

Arran

In his preface to the "Rambles" Mr Macdonald writes:—

"The district of which Glasgow is the centre, while it possesses many scenes of richest Lowland beauty, and presents many glimpses of the stern and wild in Highland landscape, is peculiarly fertile in reminiscences of a historical nature. In the latter respect, indeed, it is excelled by few localities in Scotland—a circumstance of which many of our citizens seem to have been hitherto almost unconscious. There is a story told of a gentleman who, having boasted that he had travelled far to see a celebrated landscape on the Continent, was put to the blush by being compelled to own that he had never visited a scene of superior loveliness than one situated on his own estate, and near which he had spent the greater part of his life. The error of this individual is one of which too many are guilty."

Celebrated scenery disappointing.

These sentences would make an admirable text for a little week-day sermon. For we are prone, in other matters than scenery, to seek our enjoyments at a distance. We would gather that happiness from the far-off stars which, had we the eyes to see, is all the while lying at our feet. You go to look at a celebrated scene. People have returned from it in raptures. You have heard them describe it, you have read about it, and you naturally expect something very fine indeed. When you arrive, the chances are that its beauties are carefully stowed away in a thick mist, or you are drenched to the skin, or you find the hotel full, and are forced to sleep in an outhouse, or on the heather beneath the soft burning planets, and go home with a rheumatism which embitters your existence to your dying day. Or, if you are lucky enough to find the weather cloudless and the day warm, you are doomed to cruel disappointment. Is that what you have heard and read so much about? That pitiful drivelling cascade! Why, you were led to expect the wavy grace of the Gray Mare's Tail combined with the flash and thunder of Niagara. That a mountain forsooth! It isn't so much bigger than Ben Lomond after all! You feel swindled and taken in. You commend the waterfall to the fiend. You snap your fingers in the face of the mountain. "You're a humbug, sir. You're an impostor, sir. I—I'll write to the Times and expose you, sir." On the other hand, the townsman, at the close of a useful and busy day, walks out into the country. The road is pretty; he has never been on it before; he is insensibly charmed along. He reaches a little village or clachan, its half-dozen thatched houses set down amid blossoming apple-trees; the smoke from the chimneys, telling of the preparation of the evening meal, floating up into the rose of sunset. A labourer is standing at the door with a child in his arms; the unharnessed horses are drinking at the trough; the village boys and girls are busy at their games; two companies, linked arm-in-arm, are alternately advancing and receding, singing all the while with their sweet shrill voices—

"The Campsie Duke's a riding, a riding, a riding."

Unexpectedness of pleasure.

This is no uncommon scene in Scotland, and why does it yield more pleasure than the celebrated one that you have gone a hundred miles to see, besides spending no end of money on the way? Simply because you have approached it with a pure, healthy mind, undebauched by rumour or praise. It has in it the element of unexpectedness; which, indeed, is the condition of all delight, for pleasure must surprise if it is to be worthy of the name. The pleasure that is expected and looked for never comes, or if it does it is in a shape so changed that recognition is impossible. Besides, you have found out the scene, and have thereby a deeper interest in it. This same law pervades everything. You hear of Coleridge's wonderful conversation, and in an evil hour make your appearance at Highgate. The mild-beaming, silvery-haired sage, who conceived listening to be the whole duty of man, talks for the space of three mortal hours—by you happily unheard. For, after the first twenty minutes, you are conscious of a hazy kind of light before your eyes, a soothing sound is murmuring in your ears, a delicious numbness is creeping over all your faculties, and by the end of the first half-hour you are snoring away as comfortably as if you were laid by the side of your lawful spouse. You are disappointed of course: of the musical wisdom which has been flowing in plenteous streams around, you have not tasted one drop; and you never again hear a man praised for power or brilliancy of conversation without an inward shudder. The next day you take your place on the coach, and are fortunate enough to secure your favourite seat beside the driver. Outside of you is a hard-featured man, wrapt in a huge blue pilot-coat. You have no idea to what class of society he may belong. It is plain that he is not a gentleman in the superfine sense of that term. He has a very remarkable gift of silence. When you have smoked your cigar out, you hazard a remark about the weather. He responds. You try his mind as an angler tries a stream, to see if anything will rise. One thing draws on another, till, after an hour's conversation, which has flown over like a minute, you find that you have really learned something. Pleasure not to be sought at a distance. The unknown individual in the pilot-coat, who has strangely come out of space upon you, and as strangely returns into space again, has looked upon the world, and has formed his own notions and theories of what goes on there. On him life has pressed as well as on you; joy at divers times has lighted up his grim features; sorrow and pain have clouded them. There is something in the man; you are sorry when he is dropped on the road, and say "Good-bye," with more than usual feeling. Why is all this? The man in the pilot-coat does not talk so eloquently as S.T.C, but he instructs and pleases you—and just because you went to hear the celebrated Talker, as you go to see the Irish Giant, or the Performing Pig, you are disappointed, as you deserved to be. The man in the pilot-coat has come upon you naturally, unexpectedly. At its own sweet will "the cloud turned forth its silver lining on the night." Happiness may best be extracted from the objects surrounding us. The theory on which our loud tumultuary modern life is based—that we can go to Pleasure, that if we frequent her haunts we are sure to find her—is a heresy and a falsehood. She will not be constrained. She obeys not the call of the selfish or the greedy. Depend upon it she is as frequently found on homely roads, and amongst rustic villages and farms, as among the glaciers of Chamouni, or the rainbows of Niagara.

