What do you mean by original genius? By that fine line in the "Pleasures of Hope"—

Why—genius—one kind of it at least—is transfusion of self into all outward things. The genius that does that—naturally, but novelly—is original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of Us. Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus—and lo! list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be seen any more than if we were in the middle of the sea. Yet a wan glare shows that the snow-storm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent cliffs; and though you cannot see, you hear the mountains. Rendings are going on, frequent, over your head—and all around the blind wilderness—the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the moanings, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rooking and tossing of old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate?

more fearful than at midnight in this night-like day—whose meridian is a total sun eclipse. The river runs by, blood-like, through the snow—and, short as is the reach you can see through the flaky gloom, that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible—more and more terrible—as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan—ere long he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear thunder, though you know that cannot be—but sublimer than thunder is the nameless noise so like that of agonised life—that eddies far and wide around—high and huge above—fear all the while being at the bottom of your heart—an objectless, dim, dreary, undefinable fear, whose troubled presence—if any mortal feeling be so—is sublime. Your imagination is troubled, and dreams of death, but of no single corpse, of no single grave. Nor fear you for yourself—for the Hut in which you thus enjoy the storm is safer than the canopied cliff-calm of the eagle's nest; but your spirit is convulsed from its deepest and darkest foundations, and all that lay hidden there of the wild and wonderful, the pitiful and the strange, the terrible and pathetic, is now upturned in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind Roaring Day—at once substance, shadow, and soul—is felt to be one with ourselves—the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive.

We are in a Highland Hut—if we called it a Shieling we did so merely because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once brings to eye and ear—the rustling of leaves on a summer sylvan bower, by simple art slightly changed from the form of the growth of nature, or the waving of fern on the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journey-long glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk and cross—Luath his sole companion—his sole care the pasturing herds—the sole sounds he hears the croak of the raven on the cliff, or bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the sunny, moonlight, starry months,—the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her dying father gave into his arms—the old blind soldier—knowing that the boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been buried—now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird—the happiest of all living things—her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride.

We are in a Highland Hut among a Highland Snow-storm—and all at once amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of Burns—the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, with what profound pathos are they charged!

Burns is our Lowland bard—but poetry is poetry all over the world, when streamed from the life-blood of the human heart. So sang the Genius of inspired humanity in his bleak "auld clay-biggin," on one of the braes of Coila, and now our heart responds the strain, high up among the Celtic cliffs, central among a sea of mountains hidden in a snow-storm that enshrouds the day. Ay—the one single door of this Hut—the one single "winnock," does "rattle"—by fits—as the blast smites it, in spite of the white mound drifted hill-high all round the buried dwelling. Dim through the peat-reek cower the figures in tartan—fear has hushed the cry of the infant in the swinging cradle—and all the other imps are mute. But the household is thinner than usual at the meal-hour; and feet that loved to follow the red-deer along the bent, now fearless of pitfalls, since the first lour of morning light have been traversing the tempest. The shepherds, who sit all day long when summer hues are shining, and summer flowerets are blowing, almost idle in their plaids, beneath the shadow of some rock watching their flocks feeding above, around, and below, now expose their bold breasts to all the perils of the pastoral life. This is our Arcadia—a realm of wrath—woe—danger, and death. Here are bred the men whose blood—when the bagpipe blows—is prodigally poured forth on a thousand shores. The limbs strung to giant-force by such snows as these, moving in line of battle within the shadow of the Pyramids,

while the Invincible standard was lowered before the heroes of the Old Black Watch, and victory out of the very heart of defeat arose on "that thrice-repeated cry" that quails all foes that madly rush against the banners of Albyn. The storm that has frozen in his eyrie the eagle's wing, driven the deer to the comb beneath the cliffs, and all night imprisoned the wild-cat in his cell, hand-in-hand as is their wont when crossing a stream or flood, bands of Highlanders now face in its strongholds all over the ranges of mountains, come it from the wrathful inland or the more wrathful sea.

and man's reason goes to the help of brute instinct.

