My Schools and Schoolmasters Part 6

"The muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang: Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder A heartfelt sang!"--BURNS.

There are delightful walks in the immediate neighbourhood of Conon-side; and as the workmen--engaged, as I have said, on day's wages--immediately ceased working as the hour of six arrived, I had, during the summer months, from three to four hours to myself every evening, in which to enjoy them. The great hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty Firth divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the sea ceases to flow. There is the valley of the Peffer, and the valley of the Conon; and a tract of broken hills lies between, formed of the Great Conglomerate base of the Old Red System. The conglomerate, always a picturesque deposit, terminates some four or five miles higher up the valley, in a range of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they front the interior of the country, as if they formed the terminal barrier of some exposed sea-coast. A few straggling pines crest their summits; and the n.o.ble woods of Brahan Castle, the ancient seat of the Earls of Seaforth, sweep downwards from their base to the margin of the Conon. On our own side of the river, the more immature but fresh and thickly-cl.u.s.tered woods of Conon House rose along the banks; and I was delighted to find among them a ruinous chapel and ancient burying-ground, occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little green hillock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the gradual wear of the channel, and the consequent fall of the water to a lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely lichened tombstones that mark the ancient grave-yard; and among the tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its iron gnomon worn to an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and moss. And around this little lonely yard sprang the young wood, thick as a hedge, but just open enough towards the west to admit, in slant lines along the tombstones and the ruins, the red light of the setting sun.

I greatly enjoyed those evening walks. From Conon-side as a centre, a radius of six miles commands many objects of interest; Strathpeffer, with its mineral springs--Castle Leod, with its ancient trees, among the rest, one of the largest Spanish chestnuts in Scotland--Knockferrel, with its vitrified fort--the old tower of Fairburn--the old though somewhat modernized tower of Kinkell--the Brahan policies, with the old Castle of the Seaforths--the old Castle of Kilcoy--and the Druidic circles of the moor of Redcastle. In succession I visited them all, with many a sweet scene besides; but I found that my four hours, when the visit involved, as it sometimes did, twelve miles' walking, left me little enough time to examine and enjoy. A half-holiday every week would be a mighty boon to the working man who has acquired a taste for the quiet pleasures of intellect, and either cultivates an affection for natural objects, or, according to the antiquary, "loves to look upon what is old." My recollections of this rich tract of country, with its woods, and towers, and n.o.ble river, seem as if bathed in the red light of gorgeous sunsets. Its uneven plain of Old Red Sandstone leans, at a few miles' distance, against dark Highland hills of schistose gneiss, that, at the line where they join on to the green Lowlands, are low and tame, but sweep upwards into an alpine region, where the old Scandinavian flora of the country--that flora which alone flourished in the times of its boulder clay--still maintains its place against the Germanic invaders which cover the lower grounds, as the Celt of old used to maintain exactly the same ground against the Saxon. And at the top of a swelling moor, just beneath where the hills rise rugged and black, stands the pale tall tower of Fairburn, that, seen in the gloamin', as I have often seen it, seems a ghastly spectre of the past, looking from out its solitude at the changes of the present. The freebooter, its founder, had at first built it, for greater security, without a door, and used to climb into it through the window of an upper story by a ladder. But now unbroken peace brooded over its shattered ivy-bound walls, and ploughed fields crept up year by year along the moory slope on which it stood, until at length all became green, and the dark heath disappeared. There is a poetic age in the life of most individuals, as certainly as in the history of most nations; and a very happy age it is.

I had now fully entered on it; and enjoyed in my lonely walks along the Conon, a happiness ample enough to compensate for many a long hour of toil, and many a privation. I have quoted, as the motto of this chapter, an exquisite verse from Burns. There is scarce another stanza in the wide round of British literature that so faithfully describes the mood which, regularly as the evening came, and after I had buried myself in the thick woods, or reached some bosky recess of the river bank, used to come stealing over me, and in which I have felt my heart and intellect as thoroughly in keeping with the scene and hour as the still woodland pool beside me, whose surface reflected in the calm every tree and rock that rose around it, and every hue of the heavens above. And yet the mood, though sweet, was also, as the poet expresses it, a pensive one: it was steeped in the happy melancholy sung so truthfully by an elder bard, who also must have entered deeply into the feeling.

"When I goe musing all alone, Thinking of divers things foreknowne-- When I builde castles in the air, Voide of sorrow and voide of care, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet-- Methinks the time runs very fleet; All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie.

"When to myself I sit and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood soe green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures doe me blesse, And crowne my soul with happiness All my joyes to this are follie;-- None soe sweet as melanchollie."