In one of his earliest rambles, Mr Macdonald follows the river for some miles above the city. The beauty of the Clyde below Glasgow is well known to the civilised world. Even the roué of landscape, to whom the Rhine is weariness and the Alps common-place, has felt his heart leap within him while gazing on that magnificent estuary. But it is not only in her maturity that the Clyde is fair. Beauty attends her from her birth on Rodger Law until she is wedded with ocean—Bute, and the twin Cumbraes, bridesmaids of the stream; Arran, groomsman to the main. With Mr Macdonald's book in pocket to be a companion at intervals—for one requires no guide, having years before learned every curve and bend of the river—let us start along its banks towards Carmyle and Kenmure wood. We pass Dalmarnock Bridge, and leave the city, with its windowed factories and driving wheels and everlasting canopy of smoke behind. The stream comes glittering down between green banks, one of which rises high on the left, so that further vision in that quarter is intercepted. On the right are villages and farms; afar, the Cathkin Braes, the moving cloud shadows mottling their sunny slopes; and straight ahead, and closing the view, the spire of Cambuslang Church, etched on the pallid azure of the sky. We are but two miles from the city, and everything is bright and green. The butterfly flutters past; the dragonfly darts hither and thither. See, he poises himself on his winnowing wings, about half a yard from one's nose, which he curiously inspects; that done, off darts the winged tenpenny-nail, his rings gleaming like steel. There are troops of swallows about. Watch one. Now he is high in air—now he skims the Clyde. You can hear his sharp, querulous twitter as he jerks and turns. Nay, it is said that the kingfisher himself has been seen gleaming along these sandy banks, illuminating them like a meteor. Dalbeth Convent. At some little distance a white house is pleasantly situated amongst trees—it is Dalbeth Convent. As we pass, one of the frequent bells summoning the inmates to devotion is stirring the sunny Presbyterian air. A little on this side of the convent, a rapid brook comes rushing to the Clyde, crossed by a rude bridge of planks, which has been worn by the feet of three generations at the very least. The brook, which is rather huffy and boisterous in its way, particularly after rain, had, a few days before, demolished and broken up said wooden planks, and carried one of them off. Arriving, we find a woman and boy anxious to cross, yet afraid to venture. Service is proffered, and, after a little trouble, both are landed in safety on the farther bank. The woman is plainly, yet neatly dressed, and may be about forty-five years of age or thereby. The boy has turned eleven, has long yellow hair hanging down his back, and looks thin and slender for his years. With them they have something wrapped up in a canvas cloth, which, to the touch as they are handed across, seem to be poles of about equal length. For the slight service the woman returns thanks in a tone which smacks of the southern English counties. "Good-bye" is given and returned, and we proceed, puzzling ourselves a good deal as to what kind of people they are, and what their business may be in these parts, but can come to no conclusion. However, it does not matter much, for the ironworks are passed now, and the river banks are beautiful. They are thickly wooded, and at a turn the river flows straight down upon you for a mile, with dusty meal-mills on one side, a dilapidated wheel-house on the other, and stretching from bank to bank a half-natural, half-artificial shallow horse-shoe fall, over which the water tumbles in indolent foam—a sight which a man who has no pressing engagements, and is fond of exercise, may walk fifty miles to see, and be amply rewarded for his pains. In front is a ferry—a rope extending across the river by which the boat is propelled—and lo! a woman in a scarlet cloak on the opposite side hails the ferryman, and that functionary comes running to his duty. Carmyle. Just within the din of the shallow horse-shoe fall lies the village of Carmyle, an old, quiet, sleepy place, where nothing has happened for the last fifty years, and where nothing will happen for fifty years to come. Ivy has been the busiest thing here; it has crept up the walls of the houses, and in