How passing sweet is that other stanza, heard like a low hymn amidst the noise of the tempest! Let our hearts once more recite it,—

The whole earth is for a moment green again—trees whisper—streamlets murmur—and the "merry month o' Spring" is musical through all her groves. But in another moment we know that almost all those sweet-singers are now dead—or that they "cow'r the chittering wing"—never more to flutter through the woodlands, and "close the ee" that shall never more be re-illumined with love, when the Season of Nests is at hand, and bush, tree, and tower are again all a-twitter with the survivors of some gentler climate.

The poet's heart, humanised to utmost tenderness by the beauty of its own merciful thoughts, extends its pity to the poor beasts of prey. Each syllable tells—each stroke of the poet-painter's pencil depicts the life and sufferings of the wretched creatures. And then, feeling that at such an hour all life is subject to one lot, how profound the pathos reflected back upon our own selves and our mortal condition, by these few simplest words,—

They go to help the "ourie cattle" and the "silly sheep;" but who knows that they are not sent on an errand of higher mercy, by Him whose ear has not been shut to the prayer almost frozen on the lips of them about to perish!—an incident long forgotten, though on the eve of that day on which the deliverance happened, so passionately did we all regard it, that we felt that interference providential—as if we had indeed seen the hand of God stretched down through the mist and snow from heaven. We all said that it would never leave our memory; yet all of us soon forgot it—but now, while the tempest howls, it seems again of yesterday.

One family lived in Glencreran, and another in Glenco—the families of two brothers—seldom visiting each other on working-days—seldom meeting even on Sabbaths, for theirs was not the same parish-kirk—seldom coming together on rural festivals or holidays, for in the Highlands now these are not so frequent as of yore; yet all these sweet seldoms, taken together, to loving hearts made a happy many, and thus, though each family passed its life in its own home, there were many invisible threads stretched out through the intermediate air, connecting the two dwellings together—as the gossamer keeps floating from one tree to another, each with its own secret nest. And nest-like both dwellings were. That in Glenco, built beneath a treeless but high-heathered rock—lown in all storms—with greensward and garden on a slope down to a rivulet, the clearest of the clear (oh! once woefully reddened!) and growing—so it seems in the mosses of its own roof, and the huge stones that overshadow it—out of the earth. That in Glencreran, more conspicuous, on a knoll among the pastoral meadows, midway between mountain and mountain, so that the grove which shelters it, except when the sun is shining high, is darkened by their meeting shadows, and dark indeed even in the sunshine, for 'tis a low but wide-armed grove of old oak-like pines. A little further down, and Glencreran is very sylvan; but this dwelling is the highest up of all, the first you descend upon, near the foot of that wild hanging staircase between you and Glen-Etive; and, except this old oak-like grove of pines, there is not a tree, and hardly a bush, on bank or brae, pasture or hay-field, though these are kept by many a rill there mingling themselves into one stream, in a perpetual lustre, that seems to be as native to the grass as its light is to the glow-worm. Such are the two Huts—for they are huts and no more—and you may see them still, if you know how to discover the beautiful sights of nature from descriptions treasured in your heart—and if the spirit of change, now nowhere at rest on the earth, not even in its most solitary places, have not swept from the scenes they beautified the humble but hereditary dwellings that ought to be allowed, in the fulness of the quiet time, to relapse back into the bosom of nature, through insensible and unperceived decay.

These Huts belonged to brothers—and each had an only child—a son and a daughter—born on the same day—and now blooming on the verge of youth. A year ago, and they were but mere children—but what wondrous growth of frame and spirit does nature at that season of life often present before our eyes! So that we almost see the very change going on between morn and morn, and feel that these objects of our affection are daily brought closer to ourselves, by partaking daily more and more in all our most sacred thoughts, in our cares and in our duties, and in knowledge of the sorrows as well as the joys of our common lot. Thus had these cousins grown up before their parents' eyes, Flora Macdonald—a name hallowed of yore—the fairest, and Ranald Cameron, the boldest of all the living flowers in Glenco and Glencreran. It was now their seventeenth birthday, and never had a winter sun smiled more serenely over a hush of snow. Flora, it had been agreed on, was to pass that day in Glencreran, and Ranald to meet her among the mountains, that he might bring her down the many precipitous passes to his parents' hut. It was the middle of February, and the snow had lain for weeks with all its drifts unchanged, so calm had been the weather, and so continued the frost. At the same hour, known by horologe on the cliff touched by the finger of dawn, the happy creatures left each their own glen, and mile after mile of the smooth surface glided away past their feet, almost as the quiet water glides by the little boat that in favouring breezes walks merrily along the sea. And soon they met at the trysting-place—a bank of birch-trees beneath a cliff that takes its name from the Eagles.

