Why, this does not look like the same day. No gloom here, but a green serenity--not so poetical perhaps, but, in a human light, far preferable to a "brown horror." No sulphureous smell--"the air is balm." No sultriness--how cool the circulating medium! In our youth, when we had wings on our feet, and were a feathered Mercury--Cherub we never were nor Cauliflower--by flying, in our weather-wisdom, from glen to glen, we have made one day a whole week--with, at the end, a Sabbath. For all over the really moun_taineous_ region of the Highlands, every glen has its own indescribable kind of day--all vaguely comprehended under the One Day that may happen to be uppermost; and Lowland meteorologists, meeting in the evening after a long absence--having, perhaps, parted that morning--on comparing notes lose their temper, and have been even known to proceed to extremities in defence of facts well established of a most contradictory and irreconcilable nature.

Here is an angler fishing with the fly. In the glen beyond that range he would have used the minnow--and in the huge hollow behind our friends to the South-east, he might just as well try the bare hook--though it is not universally true that trouts don't rise when there is thunder. Let us see how he throws. What a cable! Flies! Tufts of heather. Hollo, you there; friend, what sport? What sport we say? No answer; are you deaf?

Dumb? He flourishes his flail and is mute. Let us try what a whack on the back may elicit. Down he flings it, and staring on us with a pair of most extraordinary eyes, and a beard like a goat, is off like a shot.

Alas! we have frightened the wretch out of his few poor wits, and he may kill himself among the rocks. He is indeed an idiot--an innocent. We remember seeing him near this very spot forty years ago--and he was not young then--they often live to extreme old age. No wonder he was terrified--for we are duly sensible of the _outre tout ensemble_ we must have suddenly exhibited in the glimmer that visits those weak red eyes--he is an albino. That whack was rash, to say the least of it--our Crutch was too much for him; but we hear him whining--and moaning--and, good God! there he is on his knees with hands clasped in supplication--"Dinna kill me--dinna kill me--'am silly--'am silly--and folk say 'am auld--auld--auld." The harmless creature is convinced we are not going to kill him--takes from our hand what he calls his fishing-rod and tackle--and laughs like an owl. "Ony meat--ony meat--ony meat?" "Yes, innocent, there is some meat in this wallet, and you and we shall have our dinner." "Ho! ho! ho! ho! a smelled, a smelled! a can say the Lord's Prayer." "What's your name, my man?" "Daft Dooggy the Haveril." "Sit down, Dugald." A sad mystery all this--a drop of water on the brain will do it--so wise physicians say, and we believe it. For all that, the brain is not the soul. He takes the food with a kind of howl--and carries it away to some distance, muttering "a aye eats by mysel!" He is saying grace! And now he is eating like an animal. 'Tis a saying of old, "Their lives are hidden with God!"

This lovely little glen is almost altogether new to us: yet so congenial its quiet to the longings of our heart, that all at once it is familiar to us as if we had sojourned here for days--as if that cottage were our dwelling-place--and we had retired hither to await the close.

Were we never here before--in the olden and golden time? Those dips in the summits of the mountain seem to recall from oblivion memories of a morning all the same as this, enjoyed by us with a different joy, almost as if then we were a different being, joy then the very element in which we drew our breath, satisfied now to live in the atmosphere of sadness often thickened with grief. 'Tis thus that there grows a confusion among the past times in the dormitory--call it not the burial-place--overshadowed by sweet or solemn imagery--in the inland regions; nor can we question the recollections as they rise--being ghosts, they are silent--their coming and their going alike a mystery--but sometimes--as now--they are happy hauntings--and age is almost gladdened into illusion of returning youth.

'Tis a lovely little glen as in all the Highlands--yet we know not that a painter would see in it the subject of a picture--for the sprinklings of young trees have been sown capriciously by nature, and there seems no reason why on that hill-side, and not on any other, should survive the remains of an old wood. Among the multitude of knolls a few are eminent with rocks and shrubs, but there is no central assemblage, and the green wilderness wantons in such disorder that you might believe the pools there to be, not belonging as they are to the same running water, but each itself a small separate lakelet fed by its own spring. True, that above its homehills there are mountains--and these are cliffs on which the eagle might not disdain to build--but the range wheels away in its grandeur to face a loftier region, of which we see here but the summits swimming in the distant clouds.