some instances fairly "put out the light" of the windows. The thatched roofs are covered with emerald moss. The plum-tree which blossomed some months ago blossomed just the same in the spring which witnessed the birth of the oldest inhabitant. For half a century not one stone has been placed upon another here—there are only a few more green mounds in the churchyard. It is the centre of the world. All else is change: this alone is stable. There is a repose deeper than sleep in this little, antiquated village—ivy-muffled, emerald-mossed, lullabied for ever by the fall of waters. The meal-mills, dusty and white as the clothes of the miller himself, whir industriously; the waters of the lade come boiling out from beneath the wheel, and reach the Clyde by a channel dug by the hand of man long ago, but like a work of nature's now, so covered with furze as it is. Look down through the clear amber of the current, and you see the "long green gleet of the slippery stones" in which the silver-bellied eel delights. Woe betide the luckless village urchin that dares to wade therein. There is a sudden splash and roar. When he gets out, he is laid with shrill objurgations across the broad maternal knee, and fright and wet clothes are avenged by sound whacks from the broad maternal hand. Leaving the village, we proceed onward. The banks come closer, the stream is shallower, and whirls in eddy and circle over a rocky bed. There is a woodland loneliness about the river which is aided by the solitary angler standing up to his middle in the water, and waiting patiently for the bite that never comes, or by the water-ousel flitting from stone to stone. Kenmuir Bank. In a quarter of an hour we reach Kenmuir Bank, which rises some seventy feet or so, filled with trees, their trunks rising bare for a space, and then spreading out with branch and foliage into a matted shade, permitting the passage only of a few flakes of sunlight at noon, resembling, in the green twilight, a flock of visionary butterflies alighted and asleep. Within, the wood is jungle; you wade to the knees in brushwood and bracken. The trunks are clothed with ivy, and snakes of ivy creep from tree to tree, some green with life, some tarnished with decay. At the end of the Bank there is a clear well, in which, your face meeting its shadow, you may quench your thirst. Seated here, you have the full feeling of solitude. An angler wades out into mid-channel—a bird darts out of a thicket, and slides away on noiseless wing—the shallow wash and murmur of the Clyde flows through a silence as deep as that of an American wilderness—and yet, by to-morrow, the water which mirrors as it passes the beauty of the lucken-gowan hanging asleep, will have received the pollutions of a hundred sewers, and be bobbing up and down among the crowds of vessels at the Broomielaw. Returning homeward by the top of Kenmuir Bank, we gaze westward. Out of a world of smoke the stalk of St Rollox rises like a banner-staff, its vapoury streamer floating on the wind; and afar, through the gap between the Campsie and Kilpatrick hills, Benlomond himself, with a streak of snow upon his shoulder. Could one but linger here for a couple of hours, one would of a verity behold a sight—the sun setting in yonder lurid, smoke-ocean. The wreaths of vapour which seem so common-place and vulgar now, so suggestive of trade and swollen purses and rude manners, would then become a glory such as never shepherd beheld at sunrise on his pastoral hills. Beneath a roof of scarlet flame, one would see the rolling edges of the smoke change into a brassy brightness, as with intense heat; the dense mass and volume of it dark as midnight, or glowing with the solemn purple of thunder; while right in the centre of all, where it has burned a clear way for itself, the broad fluctuating orb, paining the eye with concentrated splendours, and sinking gradually down, a black spire cutting his disk in two. But for this one cannot wait, and the apparition will be unbeheld but by the rustic stalking across the field in company with his prodigious shadow, and who, turning his face to the flame, will conceive it the most ordinary thing in the world. We keep the upper road on our return, and in a short time are again at Carmyle; we have no intention of tracing the river bank a second time, and so turn up the narrow street. But what is to do?

