Summers and winters at Balmawhapple; a second series of The table-talk of Shirley

Summers & Winters

%the North Sea,
Among the Summer Isles
TVlpine lasting Places
Home "Again !

Summers and Winters at
Balmawhapple

<

Second Series of "Table -Talk"

Summers and Winters
at Balmawhapple a
Second Series of The
Table -Talk of Shirley
by John Skelton C.B.
LL.D.

r-

V

With Illustrations

Volume Two

Second Edition

William Blackwood & Sons
Edinburgh and London 1897

PR.
$452.

v/. 2.

CONTENTS.

BOOK TWO.
» AMONG THE SUMMER ISLES.

PAGE

I. THE FIRST SPRING MORNING .... 5

II. THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA . . .12

III. WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS . . .« 1 8

IV. WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS . 23
V. ACROSS THE MOOR : A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE . 35

VI. AUTUMN IN ARCADY : THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IM-
PRESSIONIST ...... 49

VII. THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK . 86

VIII. THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT . -91

IX. A NIGHT AT SEA ..... 97

BOOK THREE.

ALPINE RESTING-PLACES.

MADGE HOLDFAST TO ISABEL LEE —

I. FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS . . . 113

II. FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS Il8

vi CONTENTS.

MADGE HOLDFAST TO ISABEL LEE—

III. FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS . . . . I2O

IV. FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS . . .123
V. FROM THE RIFFEL . .126

VI. FROM THE BEL ALP . -131

VII. FROM THE EGGISCHHORN . . . .134

VIII. FROM THE EGGISCHHORN . . . .140

IX. FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG . .145

X. FROM TRIBERG, IN THE BLACK FOREST . .150

XI. FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY . . . .154

XII. FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL . 159

XIII. FROM ZELL, IN THE ZILLER THAL . . .164

XIV. FROM SAN MARTI NO DI CASTROZZA . .169
XV. FROM KLOBENSTEIN, ABOVE BOTZEN . .173

XVI. FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO . . .177

XVII. AND LAST, FROM MACUGNAGA . . 1 82

BOOK FOUR.

HOME AGAIN!

I. A LETTER BY THE WAY . . . .187
II. A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE —

SUMMER EVENINGS AT BALMAWHAPPLE . . 199
III. AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN-
WINTER EVENINGS AT BALMAWHAPPLE . . 217
LAST WORDS . . . . . 255

BOOK TWO

AMONG THE SUMMER ISLES

AMONG THE SUMMER ISLES,

HE Holdfasts used to
leave us in Spring ;
our East winds were
rather too keen for
Mark, who, though
not exactly an invalid,
was far from robust.
In the fierce strug-
gle of the bar one or
other of the nerves
or cords or fibres or
ligaments of the heart

had gone perilously near snapping, and the tone of
his system had been permanently lowered. Conse-
quently at times the tension needed to be relaxed ;
and "in other kingdoms of a sweeter air" (as poor
David Gray sang) relief was found. A distant cousin
had left him a modest shooting-box in a famous

4 AMONG THE SUMMER ISLES.

Western Island; and to this, when May had set in
with its wintry severity, and its six weeks of east
wind, the whole family retreated. But the letters
which Mark wrote to his friend, the Editor of The
Tomahawk, gave us a lively insight into the life they
led on the moist seaboard of the Atlantic, and
became for some seasons the standing dish of Balma-
whapple's sole literary organ. I know nothing sorrier
than an old newspaper ; it is surely the dreariest pos-
sible commentary upon the vanity of life and the futil-
ity of popular favour. Why these frantic cheers ? we
ask ourselves, when we find that the orator's most
stirring appeal fails to elicit even the most languid
response. And then we remember blankly that we
ourselves were of the audience that roared and yelled
like maniacs. Some such feeling I experienced when
seeking through a file of The Tomahawk for Mark's
Letters from the West. The ink had faded ; the paper
was musty; the people were dead. Whenever I had
secured what I wanted, I opened the window, so that
the fresh air might blow the cobwebs away.

I had sometimes said to myself — Is not the man who
has once taken part in the Great Game permanently
disabled for playing the pastoral pipe, and joining in
the Shepherd's dance ? To him, sunset or sunrise, the
bloom of heather or the song of lark or mavis, is at
best an Interlude of which he will tire before "Finis"
is reached. But it would seem after all that Mark had
not tired.

These are some of the letters that I recovered.

I.

THE FIRST SPRING MORNING.

TV/T ANY years ago I said somewhere— it was in the Cornhill,
1YA I fancy, in the great days when Thackeray was editor,
and used to write his contributors those queer angular upside-
down little notes which one remembers so well — why don't
we have an edition of his letters with his own illustrations ?—
there, or elsewhere, I said, a hundred years ago, that there
is always one particular day in the year when the spring
seems to me to awake — the first spring morning in fact, and
not by the calendar. The snow has been gone for weeks,
the sun has been shining briskly, the pear and the plum are
white with blossom ; yet the sky remains hard and stern, and
the earth is black and inhospitable — as if the thought of
winter still chilled her heart. But one morning we wake
unwarned, and we have barely drawn aside the curtains ere
we are aware that the bonds of death are loosed, that a new
life has been born into the year, and that, like the eyes of a
girl who has begun to love, the blue sky and the fleecy clouds
have strangely softened since nightfall. Spring is abroad
upon the mountains, and her maiden whisper thrills your
pulse !

Ever since then — during the intervening hundred years or
so — I have made a red cross in my journal on that particular
day. The anniversary of the youthful year is emphatically a
movable feast. It is as incalculable as the caprice of a
coquette or the orbit of a political leader— a Disraeli or a

6 THE FIRST SPRING MORNING.

Gladstone. Sometimes it comes in March, sometimes in
April, sometimes in May. Once it surprised us in February ;
but it was leap-year, and possibly the odd day had been over-
looked. Once June was imminent ; but that year there had
been patches of snow in our deep glade till May, and poet
and farmer alike had expostulated in vain : " O sweet new
year delaying long, delaying long, delay no more." But it
turned a deaf ear to our charming, and it was well on into
August before the hawthorn was in blossom. The Tories, to
be sure, were in power at the time, and we never can tell
what the clerk of the weather will do when that happens.

Once more the blessed day has returned, and what can I
do better this balmy morning than send a spring greeting to
the Balmawhapple Maga and its Editor? Many happy re-
turns of this admirable number. We have had a great deal
of controversy lately on the condition of the people question,
— whether life upon the whole is easier and sweeter for the
great mass of our workers than it was forty years ago. We
have been told all about the comparative values of bread,
and butcher-meat, and rents, and taxes, and so on ; but not a
word has been said about our cheap literature, and about the
novel conditions which have made such a venture as yours
possible, and, I hope, profitable. Man does not live by
bread alone; and when balancing our gains and losses we
should not fail to take into account the mental feast which
the poorest artisan may now enjoy for a copper or two.
Honour to whom honour is due ; and those who cater in an
honest and friendly spirit for the entertainment of the teeming
masses of our great cities are among the true benefactors of
the race.

Yet it makes one sad to think to how few of them, in their
vast hives of industry, beneath their sable canopies of smoke
and fog, is the message of the spring - time brought. " I
saw," says Heine, " the young Spring God, large as life,
standing on the summit of an alp." It is not on the summit
of an alp that I have met the youngster to-day, but in a deep
glade, carpeted with cowslip and anemone, and vocal with
woodland song. A great city lies on the other side of the

THE FIRST SPRING MORNING. 7

hill — a hill famous in Scottish poetry — but to our secluded
glen the smoke of the factory and the forge, and the thunder
of their traffic, do not penetrate. Nature is hard at work to
be sure, — but she works in silence ; she is making a New
World, but there is no sound of hammer or of axe. Fair and
shapely, and fashioned by an instinct more inevitable than
fashioned the temples of Jerusalem or of Athens, this beauti-
ful new world rises day by day before our eyes — how often
unseen or unregarded ! — until the forbidding blackness of
the wintry earth is covered all over with summer greenery.
Foolish people say that the age of miracles is past ; how can
that be when the unique miracle of spring is always with us ?
At a time when all the professions are overcrowded, I often
wonder, with Mr Gladstone, why some of us do not take to
market-gardening. A garden is one of the best teachers, as it
is one of the greatest enjoyments, in life. For it brings us
face to face with the wonderful processes of growth. That
the earth this spring should be as able and willing as ever to
produce green peas and young potatoes and French beans
(not to speak of subtler and more ethereal products), often
touches me, in view of our own decay, with unspeakable
astonishment. It is good for us, moreover, to make our
hands familiar with the soil from which we have been taken,
and to which we must return. If we come to love the earth,
and to feel that kind, beneficent, and fruitful processes are at
work among the sods, we shall banish a great deal of the
foolish sentimental sadness about mortality which the Modern
Muse affects. Perhaps indeed a disorderly bit of woodland
like ours is even better and more instructive than a well-
ordered garden or nursery, — we watch Nature at work in her
simplest moods and in her most rustic dress. Here, if any-
where, the solution of the mystery is to be reached. The
miracle transacts itself, night and morning, before our eyes ;
and (assuming that it is capable of explanation) we have only
our own obtuseness to thank if we remain as ignorant as
before.

A charming little volume has been recently issued by Mr
Harrison Weir, the eminent artist and naturalist, which ought

8 THE FIRST SPRING MORNING.

to be in the hands of every child, old and young, who wishes
to keep a daily record of what is going on out of doors. It
is called Every Day in the Country ; and from the ist of
January to the 3ist of December, there are regular entries of
the " events " in the animal and vegetable world, as observed
by the author, as well as characteristic illustrations of each.
On the opposite page blank spaces are left where you record
your own observation of the advent of bird and flower.
Looking over the copy which has been assiduously posted
up by deft little hands this year in our glen, we learn how
much there is to see within a hundred yards of the dining-
room windows — how many welcomes and farewells, how many
comedies, how many tragedies even. The winter just gone
was, as we all know, a mere pretence. We had a shower of
snow once and again ; but it melted before mid-day. So that
we are not surprised to learn that on the First of the year
a stray celandine and campion were visible ; that on the
Second the water-ousel (which, strange to say, Mr Ruskin has
never beheld) was singing ; that on the Fifth there were no
less than twelve flowers on the Gloire de Dijon ; that on the
Ninth, daisies, violets, and primroses were showing themselves
in the garden borders ; and that by the Eighteenth the wood-
land concert had begun in earnest. Already, this 26th of
April, nearly all the firstlings of the year have faded. The
snowdrop, the crocus, the wood-anemone, the sweet violet,
the winter aconite, have come and gone. The wood -sorrel
and the cowslip, the periwinkle and the primrose, are yet in
bloom ; the glen is still bright with yellow celandine and
crimson campion ; and in another day or two the wood-
land carpet will be blue all over — blue as the heaven — with
hyacinth. In our chilly climate, as a rule, few of these
events " come off" before May or June ; but this season we
are six weeks earlier than usual. Then the birds have been
busy at their nests for months. There are eight or nine eggs
in the water-ousel's nest beneath the waterfall before April
had well begun ; and, while her mate is still sitting on her first,
the male water-hen is already occupied in building a second.
(A humorous battle between him and a water-rat has this

THE FIRST SPRING MORNING. 9

moment occurred, resulting in the complete discomfiture of
the rat.) Last night the owl was hooting from a coign of
vantage above his nest in the ivy, and, if I am not mistaken,
I have heard more than once the shrill complaint, the curious
yelp, yelp) of the young birds. (As we have had a sharp frost
lately, the little unfledged creatures possibly find it chilly.)
The cuckoo has not yet returned from the Riviera, and only
an occasional swallow has been seen ; but otherwise the wood-
land season is at its briskest. The wagtail, the creeper, the
wren, the robin, the thrush, the missel-thrush, the blackbird,
the starling, the skylark, the yellow-hammer, the tit, the fly-
catcher, the chaffinch, the cushet, are in their best dresses,
and hard at work from daybreak till dark. What with building
of nests, and laying of eggs, and hunting of worms and grubs
and larvae, and vigilant observation of magpies and carrion crows
and water-rats, and general conversation, and an occasional
irrepressible outburst of joyful melody, not one of them has an
idle moment. Where does this happiness come from ? Who
has put it into their hearts? There are no pessimistic philoso-
phers among our birds, — merle and mavis are as happy and
hopeful to-day as when they sang in Eden, while we, who
look before and after and sigh for what is not, are disquieted
in vain. "Behold, thou hast made my days as an hand-
breadth ; and mine age is as nothing before thee : verily man
at his best state is altogether vanity. Surely every man
walketh in a vain show : surely they are disquieted in vain :
he heapeth up riches and knoweth not who shall gather
them."

Yet after all is said, and in spite of the Fall and the east
wind, this England and Scotland of ours are very fair and
sweet in the spring-time ; and I do not wonder that even in
Italy Robert Browning remembered the Hampshire downs
and the Devonshire lanes —

" Oh, to be in England,

Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning unaware,

10 THE FIRST SPRING MORNING.

That the lowest boughs o' the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough,
In England — now ! "

It is thus, and in these manifold, mysterious, beautiful ways,
that the miracle of a New World repeats itself year by year.
Were it not for this ever-fresh childhood of the spring, the
earth, I suppose, would grow old as the rest of us do. But,
like the hero of the fairy story, it bathes itself in an enchanted
fountain, and so renews its youth. Here as elsewhere, each
of us makes his own choice ; to you the coming of the flowers
— to you the coming of the birds — is the special message of
the opening year. For my own part, I do not think there is
anything so exquisite and incredible in all this miraculous
season as the rising and unfolding of the delicate frond of
the fern. There are ferns here on every hand — brought from
every quarter of Europe. Other travellers bring pictures or
carvings or cameos to remind them of the pleasant places
they have visited; I am content with a fern root or two,
which may be carried quite safely in a spare sponge-bag, and
which to my mind are even more directly associative and
suggestive. This delicate asplenium was gathered in the Val
Anzasca in sight of Monte Rosa; that rare polypody is a
native of Monte Christallo in the Dolomites ; this plant of
holly was found on the summit of the Simplon half buried in
the snow, that in the Fuscherthal on the route across the
Pfandlscharte to the mighty Pasterze Glacier ; from the cool
depths of the well in the convent courtyard at Padua, where
Giotto's frescoes are still dimly visible, came this tuft of
fragile maiden-hair — as old perhaps as the frescoes; the
stately Osmunda is a relic of an unforgotten visit to Mr
Froude and the Kerry coast; the oak and the beech, and
the parsley and the hartstongue, and the hay-scented and
the green Asplenium marinum (which first saw the light in
a cave at Colonsay) are reminiscences of English lake and
Western Island. One or two of them are already perfectly

THE FIRST SPRING MORNING. II

developed — others have only begun to stir the soil above
their heads. But in each and all an inscrutable and irre-
sistible force is at work, a power so potent that even the
hard-trodden sod is moved aside by a slender needle-like
shaft which the faintest breeze will bend. A miracle, indeed !
before which science is mute.

12

II.

THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA.

[ COULD not help asking myself, as I mounted the hillside
this morning — Is it possible that life can be more perfect
anywhere than it is among these Western Islands during the
summer and autumn months ? I am staying at a little inn
which looks out across the stormy sound where the fugitive
Bruce was driven by stress of weather into his enemy's strong-
hold—as we learn from that altogether delightful and authentic
history, The Lord of the Isles. We have been recently assured
by Mr Matthew Arnold that Sir Walter's poem is not poetry,
and that it is only old-fashioned people without any ear for
music who can admire the jingle of his rough-and-ready
rhymes. Surely, this is the merest fatuity of criticism. I am
certain at least that every yachtsman and fisherman will tell
us that the run from Skye to Arran in the Fourth Canto is
one of the breeziest bits of writing in the language ; that no-
where else has the joy and gladness and sparkling merriment
of " Old Ocean " been more rhythmically rendered. And I
should like to know where we shall find stronger and more
dramatic action than at the interview in the old castle over
yonder, between the aged Abbot of lona and the outlawed
king :—

' ' De Bruce, thy sacrilegious blow
Hath at God's altar slain thy foe :
O'ermastered yet by high behest,
I bless thee, and thou shalt be blest ! "

THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA. 13

We had our trout-rods with us ; but fishing was only a
subordinate and incidental sport to-day ; we were in quest of
nobler game.

The old Ross-shire shepherd had solemnly assured us while
we were smoking a pipe in the harness-room the day before
(it was a wild day of wind and rain, and we had turned the
harness-room into a smoking-room pro temp.\ that the great
Osmunda regalis was to be found in profusion within five
miles of the inn door. There was a stream in the heart of
the hills along which it grew in thickets — as high as a man's
head, he said. His directions were rather indefinite, and his
Gaelic abnormally vague ; but we could not doubt that some-
where among the hills round about — two feet, or four feet, or
six feet high — the Royal Fern was to be found. To some of
us the news that this noble plant, which in a few years will be
as rare as the Great Auk, if not as extinct as the Dodo, might
be seen in a state of nature within easy walking distance, was
great news, and caused such a thrill of excitement as the dis-
covery of a big nugget causes to a colony of Australian or
Californian diggers. In this age of grandmotherly legislation,
when the Home Secretary has become a sort of head-nurse,
and we are drilled without mercy or pity into virtue and hap-
piness, I am astonished that a bill to protect wild flowers, and
to punish their unscrupulous enemies, has not been thought
of. There is a statute for the protection of wild birds ; and,
between ourselves, wild birds are by no means so innocent as
wild flowers. Gulls, solan geese, herons, and various other
sea and water fowl have prodigious appetites, and when they
get among a shoal of young fry work wholesale havoc. Still
the Act is a good one — only I should like to see it extended.
The brute who shot the last Great Auk on our coast cannot
have been more hopelessly wicked than the wretches who
extirpated the Killarney fern. The bones of the Great Auk
rAay still be seen in our museums (the skeleton is as costly a
rarity as an Aldine or an Elzevir) ; but what a splendid fellow
he must have been in the water — through which he could dive
with the ease that a swallow wings its way through the air!
It is a thousand pities that the Act for the Protection of Wild

14 THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA.

Birds came a few years too late, and after he had been finally
worried out of existence. But unless some such Act as I
suggest is speedily passed, we shall be familiar with the
Osmunda and its kindred only as we are familiar with the
Great Auk and the Dodo. The poacher who is found on the
public highway with a hare or a pheasant up his coat-sleeve is
sharply punished — as he deserves to be, no doubt; but the
rascal who has stolen the only root of Woodsia hyperborea in
a county escapes scot-free. What is a hare or a pheasant
more or less in comparison with a crested lastrea or a plant
of Cystopteris montana? When we nationalise the land
we shall, I suppose, have neither deer nor hare, grouse nor
pheasant ; and when in addition we have cut down our last
wild rose and uprooted our last fern, we shall have reached
a dead level of dulness that cannot in any direction, it is to
be hoped, prove obnoxious to republican simplicity.

In the meantime, however, in the remoter islands the
Osmunda continues to flourish ; and, inspired by the shep-
herd's narrative, we started this morning on a voyage of
discovery.

The long sea-loch or fiord is, perhaps, the most attractive
and characteristic feature of our Atlantic seaboard. Brilliantly
blue, it winds among purple heather or greenest bracken.
This is a bracken country — from the water-edge to the hill-
top we wade through a forest of fern. The turf beneath the
wavy branches is short and sweet, and here the blue hare
burrows and the curlew nests. The whaup, indeed, is the
genius loci. Night by night, if we are wakeful, we hear its
melancholy wail, a wail in which all the pathetic loneliness
of solitary places finds voice.

" The wild buck bells from ferny brake,"

and the rabbits scuttle past our feet. Below us the water
is enchantingly blue and breezy, and when we reach the
summit the great Ben More range opens away to the Atlantic.
We keep to the hill-path that leads to the upper loch.
It skirts the moor, crossing many a deep gorge where the
burn leaps from ledge to ledge, and where, among birch and

THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA. 15

hazel bushes, and the red berries of the mountain ash, the
pensive Lady Fern spreads fan-like her drooping fronds.

" Where the copsewood is the greenest,
Where the fountain glistens sheenest,
Where the morning dew lies longest,
There the Lady Fern grows strongest."

There are oak and beech and filmy ferns besides, and
wonderful patches of green and yellow and orange moss ;
a black-cock rushes up like a rocket ; a spotted snake steals
away among the stones ; but we search in vain for the
Osmunda. Has our shepherd, with his natural Gaelic affa-
bility, and Celtic anxiety to please, sent us on a wild-goose
chase after all ?

One of us knows of a perennial spring among the heather ;
and there, on a natural terrace that faces the cloud-capped
Ben More, we lunch royally on whisky and oat-cake — a
few marmalade sandwiches being provided for the weaker
brethren. It is the unexpected that always happens, says
Lord Beaconsfield ; and it is quite true that the big moments
of life are not announced beforehand, or ushered in by any
preliminary flourish of trumpets. There is no overture to
our opera, no prologue to our play. When least looked for,
what we had vainly and eagerly pursued steals quietly in.
We had been on this very spot before, more than once ; we
were satisfied that no fern rarer than a marsh or a mountain
lastrea was to be found in the neighbourhood ; and all at
once, as we sauntered about with pipe and cigar — lo the
Osmunda ! One or two dwarfish plants were growing along
the open stream ; but following them into the copsewood
which fringes the burn, where it dashes through a cleft in the
hillside, we came upon it at last in all its glory. We had
seen it at Muckross ; we had seen it at Derreen ; we had
seen it at Oronsay ; but we had never seen anything like this.
As we picked our way up the slippery staircase // fairly met
above our heads. In this inviolate solitude, where, since the
creation of the world, it had probably never been disturbed,
it had attained positively tree-like dimensions. It was pos-

16 THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA.

sible now, as we gazed at the glorious sweep of its spreading
branches, to understand the enthusiasm which it has roused.
The poor Auk has left the world without ever an elegy ; but
even if the Osmunda should finally perish by the hands of
miserable Cockneys, it has lived long enough for fame. It
is enshrined in imperishable poetry, preserved in some of the
most monumental verse that even Wordsworth has written : —

"Flower or water- weed too fair,
Either to be divided from the place
On which it grew, or to be left alone
To its own beauty. Many such there are,
Fair ferns and flowers, and chiefly that tall fern,
So stately, of the queen Osmunda named ;
Plant lovelier in its own retired abode
On Grassmere's beach, than Naiad by the side
Of Grecian brook, or Lady of the Mere
Sole sitting by the shores of old romance. "

Think of that ! Is not that immortality ? Was finer epitaph
ever composed for poet's Laura or Beatrice or Lycidas ?
What great general or statesman or orator would not be happy
to be so commemorated ?

" Ah," said one of our party, who has a fancy for being in
the minority, " I detest all your popular favourites. It seems
to me that you are bewitched — the victims of some malign
enchantment. What a spectacle at this very moment do we
present to a scandalised and astonished universe ! Our high
Abbot of Unreason ! — and the whole community, like a pack
of frantic Maenads, dancing and piping and fiddling after him
to destruction ! A mad world, my masters ! But on this
Osmunda question I go, as it happens, with the majority."

Up till this moment the morning had been breathlessly
calm, and even our most inveterate angler was content to
leave his rod in its cover. But now clouds have gathered,
and a fresh breeze is rising. The tempting change of weather
is, of course, irresistible, and we clamber up the hillside to the
loch. We are just in time. Scarcely has the boat been
launched before the big trout begin to bite. We drift along
the northern shore within a cast of the ivied rocks, which rise

THE QUEST FOR THE OSMUNDA. 17

sheer from the water. Among the huge boulders which cover
the bottom, and occasionally show above the surface, the
sweetest and gamest of the loch trout lie. The breeze has
risen to a gale, and delicate steering is required. But Angus
knows his ground, and we work back and forward in first-rate
style — at every second or third cast raising a good-sized trout,
which, as often as not, swallows the fly (a Zulu is as deadly as
any) with hungry avidity. An hour or two of such fishing in
a wild Highland loch in a gale of wind (with an occasional
sea-trout where the swollen stream enters the loch) is about
as good a time as a modest-minded angler can desire.

Then we walk home in a beatified twilight — Angus being
despatched across the hill with some of the biggest fish — for
these mountain trout should be cooked and eaten without
delay. The homeward talk in the twilight turns, as is meet,
upon trout and flies and ferns. Is a Zulu or a worm-fly the
deadliest lure ? Would Mr Ruskin be good enough to supply
a new classification for ferns as well as for flowers? Can any-
thing be more absurd than the present system — which puts
the beech and the oak and the common polypody together ?
Is the passion for ferns, like the passion for mountains, of
modern growth ? Was not the bracken once a sacred flower
— regarded with a certain mysterious awe ? Who is the old
herbalist who declares that its root, boiled in oil, " makes
very profitable ointments to heal wounds," and is, moreover,
" good for them that have ill spleens " ? How much is fancy
and how much is fact in the legend that on one night only of
the year was its mystic seed made visible to mortals? And
stay — is not this the very night when the miraculous vision
was vouchsafed?

" But on St John's mysterious night,

Sacred to many a wizard spell,
The hour when, first to human sight
Confest, the mystic fern seed fell."

VOL. II. B

i8

III.
WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS.

A SAD tragedy took place last night, we hear, — the mother
Merganser was shot We had seen her often upon the
loch with her tiny brood behind her, oaring swiftly and deftly
from side to side. No one had meddled with her on the loch ;
but yesterday she had made up her mind to take her little
ones down the stream to the sea, and she had been discovered
by some rustic sportsman who had valiantly then and there
brought her maternal solicitudes to' a close. Would the little
waifs be able to shift for themselves ? How did they feel in
the great, big, unknown world, as they huddled in among the
rushes without guide or guardian? Would they all die of
hunger and fright, while waiting in vain for the mother who
does not return ? Possibly these and similar reflections did
not occur to the mind of the enterprising sportsman — more's
the pity.

And yet, to do him justice, the man was not much worse
than his neighbours, I daresay. It is hard to justify sport,
but Mr Ruskin is quite wrong in his passionate invective
against sportsmen. We all know that fishing and shooting do
not harden the heart or sear the conscience, and that in point
of fact the most ardent sportsmen are to be found among the
most tender-hearted men. To be logical and consistent, no
doubt they ought to be cruel and bloodthirsty ; but fortunately,
as Mr Ruskin knows, human nature is superbly illogical and
splendidly inconsistent. It is not merely that they do not

WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS. ig

beat their wives or swear at their mothers-in-law ; their kindli-
ness is positive, not negative. Izaak Walton and Charles St
John, for instance, have the most direct and catholic sympathy
with the innocent creatures of wood, and field, and river. Yet,
when their blood is up — nay, even in cold blood — they think
no more of landing a trout or stalking a stag than does the
merest Red Indian. I never knew a finer, gentler, or sweeter
nature than St John's ; and I venture to say that the books of
that delightful naturalist are the soundest and healthiest
reading we can give our boys. If they imbibe his spirit they
will learn how to reconcile what appear at first sight to be
inconsistent qualities — how it is possible, even in sport, to be
high-minded and chivalrous. For sport is one thing and
butchery another ; and instead of shooting the poor maternal
goosander, St John would have watched her perilous journey
down the stream with infinite sympathy and delight, and given
her a helping hand if he could. And how the deft ways and
the pleasant, crafty wiles of the little goosanders would have
sparkled in his pages !

There is not a breath of air in the sky, not a single mare's-
tail even ; not by hook or crook to-day could a trout be
tempted to rise ; so we put our rods aside and saunter down
to the beach. It is a pleasant shore — the yellowest of yellow
sand, brown tangle, and then the cool, fresh, intense blue of
the sea. The oyster-catcher flits with shrill whistle round the
point ; the warier whaup keeps farther out. One, two, three,
four herons are standing at intervals, like sentries, along the
rocks, each at his favourite post. With hoarse croak, the
chronic Darwinian development of some primeval influenza,
and slow-flapping pinions, the unwieldy creatures rise as we
approach. I do not love the heron ; it seems to me that
there is something cynical and sardonic in his expression — a
natural ironic reserve which experience has only served to
confirm. But the sandpipers, and the oyster-catchers, and
even the curlews, with their ridiculously long bills (which, one
would fancy, must be immensely in the way of anything like
familiar intercourse or close friendship), form an altogether
agreeable and delightful society.

20 WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS.

Push the boat out, and we shall make our way to the
Delectable Islands in the middle of the Sound. Tis a long
pull, but the skiff is light as an eggshell, and the tide runs
strongly with us. As we cross the bay a whaup is startled
from the shore and comes just within range. A snap-shot
brings him down — quite an event, for the whaup is the shyest
and wariest of birds. Our Delectable Islands are merely a
few jagged reefs of grey, weather-beaten rock, with patches of
coarse grass, among which a populous colony of the black-
headed tern have established their nurseries. The nests (if
nests they can be called) are now empty, and only one or
two downy little morsels are to be found, lurking among the
long grass. The whole colony, young and old, are on the
wing, and wheel clamorously round our heads. Between the
islands the tide runs like a river — a famous fishing -ground
for saithe and lythe. But the only fisher at present is a
round-faced, inquisitive seal, who persistently follows the boat
until we fire a cartridge over his head. Then he drops away,
and we see him no more. There is a family-party of half-
a-dozen oyster-catchers on the outermost reef, and as the
taxidermist of our party needs a specimen for stuffing, a shot
is fired. Amid deafening clamour (for the terns almost pitch
themselves into our faces) one falls upon the water. But
he is only winged, and when we approach to pick him up
dives as a duck or a guillemot would dive, reappearing on
the surface after a long interval, quite a hundred yards off.
I had never heard of the oyster-catcher (who is not one of
the web-footed race) diving in this masterly fashion, and it
was a surprise to us all. Is it possible that extremity of
peril suddenly develops a dormant talent ? We fired at him
again, but he dived with the shot ; and a third cartridge
was needed before we secured him. The oyster-catcher
is a brilliant little bird — his red, white, and black telling
effectively against the blue of sea or sky.

By this time the day was beginning to wane. We had a
plunge into the clear sparkling water, an al fresco tea, and
then we hoisted an artist's umbrella (for a fresh breeze had
risen as the twilight fell), and drifted back leisurely to the

WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS. 21

mainland. It was a perfect night ; day still lingered upon
the summit of Ben More, but the shadows had gathered
round about us. There was not a sound, save the occasional
wail of a curlew passing high overhead, or the twitter of a
belated sandpiper.

Yet even on such a night there is not, I think, absolute
silence upon the sea. For the ocean is never at rest ; and
the beating of its mighty heart is audible in the deadest calm.
Deep calls unto deep. There is surely something strangely
impressive in an everlasting ebb and flow which, like the
swing of the pendulum, is adjusted with delicate nicety and
absolute precision. But this chronometer that beats through
the ages — was it set agoing once for all at the beginning, or
is it periodically wound up ? " The will of mortal men did
not beget it, neither shall oblivion ever lay it to sleep."
There is the fact — make of it what we like. For my own
part, I do not think that Greek or Latin sage, French Renan
or English Matthew Arnold, has said anything much better
about the mystery than was said by the Sheik of an obscure
Arab tribe thousands of years ago. Our New Testament is
very beautiful ; but there are glimpses of insight, felicities of
expression, in the Old, which, considering the time and the
people, are even more surprising — especially from a purely
literary point of view. " The eternal God is thy refuge, and
underneath are the everlasting arms." How did Moses rise
to this height ? All round about there was darkness — thick
darkness — darkness that might be felt : yet on one favoured
spot the light was absolute and unconditioned. May we not
say that it is this intense imaginative vision that is the unique
element in the early history of the chosen people ?

The newspapers have arrived during our voyage, and what
between Egypt itself and the more than Egyptian darkness
of the peers, the prospects of the Monarchy are thought to
be gloomy in the extreme. The British Constitution is on
its last legs. Be it so. Whether indeed we have lost the
faculty for governing ourselves and others which our fathers
possessed remains to be seen. But the end must come some
time. We cannot hope to escape the paralysis which has

22 WITH THE SEA-SWALLOWS.

attacked, one after the other, the ruling races of the world.
Meantime, however, there are big trout in Morar, and the
Atlantic ebbs and flows through the Sound as it did before
the British Constitution was set up, and as it will continue
to do after it is taken down and put away on the shelf where
we keep our antiquities. " What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue ! " So the great Mr Burke remarked ;
but Mr Burke lived before the Burgh Police Bill was passed ;
and with the Burgh Police Bill positive history begins.
Shadows indeed ! when we have a telegraph wire right round
the globe, and a telephone next door, and the whole tittle-
tattle of the universe ready for us every morning with our
muffins. There are grumblers everywhere and in every age ;
but even the Mummy who had helped to raise the Pyramids
was forced to confess with a blush that his countrymen had
no knowledge of Ponnener's lozenges or Brandreth's pills.

IV.
WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

THE Sorceress was at anchor in Loch Laxford. We had
had a famous run. In the early morning we had
steamed along the Shetland coast ; in the afternoon we were
off Cape Wrath ; in the summer twilight — it was the 2oth of
June — we had quitted the open sea, and glided through a cleft
in the rock into this land-locked bay. The dressing-bell was
ringing, and the moon was rising over Ben Arkle, as we quitted
the deck. The anchorage was good ; there was not a breath
of wind in the sky ; and the anxious mind of our captain — as
good a man and as skilful a skipper as there is in the Navy —
was at rest. He could spin his pleasantest yarn and laugh his
jolliest laugh without any thought of the morrow.

Laxford was flooded with the moonlight when we came out-
side again to smoke a final pipe. At least, a broad lane of
liquid light ran from shore to shore. But the shadows lay
thick upon the rocky channels, which led, on either hand, we
knew not whither. We heard at times, in their dim recesses,
the wail of a curlew ; at times the hoarse cry of a heron ; at
times the splash of a seal ; more than once the rapid beat of
invisible wings was audible overhead, — the mire-duck or the
grey lag making his way to inland marshes, where his mate
waited with half-fledged gosling or tiny flapper. But for the
most part, as we watched, the silence was unbroken — the per-
fect stillness of sea and sky, of earth and heaven, was intense,
ghostly, magical, — the stillness of the sleeping Princess and

24 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

her Palace in Mr Burne-Jones's masterpiece. The bright and
cozy saloon, with its books and papers, and maps, and easy-
chairs, and stirring stories of Indian life by Rudyard Kipling,
and charming sketches of Stuart relics l by William Gibb, and
bottles of Apollinaris and seltzer, seemed like a different world.
" Half-a -bottle of potass, and the laste little taste in the
world — " were the last words I heard as I opened the port-
hole of my cabin to admit the tonic saltness of the sea, and
drew up the sheets.

We Had completed our work. We had overhauled the
whole of the Western Islands, — the islands that look out on
the Atlantic. We had seen with our own eyes the hovels in
which human beings contrive to live. We had seen the
people themselves, and had found that in spite of poor living
and peat-smoke and the company of sheep and cattle and
poultry and pigs, summer and winter, day and night, all the
year round, they were as fine specimens of the Celtic race as
are to be met with anywhere. We had seen hundreds of
herring-boats at Stornoway and Castlebay — Castlebay, the
great natural harbour of the West — returning from the fishing-
grounds in the early morning, their brown sails flapping idly
against the mast while the long oars were busy on a sea like
glass ; we had seen the sea-birds drifting like snow-flakes
across the great cliffs of Mingulay and Barra ; we had searched
the grassy table-lands of Fair Isle for the nests of the eider ;
we had found the eggs of the arctic tern on the shores of
Loch Bay, and of the red-breasted merganser on the islands
of Loch Roag; we had landed on Foula, and been driven
away from their moorland breeding-places by the sharp beaks
and sweeping wings of the most intrepid of birds — the hungry
hawks of the sea — the greater and the lesser skua; we had
seen the prehistoric Mousa, and the stones of Callernish, and
the great, cathedral which in remotest Thule had been raised
to the memory of Magnus by the ingenious and industrious

1 The Relics of the Royal House of Stuart — forty water-colour sketches
by Mr William Gibb of Edinburgh — for which one of our party had written
the Introduction — is probably the most splendid book of its kind ever pub-
lished in this country.

WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS. 25

Northmen ; we had climbed the Cuchullins and looked into
the mighty corries where the red-deer lodge ; and everywhere
we had had kindly greeting or eager welcome ; and the Chief,
by his tact, his urbanity, his ready sympathy, his utter absence
of pretence, had won golden opinions from all sorts and
conditions of men.

This was so far well ; but it had been manifest for some
days that two of our party were " taking their pleasure sadly."
I would exaggerate if I said that they were unhappy ; " un-
happy " is too strong a word ; in that delightful air, in those
vast spaces of sea and sky, unhappiness could be only skin-
deep ; they were victims — let me rather say — of that divine
discontent which leads, as we are told, to a higher felicity. —
The dream of Sir George's life had been to shoot or other-
wise secure a perfect specimen of the Fork-tailed Petrel ; but
during our cruise the fork-tailed petrel had judiciously ab-
sented himself: and while marrots and parrots and guille-
mots, and even geese and mergansers and skuas, had been
as common as blackberries, the fork-tailed petrel was nowhere
to be met with. From Cape Wrath to Laxford the summer
sea had been solid with sea-birds; we had sailed all day
through regiments of razor-bills who had hardly been induced
to move aside as the steamer passed ; but the fork-tailed
petrel was conspicuous by his absence. Harvie Brown had
found him in the ruined chapel at Rona ; he had watched
him in his zigzag flight, in his mimicry of bat and butterfly,
of snipe and swallow ; but Rona was quite out of our way,
and Sir George's spirit was troubled.

" I have done my best for you, Sir George," said the Chief
that night, "but the fork-tailed petrel is more obstinate than
a pig, and more powerful than a minister of state. But what
say you to the white-tailed eagle ? It has its eyrie on a name-
less rock that lies between the Long Island and Dunvegan, —
a rock that has seldom or never been visited except by Harvie
Brown and the lobster-fishers from Harris; and we have a
spare day on our hands. If our good captain consents, shall
we try our luck to-morrow ? "

It was thus that we came to visit what I call for distinction

26 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

the Summer Isles ; for it is only in the calmest and most
cloudless day of summer that this reef in the stormy Minch
can be approached with safety.

I have indicated that Sir George was not the only member
of the party who was taking his pleasure sadly. We had a
gay (a gay but perfectly guileless) Lothario on board, who
ever since he had read of Princesses in Thule had inwardly
resolved to find a bride among the farthest Hebrides. His
search, like Sir George's (or Sir Galahad's) had been hitherto
fruitless. — Lawrence was invariably late — late for breakfast,
for lunch, for dinner, for tea, for tiffin (the number of meals
that we consumed on board that vessel was simply incredible ;
Graham's resources were taxed to the uttermost, but Graham
is an incomparable strategist, and the commissariat arrange-
ments were admirable from first to last) ; and he made no
secret of what he had been about. He had missed his
meals ; he had eaten at untimely hours ; he had tampered
with his stomach ; because he was engaged in a Quest. He
was looking for the Princess, — for the Princess who remained
obstinately invisible. He talked with every pretty girl he met
(unluckily he had " no Gaelic "), on the bare chance that it
might be the One in question. He had the captain's gig out
whenever a petticoat was in sight. The hazards he ran with
a light heart and a cheery laugh might have daunted a Lor-
requer or an O'Malley. A murderous red-bearded Celt, who
had found him conversing with his betrothed, had publicly
offered to " stap him in ta powels," — an offer that had been
hastily declined. On another occasion he had been even
more unsuccessful ; impressed by the graceful contours of her
Shetland shawl, he had run her down in the steam-cutter,
only to find that she was old as Methuselah. It was no good,
in short, and Lawrence was now returning, in middle life, to
his family, a disappointed and disenchanted man. Think of
that, Mr Black ! l

1 We had Dobbs with us too (the process of evolution by which the
baptismal " Samuel Ebenezer" became " Dante Gabriel" may be indica-
ted hereafter) ; but a Higher Power kept Dobbs mainly to his cabin. He
was virtually invisible (if not inaudible) during the whole voyage. What

WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS. 2/

The dawn was lovely. The Chief and I (slightly but not
inelegantly attired) took our early cocoa in the chart-house
on the bridge. I had had a dip in the salt water soon after
midnight (to call that modified radiance " night " is, however,
an abuse of language), and we were out at sea before the
others were out of bed. That six-o'clock cup of cocoa on
the bridge, while the sun was rising, and the mists were lifting,
and the marrots and parrots on Handa were clearing their
throats (a curious guttural chuckle swept across the ledges as
we passed), will not be readily forgotten. And the morning
was only the prelude to an incomparable day. It is true
that we went back to bed for an hour or two ; and when we
met at breakfast the good ship was well away from the land.
But the mountains of Ross and Sutherland, the great range
which stretches without a break from Laxford to Strom e
Ferry, still towered above us ; and, as they sank, the Cuchul-
lins rose. The angry Minch itself was as smooth as a
mill-pond, and populous as a crowded city. Gay parties of
marrots were busy with their morning meal ; gannets fell like
bullets into the water ; the great cormorant and the green
cormorant were constantly crossing our bows ; and, while the
great black-backed gull swept overhead, flocks of noisy terns
and kittiwakes followed us everywhere. Once and again we
sighted a black-throated diver — now that the great auk has
left us for good and all, the strongest bird that swims.

If we laymen can believe what the experts tell us, the
columns of a mightier temple than any built by man — what
to it was the temple of the Olympian Jove ? — must once
have extended from the Faroe Islands to the coast of Ulster,
four hundred miles as the crow flies. This majestic minster
has been wrecked — by what obscure primeval Titan who can
tell ? — and only a few scattered and shattered pillars are now
visible, though I presume if we got to the bottom of the sea

he suffered, only an impressionist poet could fitly relate. But you will
understand Dobbs better when you have read his Autumn in Arcady.
And Lawrence's Across the Moor will prove after all that there are still
Princesses (native or imported) in Thule. Of their subsequent adventures
— how each fared with the fair — they themselves shall tell us by-and-by.

28 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

we might find the bases of others. Those that remain, how-
ever— the pillars of columnar basalt at the Giant's Causeway,
at Staffa, and along the coast of Skye — suffice to indicate the
course it took. I have seen them all ; but they are nowhere,
I think, so fine as at Garbh-eilean ; and Garbh-eilean is the
most considerable of the Summer Isles. Though worn by
ceaseless storm — beaten by the rain and lashed by the surf
from the beginning of time — the gigantic columns on its
northern face are wonderfully well preserved. This great
mural rock is of prodigious height ; we have nothing here
indeed like the thirteen hundred feet of Foula ; but then the
Garbh-eilean precipice is sheer, and overhangs rather than
otherwise, whereas there is ridge upon ridge at Foula, — a
series of gigantic steps, such as we find on what was once
considered the impregnable Matterhorn, leading up to the
central peak.

The huge rock rose before us as we advanced until the
Sorceress was well under its shadow. The sea that day was
so absolutely smooth that I believe we might have taken our
thousand-ton vessel close to the cliff and jumped ashore —
had there been footing. None of us, indeed, had ever known
the boisterous Minch in so placid a mood. Even in the
height of summer the ground-swell seldom entirely subsides ;
the water may look like glass, but, all the same, it breaks
whitely against the granite boulders, and one hears its muffled
roar in the caves where the "blue rocks" build. But this
day there was not a ripple ; where the rock met the water
a paper canoe might have been moored.

Ours was not a canoe, however. We left the ship in the
captain's own launch, with eight blue -jackets at the oars.
Fine fellows our blue-jackets are, — trim and clean and good-
humoured, and ever ready for a lark. I do not imagine that
they are very easily impressed ; but this stupendous rock
fairly staggered them. When we had rowed close in, and
felt it rising sheer over us into the sky, "the boldest held
his breath for a time." Fancy what the impression must be
when the Atlantic rollers dash madly against its face and the
stoutest bark is swept about like a cork !

WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS. 29

As we approached the islands (there are some ten or a
dozen in all, most of them, except Garbh-eilean and Eilean
Mhuire, mere jagged stacks and skerries rising a few feet
out of the water) the stream of birds had sensibly thickened.
Even before we quitted the Sorceress it seemed to us as if
the whole sea was astir with them. They crossed our bows ;
they swept through the rigging, sometimes dashing themselves
against the ropes in their headlong flight ; the rhythmic beat
of wings overhead became almost monotonous. All this, how-
ever, as Mr Disraeli said of the National Debt, was a mere
fieabite. It was not until a shot was fired from the boat that
we began to realise how densely populated this bare rock
must be. Millions of puffins (there must have been millions)
swept down upon us from every ledge, from every nook and
cranny. I don't wish to exaggerate, but I seek in vain for
any comparison that will do justice to their amazing number.
A swarm of bees ? But this was a swarm of birds miles long.
Far as we could see, the air was as thick with sea-birds as it
is with snow-flakes in a winter storm.

But the crowning glory of Garbh-eilean is the white-tailed
eagle. This eagle — either this identical eagle, or his father
or grandfather — nobody really knows how long they live —
had his eyrie here two hundred years ago ; and, as far as one
can judge, he has never been, and is never likely to be,
disturbed. Protected by an overhanging ledge — a broken
column of basalt — halfway up an inaccessible cliff, on which
there is no footing for anything heavier than a bird, he is, I
should fancy, tolerably safe. The pair — they had, of course,
observed our approach — were away when we arrived ; but they
had not gone far. The precipice is five hundred feet high ;
five hundred feet above the precipice, a thousand feet above
our heads, they circled slowly and majestically in mid-air.
The eagle and the hawk are nearly allied ; but the hawk's
manners have not the repose which suits a royal bird. The
peregrine assails the intruder on its domain with an angry
scream as it leaves its nest ; but the eagle, high in heaven,
sweeps past in silence and makes no sign. Nor are his wings
pointed like the peregrine's : square cut, they convey the im-

30 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

pression of enormous, if latent, power. Twenty years ago the
sea-eagle had many eyries among the Outer Islands, but they
were not so inaccessible as the eyrie on Garbh-eilean, and
most of them are now deserted — more's the pity !

The puffin or sea-parrot, however, is the true lord and
master of Garbh-eilean and her sister isles. All along these
cliffs, three or four miles in length, they breed in incredible
numbers. There are vast colonies of razor-bills and guille-
mots and kittiwakes ; but for every razor-bill or guillemot or
kittiwake there are a hundred parrots. The sea-parrot, as
everybody knows, is the caricature of a bird. He is one of
the creatures that burrow ; and his enormous beak, I pre-
sume, has been provided to enable him to shovel out the
earth from the hole where the eggs are laid. (The puffin has
only one egg — as has the guillemot, but the guillemot's are
streaked and spotted, whereas the puffin's are pure white —
possibly because they are laid in the dark ?) The great
triangular beak (it is of a brilliant red, and in consequence
all the more conspicuous) is thus out of all proportion to the
size of the bird, and the effect is comic in the extreme. One
cannot help feeling that he has been heavily handicapped in
the race of life, and the gleam of suspicion in his watchful
eye is due no doubt to the unpleasantness of the position in
which he finds himself. Fancy having to go about the world,
like the Dougal in Aytoun's unpublished ballad —

". . . Dougal,
To whom the ladies were of their attentions frugal, "-

with such a nose ! There was a book I delighted in when a
boy — the immense folio of Bishop Pontoppidan, the Swedish
naturalist. Pontoppidan was an enthusiast all round ; but he
had a special regard for the puffin. " With his claws and his
beak," he tells us, "he defends himself against the raven,
his enemy, whom he holds by the throat, and will carry him
out to sea and drown him before he looses his hold." It
appears, moreover, that "when in his nest he lies on his
back," and that when one is stunned the others gather about
him, " and never leave off pecking till he revives " — a mode

WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS. 31

of restoring animation that may be recommended to the
Faculty. Another legend is also current in the north. The
chicks, it is said, grow so fat before they fly that the parents
have to administer sorrel leaves to enable them to quit the
nest. It is undoubtedly true, however, that both old and
young are excessively pugnacious, as any incautious inquirer
who pushes his arm into one of their burrows will find to his
cost. A puffin holds on like a bull-dog, and will bite the
finger to the bone.

Meantime we are still on the north side of Garbh-eilean.
There is a circuitous channel between Garbh-eilean and Eilean
Mhuire, by which one can eventually reach the isthmus near
which the solitary shepherd has his shieling ; but on a fine
day a boat can venture through a vaulted passage, forty
yards long, in Garbh-eilean itself, which is much more direct.
This wonderful arched way twists a little (as the letter " S "
twists), but from the central shaft one can see blue sea and
sky at either entrance, like a " bit " by Stanfield or a brilliant
vignette. The blue-jackets took us through very cleverly,
and then we landed upon the shelving beach of the isthmus.
This isthmus, which is sometimes flooded when the tide and
the wind are high, is almost the only place where a landing is
practicable. The smooth rounded stones of which it is com-
posed form a narrow causeway which connects the two limbs
of the island, Garbh-eilean and Eilean-an-Tigh. There is a
wealth of vegetation on the gentle slopes of the latter (where
the shepherd lives) ; the Chief gathered in the course of an
hour a score at least of wild flowers — the red and white wild
rose, ling and bell heather, butter-wort, bracken, hard fern,
asphodel, eyebright, primrose, dwarf willow, leopard's bane,
marsh buttercup, yellow iris, yellow and red rattle, silver
weed, rag -weed, house -leek; the other is more rocky and
rugged ; moreover, the puffins have undermined the shallow
coating of earth, and withered the grass. There is a path
that leads to the summit; mounting step by step from the
shore, it winds round the southern side, but thins away into
a mere sheep-track before it reaches the tableland at the top.
These steep grassy slopes are always trying, and after a long

32 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

spell of dry weather, are apt to grow dangerously slippery.
They need a steady head — the slightest touch of giddiness is
certain death. I sat down on a ledge where the parrots were
in force, but they barely took the trouble to move. They
wagged their heads, and smacked their bills, and gazed at me
with glassy eyes. Swarms of them were sweeping round the
rock within arm's length, and with a quail net I might have
caught any number. There was a deep ravine at my feet
into which they seemed to plunge, and which was literally
alive with birds ; — gulls poised on steady wing, cormorants in
solemn session, flocks of brilliant oyster-catchers among the
tangle, flocks of black guillemots upon the sea itself. The
others had left me by this time ; I was quite alone ; I began
to reflect on the mauvais pas I had to cross in returning ; my
eye would follow the razor-bills in their headlong dive into
empty space; the aerial clamour, the unceasing beat and
constant whirr of wings, brought on that uncomfortable sensa-
tion about the diaphragm which is, I am told, the prelude to
vertigo. Marvellous and commanding as my watch-tower was,
I dared not linger longer ; and I was by no means sorry when
I reached terra firma, — if those polished pebbles over which
one scrambles and stumbles deserve the name.