On their meeting seemed not to them the whole of nature suddenly inspired with joy and beauty? Insects unheard by them before, hummed and glittered in the air—from tree-roots, where the snow was thin, little flowers, or herbs flower-like, now for the first time were seen looking out as if alive—the trees themselves seemed budding as if it were already spring—and rare as in that rocky region are the birds of song, a faint trill for a moment touched their ears, and the flutter of a wing, telling them that somewhere near there was preparation for a nest. Deep down beneath the snow they listened to the tinkle of rills unreached by the frost—and merry, thought they, was the music of these contented prisoners. Not Summer's self, in its deepest green, so beautiful had ever been to them before, as now the mild white of Winter; and as their eyes were lifted up to heaven, when had they ever seen before a sky of such perfect blue, a sun so gentle in its brightness, or altogether a week-day in any season, so like a Sabbath in its stillness, so like a holyday in its joy! Lovers were they—although as yet they scarcely knew it; for from love only could have come such bliss as now was theirs, a bliss that while it beautified was felt to come from the skies.

Flora sang to Ranald many of her old songs to those wild Gaelic airs that sound like the sighing of winds among fractured cliffs, or the branches of storm-tossed trees when the subsiding tempest is about to let them rest. Monotonous music! But irresistible over the heart it has once awakened and enthralled, so sincere seems to be the mournfulness it breathes—a mournfulness brooding and feeding on the same note that is at once its natural expression and its sweetest aliment—of which the singer never wearieth in her dream, while her heart all the time is haunted by all that is most piteous, by the faces of the dead in their paleness returning to the shades of life, only that once more they may pour from their fixed eyes those strange showers of unaccountable tears!

How merry were they between those mournful airs! How Flora trembled to see her lover's burning brow and flashing eyes, as he told her tales of great battles fought in foreign lands, far across the sea—tales which he had drunk in with greedy ears from the old heroes scattered all over Lochaber and Badenoch, on the brink of the grave still garrulous of blood!

but time had not been with the youthful lovers, and the blessed beings believed that 'twas but a little hour since beneath the Eagle Cliff they had met in the prime of the morn!

The boy starts to his feet—and his keen eye looks along the ready rifle—for his sires had all been famous deer-stalkers, and the passion of the chase was hereditary in his blood, Lo! a deer from Dalness, hound-driven or sullenly astray, slowly bearing his antlers up the glen, then stopping for a moment to snuff the air, and then away—away! The rifle-shot rings dully from the scarce echoing snow-cliffs, and the animal leaps aloft, struck by a certain but not sudden death-wound. Oh! for Fingal now to pull him down like a wolf! But labouring and lumbering heavily along, the snow spotted as he bounds with blood, the huge animal at last disappears round some rocks at the head of the glen. "Follow me, Flora!" the boy-hunter cries—and flinging down their plaids, they turn their bright faces to the mountain, and away up the long glen after the stricken deer. Fleet was the mountain-girl—and Ranald, as he ever and anon looked back to wave her on, with pride admired her lightsome motion as she bounded along the snow. Redder and redder grew that snow, and more heavily trampled, as they winded round the rocks. Yonder is the deer staggering up the mountain, not half a mile off—now standing at bay, as if before his swimming eyes came Fingal, the terror of the forest, whose howl was known to all the echoes, and quailed the herd while their antlers were yet afar off. "Rest, Flora! rest! while I fly to him with my rifle—and shoot him through the heart!"