The acrobat.

The children are gathered in a circle, and the wives are standing at the open doors. There is a performance going on. The tambourine is sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a fillet round his brow, tights covered with tinsel lozenges, and flesh-coloured shoes, is striding about on a pair of stilts, to the no small amazement and delight of the juveniles. He turns his head, and—why, it's the little boy I assisted across the brook at Dalbeth three hours ago, and of course that's the old lady who is thumping and jingling the tambourine, and gathering in the halfpennies! God bless her jolly old face! who would have thought of meeting her here? I am recognised, the boy waves me farewell, the old lady smiles and curtsies, thumps her tambourine, and rattles the little bells of it with greater vigour than ever. The road to Glasgow is now comparatively uninteresting. The trees wear a dingy colour; you pass farm-houses, with sooty stacks standing in the yard. 'Tis a coaly, dusty district, which has characteristics worth noting. For, as the twilight falls dewily on far-off lea and mountain, folding up daisy and buttercup, putting the linnet to sleep beside his nest of young in the bunch of broom, here the circle of the horizon becomes like red-hot steel; the furnaces of the Clyde iron-works lift up their mighty towers of flame, throwing

"Large and angry lustres o'er the sky,
And shifting lights across the long dark roads;"

and so, through chase of light and shade, through glimmer of glare and gloom, we find our way back to Glasgow—its low hum breaking into separate and recognisable sounds, its nebulous brightness into far-stretching street-lamps, as we draw near.

Paisley.

The tourist who travels by train from Glasgow to Greenock must pass the town of Paisley. If he glances out of the carriage window he will see beneath him a third-rate Scotch town, through which flows the foulest and shallowest of rivers.

The principal building in the town, and the one which first attracts the eye of a stranger, is the jail; then follow the church spires in their order of merit. Unfortunately the train passes not through Paisley, but over it; and from his "coign of vantage" the tourist beholds much that is invisible to the passenger in the streets. All the back-greens, piggeries, filthy courts, and unmentionable abominations of the place, are revealed to him for a moment as the express flashes darkly across the railway bridge. For the seeing of Scotch towns a bird's-eye view is plainly the worst point of view. In all likelihood the tourist, as he passes, will consider Paisley the ugliest town he has ever beheld, and feel inwardly grateful that his lot has not been cast therein. But in this the tourist may be very much mistaken. Paisley is a remarkable place—one of the most remarkable in Scotland. Just as Comrie is the abode of earthquakes, Paisley is the abode of poetic inspiration. There is no accounting for the tastes of the celestials. Queen Titania fell in love with Bottom when he wore the ass's head; and Paisley, ugly as it is, is the favourite seat of the Muses. There Apollo sits at the loom and earns eighteen shillings per week. At this moment, and the same might have been said of any moment since the century came in, there is perhaps a greater number of poets living and breathing in this little town than in the whole of England. Whether this may arise from the poverty of the place, on the principle that the sweetness of the nightingale's song is connected in some subtle way with the thorn against which she leans her breast, it may be useless to inquire. Proceed from what cause it may, Paisley has been for the last fifty years or more an aviary of singing birds. To said aviary I had once the honour to be introduced. Some years ago, when dwelling in the outskirts of the town, I received a billet intimating that the L.C.A. would meet on the evening of the 26th Jan. 18—, in honour of the memory of the immortal Robert Burns, and requesting my attendance. N.B.—Supper and drink, 1s. 6d. Being a good deal puzzled by the mystic characters, I made inquiries, and discovered that L.C.A. represented the "Literary and Convivial Association," which met every Saturday evening for the cultivation of the minds of its members—a soil which for years had been liberally irrigated with toddy—with correspondent effects. To this cheap feast of the gods on the sacred evening in question I directed my steps, and beheld the assembled poets. The poets. There could scarcely have been fewer than eighty present. Strange! Each of these conceited himself of finer clay than ordinary mortals; each of these had composed verses, some few had even published small volumes or pamphlets of verse by subscription, and drank the anticipated profits; each of these had his circle of admirers and flatterers, his small public and shred of reputation; each of these envied and hated his neighbour; and not unfrequently two bards would quarrel in their cups as to which of them was possessor of the larger amount of fame. At that time the erection of a monument to Thom of Inverury had been talked about, apropos of which one of the bards remarked, "Ou ay, jist like them. They'll bigg us monuments whan we're deid: I wush they'd gie us something whan we're leevin'." In that room, amid that motley company, one could see the great literary world unconsciously burlesqued and travestied, shadowed forth there the emptiness and noise of it, the blatant vanity of many of its members. The eighty poets presented food for meditation. Well, it is from this town that I propose taking a walk, for behind Paisley lie Gleniffer Braes, the scene of Tannahill's songs. One can think of Burns apart from Ayrshire, of Wordsworth apart from Cumberland, but hardly of Tannahill apart from the Braes of Gleniffer. The district, too, is of but little extent; in a walk of three hours you can see every spot mentioned by the poet. You visit his birthplace in the little straggling street, where the sound of the shuttle is continually heard. You pass up to the green hills where he delighted to wander, and whose charms he has celebrated; and you return by the canal where, when the spirit "finely touched to fine issues," was disordered and unstrung, he sought repose. Birth, life, and death lie side by side. The matter of the moral is closely packed. The whole tragedy sleeps in the compass of an epigram.