When I remember how my happiness was enhanced by every little bird that burst out into sudden song among the trees, and then as suddenly became silent, or by every bright-scaled fish that went darting through the topaz-coloured depths of the water, or rose for a moment over its calm surface--how the blue sheets of hyacinths that carpeted the openings in the wood delighted me, and every golden-tinted cloud that gleamed over the setting sun, and threw its bright flush on the river, seemed to inform the heart of a heaven beyond--I marvel, in looking over the sc.r.a.ps of verse produced at the time, to find how little of the sentiment in which I so luxuriated, or of the nature which I so enjoyed, found their way into them. But what Wordsworth well terms "the accomplishment of verse," given to but few, is as distinct from the poetic faculty vouchsafed to many, as the ability of relis.h.i.+ng exquisite music is distinct from the power of producing it. Nay, there are cases in which the "faculty" may be very high, and yet the "accomplishment"

comparatively low, or altogether wanting. I have been told by the late Dr. Chalmers, whose Astronomical Discourses form one of the finest philosophical poems in any language, that he never succeeded in achieving a readable stanza; and Dr. Thomas Brown, whose metaphysics glow with poetry, might, though he produced whole volumes of verse, have said nearly the same thing of himself. But, like the Metaphysician, who would scarce have published his verses unless he had thought them good ones, my rhymes pleased me at this period, and for some time after, wonderfully well: they came to be so a.s.sociated in my mind with the scenery amid which they were composed, and the mood which it rarely failed of inducing, that though they neither breathed the mood nor reflected the scenery, they always suggested both; on the principle, I suppose, that a pewter spoon, bearing the London stamp, suggested to a crew of poor weather-beaten sailors in one of the islands of the Pacific, their far-distant home and its enjoyments. One of the pieces suggested at this time I shall, however, venture on submitting to the reader. The few simple thoughts which it embodies arose in the solitary churchyard among the woods, beside the aged, lichen-incrusted dial-stone.

ON SEEING A SUN-DIAL IN A CHURCHYARD

Grey dial-stone, I fain would know What motive placed thee here, Where darkly opes the frequent grave, And rests the frequent bier.

Ah! bootless creeps the dusky shade, Slow o'er thy figured plain: When mortal life has pa.s.sed away, Time counts his hours in vain.

As sweeps the clouds o'er ocean's breast, When shrieks the wintry wind.

So doubtful thoughts, grey dial-stone, Come sweeping o'er my mind.

I think of what could place thee here, Of those beneath thee laid, And ponder if thou wert not raised In mockery o'er the dead.

Nay, man, when on life's stage they fret.

May mock his fellow-men!

In sooth, their soberest freaks afford Rare food for mockery then.

But ah! when pa.s.sed their brief sojourn-- When Heaven's dread doom is said-- Beats there the human heart could pour Like mockeries o'er the dead?

The fiend unblest, who still to harm Directs his felon power, May ope the book of grace to him Whose day of grace is o'er; But never sure could mortal man, Whate'er his age or clime, Thus raise in mockery o'er the dead, The stone that measures time.

Grey dial-stone, I fain would know What motive placed thee here, Where sadness heaves the frequent sigh, And drops the frequent tear.

Like thy carved plain, grey dial-stone, Grief's weary mourners be: Dark sorrow metes out time to them-- Dark shade marks time on thee.

I know it now: wert thou not placed To catch the eye of him To whom, through glistening tears, earth's gauds Worthless appear, and dim?

We think of time when time has fled, The friend our tears deplore; The G.o.d whom pride-swollen hearts deny, Grief-humbled hearts adore.

Grey stone, o'er thee the lazy night Pa.s.ses untold away; Nor were it thine at noon to teach If failed the solar ray.

In death's dark night, grey dial-stone, Cease all the works of men; In life, if Heaven withhold its aid, Bootless these works and vain.

Grey dial-stone, while yet thy shade Points out those hours are mine-- While yet at early morn I rise-- And rest at day's decline-- Would that the SUN that formed thine, His bright rays beamed on me, That I, wise for the final day, Might measure time, like thee!

These were happy evenings--all the more happy from the circ.u.mstance that I was still in heart and appet.i.te a boy, and could relish as much as ever, when their season came on, the wild raspberries of the Conon woods--a very abundant fruit in that part of the country--and climb as lightly as ever, to strip the guean-trees of their wild cherries. When the river was low, I used to wade into its fords in quest of its pearl muscles (_Unio Margaritiferus_); and, though not very successful in my pearl-fis.h.i.+ng, it was at least something to see how thickly the individuals of this greatest of British fresh-water molluscs lay scattered among the pebbles of the fords, or to mark them creeping slowly along the bottom--when, in consequence of prolonged droughts, the current had so moderated that they were in no danger of being swept away--each on its large white foot, with its valves elevated over its back, like the carpace of some tall tortoise. I found occasion at this time to conclude, that the _Unio_ of our river-fords secretes pearls so much more frequently than the _Unionidae_ and _Anadonta_ of our still pools and lakes, not from any specific peculiarity in the const.i.tution of the creature, but from the effects of the habitat which it is its nature to choose. It receives in the fords and shallows of a rapid river many a rough blow from sticks and pebbles carried down in times of flood, and occasionally from the feet of the men and animals that cross the stream during droughts; and the blows induce the morbid secretions of which pearls are the result. There seems to exist no inherent cause why _Anadon Cygnea_, with its beautiful silvery nacre--as bright often, and always more delicate than that of _Unio Margaritiferus_--should not be equally productive of pearls; but, secure from violence in its still pools and lakes, and unexposed to the circ.u.mstances that provoke abnormal secretions, it does not produce a single pearl for every hundred that are ripened into value and beauty by the exposed current-tossed _Unionidae_ of our rapid mountain rivers. Would that hards.h.i.+p and suffering bore always in a creature of a greatly higher family similar results, and that the hard buffets dealt him by fortune in the rough stream of life could be trans.m.u.ted, by some blessed internal predisposition of his nature, into pearls of great price.