Up—up—up the interminable glen, that kept winding and winding round many a jutting promontory, and many a castellated cliff, the red-deer kept dragging his gore-oozing bulk, sometimes almost within, and then, for some hundreds of yards, just beyond rifle-shot; while the boy, maddened by the chase, pressed forwards, now all alone, nor any more looking behind for Flora, who had entirely disappeared; and thus he was hurried on for miles by the whirlwind of passion—till at last he struck the noble quarry, and down sank the antlers in the snow, while the air was spurned by the convulsive beatings of feet. Then leaped Ranald upon the Red-deer like a beast of prey, and lifted up a look of triumph to the mountain-tops.

Where is Flora? Her lover has forgotten her—and he is alone—nor knows it—he and the Red-deer—an enormous animal—fast stiffening in the frost of death.

Some large flakes of snow are in the air, and they seem to waver and whirl, though an hour ago there was not a breath. Faster they fall and faster—the flakes are almost as large as leaves—and overhead whence so suddenly has come that huge yellow cloud? "Flora, where are you? where are you, Flora?" and from the huge hide the boy leaps up, and sees that no Flora is at hand. But yonder is a moving speck far off upon the snow! 'Tis she—'tis she—and again Ranald turns his eyes upon the quarry, and the heart of the hunter burns within him like a new-stirred fire. Shrill as the eagle's cry disturbed in his eyrie, he sends a shout down the glen—and Flora, with cheeks pale and bright by fits, is at last at his side. Panting and speechless she stands—and then dizzily sinks on his breast. Her hair is ruffled by the wind that revives her, and her face all moistened by the snow-flakes, now not falling but driven—for the day has undergone a dismal change, and all over the skies are now lowering savage symptoms of a fast-coming night-storm.

Bare is poor Flora's head, and sorely drenched her hair, that an hour or two ago glittered in the sunshine. Her shivering frame misses now the warmth of the plaid, which almost no cold can penetrate, and which had kept the vital current flowing freely in many a bitter blast. What would the miserable boy give now for the coverings lying far away, which, in his foolish passion, he flung down to chase that fatal deer! "Oh! Flora! if you would not fear to stay here by yourself—under the protection of God, who surely will not forsake you—soon will I go and come from the place where our plaids are lying; and under the shelter of the deer we may be able to outlive the hurricane—you wrapped up in them—and folded—O my dearest sister—in my arms!"—"I will go with you down the glen, Ranald!" and she left his breast—but, weak as a day-old lamb, tottered and sank down on the snow. The cold—intense as if the air were ice—had chilled her very heart, after the heat of that long race; and it was manifest that here she must be for the night—to live or to die. And the night seemed already come, so full was the lift of snow; while the glimmer every moment became gloomier, as if the day were expiring long before its time. Howling at a distance down the glen was heard a sea-born tempest from the Linnhe-Loch, where now they both knew the tide was tumbling in, bringing with it sleet and snow-blasts from afar; and from the opposite quarter of the sky an inland tempest was raging to meet it, while every lesser glen had its own uproar, so that on all hands they were environed with death.

"I will go—and, till I return, leave you with God."—"Go, Ranald!" and he went and came—as if he had been endowed with the raven's wings!

Miles away—and miles back had he flown—and an hour had not been with his going and his coming—but what a dreary wretchedness meanwhile had been hers! She feared that she was dying—that the cold snow-storm was killing her—and that she would never more see Ranald, to say to him farewell. Soon as he was gone, all her courage had died. Alone, she feared death, and wept to think how hard it was for one so young thus miserably to die. He came—and her whole being was changed. Folded up in both the plaids, she felt resigned. "Oh! kiss me—kiss me, Ranald—for your love—great as it is—is not as my love. You must never forget me, Ranald—when your poor Flora is dead."

Religion with these two young creatures was as clear as the light of the Sabbath-day—and their belief in heaven just the same as in earth. The will of God they thought of just as they thought of their parents' will—and the same was their loving obedience to its decrees. If she was to die—supported now by the presence of her brother—Flora was utterly resigned; if she were to live, her heart imaged to itself the very forms of her grateful worship. But all at once she closed her eyes—ceased breathing—and, as the tempest howled and rumbled in the gloom that fell around them like blindness, Ranald almost sank down, thinking that she was dead.

"Wretched sinner that I am!—my wicked madness brought her here to die of cold!" And he smote his breast—and tore his hair—and feared to look up, lest the angry eye of God were looking on him through the storm.