Stanley Castle.

Leaving the rambling suburbs of Paisley, you pass into a rough and undulating country with masses of gray crag interspersed with whinny knolls, where, in the evenings, the linnet sings; with narrow sandy roads wandering through it hither and thither, passing now a clump of gloomy firs, now a house where some wealthy townsman resides, now a pleasant corn-field. A pretty bit of country enough, with larks singing above it from dawn to sunset, and where, in the gloaming, the wanderer not unfrequently can mark the limping hare. A little further on are the ruins of Stanley Castle. This castle, in the days of the poet, before the wildness of the country had been tamed by the plough, must have lent a singular charm to the landscape. It stands at the base of the hills which rise above it with belt of wood, rocky chasm, white streak of waterfall—higher up into heath and silence, silence deep as the heaven that overhangs it; where nothing moves save the vast cloud-shadows, where nothing is heard save the cry of the moorland bird. Tannahill was familiar with the castle in its every aspect—when sunset burned on the walls, when the moon steeped it in silver and silence, and when it rose up before him shadowy and vast through the marshy mists. He had his loom to attend during the day, and he knew the place best in its evening aspect. Twilight, with its quietude and stillness, seemed to have peculiar charms for his sensitive nature, and many of his happiest lines are descriptive of its phenomena. But the glory is in a great measure departed from Stanley Tower; the place has been turned into a reservoir by the Water Company, and the ruin is frequently surrounded by water. This intrusion of water has spoiled the scene. The tower is hoary and broken, the lake looks a thing of yesterday, and there are traces of quite recent masonry about. The lake's shallow extent, its glitter and brightness, are impertinences. Only during times of severe frost, when its surface is iced over, when the sun is sinking in the purple vapours like a globe of red-hot iron—when the skaters are skimming about like swallows, and the curlers are boisterous—for the game has been long and severe—and the decisive stone is roaring up the rink—only in such circumstances does the landscape regain some kind of keeping and homogeneousness. There is no season like winter for improving a country; he tones it down to one colour; he breathes over its waters, and in the course of a single night they become gleaming floors, on which youth may disport itself. He powders his black forest-boughs with the pearlin's of his frosts; and the fissures which spring tries in vain to hide with her flowers, and autumn with fallen leaves, he fills up at once with a snow-wreath. But we must be getting forward, up that winding road, progress marked by gray crag, tuft of heather, bunch of mountain violets, the country beneath stretching out farther and farther. Lo! a strip of emerald steals down the gray of the hill, and there, by the way-side, is an ample well, with the "netted sunbeam" dancing in it. Those who know Tannahill's "Gloomy Winter's noo awa" must admire its curious felicity of touch and colour. Turn round, you are in the very scene of the song. Gleniffer. In front is "Gleniffer's dewy dell," to the east "Glenkelloch's sunny brae," afar the woods of Newton, over which at this moment laverocks fan the "snaw-white cluds;" below, the "burnie" leaps in sparkle and foam over many a rocky shelf, till its course is lost in that gorge of gloomy firs, and you can only hear the music of its joy. Which is the fairer—the landscape before your eyes, or the landscape sleeping in the light of song? You cannot tell, for they are at once different and the same. The touch of the poet was loving and true. His genius was like the light of early spring, clear from speck or stain of vapour, but with tremulousness and uncertainty in it; happy, but with grief lying quite close to its happiness; smiling, although the tears are hardly dry upon the cheeks that in a moment may be wet again.