God bless that hut! and have its inmates in His holy keeping! But what Fairy is this coming unawares on us sitting by the side of the most lucid of little wells? Set down thy pitcher, my child, and let us have a look at thy happiness--for though thou mayest wonder at our words, and think us a strange old man, coming and going, once and for ever, to thee and thine a shadow and no more, yet lean thy head towards us that we may lay our hands on it and bless it--and promise, as thou art growing up here, sometimes to think of the voice that spake to thee by the Birk-tree well. Love, fear, and serve God, as the Bible teaches--and whatever happens thee, quake not, but put thy trust in Heaven.

Do not be afraid of him, sweet one! O'Bronte would submit to be flayed alive rather than bite a child: see, he offers you a paw--take it without trembling; nay, he will let thee ride on his back, my pretty dear--won't thou, O'Bronte?--and scamper with thee up and down the knolls like her coal-black charger rejoicing to bear the Fairy Queen.

Thou tellest us thy father and mother, sisters and brothers, all are dead; yet with a voice cheerful as well as plaintive. Smile--laugh-- sing--as thou wert doing a minute ago--as thou hast done for many a morning--and shalt do for many a morning more on thy way to the well--in the woods--on the braes--in the house,--often all by thyself when the old people are out of doors not far off--or when sometimes they have for a whole day been from home out of the glen. Forget not our words--and no evil can befall thee that may not, weak as thou art, be borne,--and nothing wicked that is allowed to walk the earth will ever be able to hurt a hair on thy head.

My stars! what a lovely little animal! A tame fawn, by all that is wild--kneeling down--to drink--no--no--at his lady's feet. The collie catched it--thou sayest--on the edge of the Auld wood--and by the time its wounds were cured, it seemed to have forgot its mother, and soon learnt to follow thee about to far-off places quite out of sight of this--and to play gamesome tricks like a creature born among human dwellings. What! it dances like a kid--does it--and sometimes you put a garland of wildflowers round its neck--and pursue it like a huntress, as it pretends to be making its escape into the forest?

Look, child, here is a pretty green purse for you, that opens and shuts with a spring--so--and in it there is a gold coin, called a sovereign, and a crooked sixpence. Don't blush--that was a graceful curtsy. Keep the crooked sixpence for good-luck, and you never will want. With the yellow fellow buy a Sunday gown and a pair of Sunday shoes, and what else you like; and now--you two, lead the way--try a race to the door--and old Christopher North will carry the pitcher--balancing it on his head--thus--ha! O'Bronte galloping along as umpire. The Fawn has it, and by a neck has beat Camilla.

We shall lunch ere we go--and lunch well too--for this is a poor man's, not a pauper's hut, and Heaven still grants his prayer--"give us this day our daily bread." Sweeter--richer bannocks of barley-meal never met the mouth of mortal man--nor more delicious butter. "We salt it, sir, for a friend in Glasgow--but now and then we tak a bite of the fresh--do oblige us a', sir, by eatin, and you'll maybe find the mutton-ham no that bad, though I've kent it fatter--and, as you hae a lang walk afore you, excuse me, sir, for being sae bauld as to suggeest a glass o'

speerit in your milk. The gudeman is temperate, and he's been sae a' his life--but we keep it for a cordial--and that bottle--to be sure it's a gey big ane--and would thole replenishing--has lasted us sin'

Whitsuntide."

So presseth us to take care of number one the gudewife, while the gudeman, busy as ourselves, eyes her with a well-pleased face, but saith nothing, and the bonny wee bit lassie sits on her stool at the wunnock wi' her coggie ready to do any service at a look, and supping little or nothing, out of bashfulness in presence of Christopher North, who she believes is a good, and thinks may, perhaps, be some great man. Our third bannock has had the gooseberry jam laid on it thick by "the gudewife's ain hand,"--and we suspect at that last wide bite we have smeared the corners of our mouth--but it will only be making matters worse to attempt licking it off with our tongue. Pussie! thou hast a cunning look--purring on our knees--and though those glass een o' thine are blinking at the cream on the saucer--with which thou jalousest we intend to let thee wet thy whiskers,--we fear thou mak'st no bones of the poor birdies in the brake, and that many an unlucky leveret has lost its wits at the spring of such a tiger. Cats are queer creatures, and have an instinctive liking to Warlocks.