We went into the shepherd's house, where two rather pretty
girls, with soft eyes and low voices, who had never been out-
side the island, were closely scrutinised by Lawrence. They
were little more than children as yet indeed ; but this was
quite in accordance with precedent ; for everybody knows that
the first thing a man does who is to marry a Princess from
Thule (especially when she has "no English") is to send her
to a suburban boarding-school. The rest of us meantime
were looking over the shepherd's eggs, which were tastefully
hung upon the bedroom wall — the white and red of the parrot
and the peregrine forming an agreeable contrast to the green
and brown of shag and skua. One egg which Sir George was
at first inclined to attribute to the fork-tailed petrel, turned
out on further inquiry to be that of the domestic fowl — which
is indeed the greatest rarity in the island. Of the fork-tailed
petrel himself no intelligence could be obtained.

WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS. 33

During our rambles the morning had slipped away. It was
now two o'clock. The Sorceress had been brought round, and
lay at anchor in the bay. "What on earth are they about?"
Sir George inquired, pointing to the bridge, where a slim blue-
jacket, with a striped flag in either hand, was signalling
violently. It was obvious to the meanest capacity that some-
thing was wrong. The Colonel was appealed to — our Colonel
of Engineers — we always appealed to the Colonel — the Colonel
would know. His glass was unslung and pointed severely at
the bridge. After a long and steady gaze his face brightened.
" It is a summons from Graham," he said as he replaced the
glass, "an urgent summons. We are to go at once. The
salmon cutlets are done to a turn." Without another word
we made for the boat.

We were off the coast of Skye when we came on deck
again. The morning had been lovely ; the afternoon was
gorgeous. We lay on the bridge in the mellow Atlantic sun-
shine, and read and sketched, and smoked and talked. The
officers — real good fellows all of them — were at no time indis-
posed for a chat. I am afraid, however, that they did not
care overmuch for this cruise in strange waters, and our
enthusiasm, I take it, rather bored them. Lucas, the chief
engineer, told us quite frankly, indeed, that the bare rock and
the couple of gulls which, when visible through Scotch mist,
were the most characteristic features of Scotch landscape, had
become during the past two months slightly monotonous to
him. The people, too — why an English pig was better housed
than a Skye laird ! It was in vain that we assured him that
the Scots, Highlanders and Lowlanders, in spite of squalid
surroundings, were a fine, poetical, imaginative race. Had he
never read Ossian ? Had he never heard of Plackie ? Law-
rence, who is a Border man, would not see the joke. He was
furious. They might say what they liked against Ossian,
indeed ; but the ballads of the Border minstrels — indestructible
as the Psalms of David — defied oblivion. And even to-day,
the writers of Burd Helen and Young Tamlane had worthy
representatives, — as he happened to know. The Imp of Loch
Avich, for instance, had been published quite lately at Kirkin-

VOL. II. C

34 WHERE THE SEA-EAGLE NESTS.

tilloch. It was by a Galloway drover. Written in the irregular
ballad measure, its finely satirical reflections upon English
gluttony could not fail to please. Would we like to hear a
stanza or two ? It was more or less of an allegory, he added,
showing how the Celtic appeal to the grosser appetites of the
Saxon, —

' ' ' Noo bide a wee,' quoth the bould Baldie,

' Nor gang sae soon to the sooth countrie,
Where there's never a muircock on the hill,
Nor a salmon in the sea.

' But ye sail bide by Loch Avich's side, —
For in Avich there's mony a toothsome troot,

And bonny mire-ducks and fat roebucks,
And the whuskey — it is goot> "

had proved successful.

" The road was lang and the wind was strang,

And the gatherin' nicht grew grumly :
'A muircock's wing or the woodcock's trail?' —
Alack-a-day ! but man is frail,

And the nicht was dark and drumly."

Here Lucas said that he must go and see how much coal
they were burning, — a move that Lawrence justly construed
into a confession of defeat on the part of the " auld enemy."
In these circumstances it was resolved that the rest of the
ballad might be " held as read."

******;;

******

" It has been a perfect day," said the Chief, as, in the cool
of the evening, we steamed up Loch Harport.

" A perfect day," said Lawrence ; " but where is the
Princess of Thule?"

" A perfect day," said Sir George ; " but where is the Fork-
tailed Petrel ? "

And then — to each of them — I made bold to reply, in the
awful words of Mrs Prig, —

" I don't believe there's no sich a person."

35

V.
ACROSS THE MOOR:

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE.

THE failure of our friend Lawrence, when on
board the Sorceress, to find " A Princess in
Thule," secured for him general sympathy. The cir-
cumstances of the case were brought under the notice
of Mr William Black, and an appeal was made to
him on behalf of the sufferer. He responded with
his usual urbanity ; but he declined to accept any re-
sponsibility. It was Lawrence's own fault, he asserted ;
Princesses were in Thule for those who had eyes.
" My dear sir," he wrote to the author of the appeal,
" let me confess that the topography has puzzled me.
However, who can track Ulysses from ^Eolia to
Ogygia ? — it's of little account so long as you are
interested in the narrative. And I'm sorry your
companion failed to find any Princesses in Thule.
There are plenty; but you've got to take the proper pair
of eyes with you ."

36 ACROSS THE MOOR :

Mr Black's concluding remark (let me say in pass-
ing) reminds me of a characteristic anecdote of Mr
Watts (our great ideal painter) which Mrs Hodgson
Burnett tells. " Well, Mr Watts," a lady said to him,
after examining his picture of Covent Garden Market,
"this is charming; but I know the market, and I
confess I never saw it look like this." "No?" Mr
Watts replied. And then, looking at her thoughtfully,
" Don't you wish you could ? "

I am not myseif sure that Lawrence was to blame ;
but I do not care to enter upon a controversy which
has ceased to have any practical importance. The
fact is, that a Princess has been found — found, too, in
a Western Island ; and Lawrence himself has apprised
me of the fact. The record of his adventures and
misadventures in pursuit of the fugitive damsel will
no doubt gratify Mr Black ; for the letter which I
have ventured to christen " Across the Moor " is as
animated as it is copious.

Lawrence, as we know, was not the only guest on
board the Sorceress whose patience in pursuit of an
ideal was unrewarded by success. " Sir George," it
may be remembered, failed to secure a specimen of
the fork-jailed petrel. But " Sir George " was there-
after appointed a commissioner to inquire into the
manners and customs of the fur-bearing seals of Alaska
(in connection with a famous arbitration), and he was

no sooner in these remote seas But he must tell

his story in his own words, — a story that to Mr Stead
or Mr Lang would no doubt have suggested the inter-

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 37

vention of one of those ghostly messengers who knock
chairs about in the attics, and otherwise misconduct
themselves : —

"S.S. DANUBE,
"BEHRING'S SEA, OFF COPPER ISLAND, n Sep. '91.

" I came up to these seas in July — into the latitude
of Kirkwall and Vaila Voe and Foula — on a Govern-
ment quest, and with many an act of commission and
omission to recall my pleasant experiences of last year —
but none so startling in its reality as the strange, and
sudden, and almost uncanny proposal of the Russian
Commandant of the Behring Sea Islands — only the
other day — to give me a rare bird he had shot and
skinned. ' Oh, thank you,' I said, in my very best
German ; ' and what sort of bird is it ? ' I added,
merely to round off the sentence. He was opening
a drawer; and, handing me a bird's skin, I read on
the label attached the ominously significant words,
' FORK-TAILED PETREL.' So that you will see that
under a beneficent dispensation ' Sir George ' has
been satisfied. I must not run on, however, or I
should be overwhelming you with the wonderful de-
tails of seal life to be seen when thousands upon
thousands of them are ashore for three months in the
year to breed."

This is Lawrence's letter : —

" And to-morrow, Lawrence, we shall cross the moor ! "
But a good deal, as you will find, had happened before
" to-morrow " ; and it may be convenient that I should, in

38 ACROSS THE MOOR:

the meantime, tell you about "yesterday," and possibly the
day before.

I met her first at Gsteig. Gsteig is the most out-of-the-way
place in the world, — one of the obscure Swiss valleys, obscure
but cosy, which lie hidden away between the busy thorough-
fares of tourist traffic, and through which a mule-track only
winds. The cattle, when they come home with their bells
in the summer evenings from the knee-deep, sweet-smelling
clover meadows, occupy the ground-floor of the chalet which
does duty for an inn ; and there is a picturesque outer stair,
by which the other inmates ascend to the living-rooms above.
The wooden balcony which runs along the front of the house,
though black with smoke, is curiously carved. Zimmermatter
and his comely wife occupy one end of the upper storey ;
but three rooms — two bedrooms and a salle-a-manger — are
reserved for the infrequent guest. They are lined with
polished pine, and when the fire is lighted at sundown they
smell of resin, and fir-cones, and the great woods that over-
hang the village. These are the woods that stand out so
blackly against the pure snows of the Wildstrubel — snows
which, long after night has fallen upon the valley, reflect the
sunset.

Zimmermatter and I had been among them all day. We
had climbed rocks, and crossed glaciers, and from the crown-
ing peak had seen the queenly Jungfrau on one hand, and the
mighty Mischabelhorn on the other, and the broad valley of
the Rhone between. The light had failed us ere we reached
the pastures, where the lily of paradise and the crocus bloom ;
but the moon was rising when we stood in front of the inn.
A white figure leant lightly against the balustrade of the bal-
cony,— a ghostly figure in the deep shadow of the overhanging
roof. A gleam of warm light came through the open door of
the salon ; but it did not touch the apparition, and only em-
phasised the darkness. Some one was in the salon, for we
presently heard a voice, " Come in, Patty ; you will get your
death of cold." And then the girl outside (for it was no
ghost) responded, " O, Auntie dear, it is quite too lovely —
the moonlight on the snow of the Wildstrubel is just heavenly."

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 39

"The English ladies have come," said Zimmermatter in a
whisper, as we mounted the stair.

During the next week I came to know them well. We rode,
and we climbed, and we picnicked, and we penetrated into
every corner of that primitive pastoral valley. The maiden
aunt was pleasant and well informed, and Patty was a girl in
a thousand — bright, fresh, eager, outspoken ; facing the world
with the brave candour of a virgin soul, and a frankness that
was never immodest. During these long rambles there was
leisure for many friendly controversies ; and Patty had one or
two convictions to which she clung with invincible tenacity.
One liked her all the better, to be sure, for her pretty fanati-
cisms, which neither raillery nor argument could shake. She
was Scotch by extraction, and nothing could persuade her that
the Scotch valleys and mountains were inferior to the Swiss.
This was a standing dish with us ; the English aunt rather
sided with me, but Patty was quite able to hold her own
against us both. Where in Scotland, I would say, will you find
a vast field of snow like that you cross to the Cima de Jazi ?
or such a mighty multitude of jagged peaks as you see from the
Bella Tolla ? or such a valley as the Zinal ? or such a peak as
the Weisshorn ? or such a mountain wall as the Monte Rosa
range from Macugnaga ? But it was no good ; the damsel
was not to be moved ; a sunset among the Hebrides was finer
than the after-glow on Mont Blanc, and the Marjelin See a
duck -dub when compared with the Atlantic, or even with
Loch Maree. A Scotch hillside with the heather in bloom,
and a pack of grouse on the wing, and a broad landlocked
bay in the offing, with white sails skimming across the blue
water where the Solans dive, was out of sight the most
perfect picture which Nature had hung in her gallery.

"When I go back to Scotland," I said in effect at last,
" if you will only undertake to be my guide, I am ready to
be converted."

But this was flippancy, she answered, with grave reproof in
her brown eyes, mere flippancy. It was only honest convic-
tion that she valued.

We had parted somewhat abruptly ; they were called away

40 ACROSS THE MOOR:

suddenly when I had gone for a couple of days to Thun to
reconstruct my knickerbockers ; and, though on my return I
forthwith followed them to the inn at Diablerets, where they
were to rest for the night, and thereafter to Aigle, Lausanne,
and Neuchatel, I was always, as it chanced, a day too late. I
finally lost them among the Jura Mountains ; in the inn album
at Pontarlier the entry ran, "The Misses Maxtone en route

for , Scotland." Where I have drawn a dash a drop of

ink had fallen, rendering the word underneath illegible. The
entry was in Patty's hand. Had she left the address for my
benefit, confident that I would follow? and had some awk-
ward donkey, some miserable miscreant of a bagman, divided
us for ever ? Was it the malice of Fate, against which, like
Evangeline, we struggle in vain ? or accidental mischance, the
misadventure of a mere blundering mortal ?

It was the memory of Patty — a memory which had not a
whit faded, but was, in fact, more vivid than ever — which a
year afterwards induced me to accept Dick Bramwell's invi-
tation to spend a fortnight with him on his moor. Dick, who
is a " sentimental enthusiast " about our poor relations, who
wear feathers instead of seal-skins, and use wings as well as
legs, had rented an island off the coast of Sutherland, where
there were grouse, and snipe, and sea -trout, and an old-
fashioned country house, and an old-fashioned garden bright
with hardy flowers, and whatever else the heart of sportsman,
and naturalist, and artist could desire. " And a lot of pretty
girls ! " Dick added in a postscript. Was it possible that
Patty might be among them ? I asked myself with a sigh as
I accepted the invitation.

I had now been with him for a week. The place altogether
was delightful. It stands between two seas, on the low, narrow
isthmus which separates an inland mere from the Atlantic.

"On one side lay the Ocean, and on one
Lay a great water, and the moon was full. "

That was the nightly picture on which I looked, while
through the open windows the plaint of the whaup and the
hoarse cry of the heron mingled with my dreams. And all

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 41

day long the great black cormorants passed over the roof,
crossing from one sea to the other. And then there were nice
girls, as Dick had promised ; but — and this was the one bitter
drop in my cup — no Patty ! We shot snipe, and we caught
sea-trout, and we ferreted rabbits, and we photographed the
natives, and we sat in our boat in the bay and read Long-
fellow and Dante Rossetti to Maud and Clara; but Patty,
alas ! remained obstinately invisible.

It was then that Dick had proposed, as we have seen, to
take me " across the moor," to visit a famous " stack " at the
other end of the island. We would be away the whole day ;
it was possible indeed that we might have to seek shelter for
the night in one of the fishers' cottages on the Mishnish
shore, or at the shooting-lodge — a mere hut — which was
presently tenanted, however — the Twelfth had not yet come
— by the under-keeper only.

The morning was splendid. The faint flush of dawn had
barely died away when we were in the thick of a Highland
breakfast. The creamy trout, and the devilled kidneys, and
the clotted cream, and the honey, and the oat-cakes, and the
mushrooms — are they not written in the chronicles of the
immortal Christopher? The "gluttony" of those ambrosial
nights makes the cockney moralist shudder ; but, after all,
it is a gluttony enriched by wisdom and seasoned with wit.
"And indeed," continued Dick, in answer to my implied
apology for an appetite that in the shattered state of my
heart might almost be called " brutal," " may it not be said
quite truly that it is gluttony, in the higher sense of the
word of course (that is to say, a sound and wholesome and
judicious relish for good cooking), which distinguishes man
from the lower animals ? The most advanced monkey cannot
boil a potato."

Dick paused for a moment, as we crossed through the
library, to take down from its shelf a quaintly bound and
quaintly lettered duodecimo which he gave to the ghillie, who
was waiting for us in the court. " Put it in the knapsack,"
he said, "and I will read you the Ladbroker-Quida at lunch."

The world outside was newly awake, the dew of sleep still

42 ACROSS THE MOOR :

upon its eyelids. The rabbits popped in and out of their
burrows — populous, they must be, as an Eastern city — as we
crossed the links, — the pale green of the bent contrasting
finely with the intense blue of the Firth beyond. It is quite
still here among the sandhills, but a breeze of morning moves
upon the sea. That is why it is so blue, and why the white
sails of the yacht that has been simply drifting to and fro like
a lifeless log begin to fill. Ere we leave the links a brilliant
sheldrake passes over our heads within easy shot. Like the
rabbits, it has its burrow in the sand, where the mother duck
and the ducklings are still safely housed.

We had reached by this time a mass of granite boulders
heaped upon the shore. Here the long line of cliff begins —
the line of cliff which, with hardly a break, runs round the
coast to Mishnish.

"This is one of the flighting-places of the blue rocks," said
Dick. "The face of the cliffs for twenty miles is seamed
with caves, where (upon the eaves) they breed in hundreds.
There is little food for them, however, on the adjacent moor
when the summer berries are over, and so they have to visit
the turnip-fields and the stubbles at our end of the island.
They fly with prodigious speed ; but even the blue rocks can
make little way against a gale, and thus they are forced to
follow what is called the line of least resistance. With the
wind in any quarter except the north-west, for instance, you
might sit here all day without seeing a bird ; but the moment
it gets into the right 'airt,' a stream of pigeons returning
home will pass you for hours. The cliffs afford them the
cover which they need, and this is their shortest route to
shelter, every coign of vantage being skilfully utilised. I
often sit here the whole afternoon with my gun pointed over
that slab of sandstone ; for I know that flock after flock, and
the single birds as well, will pass within a yard of my mark.
The most accomplished sergeant could not have secured by
years of drill more absolute uniformity. Is it not astonishing ?
How has it been achieved ? Is it hereditary instinct or in-
veterate custom ? The young bird just out of the nest has
learnt the art, no less than the veteran campaigner. And

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 43

this fundamental law of flight — to follow the line of least
resistance — is everywhere, and under all conditions, obeyed.
Certum est, quia impossibile est ! "

Dick's rhapsody was interrupted by the clamour of gulls.
We had been pushing briskly along while he discoursed ; and
now we found ourselves, without warning, in the midst of a
colony of herring-gulls and terns. The little downy morsels
were just beginning to run ; it would be weeks yet before
they were ready to fly. So the parents overhead shrieked
themselves hoarse. They were warning their chicks to lie
close ; and the warning was apprehended with astonishing
cleverness. So long as the young ones did not stir, it was
almost impossible to distinguish them from the grey stone or
grass or lichen among which they lurked. Only their bright
brown eyes, fixed solemnly on us as we searched, were apt to
betray them. " What a din they are making up there ! " I
said ; " I wonder they don't attack us in force. We should
certainly be worsted."

" Wait till you see the skuas ! " said Dick. " But we must
hurry on — the steep slopes of the Tor, with the sun blazing
down on us, will try our metal."

The Tor is one of the noblest cliffs in these parts. It has
a sheer rise (ought one to say " fall " ?) of six hundred feet.
This is the sea-face of course ; but even on the land-side the
ascent is sufficiently trying. There is a faint track made by
the sheep ; but on either hand the dry grass is like glass, and
when you near the summit you look down into an abyss.
This tremendous rent cuts the great headland in two, and is
the home of innumerable sea-birds, who move along the giddy
ledges with enviable ease. Farther on you can seat yourself
securely on a flat slab of granite, and watch the cormorantry
below — the " cormorantry " being the nursery of the great black
cormorants. The parent birds are constantly on the wing,
fetching supplies for their voracious offspring ; for the " scart "
from his birth is a glutton. Between scart and seal and
steam-trawler it is wonderful indeed that any fish escape.
But the supply of " cuddies " at least, here as elsewhere,
appears to be inexhaustible — though the sea-trout, no doubt,

44 ACROSS THE MOOR :

are thinned out or scared away by the ravages of the seals.
(Herds of the common seal we can see are basking in the
morning sunshine upon the tangle.) I never could quite
understand, by the way, how it is that the sea-trout, one of
the liveliest and most active of fish, is so easily captured by
the seal in the open bays. The seal certainly does not swim
so swiftly, but possibly its presence has the paralysing effect
of the rattlesnake on the bird.

There are fresh-water lochs on the summit of the Tor, and
their margins are brilliant with purple and scarlet berries —
the black bear-berry and the red. Snipe are constantly rising
from the marshy flats before Oscar's nose (the dog is clearly
at a loss to understand why we do not fire), and a family of
flappers are hiding among the reeds. The view is vast and
varied, — on one hand, across the narrow sound, the great
mountains of the mainland ; on the other, the shadowy out-
lines of the Hebrides, and the illimitable Atlantic. We see,
miles away, beyond the long line of cliff, the fishing village
for which we are bound. It is clearly a stiff tramp.

Among the " Loomi-shuns " (as the Tor lochans are named)
the red-throated diver is said to build ; but we looked in vain
for any sign of a nest. Yet the birds must be about some-
where ; for along with the mocking " honk, honk " of the wild
goose (high up in the ether, so high that the birds themselves
are invisible) we are constantly startled by the harsh and
insistent challenge of the " loom."

We had only descended a few yards from the lochans when
we entered the territory of the skua. There was a rush of
wings about our heads ; Oscar, after a gasp of incredulity,
came voluntarily to heel; these swift assailants swooping
down upon him without rhyme or reason, and contrary indeed
to the whole course of nature as previously comprehended
by him, were obviously " uncanny." Even upon the land
the hawk of the sea is an enemy that one cannot fail to
respect ; and during the breeding season his audacity is un-
bounded. But they occupy only a corner of the hill, and
by-and-by Oscar is himself again, though a couple of scouts
from the main body follow us for a mile.

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 45

" Some of them are black as night," Dick remarked, " while
some of them — nobody can tell why — are of a delicate cream-
colour. It is still a puzzle for the naturalist. The great skua,
which is only to be seen in Foula, is a grand bird ; ours are
the smaller variety, and though even more supple, are not
half as powerful. Yet a blow from that hawk-like beak would
be nasty."

So we trudged on across the moor, which was mostly
silent in the mid-day heat, except when an old cock-grouse
occasionally sounded a shrill alarm.

" That is the rock where the Manx shearwater breeds,"
Dick said, pointing to what appeared an inaccessible pre-
cipice,— " our rarest and most distinguished visitor. They
are all at sea now ; they seldom return till it is dark ; but
that is the cliff they love best when on land. We are going
to lunch at the foot"

It was a delightful surprise. The fresh green turf, smooth
as velvet, was dotted over with mushrooms. A stream from
the moor leapt over the cliff — a terrific leap, three hundred
feet at the very least ; and within was a hollow recess, a
shadowy sanctuary, where a mermaiden (and there are mer-
maidens about, they say) might have lodged ; for it was cool
as the crystal depths of the sea. The mist of the cascade
hung over it like a veil, and the air was sweet and moist.

But this was not all. The rocky walls were lined with
moss, and the Asplenium marinum, which had taken root in
every crevice, was wonderfully luxuriant. There are friends
of mine, excellent in their way, who rave about the Osmunda.
For my own part I prefer the sea -spleen wort as it grows
on a Western Island. I stuck a tuft in my buttonhole, and
thought of One who had assured me with fine scorn not
many months before (but how long it seemed!) that this shy
and modest fern (which yet loves the stormy Atlantic) was
more to be commended, was better and worthier of our
regard, than tiger lily or Alpine rose. I had been mildly
sceptical at the moment ; now I knew she was right.

A fire of drift-wood was quickly lighted by Malcolm ; and
the mushrooms, creamy without, pink as salmon within, were

46 ACROSS THE MOOR :

fizzing among the embers. If I say, How good they were !
I shall be told, probably, that I had no right to the unearned
increment; so for this and other reasons I forbear. And
might not any allusion (however indirect) to Glenlivet or
Glendronoch be just as imprudent ?

But I do not know why I should not freely admit that I
was won by the Ladbroker-Quida. There are moments when,
in spite of the sweetness and light of democratic surroundings,
one returns with a fierce relish to the ancestral barbarism;
and this was one of them. I had heard nothing of Patty;
and there was no reason, so far as I could see, why I should
continue to cultivate the finer and more ethereal emotions.

"It is the death-song," said Dick, " of one of the Rovers,
who stole our cattle and murdered our men, and it should
be read within sound of the surf — on the shore where they
moored their galleys."

And then Dick, "mouthing out his hollow 0's and «'s,"
began to declaim the English translation, which was made,
I found, in 1782, by the Rev. James Johnstone, of Orkney,
who was then Chaplain to the British Embassy at Copenhagen.
" You must join in the chorus," said Dick —

" Hiuggom ver med hiaurir ! "

which translated means merely, "We hewed with our swords!"
— surely a characteristic refrain. And remember that it was
Regnier, King of Denmark, who, made prisoner by Ella, a
Northumbrian noble, and condemned to die by the bite of
vipers, sang the " Death-song of Lodbroc " : —

"High I bore my lance, and wide I carried my ensanguined
blade, before I numbered twenty years. Eight earls graced
my triumph at the Dwina's mouth — there we the falcon
entertained with plenteous meals. The crimson sweat of
death poured on the sullen sea. Gore distained the deep.
The raven waded through the blood of the slain.

" Chorus. — We hewed with our swords ! "
And so on through a hundred battle-fields by sea and land.
Then it ends : —

" Full fifty times my lance, dire devastation's harbinger,

A LETTER FROM LAWRENCE. 47

announced the distant enterprise. Methinks no King has
truer cause to glory. It was the pastime of my boyish days
to tinge my sword with blood. The immortals will permit
my presence in their company. No sigh shall disgrace my
going. See the celestial Virgins sent from the Hall where
Odin's martial train resides invite me home. There, happy
on my high raised throne, I'll quaff the barley's mellowed
juices. The moments of my life are fled. The smiles of
death compose my placid visage.

" Chorus. — Now let us cease our song."

This sincere and unsophisticated life, I said to myself,
was clearly what I needed. It would brace like a tonic.
The morbid subtleties of unrequited affection and pessimistic
philosophy and poetry would no longer perplex one. Why
not have a relapse ? Why not revert to primitive methods ?
Why not become a Viking ?

Meantime Malcolm had disappeared.

" What has come of the lad ? " Dick said, as we went out
into the open. " He climbs like a cat, and I know there is a
gled's nest somewhere along that ledge."

We looked up ; though the great black-backed gulls were
sailing placidly along the face of the cliff, an angry peregrine,
as it mounted aloft, screamed shrilly. Malcolm was not to be
seen, and Dick's whistle brought no reply. But by-and-by
he appeared bareheaded high overhead, creeping along a
slippery shelf, where a whitret, as it seemed to us, watching
him from below, could barely have found footing. " He has
got the young gledes in his cap," JDick explained, " which he
has swung somehow round his neck, and in his stocking-soles
there is no chance of a slip — unless, indeed, the old bird, who
is growing vicious, strikes her claws into his face. There now,
he has crossed the mauvais pas, and the rest is plain sailing."

The half-fledged little creatures, who with hereditary pluck
snapped their bills fiercely in our faces, were placed in the
knapsack ; and after Malcolm had been soundly rated for his
rashness, we started at a run.

But it quickly became apparent that we had loitered too
long by the way. The afternoon was closing in ere we reached

48 ACROSS THE MOOR.

the Mishnish village, and the great rock for which we were
bound — the Devil's Needle, they call it — was still miles away.
" We must make a night of it at the hut," said Dick. " I
hope there are blankets enough to keep us snug. Duncan
must be at home," he added, after a pause ; " that's the smoke
of his peat-fire curling up the hill — but what a blaze ! Can
the fellow have company ? — company it is, Lawrence — five
o'clock tea, and a petticoat, by the powers ! "

And indeed, as we rounded the hillside, we saw that some
one was seated on the bench in front of the hut. The costume
was unfamiliar — deer-stalker's hat with black-cock feather,
rough blue serge jacket such as sailors wear, skirt to match, a
stout pair of boots with serviceable tackets ; but the delicate
life of the complexion, the soft maze of wavy hair which the
breeze had tangled, the easy poise of the head, the tender
grace of the slight girlish figure ! — surely I could not be wrong,
surely I had found her at last. And indeed it was Patty her-
self— Patty, browned with the sun and rain and wind of the
Western Sea, but the identical adorable Patty of whom I had
been dreaming for months.

They had come across the Sound from her brother's shoot-
ing, and their boat was waiting for them at the pier.

"And you still dote on the Weisshorn, and the Jungfrau,
and the Dom ? " she inquired rather mischievously, as later on
we sauntered down to the boat.

But I could assure her quite honestly that since we parted
my passion had cooled.

" And what of poor old Scotland ? " she continued, with an
air of grave concern that, perhaps, was not wholly assumed.

I did not at the moment frame the answer into articulate
words ; but I think she read it in my eyes : " Scotland — with
Patty — is Paradise."

49

VI.

AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST.

IT was a surprise to Balmawhapple when Dobbs
became famous. We had not thought much of
him as a boy; he had been steadily and persistently
flogged for many years without much apparent result ;
when he left us for the metropolis — shaking the Bal-
mawhapple dust fastidiously off his duck gaiters — we
imagined that he would be quickly sucked into the
whirlpool, and lost to sight. Lost to sight, and not
even to memory dear. But we were wrong : what we
took for a crack in the brain was only, it appeared, a
streak of genius ; when we ridiculed " Miss Dobby," as
we called him at the grammar-school, we had mistaken
delicacy of imagination for constitutional flabbiness.
The 52 Giles' Gazette, which declared on its honour
that there were only three men in the country who
could have written Autumn in Arcady, first opened our
eyes ; and, had he lived, the freedom of his native
burgh would no doubt have been unanimously con-

VOL. II. D

50 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

ferred upon Dobbs. But the pale Impressionist is first
cousin to pallida Mors, and Dobbs, with most of the
school to which he belonged, has gone over to a
majority which is increasing with alarming rapidity, —
the catastrophe which Beddoes anticipated appearing
indeed to be imminent : —

" In the old time death was a feverish sleep
In which men walked. The other world was cold
And thinly peopled, so life's emigrants
Came back to mingle with the crowds of earth ;
But now great cities are transplanted thither, —
Memphis, and Babylon, and either Thebes,
And Priam's towery town with its one beach.
The dead are most and merriest ; so to be sure
There will be no more haunting till their towns
Are full to the garret ; then they'll shut their gates
To keep the living out."

Although a Scot by birth, and an Impressionist by
adoption, Dobbs has been known to laugh ; and I
have sometimes fancied that he was not so demurely
innocent as in Autumn in Arcady he affects to be.

I.

I NEVER could tell why she threw me over. I don't know
yet. The Chief said it was because I wore the shabby old
hat of an Italian brigand (shabby it might be, but entirely
artistic) ; Mrs Mac thought it was because I swore by Sandys
and Swinburne (I never did swear in my life) ; on the other
hand, my brother Sylvester declared it was quite clear that a
girl with any self-respect could not marry a man who had
failed, as I had failed, to live up to the Japanese flower-pots
she had given me. (He called them Siamese twins ; but

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 51

Sylvester, who is in a public office, and as ignorant as an
Eton schoolboy, does not know Cloisonne from Satsuma.)
The matter was a good deal discussed in our circle, and I
think most of the critics ultimately came to agree that the
misunderstanding was somehow connected with the " whitey-
brown paper" which I had used for my study. It was as
little " whitey-brown," indeed, as I am myself, — being, in
fact, one of William Morris's most choice compositions ; but
there is no accounting for tastes : and our friends are so
constitutionally inaccurate that when I proved conclusively
that it was not, and could not be, "whitey-brown," they
shamelessly retorted that I would not venture to deny that
it was at least " dirty green." These sophistries are as
transparent as Mr Gladstone's, and do not require to be
refuted. The paper, I may mention, has been much admired
by Mr Pater, who was good enough to suggest that it had
much of the modest reserve and chaste insipidity of his own
style. With the blinds down and a pair of wax lilies in the
jar (it is only the wax ones that are good all the year round,
and you could not indeed tell them from Rossetti's), its
studious gravity inclines the mind to serious reflection ; and
the silence which so often falls upon the select society which
meets there of a Sunday afternoon has been attributed to its
delicate but incisive condemnation of " startling effects." At
all events, the boisterous spirits of the barbarians are un-
known in that vestal chamber, — that temple of more than
virginal reserve.

It was perhaps as well that we parted. Evadne (Polly
was her own name, but she became Evadne — out of the old
English play — after we were engaged) never could conquer
her inclination to yawn. A girl who turned her back on
Madox Brown, and fell asleep when we were reading Mr
Pater's articles in Macmillan, was obviously out of place in
a community like ours. Her language, it is true, was un-
conventional ; but the unconventionality of rude health and
spirits has nothing in common with the unconventionality that
has been studiously prepared and anxiously rehearsed. The
natural gaiety of the untutored savage cannot compare — for

52 AUTUMN IN ARCADY :

moral value — with the serenity that is attained by constant,
and it may be painful, experiments on the emotions, and
which indeed is closely akin to tears. The truth is, I could
make nothing of the girl. Her hair was brown, abundant, and
curly ; and she threw it out of her eyes as a Shetland pony
does its mane. She was never pensive, never languid. I
could not detect, in sparkling eye or ruddy lip, the slightest
trace of ill-health. I looked in vain day after day for any
symptom of constitutional delicacy. Where were the lean
neck and pallid cheek which I had learned to love in the
works of the later Masters ? She could have no acquaintance,
it was clear, with the deep-seated dyspepsia which communi-
cates a chronic if somewhat angular charm to the Iphigenia of
Burne-Jones and the Mary Magdalene of Holman Hunt. I
tried hard to persuade her to put her curly hair in long plaits,
and let it hang down her back like the Japanese tea-girls, or
Rebecca at the Well ; but she declined with a laugh that was
barren of sympathy : she said it would ruin her in pomatum.
It was of course impossible for me, with my subdued and sen-
sitive tastes, to marry a robust girl ; but I hoped against hope.
It was possible, I argued, that sorrow, if not sickness, might
refine her. Something or other might prey upon her damask
cheek. But her good-humour was invincible. She defied the
green-eyed monster in either form, — she was as superior to
jaundice as to jealousy. We took her to see Mr Irving in
"Faust"; we gave her a dose of John Inglesant ; we put her
through a course of Robert Elsmere. I got a ticket for her to
the Ladies' Gallery on an Irish night. She attended a penny-
reading by Professor Plackie, and a lecture on " Shelley and
Water," when Mr Furnivall was in the chair.1 But the one
had as little effect on her as the other. She was none the
worse. She rose next morning as blithe as a lark, and as
busy as a bee ; and we could hear her humming the Hunts-
man's Chorus to herself while she was putting on her habit.

1 This must be a mistake, for Mr Rossetti's lecture on " Shelley and
the Element of Water, Part I.," was not delivered to the Shelley Society
till later on. — S.

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 53

I have been able by long practice to curb the native irritability
of genius ; it is bad form, of course, to show any trace of the
Old Adam who turned upon Eve when the apple disagreed
with him ; but I confess I was vexed. Here was a girl who
was capable, I had fondly believed, of better things. She had
been fortunate enough to interest me, and on certain conditions
I was willing to take her in hand. But she must have known
that unless these conditions were strictly observed, I would no
more think of marrying her than I would think of marrying a
milkmaid. The conditions were not observed. No tragic
shadow dulled her eye or paled her cheek. Her flush was not
hectic, nor eloquent with the pathos of rapid decline. She
sang like a bird, and there was as little of Wagner in her
songs (which were even comic occasionally) as in the songs of
a thrush. She did not smile dreamily like Cleopatra in her
barge, nor drearily like Mariana in the Moated Grange, — she
positively laughed; and, with the profane vulgar, her laugh
was as infectious as fever. I have no wish to exaggerate, —
poor thing, it is all over with her now ; but I believe that I am
within the mark when I say — can I write the words? — that
she actually became stouter during the period of our intimacy.
I felt it a good deal, I admit. When I had thrown her
over (or was it the other way?) I began to ask myself, as I
sometimes do in moments of uncritical despondency, whether
the game was worth the candle? (I put it to myself in
French, but translate it for the benefit of the Foreign Office
clerks.) Was renunciation for a noble end a virtue, or was
it not ? Was I to give up Polly or the Japanese Jar ? Was
I to allow myself to be dragged down from the serene seat
above the thunder to which I had clambered with labour and
difficulty, for the sake of a woman who (unlike Mr Campbell
Bannerman) had not found, and did not apparently wish to
find, salvation? The temptation was only momentary; the
higher nature asserted itself. " Get thee behind me, Polly ! "
I said, not with the calmness of despair, but with the gentle
superiority of the criticism in the Parthenon, and forthwith
sat down to write an essay On the Artistic Repression of the
Domestic Affections for the Hobby-Horse. (The Century Guild

54 AUTUMN IN ARCADY :

Hobby-Horse, published quarterly, price 25. 6d.) I ceased to
call her Evadne, — the Evadne I had created was dead and
buried ; and I relieved my feelings by calling her " Polly."
But as the sonnets that I addressed to Evadne may one day
see the light — the sonnet is my favourite form, and though
the Being to whom they were addressed has proved unfaith-
ful, they are too good to be lost — I shall burn her photograph
instead, and the altar shall be heaped with pot-pourri and
lighted with a billet-doux.

The Chief, to do him justice, was kindness itself. " Come
down with us to Cairnbana, Professor, and we shall find
medicine for the mind diseased. The Highland moon and
the Highland moor are hardly up to the mark of the New
Gallery, I grant you ; but we have a sweet oblivious antidote
in these parts which has been found efficacious in many
difficult cases."

I learned afterwards that this was a sample of what is known
as Scotch " wut," — a very inferior brand to the English ; but,
poor fellow, he meant well. " Don't you believe anything they
tell you about Scotland," he continued, in the same vein, when
I asked him afterwards at Cairnbana if it was true that his
countrymen, as was alleged, could only joke " with deeficulty."
" They say it takes a surgical operation," he replied, " to get
a joke into a Scotsman's head ; and when it is an English
joke," he added grimly, " I am not surprised. Now, in Eng-
land, they would call this mild morning mist rain, and it might
probably wet them. That's how they explain Bannockburn, my
lad, — they couldn't stand the Scotch weather. But we, — we
never fash our heads about a bit drizzle."

It was coming down bucketfuls while he stood beside me,
— bareheaded and barelegged, a mature Apollo. He was cer-
tainly a splendid specimen of the primeval savage, — as much
a product of the soil as the deer-hound at his feet ; and while
he shook his blond curls at the black thunder-cloud overhead,
he might have been taken by an itinerant photographer for
Ajax defying the lightning. I looked at him (from under my
umbrella — the symbol of civilisation) with a mingled feeling
of admiration and pity, — the feeling Columbus may have ex-

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 55

perienced when he landed on the New World, and beheld a
Red Indian in his war-paint for the first time.

But even while we stood there the cloud moved past and
the fog lifted. We were on the terrace above Cairnbana (for
the house, to shelter it from winter storm, lies in the hollow),
and it fairly took away my breath. There were the sandhills
below us, through which the rabbits were scudding. The
snowy sand, as it advanced, had been partly overgrown by
grey-green bent; and both — the white sand and the grey
bent — were drawn with almost startling emphasis across a
sea blue as indigo. Then along the horizon, phantom islands
rose out of the Atlantic, — the farthest Hebrides ! While
right before us — close at hand, as it seemed — stretched the
mighty range of the Coolins — with Skye, and Rum, and Eigg,
and Canna — round to the point of Ardnamurchan on the
south, and on the north to the great mountains of Ross.
The mist was trailing along their flanks, surging out of their
corries ; but the sun had already gained the day, and the air
everywhere was full of light.

" That beats Ruskin ! " the Chief exclaimed victoriously,
slapping me on the back with his open palm, while he gave
the war-whoop of his clan. The cordiality — let me say in
passing — if well-meant, was ill-timed. The hug of a bear —
a blow from the battle-axe of the Bruce — would have been
borne with greater composure by our unclothed and unlettered
ancestors than this alarming demonstration of regard from a
Highland Hercules by the not altogether unknown represen-
tative of the later culture. These Celtic lairds, indeed, do
not understand the amenities of modern life any better than
their black cattle do. I speak from sorrowful experience, —
I, too, have been in Arcadia. There is a neighbouring pro-
prietor with whom I shook hands on landing from the Clans-
man (I need hardly add that I have avoided him ever since).
He took my hand in his hairy paw, and squeezed it till I
could have roared. " You do not look ferry well," the brute
said, as tears of rage and pain came into my eyes. "You
will take a glass of Talisker, — it is not pad, though Long
Shon is petter."

56 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

" That beats Ruskin ! " Beats Ruskin ? It was too much.
I had to go and lie down.

II.

SOMETIMES after a pouring wet day we have a dance in the
servants' hall; we get on very well with the pretty milk-
maids and demure daughters of water-bailiff or gamekeeper,
when the pipes are sent outside. The native music, of which
more hereafter, is all that could be desired — at a distance.
The piper of Glengarry, strutting up and down the terrace
below the open window, with tartan kilt and flying ribbons,
excites the emulation of the bubbly-jock to such a degree
that their united efforts nearly blow our heads off; whereas
a cheerful coronach or a pensive pibroch — with the loch be-
tween us — affects me deeply, and on more than one occasion,
indeed, has moved me to tears. These innocent festivities
are presided over by the cook, a buxom dame, who acts as
master of the ceremonies, and introduces us to our partners.
It is like a leaf out of the Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich ; and
had there been a Philip among us, he might have searched
the whole country-side —

" Knoydart, Croydart, Moidart, Morar, and Ardnamurchan "-

for a prettier Katie than we can boast. Unfortunately there
is a gigantic Angus or Alister of native breed to whom she
is said to be engaged. He is red-bearded and wild-eyed, —
an altogether objectionable sweetheart, I should have sup-
posed ; yet, curiously enough, she seems to prefer his coarse
homespun to the velveteen knickerbockers of the south. I
tried a little mild flirting at first (a few distant endearments);
but I did not prosecute it far : there was a threatening " Wha
daur meddle wi' me ? " air about the fellow which I did not
relish ; and after he had presented her with a parcel of
(highly perfumed) peppermints from the " merchant's " at
Balmacrapple, I felt that further pursuit was hopeless. Had
Alister of the Red Beard been one of the fair Katie's suitors,

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 57

I am doubtful if Philip would have been permitted to carry
her off; for he was in every sense an ugly customer.

After the dance we go with the Chief to his den, where,
as the night advances, he bitterly denounces the Saxon.
English gold — this is the burden of his complaint — had de-
moralised the incorruptible Celt. The stout clansmen of
Clan Ranald had been shipped across the water. The house
of Glengarry, which we had seen yesterday from the road,
was a roofless ruin. Where were the brave gentlemen who
had stood by their Prince upon Loch Ailort ? Where were
their sons and their grandsons ? Not one remained except
himself — save himself not one. His only neighbours were
an Irish peer and an Irish whisky-dealer. The peer was
a penurious Radical who had married a dairymaid ; and
the whisky-dealer — why, the whisky-dealer brought his own
whisky with him. " Irish whisky ! " exclaimed the Chief,
in a tone of deep disgust, as if the discontent of the crofters
was fully accounted for. " Hear to them now ! " he added,
pushing back the door which led into the kitchen passage.

The dancing had ceased, and a low monotonous wail
sounded through the hall. It was a song in Gaelic set to
a Gaelic air. The drone of the bagpipe was heard outside,
but — as if subdued by the hopeless sadness of the song — all
its harshness was banished. The Chief gave me the words
afterwards ; and I venture to translate them for the sake
of the illiterate Lowlander, — two or three of the best lines,
however, being by another — an unknown — hand : —

THE CANADIAN CROFTER'S BOAT-SONG.

Listen to me, as when ye heard our father

Sing long ago of other distant shores ;
Listen to me, and then in chorus gather

All your deep voices, as ye dip your oars : —

" Where Scuir-na-Gillean braves the wind and rain,
And round Ben More the mad Atlantic raves ;

Where grey lona's immemorial fane
Keeps solemn ward by unremembered graves ; —

58 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

" No more our voices echo through the valley,
The stag unchallenged roams across the glen;

No more around Clan Ranald's banner rally
The fairest women and the bravest men.

" No more the lovers on the leas are meeting,
No more the children paddle in the stream ;

We hear no more the pibroch's kindly greeting,
Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam.

" From the lone shieling on the misty island
Mountains divide us and a world of seas ;

But still the heart is true, the heart is Highland,
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.

" Green are the woods that gird the mighty river,
And green the meadows sloping to the strand ;

But we have left our native hills for ever, —
But we are exiles from our father's land."

This is pretty; but, to tell the truth, Highland singing is
not much to my taste. It is mainly produced through the
nose, and may be held to represent the drone of the bagpipe
in a minor key. Ossian was all very well for the barelegged
barbarians to whom his archaic minstrelsy was addressed ;
but much as I admire the author of Humphry Clinker (for
a more than Swiftian sincerity and candour, which I find
nowhere else now, except perhaps in my friend Mr Sym-
monds' Benvenuto Cellini\ I cannot truthfully aver that
" when I enter our landlord's hall, I look for the suspended
harp of the divine bard, and listen in hopes of hearing the
aerial sound of his respected spirit"

III.

I HAVE often wished that I was a Greek, and I have some-
times thought of buying a Greek island. I might possibly
have entered into negotiations for Cyprus had I not been
anticipated by Lord Beaconsfield. But even in the Greek

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 59

Islands " Pan is dead," whereas among the islands of the
Western Sea, " the fair humanities of old religion," the be-
nignant or malignant beings of the popular mythology, have
not been disturbed. The melancholy ocean is favourable to
the growth of fable, and miracle dies hard among the hills.
Had Mr David MacBrayne, the good genius of the Hebrides,
lived a few centuries earlier, he would long ago have had
a place in Walhalla beside Odin and Balder ; and the exploits
of this Lord of Many Waters, this potent Neptune whose
sceptre swept the Northern seas, would still have been the
theme of song and story. I was lying on the margin of the
bent, like Lady of the Mere, " sole sitting by the shores of old
Romance," waiting for the boat. There was a slight haze on
the water (which was smooth as glass), though the highest
peak of Rum penetrated into an unclouded heaven, and
reflected the Atlantic sunset beyond. The boys had gone
to shoot flappers at the mouth of the Lora, where the fresh
water twice a-day mingles with the salt. There was a great
drowsiness upon sea and land, — the clamour of the gulls had
ceased, and even the oyster-catchers were mute. Then a
cry, or rather a wail — a strange, uncanny, and unearthly wail
— rose from the middle of the bay. It died away. Then
it was repeated— nearer at hand each time — until it seemed
to come from below my very feet. What happened next I
do not precisely know : the drowsiness of the day was in-
fectious ; in that soft air Oblivion scattereth her poppies. I
was barely awake, it might be, and yet I did not dream. I
saw through the mist a gleam of golden hair, and then, in a
ravishing whisper that thrilled me to the marrow, I heard
my own name, — "Gabriel — Dante — Dobbs." The short and
the long of it was, that in an incredibly brief space of time I
found myself in confidential conversation with — a mermaid !
She did not enter into particulars ; but from an incidental
allusion to Sir John M'N — 11, I understood that she was the
Colonsay siren. She knew Leyden's ballad by heart, and
warbled a few of the lines : —

" On Jura's heath how sweetly swell

The murmurs of the mountain bee ! "

60 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

Her voice was still clear and flute-like, though some of the
upper notes were rather worn, — at which, indeed, I was not
surprised, for she must have been a good deal older than
Patti. But — old or young — her adorable beauty had not
suffered ; for seductive charm and stealthy grace she was still
peerless, — peerless as the " sea-maid " of Shakespeare, or the
Mary Stuart of Froude. SHe wore a loose jacket of some
gauzy material, which did not conceal the native grace of a
figure that had not been injured by tight-lacing ; and through
her golden hair a chain of pearls was strung. Although she
assured me more than once during our brief interview that
her intentions were strictly honourable, I had an uneasy sus-
picion from the outset that something was wrong ; and her
invitation to accompany her home — I think she mentioned
afternoon tea — was politely, if reluctantly, declined. I say
" reluctantly," for the truth is I was on the point of yielding
when, happening to glance behind me, I beheld an enormous
sea-horse or walrus — in fact, there was more than one — a
dozen at least — getting between me and the land. The truth
flashed upon me. I was the victim of a base conspiracy.
These monsters were in her pay. She had retained them
at so much a tusk ; and their tusks were bigger than the
biggest in Mr Rider Haggard's collection. I tried to shout
for aid, but my lips were glued. I tried to rise, but my limbs
refused to move. The malign enchantment had done its
work ; and like Thomas the Rhymer and the Young Tamlane
and Bonny Kilmeny, I was about to bid farewell to the sweet
upper air and the wholesome sunshine during the rest of
Lord Salisbury's administration. If I returned at all (which
was doubtful), it would be seven years hence — for they have
a Septennial Act as we have — to find Mr Gladstone in office
and a changed world. Acutely conscious of what was in
store for me, I braced myself up for one supreme effort, and
with a despairing shriek threw my stick at her head. She
ducked like a diver before the shot reached her, and with
one flap of her tail (which now showed itself for the first time
— I had begun, indeed, to fancy that, to oblige Mr Darwin,
the tail had been discontinued), was out of sight. And

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 6l

I , where was I ? The mist had lifted, the boys had

landed, and Black John was bending over me with a grin.

IV.

TIME passed placidly away. The barbarians were hospit-
able and friendly. They listened to my criticism of life with
respect and appreciation ; the close attention and sustained
interest of one old man particularly pleased me. Though it
afterwards appeared that he was stone-deaf, and understood
no English, the expression of his nose as he fumbled with his
snuff-box is still pleasant in the retrospect. There was a
juiciness, indeed, about the old fellow which reminded me of
Romney and Raeburn at their best, though in his case it was
possibly to be attributed to an unlimited supply of peat-smoke
and whisky. To the educated eye of the artist, however, the
hovels of the peasantry were even more precious than their
inhabitants, — the dirt and squalor and dismal darkness of
most of these " cottage interiors " being positively Rembrandt-
esque. Altogether we got on very well. Respect rapidly
ripened into affection. I was always ready to aid them with
— my advice ; and the impression that I was a missionary who
had been despatched by Providence to assist them in resisting
the Saxon, and recovering their tribal rights, was confirmed by
more than one incident. I am one of the artists in whom the
mimetic faculty is strong, and I had no difficulty in assuming
the character that had been assigned to me. I had always
been drawn to St Columba ; and when, at a meeting of the
local Land League, I was publicly identified with " the lumi-
nary of the Caledonian regions from whence roving clans and
savage barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the
blessings of religion," I thanked them (on the top of a barrel)
from the bottom of my heart. The speaker who succeeded
me proposed that I should stand for the county, and the pro-
posal was cordially adopted, — the members present resolving
themselves into a committee to secure my return. I thanked
them again from the bottom of my heart, but not from the

62 AUTUMN IN ARCADY :

top of the barrel, — the unpretentious platform (an old whisky-
cask) having given way with the previous speaker, who, during
a vigorous peroration on Sheriff Ivory, had disappeared into
its interior, and whose absence, in the enthusiasm of the
moment, had not been noticed. The pipes, which had been
perambulating outside, were now brought in ; and we had
long speeches in Gaelic, and after each resolution a fresh jug
of whisky-toddy, — though most of them preferred to take it
" neat " ; and we heard a good deal about the original St
Columba, and how he had blessed the land and the loch, and
how he had assured them that land and loch would belong to
them and to their children for ever, and that they would get
bread from the one and Salmo ferox from the other. It was
long past midnight before we parted, and we shook hands
all round, and the Chief declared that it had been a great day
for Ardnamurchan — "a great day whatever" — and advised
them to go home quietly.