All at once, without speaking a word, Ranald lifted Flora in his arms, and walked away up the glen—here almost narrowed into a pass. Distraction gave him supernatural strength, and her weight seemed that of a child. Some walls of what had once been a house, he had suddenly remembered, were but a short way off—whether or not they had any roof, he had forgotten; but the thought even of such shelter seemed a thought of salvation. There it was—a snow-drift at the opening that had once been a door—snow up the holes once windows—the wood of the roof had been carried off for fuel, and the snow-flakes were falling in, as if they would soon fill up the inside of the ruin. The snow in front was all trampled as if by sheep; and carrying in his burden under the low lintel, he saw the place was filled with a flock that had foreknown the hurricane, and that all huddled together looked on him as on the shepherd come to see how they were faring in the storm.

And a young shepherd he was, with a lamb apparently dying in his arms. All colour—all motion—all breath seemed to be gone—and yet something convinced his heart that she was yet alive. The ruined hut was roofless, but across an angle of the walls some pine-branches had been flung as a sort of shelter for the sheep or cattle that might repair thither in cruel weather—some pine-branches left by the woodcutters who had felled the few trees that once stood at the very head of the glen. Into that corner the snow-drift had not yet forced its way, and he sat down there with Flora in the cherishing of his embrace, hoping that the warmth of his distracted heart might be felt by her who was as cold as a corpse. The chill air was somewhat softened by the breath of the huddled flock, and the edge of the cutting wind blunted by the stones. It was a place in which it seemed possible that she might revive—miserable as it was with mire-mixed snow—and almost as cold as one supposes the grave. And she did revive—and under the half-open lids the dim blue appeared to be not yet life-deserted. It was yet but the afternoon—night-like though it was—and he thought, as he breathed upon her lips, that a faint red returned, and that they felt the kisses he dropt on them to drive death away.

"Oh! father, go seek for Ranald, for I dreamt to-night he was perishing in the snow!"—"Flora, fear not—God is with us." "Wild swans, they say, are come to Loch-Phoil—let us go, Ranald, and see them—but no rifle—for why kill creatures said to be so beautiful?" Over them where they lay bended down the pine-branch roof, as if it would give way beneath the increasing weight;—but there it still hung—though the drift came over their feet and up to their knees, and seemed stealing upwards to be their shroud. "Oh! I am overcome with drowsiness, and fain would be allowed to sleep. Who is disturbing me—and what noise is this in our house?"—"Fear not—fear not, Flora—God is with us." "Mother! am I lying in your arms? My father surely is not in the storm! Oh! I have had a most dreadful dream!" and with such mutterings as these Flora relapsed again into that perilous sleep—which soon becomes that of death.

Night itself came—but Flora and Ranald knew it not—and both lay now motionless in one snow-shroud. Many passions—though earth-born, heavenly all—pity, and grief, and love, and hope, and at last despair—had prostrated the strength they had so long supported; and the brave boy—who had been for some time feeble as a very child after a fever—with a mind confused and wandering, and in its perplexities sore afraid of some nameless ill, had submitted to lay down his head beside his Flora's, and had soon become like her insensible to the night and all its storms!

Bright was the peat-fire in the hut of Flora's parents in Glenco—and they were among the happiest of the humbly happy, blessing this the birthday of their blameless child. They thought of her singing her sweet songs by the fireside of the hut in Glencreran—and tender thoughts of her cousin Ranald were with them in their prayers. No warning came to their ears in the sugh or the howl; for Fear it is that creates its own ghosts, and all its own ghost-like visitings, and they had seen their Flora in the meekness of the morning, setting forth on her way over the quiet mountains, like a fawn to play. Sometimes too Love, who starts at shadows as if they were of the grave, is strangely insensible to realities that might well inspire dismay. So was it now with the dwellers in the hut at the head of Glencreran. Their Ranald had left them in the morning—night had come, and he and Flora were not there—but the day had been almost like a summer-day, and in their infatuation they never doubted that the happy creatures had changed their minds, and that Flora had returned with him to Glenco. Ranald had laughingly said, that haply he might surprise the people in that glen by bringing back to them Flora on her birthday—and, strange though it afterwards seemed to her to be, that belief prevented one single fear from touching his mother's heart, and she and her husband that night lay down in untroubled sleep.