It formed one of my standing enjoyments at this time to bathe, as the sun was sinking behind the woods, in the deeper pools of the Conon--a pleasure which, like all the more exciting pleasures of youth, bordered on terror. Like that of the poet, when he "wantoned with the breakers,"

and the "freshening sea made them a terror," "'twas a pleasing fear."

But it was not current nor freshening eddy that rendered it such: I had acquired, long before, a complete mastery over all my motions in the water, and, setting out from the sh.o.r.es of the Bay of Cromarty, have swam round vessels in the roadstead, when, among the many boys of a seaport town, not more than one or two would venture to accompany me; but the poetic age is ever a credulous one, as certainly in individuals as in nations: the old fears of the supernatural may be modified and etherealized, but they continue to influence it; and at this period the Conon still took its place among the haunted streams of Scotland. There was not a river in the Highlands that used, ere the erection of the stately bridge in our neighbourhood, to sport more wantonly with human life--an evidence, the ethnographer might perhaps say, of its purely Celtic origin; and as Superst.i.tion has her figures as certainly as Poesy, the perils of a wild mountain-born stream, flowing between thinly-inhabited banks, were personified in the beliefs of the people by a frightful goblin, that took a malignant delight in luring into its pools, or overpowering in its fords, the benighted traveller. Its goblin, the "water-wraith," used to appear as a tall woman dressed in green, but distinguished chiefly by her withered, meagre countenance, ever distorted by a malignant scowl. I knew all the various fords--always dangerous ones--where of old she used to start, it was said, out of the river, before the terrified traveller, to point at him, as in derision, with her skinny finger, or to beckon him invitingly on; and I was shown the very tree to which a poor Highlander had clung, when, in crossing the river by night, he was seized by the goblin, and from which, despite of his utmost exertions, though a.s.sisted by a young lad, his companion, he was dragged into the middle of the current, where he perished. And when, in swimming at sunset over some dark pool, where the eye failed to mark or the foot to sound the distant bottom, the twig of some sunken bush or tree has struck against me as I pa.s.sed, I have felt, with sudden start, as if touched by the cold, bloodless fingers of the goblin.

The old chapel among the woods formed the scene, says tradition, of an incident similar to that which Sir Walter Scott relates in his "Heart of Mid-Lothian," when borrowing, as the motto of the chapter in which he describes the preparations for the execution of Porteous, from an author rarely quoted--the Kelpie. "The hour's come," so runs the extract, "but not the man;"--nearly the same words which the same author employs in his "Guy Mannering," in the cave scene between Meg Merrilies and Dirk Hatteraick. "There is a tradition," he adds in the accompanying note, "that while a little stream was swollen into a torrent by recent showers, the discontented voice of the water-spirit was heard to p.r.o.nounce these words. At the same moment, a man urged on by his fate, or, in Scottish language, _fey_, arrived at a gallop, and prepared to cross the water. No remonstrance from the bystanders was of power to stop him: he plunged into the stream, and perished." So far Sir Walter.

The Ross-s.h.i.+re story is fuller, and somewhat different in its details.