I suppose they did so ; though I had been an hour in bed
before the bray of the bagpipes and the clamour of angry
voices had died away up the glen. Cunning as foxes, simple
as children, credulous as savages, idle as monkeys, obstinate as
mules — one might exhaust the whole adjectives of the lan-
guage— what can be made of these charming and provoking
people ? How can they be saved from themselves, and from
the charlatans who profess to be their friends? It is a
problem which political economy has failed to solve, — will
the gospel of sweetness and light prove equally helpless ? We
shall see — at the next election.

It was a lovely moonlit night ; and Cairnbana, which, like
the field where Arthur fought his last battle, lies between
two seas, has the benefit of the moonlight upon both. It
travels from one to the other : when high in heaven it touched
with a wan brightness the lonely bays of Loch Lora ; now in
the last watch of night it follows the long heave of the
Atlantic, and moves with the moving waters. I am just
closing my eyes when a phantom bark (my window commands
all the western horizon) passes across the band of light. What
bark is this which, as the night wanes, steals out of the dark-

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 63

ness ? On what errand is it bound ? Is it the spectre-bark of
Death and Life-in-Death ? Is it the Flying Dutchman? I
am still contemplating the problem, which becomes momently
more intricate and insoluble, when through the murmur of
Wagner's ghostly music a clear soprano voice defines itself
with growing insistence, — "Please, sir, breakfast is on the
table ! "

V.

WE stroll up before dinner to meet the postman, who passes
three days a-week ; and after he is gone we sit on the parapet
of the bridge over the Lora to read our letters. The Chief
has a host of correspondents, from Skye crofters to Cabinet
Ministers, from Indian proconsuls to the county police.
Whether a State secret is more entertaining than the gossip
of the village it is hard to say ; in great things and in small,
men are wonderfully alike. The Chancellor of the Exchequer,
who is staying with the M'Leods, has set his heart upon a
skye-terrier ; Lord John up at Meuble wants to know if we
have any spare cartridges ; would the Chief be good enough
to oblige Miss Skinflint, who has twisted her ankle and keeps
a birthday-book, with his autograph and a sheet of sticking-
plaster? Of these and similar inquiries the name is legion.
Yesterday, however, there was only a single letter, — a long
one, it proved, such as they used to write before Rowland
Hill discovered that a letter could go for a penny. " He's a
man worth knowing," the Chief explained, as he opened the
envelope, — " not your style at all, Dobbs ; on the contrary,
life's fu' o' sariousness to him — he just never can get eneuch
o' fechtin'. He thinks we have been going to the dogs ever
since Mary was beheaded, and that the last statesman of
repute was Guy Fawkes. But he writes well — at least he
used to do so before he took to the dismal science. Let's
hear what he says." And we all gathered round while he
read : —

" It seems to me, Mac, that we are getting very tired of
each other. Our friends bore us more than they used to do.

64 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

Society as such has become blase. We are wearied to death
by what our grandfathers would have considered the keenest
enjoyment. They used to begin to dine about two o'clock in
the afternoon, and they kept it up till midnight. Those who
were able to leave the table went to bed for a few hours, and
were hard at work by daybreak, as fresh as larks or daisies.
Now we dine at eight, hurry through a few French dishes, and
then rush away as if we had suddenly discovered that our hosts
were in quarantine, and their house infected by the plague.
We have no leisure to be agreeable, and in the hubbub the
capacity for enjoyment appears to be leaving us. There are
some wits among us still, but no one cares to listen to their
bons-mots ; and the gay wisdom of Sydney Smith himself
would fall quite flat in circles where a rude practical joke is
treated with imbecile laughter. People have been brought
close together by railways, and steamers, and telegraphs, and
morning and evening newspapers ; and yet each man seems to
get more isolated. The old classic friendships have died out.
There is little real intimacy, for we cannot cultivate confidential
relations with a mob. Then our scholars — our hard laborious
workers — are as scarce as our wits ; and they have no audience
who care to listen to them. The writers of books have become
the pensioners of Mr Mudie ; and Mr Mudie cannot afford to
invest in a class of books which, though of permanent value,
are neither light nor flashy nor sensational. So, as the
Laureate says, * Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers ' ; and
thus it happens that the smart young men and women, who
read as much in each day's paper as their solid grandfathers
and grandmothers read in a month, are yet essentially unin-
formed. The mind is frittered away on trifles which leave
no abiding impression. Moralists abuse our morals ; but our
intellectual frivolity is worse than our moral. What we hear and
read is not assimilated, — running off our minds as water off
a duck's back. A nation educated in this fashion — a frothy,
flighty, unsocial democracy, demoralised by light literature
and greedy for change — becomes dangerous to itself and to
its neighbours. It loses the steadfastness which belongs to
old-fashioned habit, to immemorial tradition, as well as to

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 65

real knowledge. Unless it can pull itself up in time, it is on
the road to ruin, and will one day topple over into the abyss.

" Social reform, however, is a grave matter ; and you know,
Mac, that I do not care to pose as a social reformer. It is
not in my line. I have no vocation for fighting with beasts
at Ephesus. If I get furious at times at the crass folly of
official mankind, I keep my feelings as far as possible to
myself. When I hear eminent men argue that children are
better in a workhouse school than running about the fields,
I simply grind my teeth (such of them as are left). When
I hear eminent men maintain that, as malignant smallpox is
a ' home-disease ' (a kind of domestic pet, let us say), no pre-
cautions should be taken against its importation from foreign
parts, I appeal mutely to the indignant gods. When I am
told that So-and-so and So-and-so and So-and-so are the
greatest statesmen and poets and actors that the world has
ever seen, I 'jouk and let the jaw gae by.' Why should I
interpose ? It will be all the same a hundred years hence.
The popular idols of 1888 will be mere scarecrows before the
century is out ; but in the meantime, who can close the flood-
gates of folly ? What is Mrs Partington against the Atlantic ?
But do not misunderstand me, Mac. Though a fatalist, and
possibly an Epicurean (in the philosophical sense, of course),
I am bound to own that I admire that admirable woman. I
could not become a Mrs Partington myself; yet — from a high,
abstract, ideal standpoint — I incline to hold that she has been
scurvily treated. The magnanimous qualities of a really heroic
nature have not been sufficiently recognised. The woman who
could address herself with invincible industry to sweep out
the Atlantic must have been a fine specimen of her sex.
Like the British army, she did not know when she was beaten.
It is because they do not know when they are beaten that
British soldiers win in the end, — and why not Mrs Parting-
ton ? She is the typical Englishman — Shakespeare's English-
man— the Englishman before he had been enfeebled by cheap
newspapers and sweet reasonableness. Thus I should be in-
clined to include Mrs Partington in that catalogue of the ten
most eminent women of the world, from Eve to Mrs Josephine

VOL. II. E

66 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

Butler, which an evening journal is so anxious to obtain.
With the exception of Semiramis and Joan of Arc, all the
most eminent women of the world, I observe, appear to be
our contemporaries; but Mrs Partington, whose obstinate
heroism has seldom been matched, is not included in any
of the lists that have been returned. It may be said that
she failed ; but the merit of an action does not depend on
its success. Her methods may have been faulty, — the Dutch
dykes possibly may be better adapted for the purpose than
her mop ; but how often did Watt try his hand at the steam-
engine before he got it to go ? Nor with the information at
present available can it be positively asserted that she did
fail. It has been assumed somewhat hastily that the Atlantic
was victorious ; but full details have not been forwarded ; and
we know, in point of fact, that the Atlantic ultimately retired,
— whether intimidated by the undaunted woman's broom, or
for other reasons, does not appear. The more we consider
the matter, indeed, the more will we be inclined to conclude
that in this instance Sydney Smith was not true to his own
admirable common-sense. He might have disapproved of Mrs
Partington's attitude, but he need not have held her up to
popular ridicule; and when he did so, he was guilty of an
offence against the clear and nervous logic of which he was
a master. He used her, in short, as a sophist or a rhetorician
might have used her. When he observes, however, later on,
Every man knows that he must keep down his feelings, and
witness the spectacle of triumphant folly and tyranny (qualified
as the observation is by the proviso, A few scraps of victory
are thrown to the wise and just in the long battle of life\ we
feel that Sydney is himself again, — a man of admirable temper
and candour, whose practical philosophy was as modest as it
was genuine.

" * Every man knows that he must keep down his feelings,
and witness the spectacle of triumphant folly and tyranny.'
It is fortunate or unfortunate (as the case may be) that we
cannot always practise what we preach. I had for some time
been finding the effort to keep down my feelings (as well as
to hold my tongue) attended with growing difficulty. Why

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 67

are people so exasperating? You would fancy that a fool
would be anxious to conceal his folly ; but it is not so. It
would really appear as if he were careful to parade it ; and
the diseased craving for publicity is possibly a symptom of
the complaint. I was a member of divers select societies,
literary and scientific, and I used to attend pretty regularly
at first ; but I quickly discovered that folly was not confined
to the masses. The twaddle that was talked by Colonel Mac-
Blethers at the Harmonic, and by Professor Stodger at the
Helvetic, was fully as tedious as the twaddle outside. So I
sent in my resignation, which — there being shoals of candi-
dates— was at once accepted. Then I ceased to dine out. I
had met the same people night after night for months, and
made myself ill with the same dishes. My digestion, it may
be, is not so good as it once was ; but I connect my indis-
position for society with moral rather than physical causes.
I am a bachelor, and the young women of the house were
generally intrusted to my charge. They used to be bright
and lively, and inclined to flirt ; but now, unless you know
something about conic sections, or the multiplication table,
or the professor's lectures on pre-Adamite literature, you have
no chance with them. Not that they know much more than
you do ; and, spite of conic sections and pre-Adamite litera-
ture, some of them are quite nice, — sweet girl-graduates who
will never take a degree, and who are neither prudes nor
proctors. But — I must make the confession whatever it
costs, whatever the consequences may be — if there is one
girl I detest more than another, it is Matilda Black. The
fate, the evil fortune, that has dogged our family for genera-
tions (see The House of the Seven Gables) is personified
in Matilda Black. Whenever I meet her on the stairs, I
know instinctively what is in store for me. A tragic at-
traction draws us together; and I could lay any odds that
the hostess will remark, with an idiotic simper, before I
have got to the rug — * Mr Green, you will take in Matilda ? '
Heavens ! — take her in ! — you might as well attempt to take
Sir Henry Hawkins in. ' A low voice is an excellent thing
in woman.' But Matilda's voice ! — it goes through you like

68 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

a knife, it rasps you like a saw. You hear it across the
street. Her softest whisper is trumpet-tongued ; and when
she informs you (for instance) in the closest confidence that
Mrs A. (at the other end of the table) is rather carrying on
with Major B., or that Mrs C. is taking more champagne than
is prudent, every word is distinctly audible to the maids who
are tittering in the lobby.

" So, as I have said, I gave up dining out ; and as I was
always in danger of coming in contact with one or other of
Professor Plackie's West -End friends, I have moved my
household gods to the Old Town. You will be interested to
know that I occupy the house occupied by Francis Horner
when he was visited by Sydney Smith. ' He lives very high
up in Gordon's Court, and thinks a good deal about man-
kind.' I live very high up too ; and if I think a good deal
about mankind, I cannot say that my reflections are par-
ticularly agreeable. Though it is the middle of July, the
wind is from the east ; and when the wind is from the east
I hear, or fancy that I hear, Matilda's voice across the Nor'
Loch ; and old MacBlethers, who proposed me for the Har-
monic, has marked me down again, as a keeper marks a
wounded bird. After the venerable colonel has toiled up six
pairs of stairs on his gouty old legs (and I can identify him
by his wheeze long before he comes in sight), I have not
courage to tell the girl to say that I am particularly engaged.
Consequently he is admitted, and sits with me (and on me)
most of the afternoon. So few people are in town, he remarks
cordially, that those who are left should draw together. There
shall be one fewer to-morrow, I inwardly protest, as, seized
by a sort of St Vitus' dance, I listen with growing irritation
to his wheezy platitudes; and, whenever he leaves, I begin,
like Silvio Pellico, to plan how I am to escape. There are
havens of rest which MacBlethers does not trouble, — valleys
of Avilion to which even Matilda's voice cannot penetrate.
Am I chained like a galley-slave to the oar ? Why not take
a holiday as the others are doing ? That sweet girl with the
blue eyes and a liking for Longfellow is ducking her little
sisters at Largs; the Keeper writes that there are lots of

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 69

flappers in the river, and that the trout are rising freely on
the loch; we have been advised by the Oban Times that
the dismal weather of the east coast is strictly local, and that
the sun has been shining without stint since early in May on
western moor and glen. So the volume at which I am work-
ing is pitched aside. Guy Fawkes has waited so long for
justice, that he can afford to wait a little longer. The tackle
is seen to, the portmanteaus packed, the rods strapped, and I
leave by the night mail. As I drive along Princes Street,
I observe MacBlethers in amicable conversation with the
porter who speaks Gaelic at the corner of Castle Street ; and
it is not until the train has crawled slowly up the pass above
Ardvoirlich, and the dawn has flushed the sky over Etive
— not until I have ceased to confuse Matilda's voice, in a
disturbed and feverish dream, with the scream of the steam-
whistle — that I feel safe. By the time the Fusilier has
rounded the Ardnamurchan Point, my town-bred troubles
have vanished with the mist. I begin to contemplate the
feasibility of founding a school of political economy from
which the ' dismal ' element shall be entirely excluded.
And I mean to look you up, Mac, in the course of a day
or two, to discuss the ' preleeminaries.' For, as it happens,
we are near neighbours, — Malloch, where I have built a
wooden shanty, which is only accessible, I find, during an
exceptionally dry summer, being within easy reach of you, —
when you have once mounted an inaccessible precipice and
crossed an unfathomable bog. By the way, Mac, has any-
thing been heard in these parts of a ridiculous creature called

Dobbs ?"

The Chief drew himself up with a jerk that nearly sent
him over the bridge into the whirlpool where the salmon lie
before they leap the fall. There was a general titter, and
a rush to the house; the dinner-bell was rung vindictively
by a frantic domestic ; and (as diplomatists write) " the in-
cident terminated." I may say truly that, apart from any
personal feeling, I regretted the interruption : for I know
there was something on the last page about the girl with the
blue eyes and the liking for Longfellow ; and I should have

7o AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

been pleased to ascertain whether she was still ducking her
little sisters at Largs. Polly is the eldest of a large family ;
I have reason to fear that she cares a deal more for Long-
fellow than for Swinburne or Rossetti ; and her eyes are blue,
sea-blue, except when I have had to make them brown or
black to suit the rhyme. Polly ? O, my prophetic soul !

VI.

I QUITE agree with Mr Ruskin that field-sports are demoral-
ising. What is worse, they spoil anything like rational con-
versation. At St Andrews, for instance, I might as well
belong to a Trappist community; the Philistines of the Links
speak a foreign tongue ; for what meaning can an intelligent
being attach to "cleeks," and "niblics," and "putters," and
" long spoons," and " hittin' the grun'," and " tappin' the
ba' " ? Here, at Cairnbana, it is just as bad. The boys
— and they are nice boys too — can think of nothing but
loch trout and wild duck. There is a big Salmo ferox which
haunts their dreams. The brute lives at the bottom of the
loch, and only comes to the surface at intervals to play the
deuce with their tackle. In such a society, moreover, all the
ordinary relations of life are inverted. Ronald Macdonald,
the water-bailiff, is a much more important personage than the
Secretary for Scotland ; and the exploits of Angus Cameron,
the keeper — the deer he has stalked, the salmon he has
landed, the eagles he has shot — are spoken off with bated
breath. The most valued correspondent of the family (to
judge from the constant allusions that are made to him)
appears to be a gentleman of the name of Wells. Wells will
do this, — Wells will do that ; and mysterious packets arrive
from him by post. I fancy at first that he is connected some-
how with the Local University examinations, for which the
boys are presumed to be reading ; it turns out that he is an
Edinburgh tackle-maker. The discussions about " flies " are
interminable. Are Zulus killing ? Are Alexandras any good ?
What about the little Doctor ? The preparation of a " cast "

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 71

involves no end of care, — a great artist could not select the
colours for his palette with a graver sense of responsibility.
And the intelligence that a big fish has been seen in the
Salmon Pool (and whenever Donald wants a glass of whisky
on his way home, a big fish is sure to be about) drives the
whole household fairly frantic. If Mr Andrew Lang would
like to watch the formation of a myth, he ought to come to
Ardnamurchan. The day that a fish is lost, it weighs ten
pounds. Next day it rises to twenty. By the end of the
month it is as big as the Snapping Turtle of Alabama, — the
monster who " swallowed Langton Bennett, and digested
Rufus Dawes." The growth of the legend in the course of
ages is easily accounted for, when we remember how a salmon
quadruples his weight in a week. " They were telling me that
John had lost a big fish — ten punds they were saying." " It
was not less than twenty punds the fish that John lost — he was
fast for an hour and a quarter and a half, but he would not
move from the bottom, whatever John would do." " You will
have been hearing of the fish that John lost — I saw him
myself — he would weigh forty pound — forty pound and more
— he jumped clean over the linn, and never stopped till he
got to the sea. He was a fine fish."

We were on the loch on Monday. Loch Lora is certainly a
grand bit of water. The mountains round about are bleak
and bare, — at the far end, where the goats look down at us
through the mist, the precipices are wellnigh inaccessible.
The islands, however, where we lunched, are finely wooded,
— gaunt Scotch firs rising from banks of heather as high as
our heads. Here, and on all the lochans round about, the
shores are green with the great Osmunda regalis — the Royal
Fern. There were hundreds of gulls overhead — screaming at
us out of the sky ; and we saw a bird that is hardly, they tell
me, to be seen elsewhere in Scotland — the black-throated
Diver. The young ones had left the nest — but we could not
distinguish them ; we only knew by the mother's warning cry
— strangely weird yet melodious — that they were somewhere
about.

I do not see the fun (apart from the moral considerations on

72 AUTUMN IN ARCADY :

which Mr Ruskin has so copiously enlarged) of fly-fishing.
The line has a bad habit of coming back in your face, and in
my own case the hooks were always catching in one or other
of the boatmen. They did not seem to like it, and after a
little I came to the conclusion that there were no fish in the
loch, and went ashore with a volume of Wordsworth. It was
a drowsy day ; there was hardly a ripple on the water ; and
I lay for a while on the bank, looking at the boat as it drifted
slowly past, and watching the boys who were casting as in-
dustriously as ever. They were good anglers, I daresay ; their
lines fell with surprising lightness ; and ever and again I saw
the line tighten, the rod bend, and after a brief conflict, John
would lean over the side with the landing-net in his hand, and
a cheer from Jack directed my attention to the fact that a fish
had been captured. The trout had begun to feed, they told
me afterwards ; and for half an hour the big fellows seemed as
hungry as hawks. " Won't you try it a bit ? " they shouted
cheerily ; but I only shook my head, and the boat drifted
away again. Then I opened my book (it opened curiously
enough at the page where the poet warns the shepherd never
to mix — his drink, I had written inadvertently — never to mix
his pleasure or his pride with sorrow of the meanest thing
that feels,— "But they don't feel," Jack retorted, when I
pointed the passage out to him on our way back, "they
rather like it,"—" And they ain't mean," Jim added) ; and
became so engrossed in its perusal that the outside world
faded from my vision, and I was only recalled from a delight-
ful dream of an enchanted palace, and an emaciated Princess,
by hearing voices close at hand. " I believe the Professor
has fallen asleep again, — by Jove ! what a guy the midges
have made him ! " It was too true. As the afternoon waned,
the infernal — I beg pardon — the infamous mosquitoes had
waxed lively and mischievous • and for some days thereafter I
could not look at myself in the glass without a shudder.

All the way home— and we had a long pull to the pier,
and a three-mile drive after leaving the loch — they talked of
nothing but fish. "Will you believe it, sir?" said Jim.
" I caught a three-pounder with a whole cast of flies in its

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 73

mouth that Jack lost last week ! " " But the strangest thing
happened that ever I heard of," Jack interrupted ; " when
we were trolling back, a small trout, not much more than
a minnow, took my tail-fly, and I was reeling in the line
leisurely, when — slap — a big fish went at him. The beggar
held on like grim death — it wasn't hooked, you understand —
till we had him in the landing-net. His teeth were fast in
the little beggar's belly, and we had to knock him on the
head before he'd let go. Did you ever hear of such a thing,
Donald ? " "I do not myself remember," Donald replied
deliberately, resting on his oar, and translating out of the
Gaelic as he went along ; " but Ronald here would be telling
me that when he was with Lord Lovat — the late Lord it
would be — as a gillie at Ach-na-Cloich — that is at the back
of Ben More, in Assynt — half-way up Glen Feochan — where
Angus Mackechan's grandfather had a fine croft — but the
oats were always eaten by the deer — it would be five-and-
twenty years now — perhaps thirty — ay, even more — there
was a big fosh " — and so the story, the point of which was
never reached, so far as I know, meandered along till we got
home.

When the trout were laid out at the front door they made a
grand show, and the boys were kind enough to insinuate —
they are good lads — that the capture of the biggest — a mag-
nificent three-pounder — was more or less due to my skill.
" That's the Professor's," they insisted. I did not feel called
upon to contradict them, — it would have been bad taste indeed
to tell their mother that they had been — fibbing. There were
thirty-two trout in all, and they weighed eighteen pounds. I
ate two of them at supper — as crisp and pink as salmon ; and
before going to bed, I was constrained to admit that Words-
worth was perhaps a trifle too particular, and that even Virtue
may become pedantic. It was possible besides, I reflected,
that English fresh-water fish are not so succulent as Scotch.
Or was it rather perhaps that the Lake poet had as little taste
for Lake-trout as Lachlan Maclachlan had for the forbidden
fruit ? " For my own part," the worthy piper is reported to
have said during his last illness, incensed at the thoughtless

74 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

and indeed unaccountable conduct of the pair who brought
death into this world and all our woe, and with a profound
sense of the unfairness of the punishment in his own case,—
" For my own part, minister, I do not care a tamn for
apples ! " l

"Poor old Wordsworth!" said the Chief, as he lighted
his candle ; " what a nightmare he must find Professor
Knight ! " 2

VII.

ANOTHER day we went to meet the steamer at Rhubana.
John was waiting for us with the boat at the Boat-house
Bay, — one of those splendid sandy bays — like a bow half-bent
— of which we have more than one at Cairnbana. The sun
was newly risen, and the phantom islands were repeated in
the unrippled water. A light land breeze, however, rose as
we embarked, and we glided silently before it. Outside the
jagged range of reef, the long Atlantic swell broke now and
again with a hoarse murmur ; but, inside, the peace and calm
and silence were absolute. Only the white gannets were
falling like bullets into the water. Near the Rhu there are
a hundred islands — a perfect network — haunted by seals and
ducks and gulls and mergansers ; and here we waited for the
steamer. We had a long time to wait. John, who has no
belief in the authenticity of Mr MacBrayne's printed time-
tables, was apt to bring us off hours before the boat was
due. " Sometimes she comes sooner, and sometimes she
comes earlier, and sometimes even before that," he would
reply oracularly, when closely cross-examined on the subject.
We lighted a fire with bits of drift-wood that Atlantic storms
had left among the rocks ; we boiled our tea and our eggs ;
and with tea and eggs and sardines and potted tongue and
oatmeal cakes, we breakfasted royally. It was speedily dis-
covered that rats abounded ; and Maco, the most sagacious of

1 Lachlan was Maclachlan of Maclachlan's piper, and well known in the
Maclachlan country about Ardgour and Ardnamurchan.— S.

But, Scotch joking apart, the Lake poet is the Professor's debtor.

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 75

Scotch fox-terriers, had a good time. By-and-bye the boys
had a dip in the cool sparkling water ; the round black faces
of the seals began to bob up when they found we meant
them no harm ; then we took a stroll through the island, and
found a merganser's nest in the thick coarse grass, with
thirteen eggs, and caught the bird herself before she had time
to rise. (We left her to look after her eggs, and next week
I hope we shall see her again, paddling along the shore, with
a dozen little sawbills in her wake.) The splendid Fusilier
was up to time, and we had taken the Parson on board
(the Parson had come all the way from the Midlands), and
were drifting away, when another boat, rowed by a crew of
lightly clad, sun-burnt girls, who sent it scudding through
the water, came alongside. A handkerchief was waved from
the steamer's deck ; a confused mass of rods and rugs and
Gladstone bags was thrown into the bow ; and a trig damsel
in deer-stalker hat and brilliant petticoat, escorted by a polite
mate, ran down the gangway. Our boat was already on the
move ; the others were busy with the sail ; but I could not
be mistaken. / would have known these boots anywhere. My
heart gave a tremendous thud. It was Polly herself.

VIII.

THE Parson was the best of company, and during his stay
the children nearly died of laughing. His stories of parsons,
in and out of the pulpit, were better than Dean Ramsay's ;
and his humorous expostulations with the Universe in general,
and his own ill-luck in particular, vastly amusing. His main
grievance, on which the changes were rung with infinite zest,
was closely connected with the man he had been appointed
to succeed. Our friend was the assistant and successor, and
did all the work ; but the bulk of the tithes went in the
meantime to the previous incumbent. There was an honour-
able understanding, he said, though it had not been reduced
to writing, that the old gentleman (who was over eighty)
would not live six months. But whenever the legal arrange-

76 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

ments had been completed, the octogenarian renewed his
youth. It was his clear duty to die; but, though in Holy
Orders, he persisted in living on with a pertinacity that even
in a layman would have been unbecoming. The contract, if
not express, was implied, but he had apparently taken ad-
vantage of a technical informality. He was immortal —
perennial — like the Wandering Jew or the discoverer of the
elixir vita. The question had occurred to our friend, and
he now submitted it for our consideration, — Would he be
justified, in the circumstances, in putting him to death? A
man who notoriously disregards the etiquette of his profession
is looked upon as a black sheep ; and black sheep commonly
come to a bad end. Had he manifested any true remorse or
sincere repentance, it might have been proper to remit the
penalty ; but, though in his dotage, he was as hearty as ever,
and even enjoyed, it was believed, the annoyance and incon-
venience of which he was the cause. His appetite was good,
his digestion perfect, and whenever he met his infuriated
successor he thanked God ostentatiously that, though eighty-
eight years old, he had never felt in better health. His
whole conduct, in short, was reprehensible in the extreme,
and the Chief did not hesitate to assure his friend that if the
miserable old impostor was suddenly removed, however sus-
picious the circumstances might be, he would refrain from
communicating with the Public Prosecutor.

We took the boat up to Bracora next Sunday and went to
the Catholic chapel.1 Maco went with us, and behaved him-

1 We had intended to go to Stornoway (if you wish to become a
genuine humourist, see that you pronounce it Sty-or-no-way) about this
time ; but the yacht was not ready. Day and night (and especially at
night, when, though more than fifty miles distant as the crow flies, they
stood out with magical distinctness) I had dreamt of these phantom
Islands in the west. If supernatural beings, fairer than dreams, haunted
the shore of the mainland, what might not be expected in the farthest
Hebrides? The Chiefs yacht had been riding at anchor in the
bay ; a score of kilted savages had been engaged in overhauling her for
months ; but, so far as we could discover, absolutely no progress had
been made. The policy of " masterly inactivity " is practised by the Celts
with entire success. They take to it as they take to whisky,— the taste
for alcohol and obstruction (Parliamentary or other) being born with

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 77

self like an enlightened Christian, — in spite of the shepherds'
collies who hung about the open door, and interrupted the
service by dismal howls and an occasional free fight. Like
their masters, it is only on Sundays they have a chance of
meeting ; the rest of the week they are looking after the sheep
on misty hillsides and among gloomy corries, where the croak
of a raven or the scream of an eagle serves only to intensify
the sense of absolute solitude. Catholicism abroad always
seems to me to be tawdry ; here it is as severely simple as
Calvinism ; and you can say your prayers before the homely
altar, as the Parson liberally remarked, without an uneasy
suspicion of being at a play. It is curious how tenaciously
the Celt has clung to the ancient faith, — John Knox's Refor-
mation did not cross the Great Glen for generations, and even
yet whole districts are Catholic. Some of us walked back
after service, and the talk — as we had the Priest and the
Parson with us — assumed, as was natural, a theological hue.
Here (as elsewhere among a pastoral people) it appeared, from
what the Chief told us, that the notions of a Divine govern-
ment were closely associated with, if not largely modified by,
the weather. Orthodoxy was rampant during a dry summer ;
a long and hard winter, with a touch of east wind, was favour-
able to the growth of heresy. The farmer who rails at " that
there Old Providence " who has taken his " missus," is not,
indeed, far removed from the Savage who bangs his god about
when rain does not come. Our Parson admitted that among
the Midland agricultural labourers, who formed the bulk of
his flock, similar feelings prevailed ; but then, too, among
them, as among Dr Jessop's people, there was a firm belief
in the fair dealing of a higher power. " There ain't no use
a-gainsayin' on it ; but somehow that there Old Providence

them. They scold now as the Homeric warriors scolded. They harangue
each other as their Ossianic ancestors harangued. We could hear them at
it from the shore. No nail could be driven, no rope could be spliced, no
patch of paint applied, without prolonged discussion. Saw or hammer in
hand, the rest would gather round the rival orators — the Gladstone and
Salisbury of the fray — and weigh gravely and with the utmost deliberation
the arguments adduced on either side. Meantime, of course, all work was
suspended ; and the run to Stornoway had to be postponed — sine die.

78 AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

hev been agen me all along, he hev ! Whoi, last year he
mos' spoilt my taters, and the year before that he kinder did
for my turnips, and now he's been and got hold of my missus.
But, I reckon, as there's One abev as'll put a stopper on ha
if 'a go too fur." They all allowed that this was excellent ;
(I thought of Keats's —

" He might not ; — No, though a primeval God,
The Sacred Seasons might not be disturbed ; ")

and it was followed by half-a-dozen others just as good.
There was, for instance, one of a factor in the low country
who had an evil reputation among the poorer tenants. " If
the deil disna get Jimmy Wabster," one of them exclaimed
with humorous vehemence, "there's nae use of a deil ava."
The story of the two little lads who were overheard discussing
some of the intricate and far-reaching conundrums which
philosophy has failed to solve, was also excellent. "What
did God make people for?" the smallest of the two theo-
logians inquired. "God made people to be good," his six-
year-old brother replied authoritatively ; " but He know'd they
wouldn't be."

I did not think it worth while to join in the discussion.
Divinity has always appeared to me to be a barren science ;
so long as we devote ourselves to the contemplation of the
Beautiful — to Oriental pottery, to Sevres, Wedgwood, and
Derby, to Aldines and Elzevirs, to lovely old bindings from
the libraries of Diane de Poictiers and Madame du Barry, to
first editions of Shelley, to Burton's Arabian Nights and
Villon's Ballades^ to engravings of Boucher's nymphs and
etchings from Greuze, to the glass of Murano and the wall-
papers of Mr Morris — we are on firm ground ; but theology !
politics ! morals ! metaphysics ! — bah ! — I would as soon think
of following a Will-o'-the-wisp into the Serbonian bog.

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 79

IX.

THAT night (or was it the night after?) we had a long talk
in the verandah while we watched the sunset. The sunsets
last summer came off punctually every evening after tea.
We took seats for them as we would have taken seats for the
play. " Now, ladies and gentlemen," the Chief would say, dis-
respectfully, " the performance is about to begin." We came
at last to be critical. We knew exactly how the amber sea
and the daffodil sky and the purple mountains of Rum and
the golden blaze of glory behind Scur-na-Gillean should look
at their best. Yet we were forced to own that the Great
Scene-Shifter was equal and more than equal to the occasion.
There were subtleties of colour, — elusive, intangible, evan-
escent as the Iris, — which the most daring and dashing
painter would have failed to capture. Old Mother Earth
was in one of her incalculable moods ; brimful of surprises ;
as whimsical as a girl in her teens. Custom could not stale
her variety, age could not quench her vivacity. We had
sometimes, indeed, a lurking suspicion that she was laughing
at us in her sleeve. The cloud-battalions would come up
arrayed for battle ; there would be a general scamper inside :
before we had time to get to the fireside the sun was out
again, and shining furiously in all directions, as we see him
on old sign-boards. One day the mercury would be at 80°
in the shade ; next day, when we had donned our lightest
summer jackets, it would fall to zero. Was it possible that
this extremely old lady could be poking fun at us ? It was
of an evening, perhaps, that her caprices were most marked.
The light, which had been playing wonderful tricks for an
hour or two, would fade away about eleven o'clock, and leave
us, as it seemed (save for stealthy flight of owl or rustling
wing of humming-bird moth in the veronica), with stillest
night ; and then, on a sudden, the whole heaven, the whole
sky to the zenith, would grow luminous again. There was
indeed no darkness to speak of. The twilight of sunset faded
insensibly into the twilight of sunrise. In that rare air — in

go AUTUMN IN ARCADY:

the radiance of perpetual day— we had out-soared, with Keats,
the shadow of our night. And then, as the music of Shelley's
words came back to us we had a glorified glimpse of Adonais
himself — his head resting upon his hand, his arm resting upon
his knee — gazing into the unfathomable sunset of an Atlantic
beyond our ken.

The Mount of Vision, however, is too high for permanent
occupation ; its air is too rare for mortals ; and we used to
come down to the common earth with a thud. " Please, sir,
here's black John " (or was it white John ? — Ion baun, she
said) "asking if you will be for going to the Loch to-mor-
row ? " Surely, surely : the ayes have it ; it is carried without
a division ; and the boys set about busking a new worm-fly
which they had found killing.

So we had no time for the discussion on which I invited
them to enter, — Mr Andrew Lang as Poet and Collector. I
ventured to observe — "Andrew has a very pretty knack of
saying pretty things prettily — but what does he know of Blue
China ? " — but nobody listened ; and indeed I find that there
is no opening for any really urbane criticism in a society
which has been demoralised by the cruel frankness of Pro-
fessor Huxley and the indelicate incisiveness of Mr Arthur
Balfour.

" Oh dear ! oh dear ! " said the Parson, looking kindly at
the lads, " what a splendid heritage is youth ! Lord Beacons-
field was right after all — there is nothing like it. But the
mischief is, we never know how good it is till it is gone."

"And indeed," added the Chief, "considering how short
the whole thing is — from beginning to end, and what a
muddle at best — it is hardly worth the trouble of being born.
But as we have got into the scrape, Dobbs, don't you think
we had better go to bed ? "

X.

I HAVE had a natural delicacy in speaking to the Chief
about Polly (much as I like him when serious, his broad
banter — the playful gambols of a great St Bernard who

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 8 1

thinks nothing of rolling you over just for fun — is wanting
in true refinement ; — you can see his big jokes a mile off) ;
but I made a shy approach to the subject with Mrs Mac.
She is one of the kindest of women, and, except that she
holds that no one is good enough for Polly, was quite willing
to befriend me.

"You really think it was Polly? And you confess you
have been an incorrigible and unspeakable Donkey? Well,
there are some English people over Loch Arkaig way — only
a mile off — but, as it happens, we do not happen to know
them. They are far too grand for simple natives like our-
selves. Madam turns up her nose whenever we meet, and
takes the other side of the road. They came down last week,
and it is possible that Polly may be with them, but I don't
see how you are to get at her."

Fortune, however, on this occasion was willing to forgive
me.

We had gone to Cuddy Island to gather terns' eggs. They
are very good for those who like them — I don't. The rock
rises sheer from the sea ; and — rounding a sharp corner — on
the topmost pinnacle where the cormorants sit in permanent
session — I beheld Polly. I had been constantly watching
for her ; yet was I as much taken aback as Heine was on a
like occasion by a similar apparition. " I saw the young
Spring God, large as life, standing on the summit of an alp."
The young Spring God ! But what was the young Spring
God to Polly? The wind was among her hair — her eyes
were sparkling with animation — she was ruddier and rosier
than ever ; yet I hesitated no longer. I knew that my mind
was made up. This was a prize for which no sacrifice could
be too great. The fresh Highland air had blown a lot of
nonsense out of my head, and I felt that Polly was worth all
the Nankin Blue in China — and a deal more.

Was it too late ?

She was quite gracious, — almost too urbane, I fancied. I
have seen a good deal of her since ; but I don't seem to
make much way. Mrs Tudor Plantagenet has condescended
to give me a distant nod ; but I am unaffectedly conscious

VOL. II. F

82 AUTUMN IN ARCADY :

that she looks upon me as— dirt. I am willing, however,
to stand a good deal for Polly, and if I don't grovel it is
simply because I don't think Polly would approve. My best
chance is when she comes down to the beach to duck the
little Plantagenets, and gather cowries and clams. There is
a vast variety of brilliant shells in our bay ; and I have de-
veloped (with alarming rapidity, I fear) an ardent passion for
conchology. Shells are a good medium, I find ; one can ring
the changes on a shell-like ear (and Polly's is perfect), its
shapeliness, its transparent delicacy, its inimitable curves, and
so on; and the transition from shells to Shelley, and from
Shelley to the most impassioned of his lyrics, is obvious.
Then we search for white heather on our way back (and to
find a bunch is luck, you know) ; and one can look, or try to
look, unutterable things while she pins it into her collar.
The Colonsay mermaid, to whom I had incautiously addressed
a little ballade or rondeau (I forget which), was rather a sore
subject at first — a bone of contention. Polly professed to be
certain (most unreasonably) that I would have run away with
the siren, if I had not been stopped ; but we have mutually
agreed to drop her. There is, however, a great big fellow in
rough tweed knickerbockers at the Castle, about whom I am
not comfortable. He is out deerstalking all day, so I don't
see much of him ; but he came down last Sunday ; and he was
introduced to me as Tom Something or other, — "Cousin
Tom," she calls him. He is very free and easy with her, and
never shows the least inclination to go down on his knees,
or to treat her as Divinities ought to be treated. He calls
her Polly with the most disrespectful familiarity, and she
actually seems to like it. But he is her cousin, you see
(only by marriage, it turns out), and she knew him when
he was a boy at school. We had arranged to sail across
to Sleat one day (to see another of the Macs), and he came
with us. It was a little rough outside the reef, and the boat
went up and down in the tideway, and shipped a good deal
of water. I was the oldest on board, and insisted that it
would be folly to go on. Polly made a little mouth at the
suggestion, and Cousin Tom laughed in my face. Then he

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 83

offered to pull an oar against me (in a really offensive tone,
as I thought — though everybody says he is so good-natured),
and then something happened to my knickerbockers (for I
was roused at last, and pulled madly and recklessly) which
imposed a certain restraint upon my movements for the rest
of the afternoon.

But the crowning disaster happened some days afterwards.
We were coming down the hillside where the farmer's herd
of black cattle were feeding. I have never liked cattle of
any kind, — one can never be sure even of a milk-cow if she
has horns. But there was in this herd a dun-coloured Bull
of immense size, whose expression was simply diabolical. He
had a wicked and malignant eye, and he had more than once
fixed it upon me as I was passing. I did not so much mind
this when he was on the other side of the fence; and I
had, in fact, on these occasions, if the ladies were with me,
ventured to assume an air of nonchalance, which I was very
far from feeling. (His look said as plainly as possible, — I'll
know you again, my lad ; and the brute, I felt sure, had taken
a mental note of the sky-blue Tam-o'-Shanter, dashed with
pea-green, that a fair hand had braided, and of its wearer.)
The herd were feeding, I have said; and I devoutly hoped
that we might pass them without being observed ; but a Bull
never feeds, and is always on the look-out for mischief. It
was clear that he saw us ; for he began to paw the earth with
his fore-feet and to bellow frightfully. " Don't look at him,"
said Polly, as cool as a cucumber, " and walk slowly, as if you
didn't mind." (The brave girl had heard somehow that that
was the proper way to treat a bull who was about to charge ;
but I didn't see it.) I gave a squint behind. He was cer-
tainly coming. In that supreme moment the convention-
alities were suspended. " Run, Polly, run ! " I exclaimed,
with my heart in my mouth, so that I was barely intelligible,
I daresay, — " run, Polly, and — in this supreme moment —
I shall await the shock." I knew that in a supreme moment
this was the right thing to say, and I really fancy I said
it. But I have no clear recollection of what followed, —
like the blameless Arthur, all my mind is clouded with a

84 AUTUMN IN ARCADY.

doubt. A poignant sense of what the world would lose, if
the essay On the Artistic Repression of the Domestic Affec-
tions remained unfinished, suddenly took possession of me.
If Evadne was safe (as I trusted she was), where was the
good of waiting, and (should a catastrophe occur) leaving the
world so much the poorer? I had a duty to the public
as well as to the individual. So we both made for the dike,
in double-quick time, as they say, — at least I know I did.
When I recovered my senses, I found Polly in a passion
of tears (or was it laughter ?) ; and a little ragamuffin — a
six-year-old brat of a boy who had been lying in the ditch
— was calling the Bull bad names in Gaelic, and hitting
him with a stick.

We did not meet till next day, and then she was walking
with Cousin Tom.

" I hope you are none the worse for the Bull," she said
with angelic sweetness. " I was so sorry about it, Mr
Gabriel ; but Tom says it is really a cowardly creature, and
that it only pretends to be furious." (It was an admirable
piece of acting, I was tempted to remark ; but I held my
peace, for I divined what was coming.) " And — Mr Gabriel
—Mr Dante — Mr Dob— " here she hesitated and paused,
and then added in a rapid aside, looking up into his face
with the blush of an angel, — " Tom, Tom, please would you
tell him, Tom ? "

The essay On the Artistic Repression of the Domestic
Affections was finished some time ago. It was fortunate that
I was spared to complete it ; for it has been considered by
very competent judges (need I mention Brown-Jones ajid
Mrs Major Higgins— Amelie Something that was) to con-
tribute much original material to the elucidation of a diffi-
cult but increasingly interesting problem. On the whole, I
incline to agree with the more advanced wing of the great
army of Culture, and to hold with the experienced Mrs Mona

THE IMPRESSIONS OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 85

Caird, who, like the wise Ulysses, has seen many men and
cities, that, looked at all round, — MARRIAGE is A MISTAKE.

P.S. by the Chief. — Poor Dobbs ! He was a good creature.
We could have better spared a better man. For Dobbs is
gone. He caught cold on the voyage to Stornoway, and he
was very sick on the way back across the Minch. He was
rather depressed, too, by finding that, instead of the pale
pensive poetic Princess of Thule he had been led to expect,
we were waited upon at Garynahine by a decidedly buxom
wench. But he made a good end at the last. He renounced
Swinburne and all his works. He forgave Polly and the
Professor. (Plackie had written some complimentary stanzas
on Dobbs, in which he compared him to John Knox and
Julius Caesar.) We buried him in the kirkyard of his native
village. It may have been the delirium of the fever ; it may
have been a pathetic revival of early associations; but he
particularly requested — they were his last words — that on the
modest monument, which we delicately led him to understand
would be erected to his memory, the baptismal "Samuel
Ebenezer" should be inscribed in full.

86

VII.
THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK.

THE Island of the Eider Duck lies well out in the
Atlantic ; and except the Dhu Heartach lighthouse,
there is nothing, so far as I know, between it and Newfound-
land. A boat comes off to the steamer ; our traps are hoisted
over ; and we let go the rope, figurative and literal, that binds
us to the mainland. For another week we might as well be
in another planet. It is upon the whole an invigorating ex-
perience. It does us good to learn that we can live without
the Times and even the Tomahawk, and that civilisation, after
all, is only a bad habit which we may expect to outgrow.
We have managed somehow to get into the rut, and anything
like intellectual independence is unknown among us. Every-
body talks, for instance, as if the descent down the easy incline
that leads to democracy were irresistible and inevitable ; and
yet we have only to shake ourselves free of the busybodies of
the streets to discover that it is a passing fashion only, and
that there is no absolute necessity in the matter. We babble
just now about the county franchise, electoral districts, and
the ballot-box — as if these fads were somehow bound up with
the immutable laws of the universe ; yet to another age they
will be mere empty words, without vitality or significance —
like the theological phrases of the middle ages, which, having
once deluged Europe with blood, are as dead to us as the
politics of the Pharaohs and the shibboleths of the Pharisees.
There is nothing like cutting ourselves adrift from the main-

THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK. 8/

land for a week or two, if we wish to learn how little in our
intellectual environment and social standards is essential —
how easily we can dispense with the niceties and refinements
and dexterities which are mainly distinctive of modern life —
how the daily newspaper, and the telegraph, and the railway,
and the parliamentary debate, and the caucus, are mere ex-
crescences which have not added anything to the true happi-
ness and virtue of mankind, and might be swept away again
without reducing their sum. So, when my gloomy friends
assure me that the Monarchy is on its last legs, I am content
to reply — The whole horizon may change to-morrow. De-
mocracy is as much a caprice as Mormonism, and Joseph
Hume has as much to do with the appointed seasons of the
universe as Joe Smith. You are bewitched by the spell of
custom and familiarity ; but open your eyes, stretch out your
arms, break your bonds, and the enchantment will vanish with
the mist.

The eider duck, after the wild swan, is probably the finest
bird that frequents the Atlantic sea-board. They nest all
about the island, especially among the long heather and
reedy inlets of the eastern coast. The great precipices on
which the Atlantic breaks are too steep and perilous, and
the young birds, new from the nest, could hardly weather
that tempestuous sea. From their earliest days, it is true,
they are splendid sailors. When they grow older they grow
somewhat unwieldy, and are not difficult to shoot on the
water ; but the half-fledged bird is splendidly supple, and
seems to dive with the flash. In clear shallow bays we can
see the little downy morsels oaring themselves swiftly a foot
or two under water, and when forced to the surface, showing
only the tips of their bills. At this season the family is
under the maternal wing, — the drake, till well on in autumn,
leaving his consort to her own resources. Meantime the
male birds keep together, and are found quite on the other
side of the island, in parties of a dozen or a score. Why
they should manifest such selfish unconcern for their off-
spring, at a season when one would fancy that their services
were most required, I do not know, but the fact is undoubted.

88 THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK.

We hunted about the bays of the eastern coast ; and though
they were dotted all over with little family groups in brown,
the brilliant white of the drake was conspicuous by its absence.
A day or two later the anomaly was explained : running round
to Eilan-a-Rhoan, before a sharp breeze, we surprised a com-
pany of a dozen drakes fully a mile from the shore, and well
out of the way of the " blind rollers," which even on the
stillest day of summer thunder whitely along the Atlantic
shore. These "blind rollers" are rather unaccountable : the
sea may be smooth as glass, unruffled by wind or tide, when
on a sudden a monstrous wave, rising up in the middle of
the bay, breaks with mist of foam and cataract roar on the
frail coble of the unwary fisher. Some hidden energy that
has been generated by the Gulf Stream in its long Atlantic
voyage may thus unpleasantly and unexpectedly disclose
itself; but whatever its cause, the phenomenon is exception-
ally striking and impressive — reminding us of the thunder in
a cloudless sky which Lord Herbert of Cherbury took for a
sign.

The ragged reefs that lie to the south form an archipelago
which bears a curious resemblance to the Venetian lagoon.
This group of islands, on the largest of which the shrubby
vegetation serves to support a few scraggy sheep — most of
them, however, being bare rock on which no blade of grass
can grow — are separated by deep and narrow channels — the
canals of Venice? — through which twice a-day the Atlantic
ebbs and flows. They can hardly, indeed, be more desolate
or lonely than the dreary mud-banks on which the fugitives
from the Italian mainland found shelter, and from which their
wonderful city rose like an exhalation. Here, too, relics of
an ancient civilisation are to be found — Gothic arches, crosses
of exquisite finish and design ; for the missionary genius of
the Church had invaded these perilous seas, and held its own
against Scandinavian reiver and native cateran. But to-day
the solitude is unbroken — only some black bullet-heads rise
and sink noiselessly as the boat threads the channel from one
land-locked bay to another.

The owners of the black heads belong to the smaller variety

THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK. 89

of Phoca — the Phoca vitulina. The great seals congregate
about the outermost reef — Cann-riva — which is still a mile
ahead, separated from us by what may be called the Grand
Canal — a spacious inland sea. The field-glass is taken out ;
and sure enough, the unshapely grey objects that lie prone
upon the brown tangle prove to be the game of which we are
in search — a creature about as big and strong as a sea-horse.
The Tapists are comparatively rare : this is one of their favour-
ite haunts, and all told, they do not number a dozen, whereas
the common seals are to be reckoned by hundreds. A plan
of operations is agreed upon : we land one of our party on the
other side of the reef, shove the boat into a narrow inlet, and
await the result of the stalk. The sportsman steals across the
rocks till well within shot. Then there is a puff of smoke
and a sharp report, and the great beasts scuttle with marvel-
lous rapidity into the water. When we arrive at the scene of
action, we find the water round the place where they had dived
red with blood, which continues to rise in copious streams
from the bottom — a sure sign that the express-rifle and the
explosive bullet had done their work. But it is long before
we can hook up the enormous brute. Again and again he
slips back into the deep water. At last by a united effort he
is hauled on board, and we get a fair look at him. A fierce
and villanous-looking customer indeed, — his great tusks being
worn white and sharp with age and hard fighting and the
vicissitudes of amphibious life in these stormy northern seas.

Another day we drive across sandy bents to Ardskinish — a
long yellow beach, bent like a bow, with granite rocks outside
and blue water between. A lovely bay ! — facing the Atlantic,
but sheltered from its billows by the intervening reefs. This
is the favourite resort of the common seal; and when we
reach the summit of the vast sandhills by which it is enclosed,
we see them lying thickly about in all directions — on black
rock and yellow sand. For half an hour or so we watch them
through the glass, and so pretty a sight it would be hard to
match. There is a sort of clumsy playfulness about the
simple-looking creatures when they take to the land which is
irresistibly comic. Murdoch engages to convey us within

90 THE ISLAND OF THE EIDER DUCK.

shot. But somehow we would rather leave them undisturbed ;
for after watching them at their elephantine gambols it is im-
possible not to feel friendly. They look indeed so much
nicer and cleaner and happier than most of our fellow-mortals !
As it turns out, we find less cover than Murdoch had expected,
and before we are fairly within shot they are all under water.
The seal, however, is as inquisitive as a woman, and Murdoch
opines that they will have another squint at us before they
finally retire. So we are stowed away among the big stones
which the tide has left bare ; and sure enough — though at first
well out of shot — the bullet-heads begin to show upon the sur-
face, and with keen inquisition follow the keeper in his Parthian
retreat from the shore. Soon they grow bolder, and at length
one bolder than the rest rises well within shot — gazing about him
with an expression of deprecative appeal in his brown eyes
which is like to disarm us. But Murdoch, we know, would
scorn our weakness ; and we console ourselves with the re-
flection that it is a hundred to one against the bullet in this
case finding its billet, — an " outer " or even a " centre " here
being of no use whatever. Alas ! it goes straight to the mark
with altogether unaccountable directness, and the red circle
upon the water widens and widens, until it is too plainly evi-
dent that the pretty innocent victim must be stretched, dead
as Julius Caesar, along the bottom. How and by what means
(there being no boat at hand) the body was recovered need
not here be told ; but we suspect that among the lone shiel-
ings of the misty island the legend of the wild huntsman who
in a state of quite primitive nudity dragged the monster ashore,,
still lingers.