And these two old people have survived all their children--sons and daughters! They have told us the story of their life--and as calmly as if they had been telling of the trials of some other pair. Perhaps, in our sympathy, though we say but little, they feel a strength that is not always theirs--perhaps it is a relief from silent sorrow to speak to one who is a stranger to them, and yet, as they may think, a brother in affliction--but prayer like thanksgiving assures us that there is in this hut a Christian composure, far beyond the need of our pity, and sent from a region above the stars.

There cannot be a cleaner cottage. Tidiness, it is pleasant to know, has for a good many years past been establishing itself in Scotland among the minor domestic virtues. Once established it will never decay; for it must be felt to brighten, more than could be imagined by our fathers, the whole aspect of life. No need for any other household fairy to sweep this floor. An orderly creature we have seen she is, from all her movements out and in doors--though the guest of but an hour. They have told us that they had known what are called better days--and were once in a thriving way of business in a town. But they were born and bred in the country; and their manners, not rustic but rural, breathe of its serene and simple spirit--at once Lowland and Highland--to us a pleasant union, not without a certain charm of grace.

What loose leaves are those lying on the Bible? A few odd numbers of the SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD. We shall take care, our friends, that all the Numbers, bound in three large volumes, shall, ere many weeks elapse, be lying for you at the Manse. Let us recite to you, our worthy friends, a small sacred Poem, which we have by heart. Christian, keep your eye on the page, and if we go wrong, do not fear to set us right. Can you say many psalms and hymns? But we need not ask--for

"Piety is sweet to infant minds;"

what they love they remember--for how easy--how happy--to get dear things by heart! Happiest of all--the things held holy on earth as in heaven--because appertaining here to Eternal Life.

TO THE SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERALD.

BY THE REV. DUNCAN GRANT, A.M., MINISTER OF FORRES.

"Beauteous on our heath-clad mountains, May our HERALD'S feet appear; Sweet, by silver lakes and fountains, May his voice be to our ear.

Let the tenants of our rocks, Shepherds watching o'er their flocks, Village swain and peasant boy, Thee salute with songs of joy!

CHRISTIAN HERALD! spread the story Of Redemption's wondrous plan; 'Tis Jehovah's brightest glory, 'Tis His highest gift to man; Angels on their harps of gold, Love its glories to unfold; Heralds who its influence wield, Make the waste a fruitful field.

To the fount of mercy soaring, On the wings of faith and love; And the depths of grace exploring, By the light shed from above; Show us whence life's waters flow, And where trees of blessing grow, Bearing fruit of heavenly bloom, Breathing Eden's rich perfume.

Love to God and man expressing, In thy course of mercy speed; Lead to springs of joy and blessing, And with heavenly manna feed Scotland's children high and low, Till the Lord they truly know: As to us our fathers told, He was known by them of old.

To the young, in season vernal, Jesus in His grace disclose; As the tree of life eternal, 'Neath whose shade they may repose, Shielded from the noontide ray, And from ev'ning's tribes of prey; And refresh'd with fruits of love, And with music from above.

CHRISTIAN HERALD! may the blessing Of the Highest thee attend, That, this chiefest boon possessing, Thou may'st prove thy country's friend Tend to make our land assume Something of its former bloom, When the dews of heaven were seen Sparkling on its pastures green,

When the voice of warm devotion To the throne of God arose-- Mighty as the sound of ocean, Calm as nature in repose; Sweeter, than when Araby Perfume breathes from flow'r and tree, Rising 'bove the shining sphere, To Jehovah's list'ning ear."

It is time we were going--but we wish to hear how thy voice sounds, Christian, when it reads. So read these same verses, first "into yourself," and then to us. They speak of mercies above your comprehension, and ours, and all men's; for they speak of the infinite goodness and mercy of God--but though thou hast committed in thy short life no sins, or but small, towards thy fellow-creatures--how couldst thou? yet thou knowest we are all sinful in His eyes, and thou knowest on whose merits is the reliance of our hopes of Heaven. Thank you, Christian. Three minutes from two by your house-clock--she gives a clear warning--and three minutes from two by our watch--rather curious this coincidence to such a nicety--we must take up our Crutch and go. Thank thee, bonny wee Christian--in wi' the bannocks intil our pouch--but we fear you must take us for a sad glutton.

"Zickety, dickety, dock, The mouse ran up the nock; The nock struck one, Down the mouse ran, Zickety, dickety, dock."