On a field in the near neighbourhood of the chapel, now laid out into the gardens of Conon House, there was a party of Highlanders engaged in an autumnal day at noon, some two or three centuries ago, in cutting down their corn, when the boding voice of the wraith was heard rising from the Conon beneath--"The hour's come, but not the man." Immediately after, a courier on horseback was seen spurring down the hill in hot haste, making directly for what is known as a "fause ford," that lies across the stream just opposite the old building, in the form of a rippling bar, which, indicating apparently, though very falsely, little depth of water, is flanked by a deep black pool above and below. The Highlanders sprang forward to warn him of his danger, and keep him back; but he was unbelieving and in haste, and rode express, he said, on business that would brook no delay; and as for the "fause ford," if it could not be ridden, it could be swam; and, whether by riding or swimming, he was resolved on getting across. Determined, however, on saving him in his own despite, the Highlanders forced him from his horse, and, thrusting him into the little chapel, locked him in; and then, throwing open the door when the fatal hour had pa.s.sed, they called to him that he might now pursue his journey. But there was no reply, and no one came forth; and on going in they found him lying cold and stiff, with his face buried in the water of a small stone font. He had fallen, apparently, in a fit, athwart the wall; and his predestined hour having come, he was suffocated by the few pints of water in the projecting font. At this time the stone font of the tradition--a rude trough, little more than a foot in diameter either way--was still to be seen among the ruins; and, like the veritable cannon in the Castle of Udolpho, beside which, according to Annette, the ghost used to take its stand, it imparted by its solid reality a degree of authenticity to the story in this part of the country, which, if unfurnished with a "local habitation," as in Sir Walter's note, it would have wanted. Such was one of the many stories of the Conon with which I became acquainted at a time when the beliefs they exemplified were by no means quite dead, and of which I could think as tolerably serious realities, when, lying a-bed all alone at midnight, the solitary inmate of a dreary barrack, listening to the roar of the Conon.

Besides the long evenings, we had an hour to breakfast, and another to dinner. Much of the breakfast hour was spent in cooking our food; but as a bit of oaten cake and a draught of milk usually served us for the mid-day meal, the greater part of the hour a.s.signed to _it_ was available for purposes of rest or amus.e.m.e.nt. And when the day was fine, I used to spend it by the side of a mossy stream, within a few minutes'

walk of the work-shed, or in a neighbouring planting, beside a little irregular lochan, fringed round with flags and rushes. The mossy stream, black in its deeper pools, as if it were a rivulet of tar, contained a good many trout, which had acquired a hue nearly as deep as its own, and formed the very negroes of their race. They were usually of small size--for the stream itself was small; and, though little countries sometimes produce great men, little streams rarely produce great fish.

But on one occasion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over the lower jaw at its symphysis, like the beak of a hawk, and as deeply tinged (though with more of brown in its complexion) as the blackest coal-fish I ever saw. It must have been a bull-trout, a visitor from the neighbouring river; but we all concluded at the time, from the extreme dinginess of its coat, that it had lived for years in its dark pool, a hermit apart from its fellows. I am not now, however, altogether certain that the inference was a sound one.

Some fishes, like some men, have a wonderful ability of a.s.suming the colours that best suit their interests for the time. I have been unable to determine whether the trout be one of these conformists; but it used to strike me at this period as at least curious, that the fishes in even the lower reaches of the dark little rivulet should differ so entirely in hue from those of the greatly clearer Conon, into which its peaty waters fall, and whose scaly denizens are of silvery brightness. No fish seems to possess a more complete power over its dingy coat than a very abundant one in the estuary of the Conon--the common flounder. Standing on the bank, I have startled these creatures from off the patch of bottom on which they lay--visible to only a very sharp eye--by pitching a very small pebble right over them. Was the patch a pale one--for a minute or so they carried its pale colour along with them into some darker tract, where they remained distinctly visible from the contrast, until, gradually acquiring the deeper hue, they again became inconspicuous. But if startled back to the same pale patch from which they had set out, I have then seen them visible for a minute or so, from their over-dark tint, until, gradually losing it in turn, they paled down, as at first, to the colour of the lighter ground. An old Highlander, whose suit of tartan conformed to the general hue of the heather, was invisible at a little distance, when traversing a moor, but came full into view in crossing a green field or meadow: the suit given by nature to the flounder, tinted apparently on the same principle of concealment, exhibits a degree of adaptation to its varying circ.u.mstances, which the tartan wanted. And it is certainly curious enough to find, in one of our commonest fishes, a property which used to be regarded as one of the standing marvels of the zoology of those remote countries of which the chameleon is a native.

The pond in the piece of planting, though as unsightly a little patch of water as might be, was, I found, a greatly richer study than the dark rivulet. Mean and small as it was--not larger in area inside its fringe of rushes than a fas.h.i.+onable drawing-room--its natural history would have formed an interesting volume; and many a half-hour have I spent beside it in the heat of the day, watching its numerous inhabitants--insect, reptilian, and vermiferous. There were two--apparently _three_--different species of libellula that used to come and deposit their eggs in it--one of the two, that large kind of dragon-fly (_Eshna grandis_), scarce smaller than one's middle-finger--which is so beautifully coloured black and yellow, as if adorned by the same taste one sees displayed in the chariots and liveries of the fas.h.i.+onable world. The other fly was a greatly more slender and smaller species or genus, rather _Agrion_; and it seemed two, not one, from the circ.u.mstance, that about one-half the individuals were beautifully variegated black and sky-blue, the other half black and bright crimson. But the peculiarity was merely a s.e.xual one: as if in ill.u.s.tration of those fine a.n.a.logies with which all nature is charged, the s.e.xes put on the _complementary_ colours, and are mutually fascinating, not by resembling, but by _corresponding_ to, each other. I learned in time to distinguish the disagreeable-looking larvae of these flies, both larger and smaller, with their six hairy legs, and their grotesque formidable vizors, and found that they were the very pirates of the water, as the splendid insects into which they were ultimately developed were the very tyrants of the lower air. It was strange to see the beautiful winged creature that sprang out of the pupa into which the repulsive-looking pirate had been transformed, launch forth into its new element, changed in everything save its nature, but still unchanged in that, and rendering itself as formidable to the moth and the b.u.t.terfly as it had been before to the newt and the tadpole. There is, I daresay, an a.n.a.logy here also. It is in the first state of our own species, as certainly as in that of the dragon-fly, that the character is fixed.