VIII.
THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT.

OUR week in the Island of the Eider Duck is over, and
the steamer is again in the offing. Over a placid moon-
light sea we are carried smoothly in the course of a few hours
to the Island of the Sea-trout ; and for the past ten days our
clever landlady has made us as comfortable as possible in the
homely little tavern, which lies so close to the sea that during
high tides the salt water comes up to the hall-door. But alas !
for the first forty-eight hours the rain it rained every day,
and every minute of every day. Such a wild burst of rain and
wind as followed our peaceful voyage has seldom been known
during early autumn, even in the Island of the Sea-trout —
which is proverbially wet and windy. Four times a-day before
dinner did we retire to the stable to smoke a meditative pipe ;
twenty times a-day did we open the front door and gaze help-
lessly upon the heavy-laden clouds that drifted up from Ben
More in endless procession. Even the low-country shepherd
was at last forced to admit that there was something more
than "a bit mist " on the hill. It was " weet — weet." So
hopeless, indeed, did the prospect become, that ultimately we
were driven to — read.

There has been much discussion about the kind of litera-
ture we should take with us to the country. All the books
without which no gentleman's library is complete must of
course be scrupulously avoided. It is physically impossible to
convey your copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica ; and many

92

THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT.

a novel in three volumes is just as heavy. A good deal may
be said for the cheap translations of Gaboriau's romances,
which, as we know from the publisher's advertisement, form
Prince Bismarck's favourite reading ; but the type is trying to
the strongest eyes. A few hours may be profitably devoted
to The Sportsman's Guide ; but, unlike the witch of old Nile,
even The Sportsman's Guide is not inexhaustible : besides,
there was only one copy in the inn, and the competition after
breakfast for the favourite manual was so excessive, that some-
times it was not available till well on in the afternoon. (It
was rumoured in the coffee-room that one of our companions
in adversity took it with him to bed — an unfair advantage that
would have been resented if the weather had not cleared.) A
friend had recommended us to try tentatively one or other of
the Books of Extracts from our great writers — Thackeray,
Ruskin, Landor, Browning, George Eliot — which are now so
common, and which are easily packed and easily carried. We
can hardly say that the experiment was successful. An author
must indeed be a tremendously big fellow who can stand this
iconoclastic treatment without suffering injury — internal or
external. The maxims of Joubert are inimitable. They are
as clean cut as cameos. But there is only one Joubert, and
he was a Frenchman. Our English writers have not the art of
compression. They cannot condense. The " extractor " who
looks for a fitting pause in the " spate " of Mr Ruskin's elo-
quence may be compared to the rustic who stood on the bank
of the river, and who is probably standing there still. Even
the mellow wisdom of Thackeray loses something of its
curiosa felidtas when divorced from the context. Thackeray
was a true artist ; and it is wonderful how the little bit of
humorous cynicism, of sudden pathos, fits into and illustrates
the narrative. But when the delicate morsel is cut out, and
stuck, as a butterfly is stuck, on a pin, to be coldly regarded
by critics who have not been warmed by the fire of the story,
a certain thinness and poverty appear which had not struck
us before. Let us not be misunderstood. Vanity Fair is not
the less a great book because the separate bricks of which it
is composed do not admit of displacement ; on the contrary,

THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT. 93

it may be said quite truly that the less quotable a book is, the
higher must have been the art of the author. The perfect
manner of Thackeray, its high-bred ease and familiarity, is not
his least charm ; and, after all, it was more his way of saying
a thing than the thing said that was memorable. Landor and
Matthew Arnold fare better — they polish their epigrams, and
their speculation has a distinctive flavour : yet we say again
— There is but one Joubert ; and whoever assures you that
Thackeray or Ruskin or Arnold taken in thin slices or homoeo-
pathic globules will stay the intellectual appetite, and carry
you victoriously through a wet day in the Highlands, — trust
him not — he is fooling thee.

At last — at last — there is a break in the clouds, — Ben More
and the Ardnamurchan peaks have been fitfully visible since
daybreak ; the flooded river is unworkable, indeed, but the
lochs must be in fine trim. To-day Loch Tanna is our
destination — to-morrow Loch Dhu. As we climb the hill-
side the rain-clouds roll away, and John assures us that we
are in for a spell of fine weather. The fisherman's "fine
day " is not indeed the " fine day " of the ordinary mortal ;
but a light breeze and an occasional cloud are all that he
needs on Loch Tanna, where, after rain, the trout are in high
spirits and greedy as gleds. Your " cast " has been ex-
haustively studied during these days of enforced idleness —
drake's-wing with claret body, a Zulu, and a worm-fly — and
you are ready for action the moment the boat throws off.

The trout rise well for an hour or two, and it is clear they
mean work. No dallying or coquetting, but a clean, swift
run at the fly, and it is your own fault if they don't hook.
The first "rise" of the season, especially if the trout be of
fair size, is always an event. The little ripple on the water,
the gentle pressure on the line, until you give the artistic turn
of the wrist (mostly overdone, we fancy), and a good half-
pounder is bending your light trout-rod, in a frantic effort to
outwit you. On Loch Tanna, leisurely drifting before the
wind, not far from the shore — for they lie upon the shingly
bottoms, close to the reeds — you may easily kill your three
dozen of choice trout, — game little fellows, who run till they

94 THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT.

are dead-beat, and who are red as Lochleveners when placed
on the table. Get your landlady to give you half-a-dozen at
supper — split open, and done hastily with pepper and salt in
the frying-pan— for next morning they are comparatively dry
and tasteless. No one knows what a Loch Tanna trout is
unless it be cooked within a few hours of its capture. Full
of juice, the pink flesh comes away from the bone in creamy
flakes — a toothsome morsel. The wind dies away towards
evening, and we put up our rods, with six dozen in the boat,
— fair trout all, though none are up to the pound. The Loch
Tanna trout, as a rule, run two or three to the pound ; and
though there are sea-trout in the loch, they are seldom taken
— the only one we hooked to-day throwing himself cleverly
off the hook, after a smart run. The light rod and the small
flies are hardly a match for this rapid and dashing fish.

The walk home in the still twilight through the upland
moors — with the Ben More peaks reflecting from across the
valley the Atlantic sunset — is full of charm.

Loch Dhu is an ideal loch. It is only a mile from the sea,
and swarms with salmon and sea-trout; but it winds among
the deep valleys of Ben More, and on a blustering day the
gusts from the mountains sweep it from end to end. For
sea-trout and salmon, so long as the boat can live, you cannot
choose too wild a day. It is blowing half a gale as we push
off, and the men have hard work to round the headlands.
We pick up a few white trout the size of large herrings on our
way; but the big fish lie farther up. Off Salmon Point a
monster throws himself bodily out of the water. A hungry
fish, we are told, and the boat is allowed to drift before the
wind to the spot where he rose. At the first cast he goes
straight at the fly, and before we know that he is fast, the line
is spinning off the reel, and he is making for the middle of the
loch. After the first wild burst the pace slackens, and we
are able to get him in hand. We are landed at the point,
and slowly and carefully we force him into the sandy shallows.
There Alister watches his chance, and a five-pound trout is
safely in the landing-net. The sea-trout is, to our mind, the
king of fishes : brisk and dashing by nature, he never sulks

THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT. 95

like the salmon, but fights with undaunted spirit — now at the
bottom, now on the surface — till the game is up, and the gaff
in his gills. The small shapely head — the lithe body — the
powerful tail — the silvery mail with its delicate reflections of
pink and emerald — are characteristic of the thorough-bred
races who in the struggle for existence are sure to come to
the top.

Man never is but always to be blest. We should have
been content with our success, and gone home. The wind
by this time had risen to a gale, so we drew the boat ashore,
and lunched in a thicket of ancient birches, whose weird and
fantastic arms were being tossed by the hurricane — like those
of the damned spirits in Gustave Dore's Dante. By-and-by
the wind moderated a bit, and we ventured out. We caught
two or three more of the silvery herring-like half-pounders,
and then the big fish of the day dashed at the fly. We saw
him before he touched the hook, for he sprang almost out of
the water as he went at it. Callum and Alister declared that
he was a ten-pounder at the least. And he ran as few ten-
pounders run, with a dead steady pull on the line which we
were powerless to check. The men had to keep the boat's
head to the wind, for the waves were like to swamp us, and
we were too far out to land. We played him very carefully
and craftily, for his uncanny and unaccountable proceedings
had indicated from the first that something was wrong. At
last he began to tire, his black back came to the surface, and
the mysterious movements were explained. He was hooked by
the dorsal fin I He had missed the fly in his headlong leap,
but it had caught him by the back as he passed. We kept
him steadily to the surface of the water till he was quite spent,
but we never could bring him — try as we could — quite within
reach of the landing-net. He had got to windward of us, and
Callum, who was now alone at the oar (Alister being ready
with the net), was nearly powerless against the gale. The
heavy coble made no way, the waves broke viciously over us,
and then — without any warning — the line suddenly slackened,
and the bare hook was flying overhead. It had cut its way
through the fin, and the fish was loose. Even after the hook

96 THE ISLAND OF THE SEA-TROUT.

had come away, the big fellow lay flat on the surface, too ex-
hausted to move. Then sinking leisurely into the invisible
depths, he passed away from our gaze, and we saw him no
more. Over the misery of that moment we must draw a
veil. It comes back to us even yet in an occasional night-
mare.

We have said little or nothing about the green and gold
and azure, and purple and crimson, and lilac and orange, of
our Atlantic sunsets. Are they not written in the Chronicles
of Sheila of Styornoway and her sisters ? But in justice to
one exceptional night, we really cannot be quite silent. The
sunset had been nearly as gorgeous as Mr Black could have
made it ; and now it was dark, and we were brewing a tumbler
of extremely weak whisky and very boiling water before going
to bed. Then the landlord came in — it was about eleven
o'clock, the last day of June or the first of July — and told
us that the sky was "just remarkable." We all sallied out
to the pier at the back of the house. The picture was indeed
perfect. The whole of the western sky was aflame with bril-
liant orange. Heaven and earth were luminous with the light.
Most luminous above the horizon, it faded away at the zenith
into lilac mist. The sea was brilliant as the sky, and between
the two lay a belt of deepest purple — the Ardnamurchan
range. Without this imperial cincture the picture would
have been fine, — the dark dividing line gave it the finishing
touch of excellence. One sees the " after-glow " in Switzer-
land and elsewhere, but as a rule it comes directly after
sunset: here it was long past midnight before the glory
waned.

97

IX.
A NIGHT AT SEA.

OOMETIMES of an evening when running noiselessly
^ through the channels that separate the low sandy islands
of the Orcadian group, I could have fancied that I was on the
Lagoon. And the approach to the Capital by Scapa Flow
is not unlike the approach to Venice. After the turmoil of
the Pentland Firth, after the breathless struggle with the
wild tides that meet at Dunnet Head, we have reached, as it
seems, an inland lake, " where never wind blows loudly " ;
clusters of sad secluded islands lie about us ; while, across
the belt of sandy bent straight ahead, the sunset strikes on
tower and steeple. And the impression deepens when, land-
ing in the magical twilight of the North, we wander through
curiously narrow and crooked lanes till we enter the vast
cathedral, where solid pillars that almost rival St Mark's rise
solemnly into the darkness overhead.

What is the meaning of it all ? we ask ourselves later on.
Might not these ocean-bound and wind-beaten rocks have
been fitly left to seal and sea-gull ? Why should sane men,
who had heard no doubt of happier climes, have elected to
pass their lives upon barren islands, where no tree will grow,
where the sun is rarely visible through the Atlantic fogs, where
the sea is bleak and inhospitable ? It was a hard and strenu-
ous life they were forced to lead to keep the breath in their
bodies, and their scanty harvests were won by ceaseless toil.
And yet they found leisure to raise a mighty minster, to pile

VOL. II. G

98 A NIGHT AT SEA.

vast mounds over the chambers where their dead were laid,
to drag huge boulders from hillside and valley, and plant
them in stately circles for worship or sacrifice. In such a
race there must have been a good deal, not only of the heroic
element in general, but of the dogged obstinacy that will not
admit that it can be beaten. Nay, indeed, of something

more.

" They dreamt not of a perishable home
Who thus could build."

Thus it is that the true lover of Orcadia lives, if I may use
the phrase, a double life.

The sportsman, if he be a naturalist to boot, discovers
enough, and more than enough, to interest him. The orni-
thologist especially will find the summer day too short. The
" plaintive creatures who pity themselves on moorlands "
(thank you, Mr Butler!) are never far off. Morning and
evening, through the open window which looks out upon
the bay, he hears wail of curlew and pipe of plover. While
he is smoking his pipe in the twilight, the snipe high overhead
are winging their way to fresh springs and pastures new.
(Why they thus suddenly change their feeding-grounds no
man can tell ; it has something to do with the wind possibly,
something with coming storm.) What with ducks and geese
in the mosses ; what with wading-birds, dunlin and whimbrel
and greenshank, on the shore ; what with the gannet and the
skua and the Manx shearwater on the open sea ; what with
grouse on the moors ; what with trout in the lochs ; what
with such rare plants as the adder's-tongue, and the horned
pond-weed, and the Primula scotica, and the Carex fulva,—
the sportsman who is not intent on killing only need never
pass an idle hour.

And for the artist there are the vast spaces of sea and sky ;
the shining sands ; the glories of the sunset ; and above and
beyond all, the pageantry of the storm. For each day a
fresh drama is transacted upon the heavens. The morning
hours are often brilliantly bright; but ere mid-day the sun
is suddenly obscured; the storm-cloud rises out of the At-
lantic ; sometimes the wind and rain lash the panes for hours ;

A NIGHT AT SEA. 99

sometimes the cloud breaks upon the hills of Hoy, and
passes away like a dream. The denoument of the drama is
always obscure; you cannot predict what the end will be;
and so the interest never flags.

And among the landlocked bays and through the narrow
channels there is excellent boating for those who can circum-
vent the tides. Unless, indeed, you know something of the
obscure laws which govern the ebb and flow of the ocean in
this network of islands, you are pretty sure to come to grief.
For round many of them it runs like a mill-race. Between
Hoy and Stennis, for instance, the ebb is simply a foaming
and swirling torrent, against which sail and even steam are
powerless. That vast body of water pouring into the Atlantic
is as irresistible as a Canadian rapid. But if you study the
tides, you can seek out secluded nooks where the seals are
basking on the tangle, and the wild duck are wheeling round
the bay, and the blue-rocks are darting out of the caves, and
the grouse are crowing among the heather, and where for ten
months out of the twelve the peace is absolute, and silence
unbroken save by the shepherd's dog.

This is Orcadia from the outside, so to speak ; but beneath
a thin layer of turf or peat there is the historic or prehistoric
Orcadia. It is a history of immense antiquity, — a history, in
the stately words of an old writer, " not to be computed by
years of annual magistrates, but by great conjunctions and
the fatal periods of kingdoms." Maeshowe and the Stones
of Stennis stood where they stand before the Vikings came ;
and older than Stennis or Maeshowe are the weapons and
implements in flint and bronze and iron which are dug up
every day in bog and moss, and forwarded to the indefatigable
Mr Cursiter. The ghost of many a primeval Orcadian, whose
long sleep has been rudely disturbed by spade or plough,
must haunt the pleasant and hospitable dwelling where all
that remains of him and his tempestuous life has been safely
put away under lock and key — each restless Spirit of the
Storm on his own shelf.

We had seen the Stones of Stennis, and the Brochs, and
Maeshowe, and the Church of St Magnus, and the castles of

100 A NIGHT AT SEA.

Bishop and Earl ; and when at length we went in our friend's
yacht to visit the Old Man of Hoy, imagination was still busy
with the pale ghosts of the buried and unburied dead whose
rest we had dared to break. The tumultuous rush of the
ebb had carried us through the narrow Sound into the wide
Western Ocean • and before the wind went down we had
passed the Kaim of Hoy, and St John's Head, and the long
buttress of cliff which was raised no doubt to prevent the
islands from being swept bodily away by the Atlantic rollers.
We had not counted, however, upon an absolute calm, and
had meant to return with the tide. But when we were told
after our evening meal that we must wait where we were
for the morning breeze, it did not occur to us to complain.
The night was too exquisite for sleep — for sleep at least under
a slated roof. The balmy air of the Gulf Stream was about
us. Wrapped in our rugs, we could scan the mighty crags
and watch for the moon to rise. Too exquisite for sleep ;
and yet I must have dozed; for when I looked again the
moon was high in heaven.

* *
*

There was not a breath of air in the sky or on the water.
The ocean was flooded with pallid moonlight ; the heat of the
day had been converted into a transparent mist — a mist of
ghostly transfiguration — through which, as in a dream or
through a veil, we saw the solid earth. There was no sound
save that of the moving waters " at their priest-like task," —
the tide that softly lapped the iron bases of the hills. At
times, indeed, a murmur came from the rocks where in solid
ranks thousands of parrots and marrots sat beside their nests.
It was the first watch of night ; but midnight was at hand.
All on board were asleep except myself, and one seaman at
the stern who idly handled the tiller. We were drifting
slowly with the tide, no doubt ; but the progress was inap-
preciable. A phantom ship upon a phantom ocean ! Mighty
precipices hundreds of feet in height rose out of the water
— a bow-shot from us on our right. The moonlight did not

A NIGHT AT SEA. IOI

touch them — did not at least pierce the gloom of the dark
fissures and caverns into which the seals stole noiselessly as
we passed. Only the Old Man of Hoy stood out clear against
the sky — clean-cut as by a knife. But even while wrapped
in my rugs I lazily regarded this titanic pile of weather-
beaten stone, I was aware of a mystic change. Like the
smoke that issued from the vase when Solomon's seal was
broken, the gigantic pillar at our side slowly assumed the
semblance — nor yet the semblance only — of a human form.
I was not surprised ; it seemed only right and fitting that
the Titan who, during the primeval conflict of elemental forces,
had been turned into stone, should be permitted to converse
with the representative of a later race. In that illusive light,
indeed, nothing was incredible, — nothing too weird and ex-
travagant for belief. Certum est quia impossibile est, I said to
myself, as Sir Thomas Browne had said before me, and Ter-
tullian before Sir Thomas Browne. The voice was low and
placid and passionless, — serene with the serenity of an im-
measurable past. I did not dare at first to interrupt the
monologue, which began in a speech as unknown to me as
the gurgle of the guillemots. For he did not notice us for
a time ; he was looking across the sea, straight across to New-
foundland, whence the sunset had struck age after age upon
his upturned face; and "the large utterance of the early
gods," which had grown quite archaic before Homer was born,
was doubtless his native tongue. The Gaelic of the Garden
of Eden, the Norse of Odin's Walhalla, can still be construed
by scholars ; but Thea and Saturn are dumb. It could not
well be otherwise, perhaps ; for — to judge from what I heard
that night — the language they used must have had more
affinity with the sough of the wind and the ripple of the
stream than with articulate words.

But after a while he appeared to become conscious that he
was no longer alone, and that a monologue in a dead lan-
guage was out of place, and indeed barely civil. It may be
true that Titans are not naturally communicative ; but for ten
or twelve thousand years he had led a life of extreme se-
clusion ; and the sociable instinct is deeply seated. How it

102 A NIGHT AT SEA.

came about I cannot exactly undertake to explain ; but ere
many minutes had passed I found myself, as matter of fact,
engaged in amicable conversation with my gigantic neighbour,
— a conversation devoted mainly to the more striking in-
cidents of his long, if not varied, career. Much of the con-
versation is lost — irrevocably lost ; but a few fragments cling
to the memory.

The interchange of the customary civilities was followed by
the usual remarks upon the inclemency of the weather. By
mutual consent, implied rather than expressed, anything in the
nature of political controversy was avoided, and Mr Glad-
stone's name was not even mentioned. The conversation
might consequently have flagged had we not accidentally dis-
covered a topic of common interest. We were both natural-
ists ; and the sea-birds with whom he had cultivated friendly
relations, and who treated him with the most absolute confi-
dence, had been my special study. He had known the Great
Auk intimately and regretted his untimely end. (I promised,
by the way, to let him have Harvie - Brown's monograph.)
But the King was never, he said, the same bird after his wife's
death, and had told him, indeed, that he did not care to live.
He could not honestly say that he missed the white-tailed
eagle (who had deserted his eyrie a year ago) ; for, though a
gentlemanly bird of good family, he was a bit of a glutton, and
his relations with the lesser gulls were strained, and led to
constant unpleasantness.

"What amazes me most," he went on, "is the freshness
of interest which the numberless generations of marrots and
parrots I have known contrive to maintain. My brisk little
neighbours never lose heart. They continue to lay their eggs
summer after summer with an intrepid faith in the future that
never fails them. One would have fancied that by this time
they might have come to see that the game was not worth the
candle. The father and mother birds have seldom opportun-
ity to hatch more than a brood or two before they are cut off;
and how many of the chicks survive ? The perils of the deep
are incalculable; and yet no experience will convince the
overwhelming majority that the life of storm and stress on

A NIGHT AT SEA. IO3

which they have entered, and from which they cannot escape,
is not worth living. Whence comes that seed of day which
forces them to persevere, and which the most bitter frost can-
not kill?"

I looked at him anxiously ; I was afraid that his obser-
vations, ostensibly confined though they were to the parrots
and marrots, might have a wider application. But there was
no irony in his tone, no cynicism on his lip ; and I ventured
to remark that when the breeding season was over, and the
birds had scattered, he had possibly had leisure to observe
what his fellow-creatures (if I might without impropriety use
the word) were about.

" Yes," he continued, thoughtfully, " I have seen something
of them. The races of men that make haste to destruction !
But they do not interest me much — as little indeed as the
monotonous procession of the Seasons. I have, however,
more than once talked over their prospects with my good
friend and neighbour, the Dragon of Maeshowe, who is a
shrewd judge of character, though his field of observation, no
doubt, has been comparatively limited. When I first came
here," he went on, " some aeons ago, the scrath and the phoca
had the islands pretty much to themselves. They led an easy
life, — fish were plentiful and the weather was fine. We have
no such summers now as we had then, and salmon and sea-
trout have become comparatively scarce. Indeed the salmon,
I hear, has left us for good. That Golden Age of peace and
plenty came to an end when the first boat-load of bearded
rovers was driven by stress of weather upon our shores.
These sailed away and brought back others, — men and women
who bred and multiplied — yea, multiplied exceedingly. That,"
he concluded, " is the whole story — a story as tedious as it is
trivial."

" But," I interrupted, " consider the Progress that has been
made ! "

"What is Progress?" he responded. "As it does not
occur in the vocabularies I have consulted, it is a word, I pre-
sume, that has been only recently coined. May I ask you to
be good enough to define what it embraces ? "

104

A NIGHT AT SEA.

"Oh — progress — progress — why, my dear sir, every one
knows what Progress means. Progress is the telegraph, the
telephone, the half-penny paper, the right to vote as you please,
sixty miles an hour by express "

" That will do," he replied, gravely ; " I shall not trouble
you further. I find that in effect the phrase must have been
in use ever since I can remember anything. Even in these
remote islands it is a household word. You have seen my
friend Cursiter's museum of Orcadian antiquities? So you
know something of our history. We have had the flint age,
and the bronze age, and the age of Maeshowe and the Stones
of Stennis, and the devout medieval age which built the great
church at St Olaf, and the modern secular age which built the
squalid little barn in which, if I am not mistaken, you sat last
Sunday. But what has come of it all ? Do you mean to tell
me that you are happier or handier or wiser all round than the
men who shaped the flints and hammered the bronze ? Only
consider what invention and ingenuity were required to light
the first fire, to wing the first arrow, to fashion the first frying-
pan, to boil the first leg of mutton. Ce riest que le premier
pas qui cotite ; when the initial difficulty has been overcome,
you are within measurable distance of the printing-press and
the spinning-jenny."

" True," I answered ; " but on the ethical side you must
surely admit (if you are not an absolute pagan) " — I could see
that he winced at the implication — " that we have outstripped
our fathers. The rapacious instinct has been subdued. The
wolf who worried the sheep has been tamed into the sheep-
dog. That is what Professor Huxley maintains."

"That, too, was the contention of Zeus and the younger
gods when they turned us out of heaven. But you know how
Zeus behaved himself, and what kind of place Olympus be-
came? Be sure that the sheep-dog is still a wolf at heart.
With the least encouragement the native savageness will assert
itself. Paris, they tell me, is the centre of your civilisation,
and yet you will hardly deny that the Parisian petroleuse is
just the wild-cat over again. The puzzle, my ingenuous
young friend, is as old as the hills. Evolution can only
evolve ; it does not create. How are you to get out of your-

A NIGHT AT SEA. IO5

self? Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard
his spots? What you call Progress is merely the change
of manners — due to bit and bridle, to the scavenger and the
policeman ; the essential element, the dominant and deter-
mining factor, remains the same. The tide of mortal affairs
is like the tide of the ocean ; by an invariable law the flood
is followed by the ebb. Huxley — if it be the Huxley I knew
when speech was pellucid as the mountain spring, and logic
cut like a sword — will tell you as much; for Huxley, like
myself, is a survival. Has he not confessed indeed that you
have reached the stage — the fatal stage in national life — when
the duties of the individual to the State are forgotten, and
his tendencies to self-assertion are dignified by the name
of rights ? "

" But Mr Huxley admits that the ethical force will prove
superior to the cosmic, and that the return to the ruthless
and unscrupulous struggle for existence which we call bar-
barism "

He shrugged his shoulders (or was it only an optical
delusion ?), and I fancied that I heard a contemptuous whistle,
which, however, may have come from a half-awakened curlew,
— for the dawn was at hand.

" Even your most lucid thinker cannot escape from his en-
vironment," he answered ; and then he added — " Neither you
nor he, indeed, can be expected to recognise and appreciate
as I do the essential truth of what one of your own poets has
said : —

" He might not : — No, though a primeval God ;
The Sacred Seasons might not be disturbed."1

He was exasperatingly cool, and I was rather nettled ; so
I said slowly, looking him straight in the face, " Do you mean

1 Mr Huxley's reply will be found on page 300 of the First Series of
'Table-Talk ' : " I must have done with such escapades as that at Oxford.
Imagine having to talk about Ethics when ' Religion and Politics ' are
forbidden by the terms of the endowment ! — and to talk about Evolution
when good manners obliged one to abstain from dotting one's i's and
crossing one's t's. Ask your Old Man of Hoy to be so good as to suspend
judgment until the Lecture appears again with an appendix in that collec-
tion of volumes the bulk of which appals me."

106 A NIGHT AT SEA.

to assure me, my venerable friend, on your word of honour,
as a Titan and a philosopher, that there is nothing new under
the sun ? "

" Well," said the Old Man, after a prolonged pause (it may
be that he was wearied by my pertinacity), " it is possible that
I am doing you less than justice. I beg your pardon. But
it is only of late years — only the other day, indeed — that my
attention has been directed to a practice for which in my ex-
perience no precedent can be found. The art is distinctively
modern, if not characteristically English. In this respect I
am ready to admit that you have not been anticipated. Look
there ! " he exclaimed, pointing to the opposite bluff, on which
in monstrous characters a facile but audacious brush had
inscribed such words as these : — PRATT'S LITTLE LIVER
PILLS — TRY OUR CASTOR OIL — THOMS' SOFT SOAP is THE
BEST — BUNCOMBE'S POWDER FOR BUGS, and so on.

The day was breaking ere I had spelt out the last word,
and when I turned to the Old Man, —

" There is a breeze in the offing," said the skipper, touching
his cap. "We shall have it directly. We did not care to
waken you, Mr Holdfast ; but, now that the tide has turned,
we shall be at Stromness in an hour."

That Sabbath-day was long memorable to us. The breeze
that wafted us slowly along the coast had come with the Gulf
Stream from tropical islands, and was soft and mellow.
Stromness was only half-awake when we passed into Scapa
Flow ; a purple haze rested on the hills of Hoy ; and though
now and again we saw a group of country people on their way
to church, and though far off there was a glamour of sea-
gulls, the peace was absolute and unbroken. The beatific
hush of the seventh day had fallen upon us. Nature, like
man, was at rest from her labours. Even the shy wild birds
knew that they were safe — safe while the brief truce lasted.
Eider-duck and black guillemot, too lazy to fly, too confident
to dive, looked the "auld enemy" fearlessly in the face.
It was growing dark before we dropped our anchor beside the
Chapel of the Rock. The service was closing ; they were
singing their evening hymn. It is a hymn made solely for
pastoral and seafaring people who are sorely tried by wind

A NIGHT AT SEA. IO/

and evil weather, and has no place in the authorised main-
land version. The E'en brings «' Hame, they call it (after
the beautiful old proverb), and it is set to Mendelssohn's
music : l —

" Upon the hills the wind is sharp and cold,
The sweet young grasses wither on the wold,
And we, O Lord, have wandered from Thy fold ;
But evening brings us home.

Among the mists we stumbled, and the rocks
Where the brown lichen whitens, and the fox
Watches the straggler from the scattered flocks ;
But evening brings us home.

The sharp thorns prick us, and our tender feet
Are cut and bleeding, and the lambs repeat
Their pitiful complaints, — oh, rest is sweet,
When evening brings us home.

We have been wounded by the hunter's darts.
Our eyes are very heavy, and our hearts
Search for Thy coming, — when the light departs
At evening, bring us home.

The darkness gathers. Through the gloom no star
Rises to guide us. We have wandered far.
Without Thy lamp we know not where we are.
At evening bring us home.

The clouds are round us, and the snow-drifts thicken.
O Thou dear Shepherd, leave us not to sicken
In the waste night, — our tardy footsteps quicken ;
At evening bring us home."

It was only a coincidence, no doubt ; but I said to myself,
as we pulled the dingy ashore, that I had somehow found an
answer to the gloomy vaticinations of the Titan.

1 Adagio non troppo in E major, from the "Lieder ohne Worte."

BOOK THREE

ALPINE RESTING-PLACES

ALPINE RESTING-PLACES.

T^AVID HUME has failed to explain away the
-*-ff miraculous rapidity with which young animals
grow up ; and thus it came about that Madge Holdfast
was eighteen years old before any of us — her father
least of all — had realised that she was out of the
nursery. Madge was the bosom friend of my niece,
Isabel Lee — who has come to live with me latterly ;
and Isabel would probably have gone abroad with the
Holdfasts that summer when Mark was out of sorts
and had been ordered away by Dr Muffin (who suc-
ceeded Dr Jackson), had it not been that she was pay-
ing a visit in Connemara to one of our Irish cousins.
(Tom Graham, my partner, a cousin of the Holdfasts,
went in her place, and Tom is a host in himself.) It
was as well for me perhaps ; for the letters that Madge
wrote to her friend, and which I was privileged to per-
use, were as good as a play. Madge Holdfast — Madge

112 ALPINE RESTING-PLACES.

Holdfast that was — is a monstrously clever girl (and
as a rule I don't think that I like clever girls) ; but
Madge, I am ready to admit, is as nice as she is clever ;
and if of late she has taken to calling me " Old Cross-
patch," she does it as Lilian's parrot with his lady's
finger,—

" And bites it for true heart and not for harm " —

and I forgive her.

MADGE HOLDFAST TO ISABEL LEE.

I.
FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

HPHERE never was such luck, my dearest Bell. You know
* how much I wanted to see the Alps that Tom raves
about. Tom is a terrible flirt with you girls, my dear, but he
is constancy itself to Monte Rosa and the Jungfrau. It all
came about through papa. He had been terribly worried
with his plea for Lucrezia Borgia; the Spectator didn't half
like its " ethical departure " ; the Saturday Review said that
even Charles Kingsley or Froude couldn't have made a
greater mess of it ; and the penny-a-liners — but I needn't
bother you, dear, with the outs and ins, only papa was abused
right and left as a perfect pickpocket — poor dear papa, who
wouldn't hurt a fly. So he was out of sorts, and La Beata
insisted that he should see Dr Muffin and be patched up there
and then. Tom brought Dr Muffin down next day in the
boat, and it was all arranged after dinner when we were sitting
out on the shore looking at Cuilmore through the twilight.
Well, Tom may say what he likes about the Swiss mountains,
but there never was such a purple as we had that evening, ex-
cept perhaps in one of Mr Waller Paton's pictures. I rather
suspect that Tom was at the bottom of the prescription —
only to be sure it's quite the fashion now with the faculty ;
and I do think it's a vast improvement on the horrid pills and
VOL. II. H

114 FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

powders they used to give us in the nursery — I don't expect
I shall get the taste of the currant jelly out of my mouth as
long as I live. It was just this : — papa was to give up his
books and his boating and go and live for six months seven
thousand feet above the sea. But he couldn't afford to keep
a balloon, papa said, rather grimly at first. The doctor and
Tom, however, were resolved that he should go. There were
no end of famous hotels in Switzerland and the Tyrol, where
you could live for months above the clouds, and feel exactly
like a lark when it is up in the sky. But for the removal of
pressure from the lungs, Tom remarked with perfect gravity,
the lark could never manage to sing as he does ; and Dr
Muffin added that it had the same effect on the liver. " And
the heart, too, I hope ? " papa asked rather drearily, indicating
that it was there or thereabouts that the pressure in his case
was sorest. "Certainly," said Dr Muffin; "only in the
pharmacopoeia we call it the stomach" — O Bell, Bell, I do
hate these men of science who can play with our tenderest
feelings in this cruel way. Tom did not seem to see it, and
only pressed his hand over his waistcoat with an air of quizzi-
cal adoration as he looked at me. And this from Tom, who
I had thought, — but men are monsters, my dear, and only
nice, really nice, in a novel.

Tom was appointed Commander-in-Chief. "Don't, for
goodness' sake, bring a lot of fal-de-lals with you," he said
to me. " Just suppose you are a private in a marching regi-
ment and that all you have in the world must go in your kit.
I hate dragging a whole lot of trunks and trash up a mountain
road on the back of a wretched mule. So take only what you
need for a change — some clean cuffs and collars and one or
two pink and sky-blue ties to make you look nice at table
d'hote." (Nice, indeed, Master Tom !) " And you must have
nails in your boots and a tuck or two in your petticoat, and a
pair of blue spectacles, and an opera-glass slung across your
shoulder like Diana's quiver. Man needs but little here below
in the way of dress, and woman too if she only knew it. A
tight and tidy little lass never looks better than when she is
scrambling over the glacier with all her * things ' in a knapsack.

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS. 115

Why, there was a charming girl at the Bel Alp last summer
who lived for a month on a clean collar and a ' change ' of dry
stockings. The father was an English earl, and the daughter
was as thoroughbred as a Derby winner. The famous Boston
beauty, Lily Vanderloo, who had two mules to carry her trunks,
looked dowdy beside her. They are hothouse plants, to be
sure, these Yankee dolls, and can't stand the cold water and
the keen air which make you English girls, Madge, so nice and
bracing." Tom is simply aggravating at times. He knows I
hate his patronising airs, but that of course only makes him
worse. To hear him talk, you would fancy that he was the
Sultan of Turkey or the Khan of Tartary, and that we were
all ready to go down on our knees to the men — detestable
creatures ! What a pity it is, Bell, that there are no Amazons
now ; it would have been so jolly to get away quite by our-
selves, like Mr Tennyson's princess. But after all, to be sure,
she wasn't good for much.

Then the question of how and where we were to go was
hotly debated. Tom had it all cut and dry, and he had his
way of course. Tom is like a benevolent hurricane, and
though I make a show of opposition, it is a mere matter of
form, for he carries all before him. It was no good going to
the Pyrenees ; the mountains there were all carefully labelled
and packed away out of sight ; our rough tweeds and serges
would be utterly ludicrous at Eaux Chaudes or Eaux Bonnes ;
a Frenchman drinking the waters was little better than an
over-dressed monkey, being in fact the missing link for which
Mr Darwin had been seeking so long. Then the Bernese
Oberland was eaten up by countless herds of Cockneys,
and the Engadine was as dull as a ditch — in short it was just
a big ditch, a trench driven by some Titanic plough, cried
Tom, carried away on a wave of tempestuous scorn. No, no
—the Alps of the Valais, the Alps of the Tyrol, the Alps of
Italy — these were the happy hunting-grounds where living
was cheap and the people frank and friendly and free-spoken,
where we could listen to the marmot and watch the lammer-
geier, where bears and chamois and ibex still gave local colour
to the landscape.

Il6 FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

Then Tom knew by heart all the delightful old towns, with
their steep roofs and quaint gables, which we must take by the
way. He gave us quite graciously the choice of three routes.
We might go by Rouen, or by Treves, or by Nuremberg.
If we went through France, there was Dieppe, with its shelly
beach and white cliffs against a background of bluest sky, and
Norman crosses and Norman ponies, and queer fishermen
with wide-spreading picturesque nets, and queerer fisherwomen
with high caps and sharp sand-eel spades; and marvels of
Gothic architecture at Rouen, lovely old windows and delicate
lacework in stone and lime, and imps and satyrs and saints
and martyrs playing hide-and-seek among the carvings on the
church doors ; and the Cathedral of Sens, and the towers of
Tonnerre and Dru and MaQon, and old Burgundian houses
and old Burgundian shrines at Dijon, to say nothing of the
Gloire de Dijon itself in its glory. (And, O Bell, looking
through a gateway of the cloister, into a neglected garden,
we saw such a thicket of roses, such a blaze of light, as Dante
Rossetti — Dante, is it not ? — puts about his bewitching Venus
of the Flowers.) Or we might go through Belgium and Lux-
emburg to Treves, with its Roman pillars and arches and
baths, and to Strasburg, where the storks build their nests
among the brown chimneys and stand like sentinels upon the
house-tops, and so on through the rustic old-world towns of
the Black Forest to Constance or Schaffhausen. And then
there was the last and the best, — the road by Cologne and
Andernach and Aschaffenburg and Nuremberg and Ratisbon
— the fair fertile country of the Rhine and the Danube —
which would bring us down at last upon queenly Salzburg,
the gateway of the Austrian Tyrol. And to think, Bell, that
all this was only the prelude to the play ! It was too de-
lightful, and I could have danced from morning till night
from sheer intoxication of spirits, only that would have been
rather undignified for a young lady fresh from Girton.

I really cannot tell you how we got here. I know we
came through France, amid a blaze of poppies and corn-flowers ;
and I have a dim vision of windmills and straight canals and
peat-boats and prim rows of stunted poplars; and the dark

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS. 117

fir-clad hills of the Jura began to rise before us while we
were yet far off in the great plain of Burgundy ; and then
in the afternoon we began to crawl up the mountain-side
through wood and rock and wide parklike spaces of emerald
lawn ; and the air was sweet with the fragrance of millions
and millions and millions of white lilies — the pale Narcissus ;
and through open glades in the pine-woods we could look
down into the deep glens at our feet where picturesque
steeples and high-roofed houses of a deep sun-burnt red were
dotted about among the fields. But it was after we had
crossed the high tableland of the Jura — somewhere between
Pontarlier and Cossonay, I think — it was getting late and the
shadows were deepening in the hollows and creeping up the
pine-slopes, when we beheld what papa called a beatific
vision. It might be fifty miles, it might be a thousand, but
far away over the blue haze of the plain, over purple peak
and storm - piled cloud, we saw along the southern sky a
phantom outline, softly dimpled as a baby's arm yet strong as
adamant, spectral and remote in heavenly inaccessibility, yet
with such a faint blush of delicate rose as may touch the cheek
of a new-born spirit, all unused as yet to the slight and diaph-
anous vestments of the blest. " Mont Blanc ! " said Tom,
lifting his hat as if we had gone into church. It was almost
too lovely : do you know, Bell, I felt half-inclined to cry
(only Tom would have chaffed me so), and I noticed that papa
was wiping his spectacles. The great mountain so mighty in
its immutable repose, the flush so fragile and perishable — it
had died away as we gazed — what is there in such supreme
beauty that makes us sad? Papa said something in a low
tone to La Beata — that's mother, you know — about time and
eternity, the things seen and the things unseen, those which
pass away and those which cannot be shaken ; and La Beata
(Tom, who is always saying things, declares that she is just half
my age, but then there was no Girton, he adds, when she was
a girl) laid her hand softly upon his arm and gazed wistfully
into the darkness. But Tom and I, at the other end of the
carriage, were now engaged in a mild, a very mild flirtation,
and I could not hear exactly what passed between them.

II.
FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

DEAREST BELL, — We are having a lovely time of it.
There has not been a cloud in the sky or a speck of
mist on the mountains since we came here; and yet the
grumblers complain that it is always wet in Switzerland. The
fact is that English people come too late ; after a long spell
of dry weather it often breaks about the middle of August,
and rains right on till October. In our own Highlands it
is never quite dry, and because we have some big trees round
about the house to shelter us from that pitiless inquisitor the
east wind, our friends make a point of inquiring, "Don't you
find it Damp ? " (I wonder what they would think if I asked
them whether, being such awful stupids, they didn't find
themselves Dull and Dreary and Dismal ?) But in Switzer-
land, if you are in luck, you get well heated through before
the summer is over, and Tom says that we will carry enough
of sunshine home with us to last us till spring. Now, Bell,
where was I when I left off? Just outside Lausanne, was it
not?

The terrace at the Hotel Gibbon is far nicer than anything
at Ouchy. You have no idea how nice it is to sit there in
the cool of the evening under the trees and watch the moon-
light on the lake at your feet, and fancy that you are Gibbon
finishing his Decline and Fall^ — for it was here, just on such
a night, that he wrote the last words of that overwhelming
history. (It overwhelmed us at least, dear, did it not?) I

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS. 119

am not going to tell you anything about our visit to Chamonix ;
for, though they have built a great new hotel at Montanvert
above the Mer de Glace, we did not care much about it —
it ought to be on the other side of the valley, from whence
the whole range of the Mont Blanc Aiguilles are seen in one
stately group holding royal court around their king. We went
across the Tete Noir to the Rhone Valley, and, though the
Rhone Valley, with its flies and its frogs, is quite detestable, the
valleys that run into it from the south are awfully nice. Evolina
and Zinal and the Arpitetta Alp and St Luc and the Bella Tola
and the Meiden Pass and the lonely Turtman Thai and the little
inn at Gruben under the glaciers of the Weisshorn, are places
to dream about. It is such fun wading through the snow.
If you had seen La Beata and me, with our gaiters on and
our skirts kilted up, scrambling up the Bella Tola, or holding
on like grim death to the guide as we glissaded down the
steep snow-slope on the other side of the Meiden into the
Turtman Valley, what would you have thought of us, I won-
der ? I have lost my heart to the Weisshorn — from the Bella
Tola it is faultless — it dazzles one with its perfect symmetry
and absolute grace — it is, papa says, the queen among moun-
tains, as the Venus of Milo (which we saw in the Louvre)
is queen among women. And now, Bell, you must under-
stand that after one more terrific scramble across the Augst-
bord Pass we came down upon St Niklaus (where there are
such nice people at the inn), and then up the Nicolai Thai
to Zermatt and the Riffel, the special country of that benevo-
lent despot, Monsieur Seiler. The Riffel is the first of our
Alpine resting-places.

120

III.
FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

MR MOWBRAY is the greatest positive contrast to Tom.
He draws a little, and he writes a little, and he smokes
a little, and he walks a little, and he talks a little, and he lies
about on the grass in the sunshine the rest of the day. The
Riffel is the most eligible place in the world for lying on the
grass. So Mr Mowbray — Raphael Mowbray — stays a good
deal at the Riffel. He has driven Tom nearly frantic by his
incurable indolence, and by — but you shall hear all about
it by-and-bye. I wish you were here, my dear : to have two
young men on one's hand, the one as lazy as the day is long,
the other boiling over with morbid activity, is too much for
one girl. We could manage them so nicely between us, Bell ;
as it is, the situation is a little mixed.

I really cannot say how (I mean under what conditions)
I like the Riffel best. It is very delightful when La Beata
and I seat ourselves on the terrace, round which the Matter-
horn, the Dent Blanche, and the Weisshorn, and ever so many
sharp-cutting peaks, draw a wonderful semicircle, with our
work after breakfast; still more so after table dhote, when,
wrapped up to the ears in our sealskins — for the air grows
chilly the moment the sun is hidden — we come out to have
a chat with the guides, and to see the mist surging up the
valley, and the lights of Zermatt twinkling through the gloom.
I love the twilight always and everywhere ; but here it adds
mystery to mystery — one cannot tell which is solid land and

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS. 121

which is cloud-land : as I look over the terrace into that
cloudy deep, I remember how the Blessed Damozel in Ros-
setti's poem looked over the battlements of heaven.

"Is that you, Miss Holdfast?" and a dim figure begins
to make itself palpable through the gloom, until it seats itself
on the wall beside me. "You looked like a spirit in the
darkness. I could have fancied that you were just a wave
of the mist that would float away as I approached."

I said something about being far too solid and prosaic for
a spirit; whereupon he replied that he was quite happy to
hear me say so, for the solid and prosaic just suited him, and
as a rule he didn't much care for spirits. And then we had
a long talk about ghosts — do you know, Bell, he has one in
his family ? — not a ghost that frightens you out of your wits,
but a picturesque and attractive apparition, with long black
hair and such eyes, "not unlike yours, Miss Holdfast, if you
will permit me to say so."

This was pretty well for the first week, Bell ? and I must
say for a young gentleman who lounges about the grass or
the sofa all day he brightens up wonderfully after dark. I
told him that he reminded me of the great big moths, which
get quite lively when we are going to bed. But he didn't
mind in the least. " Splendid fellows ! " he said. " Wouldn't
you like to get one saddled and bridled and ride away on his
back through the gloaming, like Ariel, or Puck, or Heinrich
Heine?"

Meantime Tom and I and papa, and once or twice La
Beata, had grand excursions. It is very unpardonable, but
I really do not care for the Matterhorn. Here he is always
before us, hard, angular, unsuggestive — a huge unattractive
creature that should be put into a caravan by Mr Barnum
and taken about the country. He quite wearied me after a
day or two. There is nothing of the infinite about him, as
there is in our northern sea, or even in Monte Rosa. The
long billowy snowfields of the Lyskamm are the delicatest
of poetry in comparison. We see only a scrap of the
Breithorn from our bedroom window ; but in half an hour
from the inn door we can reach the Rothekumm (don't go

122 FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

to the Corner Grat — it spoils all), and there the revelation
is complete. We are done with the grosser forms of stone
and lime ; there is no greenness of grass or purple of gentian
or crimson of clover; no bleating of sheep or tinkling of
cattle-bells ; but a silent world of ineffable purity, which might
have been let down, like the New Jerusalem, out of heaven
from God, without any taint of earth. Papa says that we
have to go to the vision of St John for fit words for such a
shrine. " And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat
on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away ; "
" And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire ; "
and then he read us — we were alone with La Beata, and it
was our evening service — the beautiful verses about the white
robes of the redeemed. "And one of the elders answered,
saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white
robes ? and whence came they ? And I said unto him, Sir,
thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which
came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes,
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. There-
fore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day
and night in His temple : and He that sitteth on the throne
shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither
thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any
heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall
feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters :
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

It was quite dark before we got back to the inn, and found
Tom waiting for us at the door. " You should have been in
bed an hour ago," he said to me. " They are to call you at
one. Zimmermatter says it is to be a lovely day ; so we are
going to the Cima de Jazi."

123

IV.

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

T T is so funny, Bell, to get up about the time you are going
••• to bed. I was wakened from a dream, in which Tom
and Mr Mowbray were riding a steeplechase on the back of
an avalanche, by a sound like thunder, which turned out on
closer reflection to be the night porter knocking at my door.
It was 1.30 A.M. I jumped out of bed, dressed, and had
found my way through the dark passages to the salle-a-manger
before I was well awake. Even at that dismal hour the house
was astir. One party had just left for Monte Rosa ; another
was leaving for the Breithorn ; two or three sleepy-looking
mountaineers were seated round the table. Tom made me
swallow a cup of steaming cafe au lait, eat a morsel of bread,
and then we went out into the starlight. It was terribly
chilly for the first half-hour, but we soon warmed to our work
The lantern which Zimmermatter carried helped us to keep
the path till we came to the Rothekumm — the narrow ledge
that has been scraped along the tremendous slope that goes
straight down to the glacier. By this time there was a faint
light in the sky; but the glacier underneath was dim and
ghostly. I fancied that I could see a dark shape moving
along its surface, some ravenous nocturnal creature prowling
about the ice, but it vanished into thin air as the light grew
stronger. A brilliant planet still burned over Monte Rosa,
and I thought of Coleridge's " Hast thou a charm to stay
the morning star ? " And then — then, Bell — but what words

124 FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS.

can describe what we saw when the sun first touched the
snow-peaks? The pearly sheen of a sea-shell? The blush
of an immortal ? A spray of apple-blossom on the day of its
birth ? At last we got down to the glacier, and we had such
fun on the ice. Tom insisted that I was a born mountaineer
— I jumped so pluckily, and kept my feet like a goat. But
all the same, Bell, I was in a mortal fright, especially when I
had to steady myself on a narrow ridge with a blue yawning
gulf on either hand. Only one got used to it after a little,
and Zimmermatter made steps in the ice with his axe when-
ever we came to a specially nasty place. Then we came to
the vast snow-fields that stretched away for miles, like an
American prairie, in long, gentle undulations, to the foot of
the Monte Rosa crags. That silent upper world of pure snow,
Bell, is most impressive; I never saw anything to compare
with it. Zimmermatter pointed out to me the footprints of
some chamois that must have crossed our line of march during
the night. That was the only sign of life, and we felt some-
how— at least I did — that we were intruding into an alien
realm that belonged to another race. On these smooth
Olympian lawns Odin and Old King Christmas may hold
their wintry revels. We were all tied to the rope by this time,
and now came the tug of war — they fairly dragged me up the
steep slopes of the Cima. The summit of the Cima is only
a cornice of ice, which sometimes breaks away and falls with
a crash into the Val Anzasca. So we had to tread gingerly,
and Zimmermatter, anchoring himself well back, tied the rope
fast round me before he would let me look over the edge.
We spread the rugs we had brought with us on the snow, and
we had such a breakfast, — though M. Seller's cold mutton—
but Tom says it is tough on purpose to keep us warm by the
exercise it gives the teeth ; and the wine and the cheese were
certainly very nice. And then, Bell, what a view ! We are
more than a mile above the plain, and Italy lies at our feet.
Out of its soft warm haze, beyond the purple mist that floats
over Como and Maggiore, rise the peaks of the Tyrol. Ma-
cugnaga, in the Val Anzasca, is 7000 feet below us, its houses
no bigger than beehives. On the other hand the mighty mass

FROM THE RIFFEL HAUS. 125

of Mont Blanc, standing four- square to all the winds that
blow, is clearly visible above the long ridge of rock that
culminates in the Matterhorn.