Come closer, Christian--and let us put it to thine ear. What a pretty face of wonder at the chime! Good people, you have work to do in the hay-field--let us part--God bless you--Good-by--farewell!

Half an hour since we parted--we cannot help being a little sad--and fear we were not so kind to the old people--not so considerate as we ought to have been--and perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our years. Nonsense. We were all merry together--daft Uncle among the lave--for the creature came stealing in and sat down on his own stool in the corner; and what's the use of wearing a long face at all times like a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister! Why, John Wesley was facete, and Whitfield humorous, and Rowland Hill witty--though he, we believe, was not a Methody; yet were their hearts fountains of tears--and ours is not a rock--if it be, 'tis the rock of Horeb.

Ha, Hamish! Here we are beneath the Merlin Crag. What sport? Why, five brace is not so much amiss--and they are thumpers. Fifteen brace in all.

Ducks and flappers. Seven leash. We are getting on.

"But what are these, So wither'd and so wild in their attire; That look not like th' inhabitants o' the earth, And yet are on't? Live you? or are you aught That man may question? You seem to understand me, By each at once her choppy finger laying Upon her skinny lips:--you should be women, And yet your beards forbid me to interpret That you are so!"

Shakespeare is not familiar, we find, among the natives of Loch-Etive side--else these figures would reply,

"All hail, Macbeth! hail to thee, Thane of Glammis!"

But not satisfied with laying their choppy fingers on their skinny lips, they now put them to their plooky noses, having first each dipped fore and thumb in his mull, and gibber Gaelic, to us unintelligible as the quacking of ducks, when a Christian auditor has been prevented from catching its meaning by the gobbling of turkeys.

Witches at the least, and about to prophesy to us some pleasant events, that are to terminate disastrously in after years. Is there no nook of earth perfectly solitary--but must natural or supernatural footsteps haunt the remotest and most central places? But now we shall have our fortunes told in choice Erse, for sure these are the Children of the Mist, and perhaps they will favour us with a running commentary on Ossian. Stout, grim, heather-legged bodies they are, one and all, and luckily we are provided with snuff and tobacco sufficient for the whole crew. Were they even ghosts they will not refuse a sneeshin, and a Highland spirit will look picturesque puffing a cigar!--Hark! we know them and their vocation. These are the Genii of the Mountain-dew; and their hidden enginery, depend on't, is not far off, but buried in the bowels of some brae. See!--a faint mist dissipating itself over the heather! There--at work, shaming the idle waste, and in use and wont to break even the Sabbath-day, is a STILL!

Do we look like Excisemen? The Crutch has indeed a suspicious family resemblance to a gauging-rod; and literary characters, like us, may well be mistaken for the Supervisor himself. But the smuggler's eye knows his enemy at a glance, as the fox knows a hound; and the whispering group discern at once that we are of a nobler breed. That one fear dispelled, Highland hospitality bids us welcome, even into the mouth of the malt-kiln, and, with a smack on our loof, the Chief volunteers to initiate us into the grand mysteries of the Worm.

The turf-door is flung outward on its lithe hinges, and already what a gracious smell! In we go, ushered by unbonneted Celts, gentlemen in manners wherever the kilt is worn; for the tartan is the symbol of courtesy, and Mac a good password all the world over between man and man. Lowland eyes are apt to water in the peat-reek, but ere long we shall have another "drappie in our ee," and drink to the Clans in the "uuchristened cretur." What a sad neglect in our education, among all the acquired lingoes extant, to have overlooked the Gaelic! Yet nobody who has ever heard P. R. preach an Erse Sermon, need despair of discoursing in that tongue after an hour's practice; so let us forget, if possible, every word of English, and the language now needed will rise up in its place.

And these figures in men's coats and women's petticoats are females? We are willing to believe it in spite of their beards. One of them absolutely suckling a child! Thank you, my dear sir, but we cannot swallow the contents of that quaich. Yet, let us try.--A little too warm, and rather harsh; but meat and drink to a man of age. That seems to be goat-milk cheese, and the scones are barley; and they and the speerit will wash one another down in an amicable plea, nor quarrel at close quarters. Honey too--heather-honey of this blessed year's produce.

Hecate's forefinger mixes it in a quaich with mountain-dew--and that is Atholl-brose?