And what could have been done for them, had they been told by some good or evil spirit that their children were in the clutches of such a night? As well seek for a single bark in the middle of the misty main! But the inland storm had been seen brewing among the mountains round King's House, and hut had communicated with hut, though far apart in regions where the traveller sees no symptoms of human life. Down through the long cliff-pass of Mealanumy, between Buachaille-Etive and the Black Mount, towards the lone House of Dalness, that lives in everlasting shadows, went a band of shepherds, trampling their way across a hundred frozen streams. Dalness joined its strength—and then away over the drift-bridged chasms toiled that Gathering, with their sheep-dogs scouring the loose snows—in the van, Fingal the Red Reaver, with his head aloft on the look-out for deer, grimly eyeing the Correi where last he tasted blood. All "plaided in their tartan array," these shepherds laughed at the storm—and hark! you hear the bagpipe play—the music the Highlanders love both in war and in peace.

and though they ken 'twill be a moonless night—for the snow-storm will sweep her out of heaven—up the mountain and down the glen they go, marking where flock and herd have betaken themselves, and now, at nightfall, unafraid of that blind hollow, they descend into the depth where once stood the old Grove of Pines. Following the dogs, who know their duties in their instinct, the band, without seeing it, are now close to that ruined hut. Why bark the sheep-dogs so—and why howls Fingal, as if some spirit passed athwart the night? He scents the dead body of the boy who so often had shouted him on in the forest, when the antlers went by! Not dead—nor dead she who is on his bosom. Yet life in both is frozen—and will the iced blood in their veins ever again be thawed? Almost pitch-dark is the roofless ruin—and the frightened sheep know not what is the terrible Shape that is howling there. But a man enters, and lifts up one of the bodies, giving it into the arms of them at the doorway—and then lifts up the other; and, by the flash of a rifle, they see that it is Ranald Cameron and Flora Macdonald, seemingly both frozen to death. Some of those reeds that the shepherds burn in their huts are kindled, and in that small light they are assured that such are the corpses. But that noble dog knows that death is not there—and licks the face of Ranald, as if he would restore life to his eyes. Two of the shepherds know well how to fold the dying in their plaids—how gentliest to carry them along; for they had learnt it on the field of victorious battle, when, without stumbling over the dead and wounded, they bore away the shattered body—yet living—of the youthful warrior, who had shown that of such a Clan, he was worthy to be the Chief.

The storm was with them all the way down the glen—nor could they have heard each other's voices had they spoke—but mutely they shifted the burden from strong hand to hand—thinking of the Hut in Glenco, and of what would be felt there on their arrival with the dying or dead. Blind people walk through what to them is the night of crowded daystreets—unpausing turn round corners—unhesitatingly plunge down steep stairs—wind their way fearlessly through whirlwinds of life—and reach in their serenity, each one unharmed, his own obscure house. For God is with the blind. So is he with all who walk on works of mercy. This saving band had no fear—and therefore there was no danger—on the edge of the pitfall or the cliff. They knew the countenances of the mountains shown momentarily by ghastly gleamings through the fitful night, and the hollow sound of each particular stream beneath the snow at places where in other weather there was a pool or a waterfall. The dip of the hills, in spite of the drifts, familiar to their feet, did not deceive them now; and then, the dogs in their instinct were guides that erred not, and as well as the shepherds knew it themselves did Fingal know that they were anxious to reach Glenco. He led the way, as if he were in moonlight; and often stood still when they were shifting their burden, and whined as if in grief. He knew where the bridges were—stones or logs; and he rounded the marshes where at springs the wild-fowl feed. And thus Instinct, and Reason, and Faith conducted the saving band along—and now they are at Glenco—and at the door of the Hut.