I went to bed the moment we got back, and didn't open
my eyes till they were ringing the bell for table d'hote. Do
you know, Bell, I am coming to think that life is only worth
living at 13,000 feet above the sea.

126

V.
FROM THE RIFFEL.

THIS was an off-day with me, as they say in the Shires,
for Tom was at the Gabelhorn. So I left La Beata
writing letters in the salon> and took my book — it was a
volume of Heine — to the rocks above the hotel

By-and-bye Mr Mowbray sauntered up to the place where
I was sitting.

" With the big glass at the inn I saw your cousin over
yonder," he said, pointing to the great wall of rock that
encloses the Trift glacier. " Even up there it must be hot
to-day," he added, throwing himself back languidly on the
turf, where the shadow of my umbrella made a coolness on
the grass.

I asked him if he thought that Alpine climbing was really
so risky as it was held to be by some. It was a silly common-
place question, Bell, but I was eager to get on ordinary topics ;
for last night we had been growing perilously confidential,
and Tom had been as savage as a wild cat. So I wished to
show him at once that he was not to presume. He gave me
a lazy comical look out of his half-closed eyes, but took the
cue directly.

There was no risk whatever, he said. The beaten tracks
up Monte Rosa and the Weisshorn were as safe as the Strand,
and safer. The whole Alpine business — ropes, ice-axes,
huts, guides — was so thoroughly organised that it was next
door to impossible to break your neck. He had done some

FROM THE RIFFEL.

Swiss climbing when he was young and foolish, but he had
never been once in real danger. The truth is, he went on,
that it is only when one is quite alone among the mountains
that the imagination sometimes gets the better of the judg-
ment. The sense of human society allays apprehension and
keeps one cool. But when you are quite by yourself and
you come to a wide crevasse, or an ugly gap on the rocky
ledge, you have to pull yourself together for the leap, and
sometimes you refuse it altogether. He had only, so far as
he remembered, been in actual peril twice in his life, and on
both occasions it was, not upon the high Alps, but among the
scrubby little hills of Scotland

" Scrubby little hills ! " I exclaimed.

" I beg your pardon. I only meant that they did not look
quite so big as the Alps. And I like yours ever so much,
though the two are curiously dissimilar. Between your Arran
mountains with their purple heather, and birken glades, and
whimpering burns, between them and these phantom presences
there is all the difference that there is between the robust life
of Walter Scott and the gossamer dream-work of Shelley or
De Quincey. But I bore you," he added with a yawn.

" No indeed, Mr Mowbray. But tell me how you came to
be in danger."

"Once it was in Skye. I had taken the steamer from
Kyleakin to Scavaig, and it had left me there alone — to make
my way back to Broadford over the hills as I best could. It
was a lovely summer afternoon, and Coruisk and its semicircle
of great peaks looked splendid. There was not a creature
left behind but myself, and I sat and smoked and sketched
to my heart's content. At last the sun got low in the sky,
and it was time to move. I knew there was a track across
the hills to Camasunary, and I climbed leisurely through ferns
and bracken till I was well up the cliff. The view here was
so lovely — the sharp peaks of Rum standing out purple
against an orange sunset, and reflected in the motionless
plain of water — that I stopped to make a note of the colours
in my sketch-book. Then I went on again, and followed
what appeared to me a quite definite track along the face of

128 FROM THE RIFFEL.

the precipice. But after a bit it thinned away, and I had to
go up and try another. This I did several times, till at last
I was forced up to quite a giddy height above the sea. I
had rather lost patience, and now resolved that at any cost
I would keep straight on. The ledge by this time had got so
narrow that I was forced to cling to the rock with my hands,
and under my feet it fell sheer down to the sea three hundred
feet below. Still I went on till I came to a projection of the
cliff, beyond which I could not see. Very cautiously I twisted
myself round, and then I learnt that I was on the very last
foot of my ledge — nothing but smooth polished rock before
me. I tried to turn, but my hands shook, and I felt vertigo
coming on. I knew that if I gave way I was gone, and by
a last effort of the will I steadied my nerves. How long I
clung there I cannot tell. The sea-gulls came sweeping along
far below ; once a covey of grouse shot past, and I heard the
wail of the curlew • there were two fisher-boats at their nets
half a mile away ; all over the wide sea was the hush of the
gathering night. Somehow or other I managed ultimately to
creep back to the point; but it was dark before I reached
the farmhouse."

" Oh ! Mr Mowbray, it makes me giddy to think of it.
Where were you the other time?"

" In the Border country, which, though it is not lovely,
has an unaccountable fascination for me. It is haunted, I
suppose ; that must be the reason. Round about Loch Skene,
however, it is really fine. I had been at Loch Skene one day
in spring, and thought I would make a short cut by the Grey
Mare's Tail. The descent is very steep, but it does not look
in any way impracticable — till you try it. I followed a sheep-
track, which gradually lost itself, and left me on a long, steep
slope of slippery grass, at a great height above the gloomy
chasm where the water was boiling furiously. I could dis-
tinctly hear the roar of the torrent in the abyss, from which
the spray rose in a cloud. There were some half-dozen
Cheviot sheep sprinkled about — one ewe, I remember, was
sniffing in a helpless, pitiful way at her dead lamb — and I
saw a peregrine high in air, which had followed me from the

FROM THE RIFFEL.

I29

loch. I crept cautiously along the grass for some time, but
I made some ugly slips, and once, my feet shooting from
under me, it was only by the merest chance that I was able
to stop myself, my coat torn and my hands bleeding. Such
a bank is really worse than any ice-slope, for you can always
make a track on the ice with your axe, but on a grassy slope
over a certain angle you are fairly helpless. I did get
back, of course. Taking off my boots and slinging them
round my neck, I was able to creep along on my knees and
my stocking-soles, till I got to some tufts of rushes and coarse
grass, by which I pulled myself up to the track. As an old
mountaineer I was rather ashamed of my escapade, till that
evening at Tibbie Shiel's I heard that a shepherd, only a
month or two before, had gone clean over the precipice from
that very spot."

Don't suppose, dearest Bell, that I am losing my heart to
Mr Mowbray (Raphael Mowbray — isn't it a pretty name ?) ; but
he is really quite nice. Of that I am sure. Who could fancy
from his lazy, drawling manner that he was such a delightful
talker ? It is the fashion, I suppose, among the young men
of his set — only he says he is not a young man, and I really
can't fancy how old he is. La Beata is sure he is over thirty ;
but he doesn't look near so venerable. Tom doesn't like him.

Then in the afternoon, Bell, I had another delightful sur-
prise. I had taken up his felt hat, and was admiring a great
bunch of edelweiss which he had stuck in it. " Are you crazy
about edelweiss, Miss Holdfast?" he asked. I told him I
was crazy about it, but that I had never had a chance of
gathering it, and didn't suppose there was any hereabouts to
gather. Then he put on a very solemn face, and said that if
I made a great vow to tell nobody, and had nothing better
to do that afternoon, he would take me to the place where the
edelweiss grows /

So after lunch we started along the path that leads to the
Theodule — La Beata and papa going with us a bit of the way.
I mustn't break my vow ; but we had such a clamber, and
when I saw at last the crisp, delicate, grey flowers showing
thinly along the dark, discoloured face of the rocks, I was

VOL. II. I

130 FROM THE RIFFEL.

fairly wild with delight. The largest plants were often far
down the precipice ; but I got lots without difficulty, and Mr
Mowbray brought me some I could not reach ; so that I had
soon a splendid bouquet. By this time we were only a little
way above the glacier, and he said, " If you are not afraid to
trust yourself to me " — I see you are opening your eyes very
wide, Bell, but there is nothing coming — " I can show you
in half an hour what is, out of sight, the great view of Monte
Rosa. Will you come?" We scrambled down by a steep
path to the ice-fall, and he took me very cleverly a little way
on to the glacier. O Bell, how grand these great waves are !
Fancy our great Atlantic rollers, just before they break, frozen
into solid ice, and that you have to walk along the broken
ridges — that's what we mountaineers do, dear, without going
quite out of our senses. It is a fearful joy ; but it takes hold
of one somehow, and day after day I become more devoted
to seracs and moulins and bergshrunds ; and what I am to do
with myself when I get home, and have no more crevasses to
jump, I don't know. The view, when I was allowed to look
up, is certainly wonderful. We were upon the lower ice-fall ;
but half a mile off there is another, and that lies right between
us and Monte Rosa. It is a great staircase of pale blue
turquoise (or sapphire) leading up step by step to a temple
of whitest marble ! That's nonsense of course, Bell, but I
must let it stand, for there is the bell for table d'hote, and
Marguerite (the pretty little laundress, who has taken quite
a fancy to me) is waiting for my " things," as Tom calls them.
Poor dear Tom, I wonder what he will say when he hears of
the edelweiss ? But I have kept a bunch for his hat.

VI.

FROM THE BEL ALP.

WE couldn't prevail upon Tom to go to church next day.
He was stiff and sore indeed ; and then the man who
was to preach is certainly very dry. It is a thousand pities ;
but certainly the High Church curates they send to Switzer-
land are what our old Calvinistic nurse (you remember
Chirsty?) calls "sapless twigs." Papa was angry with Tom
when he said that he preferred sermons from stones to
sermons from sticks ; but Mr Mowbray was quite good, and
promised to go with us. That was on Saturday night, how-
ever, and next morning he wasn't down when we started. I
felt just a little bit sore about it, and ran back for my prayer-
book, but only met Marguerite with a tray in the passage.
" It's the Herr's coffee," she said with a smile, standing back
on the stair to let me pass.

Certainly of all the bad roads in Switzerland that to the Bel
Alp is the worst. How the mules contrive to mount this
mountain ladder puzzles one ; and how the girls on their backs
(especially the fat old dowagers) are not shaken to little bits is
still more surprising. However, I walked most of the way
with papa and Tom, and it wasn't till we had reached the
more level path along the high alp that I mounted.

The Bel Alp is quite an English place, and there were lots
of nice English people at the inn ; but I rather think the
nicest had left ; for we passed the most lovely little creature
on the road — fair, simple, eager-eyed, and with a smile that

FROM THE BEL ALP.

haunts me to this day. I never wonder at men falling in love
with pretty girls. I could fall in love with them myself. They
are such darlings.

The great Professor of the Aletsch was an old college chum
of papa — they had been in Germany together — and now they
were quite happy to meet again. The Professor may be an
Agnostic (whatever that is), but I am sure he is as hospitable
as any bishop could be. The curates are rather afraid of him,
and perhaps with reason; for when we went up to see him
first, he was placing a lot of bottles filled with hay and water
in the sun (to see if anything would come of it, you know,
Bell), and he told us that this washy decoction had the same
taste in the mouth as Mr Chasuble's sermons. " Ex nihilo
nihil fit " (I am so glad they taught us Latin at Girton) was as
true of curates in particular as of creation in general. Of
course this was intended to rouse papa, and they had a little
sparring about evolution and protoplasm and the scientific re-
lation between man and the jelly-fish ; but it was all in good
form — Tom said — and nobody was hurt. That is the best of
our Professor ; he is always in good form, and behaves like a
gentleman, even when hit by a rough.1

The President of the Alpine Club (" Such sweet and cour-
teous manners, my dear ! " old Mrs MacAlpine said to me, in

her effusive way But indeed he might be a Knight of the

Garter for that matter, if only he hadn't such a taste for pick-
ing up big stones, and lugging them about in his wallet) was
at the inn when we were there ; and between President and
Professor we saw everything that was to be seen. We climbed
up the Horns and dived into the crevasses, and one day we
walked to the meeting-place of the great glaciers that sweep
round the Aletschhorn and the Nesthorn. The Ober Aletsch
is like a skating-pond, the most lovely level ice, and covered
all over with grotesque figures in frosted silver, and not a crack
into which a mouse could creep. The ice-tables — prodigious
blocks of granite supported on slender pillars of ice — are tables

1 There is no harm in saying now that "the Professor" was the late
Professor Tyndall. See his commentary in the first series of ' Table-Talk,'
page 1 02.

FROM THE BEL ALP. 133

at which giants might dine — as perhaps they do. Those on
the Ober Aletsch are, they say, the biggest in Switzerland.
They are very strange, but not so grand as the blue chasms on
the Corner, into which the snow-torrents fall with a noise like
thunder. We ate our lunch at the foot of the Aletschhorn, in
a vast amphitheatre to which the Colosseum is a mere cockle-
shell ; but the sunshine was so bright, and we were such a
merry party, that I could not feel solemn enough for the place.
I should like to see it of a starry night, quite alone, or with
only one big snowy owl sailing through the moonlight or too-
whooing from a crag, to keep me company. But alas ! Bell,
I am merely a girl (a charming creature, no doubt), and I
shall never be permitted to pass a night on a glacier. On our
way back we had a little taste of the amenities of the Alps, for
just as we had crossed our last patch of snow we heard a
terrific cannonade overhead, and a ton or two of rock came
thundering past us.

Klingele's Inn is very well in its way, and the long proces-
sion of the Pennine Alps at sunset is a picture one never
forgets ; but that wooden paling which the Professor is paint-
ing with his own hands encloses an acre or two of enchanted
ground ; only the enchantment is due to the natural magic of
genius, and the spell of genuine friendliness. I am quoting
papa ; but say it for myself too.

P. S. — Mr Mowbray made a sort of promise that he would
meet us here ; but as the dear little girl says in one of Mr
Butler's books, " Mans is all alike."

134

VII.
FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

IT is the impossible that always happens. Wasn't it dear
Lord Beaconsfield who said so? and Lord Beaconsfield
was always in the right, except when he was delightfully in
the wrong. Somebody had said it before him, very likely;
.but what does it matter? It would never do to allow all the
good things to be appropriated by people merely because they
had the luck to be born before us. That would be simple
selfishness, and I hate selfish people. To cut a long story
short, Bell, Mr Mowbray is with us again, and I have slept on
a glacier — at least, in a glacier hut. And the little girl with
the dove-like eyes and the radiant smile is writing at the little
table beside me, and her name, Mabel Gray, is as sweet as
herself.

I am not much good at geography; but I must try and tell
you about the great Aletsch glacier, so that you may under-
stand what we are doing. The Aletsch is a huge ice-stream
nearly twenty miles long, and broader than any river I know.
It rises among the great snow-fields of the Oberland peaks,
the Monch, the Jungfrau, and the Eiger; it flows down
between the Aletschhorn and the Eggischhorn; and it falls
at last in an ice-torrent into the gorge of the Massa, just below
the Bel Alp. The Bel Alp Hotel is built on one side of the
glacier, the Eggischhorn on the other. The Bel Alp is 6732
feet high, the Eggischhorn 7150; so that there is not much
difference between them. But to go from one to the other

FROM THE EGGISCHHORN. 135

you must descend to the glacier, and when you have crossed
to the nice little inn at Ried, you have a long ride along the
ridge till you reach the Eggischhorn. But the view all the
way is lovely. Every peak of the Southern Alps, from Monte
Leone to the Weisshorn, is visible, and we were always stop-
ping to look back. I walked the whole way with Tom ;
papa and La Beata had mules, which picked their steps across
the ice so cleverly. I wonder if mules have immortal souls,
Bell ? I am sure they are clever enough — and wicked enough,
too, sometimes ; though it is wonderful how good they are as
a rule, considering what they have come through. But I like
the Bernese ponies best — they are as sure-footed as chamois,
and they never sulk and try to bite you, as the mules do.

The first person we saw at the Eggischhorn was Mr Mow-
bray, lying fast asleep with his hat over his eyes on the broad
wall in front of the hotel. What a place to choose for a
siesta ! If he had wakened with a start — as I often do — and
turned round the wrong way, he would have fallen ever so
many hundred feet ! He had heard we were coming, and
had kept places for us beside him at table tfhote, on the plea
that wre were old friends, and that papa was a bishop. Of all
these mountain hotels, the Eggischhorn is far the cosiest.
The bedrooms are large and airy, and not little wooden sheds
like those at the Riffel ; the salle-a-manger is quite a grand
hall, and the mutton is positively tender. You would never
fancy, indeed, when inside, that you were living above the
clouds. For in sober truth, Bell, it is often quite bright here
when great white clouds are sweeping along the valley and
drifting through the pine-woods far below.

There is not much view from the hotel, so we generally
take our books and eatables with us, climb to some coign of
vantage, and lie about on the grass the rest of the afternoon.
We have been up the Eggischhorn, and seen the whole mag-
nificent stream of the glacier as it sweeps round the grim
bastions of the Aletschhorn. Tom said it was about as pretty
a little bit of climbing as I could wish to try, and he was
quite right. There were some great snow-drifts into which
I sank to the middle, and when I got to the enormous masses

136 FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

of rock near the summit (" confusedly hurled, the fragments
of an earlier world," — isn't that Wordsworth?), I was fairly
finished. These huge slabs had obviously been piled together
without any prospective regard to the newest fashions of ladies'
dress ; and in fact, Bell, it would be an immense relief if we
could lay aside our petticoats altogether when we come to the
Alps, and try something handier (or leg-ier should I say?)
But the men are so selfish, and keep us like babies in long
skirts ! Still the view is so exquisite (when we get it) that
the miseries of the ascent are quickly forgotten. It is said to
be the finest view in Switzerland, and perhaps it is. For
everywhere round about us, far and near, are the noblest
peaks of the Alps : over above Zermatt, the Mischabelhorner,
the Weisshorn, the Matterhorn ; in the dim distance the
mighty mass of Mont Blanc ; while close at hand, rising out
of the glacier, we have the Jungfrau and her giant sisters,
with the lovely Aletschhorn in the van. One day there was
not a cloud in the sky ; the next an ocean of mist was surging
tempestuously all about the Rhone Valley, and we could not
see an inch before our noses till we came to the very summit,
when we found ourselves on a sudden in brilliant sunshine,
and every peak to the north standing out whitely against the
cloudless blue. It was like magic ; the division between the
two worlds — the world of sunshine and the world of fog — was
as sharp as if cut by a knife. We had had a similar experi-
ence on the Sparrenhorn the week before. Tom says it has
something to do with the air-currents of the glacier, and I
suppose he is right, for though the enemy made many attempts
to break through our line, and a wave occasionally rolled up
to where we sat, it could never penetrate the charmed circle,
but was sooner or later driven back. The sublimity of the
aerial contest was indescribable ; it might have been such a
struggle in the heavens between the powers of light and dark-
ness as Milton has imagined in Paradise Lost.

But the Merjelin See — the Arctic Lake, with its stranded
and floating icebergs — is our favourite meeting-place. It is
rather far for a stroll indeed ; and we generally leave La Beata
behind us on the summit of the ridge — within easy reach of

FROM THE EGGISCHHORN. 137

the hotel ; but for the rest of us, in spite of the distance, its
attractions are irresistible. We skirt the northern shore till
we come close to the glacier. There are some smooth blocks
of granite about a hundred feet above the track, and among
these we establish our camp. It commands a noble view —
the glacier, the lake, the grand peaks of the Saas Grat. There
are Alpine flowers and Alpine butterflies in marvellous variety.
The colour of the butterflies is as gorgeous as the colour of
the flowers : there is not one subdued or neutral tint among
them — not one colour that your mamma would admit into her
London drawing-room. The barbarous blaze of blue gentian
and scarlet lily and red auricula and purple anemone and yellow
crocus is of course in the worst possible taste ; but somehow
we rather like it. One gets savage and natural, my dear, in
these Alpine solitudes. We forget all that we have learnt
about Bordone and Botticelli ; and the only scrap of aestheti-
cism that we have left among us is Mr Mowbray's felt hat
with its bunch of edelweiss — which he borrowed of an Italian
brigand, he says, and forgot to return.

He and I were waiting for Tom and Mabel at the " camp "
when he told me this " story." I took the opportunity to give
him a little lecture on his levity and want of earnestness ; in-
deed I went the length of flatly assuring him that the Italian
brigand was a myth.

" I cannot stand your earnest people, Miss Holdfast," he
answered evasively. " The only radically earnest man I know
is the Grand Inquisitor, and he is far from being an agreeable
acquaintance. The evil that has been done to us through
Ruskins and Kingsleys and Tom Browns and Arnolds is in-
calculable. What a man likes, that only can he admire ; and
when he admires what he doesn't like, he is a scamp and an
impostor. Lots of the men here are as sick of climbing as I
am, and would much rather stay with any nice girls who happen
to be about ; but they haven't the courage to say so. They
are the victims of earnest mountaineering. Believe me, Miss
Holdfast (or don't believe me, if you would rather not), that
earnestness really means narrowness and bigotry, the incapa-
city to get out of the rut which you have worn, to move about

138 FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

easily and with freedom, to give all your faculties fair play
and equal balance. My ideal heroine is the girl in that book
of Heine's you were reading at the Riffel — great free eyes
calmly looking down into the great free world. By-the-way,
what do you think of your new friend Miss Gray?"

" Mabel is the dearest girl in the world."

" She is very lovely indeed," he went on. She and Tom
were coming to us across the glacier, and her red petticoat
supplied a bit of colour that told brilliantly against the ice.
" I admire her as I admire a shell or a water-lily. They show
us what pretty things Nature can make when she chooses. In
one sense immense beauty like hers is a revelation. A very
lovely creature must come direct from the very heart of Nature,
— it needs a good many generations of blundering mortals to
turn out anything very ugly. Can you think of anything very
ugly, Miss Holdfast, that has not been made so by man ? "

"Rats and snails and puppy-dogs' tails," I answered flip-
pantly. But he only smiled languidly down upon me.

" That is right. That is what Heine's heroine would have
said if he had opened her lips. It is a pity he did not. But
when I hear my good friend, Mat Arnold, making such a
furious fuss about the free play of the intellect (as though it
were an invention of his own, and not as old as the hills), he
reminds me somehow of the Moosehead guide in Mr Russell
Lowell's delightful sketch of the American forest. You re-
member Uncle Zeb and the ' free play ' of his feet in his big
boots ? * Kind o' get your foot into 'em,' and it was all right.
'Wahl, my foot can play in 'em like a young hedgehog.'
Uncle Zeb is an invaluable character."

Yes — Tom and Mabel were on the glacier — not for the first
time. In fact they are constantly together now. What does
it mean ? Well, I am sure he is quite welcome to take up
with her if he chooses ; but indeed, Bell, I didn't think he
was such a flirt. And after what he said at— Of course,
Bell, he didn't say anything, and of course I am a little goose.
And, indeed, I don't wonder at his losing his head about
Mabel ; if I were a man I know I should be over head and
ears in love with her. But then, you see, my feeling has

FROM THE EGGISCHHORN. 139

always been that the girls are ever so much nicer than the
men ; and Mabel is a darling of darlings. Yet, after all, Bell,
when poor Mr Mowbray comes up and assures me that if we
take him to Tyrol with us I will find him wonderfully little in
the way — -for a man, I am half inclined to accept a more
lenient view of the sex.

140

VIII.
FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

DID I tell you, Bell, about our night on the ice ? Why,
it has made us famous ; our adventure has been the
sensation of the season at the Eggischhorn. Somebody com-
ing over the Furca was asked if he had heard of the two
pretty English girls who had been lost on the glacier. There,
Bell!

It came about in the simplest way. We had often taken a
run across the ice from our camp on the lake ; and Tom had
pointed out to us the long undulating ridge against the sky-
line, between the Monch and the Jungfrau. "That's the
Joch," he said, " a level road all the way, and the finest walk-
ing in the world — if we start in time." (" In time," Bell,
means a little after midnight.) " Girls who have had a week's
practice can do it easily. There's a grand view from the top
— you see Switzerland from end to end. It's eight thousand
feet above Grindelwald."

Tom and Mr Mowbray have patched up a provisional truce.
So we made up a party of five — old Colonel Gray let Mabel
come, and we had Zimmermatter, with his rope and his axe,
to carry our " things." By good luck we took a lot of wraps.

I feel like Mabel's mother (who can't leave their little York-
shire place for rheumatism). I am only a year older, to be
sure, but she is so young. She enjoys everything with almost
childish eagerness ; her divine curiosity, as papa calls it, is
never satisfied — her blue eyes are always saying, " Oh, what a

FROM THE EGGISCHHORN. 141

lovely world ! " Everybody is kind to this delightful child
(do you know, Bell, she reminds me of your little Alice, at
once so eager and so sedate?), and the grim Colonel positively
worships her. So I promised to look after her faithfully, and
she was allowed to come with us.

Tom's " in time " meant a little after midnight ; but I
needn't tell you about the start — it was much the same as
when we went to the Cima. (I don't think Mr Mowbray went
to bed at all, but fell asleep on the sofa in the salon after tea.)
Only the walk up the Aletsch is even grander than the walk
up the Corner, and the Place de la Concorde (as it is called
rather Frenchly) is the finest " place " in the world. Then we
were pulled up the steep slope to the rocky wall, which goes
down sheer to Grindelwald. For hours we had seen nothing
but the everlasting snow ; on a sudden a lovely green plain,
dotted over with villages and forests and fields and lakes, and
melting in the far distance into purple muirland, lay at our
feet. These are the sort of contrasts that make one in love
with the Alps ; we have nothing like them at home. But even
in Switzerland the high sanctuaries are few and far between,
whereas our Scotland, Bell, is lovely all over.

But to come to our adventure. We had finished our
luncheon at some rocks — the only rocks to be seen there-
abouts— not very far from the Joch ; and we were making our
way rapidly back along the glacier, so that we might be home
before it got dark. We had heard the sound of thunder in the
distance, and a slate-blue cloud was hanging over the Bel Alp.
I noticed that Zimmermatter had been looking anxiously at
the sky in that direction, and now — on turning a projecting
corner — he held up his hands and spoke hurriedly to Tom,
who was beside him. They halted until we came up to them.
Then Tom pointed out to us a heavy bank of fog that was
advancing up the glacier — not more than a mile from us.
" Zimmermatter was afraid of this when he heard the thunder
— a storm on the Bel Alp often brings a bank of fog up the
glacier. We are not very far from the Concordia hut, and
now we must make a run for it." We did make a run for it.
I clung to Zimmermatter's arm, Mabel to Tom's. As we

142 FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

scudded along I heard Mr Mowbray speaking to Zimmer-
matter in German quite coolly. " There is my compass," he
said ; " put it in your pocket. The wind is coming from the
east ; it will blow right in our faces so long as we keep
straight for the hut. You know that bit of black rock on the
neck of the Schonbiihlhorn ; if the fog lights a bit we may
chance to see it. The hut is about a hundred yards due
north." The mist was now close at hand ; in another moment
it was drifting round us ; in another we were in thick darkness
— darkness that might be felt. " For Heaven's sake ! " Tom
exclaimed, " keep close together."

Zimmermatter had positively to grope his way — guided
solely by wind and compass — for every landmark had been
blotted out. It did not seem more than a quarter of an hour
after we were tied together (we had got the rope out again as
the darkness fell upon us), when we heard a joyful shout from
the extreme end where the guide was leading. By some
extraordinary chance we had gone straight to the hut ! There
it was, like a reef of black rock looming through the mist — a
wretched little cabin, to be sure; but we were much too
happy to be critical. To us it was like the lifeboat to a ship-
wrecked crew, which means safety at least.

Some bits of wood had been left by the party who had
bivouacked before us, and we had soon a blaze on the hearth.
Then the provisions were examined — a pot of Liebig, meat
lozenges, tea, wine, and bread — surely they would last us till
the fog lifted. But when was it to lift ? As the evening fell
it grew momently darker and darker, and long before sundown
we had abandoned any hope of getting away that night. What
could we do, Bell ? There was a trackless and boundless sea of
darkness outside ; here, at least, was one little spot of light and
warmth. The inner room was given to Mabel and me, and
with our wraps we made ourselves tolerably comfortable,
though neither of us slept a wink; it was altogether too
strange. The men sat round the fire, and smoked their
pipes and waited for the dawn. But I am anticipating.

"The resources of civilisation are not exhausted," Tom
remarked, as we gathered round our primitive tea-table,

FROM THE EGGISCHHORN. 143

"though this is rather different from five -o'clock tea at
Kensington."

The fact is, Bell, we were just in wild spirits. Mabel said
she had never been happier in her life. I have not laughed
so much since I was at school, and the men were as good as
gold. It was the reaction, I suppose, from our fright ; but
we all enjoyed the evening immensely.

I had a little private talk with Zimmermatter outside, as we
were looking at the stars — for, strange to say, though the mist
still lay heavy round about the cabin we could sometimes see a
star overhead — when I learned for the first time that Mr Mow-
bray, who is laziness incarnate, had been, and still is on occa-
sion, one of the most daring climbers of the Alps. Zimmer-
matter waxed quite eloquent on the subject. He had known the
Herr ever since he was a lad, and some of their most perilous
snow-feats had been made together. Mr Mowbray has some
Italian blood in his veins — that is why he is called Raphael,
I suppose — and it was in Italy they first met. He was
shooting chamois with an Italian nobleman in the upper part
of the Val de Lys, when, one night, a political refugee, closely
followed by the gendarmerie, appeared at the chateau. The
poor man had been run into a regular cul-de-sac. His capture
was certain, unless he could be taken across the great Monte
Rosa chain to Zermatt. But no pass had yet been made over
these pathless wastes ; the Lys Joch was unknown : the nearest
place of refuge was the chalet on the Riffel. But the two
of them had somehow managed to get the fugitive across — an
old man, a Venetian republican, a friend of Mazzini, quite
unused to the snow — up perilous ice-slopes, through endless
seracs, down awful precipices. Wasn't it fine, Bell? I
wonder what the police thought when they came and found
that the bird was flown ?

Mabel and I lay down on the rough beds ; but we could
not sleep. She told me all about their simple Yorkshire
home, and the rough, kindly people among whom they live,
as we lay side by side. Neither of us, I daresay, will ever
forget that night — the murmur of talk in the other room, the
mysterious sounds of the glacier, the sough of the wind, the

144 FROM THE EGGISCHHORN.

absolute isolation. After midnight the wind rose to a gale,
clearing the fog ; but it soon moderated, and just as the stars
were growing pale in the dawn, we heard — at least I did, for
Mabel had begun to doze — a distant shout from the glacier ;
the outer door opened, admitting a cold air of morning wind,
and Zimmermatter cooed back a reply. It was, of course, the
people from the inn who had been sent to meet us ; but do
you know, Bell, I felt almost sorry ? Our little adventure —
and girls have so few — was at an end.

IX.
FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG.

DEAREST BELL, — We are on our way to the Tyrol, and
only came here by chance for a night or two. But it
is such a nice place, and there is not an Englishman in the
valley except ourselves, that I should not wonder if we stayed
on for the rest of the week. We are still in Switzerland ; but
with its baths and its beer, and its one-o'clock table d'hote and
its seven o'clock supper, and its cheapness and its homeliness,
and the plumpness and easy good-nature of the men and the
fervid "Ochs" and "Achs" of the girls, Tom says that
Stachelberg is as little English and as near Tyrolese as any-
thing Swiss can be. We came by the Furca and the St
Gothard all together as far as Amsteg — where Tom and
Zimmermatter left us to get into the Linth Thai (that's our
Stachelberg valley) by the Clariden Grat, — the rest of us
going on to Sonnenberg, on the Lake of Lucerne (2000 feet
above the Bay of Uri, and a lovely moonlight — so that every
jagged peak was as sharp in the water as in the sky — think of
that, Bell !), and then we got next morning to Schwys, and so
over the Pragel Pass to Vorauen, Glarus, and Stachelberg.
Tom met us at Vorauen, where we stayed the night — a nice
little inn at the upper end of the Klon See, and the Klon See
is as perfect a little lake as one can imagine ; for while the
great Alpine wall of the Glarnisch rises precipitously from its
southern shore, along the northern bank there is just such a
lovely confusion of green pasture and grey rock and purple
VOL. II. K

146 FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG.

heather and feathery birch as you may see any day upon a
Highland loch. The morning was so still that every scar in
the mountain-side — a stupendous cliff 7000 feet high — was
repeated in the water as in a glass ; and the glacier snows on
the summit shone brilliantly under our feet.

Mabel is with us, and so is Mr Mowbray. Old Colonel
Gray had visions of the Twelfth upon his Yorkshire moors, —
the Tyrol wouldn't tempt him ; but we made him leave Mabel,
and we are to visit them in Yorkshire on our way home.
And Mr Mowbray? Well, Mr Mowbray was going to the
Tyrol at any rate, and thought we might as well go together.
Tom fumed a little, but really Tom is unreasonable ; for if he
is to flirt with Mabel all day (only Mabel is not a bit of a flirt,
but as — as — innocent as a round -eyed Madonna), what on
earth is Miss Holdfast to do with herself in the meantime ?
I don't care a bit for the men, you know ; but for some reason
which we cannot fathom they have been included in the in-
scrutable arrangements of the universe, and it is our duty to
put up with them.

You can hardly call Stachelberg an Alpine resting-place —
for it is only 2000 or 3000 feet up — so we have to go on the
mountains every day. And the pine-woods and the chalets
on the higher pastures are so exactly what pine-woods and
chalets are in pictures, and there is such a sweet aromatic air,
such scents of spring flowers and fir cones and new milk, that
one never tires. The blue carpet of violets on the upper
" alps " is just wonderful. Yesterday we went into a chalet
where they were making cheese. There were milk-pails full
of pansies standing at the door. Think of that ! The men
who were working about told us that it is the pansy which
gives its curious colour and flavour to the green cheese of the
district. They mix them up with the curd, and the cheese has
to stand for a year. There, Bell, don't go and say that I never
give you any useful information, — they don't think so here,
I can tell you. Mr Mowbray says that I am the only Uni-
versal Gazetteer that he knows, and Tom has set me to tabu-
late the hotel bills under three heads — Greed, Rapacity, and
Fraud. But fancy — a pailful of pansies !

FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG. 147

We were sitting out in front of the Bad, watching the after-
glow on the Todi and the other great peaks at the head of the
Thai. Soft meditative shadows lay all about the lower valley.
There was the occasional tinkle of cattle-bells from the cows
waiting about the chalets to be milked — a snatch of song or
a/0dfc/from some cowherd high among the pine-woods.

" And I believe that every flower enjoys the air it breathes,"
Mabel said softly.

" That's the pathetic fallacy, as Mr Ruskin will tell you,"
Mr Mowbray replied. " But I rather hold with Wordsworth.
You come from Yorkshire, Miss Gray, and they still think a
deal of Wordsworth in the country. Why shouldn't we com-
municate our own feelings and thoughts to woods and flowers
and streams ? "

" They have much better of their own," I interposed.

" That's true. Heine says that perfumes are the feelings of
flowers. But the perfume is only the coarse outward expres-
sion— the feeling itself is doubtless far too subtle to be appre-
hended by gross creatures like men. Still we ought to be
thankful that we have any means of communication, and it
can't be denied that the smell of a violet is even finer than —
what shall I say ? — the finest bits of Keats.

' The foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,'

is possibly as good as a Narcissus or a cabbage rose."
"But what of the poor cabbage itself?" papa asked.
" The cabbage is the village Hampden, the mute inglorious
Milton, the Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. He has
lost the power of speech, and there is something sad in their
great round helpless faces — a dumb vegetable in distress is
really as pathetic as a dumb animal. So that if Mr Ruskin
meant to say that we have no right to attribute our own transi-
tory moods and dyspeptic sensations — for that, I take it, is what
we call poetry — to those whose feelings are natural and inevi-
table, why, I am with him so far. But I doubt whether he
meant it — it needs a divine trifler like Heine to enter into the
heart of a cabbage, and Mr Ruskin is terribly in earnest. Oh,

148 FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG.

Miss Holdfast, what a world of mischief these earnest men
work ! "

I never can tell whether Mr Mowbray himself is in earnest
or not. He has a habit of lying back on the sofa and letting
the words drop lazily out of his mouth, that simply exasperates
me. Still I like him, for he is certainly out of the common,
and he and papa get on beautifully. But dear papa is a
jewel ', that quaint, quiet simplicity of his is so racy ; and Mr
Mowbray never wearies of drawing it out.

" Mr Ruskin," papa said, " has possibly expected Art to do
more for our morals than it is able to do. These passionate
jeremiads against bad painting, as if bad painting were a
deadly sin and a bad painter a great criminal, are possibly
at the root of many of the exaggerations which have been so
often ridiculed. For if true Art is such a vital matter to us
all, there may be nothing absurd in trying to live up to a lily
or a chintz or a Japanese screen or a flower-pot. But I doubt
if Art has much to do with making us live better."

"Not a bit of it, sir, you may be sure, neither Art nor
Nature. A friend of mine says that the only thing that can
have a permanent influence on a man's character is to
have come of good ancestors and to live among nice people.
It's because I've been going about with you, Miss Holdfast,
that I'm so good, and not because I've seen Titian's Venus,
and been up the Finster-aar-horn."

"But don't you think," Mabel struck in, "that the place
where you live, where you were born, does something? I
don't think I would have been the same girl if I had been
bred in London. I am afraid there is a good deal of York-
shire muirland about my mind."

"That is quite true, Mabel," I exclaimed, "and we love
you better, my dear, because you have a taste of the heather
— like the grouse. But oh, Mr Mowbray, don't abuse Mr
Ruskin. There is a little German book of translations from
English writers in the salon, and the piece they give from
Ruskin is the passage on the Unterwalden pines. It was that
more than anything else, except perhaps the bit in Emerson
about Arnold Winkelried gathering in his side the sheaf of

FROM THE BATHS OF STACHELBERG. 149

Austrian spears to break the line for his comrades, that made
me long to come to Switzerland. Papa will read it to us when
we go in — it sounds quite nicely in the German."

" I know it," said Mr Mowbray, as we rose ; " but mind
you, I didn't say that Mr Ruskin at his best wasn't better
than either Art or Nature, Words are, after all, the most
effective weapons that human beings can use (what is your
Phidias and your Vandyck to our Sophocles and our Shake-
speare ?), and Nature herself is at her finest when her barbaric
pearl and gold have been passed through the alembic of the
imagination — in an inspired book like Modern Painters. You
didn't think half as much of the Unterwalden pines when you
came to see them, — did you now, Miss Holdfast ? "

Papa laughed a little, and, taking hold of Mr Mowbray's
arm, repeated one of his favourite bits from The Winters
Tale :—

" ' Nature is made better by no mean

But nature makes that mean ; so o'er that art

Which you say adds to nature is an art

That nature makes.'"

We had only one other day in Switzerland, and Tom had
reserved a great display of fireworks for the occasion. I
don't mean actual rockets and Roman candles ; but we were
to take what upon the whole, he declared, to be the finest
walk that can be made by moderate walkers among the Swiss
Alps (with Tom, to be sure, the last is always the best). It
was to the Ober Sand Chalets.

ISO

X.

FROM TRIBERG, IN THE BLACK FOREST.

I HAD to break off, before I could tell about our walk to
the Ober Sand Alp.

The whole day was delightful ; but looking back, Bell, there
are two or three exquisite little bits that give a unique character
to the rest, and keep their place in the memory with peculiar
vividness. The Pantenbriicke, which spans at one leap a
bottomless abyss, is the sort of unaccountable bridge one sees
in Der Freischutz. I had left the rest at the Hotel Todi
below (there was some difficulty about the mules for papa and
La Beata), and had climbed up the steep path alone. It
was the early morning, and there was a dewy freshness in the
air. Isn't it wonderful how young and innocent this weary
wicked old world feels of a morning ? She seems to renew
her youth with every dawn. Do you remember what Heine
saw that spring morning when he had taken a short cut across
the Hartz and lost his way? " The mountains stood in their
white night gear, the fir-trees were shaking sleep out of their
branching limbs, the fresh morning air curled their drooping
locks, the birds were at morning prayers, the meadow vale
flashed like gold strewed with diamonds, and the shepherd
passed over it with his bleating flock." That was just what
the trees were doing this morning — shaking sleep out of their
branching limbs. I said as much to Mr Mowbray when he
joined me, but he told me I was a victim of the pathetic
fallacy. "But isn't it amazing," he went on, "what genius

FROM TRIBERG, IN THE BLACK FOREST. 151

can do ? That spring morning was exactly like ever so many
other spring mornings that we have had before and since ; but
just because a poet happened to go astray, it will be remem-
bered when the morning of Jena or Austerlitz is forgotten.
And the Emperor himself! He was as mean and tricky a
little scamp as ever lived ; but just because the face of that
young Augustus fascinated Heine, he may be accepted by
posterity as something solemn and divine. Monsieur le Grand
and his drum will be admitted as unimpeachable testimony
when the terrible indictment of Monsieur Lanfrey is laid away
on the shelf where so many unpleasant truths are being con-
sumed by the moths. The Old Guard will march down the
ages to the sound of Heine's words and the music of the Mar-
seillaise." And then he hummed a snatch from Schumann —

' ' So will ich liegen und horchen still,
\Vie eine Schildwach' im Grabe,
Bis einst ich hore Kanonen Gebriill
Und wiehernder Rosse Getrabe :
Dann reitet mein Kaiser wohl iiber mein Grab,
Viel Schwerter klirren und blitzen ;
Dann steig' ich gewaffnet hervor aus dem Grab,
Den Kaiser, den Kaiser zu schiitzen."

The path meanders by wood and meadow and moorland,
till it reaches the bare hillside above which towers the mighty
wall of the Selbsanft. It rises more than a mile over our heads,
as sheer as the towers of Notre Dame. And yet, Bell, I am
not doing justice to its miraculous steepness, for at places it
actually overhangs. "A piece of Cyclopean masonry;" Mr
Mowbray said, " which shows us how the Titans built." But
by some subtlety of association papa's thoughts were busy with
that poem by Blake in which we are confronted with the
questions which the sinister-fire in the eyes of the tiger, as
representing the malign forces of nature, are apt to provoke at
times —

' ' What the hammer, what the chain,

Knit thy strength and forged thy brain ?

What the anvil ? what dread grasp

Dared thy deadly talons clasp ? "

I $2 FROM TRIBERG, IN THE BLACK FOREST.

I think we were all rather glad when we got out of the
shadow of these terrific rocks into the sunshine again. We
soon reached the chalets of the Lower Sand Alp ; but Tom
rather alarmed us by pointing to a sheet of water that was
coming down in a white mist from the high tableland overhead.
"The Ober Sand Alp is up there," he said, "and I don't
think we can take the mules much farther."

Well, Bell, we were pulled up at last, though I shouldn't
care to do it again. Bat when we got to the chalets it was
worth all we had gone through, and a great deal more. We
were in the centre of a vast amphitheatre. There was a little
grass and greenness round the chalets ; everywhere else bare
rock, sweeping glacier, eternal snow-fields. The Todi rises
like a square feudal keep out of the ice ; then come the Klein
Todi and the Sand Glacier, and then, with one long noble
sweep, like the line drawn with swift masterfulness by the hand
of a great painter, the gently undulating snow-fields of the
Clariden Grat. (Is there anything more tender and delicate
than the swell of the snow, except, perhaps, the swell of the
sea ?) It is an unbroken circle ; for behind the narrow gap
by which we had entered tower the splintered pinnacles of the
Selbsanft.

The people at the chalets were inclined to be sulky and
surly, but after some coaxing from Zimmermatter they let us
have a flagon of milk, and we dined royally among the wild
flowers, with the shy game-like cattle looking on.

Mr Mowbray walked home with me. We were a good deal
ahead of the main party, and Tom and Mabel loitered behind.
He was telling her (so she told me afterwards) how he went up
the Weisshorn. The narrative must have lasted a good while,
for, even before we were out of earshot, we heard him
begin —

" If you had been at Zermatt, Miss Gray, you might have
come with us as far as the Trift Glacier. The gorge of the
Triftbach has some nasty places, to be sure, but we would have
got you past them ; and then, when you get well up, the view
of Monte Rosa and the Saas Grat is just superb. And you

FROM TRIBERG, IN THE BLACK FOREST. 153

could have gathered hatfuls of edelweiss, and had it all to
yourself up there "

" I shall be so sorry to leave Switzerland," I said to Mr
Mowbray after a pause.

" Ah, but we are going to the Tyrol, and the Tyrol is ever
so much nicer, especially for lazy people like you and me."

" Mr Mowbray ! " I said indignantly — " I am not lazy, and
you know I am not."

" I know you are perfection."

"That's nonsense. But I daresay the Tyrol will be deli-
cious. They say that every glen has its romance. You must
tell me all about them. I daresay you know them by heart."

" There is one I know by heart very well, and I'll tell you
all about it when we get there."

I wonder, Bell, if he meant anything ? somehow he looked
as if he did. And now, on a separate slip, so that no one
may read it except yourself, you will find the

P.S. Most private and confidential. — Things are getting
rather mixed, Bell. I don't know whether I like Tom or Mr
Mowbray best. Tom doesn't know whether he likes me or
Mabel best. And Mr Mowbray ? Mr Mowbray raves about
Mabel, but then he makes me his confidante. And Mabel ?
Why, Mabel, at least, is blithe and unconscious, and knows no
more of what is going on under her nose than the lark overhead,
which just now is trying to sing a second to her new song —
the Meermadchen's Song in Oberon.

154

XI.

FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY.

T NDEED, Bell, it is too true. I cry peccavi at once, so
A don't scold me. But you don't mean to say it is actually
three weeks since I wrote you? It doesn't look like three
days. We have been having such a good time of it. First
among the nice moss-grown, middle-aged towns of Germany —
Ulm, and Aschaffenburg, and Augsburg, and Niirnberg, and
Regensberg ; and then in this lovely Salzkammergut country
among the Austrian lakes ; and I don't think, Bell, more
exquisite bits of water are to be found anywhere — even in
Scotland. Alt-Aussee and Halstadt and the Gosau See are
gems of the first water. I have lost my heart to each in turn,
and don't know which I love best. You would say that the
white snows of the Dachstein rising over the blue water and
dark greenery of the Aussee could not be beat — till you come
to Halstadt ; and then you are sure that that severe and
monumental mountain tarn is unrivalled ; only when you see
the Hinter Gosau See, with the glaciers impending over its
gloomy pines and shattered rocks, you are not quite so sure,
and, in fact, begin to get just a little muddled by all this
marvel of beauty. So we have come to anchor here, in a sort
of chalet-inn, with the smithy on one hand (where they are
shoeing their wiry little horses all day long, and sometimes far
into the night, making Rembrandt-like bits of light and dark-
ness), the pine-woods on the other, and the Donnerkogl over-
head.

FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY. 155

There is nothing like limestone, my dear — that is what Mr
Mowbray says (only of course he doesn't say " my dear," it's
you, my dear, I mean). It is the stone of which Nature builds
her spires, and towers, and minarets. Working with it she is
capable of the most astonishing " ootbraks." These incredible
peaks and impossible precipices are the crazy pranks of an
architect who doesn't mind in the least what people say. The
Donnerkogl in this line of business is simply superb, though
we are to see finer at Berchtesgaden by-and-bye.

" Nature as a rule is so staid, and steady, and respectable,
Miss Holdfast," he went on, "that I don't wonder she gets
tired of the monotonous jog-trot, and likes to break into a brisk
canter at times. This is one of the few places where she
indulges in a little healthy riot. She turns out a Donnerkogl
as she turns out a Heine, in a mood half sportive and half
impish, just to show us that there is a touch of the Bohemian
about her, and that the Philistines are not victorious along the
whole line. They have a story here of a girl wandering on the
Alp who came to a door or window on the mountain-side and
looked in. There was a great fire burning inside tended by
little men or goblins, who grinned at her. Perhaps they were
making the Donnerkogl."

We were sitting in the pine -wood, waiting for Tom and
Mabel, who have latterly taken to scientific pursuits, and were
at the moment closely engaged in considering a bank of ferns.
The ferns here are worth looking at, I admit ; but Mabel
would see them all the better, Master Tom, if you weren't
always — however, it is no business of mine, Bell, and if Mabel
likes it, I don't mind. And Mr Mowbray is — oh, so nice!
That is a discovery I have made for about a week now. But
don't breathe a whisper of it, for I am sure he doesn't like me
a bit, and people will talk without rhyme or reason.

We had been up to the Zwiesel Alp, which is one of the
great places of the Tyrol. The track is all uphill, but till you
come to the highest "alp" you are in the cool shadow of
the wood. Such pines ! with deep cool brown shadows, and
then the high sweet flowery mountain pasture on which you
emerge into the sunlight is like the grass of Paradise — emeralds

156 FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY.

newly broken (that's Dante, you know). I won't say a word
about the view from the top, except that the Dachstein looked
very white, and the Donnerkogl very black, and that among
a wilderness of jagged peaks — so wide it was that in spite of
the glimmer of sunshine everywhere we counted half-a-dozen
separate thunder-clouds trailing against the wind — we saw for
the first time the delicate cone of the Gross Glockner, — a
slender pyramid of purest ice. "Let us go to the Gross
Glockner ! " we all exclaimed there and then, and Mr Mow-
bray has promised to take us across the central range by
the track which runs up the Fuscher Thai, over the Pfandl-
scharte Glacier — quite a grand " ascension," as Zimmermatter
declares.

We got Mabel to sing us a snatch or two of her German
songs as we sat about after lunch, lazily enjoying the cool of
the afternoon on those breezy heights — Heine and Schumann
and the Meermadchen of Weber all mixed up in a delicious
tangle. She had taken off her hat, and, with her brown hair
blown about her face, looked the mountain nymph to per-
fection. I don't wonder at Tom, and it is very good of Mr
Mowbray to flirt a little with me — poor me — but then Tom
fairly appropriates her, and nobody else can get a word in.

It was nearly dark before we got back, and we found all the
people of the homestead sitting about the road, and chatting
contentedly in the mellow twilight. There was still a fiery
glow from the forge ; but the smith was resting outside the
smithy, with his sleeves tucked up to his elbows ; and the boys
were blowing it for sport. There is something delightfully
homely and sociable in this Austrian mountain life. The cows
stand about to be milked; from the high Alpine pastures
comes the sound of cattle-bells and jodefs ; the kellnerinn looks
over the carved balcony to tell us that the " baked cock " and
the mehlspeise are just ready. The landlord himself is smok-
ing a great china pipe on the bench before his house, peace-
fully contemplating his cows and his boys, the evening sky and
the returning guests and the legend scrawled all over the front
of the Wirthshaus, which, besides commending the inmates to

FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY. 157

the care of God, remarks that the beer is good. Everybody
knows everybody in the valley, and they are as friendly with
us as if they had known us all their lives. After the " baked
cock" had been disposed of, and the last flagon of light
Austrian beer drawn for the night, and the men had gone to
smoke their pipes, the kellnerinn comes out with her knitting,
and seats herself beside me. Mahley is a comely, sonsy,
good-natured soul, and very curious about the world beyond
the Halstader See.