Further, I used to experience much interest in watching the progress of the frog, in its earlier stages from the egg to the fish; then from the fish to the reptile fish, with its fringed tail, and ventral and pectoral _limbs_; and, last of all, from the reptile fish to the complete reptile. I had not yet learned--nor was it anywhere known at the time--that the history of the individual frog, through these successive transformations, is a history in small of the animal creation itself in its earlier stages--that in order of time the egg-like mollusc had taken precedence of the fish, and the fish of the reptile; and that an intermediate order of creatures had once abounded, in which, as in the half-developed frog, the natures of both fish and reptile were united. But, though unacquainted with this strange a.n.a.logy, the transformations were of themselves wonderful enough to fill for a time my whole mind. I remember being struck one afternoon, after spending my customary spare half hour beside the pond, and marking the peculiar style of colouring in the yellow and black libellulidae in the common wasp, and in a yellow and black species of ichneumon fly, to detect in some half-dozen gentlemen's carriages that were standing opposite our work-shed--for the good old knight of Conon House had a dinner-party that evening--exactly the same style of ornamental colouring. The greater number of the vehicles were yellow and black--just as these were the prevailing colours among the wasps and libellulidae; but there was a slight admixture of other colours among them too: there was at least one that was black and green, or black and blue, I forget which; and another black and brown. And so it was among the insects also: the same sort of taste, both in colour and the arrangements of colour, and even in the proportions of the various colours, seemed to have regulated the style of ornament manifested in the carriages of the dinner party, and of the insect visitors of the pond. Further, I thought I could detect a considerable degree of resemblance in form between a chariot and an insect. There was a great _abdominal_ body separated by a narrow isthmus from a _thoracic_ coach-box, where the directing power was stationed; while the wheels, poles, springs, and general framework on which the vehicle rested, corresponded to the wings, limbs, and antennae of the insect. There was at least sufficient resemblance of form to justify resemblance of colour; and here _was_ the actual resemblance of colour which the resemblance of form justified. I remember that, in musing over the coincidence, I learned to suspect, for the first time, that it might be no mere coincidence after all; and that the fact embodied in the remarkable text which informs us that the Creator made man in his own image, might in reality lie at its foundation as the proper solution.

Man, spurred by his necessities, has discovered for himself mechanical contrivances, which he has afterwards found antic.i.p.ated as contrivances of the Divine Mind, in some organism, animal or vegetable. In the same way his sense of beauty in form or colour originates some pleasing combination of lines or tints; and then he discovers that _it_ also has been antic.i.p.ated. He gets his chariot tastefully painted black and yellow, and lo! the wasp that settles on its wheel, or the dragon-fly that darts over it, he finds painted in exactly the same style. His neighbour, indulging in a different taste, gets _his_ vehicle painted black and blue, and lo! some lesser libellula or ichneumon fly comes whizzing past, to justify his style of ornament also, but at the same time to show that it, too, had existed ages before.

The evenings gradually closed in as the season waned--at first abridging, and at length wholly interdicting, my evening walks; and having no other place to which to retire, save the dark, gousty hay-loft into which a light was never admitted, I had to seek the shelter of the barrack, and succeeded usually in finding a seat within at least _sight_ of the fire. The place was greatly over-crowded; and, as in all over-large companies, it had commonly its four or five groups of talkers; each group furnished with a topic of its own. The elderly men spoke about the state of the markets, and speculated, in especial, on the price of oatmeal; the apprentices talked about la.s.ses; while knots of intermediate age discussed occasionally both markets and la.s.ses too, or spoke of old companions, their peculiarities and history, or expatiated on the adventures of former work seasons, and the characters of the neighbouring lairds. Politics proper I never heard. During the whole season a newspaper never once entered the barrack door. At times a song or story secured the attention of the whole barrack; and there was in especial one story-teller whose powers of commanding attention were very great. He was a middle-aged Highlander, not very skilful as a workman, and but indifferently provided with English; and as there usually attaches a nickname to persons in the humbler walks that are marked by any eccentricity of character, he was better known among his brother workmen as Jock Mo-ghoal, _i.e._ John my Darling, than by his proper name. Of all Jock Mo-ghoal's stories Jock Mo-ghoal was himself the hero; and certainly most wonderful was the invention of the man. As recorded in his narratives, his life was one long epic poem, filled with strange and startling adventure, and furnished with an extraordinary machinery of the wild and supernatural; and though all knew that Jock made imagination supply, in his histories, the place of memory, not even Ulysses or aeneas--men who, unless very much indebted to their poets, must have been of a similar turn--could have attracted more notice at the courts of Alcinuous or Dido, than Jock in the barrack. The workmen used, on the mornings after big greater narratives, to look one another full in the face, and ask, with a smile rather incipient than fully manifest, whether "Jock wasna perfectly wonderfu' last nicht?"