Tannahill.

But who is Tannahill? the southern reader asks with some wonder; and in reply it may be said that Burns, like every great poet, had many imitators and successors, and that of these successors in the north country Hogg and Tannahill are the most important. Hogg was a shepherd in The Forest, and he possessed out of sight the larger nature, the greater intellectual force; while as master of the weird and the supernatural there is no Scottish poet to be put beside him. The soul of Ariel seems to inhabit him at times. He utters a strange music like the sighing of the night-wind; a sound that seems to live remote from human habitations. In openness to spiritual beauty, Burns, compared with him, was an ordinary ploughman. Like Thomas the Rhymer, he lay down to sleep on a green bank on a summer's day, and the Queen of Fancy visited his slumber; and never afterwards could he forget her beauty, and her voice, and the liquid jingling of her bridle bells. Tannahill was a weaver, who wrote songs, became crazed, and committed suicide before he reached middle life. His was a weak, tremulous nature. He was wretched by reason of over-sensitiveness. "He lived retired as noon-tide dew." He wanted Hogg's strength, self-assertion, humour, and rough sagacity; nor had he a touch of his weird strain. From Burns, again, he was as different as a man could possibly be. Tannahill knew nothing of the tremendous life-battle fought on wet Mossgiel farm, in fashionable Edinburgh, in provincial Dumfries. He knew nothing of the Love, Scorn, Despair,—those wild beasts that roamed the tropics of Burns's heart. But limited as was his genius, it was in its quality perhaps more exquisite than theirs. He was only a song-writer—both Burns and Hogg were more than that—and some of his songs are as nearly as possible perfect. He knew nothing of the mystery of life. If the fierce hand of Passion had been laid upon his harp, it would have broken at once its fragile strings. He looked upon nature with a pensive yet a loving eye. Gladness flowed upon him from the bright face of spring, despondency from the snow-flake and the sweeping winter winds. His amatory songs have no fire in them. While Burns would have held Annie in his "straining grasp," Tannahill, with a glow upon his cheek, would have pointed out to the unappreciating fair the "plantin' tree-taps tinged wi' gowd," or silently watched the "midges dance aboon the burn." Then, by the aid of that love of nature, how clearly he sees, and how exquisitely he paints what he sees—

"Feathery breckans fringe the rocks;
'Neath the brae the burnie jouks."

"Towering o'er the Newton wuds,
Laverocks fan the snaw-white cluds."

Neither Keats nor Tennyson, nor any of their numerous followers surpassed this unlettered weaver in felicity of colour and touch. Any one wishing to prove the truth of Tannahill's verse, could not do better than bring out his song-book here, and read and ramble, and ramble and read again.

Elderslie.

But why go farther to-day? The Peesweep Inn, where the rambler baits, is yet afar on the heath; Kilbarchan, queerest of villages, is basking its straggling length on the hill-side in the sun, peopled by botanical and bird-nesting weavers, its cross adorned by the statue of Habbie Simpson, "with his pipes across the wrong shoulder." Westward is Elderslie, where Wallace was born, and there, too, till within the last few years, stood the oak amongst whose branches, as tradition tells, the hero, when hard pressed by the Southrons, found shelter with all his men. From afar came many a pilgrim to behold the sylvan giant. Before its fall it was sorely mutilated by time and tourists. Of its timber were many snuff-boxes made. Surviving the tempests of centuries, it continued to flourish green atop, although its heart was hollow as a ruined tower. At last a gale, which heaped our coasts with shipwreck, struck it down with many of its meaner brethren. "To this complexion must we come at last." At our feet lies Paisley with its poets. Seven miles off, Glasgow peers, with church-spire and factory stalk, through a smoky cloud; the country between gray with distance, and specked here and there with the vapours of the trains. How silent the vast expanse! not a sound reaches the ear on the height. Gleniffer Braes are clear in summer light, beautiful as when the poet walked across them. Enough, their beauty and his memory. One is in no mood to look even at the unsightly place beside the canal which was sought when to the poor disordered brain the world was black, and fellow-men ravening wolves. Here he walked happy in his genius; not a man to wonder at and bow the knee to, but one fairly to appreciate and acknowledge. For the twitter of the wren is music as well as the lark's lyrical up-burst; the sigh of the reed shaken by the wind as well as the roaring of a league of pines.