Mahley. When I am married in spring, Fritz will take me
to Ischl. It must be very nice to go with one's sweetheart.
Is the little one* to be married to the Herr — the Herr with
the brown curly hair ? And the dark Herr, who speaks the
good Deutsche, is he (with significance) to be married too ?

Miss Holdfast (blushing the least little bit}. Oh, Mahley,
the gentlemen are papa's friends, and come with us, not
because they care for Mabel and me, but because they like
to travel and see everything that is to be seen.

Mahley (reflectively]. What is the good of seeing things,
I wonder ? I think I see everything here that I want to see.
There are the woods, and the Alps, and father, and mother,
and the children, and Fritz ; and the sleighing, and the skat-
ing, and the dance in winter; and the hay-making, and the
flowers for the hat when the year gets green again ; and then
in summer one is busy all day long — running up-stairs and
down-stairs to watch that the beer is brisk and the milk cool.
Why do you come so far, mein liebes fraulein ? for England
is a long way off, they say. Are you not happy at home ?

Miss Holdfast. I have a lovely home, Mahley, and am as
happy as the day is long. But then you see that — that — yes,
to be sure — the doctors say that it is good to move about,
that change of air is the best cure, that we get musty and
fusty if we stay in one place, that —

Mahley (sympathetically). Is it the bad weather in your
country, my lady ? With us of Tyrol it is only when we go
from home that we are sick. It was going to Salzburg that
Max and Moidl fell through the ice and were drowned. And

158 FROM THE GOSAU SMITHY.

Ambrose, who went away in spring, has never been heard of
again. But Fritz is to take me to Ischl when we are married,
and then I will know better.

Some one calling " Mahley " interrupted our conversation.
I like Mahley ; in spite of her rustic ingenuousness she is a
sharp, clever girl, and not a bit dull, though she has never
been farther than Gosau Muhle. Fritz, her betrothed, is a
splendid specimen of the Austrian mountaineer — far more of
a gentleman than half the people you meet at a big dinner-
party in town — and when our cavaliers are on the Dachstein,
he sometimes comes to look after " the girls" as Tom calls
the rest of us. Mabel is convinced that he is a prince in
disguise ; and certainly the disguise is as picturesque as any
prince could wish.

159

XII.

FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL.

"PAID I write you from Berchtesgaden, Bell ? I forget ; but
•L^ at any rate, Berchtesgaden, and the hotel of the four
seasons, and the fire -flies, and the glow-worms, and the
crescented Watzmann, and the solemn Konig See, were all
delightful. And to make our happiness complete we had
a splendid adventure, a real, genuine, unquestionable adven-
ture, such as you read of in books.

You must understand, my dear, that the two best things
near Berchtesgaden are the Konig See and the Wimbach
Thai. The Wimbach Thai is a wild, sequestered glen, where
you are certain to see a good many chamois on the upper
rocks, and where the limestone is even more incredible than
usual, one whole side of the Thai indeed presenting for many
miles an outline like this —

160 FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL.

It is on the other side, the Watzmann side, that the chamois
are mostly found, — we saw with our glasses a party of them,
walking leisurely along an invisible ledge, two or three thou-
sand feet overhead ; how they do it, with their great clumsy
feet, I cannot understand. The Konig See is the most famous
lake in Europe; and though I don't love it as I love the
Aussee or the Gosau See, it is certainly a noble bit of rock
and water ; and the tablets along its cliffs, which testify to its
cruel vindictiveness when roused, prevent us from cultivating
a too-perilous and playful familiarity. Now Mr Mowbray and
Tom had planned a little expedition that would show us both
the Konig See and Wimbach Thai at their best ; and it was
during this expedition that we met with our " adventure," our
precious and invaluable adventure. Mabel and I have got to
walk beautifully by this time, and even the male creatures who
accompany us are pleased to admit that we are good for any-
thing under the Gross Glockner or the Ortler. And this was
certainly as stiff a piece of work as we have attempted ; had
it not been for the excitement of the exploit we might possibly
have broken down.

Sleeping at the little inn at Konig See, we were at the upper
reaches of the lake soon after daybreak. A weird and solemn
sail it was, Bell, in the dim light of the dawn with just a scrap
of waning moon (like that of the Queens when they took
Arthur away from his last battle), during which hardly one of
us spoke a word. We landed at the low shore which separates
the Konig See from the Ober See ; and there, with breakfast,
the spell was broken. Zimmermatter is really a good cook,
and his coffee and his omelet and his fried trout would have
done credit to our host at the Vier Jahreszeiten. Then we
sent the boat away, and began the long climb up the cliff to
the " alp " above. I don't think there can be anything more
exquisite in this world than a morning walk up such a steep
stair of rock as that we mounted ; a natural ladder, now hidden
among the trees, now hanging over the water, now opening
boldly upon the mountains and the sky. Of the flowers, and
the freshness of the air, and the blueness of the heaven, and
the noble sweep of valley and lake and mountain when we

FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL. l6l

got to the upper alp, I need not tell you ; it would only be to
repeat what I have tried to say a hundred times. The scent
of a rose, the tint of the earliest apple-blossom, how can we
translate their subtle and delicate exquisiteness into words ?

After a hard pull of three or four hours, we came to a de-
serted chalet where we resolved to lunch. We were still in
Bavaria, but close to the Austrian frontier. Mabel and I had
seated ourselves on a thick bank of heather outside, the men
were wandering about, Zimmermatter had lighted a fire of twigs
in the chalet and was busy heating a panful of Liebig. All at
once Mabel gave a little shriek and pointed to the bank close
behind us. Oh, Bell, a pair of wild, wolfish eyes were gleam-
ing out at us from the thick growth, not a yard away. We
had started up, when a low, soft voice arrested us. " For Our
Lady's sake, my lady, do not move. The Jager is watching
over there. He fired at me in the dark this morning ; he
knows that I am somewhere about. Ah ! there he comes."
I was terribly frightened, Mabel was pale as death. We had
recognised the voice at once — it was that of Fritz, Mahley's
lover, who had been our escort more than once at Gosau — a
brave, handsome lad. But to these Tyrolese marksmen the
Bavarian chamois are irresistible. Fritz was a noted poacher.

What was to be done ? Fritz had not been mistaken ; a
few hundred yards away one of the royal gamekeepers, with his
rifle laid across his arm, and his finger on the trigger, was
leisurely approaching us. Oh, Bell, the misery of that
moment ! But Mabel is a miracle of ready wit — though
trembling all over, her stout Yorkshire spirit asserted itself —
she moved slightly, in an easy, unembarrassed fashion, till she
was close to Fritz (who had been a prime favourite with her),
and then stooping and gathering a sprig of heather, she held
it up to me. " Isn't it lovely ? " she said, loud enough to be
heard by the Jager, who was now close at hand. Of course I
had to move after her, and then — then — (oh, Bell, how can I
write it ?) — we both sat down upon him — at least upon the long
heather under which he had crawled. It was not a moment to
stick at trifles.

I have a very indistinct recollection of what followed. The
VOL. II. L

162 FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL.

man did not stay long : but it seemed like hours. He spoke
a word or two ; asked if we had seen any one about ; looked
into the chalet ; was keen, vigilant, on the alert — not a man to
be hoodwinked by a pair of girls, one would have fancied.
Then Tom and Mr Mowbray came back ; the flask was pro-
duced, healths were drunk, and all the time we two wretched
beings were sitting on — Fritz.

We were awfully glad when at last the Jager moved away
and disappeared over the brow of the hill. You may conceive
how astonished the others were when they learned what we
had done. Then we got Fritz smuggled somehow into the
sennhiltte (for he felt sure that his enemy was still watching for
him) and stowed away among the rafters. His rifle and (I fear)
a chamois were hidden somewhere in the heather ; but it was
too dangerous to attempt to remove them in the daylight.
For — do you know, Bell ? — the poachers and the gamekeepers
here think nothing of killing each other, not in the thick of
fight, as they might do at home, but by what Tom calls " a
cool pot-shot." Isn't it frightful, my dear ? and to think that
poor Fritz was within an inch or two of such a fate. He heard
the bullet whistle close past his ears ; but it was almost dark—
a mere glimmer of dawn — and he escaped somehow. What
would Mahley have done ? His brother was shot on the other
side of the Steinerne Meer a few years ago, — at least he went
out one night with his rifle and never came back.

We couldn't stay long ; but we left him some food ; and we
knew that he made good his escape — how do you think, Bell ?
A day or two afterwards a splendid chamois-head, wrapt up in
packsheet, was left for Mabel at the Vier Jahreszeiten by a
passing countryman. Wasn't it nice of him ? For of course
it came from Fritz.

We had a long, long walk across the high tableland till we
got down at last into the Wimbach Thai. A lonelier or more
solitary corner of creation I never saw, nor would wish to see.
It was not a bare desolation like the Steinerne Meer — that sea
of stone, that Todte Gebirge, which stretched away behind us
to the sky-line. The " alps " were green and flower-bespangled
— but oh, so lonely ; one had come to the end of the world,

FROM ST WOLFGANG, IN THE FUSCHERTHAL. 163

and the solitariness was more than pathetic — it was savage.
Once and again we saw chamois on the rocks above us ; but
they were in the Wimbach Thai, to be sure ; and the Wimbach
Thai, in spite of its terrific rockwork, is homely and domestic
in comparison.

This St Wolfgang is a funny little Austrian watering-place
high up in a lateral glen of the Fuscherthal, where the people
and the prices are delightfully primitive, and you can live for
about sixpence a-day. We have had some glorious walks : once
up to the Trauner Alp, into the very heart of the mountains
where the great Weissbachhorn towers over everything ; once
up to the Schwarzkoft, from whence the Gross Glockner is
within speaking distance as it seems. We dream about the
Gross Glockner, Bell ; the nearer we get to him the more we
like him — that slender spire is so heavenly ; but alas ! it begins
to be doubtful whether papa will let us cross the Pfandlscharte
after all. The season is late ; the country-people say there is
a lot of snow ; and even Mr Mowbray shakes his head. Well,
Bell, you shall hear all about it in my next, and I must go now.
We are off for a scramble after ferns and edelweiss. Oh, these
happy hunting-grounds ! Though I live to be an old woman I
shall never forget the good time we are having ; and between
ourselves, my dear, it becomes daily more apparent that Mr
Mowbray (why, oh why, did they call him Raphael?) is the
bright particular star in the brilliant constellation which in
einspdnner and zweispanner and drei spanner , on mule and
donkey and solid English leather, is now passing over North-
Eastern Tyrol.

164

XIII.
FROM ZELL IN THE ZILLER THAL.

YOU must fancy us driving up and down the loveliest
valleys in the world — Ziller Thais, Inn Thais, Fuscher
Thais — in a wonderful old shandrydan, which holds five easily,
and six on a pinch. The postilions are got up regardless of
expense in the funniest possible way, — the sort of gaudy butter-
fly creatures one sees in a circus. There is great competition
among us for the vacant seats on the "dickey"; one of us,
either Mabel or I, is generally there. When Mabel is outside
Tom is outside ; when Mabel goes in Tom follows her. The
result is that Mr Mowbray is thrown a good deal on my hands,
and as he has lived for months in these valleys, shooting
chamois, and eagles, and bears, and what not, he knows lots
of the people, and all about the old castles and churches
which are perched on every height we pass. It is delightful
driving leisurely about in the sunshine, dozing a little now and
then, and waking up with a start when we stop to adjust the
slipper-drag before rushing full speed down a break-neck preci-
pice. I wonder if I could photograph for you a little of the
talk that goes on between us as we jog along, papa putting in
a word occasionally from behind.

Mr Mowbray. I like the Tyrolese ; they are a fine people.
Their popular legends and superstitions, to be sure, are mostly
ecclesiastical, — marvels of medieval Catholicism, but with a
touch of paganism and patriotism which improves them.
What pretty names, too, they give their churches — Our Lady

FROM ZELL IN THE ZILLER THAL. 165

of the Snow ! Our Lady of the Fern ! And the places they
built them — how wonderfully picturesque! — clinging to the
face of the cliff, high on the brink of the precipice, deep in
the primeval forest. They say that the passion for mountains
is a modern growth ; when I see these old churches perched
upon their giddy pinnacles I begin to doubt it. Mr Ruskin
declares that Dante had no feeling for mountains, and was a
bad climber. But then, you see, Miss Holdfast, Douglas
Freshfield, who knows a deal more about mountains than
Mr Ruskin, thinks that Dante was an expert at climbing,
— so deft a cragsman, indeed, that he would have been a
member of the Alpine Club had he lived at the proper time.
The Club Alpino Trentino it would have been ; for Dante's
mountains, like Titian's, are limestone and dolomite, such as
you see about Val Lagurina. Titian and Dante ! — it is a
great compliment to the Dolomites ; and to think that none
of us knew anything about them till Gilbert and Churchill
went there in '65.

Miss Holdfast. Tell me some of the legends, Mr Mowbray.

Mr Mowbray. Oh, they are all about saints and martyrs
and witches and the devil. The Teufel plays a great part in
Tyrolese mythology — though he and his friends, the witches,
generally come to grief in the end. The witch high in the air
on her devil's saddle hears the Wandlung bell from the church
below, and, the saddle losing its charm, she falls and breaks
her neck. Saint Joder leads the evil one about with a chain,
like a tame bear. The graceless knight won't get up in the
morning in time for chapel ; a fearful clap of thunder shakes
the castle, and when they go up to his room they find him
dead in bed, with the prints of three black and burning claws
on his neck. Then he is always on the watch for Lutherans
and other heretics. Lutheranism once made some way among
the miners in the Innspruck Valley. They had a great dis-
cussion one day, and the Lutheran missionary, in the heat
of the controversy, exclaimed, " If this is not true may Satan
fly away with me." Sure enough Satan took him at his
word, and carried him off to the top of the Drei Herren Spitz.
This was, of course, conclusive; though had it occurred

1 66 FROM ZELL IN THE ZILLER THAL.

farther north the Catholic might possibly have been confuted
— the true religion, you see, being so much a matter of
geography.

Miss Holdfast. Perhaps Satan flew away with him because
it was true ?

Mr Moivbray. There is really no saying what the father of
lies will do ; and, now that you mention it, the construction
put upon the incident by the orthordox Tyrolese is open to
observation. There can be no doubt, however, that the curse
or invocation known among them as the drei-teufels-namen is
one of peculiar force and efficacy. Still, upon the whole, the
saints have the best of it. A pagan mower, finding Eusebius
asleep among the corn, cuts off his head with his scythe ; but
the saint, being a saint, is able to take it under his arm and
walk home to the monastery to be decently buried. Then
there was the bear who at the instigation of the evil one ate
up Saint Romedius's horse ; but the saint immediately got his
man to bridle and saddle Bruin, and so rode victoriously into
Trent. Saint Fridolin was even more successful. Ursus,
a friend of his, died and left his patrimony by word of mouth
to the Church. An unbelieving brother, however, disputed
the succession, and it was ultimately held that Fridolin must
surrender the legacy unless he could produce the testimony of
the donor. This was attended with difficulty, as Ursus by
this time had been dead two years; but Fridolin, nothing
doubting, went to the graveyard, where at his call Ursus got
up, and, pushing back the tombstone, walked back with the
saint arm-in-arm to the Stadthaus. The wicked litigant was
so much taken aback that he not only gave up his brother's
estate to the saint, but made him a gift of his own.

Miss Holdfast. Oh, Mr Mowbray, these are as good as
fairy tales !

Mr Mowbray. I suppose they were fairy tales somewhere.
When I meet our old friends in new faces I am reminded of
Miss Busk's charming little girl, who on being asked what
David was before he was made King of Israel, at once replied,
" Jack the Giant-Killer " !

Miss Holdfast. How delicious ! I must tell Dr John, who

FROM ZELL IN THE ZILLER THAL. 167

writes, you know, those delightful stories about children and
dogs. It will charm him.1

Mr Mowbray. Who doesn't know Rab and his Friends ?
Now, Miss Holdfast, have you any notion why the bramble
creeps ?

Miss Holdfast Not the slightest.

Mr Mowbray. Once it caught the Virgin Mary's gown and
tore it ; so, instead of growing straight up, like other plants,
it is condemned to crawl along the ground in this serpentine
fashion. Isn't that a reminiscence of the Wandering Jew ?

Miss Holdfast. But you say they are all reminiscences.

Mr Mowbray. Most of them are, though some may be
indigenous. There is undoubtedly a change in the popular
mythology when you pass from Northern to Southern Tyrol,
as there is in the flora. Instead of the Vierzehn Nothhelfer —
the fourteen helpers in need, all of whom are saints or angels
— of North Tyrol, you have in the Guidicaria and the Dolo-
mites quite a different race of beings. They are more impish,
but more picturesque. There is Orso who, in the form of
an ass, plays the most fantastic tricks. There are the stories
of the Gian dall' Orso — Bear Johnny, as we would say. There
are the Salvans, whose shrill laughter is heard from the
summits "of the Dolomite peaks. And then there are the
Enguanes, who, as lovely maidens, steal men's hearts away
from their lawful sweethearts.

Miss Holdfast. Do the Enguanes keep to the Dolomites,
Mr Mowbray?

Mr Mowbray. They don't get so far as England, let us
hope. But the serpent of old Nile, I daresay, may have been
one of them. Cleopatra was a bit of a witch at any rate, and
Octavia must have felt very much as Maddalena did when
she saw her betrothed marry an Enguane in the parish church.
You see that mass of ruins up there, Miss Holdfast ?

Miss Holdfast. On the rock behind the pine-wood ?

1 Eheu ! eheu ! The much -beloved "Dr John "has gone over to the
majority since this was written. But it was one of the last stories I told
him, and how he enjoyed it ! — S.

168 FROM ZELL IN THE ZILLER THAL.

Mr Mowbray. Yes. It was there the pedlar played bowls
with the imprisoned ghosts. He fell asleep in the courtyard
of the castle. When he woke at midnight, twelve figures in
medieval armour were playing a game with skulls in the
moonlight. The pedlar was a crack player, and challenged
them one by one. He beat them all. This broke the
enchantment, and the ghosts were liberated. I forget the
rest of the story. Then there are some strange weird creatures
known as Berchtls, who haunt the forest hereabouts. The
Berchtl is clothed in white, carries a broken ploughshare, and
is followed by a train of little people — the souls of children
who have died before they were baptised. A charcoal-burner,
benighted in the wood, once saw her pass with her little ones.
The last of them was a poor mite of a thing, whose little bare
feet were always catching in the long skirt it wore. The
kindly peasant could not bear to see the little creature tripping
and stumbling ; he took off his garter and tied the skirt well
round its waist. The Berchtl, seeing what he had done,
undertook, in requital of his piety, that neither he nor his
children should ever come to want.

Miss Holdfast How pretty ! And what a pretty village
we are coming to !

Mr Mowbray. Why, we are at our journey's end. That's
Zell. There's a good old-fashioned inn where they make
famous pancakes. After dinner we can walk up to the Castle.
The ghosts are gone, but perhaps we may see the pedlar.

That night the rain came down in torrents, and lasted for
two whole days. So we were imprisoned in the little inn
with only one climbing German to keep us company. But
in spite of the rain we have enjoyed ourselves amazingly.

Good night, dearest. — I am so sleepy.

169

XIV.
FROM SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA.

HPHE Gross Glockner surpassed our expectations ; but the
-•• Dolomites disappoint me, just a little bit. In the old
controversy, Snow or Rock? I am all on the side of our
Lady of the Snow. And yet our Lady of the Fern is in her
own way inimitable.

Did I tell you, Bell, that we went over the Pfandlscharte
after all ? We had been driving about the valleys for a week
or two after leaving Fuscherbad, and had got as far as Inn-
spruck (where the wolves look down into the streets, you know
— we didn't see any), when a note from a Heiligenblut guide
came to Mr Mowbray, saying that the snow was all right, and
that he was to be at Bruck-Fusch with a party on Friday, and
would go back with us next day or any day we liked. We
got the note on Thursday ; Mabel and I went down on our
knees to papa ; and the upshot was that we were permitted to
return next morning by the train that goes by Worgl and Saal-
felden and St Johann to Bruck, where the Heiligenblut man
was waiting for us at the Kronprinz — such a nice new hotel
and such civil people ! The country about Saalfelden — especi-
ally the great mountain-range that stretches between it and
the Konigsee — is very fine ; but we only got a glimpse of it
in passing; and our dear Konigsee was of course invisible.
(Mr Mowbray, however, has given me a capital sketch of the
charmingly old-fashioned Bavarian village for my note-book :
and I had just time to take a rapid jotting of the huge

I7O FROM SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA.

rampart-like wall of the Steinerne Meer before the train started
again.) Papa and La Beata went over the Brenner and by
the Pustherthal line to Landro, where we met them two days
afterwards.

We had a grand day — never to be forgotten — and when we
reached the watershed and dropped down to the Franz
Josephs Hohe, above the Pasterze (the snowy cone of the
Gross Glockner rising sheer out of the glacier), I felt that this
was the finest moment of my life, and that nothing better
could be in reserve — however long it lasted. We found papa
and La Beata at Landro — a delightfully primitive old inn in
the deep gorge of the Hohlensteiner Thai — and since then we
have been wandering here, there, and everywhere among the
Dolomites. The Dolomites, they say, are coral mountains,
reared by the same little architects who build the coral islands ;
and I can quite believe it ; for they are really too unscrupu-
lously eccentric to have been built up by any graver or more
responsible machinery, such as ice, or water, or fire. This
Martino di Castrozza is a really grand Alpine resting-place,
6000 feet high ; among lovely honey-laden pastures and the
noble pine-woods of the Austrian Tyrol, and face to face with
the marvellous wall of the Saas Maor ; but, for real enjoyment,
give me the country round about Cortina — the Dolomites of
the Ampezzo; which after all, to be sure, are not true
Dolomites, but only a new freak of our old friend, the irre-
pressible limestone. There you have a wide sweep, and the
mountains (except at Landro) do not come too close to you —
do not frighten you by their cold shadows and startling pallor.
For the Dolomites, as a Scotchman would say, are "un-
canny"; and I would as soon go to a Witches' Sabbath on
the Brocken as lie out all night on the Pelmo or the Tofana.
Take it all in all, the Ampezzo Thai, with its weird procession
of bleached and splintered peaks, from the Drei Zinnen to the
Antelao, is probably the most fantastic valley in the world,
and is wonderfully suggestive of old anarchic forces laid to
sleep — shadowy forms of uncrowned gods who troop past in
the twilight. If Keats — poor fellow — had gone there on his
way to Rome, after parting with that detestable Fanny Brawn

FROM SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA. i;i

he would have found the very place where the afflicted Titans
hid themselves out of sight.

La Beata, as you know, Bell, is the sweetest and dearest of
old ladies (only she isn't a bit old, not nearly so old as her
daughter, Tom says) ; but she is apt to get fussy when put out
by anything ; and last night we had a little conversation in her
room, she and I, by ourselves.

Mamma. It seems, Madge, that you and Mr Mowbray have
a great deal to say to each other.

Miss Holdfast. Mamma dear, you know I am such a rattle,
and Mr Mowbray

Mamma. And Mr Mowbray?

Miss Holdfast. Has read everything and seen everybody.
I do so like these cultivated, unconventional, out-of-the-way
people — to know them is a liberal education, as somebody said
of Lady ; who was it, mamma ?

Mamma. But it is not wise to let your liking carry you too
far, my dear, and it is unbecoming for girls

Miss Holdfast (with tears in her eyes). Unbecoming, mam-
ma? Oh, don't say I am doing anything wrong, behaving
badly

Mamma. No, my darling; but you are a little flighty, a
little flippant, and rather inclined to — flirt.

Miss Holdfast. Dear mamma, don't say so. I know I am
half crazy with happiness, and Tom and Mr Mowbray are such
good fellows that I say whatever comes first ; and Mabel is
such a darling that she doesn't mind a bit

Mamma (retrospectively). You and Tom used to be great
friends. What has come over you both that he

Miss Holdfast (demurely). You had best ask Mabel, mamma.

Mamma. Oh, Mabel is only a child. Tom would never
think

Miss Holdfast (serenely). He doesn't think much, I ad-
mit

Mamma (severely). Madge, you are incorrigible. But when
a girl makes up to a young man

Miss Holdfast (indignantly). Makes up to a young man !
Can you really fancy, mamma, that I am actually trying to

1/2 FROM SAN MARTINO DI CASTROZZA.

marry Mr Mowbray ? Mr Mowbray ! I would never dream
of marrying Mr Mowbray. In the first place he is too
old

Mamma. A man is never too old to marry.

Miss Holdfast. That's the horrid injustice of it. Why,
they make a girl an old maid before she is five-and-twenty.
And Mr Mowbray is five-and-thirty — he told me so himself.
Then, mamma dear, I could never — marry — a man — who is
called — Raphael ! That's the real objection.

Mamma (who is coming round to Mr Mowbray). How silly
you are, Madge !

Miss Holdfast. Silly ! Don't you see it would never do,
mamma? I might as well engage an archangel at once to
button my boots ! How could I ever venture to say to him —
" Raphael, pull the bell ! Where's my umbrella, Raphael ?
Please, Raphael, hold the baby ! " — Oh, mamma, what have I
said?

Mamma. Madge, that busy tongue of yours will get you
into a real scrape some day. But you will promise to be a
good girl, and not let it run away with you more than you can
help.

So we kissed and said good night, and I am going to be as
discreet as the Sphinx, and get into no more scrapes — real or
possible.

173

XV.
FROM KLOBENSTEIN, ABOVE BOTZEN.

I DON'T like the climbing Germans as a rule ; but the one
who sits next mamma at table d'hote is quite tolerable, and
the contrast between his love of beer and tobacco and his ab-
normal and almost impossible ugliness, the contrast between
the grossness of the man's habits and looks and the high and
sublime raptures with which the mountains inspire him, is dis-
tinctly comical. " Ach, meine Hebe Frau," he will say to La
Beata through the cloud of smoke, in which like a heathen
deity he envelops himself, " I know your country for long ; I
have been in Glasgow • I have sailed on the Broomielaw ; I
have seen the mountains of Nevis and Macdhui. They are
magnificent — green, blue, purple, orange — there is colour for
you. But the snow mountains — ach, it is different ; the paint
is gone ; it is the palpable and familiar no more ; it is death
— it is infinity. I rise above the earth, I am translated, I
stand, as your Thomas Carlyle writes, at the confluence of two
eternities. There is the Glockner. You have been on the
Glockner, mein guter freund ? Nein ? Ach, that is a moun-
tain. I have been on his head. If it were not the cold I
would be on him now. When you see the Glockner, you will
know how you feel."

It was a shame to laugh at the good man, and his know-
ledge of Shakespeare and English poetry was wonderful ; but
his monologues — which I give you as recorded by Mr Mow-
bray, not vouching for the verbal accuracy of the version —

1/4 FROM KLOBENSTEIN, ABOVE BOTZEN.

were too much for our gravity ; only La Beata sat beside him
with her knitting on her knees like the Fraulein at home, and
tried to cover our naughtiness by her own adorable sweetness
and patience and sympathy. Isn't she a jewel ? But indeed,
Bell, I was ashamed of myself, and tried to make it up to him
afterwards.

We are now in the very midst of the land where a handful
of untrained peasants, by prodigies of daring valour, earned
immortal glory. Ihat is the Joch which they held for days
against the famous riflemen of Bavaria. Across that bridge
the victorious soldiers of the Republic could not force their
way. That is the house where Joseph Speckbacker died.
That is the house where Andreas Hofer was born. These
are the stories which we hear at every turn, and somehow (O
Bell ! I am ashamed of myself) — somehow they bring the tears
into my eyes. Something comes into my throat when I think of
the constant heroism of these simple men. Papa feels it too,
I know ; and our greasy German friend is more enthusiastic
than any of us ; whereas Tom and Mr Mowbray, after the
fashion of their countrymen, are rather inclined to throw cold
water on the whole affair.

" It is the mountain that makes them so brave," says the
German. "There is no patriotism like the mountaineers'.
The higher it flies the hotter it burns. That is why they cling
so to their barren rocks — that is why they fight like wild
cats " (" ze vild cat," he called it) " for their mountain nests."

"What about the Dutch?" Mr Mowbray asks. "They
fought among dikes and ditches and swampy flats as well as
Swiss or Tyrolese, did they not? The magnanimity with
which fat burghers died upon their rotten walls makes one of
the great stories which, with the defence of Thermopylae and
the siege of Londonderry and a score of others, I would like
to turn into a book for my boys — had I any."

"Ah, that is different," said the German. "That is the
enthusiasm of piety — that is religion. It was the great moral
force of our Reformation that made William of Orange ; but
with the mountaineer it is simple emotion — what you call in-

FROM KLOBENSTEIN, ABOVE BOTZEN. 175

stinct, mein Herr. That is the patriotism of the peasant of
Tyrol."

Mr Mowbray shrugged his shoulders. "What good did
it do them ? They shed their blood like water for a house
with which they were connected by the slenderest ties, and
which was about as crazy and rotten and rat-haunted as any
old house could well be. A mile or two farther south, the
same family — for no reason, better or worse — was held in un-
dying hate by people who came of the same stock, and who
had been bred in neighbouring valleys. From the time of
Friedrich mit der leeran Tasche, who being impecunious be-
came a popular hero, their patriotism has been as indiscrimin-
ating and irrational."

"It is curious," papa interposed, " how many of the popular
heroes are impecunious. But Madge, dear, those lines you
quoted to me this morning when we passed Hofer's house —
let the Herr hear them."

I was angry with Mr Mowbray, so, by way of protest, I re-
peated them with perhaps unnecessary emphasis : —

" They fell devoted and undying,
The very gale their deeds seemed sighing,
The waters murmur forth their name,
The woods are peopled with their fame,
The silent pillar, lone and gray,
Claims kindred with their sacred clay."

But Mr Mowbray was in a mocking humour. He lay back
on his seat with his eyes half shut, and let the words drop out
of his mouth in the fashion I detest. It was a horrid scrap
from Arthur Clough that he selected : —

"Whither depart the souls of the brave who die in the battle?
Die in the lost, lost fight for the cause that perishes with them ?
Are they upborne from the field on the slumbrous pinions of angels
Unto a far-off land where the weary rest from their labour,
And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture
Wiped from the generous eyes ? Or do they linger, unhappy,
Pining, and haunting the grave of their bygone hope and endeavour ?
Whither depart the brave? — God knows ; I certainly do not."

1 76 FROM KLOBENSTEIN, ABOVE BOTZEN.

I did not speak to him again that day. Between ourselves,
Bell, I could have boxed his ears, and he would have richly
deserved it.

Instead of doing that, however, I went and sat on the grass
and looked at the view. I don't wonder that the Botzen
people, whenever the heat gets oppressive, move up to the
high breezy tableland above their city. With the Rosengarten
on one hand, and the Ortler on the other, what more could
they wish in the way of mountains ? And even during the
warmest weather, the freshness of the morning and the even-
ing never fails us. That cool breath of balmy air, coming
direct from the not distant snow-fields, is simply intoxicating.

177

XVI.
FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO.

AN Italian valley, somewhere between the Lake of Garda
and the Ortler, — O Bell! do you know what that
means ? Nature sometimes economises her resources ; here
she throws them all down in a heap. There are snakes and
lizards and tiger-lilies ; there are hillsides of ferns, beech,
holly, and maiden-hair ; there are sunflowers and thickets of
roses and broad-leaved chestnuts and trellised vines; there
are frescoed walls and terraced verandahs and slender and
delicate campanili ; there are deep dark shadows and waves of
opal light and sparkling streamlets and a cool stretch of gleam-
ing snow ; where can you see a picture like it anywhere else ?
And men and women alike are worthy of their choice inheri-
tance— the women refined and stately, pale as Diana, with
skins like ivory and eyes like jet ; the men lithe and hand-
some as fauns, black-browed as bandits. And then the inns !
— fancy how delightful it is to date your letters from San
Martino di Castrozza or La Madonna di Campiglio, and to
have Maddalenas and Veronicas and Ottilias to answer the
bell and bring you hot water.

After our little tiff at Ober-Botzen Mr Mowbray had been
particularly nice. I am not going to let you into all the
secrets of the prison-house, — every girl must find them out
for herself; but it had come, I think, to be tacitly understood
between us somehow that we were on the brink of (what shall
I say?) falling in love, and that the least little push would

VOL. II. M

i;8 FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO.

send us over. Do you like being in love, Bell ? I am not
sure that I do ; it takes away our freedom, it takes away our
independence ; we become so sensitively tremulous to every
mood of the lover. Indeed, my dear, if it wasn't so deliriously
nice I think I would hate it. It was in just such an Italian
valley, opening on the Lake of Garda, as I have sketched,
that I was finally forced to confess that I was worsted, beaten,
made mince-meat of, chopped into little pieces, whatever you
like. I had met Mr Mowbray quite accidentally on the
hillside above the inn before breakfast, and he had helped
me to gather a bouquet of flowers for the table in our room.
No, Bell, I am not going to prate; and indeed there is
nothing at all that can be told; but I knew before we got
back, though no words were spoken, that it was as good as
settled. There is a Tyrolese rhyme we picked up some-
where; we had been tossing it about constantly among us,
for it was fanciful and pretty ; but do you know, Bell, when
he repeated it that morning it took quite a new significance ?
I cannot recollect exactly the words of the patois ; but in
English it would run something like this : —

" Thou art mine ; I am thine ;
Thou art locked in this heart of mine ;
Whereof is lost the little key,
So there for ever must thou be."

Ah ! Bell, I wonder if the lover ever found the little key again
after all ?

When we came down after breakfast Mr Mowbray was
away. We waited for him; but as he did not return we
started for a scramble among the higher woods. The views
were lovely ; the path kept along the margin of a brawling
torrent, and brought us quickly to the upper world. Chalets
were dotted about, not the chalets of the country people only,
but chalets de luxe built for the wealthier citizens of Botzen
and Trent, who come up here to escape the summer heat of
their valleys. We sat down at an opening in the woods,
from whence we could see far over the lake and the hazy
Italian plain. One of the pretty toy chalets was so imme-
diately beneath our feet that we could have looked down its

FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO. 179

chimneys had we tried. Under a grand chestnut on the lawn
in front of the house an old man and a girl were seated —
unseen ourselves we watched them as on a stage. O, Bell,
the girl was lovely ! When I wrote a page or two back of
the Italian women, " pale as Diana, with skins like ivory, and
eyes like jet," I was thinking of this girl. She was just the
girl to drive a man into a tempest of love and a woman into
a tempest of jealousy. They sat close to each other, but did
not speak. The silence was unbroken, except for the chirp
of the grasshoppers and the coo of a dove. It was a sort of
enchantment.

I am not good at story-telling, and what actually happened
is almost too incredible for words. Up the steep lawn to the
chalet we saw a figure advancing, clothed in tweed, and
wearing a black felt wide-awake. It bore an astonishing
resemblance to — Mr Mowbray. The girl did not notice
him at first ; in fact he was close beside her when we heard
him say, softly but quite distinctly — just fancy, Bell ! —

" Veronica ! "

The girl gave a great start and jumped to her feet. In
another moment her arms were round his neck!

By this time we had all recognised Mr Mowbray.

" Whew ! " said Tom under his breath (Tom has never
quite forgiven him) — " By Jove, it's his — wife ! "

I had such a headache, Bell, the rest of the day that I got
them to leave me to my own devices after dinner. When
they were fairly off I took the book I had been pretending to
read, and went into the wood behind the inn. I felt that
solitude would be an immense boon : and there I could be
alone. O Bell ! it was hard to have given my heart to such
a man. I believe I was actually crying when I heard some-
thing stir in the wood, and before I could get the tears out
of my eyes Mr Mowbray was beside me. It was too bad —
too heartless, and I turned my back upon him. I don't
know exactly how it began ; but after a little I found myself
saying, — well, here is the finish of our talk as nearly as I can
remember it.

Miss Holdfast (loftily). You have your own friends, Mr
Mowbray; we should regret to be in the way.

180 FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO.

Mr Mowbray. Friends ? Of course I have friends — such
as they are — not too many, I fear. But what do you mean,
Miss Holdfast ?

Miss Holdfast. I beg your pardon, Mr Mowbray. I didn't
mean anything.

Mr Mowbray. Come, Miss Holdfast, that's hardly fair.
I see I am in your black books, and you must tell me why.
I am as innocent as a baby.

Miss Holdfast (listening intently]. Is that Mabel calling?
She is waiting for me, and I must go. Good-bye, Mr Mow-
bray— bon voyage. I am in such a hurry.

Mr Mowbray. Do you wish to drive me crazy ? What can
you mean ? What have I been doing to make you treat me
in this fashion? You are frightfully unjust, Miss Holdfast,
and to me who —

Miss Holdfast (icily — going). I am sorry we have given you
so much trouble. Papa will write and thank you (pausing).
It is a pretty name, Mr Mowbray.

Mr Mowbray. A pretty name ? What name ?

Miss Holdfast. Veronica !

Mr Mowbray (after another pause}. Veronica ! Oh, I
see it now. (Authoritatively.'] Sit down, Miss Holdfast.
You don't go till I have confessed.

Miss Holdfast (sitting down leisurely). But I am in such a
hurry.

Mr Mowbray. That's right. Now for my story, such as it
is. You must understand that ever so long before you were
born I was able to lend a helping hand to a Venetian patriot.
He was in a scrape, and I managed somehow to get him
across the border. It wasn't much I did for him, but I liked
the man.

Miss Holdfast (rather too eagerly). Not much, indeed !
Why, Zimmermatter says

Mr Mowbray. Ah, Zimmermatter has told you ; then you
will have got a very romantic version of our moonlight run.
Well, the poor man had left his little daughter — his only
belonging, for the mother was dead — behind him in Venice,
and he was broken-hearted about her. So when we had
found him a chalet on the Boden See, I promised to go for

FROM LA MADONNA DI CAMPIGLIO. l8l

her. She was a charming child, and ever since we have been
sworn allies. Now they have got back to the Trentino, for
they couldn't stand the amenities of our northern summer ;
and Veronica, grown into a pretty girl

Miss Holdfast (repenting). A pretty girl ! Why, she is
lovely. Dear me, how stupid I have been, to be sure ! But
what a complete romance ! When you marry her, Mr Mow-
bray, you will let me

Mr Mowbray. When I marry her ! Why, I am nearly as
old as her father. Veronica is only fifteen, and I am five-
and-thirty. No, no, Miss Holdfast, my marrying days are
past

Miss Holdfast. O, Mr Mowbray, you are not so very old.
I am sure if you liked her you could make a girl — any girl —
I mean Veronica — very happy.

Mr Mowbray (visibly brightening). Any girl? But there
is only one girl I really care to win, one girl only that I am
madly, hopelessly, in love with. Do you know her name,
Miss Holdfast? It is not Veronica.

[An interval.

Miss Holdfast (blushing and crying). But I could never
venture to call you — Raphael.

Mr Moivbray. That's what they call me in Venice. At
home, Madge, they call me — Ralph.

So you see, my dearest Bell, the last difficulty and impedi-
ment being unhappily removed, what could I do ? I suppose
it is very foolish, and Tom will chaff me ever so badly ; but
Mabel will help me through it, I daresay (she can do any-
thing with him) ; and, Bell, you will be a bridesmaid, promise
me, dear, and don't tell a creature till I write again. I am
unaccountably happy, and just a little frightened ; I don't
know why exactly ; only it is a strange revelation to a girl
when she finds out that she can be so much to a man. It
makes her proud a bit, to be sure ; but she begins — for the
first time in her life possibly — to feel doubtful and uncertain
about herself, and the charm which has won her lover. It
would be so terrible for him to wake one morning and learn
that he had been dreaming. That's what I feel, Bell.

182

XVII. AND LAST.
FROM MACUGNAGA.

WE are now in the Val Anzasca, the loveliest of the
Italian glens of Monte Rosa, having crossed the
Stelvio (mind you go to Trafoi, Bell : whether you are en-
gaged to be married or not, it is an enchanting spot), and
seen Como and Lugano and Maggiore by the way; and a
heavenly vision from the Dome of Milan at six o'clock in the
morning, when the sky was cloudless and every peak un-
clouded ; and to-morrow we start for England by the Monte
Moro. Papa is ever so much better, and walked yesterday to
the Belvidere, where Monte Rosa rises 10,000 feet overhead.
This must be the last of my letters ; but what a summer we
have had, and what a changed world it is to more than one of
us ! For did I tell you about Tom and Mabel ? No. One
mustn't be selfish and keep all the plums to one's self. Well,
Mabel — but Mabel shall tell her own story. Here is one
other little scene from our little comedy, the very last, until
I meet you in Bond Street for the trousseau ; and so —
Good-bye.

On the slope above Macugnaga — Miss Holdfast is sketching
Monte Rosa — Mabel joins her, a little out of breath.

Mabel. I can never forgive him. What do you think he
has been doing?

Madge. My dear child, who is he ? And how can I tell
what he has done till I know who he is?

THE VAL AXZASCA.

FROM MACUGNAGA. 183

Mabel. Oh, you know very well, Madge. But that's just it.
I am such a child. Papa will never believe it • if anybody
tells him, he will pull my ears and say it's a joke. He fancies
I am about five.

Madge (seriously). Has anybody been rude and tiresome to
you, Mabel ?

Mabel. Rude and tiresome ? Tiresome to a degree, but —
no, no — not exactly rude — only very near it. It was Tom —
Mr Graham.

Madge. Tom — Mr Graham ! My goodness, what has poor
Tom been doing?

Mabel. Poor Tom ! There again — you are laughing at him
as papa will laugh at me. But I don't see it at all in that
light. I think him very nice.

Madge. Of course he is charming. And you are never to
forgive him ?

Mabel. Well — I don't know — perhaps by-and-bye — in ten
years or so — if he will wait. Oh, Madge, he has asked me to
marry him.

Madge. What a dreadful man ! But they are unaccount-
able creatures at best

Mabel. Of course it's only a joke — such a baby as I am.
Still he mightn't have made such a fuss about it — as if he
were really in earnest.

Madge. It will be no joke to Tom if you won't have him,
Mabel. Don't you see he has been in grim earnest for ever
so long?

Mabel. Oh, he was grim enough. Is that what they are
like when they want to marry you ? Then the less one has to
do with it the better.

Madge. And you told him it was no good, and sent him
about his business?

Mabel. Of course I would if he had had any. But he is so
idle, you see, that I said (pausing) —

Madge. You said

Mabel (rising and throwing her arms round Madges neck).
That I liked him ever so much, and would marry him to-
morrow. There now, — the murder's out. And then — O

1 84

FROM MACUGNAGA.

Madge, it is too dreadful ! — when I had said this, what do you
think he did ?

Madge. I couldn't possibly guess.

Mabel. He — kissed — me.

Madge. Frightful !

Mabel. But there's worse behind.

Madge. Worse — is it possible ?

Mabel (hiding her face). I — kissed — him.

BOOK FOUR

HOME AGAIN!

HOME AGAIN!

i.

A LETTER BY THE WAY.

BAY WINDOW. Mowbray is
discovered at the writing-table,
adding a few sentences to a letter
to Miss Isabel Lee, which his
wife had begun.

11 Give me health and a day, and
I will make the pomp of emperors
ridiculous." Health and a day !
This is what Mr Emerson says
in that rhapsody on Nature, which
"^ I still think his finest work; and

certainly the pomp of emperors is ridiculous when
compared with the view which from our bedroom

1 88 A LETTER BY THE WAY.

window I looked on this morning. With few and
cheap elements what a feast does nature provide
for us ! and how supremely blest is the man who
with a light heart, a clear conscience, and a sound
liver can seat himself at her bountiful table. Alas !
so much depends upon the liver. Real exhilaration
has become so rare and difficult in these times that
it is like to die out altogether, like the Dodo. Black
care sits behind the swiftest horseman, — a cloud of
doubt darkens the brightest day, — the fever is in our
blood, and we take it with us to the cool summit of
Alp or Apennine. The sadness of a moralist like
Carlyle, indeed, is not entirely due to dyspepsia. The
man who after dining with Sydney Smith must needs
write in his journal, "To me through these thin cob-
webs " — Thin cobwebs ! Alas ! poor Yorick! — " Death
and Eternity sat glaring," is clearly beyond the reach
of any medicine that nature can provide. To the
Seer, who apprehends the unseen with an almost
morbid vividness, who feels that only a frail and
perishable crust separates him from the fathomless
abysses, the ministry of sun and moon and stars, of
woods and fields and seas and rivers, is not likely to
be accompanied with any healing power. The im-
patience of emaciated saint or stiff-necked Puritan
with mere secular joys (as compared with the glory
to follow) is not more manifest or intelligible than
the inability of the philosopher, to whom this fair
world is but a ghostly mask, to take comfort from
the picturesque. To such an one there is something

A LETTER BY THE WAY. 189

distinctly impertinent in smiling skies, and laughing
seas, and prattling brooks ; and he says in the bitter-
ness of his heart, as Beddoes said in his singular
Death's Jest-Book—" The face of the world's a lie."

The moody moralist is wrong — as he finds to his
cost. Emerson's immense enjoyment — "the dawn
is my Assyria, the sunset and moonrise my Paphos
and unimaginable realms of faerie" — indicates a truer
and deeper outlook. The inexhaustible loveliness of
our world is not altogether a vain show. It may be,
as you say, only a frail perch above the bottomless
gulf; but, such as it is, it has been fashioned by a
divine hand, by an architect who is never at fault.
He has made it, as you see, very good, beautiful
exceedingly; devised it with matchless skill, adjusted
it with incomparable precision. Is it possible that
you can think or believe that it has no message for
you, and that without hurt or damage to your immortal
soul you can turn your back upon the sea and sky, the
mountain and meadow and woodland, of this astonish-
ing universe ?

Mrs Mowbray (ne'e Madge Holdfast) enters from
behind, sees how her letter has been tampered
with, inflicts condign punishment, and taking
the pen, continues —

O Bell ! what an altogether too delightful place this
Vale of Tears is on a day like this, when the shadows
are chasing each other round the mountain hollows ;
and now Ben Ghoil, now Ben Tarsuin, now Keer

A LETTER BY THE WAY.

Vhor, is struck into sudden glory by the sunlight.
Inside, our little cottage is homely enough in all
conscience; but outside, it is the palace of a king!
Everything hereabouts, you know, belongs to the
Duke, — the grouse, the deer, the woods, the moun-
tains— everything except what is best ; and that belongs
to nobody in particular, and the merest beggar may
have it for the asking. (What an advantageous
arrangement for poor people like ourselves ! ) And,
better still, it cannot be bought with money. There
is a fearful and wonderful creature across the Sound,
who pays three thousand a-year for his forest ; but the
exclusive enjoyment of the beautiful is not included in
his lease, and even if it were, he wouldn't be a bit the
richer. For the poor man cares for the picturesque as
little as Mr Carlyle cared. Ralph says that I am crib-
bing from Emerson again. I don't care if I am ; but in
fact I never saw the passage till he read it to me this
moment. Here it is : " The charming landscape which
I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke
that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none
of them owns the landscape. There is a property in
the horizon which no man has, but He whose eye can
integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the
best part of these men's farms, yet to this their land-
deeds give them no title."

So you see Ralph and I are poets, and in virtue of
that gift the whole lordship of Arran belongs to us in a

A LETTER BY THE WAY. 191

much more real way than it does to the Duke. What
we see every morning when we look out of our window
you will find in Ralph's sketchy pen and ink at the top
of our first page (correct so far as it goes) — a semi-
circle of giant peaks, with the blue sea all about their
feet. We have bathed and boated and flirted (O Bell !
people will flirt with me, do what I can), and dawdled
about to our heart's content ; but yesterday a great
longing seized me to get to the top of that far-away
battlement — sometimes it looks miles away, sometimes
close at hand — and Ralph in his good-natured way —
for to do him justice he is as a rule delightfully lazy,
and just as ready to lie in the sun at my feet as he was
before we were engaged — promised to give us a hand up
if we liked — "us" being me and Mabel, and Mabel's
little sister Euphame : for Mabel Graham — Mabel Gray
that was, you remember ? — is our nearest neighbour,
and lives only a couple of fields away. So we see each
other ten times a-day, and she is just as simple and
round-eyed as when we lost ourselves on the Aletsch
glacier, and takes just as much fresh and innocent
delight in everything and everybody, as if she were
still running wild about her Yorkshire moorland. She
was born and bred among the moors, you know, like
Charlotte Bronte. And Euphame is a beauty. The
men are all crazy about her, and poor Mr Stick-in-the-
Mud, the lawyer over the way, who is as stiff as a
poker, and as stupid as an owl, would kiss the ground
she treads, I believe, if there were any case in point.

192 A LETTER BY THE WAY.

The wail of an infant is heard from the adjoining
apartment; Mrs Mowbr ay flies to the rescue ;
Mr Mowbray resumes the narrative.
The short and the long of it is that our expedition
was a brilliant success. It was a perfect day ; and a
perfect day in Arran is as "unspeakable" as the Turk
himself. You don't have anything like it anywhere
else. There is a certain dinginess and poverty about
the fine weather of the East Coast ; the sun that pro-
fesses to shine upon the Calton Hill has, as your poet
Campbell once remarked, a " sickly glare " at its best.
I have little doubt indeed that on further inquiry Mr
Ruskin will find that the mean and disreputable
"Storm-cloud of the Nineteenth Century" was born
and brought up in the Lothians.1 But here we don't
stick at trifles. Wet or dry, the clerk of our weather
has no taste for the compromises that are in fashion at
Westminster and elsewhere. The cats and dogs of
popular meteorology are a joke to our water-spouts.
But when the storm has once spent its passion, there is
an end of it. And who indeed can object to an " oot-
brak " which is accompanied with such Lear-like sub-
limities— the thunder-cloud trailing up the bay, the in-
credible rainbow that arches Ben Ghoil ? It doesn't
hang about the place, and mutter and sputter, and
mizzle and drizzle, and make everything uncomfortable
for everybody for days. The clouds roll away to the
Atlantic, and the sun shines out — jovially, royally — as

1 The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. By John Ruskin. Allen,
1884.

A LETTER BY THE WAY. 193

he used to shine elsewhere when Mr Ruskin's papa
lived at Herne Hill, and our eloquent Jeremiah was
still a little boy in bib and tucker. " Ach Gott ! " as
Mr Carlyle says, " it is a queer world. Our Jeremiah
in bib and tucker ! — indisputable bib and tucker of the
Anglo-Saxon race — and cart-loads of aesthetic gabble —
barrenest of all gabble in this gabbling universe — still
nebulous in chaos. Ach Gott ! Ach Gott ! " The earth,
in short, has had a famous washing, and the hoary old
mountains themselves look as clean and fresh as last
night's daisy. Allons, mes enfants ! — a march like the
Marseillaise is beating in the blood, and we shall carry
Keer Vhor at a canter.