He had several times visited the south of Scotland, as one of a band of Highland reapers, for employment in his proper profession very often failed poor Jock; and these journeys formed the grand occasions of his adventures. One of his narratives commenced, I remember, with a frightful midnight scene in a solitary churchyard. Jock had lost his way in the darkness; and, after stumbling among burial-mounds and tombstones, he had toppled into an open grave, which was of a depth so profound, that for some time he failed to escape from it, and merely pulled down upon himself, in his attempts to climb its loose sides, musty skulls, and great thigh-bones, and pieces of decayed coffins. At length, however, he did succeed in getting out, just as a party of unscrupulous resurrectionists were in the act of entering the burying-ground; and they, naturally enough preferring an undecayed subject that had the life in it to preserve it fresh, to dead corpses the worse for the keeping, gave him chase; and it was with the extremest difficulty that, after scudding over wild moors and through dark woods, he at length escaped them by derning himself in a fox-earth. The season of autumnal labour over, he visited Edinburgh on his way north; and was pa.s.sing along the High Street, when, seeing a Highland girl on the opposite side with whom he was intimate, and whom he afterwards married, he strode across to address her, and a chariot coming whirling along the street at the time at full speed, he was struck by the pole and knocked down. The blow had taken him full on the chest; but though the bone seemed injured, and the integuments became frightfully swollen and livid, he was able to get up; and, on asking to be shown the way to a surgeon's shop, his acquaintance the girl brought him to an under-ground room in one of the narrow lanes off the street, which, save for the light of a great fire, would have been pitch dark at mid-day, and in which he found a little wrinkled old woman, as yellow as the smoke that filled the apartment. "Choose," said the hag, as she looked at the injured part, "one of two things--a cure slow but sure, or sudden but imperfect. Or shall I put back the hurt altogether till you get home?"

"That, that," said Jock; "if I were ance home I could bear it well enouch." The hag began to pa.s.s her hand over the injured part, and to mutter under her breath some potent charm; and as she muttered and manipulated, the swelling gradually subsided, and the livid tints blanched, till at length nought remained to tell of the recent accident save a pale spot in the middle of the breast, surrounded by a thread-like circle of blue. And now, she said, you are well for three weeks; but be prepared for the fourth. Jock prosecuted his northward journey, and encountered the usual amount of adventure by the way. He was attacked by robbers, but, a.s.sistance coming up, he succeeded in beating them off. He lost his way in a thick mist, but found shelter, after many hours' wandering far among the hills, in a deserted shepherd's s.h.i.+elin'. He was nearly buried in a sudden snow-storm that broke out by night, but, getting into the middle of a cooped-up flock of sheep, they kept him warm and comfortable amid the vast drift-wreaths, till the light of morning enabled him to prosecute his journey. At length he reached home, and was prosecuting his ordinary avocations, when the third week came to a close; and he was on a lonely moor at the very hour he had met with the accident on the High Street, when he suddenly heard the distant rattle of a chariot, though not a shadow of the vehicle was to be seen; the sounds came bearing down upon him, heightening as they approached, and, when at the loudest, a violent blow on the breast prostrated him on the moor. The stroke of the High Street "had come back," just as the wise woman had said it would, though with accompaniments that Jock had not antic.i.p.ated. It was with difficulty he reached his cottage that evening; and there elapsed fully six weeks ere he was able to quit it again. Such, in its outlines, was one of the marvellous narratives of Jock Mo-ghoal. He belonged to a curious cla.s.s, known by specimen, in, I suppose, almost every locality, especially in the more primitive ones--for the smart ridicule common in the artificial states of society greatly stunt their growth; and in our literature--as represented by the Bobadils, Young Wildings, Caleb Balderstons, and Baron Munchausens--they hold a prominent place. The cla.s.s is to be found of very general development among the vagabond tribes. I have listened to wonderful personal narratives that had not a word of truth in them, "from gipsies brown in summer glades that bask,"

as I took my seat beside their fire, in a wild rock-cave in the neighbourhood of Rosemarkie, or at a later period in the cave of Marcus; and in getting into conversation with individuals of the more thoroughly lapsed cla.s.ses of our large towns, I have found that a faculty of extemporary fabrication was almost the only one which I could calculate on finding among them in a state of vigorous activity. That in some cases the propensity should be found co-existing with superior calibre and acquirement, and with even a sense of honour by no means very obtuse, must be regarded as one of the strange anomalies which so often surprise and perplex the student of human character. As a misdirected toe-nail, injured by pressure, sometimes turns round, and, re-entering the flesh, vexes it into a sore, it would seem as if that n.o.ble inventive faculty to which we owe the parable and the epic poem, were liable, when constrained by self-love, to similar misdirections; and certainly, when turned inwards upon its possessor, the moral character festers or grows callous around it.