To life were brought the dead; and there at midnight sat they up like ghosts. Strange seemed they—for a while—to each other's eyes—and at each other they looked as if they had forgotten how dearly once they loved. Then as if in holy fear they gazed on each other's faces, thinking that they had awoke together in heaven. "Flora!" said Ranald—and that sweet word, the first he had been able to speak, reminded him of all that had passed, and he knew that the God in whom they had put their trust had sent them deliverance. Flora, too, knew her parents, who were on their knees—and she strove to rise up and kneel down beside them—but she was powerless as a broken reed—and when she thought to join with them in thanksgiving, her voice was gone. Still as death sat all the people in the hut—and one or two who were fathers were not ashamed to weep.

Who were they—the solitary pair—all alone by themselves save a small image of her on whose breast it lay—whom—seven summers after—we came upon in our wanderings, before their Shieling in Correi-Vollach at the foot of Ben Chrulas, who sees his shadow in a hundred lochs? Who but Ranald and Flora!

Nay, dry up—Daughter of our Age, dry up thy tears! and we shall set a vision before thine eyes to fill them with unmoistened light.

Oft before have those woods and waters—those clouds and mountains—that sun and sky, held thy spirit in Elysium,—thy spirit, that then was disembodied, and living in the beauty and the glory of the elements. 'Tis Windermere—Windermere! Never canst thou have forgotten those more than fortunate—those thrice-blessed Isles! But when last we saw them within the still heaven of thy smiling eyes, summer suns had overloaded them with beauty, and they stooped their flowers and foliage down to the blushing, the burning deep, that glowed in its transparency with other groves as gorgeous as themselves, the whole mingling mass of reality and of shadow forming one creation. But now, lo! Windermere in Winter. All leafless now the groves that girdled her as if shifting rainbows were in love perpetually letting fall their colours on the Queen of Lakes. Gone now are her banks of emerald that carried our calm gazings with them, sloping away back into the cerulean sky. Her mountains, shadowy in sunshine, and seeming restless as seas, where are they now?—The cloud-cleaving cliffs that shot up into the blue region where the buzzard sailed? All gone. But mourn not for that loss. Accustom thine eye—and through it thy soul, to that transcendent substitution, and deeply will they be reconciled. Sawest thou ever the bosom of the Lake hushed into profounder rest? No white-winged pinnace glides through the sunshine—no clanking oar is heard leaving or approaching cape, point, or bay—no music of voice, stop, or string, wakens the sleeping echoes. How strangely dim and confused on the water the fantastic frostwork imagery, yet more steadfastly hanging there than ever hung the banks of summer! For all one sheet of ice, now clear as the Glass of Glamoury in which that lord of old beheld his Geraldine—is Windermere, the heaven-loving and the heaven-beloved. Not a wavelet murmurs in all her bays, from the sylvan Brathay to where the southern straits narrow into a river—now chained too the Leven on his sylvan course towards that perilous Estuary afar off raging on its wreck-strewn sands. The frost came after the last fall of snow—and not a single flake ever touched that surface; and now that you no longer miss the green twinkling of the large July leaves, does not imagination love those motionless frozen forests, cold but not dead, serene but not sullen, inspirative in the strangeness of their appareling of wild thoughts about the scenery of foreign climes, far away among the regions of the North, where Nature works her wonders aloof from human eyes, and that wild architect Frost, during the absence of the sun, employs his night of months in building and dissolving his ice-palaces, magnificent beyond the reach of any power set to work at the bidding of earth's crowned and sceptred kings? All at once a hundred houses, high up among the hills, seem on fire. The setting sun has smitten them, and the snow-tracts are illuminated by harmless conflagrations. Their windows are all lighted up by a lurid splendour, in its strong suddenness sublime. But look, look we beseech you, at the sun—the sunset—the sunset region—and all that kindred and corresponding heaven, effulgent where a minute ago lay in its cold glitter the blue bosom of the lake. Who knows the laws of light and the perpetual miracle of their operation? God—not thou. The snow-mountains are white no more, but gorgeous in their colouring as the clouds. Lo! Pavey-Ark—magnificent range of cliffs—seeming to come forward, while you gaze!—How it glows with a rosy light, as if a flush of flowers decked the precipice in that delicate splendour! Langdale-Pikes, methinks, are tinged with finest purple, and the thought of violets is with us as we gaze on the tinted bosom of the mountains dearest to the setting sun. But that long broad slip of orange-coloured sky is yellowing with its reflection almost all the rest of our Alps—all but yon stranger—the summit of some mountain belonging to another region—ay—the Great Gabel—silent now as sleep—when last we clomb his cliffs, thundering in the mists of all his cataracts. In his shroud he stands pallid like a ghost. Beyond the reach of the setting sun he lours in his exclusion from the rejoicing light, and imagination personifying his solitary vastness into forsaken life, pities the doom of the forlorn Giant. Ha! just as the eye of day is about to shut, one smile seems sent afar to that lonesome mountain, and a crown of crimson encompasses his forehead.