This way of putting it is all very well in a letter to
your wife's dearest friend ; but in point of fact it was
an uncommonly stiff pull. You must understand that
there are two deep clefts by which the inner circle of
storm-beaten crag and corrie which lies behind Ben
Ghoil may be approached, — Glen Rosa and Glen San-
nox. Except Glen Rosa there is nothing in the way of
valleys finer than Glen Sannox, and nothing finer than
Glen Rosa except Glen Sannox. There are one or
two points in Glen Sannox — where you get Sui Fer-
ghus, and the Carlin's Step, and Keer Vhor, in a bee-
line — which it is difficult to beat. But Glen Rosa leads
direct to the innermost sanctuary, and so we went up
Glen Rosa.

There is a pool on the Rosa beside which we took
our first breakfast. The morning, let me say in pass-
ing, consisted largely of breakfasts, — the afternoon,

VOL. II. N

194 A LETTER BY THE WAY.

until it gently and imperceptibly declined into five-
o'clock tea, being mainly devoted to lunch. But I
anticipate. This pool on the Rosa may or may not
be historic ; we know indeed that Robert the Bruce,
and the good Sir James of Douglas, and the rest of
the heroic outlaws, hunted the red deer in this iden-
tical valley ; and I cannot believe for my own part that
on a sweltering summer afternoon even the patriot
king, gazing longingly into its cool translucent depths,
could have resisted the temptation to a dip. It is a
noble granite bath fashioned by Nature herself; and
from a polished slab that runs right across the stream
you dive into twelve feet of water that bubbles like
sparkling hock. Well, we breakfasted here, and
thereafter the ladies magnanimously suggested that
they would wait until our Serene Highness had fin-
ished his cigar. The morning mist still clung to the
mountain-tops ; the great peaks rose silently round
about us, — Ben Ghoil, Keer Vhor, Ben Noosh, Ben
Tarsuin ; the whaups were calling to each other on
every side ; and a herd of lordly deer grazed leisurely
overhead. The proper thing, you know, for these
lordly creatures in similar circumstances is to " snuff
the tainted gale " ; but here, as a rule, they don't take
the trouble to lift their heads. They are, in fact, as
tame as the black cattle, and you would as soon think
of shooting a cow.

We had a stiff tramp through long heather and
round scattered boulders, and then a hand-over-hand
climb up the side of the precipitous wall that joins A

A LETTER BY THE WAY. 195

Keer and Keer Vhor. The girls were not to be beat,
and when we gained the summit of the high table-land,
from which the great peaks spring, they had got their
" second wind " (as the jockeys say), and were nearly
as fresh as when they started. After the land is na-
tionalised, and the Duke sent to the right-about, we
shall have a big hotel up here, with a patent lift, seven-
o'clock table d'hote, and a Church of England chaplain.
Meantime it remains a majestic solitude, where, except
for the hoarse croak of the raven or the pitiful wail of
the whaup, the silence is seldom broken. High up in
the ether a peregrine watches us with jealous eyes ; a
pack of grouse sweep round the boulders and duck into
the valley at our feet ; — these and such as these are the
only natives visible. The inevitable Mr Cook is still
conspicuous by his absence.

Fancy to yourself a prolonged battlement, with a
square tower at intervals of a mile or so, and you ob-
tain a very fair idea of the great central range from Sui
Ferghus to Ben Noosh. The massive wall is never
less than two thousand feet in height. The highest of
the towers is close upon three thousand. This is
" Cyclopean architecture " indeed, and in all Scotland
—nay, in all Europe — you will hardly anywhere match
these gigantic slabs, piled one upon the other by cun-
ningest masonry into the air !

The outlook over sea and shore from the table-land
is very fine; but not of course to be compared with
that from the watch-towers overhead. Which of the
"Castles" shall we assail? There is Ben Noosh far

196 A LETTER BY THE WAY.

to the west, then Ben Tarsuin, then A Keer, then Keer
Vhor, then Castail Abhail. A Keer is too difficult,
Castail Abhail is too distant ; but here is Keer Vhor
close at hand, and though on the other side it falls like
a riven Dolomite sheer into the Castail Abhail corrie,
the ascent from this shoulder is not difficult.

The view from the final slab (for the summit is
formed of a single block of granite) is certainly superb.
Sheer below, as I have said, lies the Castail Abhail
corrie — two thousand feet below. A wilderness of
peaks rises on every hand, six or eight first-class peaks
at least, and minor pinnacles without number. The
valleys at their feet are deep in shadow, but the peaks
themselves are brilliantly lighted up, and burn like
beacon-fires against the blue of sea and sky. The
Atlantic is all aflame. Jura and I slay and Colonsay are
the phantom islands that lie along the horizon. Wind-
ing fiords, exquisitely blue and dotted with snow-white
sails, divide them from each other and from the main-
land. Clear to the north rises Cruachan ; on the frosty
evening sky the Cobbler is delicately pencilled.

Ralph yawns and lays down the pen, which is

resumed by Madge.

What a screed he has written, to be sure ! And only
the tag-end of a page to round off our adventure. But
I don't know that there is very much more to add.
We had, of course, a lovely time of it at the top, and
made lots of sketches. Then we scrambled along a
sheep-track that skirts A Keer, and came to " Bealach

A LETTER BY THE WAY. 197

an fir bogah," the Archers' Pass. The pass is a true
col, as they say in Switzerland, a deep cleft cut in the
rock between A Keer and Tarsuin. We raced down
the upper valley, — startling some splendid stags as we
passed. They bounded up the hillside in royal style ;
when we saw them last they were standing on the sum-
mit, their antlers outlined against the sunset. The
sunset ! For round our five-o'clock tea in a cosy nook
below the pass, the flying minutes had slipped away
unnoticed. The day was done before we reached the
level of the Rosa at the Garb Alt ; and we had to pick
our steps warily through Glen Shiant as the shadows
grew deeper in its depths. Glen Shiant itself was
magical in the enchanted twilight. Out of the dark-
ness from the river-brink came the restless cry of the
plover. Mysterious murmurs issued from the pine-
wood. A stag bellowed far up on the mountain. And
then, to add to the magic, the crescent moon rose from
the bay and cast a sad light upon the lonely valley.

In such sadness, however, there is a fine and subtle
joy. The mood was upon us — we experienced that
elation, that exaltation of soul, which Emerson de-
scribes.1 Even Euphame was touched.

At that moment, through the mystical moonlight,
we perceived a solitary figure advancing towards us.
The irreproachable propriety of the attire was visible—

1 " Crossing a bare common in snow-puddles at twilight under a
clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration, almost I fear to think how
glad I am."— Nature : an Essay > by R. W. Emerson, chap. i.

198 A LETTER BY THE WAY.

nay, conspicuous — even in the uncertain light. The
spell suddenly snapt ; and, with a sigh which was dis-
tinctly audible in the supernatural stillness of the
night, Nature admitted that the Philistines were too
strong for her. We came down to earth with a thud
— like the stick of a rocket.

We shall see you at Balmawhapple, shall we not ?
For, after all our roamings — here, there, and every-
where,— it is two years now, would you believe it, Bell ?
since we crossed the Monte Moro, — we are going
— Home Again !

199

II.
A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

SUMMER EVENINGS AT BALMAWHAPPLE.

r I AHE Mowbrays came back with the Holdfasts a
week ago ; the Grahams were expected last
night; so we shall have a good time of it after all,
ere the leaves begin to fall, and the glory of the
autumn is over. Madge ran over to see me before
she had changed her travelling dress : she is as direct,
as frank — may I hint, as audacious ? — as ever, and as
a married woman almost more charming than as a
girl. They had picked up in Paris a dainty little
copy of Joubert's Pensees ; this was to be mine; "To
old Crosspatch, with Madge and Mabel's love," was
written on the fly-leaf. I like pretty books as I like
pretty women, and Joubert's clean-cut cameos are
worthy of the daintiest setting. The work of these
French binders is just inimitable.

The experience of a nation is winnowed into its
proverbs ; and Joubert's proverbs are the consummate
expression of the most mature thought and the finest

20O A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

judgment. Strictly speaking, they are not epigrams :
epigrams are of a coarser fibre — more rhetorical, more
vulgarly incisive and antithetical, less urbane and ret-
icent. Epigrams are to a certain extent false; they
are meant to startle us ; and to do so they are forced
to sacrifice something to effect. Thus they have the
artificial glitter and sparkle of the gems in a gold-
smith's shop ; whereas Joubert's are lucid and colour-
less as stars. In such cameo-like work any haziness,
any indecision, is fatal. With Joubert perfect lucidity
of style is the glass of perfect lucidity of thought.

The " Pensees " of Joubert at a Pagan altar !

It was one of Madge's madcap whims. There is
an old Druidical circle at the head of the glen, just
under the waterfall. I do not know that the Druids
had anything to do with it ; but there are unquestion-
ably half-a-dozen huge stones ranged in some sort of
order round a central block. The heather and bracken
hem them in ; but they lie upon grey gravel, which
in the wettest weather is dry and crisp under foot.
Two giant pines shut out the glare of the sunshine,
and are all that are left of the primeval forest. It is
a sort of trysting-place where we meet of summer
afternoons, — the women with their work, the men with
their books or guns or fishing-tackle. Mrs Mowbray
has long been of opinion that the sermon in church
is a very one-sided arrangement where the men have
it all their own way. Some of our party are rather
inclined to be hard upon our country parson and his
sermons. Madge protests, on the other hand, that

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 2OI

if any layman among us were required to write two
discourses every week in the year, he would find it
no such easy matter to keep his audience awake.
Which, indeed, is quite true. All the same, she
maintains that it is utterly unfair that there should
be no opportunity for criticism and discussion. Audi
alterant partem ; and the ladies especially should get
a chance of showing that male logic is not invulner-
able. So at this primeval altar among the everlasting
mountains absolute equality is the rule, and the ex
cathedra assumptions of the lords of creation are sub-
jected to severe feminine scrutiny. If every preacher
had to undergo such an ordeal, she is disposed to
believe that there would be less loose writing and
loose thinking in the pulpit; and I daresay she is
right in the main.

To-day Joubert is the preacher. Mowbray, seated
upon the central column, reads the propositions, one
by one, aloud — pausing a little after each, for any
comment or criticism that may be forthcoming. But
these nicely poised, finely balanced, delicately weighed
reflections of a master mind, present hardly a weak
point to the most trenchant criticism. A crystal, or
a sea-shell, or a maiden-hair fern, is, in one sense,
eminently fragile ; but in another it has all the strength
of consummate completeness. It is marred by no
flaw ; disfigured by no blot ; weakened by no imper-
fection : and, though the rudest hand may wreck it,
it is as indestructible in design and workmanship as
Monte Rosa or the Matterhorn. Pascal and John

2O2 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

Keats and Joubert enjoy this rare immunity. Jewels,
five words long, that, on the outstretched forefinger of time,
sparkle for ever, and outlast kingdoms and dynasties.
There is a strength in such weakness that is superior,
in the long-run, to brute force and the violence of
passion. In a very real sense their strength is made
perfect in weakness.

How much food for thought there is in such texts
as these ! which, indeed, Mowbray gathered almost
at random :—

" Superstition is the only religion of which base
souls are capable."

" Virtue must be asked at any cost, and with im-
portunity ; prosperity, timidly and with resignation.
To ask is to obtain, when true riches are sought."

"The Bible is to religion what the Iliad is to
poetry."

" Some men have only their full mental vigour
when they are in good spirits ; others only when
they are sad."

" A hard intellect is a hammer that can do nothing
but crush. Hardness of intellect is sometimes no less
harmful and hateful than hardness of heart."

" There is about neat and clean clothing a sort of
youthfulness in which it is well for old age to envelop
itself."

"We may convince others by our arguments, but
we can only persuade them by their own."

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 203

" Politeness is a sort of guard which covers the
rough edges of our character, and prevents them from
wounding others. We should never throw it off, even
in our conflicts with coarse people."

" What a wonderfully small matter suffices to hin-
der a verse, a poem, a picture, a feature, a face, an
address, a word, an accent, a gesture, from touching
the heart ! "

" What is true by lamplight is not always true by
sunlight." .

" Those who never retract their opinions love them-
selves more than they love truth."

" I imagine reptiles to be the most wary of animals,
and that what notions they have are, for the most
part, clear and exact — much ignorance and little
error."

" It is much harder, I think, to be a modern than
an ancient."

" Mathematics make the mind mathematically exact,
while literature (les lettres) makes it morally exact.
Mathematics will teach a man to build a bridge;
the humanities will teach him to live."

" All good verses are like impromptus made at
leisure."

" With some writers the style grows out of the
thoughts ; with others the thoughts grow out of the
style."

" The style of Rousseau makes an impression upon
the soul that may be compared to the touch of a

204 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

beautiful woman. There is something of the woman
in his style."

"The poetry to which Socrates used to say the
gods had warned him to apply himself before he died,
is the poetry not of Homer but of Plato — the im-
material, celestial poetry which ravishes the soul and
lulls the senses. It should be cultivated in captivity,
in infirmity, in old age. It is the joy of the dying."

" Le Dieu de la metaphysique n'est qu'une idee ;
mais le Dieu des religions, le Createur du ciel et de
la terre, le Juge souverain des actions et des pensees,
est une force."

Most of the maxims, as you may well believe, pass
unchallenged; though Madge or Mabel occasionally
indulges in a note of critical or defiant interrogation.
This, you will recollect, is our Ladies' Parliament;
and the males are only permitted to listen in silence
to the words of wisdom that flow from honeyed lips —
a far better arrangement, they maintain, than that
which prevails at Westminster.

Joubert. Of the two, I prefer those who render vice
lovable to those who degrade virtue.

Madge. That is a mere male quibble. No woman
would separate them in this formal way. Whatever
makes vice lovable degrades virtue.

Joubert. I am like an ^Eolian harp, that gives out
certain fine tones but executes no air. No constant
wind has ever blown over me.

Madge. Why, that is just Tennyson,— only I sup-

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 205

pose the Laureate was in a bib at the time it was
written :—

" Like an ALoYian harp that wakes
No certain air, but overtakes
Far thought with music that it makes."

Joubert. One ought not to choose for a wife a woman
whom one would not choose for a friend were she a
man.

Madge (addressing her husband). What do you say to
that, Mr Mowbray?

Mowbray. Why, I say that he is wrong. Friendship
has its unique element, and so has love. A woman
who has the feminine charm — if I may call it so in
this presence — will make a most adorable wife, al-
though, as regards the qualities which are common
to both sexes, she may not be above par.

Madge. Is that a compliment or an impertinence?
Go on with your reading, sir.

Joubert. Necessity may render a doubtful act inno-
cent, but it cannot make it praiseworthy.

Mowbray (sotto voce). Rubbish'! Read Measure for
Measure.

Joubert. The pleasure of comedy lies in laughter ;
that of tragedy in tears. But the laughter must be
agreeable, and the tears comely, if they are to honour
the poet. In other words, tragedy and comedy must
make us laugh and weep decently. Nothing that
forces a laugh or compels a tear is commendable.

Madge. How French that is ! There you have the

206 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

Academy! We are to laugh and weep by rule.
But true tears and laughter are involuntary and un-
tutored.

Joubert. There is no virtue which appears small
when transacted on a large stage.

Madge. On the contrary, sir, a small domestic virtue
—housewifely prudence or thrift-
Mote' bray (innocently — Madge's housekeeping being a
standing joke). A small domestic virtue — — ?

Madge. - — is out of place sur un grand theatre. It
becomes incongruous, and therefore mean, in pres-
ence of the great passions and actions of the tragic
stage.

Joubert. Behind the thoughts of Pascal we see the
attitude of that firm and passionless intellect. This
it is that makes him so imposing.

Madge. Might not that, papa, have been said of
Disraeli? All the other big people that we know
are so gushing and wanting in self-respect and reti-
cence. He alone had some of the — what shall I
call it ?

Mr Holdfast. Immobility of the antique ?

Madge. Thanks, papa ; you have always the right
word. But of course we have had no practice in
public speaking — as yet. Has Joubert, by the bye,
anything to say about the emancipation of our
sex?

Joubert (maliciously). In the uneducated classes the
women are more estimable than the men; in the
higher classes we find that the men are the superiors.

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 207

This is because men more readily grow rich in ac-
quired virtues, and women in native virtues.

Madge. Oh ! oh ! oh ! Does he mean to say that
education refines men, but leaves women unrefined ?
To be sure, we have never had a chance yet of being
really educated. You men know too well what would
happen if you gave us a fair field. So you take refuge
in subterfuges and compliments, and talk of our native
virtues.

Joubert. For thirty years Petrarch adored not the
person but the image of Laura. So much easier is
it to preserve our sentiments and ideas than our
sensations ! Hence the fidelity of the knights of
old.

Madge. Shut the book, Ralph. That is not fidelity.
That is infidelity. Fidelity is to love the woman at
your side all her life, and to find her grow nearer
and dearer to you every day. I don't believe in your
Petrarchs. The Sonnets were made for himself, and
not for Laura. He was thinking of his public, of his
fame, all the time, and poor dead Laura was only a

peg.

Mowbray. Madge, at this rate you won't leave the
luckless Petrarch a rag of clothing. Suppose we say
good-bye to the poets and weigh the politicians ?

Madge. No, no, Ralph, please don't. Among the
everlasting hills, as you told us yesterday, the fading
politics of mortal Rome have no place.

Mowbray. Well, my fair friends, if you won't listen,
why — I write to the Tomahawk.

208 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

And he did. The letter ran thus :—

DEAR MR EDITOR,

The Pensees of Joubert have for long been regarded as
containing the mature experience of a profound thinker upon
nearly all the most important problems of life. Joseph
Joubert was undoubtedly a master of language, and it was
thought that the substance of his philosophy was as admir-
able as its style. But unless it be assumed that as a nation
we are going not forwards but backwards (an inadmissible
assumption, of course), I begin to fear that we must regard
Joubert, and the conclusions at which he arrived, as quite out
of date. I gather at random some half-dozen of his maxims ;
from which it will be seen that — as regards many of the most
important principles which affect society — the State as well as
the individual, — either he was or we are labouring under a
profound delusion.

JOUBERT. / would fain coin wisdom, — mould it, I mean, into
maxims, proverbs, sentences, that can be easily retained and
transmitted. Would that I could denounce and banish from
the language of men — as base money — the words by which they
cheat and are cheated / x

THE MODERN APPLICATION. The capacity for saying in
many sentences what might better be said in one is much
to be commended. Unlimited verbosity is the characteristic
of consummate oratory ; and to the orator who, besides and
beyond verbosity, most skilfully uses the words by which men
cheat and are cheated, the civic crown is due.

JOUBERT. Mental duplicity arises from duplicity of 'heart ; it
comes from secretly setting one's own opinion in the place of truth.
A false mind is false in everything, just as a cross eye always
looks askance?1

1 Que ne puis-je decrier et bannir du langage des hommes, comme une
monnaie alteree, les mots dont ils abusent et qui les trompent !

2 La faussete d'esprit vient d'une faussete de coeur ; elle provient de ce
qu'on a secretement pour but son opinion propre, et non 1'opinion vraie.
L'esprit faux est faux en tout, comme un ceil louche regarde toujours de
travers.

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 2OQ

THE MODERN APPLICATION. When the emotional side of
the mind is warmed by enthusiasm or gushes with sympathy,
mental duplicity is of no consequence. If " Truth " will not
conform to the opinion of the wisest and grandest and oldest
men, so much the worse for "Truth."

JOUBERT. Statesmanship is the art of understanding and
leading the masses, or the majority. Its glory is to lead them,
not where they want to go, but where they ought to go.1

THE MODERN APPLICATION. Statesmanship is the art of
leading the masses by going along with them. The mob, or
the majority of the mob, are always right. So that to make a
distinction between the way they want to go, and the way they
ought to go, is absurd.

JOUBERT. forms of government become established of them-
selves. They shape themselves, they are not created. We may
give them strength and consistency, but we cannot call them into
being. Let us rest assured that the form of government can
never be a matter of choice : it is almost always a matter of
necessity.

THE MODERN APPLICATION. This is nonsense. The forms
of government that have grown up and established them-
selves spontaneously are illogical and unsymmetrical. They
should in all cases be swept away, and replaced by pen and
ink and paper constitutions, evolved brand-new out of the
inner consciousness of virtuous Radicals and democratic
philosophers.

JOUBERT. One of the surest ways of killing a tree is to lay
bare its roots. It is the same with institutions. We must not
be too ready to disinter the origin of those we wish to preserve.
All beginnings are small.

THE MODERN APPLICATION. On the contrary, the mean,
ignoble, and irrational origin of all historic institutions should
be constantly exposed and keenly ridiculed.

JOUBERT. Imitate time. It destroys slowly. It undermines,
wears, loosens, separates. It does not uproot.

1 La politique est Tart de connaitre et de mener la multitude on la
pluralite ; sa gloire est de la mener, non pas ou elle veut, mais oil elle doit
aller.

VOL. II. O

210 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

THE MODERN APPLICATION. If we are to take the pro-
cesses of nature as our guide, we must remember that violent
convulsions are part of its machinery. Why not imitate the
earthquake and the tornado?

JOUBERT. In a well-ordered State those only need be anxious
about public affairs whose business it is to direct them. A
sheltering tree is their emblem. It is truly of the first im-
portance that, if private persons are to be relieved from these
anxieties, the government should be efficient, — that is to say,
that its parts should be so harmonised that its functions may be
easily performed, and its permanence e?isured. A people con-
stantly in unrest is always busied in building ; its shelter is but
a tent, — it is encamped, not established}-

THE MODERN APPLICATION. A nation should never be at
rest. A contented people is a people that is moribund ; and
constant dissatisfaction with the institutions under which they
live is the sign of vitality and health.

JOUBERT. What do the wise and good — those who live under
the sway of reason and are the servants of duty — gain by liberty ?
It may well be that what the wise and good never allow them-
selves should be conceded to no one.

THE MODERN APPLICATION. The power to go to the devil,
if they choose, is a right of which freemen (and freewomen)
cannot be deprived. Moreover, the habitual exercise of this
right is the best of education.

JOUBERT. Justice is truth in action.

THE MODERN APPLICATION. Occasionally — not always.
On the contrary, justice is sometimes, from the necessity of
the case, falsehood in action. Thus, "Justice to Ireland"
required our most upright statesmen to repudiate for the
occasion the truths of political economy, as well as the laws
of the Decalogue. [But then, to be sure, the Irish landlords
were mostly Tories, and, in the deepest sense, deserved what
they got.]

JOUBERT. If you call effete whatever is ancient ; if you wither
with a name, which carries with it the notion of decadence and

1 Un peuple sans cesse inquiet est un peuple qui batit toujours ; son abri
n'est qu'une tente — il est campe, non etabli.

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 211

a sense of 'contempt \ whatever has been consecrated and strength-
ened by time, you profane and weaken it. The decadence is of
your 02V n bringing about.1

THE MODERN APPLICATION. But that is precisely what we
desire. No doubt we apply to the House of Lords every foul
epithet that the most copious vocabulary can furnish. But
then our object is to abolish the House of Lords. So we are
quite logical.

These are a few specimens of that progress of opinion, of
that sudden (mushroom-like ?) growth of popular insight and
wisdom, which have already made Joubert a classic. That
there is a vital divergence between the two points of view no
one will deny ; and perhaps the explanation may be found in
one of the maxims which I have not yet quoted : " You satisfy
your minds with words, which, like a kind of paper-money , have
a conventional value, but no solidity. This is why there is so
little gold in your speeches and in your books." — I am, in the
meantime at least,

YOUR BEWILDERED CONTRIBUTOR.

* #
*

We had many such meetings before the winter came
down upon us. Madge was our whimsical Abbot of
Unreason. Whenever we desired to be lazily hetero-
doxical or happily paradoxical, we gathered round the
Druids' altar. Sometimes it Vas a prize competition ;
sometimes a competitive examination ; each folly of
the day had its turn. In art and politics and letters,

1 Si vous appelez vieilli tout ce qui est ancien ; si vous fletrissez d'un
nom qui porte avec lui une idee de decadence et un sentiment de dedain
tout ce qui a etc consacre et rendu plus fort par le temps, vous le profanez
et 1'affaiblissez ; la decadence vient de vous.

212 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

who was the greatest bore, who the biggest impostor ?
These and such as these were the questions we had to
answer ; I am afraid we were seldom serious ; once
however, when called upon to write out in a legible
hand, and enclose in a sealed envelope, the passages
— prose and poetry — that we loved best, we could
hardly be accused of frivolity. Some of the selections
indeed were very pretty and characteristic ; could you
guess to whom the prize was awarded ?
This was Madge's choice :—

" Those have most power to hurt us that we love,
We lay our sleeping lives within their arms."

" And if the stranger would yet learn in what spirit it was
that the dominion of Venice was begun, let him ascend the
highest tier of the stern ledges that sweep round the altar
of Torcello, and strive to feel in himself the strength of heart
that was kindled within them when first within the shelter of
its knitted walls, amidst the murmur of the waste of waves,
and the beating of the wings of the sea-birds round the rock
that was strange to them, rose that ancient hymn in the power
of their gathered voices : —

" The sea is His and He made it,
And His hands prepared the dry land."

Mabel's :-

" Leave to the nightingale her shady wood,

A privacy of glorious light is thine ;
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood

Of harmony, with instinct more divine ;
Type of the wise who soar but never roam,
True to the kindred points of heaven and home ! "

" When a noble act is done — perchance in a scene of great
natural beauty ; when Leonidas and his three hundred martyrs

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 213

consume one day in dying, and the sun and moon come each
and look at them once in the steep defile of Thermopylae;
when Arnold Winkelried, in the high Alps, under the shadow
of the avalanche, gathers in his breast the sheaf of Austrian
spears to break the line for his comrades; — are not these
heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to the beauty
of the deed?"

Euphame's : —

" Safe-guarded by immortal charms,
She clasps her heaven in folded arms ;
And — star-like over tempest — knows
Bright, unassailable repose." 1

"While the winds of departing summer scatter the white
hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the
parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip gold, far above,
among the mountains, the silver lichen spot rests, star-like, on
the stone; and the gathering orange stain upon the edge
of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand
years."

Mark's :—

' ' The garlands wither on your brow,

Then boast no more your mighty deeds ;
Upon Death's purple altar now,
See where the victor victim bleeds ;
All heads must come
To the cold tomb ;
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."

" Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal
so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet
them in the next, who when they die make no commotion

1 The lines on the Sistine Madonna were written, if I am not mistaken,
by Thomas Woolner, sculptor and poet, — a man whose gifts, both in art
and letters, have been insufficiently appreciated.

214 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

among the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt
of Isaiah."

My own : —

" 'Twas the last watch of night
Except what brings the morning quite,
When the armed angel, conscience clear,
His task nigh done, leans o'er his spear
And gazes on the earth he guards, —
Safe one night more through all its wards, —
Till God relieve him at his post."

" I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexer-
cised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her
adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal gar-
land is to be run for, not without dust and heat."

Mowbray's paper was not forthcoming. " But I'll
tell you what," he said ; " my host at Derreen gave me
a copy of verses, and, as a particular favour, and on
condition that Madge hands over the prize, I'll read
them to you before we go."

" Your host at Derreen ? You don't mean to say
that Mr Froude "

" Hush ! hush ! No names, if you please, and, as
you insist, no politics either. But Hobbes' text—
* Words are wise men's counters — they do but reckon
with them ; but they are the money of fools ' — belongs
to no party in particular ; and in a garrulous age Tory
and Radical alike may lay it advantageously to heart.
That text is the motive of the poem." l

1 These stirring lines were given to me by Mr Froude, and he sanctioned
their publication. His verses, like his drawings, however, were only a
holiday recreation. — S.

A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE. 21$

ROMSDAL FIORD.

So this, then, was the Rover's nest,

And here the chiefs were bred
Who broke the drowsing Saxon's rest,

And scared him in his bed.

The north wind blew, the ship sped fast,
Loud cheered the Corsair crew,

And wild and free above the mast
Aslauga's raven flew.

The raven still o'er Romsdal's peak

Is soaring as of yore,
But Rolf the Ganger's battle-shriek

Calm Romsdal hears no more.

Long ages now beneath the soil

The ganger has been lying-
in Romsdal's bay his quiet toil

The fisherman is plying.

With time and tide we change and change,

Yet still the world is young ;
Still free the proudest spirits range,

The prize is for the strong.

And though it be a glorious thing

In parliaments to shine, —
Though orators be modern kings

And only not divine ;

Yet men will still be ruled by men,

And talk will have its day,
And other Rolfs will come again

To sweep the rogues away.

2l6 A SERMON ON THE HILLSIDE.

The evening had fallen ere we returned ; and as we
went down the main street we found the Revivalists at
their work. A mob of sailors in front of " The Polar
Bear" — whose huge paws and gleaming teeth were
visible through the open window — listened stolidly to
the refrain of a hymn which was partly stirring and
partly grotesque, — a refrain which might have sounded
prosaically profane from other lips, but which here and
in this environment did not seem unbecoming.

" If each of you will do your best,
God Almighty will do the rest,"

the evangelist shouted ; and the audience, in rude
chorus, made reply: —

" If each of us will do our best,
God Almighty will do the rest."

III.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

WINTER EVENINGS AT BALMAWH APPLE.

BUT when the October mists came down into the
valley we had to quit the hillside, and listen to
graver discourse at our Institute.

It was a great day for Balmawhapple when the Insti-
tute was " inaugurated." Dr Evergreen was our first
President, and it was at his instance that Mark con-
sented to deliver the opening series of lectures, — a series
of lectures entitled Apologetics. The Tories were under
a cloud at the time ; the " stupid party " were treated
with playful derision by political moralists and satirists ;
nor did Dryden, Pope, and St John fare better. A
renowned man of letters had visited us shortly before
the inauguration, and had made Mark and Pat very in-
dignant by maintaining that the suave and decorous
Addison was a better man and a much greater writer
than Swift. " We must pay him off," Pat said when
they had been discussing this detestable heresy ; and
thus the lecture on the Great Dean came to be written.
It was, I think, the most popular of the series, and was

218 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

fully reported in the Tomahawk at the time. But the
Tomahawk has been long out of print ; and it has oc-
curred to me that the last word on Swift has still to be
said. Whether Mark's Apology will be accepted as
valid I cannot say. But it was regarded as a chal-
lenge as well as a protest, — the reply of Bohemia to
the Philistines in general and to Corbie in particular,
who, on behalf of the High and Dry, had taken pos-
session of the only public hall in Balmawhapple. The
Infant Institute, I may add, made headway rapidly;
and when it came to be known that the proceedings
were closed each week with a solemn recitation of The
twa Corbies by the Celt in full undress (the fine refrain
" Whar sail we twa dine the day?" being apparently
irresistible), a community which, like the Skye terrier,
"just never can get eneuch o' fechtin'," began to regard
us with cordiality, if not with enthusiasm.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

In the controversy which Swift's life and character have
provoked, it has been extremely difficult hitherto to arrive
at any quite satisfactory conclusion. Biographical criticism,
like Biblical, is a progressive science. The critical method,
which we have brought to comparative perfection, was almost
unknown to our forefathers. Johnson's Lives of the English
Poets is one of the best books of the time, for his arbitrary
dogmatism was controlled and informed by an admirable
common-sense ; but even Johnson often misleads. I do
not speak of his criticism of poetry, for the canon of taste
has changed since his day — as it may change again ; but the
genuine spirit of inquiry is conspicuous by its absence. Even

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 219

the lives of the men who might almost be called contemporary
are treated as if the gossip of the club and the tittle-tattle of
the coffee-house were the only available sources of informa-
tion. Thus, until Walter Scott's memoirs were published, the
real Swift was almost unknown. The growth of the Swift
legend was indeed unusually rapid ; and if an exacter criti-
cism had not been brought to bear upon it in time, there is
no saying to what proportions it might not have attained.
The great Dean of St Patrick's was becoming a grotesque
and gigantic shadow. Scott was not a critic in the modern
sense of the word; but his judgment, upon the whole, was
sound, and his large humanity enabled him to read into the
story much that a stricter scrutiny has since approved. The
creative sympathy of genius is seldom at fault ; for it works
in obedience to the larger laws which govern human conduct,
and if its methods are sometimes unscientific, its conclusions
are generally just.

Scott has been followed by diligent students, and their re-
searches may be considered exhaustive. Much new matter
has been recovered; much that was irrelevant has been set
aside ; and I think that a portrait, credible and consistent in
its main lines, may now be constructed. After all deductions
have been made, Jonathan Swift remains a great and imposing
personality, — as unique in that century as Benjamin Disraeli
has been in ours.

The Dean himself is to some extent responsible for the
gross caricature which has been commonly accepted as a
faithful portrait by his countrymen. The intense force of
his genius gave a vital energy to the merest trifles. His
casual sayings have branded themselves upon the language.
Only a woman's hair — die like a poisoned rat in a hole — / am
what I am — ubi sceva indignatio cor ulterius lacerare nequit, —
these letters of fire may be read through the darkness which
has engulfed so much.1 But a true and complete estimate of

1 It is the same quality in Burns that brings some of his lines home to
us with such incomparable force : —

" The wan moon is setting behind the white wave,
And time is setting with me, oh."

220 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

a man's disposition and temper cannot be constructed out of
scattered and isolated phrases. We must take these for what
they are worth, — compare them, weigh them, find out their
proper place and relative value in the narrative. The subtler
lights and shades of character are necessarily missed in a
sketch which busies itself exclusively with the occasional out-
burst— however vivid and impressive — of passion or remorse.
Mr Thackeray seldom hurts our sense of the becoming ; but
his slight and unconscientious treatment of one of the greatest
satirists of the world is, it must be sorrowfully admitted, a well-
nigh unpardonable offence.

The leading events of Swift's life fall naturally into four
main divisions: ist, His school and college life; 2d, His
residence with Sir William Temple ; 3d, His London career,
with its social, literary, and political triumphs ; 4th, His Irish
banishment. He was born in 1667; he died in 1745: so
that his life may be said to cover nearly the whole period
between the Restoration of Charles II. and the last Jacobite
rebellion.

Oliver Cromwell had been only a few years in his grave
when Jonathan Swift was born. Swift was an Irishman, in so
far as the place of birth determines nationality ; but except for
the accident that he was born in Dublin, he was, by extraction
and temperament, an Englishman. He came of a good Here-
ford stock, and he was proud of his ancestry. " My birth,
although from a family not undistinguished in its time, is many
degrees inferior to yours," he says to Bolingbroke — an admis-
sion which he might safely make, for St John had a strain of
Tudor blood in his veins. The Dean's grandfather had been
vicar of Goodrich, and had been distinguished during the Civil
War for the heartiness and obstinacy of his loyalty. But loyalty
was a losing game in England at the time. So it came about
that several of the vicar's sons were forced to cross the Irish
Channel, and try their luck in the Irish capital. The eldest,
Godwin, through his connection with the Ormond family, was
fairly successful ; but the younger brother, Jonathan, when he
married Abigail Erick, had still his fortune to make. He died
a year or two afterwards, leaving his widow wellnigh penniless.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 221

So that when Jonathan the second made his appearance in this
bad world on the last day of November 1667, the outlook was
by no means bright.

The widow contrived, however, to struggle on hopefully,
and indeed remained to the end a bright, keen, thrifty, un-
complaining, capable sort of woman, much regarded by her
son. In course of time she was able to get away from
Dublin to her native country, where the Ericks had been
known more or less since the days of that Eadric the forester
from whom they claimed descent, and settled herself in Leices-
ter, where she seems to have been well esteemed, and to have
led the easy, blameless, unexciting life of a provincial town
for many years. Her son had become famous before she
died ; but he was always loyal and affectionate to the cheery
old lady, though their relations perhaps were never so intimate
and endearing as those which united his mother to Pope, —

" Whose filial piety excels
Whatever Grecian story tells."

But he frequently went to see her, — walking the whole way,
as was his habit ; and on her death he recorded his sorrow in
words so direct and simple that they cling to the memory :
"/ have now lost my barrier between me and death. God
grant I may live to be as well prepared for it as I confidently
believe her to have been. If the way to heaven be through
piety, truth, justice, and charity, she is there."

Swift was thus cast upon the charity of his friends from his
earliest infancy. When barely a year old, indeed, he was
secretly taken to Whitehaven by his nurse, who belonged to
that part of the country, and who could not bring herself to
part from her charge. The little fellow appears to have
thriven in that homely companionship. He remained with
her for three years ; and before he was brought back to
Ireland, he could read, he tells us, any chapter of the Bible.
Soon after his return to Dublin he was sent by his uncle
Godwin to the grammar-school at Kilkenny, — the famous
academy where Swift and Congreve and Berkeley received
their early training. From Kilkenny the lad went to Trinity

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

College, — but his university career was undistinguished : he
failed to accommodate himself to the traditional course of
study, and it was with some difficulty that he obtained his
degree. The sense of dependence pressed heavily upon him ;
he was moody and ill at ease — at war with the world, which
had treated him scurvily, as he thought ; and more than once
he threatened to break into open revolt.

The Celtic rising of 1688 drove him, with a host of
English fugitives, across the Channel — not unwillingly, we
may believe. He joined his mother at Leicester ; but before
the close of 1 689, he had obtained a post in the household of Sir
William Temple. Sir William was living at Moor Park, near
Farnham, in Surrey — a wild and romantic district even now,
and which two centuries ago was a natural wilderness of
heath and furze. In the centre of this wilderness Sir William
had created a sort of Dutch paradise, — had planted his tulips,
had dug his canals, had filled his fish-pond. The somewhat
ponderous affability of the retired diplomatist was looked upon
as rather old-fashioned, even by his contemporaries ; and it is
not difficult to believe that the relations between him and the
raw and inexperienced Irish secretary must have been, at first
at least, a trifle strained and difficult. But I am rather in-
clined to think that the residence with Temple was not the
least happy period of Swift's life. He was in his early man-
hood ; he spent much of his time in the open air ; he had a
plentiful store of books to fall back upon during rainy weather ;
the first promptings of genius and ambition were making them-
selves felt ; he saw on occasion the great men who were
moving the world ; and after some inevitable misunderstand-
ings he became indispensable to Temple, who " often trusted
him," as he says, "with affairs of great importance." Then
there was little Esther Johnson, — the delicate pupil who had
already found a soft place in her master's heart, and whose
childish prattle has been immortalised in words that are as
fresh and sweet to-day as the day they were written. If it is
true that A Tale of a Tub as well as The Battle of the Books
was composed at Moor Park, the stories of his vulgar servitude
and wearing misery are finally disposed of. The glow, the

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 223

animation, the brightness of the narrative, are characteristic
of a period of fine and true happiness, — the happiness of the
creative intellect in its earliest and least mechanical exercise.

When Swift left Moor Park in 1699, his education was
complete. He was fitted by nature to play a great part in
great affairs ; and besides his unique' natural gifts, he was now
in every sense a man of culture and accomplishment. The
discipline at Moor Park had been altogether salutary ; and we
have no reason to suppose that he felt himself degraded by
the position which he had occupied and the duties he had
discharged. A bitter and dreary childhood had been suc-
ceeded by years of dependence and privation ; but at Moor
Park, for the first time, he entered a secure haven, where,
released from the stress of the storm, he had leisure to look
about him, and to prepare himself for action.

It was not for some years after Temple's death that Swift
became a noticeable figure in the metropolis. He was mostly
in Ireland. He had become a clergyman before he finally
left Moor Park ; and he now held one or two inconsiderable
livings in the Irish Church. The congregations were small ;
the duties were light ; and he had a good deal of spare time
on his hands. All his life he was a great walker (Mr Leslie
Stephen, himself an eminent mountaineer, is ready to fraternise
with this possible member of the Alpine Club), — the sound
mind in the sound body being with Swift largely dependent
upon constant and even violent exercise. At this period —
indeed during his whole career, but more especially at this
time — these long solitary rambles are a noticeable feature in
Swift's life. He walks from London to Leicester, from Lei-
cester to Holyhead, from Dublin to Laracor, — sleeping at
roadside taverns, hobnobbing with wandering tinkers and in-
curious rustics, watching the men at their work, the women at
their cottage-doors. He had a great liking for this kind of
life, and he loved the country after a fashion of his own : he
recalls through the smoke of London the willows of Laracor,
and when he is too moody in spirit to consort with his fellow-
mortals, he goes down to the vicarage and shuts himself up
in his garden.

224 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

It was in London, however, that his true life was passed.
There the . great game was being played in which he longed
to join. He soon acquired celebrity, — celebrity that in one
sense cost him dear. From the day that A Tale of a Tub was
published, he was a famous man. But it was a fame that
rather scandalised Queen Anne and the orthodox school of
Churchmen ; and Swift could never get himself made a bishop,
— a dignity which he mainly coveted, it is probable, because
it implied secular and political as well as spiritual lordship,
There is no doubt that Swift was a sincere believer in what
he held to be the main truths of Christianity;1 but his
ridicule was terribly keen, and the mere trappings of religion
fared ill at his hands. There is no saying now how far his
destructive logic might have been carried ; there seems indeed
to be a general consent among experts that it would have
spared little. For my own part, I am not prepared to admit
that the corruptions of religion — superstition and fanaticism
— cannot be assailed except by the sceptic or the unbeliever.
Swift did not attack the Church of England; but that> it
is said, was only an accident. " Martin is not ridiculed ; but
with the attacks on Peter and John before us, it is impossible
not to see that the same sort of things might be said of him
as are said of them, and with the same sort of justice. What
a chapter Swift might have written on the way in which Martin
made his fortune by bribing the lawyers to divorce the Squire
when he wanted to marry his wife's maid ; how he might have
revelled in description of the skill with which Martin forged
a new will in thirty-nine clauses, and tried to trip up Peter, and
actually did crop Jack's ears, because they each preferred
their own forgery to his ! " Well, but suppose Swift had said
all this, — would he have said anything more than Pusey, Keble,
and a crowd of Church of England dignitaries, have been
saying now for many years past, without any suspicion of

1 The prayers composed by Swift for Mrs Esther Johnson on her death-
bed are very interesting in this connection, and should be read attentively.
They seem to show, along with much else, that whatever speculative diffi-
culties he may have experienced, he had accepted Christianity, as a rule
of life and faith, with sincere and even intense conviction.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 225

irreligion, or scepticism, or even of dangerous logical insight ?
In short, the substance of religion is independent of its
accidents, which are often mean and grotesque; and the
mean and the grotesque, in whatever shape, are fit subjects
for satire, — which in the hands of a Cervantes, a Rabelais, an
Erasmus, or a Swift, may undoubtedly become the most
effective of all weapons in the cause of truth and common-
sense. " A Tale of a Tub," Sir Walter Scott remarked very
truly, " succeeded in rendering the High Church party most
important services; for what is so important to a party in
Britain as to gain the laughers to their side?" Mr Leslie
Stephen, with unlooked-for and unaccustomed timidity, replies,
— " The condition of having the laughers on your side is to
be on the side of the laughers. Advocates of any serious
cause feel that there is danger in accepting such an alliance."
But Erasmus, who contrived to get the laughers on his side,
had nearly as much to do with the reformation of ecclesi-
astical abuses in the sixteenth century as Luther or Calvin
had. Swift's ridicule may have had a wider sweep, and may
have involved even graver issues; but I do not see that it
was destructive — that is, inimical to and inconsistent with a
rational conception of Christianity — in the sense at least that
David Hume's was destructive.

Addison's Travels were published in 1705, and he sent
a copy to Swift with these words written upon the fly-leaf:
" To Dr Jonathan Swift, The most Agreeable Companion, the
Truest Friend, and the Greatest Genius of his Age, This
Book is presented by his most Humble Servant, the Author."
So that even thus early Swift's literary pre-eminence must have
been freely recognised, — at least among the Whigs, of whom
Addison was the mouthpiece. Swift at this time was held to
be a Whig ; but in truth he cared little for party. He had,
indeed, a passionate and deeply-rooted love of liberty, —

"Better we all were in our graves,
Than live in slavery to slaves," —

but the right divine of the oligarchy to govern England was
a claim that could not evoke much enthusiasm. The principles
VOL. II. P

226 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

for which Hampden died on the field and Sidney on the
scaffold were getting somewhat threadbare ; and Swift was
too clear-sighted to be in favour of popular rule. " The people
is a lying sort of beast, and I think in Leicester above all other
parts that ever I was in." At Moor Park, however, he had
been under the roof of a statesman who was closely identified
with the Revolution Settlement. The king himself had been
a not un frequent visitor ; and it was natural that Swift, when
he went out into the world, should take with him the politics
of his patron. But they always sat loosely upon him. He
did not love to see personal resentment mix with public affairs.
So he said at a later period of life ; and his earliest pamphlet
was an earnest and spirited protest against the bitterness of
faction. It recommended him to the Whig chiefs, who were
then in the minority, and who were ready to welcome an ally
who could prove from classical antiquity that their impeach-
ment was a blunder. But when the victories of Marlborough
had restored them to office, it cannot be said that Somers
and Halifax exerted themselves very strenuously in behalf of
their protege. So late as the spring of 1709 he was able to
tell the latter, that the copy of the Poesies Chretiennes which
he had begged of him on parting was the only favour he
ever received from him or his party. There were obstacles
in the way, no doubt; but it is difficult to suppose that if
they had pressed his claims, they could not have made him
an Irish bishop or an English dean. The rewards of
letters in that age were splendid; and Swift's fame was riv-
alled only by Addison's. But the truth is, that there was
from the first little sympathy between the oligarchy which gov-
erned England and this strong and trenchant intellect. Swift,
moreover, was an ardent Churchman, who hated fanaticism
and the fanatical sects ; whereas the Whigs were lukewarm
Churchmen, and rather addicted to Dissent. Macaulay says
that when Harley and St John succeeded in displacing
Godolphin, Swift " ratted." The charge appears to me to be
unfounded. Swift had shaken the dust of Whiggery off his
feet before the prosecution of Sacheverell had been commenced.
The alienation was even then virtually if not nominally com-

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 22/

plete. The leaders' of the party had treated him badly, and
were ready, he believed, to treat the Church badly if they
dared. So that for some time before the Tories returned to
office in 1710, he had been slowly but surely drifting into
Toryism. Harley and St John were resolved to have him at
any price, — he was the only man they feared ; but they would
hardly have ventured to approach him if his Whiggery had
been very pronounced. The unconventional habits of the new
Ministers were delightful to one who detested convention.
They were weighted with great affairs ; but he always found
them, he declared, as easy and disengaged as schoolboys on a
holiday. He was charmed by the easy familiarity of the Lord
Treasurer; he was captivated by the adventurous genius
of the Secretary;1 and affection and admiration completed
what the sczva indignatio may have begun. The ill-concealed
antagonisms, the long-suppressed resentments, burst out with
full force in The Examiner. Nowhere have the narrow tradi-
tions of the Whigs been more trenchantly exposed. " They
impose a hundred tests; they narrow the terms of com-
munion ; they prononuce nine parts in ten of the country
heretics, and shut them out of the pale of their Church.
These very men, who talk so much of a comprehension in
religion among us, how come they to allow so little of it in
politics, which is their sole religion?" "They come," he
exclaims in another place — "they come with the spirits of
shopkeepers to frame rules for the administration of king-
doms ; as if they thought the whole art of government con-
sisted in the importation of nutmegs and the curing of her-
rings. But God be thanked," he adds, "they and their
schemes are vanished, and their place shall know them no
more." This is not the language of a deserter who, from
interested motives, has gone over to the enemy : there is, on
the contrary, the energy of entire conviction.

1 "I think Mr St John the greatest young man I ever knew: wit,
capacity, beauty, quickness of apprehension, good learning, and an excel-
lent taste ; the best orator in the House of Commons, admirable conversa-
tion, good nature, and good manners ; generous, and a despiser of money."
—Swift to Stella.

228 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

From 1710 to 1714 St John and Harley were in office.
These were Swift's golden years. He enjoyed the conscious-
ness of power ; and now he had the substance of it, if not
the show. He was by nature a ruler of men ; and now his
authority was acknowledged and undisputed. It must be con-
fessed— as even Dr Johnson is forced to confess — that during
these years Swift formed the political opinions of the English
nation.

He was still in his prime. When Harley became Lord
Treasurer, Swift had not completed his forty-third year, and
his bodily and mental vigour were unimpaired. The man
who had hitherto led a life of penury and dependence, had
found himself of a sudden in possession of a most wonderful
weapon — the sword of sharpness or the coat of darkness of
the fairy tale — which made him a match for the greatest and
the strongest. It was an intoxicating position ; but upon the
whole, he bore himself not ignobly. That there was always
a certain masterfulness about him need not be doubted ; but
the roughness of his manner and the brusqueness of his
humour have certainly been exaggerated. The reports come
to us from those who saw him in later and evil days, when
he was suffering from bodily pain and the irritability
of incipient madness. But in 1710 the "imperious and
moody exile " was the most delightful company in the world.
The "conjured spirit" had been exorcised by the spell of
congenial work, and its owner was bright, ardent, and un-
wearied in the pursuit of business and pleasure. Swift had
unquestionably that personal charm which is so potent in
public life. Men were drawn to him as by a magnet : for
women — for more than one woman at least — he had an irre-
sistible attraction. He was not tall \ but his figure was cer-
tainly not "ungainly," and his face was at once powerful and
refined. There was a delicate curve of scorn about the lips :
though he was never known to laugh, his eyes were bright
with mirth and mockery, — " azure as the heavens," says Pope,
"and with a charming archness in them." Poor Vanessa
found that there was something awful in them besides ; but
that was later. Altogether he must have been, so far as we

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 229

can figure him now, a very noticeable man, — the blue eyes
shining archly under the black and bushy eyebrows — the
massive forehead — the dimpled chin — the aquiline nose — the
easy and confident address — the flow of ready mother-wit —
the force of a most trenchant logic : except St John, there
was probably no man in England at the time who, taken all
round, was quite a match for the famous Irish vicar.

The death of Queen Anne was nearly as mortal a blow to
Swift as to St John. It meant banishment for both. Yet the
great qualities of the men were accentuated by evil fortune.
" What a world is this, and how does fortune banter us ! " St
John exclaimed on the day he fell ; and a week later he wrote
to Swift, — "Adieu; love me, and love me better, because
after a greater blow than most men ever felt I keep up my
spirit — am neither dejected at what is past, nor apprehensive
at what is to come. Mea virtute me involvo" " Swift," said
Arbuthnot, " keeps up his noble spirit ; and though like a
man knocked down, you may behold him still with a stern
countenance, and aiming a blow at his adversaries."