There was no one in the barrack with whom I cared much to converse, or who, in turn, cared much to converse with me; and so I learned, on the occasions when the company got dull, and broke up into groups, to retire to the hay-loft where I slept, and pa.s.s there whole hours seated on my chest. The loft was a vast apartment, some fifty or sixty feet in length, with its naked rafters raised little more than a man's height over the floor; but in the starlit nights, when the openings in the wall a.s.sumed the character of square patches of darkness-visible stamped upon utter darkness, it looked quite as well as any other unlighted place that could not be seen; and in nights brightened by the moon, the pale beams, which found access at openings and crevices, rendered its wide area quite picturesque enough for ghosts to walk in. But I never saw any; and the only sounds I heard were those made by the horses in the stable below, champing and snorting over their food. They were, I doubt not, happy enough in their dark stalls, because they were horses, and had plenty to eat; and I was at times quite happy enough in the dark loft above, because I was a man, and could think and imagine. It is, I believe, Addison who remarks, that if all the thoughts which pa.s.s through men's minds were to be made public, the great difference which seems to exist between the thinking of the wise and of the unwise would be a good deal reduced; seeing that it is a difference which does not consist in their not having the same weak thoughts in common, but merely in the prudence through which the wise suppress their foolish ones. I still possess notes of the cogitations of these solitary evenings, ample enough to show that they were extraordinary combinations of the false and the true; but I at the same time hold them sufficiently in memory to remember, that I scarce, if at all, distinguished between what was false and true in them at the time. The literature of almost every people has a corresponding early stage, in which fresh thinking is mingled with little conceits, and in which the taste is usually false, but the feeling true.

Let me present my young readers, from my notes, with the variously compounded cogitations of one of these quiet evenings. What formed so long ago one of my exercises may now form one of theirs, if they but set themselves to separate the solid from the unsolid thinking contained in my abstract.

MUSINGS.

"I stood last summer on the summit of Tor-Achilty [a pyramidal hill about six miles from Conon side], and occupied, when there, the centre of a wide circle, about fifty miles in diameter. I can still call up its rough-edged sea of hills, with the clear blue firmament arching over, and the slant rays of the setting sun gleaming athwart. Yes, over that circular field, fifty miles across, the firmament closed all around at the horizon, as a watch-gla.s.s closes round the dial-plate of the watch. Sky and earth seemed co-extensive; and yet how incalculably vast their difference of area! Thousands of systems seemed but commensurate, to the eye, with a small district of earth fifty miles each way. But capacious as the human imagination has been deemed, can it conceive of an area of wider field? Mine cannot. My mind cannot take in more at a glance, if I may so speak, than is taken in by the eye. I cannot conceive of a wider area than that which the sight commands from the summit of a lofty eminence. I can pa.s.s in imagination through many such areas. I can add field to field _ad infinitum_; and thus conceive of infinite s.p.a.ce, by conceiving of a s.p.a.ce which can be infinitely added to; but all of s.p.a.ce that I can take in at one process, is an area commensurate with that embraced at a glance by the eye. How, then, have I my conception of the earth as a whole--of the solar system as a whole--nay, of many systems as a whole? Just as I have my conceptions of a school-globe or of an Orrery--by diminution. It is through the diminution induced by distance that the sidereal heavens only co-extend, as seen from the top of Tor-Achilty, with a portion of the counties of Ross and Inverness. The apparent area is the same, but the colouring is different. Our ideas of greatness, then, are much less dependent on actual area than on what painters term aerial perspective. The dimness of distance, and the diminution of parts, are essential to right conceptions of great magnitude.

"Of the various figures presented to me here, I seize strong hold of but one. I brood over the picture of the solar system conjured up. I conceive of the satellites as light shallops that continually sail round heavier vessels, and consider how much more of s.p.a.ce they must traverse than the orbs to which they are attached. The entire system is presented to me as an Orrery of the apparent size of the area of landscape seen from the hill-top; but dimness and darkness prevent the diminution from communicating that appearance of littleness to the whole which would attach to it, were it, like an actual Orrery, sharply defined and clear. As the picture rises before me, the entire system seems to possess, what I suspect it wants, its atmosphere like that of the earth, which reflects the light of the sun in the different degrees of excessive brightness--noon-tide splendour, the fainter shades of evening, and grey twilight obscurity. This veil of light is thickest towards the centre of the system; for when the glance rests on its edges, the suns of other systems may be seen peeping through. I see Mercury sparkling to the sun, with its oceans of molten gla.s.s, and its fountains of liquid gold. I see the ice-mountains of Saturn, h.o.a.r through the twilight. I behold the earth rolling upon itself, from darkness to light, and from light to darkness. I see the clouds of winter settling over one part of it, with the nether mantle of snow s.h.i.+ning through them; I see in another a brown, dusky waste of sand lighted up by the glow of summer. One ocean appears smooth as a mirror--another is black with tempest. I see the pyramid of shade which each of the planets casts from its darkened side into the s.p.a.ce behind; and I perceive the stars twinkling through each opening, as through the angular doors of a pavilion.