There cannot be the least doubt in the world that the Hamiltonian system of teaching languages is one of the best ever invented. It will enable any pupil of common-run powers of attention to read any part of the New Testament in Greek in some twenty lessons of an hour each. But what is that to the principle of the Worm? Half a blessed hour has not elapsed since we entered into the door of this hill-house, and we offer twenty to one that we read Ossian _ad aperturam libri_, in the original Gaelic. We feel as if we could translate the works of Jeremy Bentham into that tongue--ay, even Francis Maximus Macnab's Theory of the Universe. We guarantee ourselves to do both, this identical night before we go to sleep, and if the printers are busy during the intermediate hours, to correct the press in the morning. Why, there are not above five thousand roots--but we are getting a little gizzy--into a state of civilation in the wilderness--and, gentlemen, let us drink--in solemn silence--the "Memory of Fingal."

O St Cecilia! we did not lay our account with a bagpipe! What is the competition of pipers in the Edinburgh Theatre, small as it is, to this damnable drone in an earth-cell, eight feet by six! Yet while the drums of our ears are continuing to split like old parchment title-deeds to lands nowhere existing, and all our animal economy, from finger to toe, is one agonising dirl, aeolus himself sits as proud as Lucifer in Pandemonium; and as the old soldiers keep tending the Worm in the reek as if all were silence, the male-looking females, and especially the he-she with the imp at her breast, nod, and smirk, and smile, and snap their fingers, in a challenge to a straspey--and, by all that is horrible, a red hairy arm is round our neck, and we are half choked with the fumes of whisky-kisses. An hour ago we were dreaming of Malvina! and here she is with a vengeance, while we in the character of Oscar are embraced till almost all the Lowland breath in our body expires.

And this is STILL-LIFE.

Extraordinary it is, that, go where we will, we are in a wonderfully short time discovered to be Christopher North. A few years ago, the instant we found our feet in a mine in Cornwall, after a descent of about one-third the bored earth's diameter, we were saluted by name by a grim Monops who had not seen the upper regions for years, preferring the interior of the planet; and forthwith "Christopher North," "Christopher North," reverberated along the galleries, while the gnomes came flocking in all directions, with safety-lamps, to catch a glimpse of the famous Editor. On another occasion, we remember, when coasting the south of Ireland in our schooner, falling in with a boat like a cockle-shell, well out of the Bay of Bantry, and of the three half-naked Paddies that were ensnaring the finny race, two smoked us at the helm, and bawled up, "Kitty go bragh!" Were we to go up in a balloon, and by any accident descend in the interior of Africa, we have not the slightest doubt that Sultan Belloo would know us in a jiffy, having heard our person so frequently described by Major Denham and Captain Clapperton. So we are known, it seems, in the Still--by the men of the Worm? Yes--the principal proprietor in the concern is a schoolmaster over about Loch-Earn-Head--a man of no mean literary abilities, and an occasional contributor to the Magazine. He visits The Shop in breeches--but now mounts the kilt--and astonishes us by the versatility of his talents. In one of the most active working bees we recognise a cadie, formerly in Auld Reekie ycleped "The Despatch," now retired to the Braes of Balquhidder, and breathing strongly the spirit of his youth. With that heather-houghed gentleman, fiery-tressed as the God of Day, we were, for the quarter of a century that we held a large grazing farm, in the annual practice of drinking a gill at the Falkirk Tryst; and--wonderful, indeed, to think how old friends meet--we were present at the amputation of the right leg of that timber-toed hero with the bushy whiskers--in the Hospital of Rosetta--having accompanied Sir David Baird's splendid Indian army into Egypt.

Shying, for the present, the question in Political Economy, and viewing the subject in a moral, social, and poetical light, what, pray, is the true influence of THE STILL? It makes people idle. Idle? What species of idleness is that which consists in being up night and day--traversing moors and mountains in all weathers--constantly contriving the most skilful expedients for misleading the Excise, and which, on some disastrous day, when dragoons suddenly shake the desert--when all is lost except honour--hundreds of gallons of wash (alas! alas! a-day!) wickedly wasted among the heather-roots, and the whole beautiful Apparatus lying battered and spiritless in the sun beneath the accursed blows of the Pagans--returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods?

The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to the ground.--But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant price--for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron?

Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters, not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet--a profound and beautiful reflection--and no doubt originally made by some peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland hospitality would be wan and withered, and the _doch-an-dorras_, instead of a blessing, would sound like a ban.

We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls.

Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists, the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes "aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken) of dying at a good old age.