On which of the two sunsets art thou now gazing? Thou who art to our old loving eyes so like the "mountain nymph, sweet Liberty?" On the sunset in the heaven—or the sunset in the lake? The divine truth is—O Daughter of our Age!—that both sunsets are but visions of our own spirits. Again both are gone from the outward world—and nought remains but a forbidding frown of the cold bleak snow. But imperishable in thy imagination will both sunsets be—and though it will sometimes retire into the recesses of thy memory, and lie there among the unsuspected treasures of forgotten imagery that have been unconsciously accumulating there since first those gentle eyes of thine had perfect vision given to their depths—yet mysteriously brought back from vanishment by some one single silent thought, to which power has been yielded over that bright portion of the Past, will both of them sometimes reappear to thee in solitude—or haply when in the very heart of life. And then surely a few tears will fall for sake of him—then no more seen—by whose side thou stoodest, when that double sunset enlarged thy sense of beauty, and made thee in thy father's eyes the sweetest—best—and brightest poetess—whose whole life is musical inspiration—ode, elegy, and hymn, sung not in words but in looks—sigh-breathed or speechlessly distilled in tears flowing from feelings the farthest in this world from grief.

So much, though but little, for the beautiful—with, perhaps, a tinge of the sublime. Are the two emotions different and distinct—think'st thou, O! metaphysical critic of the gruesome countenance—or modifications of one and the same? 'Tis a puzzling question—and we, Sphinx, might wait till doomsday, before you, Œdipus, could solve the enigma. Certainly a Rose is one thing and Mount Ætna is another—an antelope and an elephant—an insect and a man-of-war, both sailing in the sun—a little lucid well in which the fairies bathe, and the Polar Sea in which Leviathan is "wallowing unwieldy, enormous in his gait"—the jewelled finger of a virgin bride, and grim Saturn with his ring—the upward eye of a kneeling saint, and a comet "that from his horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." But let the rose bloom on the mouldering ruins of the palace of some great king—among the temples of Balbec or Syrian Tadmor—and in its beauty, methinks, 'twill be also sublime. See the antelope bounding across a raging chasm—up among the region of eternal snows on Mont Blanc—and deny it, if you please—but assuredly we think that there is sublimity in the fearless flight of that beautiful creature, to whom nature grudged not wings, but gave instead the power of plumes to her small delicate limbs, unfractured by alighting among the pointed rocks. All alone, by your single solitary self, in some wide, lifeless desert, could you deny sublimity to the unlooked-for hum of the tiniest insect, or to the sudden shiver of the beauty of his gauze-wings? Not you, indeed. Stooping down to quench your thirst in that little lucid well where the fairies bathe, what if you saw the image of the evening star shining in some strange subterranean world? We suspect that you would hold in your breath, and swear devoutly that it was sublime. Dead on the very evening of her marriage day is that virgin bride whose delicacy was so beautiful; and as she lies in her white wedding garments that serve for a shroud, that emblem of eternity and of eternal love, the ring, upon her finger—with its encased star shining brightly now that her eyes, once stars, are closed—would, methinks, be sublime to all Christian hearts. In comparison with all these beautiful sublimities, Mount Ætna, the elephant, the man-of-war, Leviathan swimming the ocean-stream, Saturn with his ring, and with his horrid hair the comet—might be all less than nothings. Therefore beauty and sublimity are twin-feelings—one and the same birth—seldom inseparable;—if you still doubt it, become a fire-worshipper, and sing your morning and evening orisons to the rising and the setting sun.