"Such is the scene seen at right angles with the plane in which the planets move; but what would be its aspect if I saw it in the line of the plane? What would be its appearance if I saw it edgewise?

There arises in my mind one of those uncertainties which so frequently convince me that I am ignorant. I cannot complete my picture, for I do not know whether all the planets move in one plane. How determine the point? A ray of light breaks in. Huzza! I have found it. If the courses of the planets as seen in the heavens form parallel lines, then must they all move in one plane; and _vice versa_. But hold! That would be as seen from the sun--if the planets _could_ be seen from the sun. The earth is but one of their own number, and from it the point of view must be disadvantageous.

The diurnal motion must perplex. But no. The apparent motion of the heavens need not disturb the observation. Let the course of the planets through the fixed stars, be marked, and though, from the peculiarity of the point of observation, their motion may at one time seem more rapid, and at another more slow, yet, if their plane be, as a workman would say, _out of twist_, their lines will seem parallel. Still in some doubt, however: I long for a glance at an Orrery, to determine the point; and then I remember that Ferguson, an untaught man like myself, had made more Orreries than any one else, and that mechanical contrivances of the kind were the natural recourse of a man unskilled in the higher geometry. But it would be better to be a mathematician than skilful in contriving Orreries. A man of the Newtonian cast of mind, and accomplished in the Newtonian learning, could solve the problem where I sat, without an Orrery.

"From the thing contemplated, I pa.s.s to the consideration of the mind that contemplates. Oh! that wonderful Newton, respecting whom the Frenchman inquired whether he ate and slept like other men! I consider how one mind excels another; nay, how one man excels a thousand; and, by way of ill.u.s.tration, I bethink me of the mode of valuing diamonds. A single diamond that weighs fifty carats is deemed more valuable than two thousand diamonds, each of which only weighs one. My ill.u.s.tration refers exclusively to the native powers; but may it not, I ask, bear also on the acquisition of knowledge? Every new idea added to the stock already collected is a carat added to the diamond; for it is not only valuable in itself, but it also increases the value of all the others, by giving to each of them a new link of a.s.sociation.

"The thought links itself on to another, mayhap less sound:--Do not the minds of men of exalted genius, such as Homer, Milton, Shakspere, seem to partake of some of the qualities of infinitude?

Add a great many bricks together, and they form a pyramid as huge as the peak of Teneriffe. Add all the common minds together that the world ever produced, and the mind of a Shakspere towers over the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it not so with genius of a certain alt.i.tude? Homer, Milton, Shakspere, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; Shakspere an illiterate wool-comber; Milton skilled in all human learning. But they have all risen to an equal height. Learning has added nothing to the _illimitable_ genius of the one; nor has the want of it detracted from the _infinite_ powers of the others. But it is time that I go and prepare supper."

I visited the policies of Conon House a full quarter of a century after this time--walked round the kiln, once our barrack--scaled the outside stone-stair of the hay-loft, to stand for half a minute on the spot where I used to spend whole hours seated on my chest, so long before; and then enjoyed a quiet stroll among the woods of the Conon. The river was big in flood: it was exactly such a river Conon as I had lost sight of in the winter of 1821, and eddied past dark and heavy, sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!--boyish day-dreams, forgotten for twenty years--the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a period when the atmosphere of feeling was warmer than now, and the immaturities of the mental kingdom grew rank and large, like the ancient _cryptogamia_, and bore no specific resemblance to the productions of a riper time. The season I had pa.s.sed in the neighbourhood so long before--the first I had anywhere spent among strangers--belonged to an age when home is not a country, nor a province even, but simply a little spot of earth, inhabited by friends and relatives; and the verses, long forgotten, in which my joy had found vent when on the eve of returning to that home, came chiming as freshly into my memory as if scarce a month had pa.s.sed since I had composed them beside the Conon. Here they are, with all the green juvenility of the home-sickness still about them--a true petrifaction of an extinct feeling:--

TO THE CONON.

Conon, fair flowed thy mountain stream, Through blossom'd heath and ripening field.

When, shrunk by summer's fervid beam, Thy peaceful waves I first beheld.

Calmly they swept thy winding sh.o.r.e.