Swift returned to Ireland in 1714. He had been appointed
to the Deanery of St Patrick's by his Tory friends ; and he
applied himself, on his return, with zeal and assiduity to the
duties of his charge. But though he bore himself stoutly,
he was in truth a soured and disappointed man. The com-
pany of great friends had been scattered. He was remote
from St John, Pope, and Gay. He detested Ireland, — " Thou
wilt not leave my soul in hell? he had said to Oxford not
long before. But the irony of fate had been too strong for
him, and the rest of his life was to be spent among a people
whom he despised. He came back under a cloud of un-
popularity. He was mobbed more than once in the streets
of Dublin. But nature had made him a ruler of men — in
Ireland as elsewhere. Soon he rose to be its foremost citizen.
The English Whigs had treated Ireland with gross injustice ;
and the wrongs of Ireland was a ready theme for the patriot
and the satirist. The Irish people were not ungrateful.
"Come over to us," he had once written in his grand way
to Addison, " and we will raise an army, and make you king

230 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

of Ireland." He himself for many years was its virtual ruler.
"When they ask me," said the accomplished Carteret, who
had been Lord-Lieutenant, " how I governed Ireland, I say
that I pleased Dr Swift." Walpole would have been glad
more than once to punish the audacious Churchman, but the
risk was too great. During the prosecution of the printer of
the Drapier Letters, the popular determination found appro-
priate expression in a well-known passage of Holy Writ :
" Shall JONATHAN die, who hath wrought this great salvation
in Israel ? God forbid : as the Lord liveth, there shall not
one hair of his head fall to the ground ; for he hath wrought
with God this day. So the people rescued JONATHAN, that
he died not." And when, at a later period, exasperated by a
peculiarly bitter taunt, the Minister threatened to arrest the
Dean, he was dissuaded by prudent friends. The messengers
of the law would require to be protected by the military —
could he spare ten thousand men for the purpose ? " Had I
held up my little finger," Swift said to Walpole's ally, the
Primate Boulter, who had been expostulating with him on his
violence — " had I held up my little ringer, they would have
torn you to pieces."1 Bonfires blazed on his birthday. In
every town of Ireland that he visited, he was received " as a
sovereign prince." When he went from Dubh'n to the prov-
inces, it was like a royal progress. On his return in 1727
from the last visit he paid to England, the vessel in which he
crossed the Channel was signalled in Dublin Bay. "The
Corporation met the ship in wherries, the quays were decked
with bunting, the bells were rung, and the city received in gala
fashion her most beloved citizen."

But all was unavailing. The* gloomy shadows gathered
more closely round him. Vanessa was dead ; Stella was dead ;
one by one the great friends had dropped away. He was tor-
tured by a profound misanthropy — the misanthropy of the
man who sees too clearly and feels too keenly. For many

1 On another occasion, a great crowd having assembled to witness an
eclipse of the sun, Swift sent round the bellman to intimate that the eclipse
had been postponed by the Dean's orders, and the crowd forthwith dis-
persed.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 231

years before his death he read on his birthday that chapter of
Job in which the patriarch curses the day on which it was said
in his father's house that a man child was born. Gulliver is
one of the great books of the world ; but the hopeless rage
against the race of mortals in the closing chapters is almost too
terrible. For many years Swift was one of the most wretched
of men. The gloom never lightened — the clouds never broke.
It must have been almost a relief when total darkness came —
if such it was. But that is the worst of madness, — we cannot
tell if the unconsciousness, the oblivion, is absolute. Behind
the veil the tortured spirit may prey upon itself. He had
asked to be taken away from the evil to come ; but his prayer
was not granted. He would have rejoiced exceedingly to find
the grave ; but he was forced to drink the cup to the dregs.
" For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and
that which I was afraid of is come unto me" (Job iii. 25).
During the last four years of his life this famous wit, this pro-
digious intellect, was utterly prostrated. Only a broken sen-
tence came at long intervals from his lips. " Go, go ! "
" Poor old man ! " " I am what I am." The picture is
darker than any he has drawn, — it is a more bitter com-
mentary on the irony of human life than anything that Gulliver
witnessed in all his travels. The end came on the iQth of
October 1745.

Such is a brief sketch of the chief incidents of Swift's life, —
brief, but sufficient perhaps to enable us to follow with sym-
pathy and understanding some of the questions on which con-
troversy has arisen. " Without sympathy," as Mr Craik has
well said, in his valuable memoir, " few passages of Swift's life
are fairly to be judged." There are a good many side issues
that come up incidentally for judgment; but the main con-
troversy, out of which the others emerge, is concerned with the
relations which the Dean maintained with Stella and Vanessa.

If we examine with any care the indictment that has been
prepared by Jeffrey, Macaulay, Thackeray, and others, we find
that the charges against Swift may be stated somewhat thus :
He was parsimonious and avaricious, a self-seeker and a cynic,
brutal to the weak and abject to the strong, a factious Church-

232 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

man, a faithless politician, coarse in language and overbearing
in manner. Some of these allegations have been disposed of
by what has been already said : that there was an essential
consistency, for instance, in his political opinions, that he did
not " rat " in any base or vulgar sense, seems to me to be in-
contestable ; and it will be found, I think, that most of the
other charges rest on an equally slender basis of fact, on
equally palpable misconstructions. Indeed, the more we ex-
amine the Dean's life, the more obvious does it become that
his vices leant to virtue's side, and that the greatness of his
nature asserted itself strongly and unequivocally in his very
weaknesses.

One initial difficulty there is ; — Swift had a habit of putting
his worst foot foremost. He detested hypocritical pretence of
every kind ; and in speaking of himself he often went to the
other extreme. A subtle vein of self-mockery runs through
his letters, which incapacity and dulness may easily miscon-
strue. Pope understood it ; Bolingbroke understood it ; but
the solemn badinage of his own actions and motives in which
he liked to indulge, when taken as a serious element by serious
biographers, has been apt to lead them astray. Swift, in
short, was a singularly reticent man, who spoke as little as
possible about his deeper convictions, and who, when taxed
with amiability, or kind-heartedness, or generosity, or piety,
preferred to reply with an ambiguous jest.

The Dean's alleged meanness in money matters is easily ex-
plained. The iron had entered into his soul. He had known
at school and college what penury meant ; and he deliberately
resolved that by no act of his own would he again expose him-
self to the miseries of dependence. But he was not avaricious,
— from a very early period he gave away one-tenth of his nar-
row income in charity. He saved, as some one has said, not
that he might be rich, but that he might be liberal. Such
thrift cannot be condemned ; on the contrary, it is virtue of a
high order — the virtue which the strenuous Roman extolled.
Magnum vectigal est parsimonia. He went out of his way to
help others. His temper was naturally generous. It may be
said, quite truly, that he valued power mainly because it en-

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 233

abled him to push the fortunes of his friends. He excused
himself indeed in his characteristic fashion. To help his
friends was to him so much of a pleasure that it could not
be a virtue.

The charge that he was ready to push his own fortunes by
any means however base, seems to me to be capable of even
more emphatic refutation. Thackeray says that Swift was
abject to a lord. The truth is that no man was ever more
independent. The moment that Harley hurt his sense of
self-respect by an injudicious gift, he broke with him. The
Treasurer had taken an unpardonable liberty, and must
apologise. "If we let these great Ministers pretend too
much, there will be no governing them," he wrote to Stella.
He recognised true greatness cordially wherever he found it,
and real kindesss subdued him at once. But the mere
trappings of greatness — the stars and garters and ribbons —
had no effect upon his imagination : —

" Where titles give no right or power,
And peerage is a withered flower."

He loved Oxford ; he loved Bolingbroke ; but he did not
love them better than he loved Pope and Gay and Arbuthnot.
He left Somers and Halifax when he thought they were play-
ing the Church false ; but the Tory chiefs who had been kind
to him, though one was in exile and the other in the Tower,
were never mentioned by him without emotion. He offered
to share Oxford's imprisonment ; and nothing would induce
him to bow the knee to Walpole. He was anxious, indeed,
to obtain promotion ; he would have been well pleased if his
friends had made him a bishop ; but the anxiety was quite
natural. If there had been any show of neglect, if the men
for whom he had fought so gallantly had affected to under-
rate his services and to overlook his claims, his self-respect
would have been wounded. The feeling was precisely similar
to that of the soldier who fails to receive the ribbon or the
medal which he has earned. But Swift was not greedy either
of riches or of fame, — so long as he was able to keep the
wolf from the door, the most modest competence was all that

234 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

he asked. He had none of the irritable vanity of the author ;
all his works were published anonymously ; and he manifested
a curious indifference to that posthumous reputation — "the
echo of a hollow vault" — which is so eagerly and vainly
prized by aspiring mortals. Nor did he give a thought to the
money value of his work, — Pope, Mrs Barber, the booksellers,
might have it, and welcome. What he really valued was the
excitement of the campaign : in the ardour of the fight he
sought and found compensation. " A person of great honour
in Ireland used to tell me that my mind was like a conjured
spirit, that would do mischief if I would not give it employ-
ment." And he says elsewhere, — " I myself was never very
miserable while my thoughts were in a ferment, for I imagine a
dead calm is the troublesomest part of our voyage through the
world." These and similar avowals are very characteristic.
The cool poetic woodland was not for this man. He could not
go and lie down on the grass, and listen to the birds, and be
happy like his innocent rustics. One may pity him, but censure
surely is stupidly unjust. Not only were his faculties in finest
working order at the supreme and critical juncture, when the
fortune of battle was poised in the balance, but the noise of
the guns and the shouts of the combatants drove away the
evil spirit which haunted him. Absorbed in the great game,
he forgot himself and the misery which at times was wellnigh
intolerable. For all his life a dark shadow hung over him,
and only when drinking " delight of battle with his peers "
might he escape into the sunshine. It must never be for-
gotten that Swift suffered not merely from almost constant
bodily discomfort, but from those dismal forebodings of
mental decay which are even more trying than the reality.
We need not wonder that such a man should have been
cynical. The profound melancholy of his later years was un-
relieved by any break of light ; but even in his gayest time
the gloom must have been often excessive. The scorn of
fools, —

" Hated by fools and fools to hate,
Be that my motto and my fate,"

is the burden of his earliest as of his latest poetry.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 235

"My hate, whose lash just heaven has long decreed
Shall on a day make sin and folly bleed ! "

Alas ! it hurt himself as much as, or even more than, the fools
and sinners ; so that at the end, when his hand had lost its
cunning, as he thought, and the curtain was about to drop,
he entreated Pope to give them one more lash at his request.
"Life is not a farce," he adds, "it is a ridiculous tragedy,
which is the worst kind of composition ; " and then (it belongs
to the same period, and certainly shows no failure of power)
he proceeds to draw that tremendous picture of the day of
judgment, which, if he had left nothing more, would alone
prove to us that Swift's intense satirical imagination was of
the highest order : —

" While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens and said, —
' Offending race of human kind,
By reason, nature, learning, blind,
You who through frailty step'd aside,
And you who never fell — through pride ;
You who in different sects were shamm'd,
And come to see each other damn'd
(So some folks told you, but they knew
No more of Jove's designs than you),
The world's mad business now is o'er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
/ to such blockheads set my wit !
/damn such fools ! — Go, go, you're bit.'"

Strange as it may appear to some, the man who wrote these
terrible lines was a man whose heart was intensely sensitive,
whose affections were morbidly acute, who could not bear to
see his friends in pain. His cynicism melted into pity at a
word. " I hate life," he exclaims, when he hears that Lady
Ashburnham is dead, — "I hate life, when I think it ex-
posed to such accidents ; and to see so many wretches
burdening the earth, when such as her die, makes me think
God did never intend life to be a blessing." Little Harrison,
in whom he had interested himself, is taken dangerously ill,
and he has not the courage to knock at the "poor lad's"
door to inquire. " I told Parnell I was afraid to knock at the

236 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

door; my mind misgave me. I knocked, and his man in
tears told me his master was dead an hour before. Think
what grief this is to me ! I did not dine with Lord Treasurer,
or anywhere else, but got a bit of meat towards evening."
When the letter came telling him that Gay was dead, he knew
by instinct — " an impulse foreboding some misfortune " —
what it contained, and could not open it for days. And
when Stella was ill, his anguish was greater than he could
bear. "What am I to do in this world? I am able to
hold up my sorry head no longer."

And yet at times — it cannot be denied — Swift could be
simply brutal. When his passion was roused he was merci-
less. He struck out like a blind man — in a sort of frantic
rage. He raved — he stormed — he lost self-control — he was
taken possession of by his devil. The demoniac element was
at times strong in Swift : somewhere or other in that mighty
mind there was a congenital flaw which no medicine could
heal. The lamentable coarseness of much that he wrote is
likewise symptomatic of disease. But, as I have said, it is
unfair to judge him by the incidents of his closing years.
The profound misanthropy grew upon him. At first it was
clearness of vision, — at last it was bitterness of soul. But it
did not overpower him till he had passed middle life, till his
ambition had been foiled, till he had been driven into exile,
till Stella was dead, till he was tortured by almost constant
pain, till the shadows of a yet deeper darkness were closing
round him.

The story of Swift's relations with Stella and Vanessa is one
of those somewhat mysterious episodes in literary history which
continue to baffle criticism. The undisputed facts are briefly
these : That Swift became acquainted with Esther Johnson
(Stella) at Sir William Temple's ; that he directed the girl's
studies ; that a romantic friendship sprang up between them ;
that soon after Sir William's death she went, on Swift's advice,
to reside in Ireland, where she had a small estate, and where
living was relatively cheaper than in England; that though
they always lived apart, the early attachment became closer

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 237

and more intimate; that about 1708 he was introduced to
the Vanhomrigh family in London ; that Hester Vanhomrigh
(Vanessa) fell violently in love with him ; that she followed
him to Ireland; that she died in 1723, soon after a passionate
scene with the man she loved; and that Stella died in 1728,
and was buried in the cathedral, — close to the grave where the
Dean was afterwards laid. These are the bare facts, which
have been very variously construed by critics, and of which
I now proceed to offer the explanation which appears to fit
them most nearly. But, in doing so, it is necessary to dismiss
at the outset the common assumption that relations of
close friendship between a man and woman are abnormal
and unaccountable unless they end in marriage. What I
assert is, that the devotion of Swift to Esther Johnson was
the devotion of friendship, not of love ; and that from this
point of view only does the riddle admit of even approximate
solution.

Swift, as we have seen, had resolved early in life that no
temptation would induce him to barter his independence.
With the object of securing a modest competence, he prac-
tised the most rigid economy. He had no fortune of his own,
and his beggarly Irish livings afforded him at most a bare sub-
sistence. A heavy burden of debt — more than a thousand
pounds — attached to the deanery on his appointment. Thus
he was growing old before, with the views which he enter-
tained, he was in a position to marry. And he was not a
man to whom " love in a cottage " could have offered any
attractions. " He is covetous as hell, and ambitious as the
Prince of it," he said of Marlborough. Swift was not mercen-
ary as the Duke was mercenary; but the last infirmity of
noble minds was probably his ruling passion. The oracle
of a country town, tied to a dull and exacting wife, he would
have fretted himself to death in a year. He needed the
pressure of action to prevent him from growing gloomy and
morose. Nor was mere irritability, or even the sava indig-
natio, the worst that he had to apprehend. His health was
indifferent ; he suffered much from deafness and giddiness, —

238 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

caused, it is asserted, by some early imprudence, a surfeit of
ripe fruit or the like, but more or less closely connected, it is
probable, with the mental disease which seems to have run in
the family, — his uncle Godwin having died in a madhouse.
" I shall be like that tree," he is reported to have said many
years before his own death, pointing to an elm whose upper
branches had been withered by lightning ; "I shall die at the
top." Even in early manhood he had confessed that he was
of a "cold temper"; and he spoke of love — the absurd
passion of play-books and romances — only to ridicule it.
His opinion of marriage, in so far as he himself was
interested, may be gathered from a letter written when he
was five -and -twenty : " The very ordinary observations I
made, without going half a mile from the university, have
taught me experience enough not to think of marriage till
I settle my fortune in the world, which I am sure will not be
in some years ; and even then I am so hard to please myself,
that / suppose I shall put it off to the next world." This may
have been said partly in jest ; but a man so situated, and with
such antecedents, may very reasonably have asked himself
whether he was entitled to marry. Friendship, on the other
hand, was a noble emotion ; he never wearies of singing its
praise. And he acted up to his persuasion : if Swift was a
bitter foe, het was at least a constant and magnanimous
friend.

Yet, by some curious perversity, the man to whom love was
a byword was forced to sound the deeps and to explore the
mysteries of passion.

One of Swift's resolutions, recorded in the curious paper
of 1699, " When I come to be old," was, " not to be fond of
children, or let them come near me hardly." Esther Johnson,
the only child who up to that time had come very close to
him, was then just leaving her childhood behind her — she was
seventeen years old. The delicate girl had matured or was
maturing into a bright and charming woman. It is admitted
on all hands that Stella was worthy of Swift's — indeed of any
man's — regard. She had great good sense ; her conversation
was keen and sprightly ; and though latterly inclining to stout-

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 239

ness, her figure was then extremely fine. The face was some-
what pale ; but the pallor served to heighten the effect of her
brilliantly dark eyes and unusually black hair. " Hair of a
raven black," says Mrs Delaney ; " her hair was blacker than
a raven," says Swift. In society she was much esteemed j
she had a touch of Addison's courteous and caressing manner,
though later on, among her Irish friends, she rose to be a sort
of queen, and became possibly a little peremptory and dicta-
torial. But she seems at all times (in spite of a brief fit of
jealous passion now and again) to have been a true, honest,
sound-hearted, modest woman. She herself attributes her
superiority to the common foibles of her sex to Swift's early
influence ; and in one of the latest birthday poems he sent
her, he does ample justice to her candour, her generosity, and
her courage : —

" Your generous boldness to defend
An innocent and absent friend ;
That courage which can make you just
To merit humbled in the dust ;
The detestation you express
For vice in all its glittering dress ;
That patience under tort'ring pain,
Where stubborn Stoics would complain :
Must these like empty shadows pass,
Or forms reflected from a glass ? "

There can be no doubt that for Stella, Swift had a great
compassion, a true tenderness. The innocent child had been,
as it were, thrown upon his care ; she grew up to girlhood at
his side ; he was her guardian, her schoolmaster, her nearest
friend. But so far as he was concerned, there never was any
thought of love between them, — a schoolmaster might address
a favourite pupil, a father a beloved child, in precisely the
same language that Swift addressed to Stella. It was friend-
ship— friendship of the closest and most endearing character,
but friendship only — that united them. His tone throughout,
from first to last, was perfectly consistent : —

" Thou, Stella, wert no longer young,
When first for thee my harp I strung,

240 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

Without one word of Cupid's darts,
Of killing eyes or bleeding hearts;
With friendship and esteem possest,
I ne'er admitted love a guest."1

This was the language that he held to Tisdale in 1704, soon
after Esther had gone to Ireland ; this was the language he
held to Stopford when she was dying. If he had ever thought
of marriage, he would have chosen Stella : but " his fortunes
and his humour " had put matrimony out of the question ; and
his experience had been, that violent friendship was as much
engaging as, and more lasting than, violent love. Every care
was taken to make the nature of the relation clear to the
world; and in point of fact, no scandal came of it.

The " little language " in which so many of the letters and
journals are written, seems to me to point to the same con-
clusion. Swift dwells upon Esther's charming babyhood with
the sweetness and tenderness of parental reminiscence. That
innocent babble — the babble of our children before they have
quite mastered the difficulties of speech — had a perennial
charm for him, as — through him — it has for us. "I assure
zu it um velly late now ; but zis goes to-morrow. Nite,
darling rogues." He has as many pet names for Stella as
a fond father has for a pet daughter. She is Saucebox, and
Sluttakins, and dear roguish impudent pretty MD, and politic
Madame Poppet with her two eggs a-penny. How lightly,
how delicately touched ! That is the gayer mood ; the more
sombre is hardly less striking. In his darkest hours, her pure
devotion to him is like light from heaven. She is his better
angel, — the saint in the little niche overhead who intercedes
for him. "Much better. Thank God and MD's prayers."
" Giddy fit and swimming in head. MD and God help me."
Nothing can be more touching. Some critics maintain that
Swift never wrote poetry. It would be truer, we think, to
affirm that whenever he uses the poetical form to express
(sometimes to hide) intense feeling, he writes better poetry
than any of his contemporaries. When, for instance, he urges

1 Written in 1720 — three or four years after the alleged marriage.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 241

Stella — who had come from her own sickbed to nurse him in
his sickness — not to injure her health, the lines seem to me
to reach a very high altitude indeed : —

" Best pattern of true friends, beware;
You pay too dearly for your care,
If, while your tenderness secures
My life, it must endanger yours ;
For such a fool was never found
Who pulled a palace to the ground,
Only to have the ruins made
Materials for a house decayed."

How did Stella accept this lifelong friendship, this playful
homage, this tender reverence ? What did she think of it ?
It seems to me that a great deal of quite unnecessary pity has
been wasted on Esther Johnson. It may be that Swift did
not recognise the extent of the sacrifice he demanded ; but
in truth, was the sacrifice so hard ? Is there any proof that
Stella was an unwilling victim ; or, indeed, a victim at all ?
She mixed freely in society; she occupied a quite assured
position ; she was the comforter and confidant of the greatest
man of the age. Is there any reason whatever to hold that
she was unhappy? On the contrary, did she not declare to
the last that she had been amply repaid ?

" Long be the day that gave you birth
Sacred to friendship, wit, and mirth ;
Late dying, may you cast a shred
Of your rich mantle o'er my head ;
To bear with dignity my sorrow,
One day alone, then die to-morrow."

Vanessa (Hester Vanhomrigh) was a woman cast in quite a
different mould. Her vehement and unruly nature had never
been disciplined ; and when her passion was roused, she was
careless of her good name. There can, I think, be little doubt
that Swift was for some time really interested in her. She was
an apt and docile pupil; and if not strictly handsome, she
appears to have possessed a certain power of fascination, — the
" strong toil of grace," which is often more potent than mere
beauty. It cannot be said, indeed, that Swift was in love with

VOL. II. Q

242 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

Hester ; but she certainly charmed his fancy and appealed
successfully to his sympathies. Stella was absent in Dublin ;
and the Dean was a man who enjoyed the society of women
who were pretty and witty and accomplished, and who accepted
with entire submission his despotic and whimsical decrees.
Vanessa was such a woman ; and he does not, for some time
at least, appear to have appreciated the almost tropical passion
and vehemence of her nature — dangerous and devastating as a
thunderstorm in the tropics ; — appears, on the contrary, to have
been in utter ignorance of what was, coming, till she threw
herself into his arms. He had had no serious thought ; but
the acuteness of the crisis into which their intimacy had
suddenly developed, alarmed and disquieted him. Here was
a flood-tide of passion of which he had had no experience
— fierce, uncontrollable, intolerant of prudential restraint.
" Can't we touch these bubbles, then, but they break ? "
some one asks in one of Robert Browning's plays ; and
Swift regarded the situation with the same uneasiness and
perplexity. He was sorely dismayed — utterly put about —
when he discovered how matters stood. It is easy to say
that he should have left her at once, and avoided any
further intimacy. It is easy to say this ; but all the same,
the situation in any light was extremely embarrassing. He
may possibly for the moment have been rather flattered by
her preference, as most men would be by the attentions of
a pretty and attractive girl ; and he may have thought, upon
the whole, that it was best to temporise. By gentle raillery,
by sportive remonstrance, he would show her how foolish she
had been in losing her heart to a man " who understood not
what was love," and who, though caressed by Ministers of
State, was old enough to be her father. But poor Vanessa
was far too much in earnest to accept his playful advice. She
was peremptory and she was abject by turns. "Sometimes
you strike me with that prodigious awe, I tremble with fear ;
at other times a charming compassion shows through your
countenance, which revives my soul." He must marry her,
or she would die. And she did die. It was a hard fate.
Another man might have been free to woo her ; but to Swift

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

243

such a union was, of course, impossible. Stella stood between
them ; and behind Stella that gloomy phantom of mental and
bodily disease which had haunted him all his life. He was
not ungrateful to either of these women ; but such a return
would have been worse than ingratitude.

Mr Craik is of opinion that there is enough direct evidence
to show that Swift was married to Esther Johnson in 1 7 1 6. I
hold, on the contrary, not only that the direct evidence of mar-
riage is insufficient, but that it can be established with reason-
able certainty (in so far, at least, as a negative is capable of
proof) that no marriage took place.

I have already described so fully the character of the rela-
tions between them, that it is only now necessary to say that
what may be called the circumstantial evidence — the evidence
of facts and circumstances — is distinctly adverse. But in con-
firmation of what has been already advanced, I may here re-
mark that, besides the letters and poems addressed to herself
(where friendship to the exclusion of love is invariably insisted
on), he wrote much about her. In these papers the same tone
is preserved ; — she is a dear friend — not a wife. One of them
was composed, like Carlyle's remarkable account of his father,
in very solemn circumstances, — it was written mainly during
the hours that elapsed between the day she died and the day
she was buried. "This day, being Sunday, Jan. 28, 1727-28,
about eight o'clock at night a servant brought me a note with
an account of the death of the truest, most virtuous and valu-
able friend that I, or perhaps any other person, was ever blessed
with." " This is the night of her funeral," he adds two days
later, " which my sickness will not suffer me to attend. It is
now nine at night ; and I am removed into another apartment
that I may not see the light in the church, which is just over
against the window of my bed-chamber." No record was ever
penned in circumstances more calculated to make a deep im-
pression on the mind, and to induce the writer to speak with
the most perfect frankness, sincerity, and unreserve ; but here,
as elsewhere, it is the irreparable loss of her " friendship " that
is deplored. Not a word of marriage. Then there is no proof
that Stella at any time asserted that she was his wife, — the

244 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

stories of the meeting with Vanessa, and of the death -bed
declaration, being manifest inventions. Mr Craik fairly ad-
mits that the latter of these is incredible; yet the evidence
which he discards in connection with the declaration is almost
precisely identical with that which he accepts in connection
with the marriage. Nor is there any evidence to show that
they were held to be married persons during their lives,—
they had both been dead and buried for years before the
rumour of their union obtained publicity. There may be
in some contemporary lampoon an allusion to the alleged
ceremony : I have not met with it — nor, so far as I know,
has it been met with by any of the biographers. Nor can
any plausible motive for the marriage be assigned. There
was no scandal to silence ; the relations between them, which
had subsisted for nearly twenty years, appear to have been
sufficiently understood. But assuming that there had been
scandal, how was it to be silenced by a ceremony, the secret
of which, during life and after death, was to be jealously
guarded? Was it performed to satisfy Stella? But there
is no proof that she was dissatisfied, — she had cheerfully
acquiesced in, had loyally accepted, the relation as it stood.
It could not have been for the satisfaction of her conscience ;
her conscience was in no way involved : it was never asserted,
even by bitterest partisans, that the connection was immoral.
Can it be supposed that for some reason or other (to prevent,
for instance, any risk of subsequent misconstruction) it was
done at the Dean's desire ? But if the story is true that it
was the Dean himself who insisted that the secret should never
be published, what good did he expect it to effect ? how could
it avail, either directly or indirectly, to avert possible miscon-
structions ? If a ceremony did take place, I am thus entitled
to maintain that it was an utterly unreasonable and unaccount-
able act — opposed to all the probabilities of the case. Still, if it
were proved by (let me say) an entry in a register, the marriage
" lines," a letter from Stella, a letter from Swift, a certificate
under the bishop's hand — anything approaching either legal
or moral proof — we might be bound to disregard the ante-
cedent improbabilities. Nay, even if a friend like Dr Delaney

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 245

had said plainly that he had the information from Swift him-
self, then (subject to observation on the too frequent mis-
understandings of verbal confidences) it might be reasonable
to accept it. But the direct evidence does not amount even
to this. It consists of a passage in Lord Orrery's Remarks
(much that Lord Orrery said about Swift must be accepted
with reserve), where, after stating in a loose incidental way
that Stella was Swift's concealed but undoubted wife, he goes
on, — "If my informations are right, she was married to Dr
Swift in the year 1716, by Dr Ashe, then Bishop of Clogher."
On this Dr Delaney, in his Observations, remarks, — "Your
lordship's account of the marriage is, I am satisfied, true."
Mr Monck Mason's contention that this is a statement of
opinion or belief only, is vigorously combated by Mr Craik.
Mr Craik argues that the words " I am satisfied " apply not to
the fact of a marriage, which was " undoubted," but to the cir-
cumstances of the ceremony. Mr Craik's argument does not
appear to me to be successful, ist, If the ceremony did not
take place then, it did not take place at all. The belief in any
ceremony rests exclusively upon the allegation that a ceremony
was performed in the garden of the deanery in 1716 ; and if
that allegation is not somehow substantiated, the case for the
marriage must break down. So that it is really of no conse-
quence to which of Lord Orrery's statements Dr Delaney's
words apply. 2d, The words "I am satisfied" are unequivo-
cal, and clearly imply that the writer was led to his conclu-
sion by the evidence submitted to him ; — that is to say, Dr
Delaney's was only inferential and circumstantial belief — not
direct knowledge. He had not received his information from
headquarters— from Swift or from Stella ; he was putting this
and that together, and drawing an inference ; and as he no-
where asserts that he had recovered or was in possession of
any really direct evidence, Mr Mason's conclusion, that even
in the case of so familiar an intimate as Dr Delaney the
marriage was matter of opinion or conjecture only, seems to
be justified.

Lord Orrery's Remarks were published in 1752, seven years
after Swift's death ; and it was not till 1789 that the story re-

246 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

ceived any further corroboration. In that year Mr George
Monck Berkeley asserted in his Literary Relics that "Swift
and Stella were married by the Bishop of Clogher, who him-
self related the circumstances to Bishop Berkeley, by whose
relict the story was communicated to me." This bit of evi-
dence certainly comes to us in a very circuitous and round-
about fashion. Mr Berkeley was told by Bishop Berkeley's
widow, who had it from her husband, who had it from Bishop
Ashe. Any one familiar with the proceedings of courts of
law knows that evidence of this kind is of no value whatever.
The gossip is handed down from one to another, — often in
perfect good faith, — yet he who builds upon it builds upon
the sand. And when closely examined, it is seen that the
narrative is in itself highly suspicious, and open to serious
observation. The ceremony was celebrated in 1716; Ber-
keley was abroad at the time, and did not return till after
Bishop Ashe's death, which took place in 1717. Mr Craik
insists that when it is stated that Bishop Ashe " related the
circumstances to Bishop Berkeley," it is not implied that he
did it " by word of mouth." But is there the least likelihood,
from what we know of the Bishop, that he would have been
guilty of so grave an indiscretion ? It cannot be doubted that
he had been bound over to inviolable secrecy; and though
such a secret might be incautiously betrayed or accidentally
ooze out during familiar talk, is it conceivable that a man of
honour and prudence could have deliberately, and in cold
blood, made it — within a few weeks or months — the subject
of a letter to an absent friend?

This is really the whole evidence of the slightest relevancy
that has been recovered, — the loose gossip of Sheridan (of
whom it will be recollected Dr Johnson said, "Why, sir,
Sherry is dull, naturally dull ; but it must have taken him a
great deal of pains to become what we see him now. Such
an excess of stupidity, sir, is not in nature ") being very natur-
ally pooh-poohed by the biographers in general, and even by
Mr Craik. On the other hand, all those who were closely
connected with Swift and Stella in their latter years — Dr Lyon,

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 247

Mrs Dingley, Mrs Brent, Mrs Ridgeway, and others — deny
that any ceremony took place; and almost the last writing
which Stella subscribed opens with the significant words, — " I,
Esther Johnson, of the city of Dublin, spinster" It is main-
tained, indeed, that these words are of no consequence, seeing
that she had bound herself not to disclose that she was a
married woman. Still, there is this to be said, that if she was
married, the introduction of the word " spinster " was a quite
unnecessary falsehood, — the testatrix being quite sufficiently
described as "Esther Johnson, of the city of Dublin." And
when we consider that this can have been only one (though
the last) of a long succession of humiliating embarrassments,
the question again suggests itself with irresistible force, Why
should they have loaded their lives with such a burden of
deceit ? Where are we to look for the motive that will in any
measure account for it? Upon the whole, it seems to me
almost inevitable that some such story as Lord Orrery's (how-
ever unfounded) should have got abroad. The relations of
Swift to Stella were certainly exceptional, and not easily intel-
ligible to the outside world; yet Stella's character was irre-
proachable, and calumny itself did not venture to assail her.
What more natural than that the surmise of a secret union
should have been entertained by many, should have been
whispered about among their friends even during Swift's life,
and should after his death have gradually assumed substance
and shape ?

After all is said, a certain amount of mystery and ambiguity
must attach to the connection, — as to much else in the Dean's
life. He survived Stella for nearly twenty years; yet those
who assert that a marriage took place, search the records of
all these years in vain for any avowal, however slight. " Only
a woman's hair " — scrawled on the envelope in which a tress
of the raven-black hair was preserved — affords a slender cue
to conjecture, and is as enigmatical as the rest. Only a
woman's hair — only the remembrance of the irrevocable past —
only the joy, the sorrow, the devotion of a lifetime, only that
— nothing more.

248 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

" Pudor et Justitise soror
Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas." l

Whatever interpretation each of us may be disposed to give
them, we shall all admit that there must have been something
transcendent in the genius and the despair which could invest
these four quite commonplace words with an immortality of
passion.

And this — the most vivid of the Dean's many vivid sayings
— leads me, in conclusion, to add a word or two on Swift's
literary faculty. These, however, must be very brief; and
were it not that a vigorous effort has been recently made to
show that, judged by his writings, Swift was not a great, but
" essentially a small, and in some respects a bad man," might
at this time of day have been altogether dispensed with. For
there is " finality " in literature, if not in politics. The writer
who undertakes to demonstrate that Homer, and Virgil, and
Dante, and Shakespeare, and Rabelais, and Swift were essenti-
ally small men, cannot be treated seriously. To say that he is
airing a paradox is to put it very mildly; and indeed, the
offence might properly be described in much sharper language.
A scientific writer who in this year of our Lord attacks the
law of gravitation is guilty of a scientific impertinence which
all scientific men whose time is of value are entitled to resent.
Swift's position in letters is equally assured, and as little matter
for argument. A Tale of a Tub, Gullivers Travels^ the argu-
ment against abolishing Christianity, the verses on poetry and
on his own death, are among the imperishable possessions of
the world. The entry has been duly recorded in the National
Register, and cannot now be impeached. And " the clash of
the country " is not in this case a mere vague general impres-
sion, but is instructed by the evidence of the most skilful ex-
perts. To take the most recent. Scott, Macaulay, Froude,
and Leslie Stephen — each in his own department — have ac-

1 " Honour, truth, liberality, good-nature, and modesty were the virtues
she chiefly possessed and most valued in her acquaintance. It was not
safe nor prudent in her presence to offend in the least word against modesty.
She was the most disinterested mortal I ever knew or heard of." — The
character of Mrs Johnson by Swift.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 249

knowledged the supremacy of Swift. Scott regards him as the
painter of character, Macaulay as the literary artist, Froude as
the politician, Leslie Stephen as the moralist and the philo-
sopher. Scott has pointed out that Lemuel Gulliver the tra-
veller, Isaac Bickerstaff the astrologer, the Frenchman who
writes the new Journey to Paris, Mrs Harris, Mary the cook-
maid, the grave projector who proposes a plan for relieving the
poor by eating their children, and the vehement Whig politician
who remonstrates against the enormities of the Dublin signs,
are all persons as distinct from each other as from the Dean
himself, and in all their surroundings absolutely true to the
life.1 Mr Froude remarks that Swift, who was in the best and
noblest sense an Irish patriot, poured out tract after tract
denouncing Irish misgovernment, each of them composed with
supreme literary power, a just and burning indignation showing
through the most finished irony. " In these tracts, in colours
which will never fade, lies the picture of Ireland, as England,
half in ignorance, half in wilful despair of her amendment, had
willed that she should be." 2 Mr Leslie Stephen, after admit-
ting that Swift is the keenest satirist as well as the acutest critic
in the English language, adds that his imagination was fervid
enough to give such forcible utterance to his feelings as has
scarcely been rivalled in our literature.3 Lord Macaulay's
testimony is even more valuable. Macaulay disliked Swift
with his habitual energy of dislike. It must be confessed that
the complex characters where heroism and weakness are subtly
interwoven — Bacon, Dryden, Swift — did not lend themselves
readily to the manipulation of that brilliant master.4 Yet in
spite of his repugnance to the man, his admiration of the mag-

1 Memoirs of Jonathan Swift, D.D., p. 439.

2 The English in Ireland. By J. A. Froude. Vol. i. pp. 5OI-5°3-

3 English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i. p. 209, vol. ii. p. 375.

4 Addison was his literary hero ; but surely, in spite of exquisite urbanity
and a charming style, Addison, both as man and writer, has been pro-
digiously overrated by Macaulay. The others had sounded depths which
his plummet could not reach, had scaled heights on which he had never
adventured. This, to be sure, may have been his attraction for Macaulay,
to whom the difficult subtleties of the imagination and the ardent aspira-
tions of the spiritual life were enigmatical and antipathetic,— a riddle and
a by-word.

250 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

nificent faculty of the satirist is emphatic and unstinted.
Under that plain garb and ungainly deportment were con-
cealed, he tells us, some of the choicest gifts that have ever
been bestowed on the children of men, — rare powers of obser-
vation ; brilliant wit ; grotesque invention ; humour of the
most austere flavour, yet exquisitely delicious ; eloquence
singularly pure, manly, and perspicuous.1 I need not multiply
authorities. It must now be conceded, for all practical pur-
poses, that the consent of the learned world to Swift's intel-
lectual pre-eminence has been deliberately and finally given.

It is asserted by the same critic that Swift's reputation has
been gained " by a less degree of effort than that of almost any
other writer," — his writings, in point of length, being altogether
insignificant. To this curious complaint I might be content
to reply in Mr Leslie Stephen's words : " A modern journalist
who could prove that he had written as little in six months
would deserve a testimonial." Those who hold that language
was given us to conceal our thoughts may reckon " verbosity "
a virtue ; but the great books of the world are not to be
measured by their size. Hume's Essay on Miracles, which
may be said to have revolutionised the whole course of
modern thought, is compressed into some twenty pages. A
Tale of a Tub is shorter than a Budget speech which will
be forgotten to-morrow : but then — how far-reaching is the
argument; the interest — how world- wide; the scorn — how
consummate ! Brief as Swift is, he makes it abundantly
clear, before he is done, that there are no limits to his
capacity. He has looked all round our globe — as from
another star. It is true that with the most lucid intelli-
gence he united the most lurid scorn. Though he saw them
as from a remote planet, he hated the pigmies — the little
odious vermin — with the intensity of a next-door neighbour.
Yet this keenness of feeling was in a measure perhaps the
secret of his power, — it gave that amazing air of reality to
his narrative which makes us feel, when we return from
Brobdingnag, that human beings are ridiculously and unac-
countably small. Swift was a great master of the idiomatic —
1 History of England, vol. iv. p. 369.

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 251

one of the greatest ; but his intellectual ludicity was not less
noticeable than his verbal. His eye was indeed too keen, too
penetrating : he did not see through shams and plausibilities
only ; he saw through the essential decencies of life as well.
Thus he spoke with appalling plainness of many things which
nature has wisely hidden ; and he became at times in conse-
quence outrageously coarse.

Swift, it is said, never laughed ; but when he unbent him-
self intellectually, he was, I think, at his best. The serious
biographer complains of the rough horse-play of his humour —
of his weakness for puns and practical jokes. The puns, how-
ever, were often very fair ; and the humorous perception that
could meet William's favourite Recepit non rapuit^ with the apt
retort, The receiver is as bad as the thief; — or could apply on
the instant to the lady whose mantua had swept down a
Cremona fiddle, Mantua^ V& miserce. nimium vicina Cremona!
— must have been nimble and adroit. Even the practical
joking was good in its way. The dearly beloved Roger is
probably apocryphal, — borrowed from some older jest-book ;
but the praying and fasting story, as told by Sir Walter, is
certainly very comical, and seems to be authentic.1 Mr
Bickerstaff's controversy with Partridge the almanack-maker
is, however, Swift's highest achievement in this line. His
mirth (when not moody and ferocious) was of the gayest kind,
—the freest and finest play of the mind. It is not mere
trifling ; there is strenuous logic as well as deft wit : so that

1 Scott's Life of Swift, p. 381. The whole note is worth quoting, as
containing some characteristic details of manner, &c. "There is another
well-attested anecdote, communicated by the late Mr William Waller of
Allanstown, near Kells, to Mr Theophilus Swift. Mr Waller, while a
youth, was riding near his father's house, when he met a gentleman on
horseback reading. A little surprised, he asked the servant, who followed
him at some distance, where they came from? 'From the Black Lion,'
answered the man. ' And where are you going ? ' 'To heaven, I believe,'
rejoined the servant, 'for my master's praying and I am fasting.' On
further inquiry it proved that the Dean, who was then going to Laracor,
had rebuked the man for presenting him in the morning with dirty boots.
' Were they clean,' answered the fellow, ' they would soon be dirty again.'
'And if you eat your breakfast,' retorted the Dean, 'you will be hungry
again, so you shall proceed without it,' which circumstance gave rise to
the man's bon-mot"

252 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

even Partridge has his serious side. Whately's Historic
Doubts regarding Napoleon Buonaparte are now nearly for-
gotten ; but they suggest to us what may have been in Swift's
mind when he assured the unlucky astrologer that logically
he was dead (if not buried), and that he need not think to
persuade the world that he was still alive. The futility of
human testimony upon the plainest matter-of-fact has never
been more ludicrously yet vividly exposed.

The grave conduct of an absurd proposition is of course
one of the most striking characteristics of Swift's style ; but
the unaffected simplicity and stolid unconsciousness with
which he looks the reader in the face when relating the most
astonishing fictions, is, it seems to me, an even higher reach
of his art. It is quite impossible to doubt the good faith of
the narrator ; and when we are told that " the author was so
distinguished for his veracity, that it became a sort of proverb
among his neighbours at Redriff, when any one affirmed a
thing, that it was as true as if Mr Gulliver had spoken it,"
we are not surprised at the seaman who swore that he knew
Mr Gulliver very well, but that he lived at Wapping, not at
Rotherhithe. How admirable is the parenthetical, " being
little for her age," in the account of Glumdalclitch — "She
was very good-natured, and not above forty feet high, being
little for her age " ; or the description of the queen's dwarf —
" Nothing angered and mortified me so much as the queen's
dwarf, who being of the lowest stature that was ever in that
country (for I verily think he was not full thirty feet high),
became so insolent at seeing a creature so much beneath him,
that he would always affect to swagger and look big as he
passed by me in the queen's ante-chamber " ! One cannot
believe that Swift was so unutterably miserable when he was
engaged on Gulliver, or that he wrote the "travels" — the
earlier voyages at least — not to amuse the world, but to vex
it. This consummate artist was a great satirist as well as a
great story-teller ; but it is the art of the delightful story-teller,
not of the wicked satirist, that makes Gulliver immortal.

Swift's verse, like his prose, was mainly remarkable for its
resolute homeliness; but when the scorn or the indignation

AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN. 253

or the pity becomes intense, it sometimes attains, as we have
seen, a very high level indeed. The Jolly Beggars of Burns
is scarcely superior in idiomatic pith and picturesqueness to
the opening stanzas of the Rhapsody on Poetry : —

" Not empire to the rising sun,
By valour, conduct, fortune won ;
Not highest wisdom in debates
For framing laws to govern States ;
Not skill in sciences profound
So large to grasp the circle round, —
Such heavenly influence require
As how to st,rike the muses' lyre.

Not beggar's brat on bulk begot ;

Not bastard of a pedlar Scot ;

Not boy brought up to cleaning shoes,

The spawn of Bridewell or the stews ;

Not infants dropt, the spurious pledges

Of gipsies litt'ring under hedges, —

Are so disqualified by fate

To rise in Church, or Law, or State,

As he whom Phoebus in his ire

Hath blasted with poetic fire."

Yet the impeachment of Swift as the writer has, after all, a
basis of fact. His influence was largely personal. He was
greater than his books. It is easy to take up one of his pam-
phlets now, and criticise the style, which is sometimes loose
and slovenly, at our leisure. But it did its work. It struck
home. That, after all, is the true standard by which the Dean
should be judged. He was a ruler of men, and he knew how
to rule. If he had been bred to politics, if he had occupied a
recognised place, not in the Church, but in the House of
Commons, he would have been one of our greatest statesmen.
The sheer personal ascendancy of his character was as marked
in political as in private life. Friend and foe alike admitted
that his influence, when fairly exerted, was irresistible. He
was one of those potent elemental forces which occasionally
appear in the world, and which, when happily circumstanced
—when not chained as Prometheus was, or tortured as Swift
was — revolutionise society. The unfriendly Johnson, as we

254 AN APOLOGY FOR THE DEAN.

have seen, was forced to confess that for several years Swift
formed the political opinions of the English nation ; and Car-
teret frankly admitted that he had succeeded in governing
Ireland because he pleased Dr Swift. "Dr Swift had com-
manded him," said Lord Rivers, "and he durst not refuse
it." And Lord Bathurst remarked, that by an hour's work in
his study an Irish parson had often "made three kingdoms
drunk at once." I cannot be induced to believe by any
criticism, however trenchant, that the man who did all this
was not only "bad" but "small."

It is difficult in a lecture addressed to a popular
audience to be absolutely just, or to preserve that
moderation which was approved by the Apostle ; and
Mowbray declared, more suo, that he was not to be
beguiled by the persuasive arts of the special pleader.
For his part he had no belief in Lucrezia Borgia, or
Guy Fawkes, or Jonathan Swift. But the rest of us
were satisfied that the Dean had been too harshly
assailed by hostile critics, and that (to say the least) a
verdict of " Not Proven " might be honestly returned.

255

LAST WORDS.

AND now one last word — before I put away the pen
for good.1

Another high festival of our people — the only holy
day, may I say ? that Scotsmen keep — has dawned ; and
Mark (though growing old and grey and a trifle weary
at times like the rest of us) is still able to shoulder
his gun.

The thick mist that hung over the moors in the
early morning has melted away in the sunshine, and
a gentle breeze shakes the heather-bells and dimples
the blue sea. The coveys are small and scarce, for the
June thunderstorms thinned out the delicate young
birds with tender gizzards ; but the old fellows are in
splendid feather, and when they rise look as plump

1 One other " last word " must find its place in a footnote. At page 145
of Volume One there is a striking description of a blue heron — "blue in
every feather as a summer sky at morning " — perched in a fissure of the
precipice, — the fissure being ' ' exactly like a niche carved on purpose to
hold a relic or a little statue or a picture of a saint." I find that by some
mischance or misadventure I omitted to mention that for this vivid North-
umbrian reminiscence I 'am indebted to Mr A. C. Swinburne.

256 LAST WORDS.

and black as capercailzie. Juno treads gingerly
through the heather, for she knows how wideawake
these patriarchs are, and drops like a stone at her
points. What a picture ! Every limb is rigid ; the
eager head has been chiselled in marble, — the dilated
nostril alone quivering as it sniffs the breeze. Once
she looks round cautiously to see if we are within hail ;
then she rises and creeps forward step by step towards
the hidden foe, who waits behind the clump of tufted
fern. She trembles with the excitement of the chase ;
she pants with suppressed emotion ; we can see the
beating of her heart through her ribs. So-ho ! it is
an old cock, the father of the hillside, and a snap-shot
— for he has risen, crafty old rogue that he is, forty
yards off — brings him down with a thttd upon the
heather.

And so advancing, we reach at length the Mid-day
Rest, by the well where the blaeberries grow. A
narrow glen, like that where Ossian sleeps his last
sleep, and yet not unlovely in its loneliness. I know
not indeed where, away from our own moorland, you
can find its marrow. The bright red and green of
the blaeberries, the vivid crimson of the bell -heath
and the chaster purple of the ling, form a fitting
setting for the grey lichen-covered boulders that crop
out through the encircling moss. And then the meek
seclusion of the spot, unvisited all the year save by the
flying clouds, and the solitary old cock who comes to
drink at the crystal spring in the live rock, which wells

LAST WORDS. 257

up with the same tireless serenity alike in the bitter
winter frosts and the gracious summer dawns !

" And sweeter far than the sound of the bells,
Is the music that sleeps all the year in these dells,
Till the hounds go by and wake it."

We had been silent for a space, and then he turned
to me.

"Dick," he said, "it is good for us to be here.
The summer clouds drift lightly by, as they drifted
when we were boys, and it is still a brave and goodly
world. There are those among us who inquire
dubiously whether it is worth their while to have been
born ? And at times one is half inclined to agree with
them. We pursue a phantom which constantly eludes
our grasp. The curtain drops before the play is well
begun. But to lie on a hillside among the bracken
while the lark and her song melt into ' the infinite
azure,' — Dick, on a day like this, the mere joy of
living is ample justification, and more than adequate
reward."

We were silent for a little ; then he added — " You
have not forgotten, I daresay, Coleridge's great lines ?
The world is very good to-day, goodly as at the
beginning ; but there must be something behind, some
force mightier than gravitation, claiming kindred with
our spirits, which animates and informs." Then he
repeated the words which are to be found in one of
those miraculous fragments now wellnigh forgotten : —

VOL. II. R

258 LAST WORDS.

" Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My spirit I to Love compose,
In humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation,
No wish conceived, no thought exprest,
Only a sense of supplication ;
A sense o'er all my soul imprest
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal strength and wisdom are."

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

The SIXTH EDITION of the FIRST SERIES of
'THE TABLE-TALK OF SHIRLEY,'
with an Engraving on Steel and three Wood-
cuts, is now ready. Post 8vo, 75. 6d.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

" Dr John Skelton, the distinguished man of letters, historian, and
critic, who often writes as ' Shirley,' gathers together in this delightful
volume a series of ' Reminiscences of and Letters from Froude, Thackeray,
Disraeli, Browning, Rossetti, Kingsley, Baynes, Huxley, Tyndall, and
Others,' and adorns them with the play of his own fine culture and sym-
pathetic temperament His ' Table-Talk ' is that of a man of fine

temper and wide culture, and it is saying far too little of it to say, as
Shirley says himself, that its publication 'can do no harm to the living
or to the dead.' It exalts the dead by the felicity and tenderness of its
portraiture, and it cannot but delight the living by the temper and charm
of its style." — Times.

"Dr Skelton's Reminiscences are delightful reading He writes with

the grace and attractiveness which readers of his historical studies and
innumerable essays long since learnt to admire. " — St James's Gazette.

"Dr Skelton's latest work is one of the most charming that we have

come across for a considerable time, and will, we are sure, prove a

delight to many." — Westminster Gazette.

' ' The Hermitage of Braid has put forth a good many volumes, but none

more attractive than this one Froude takes up nearly a third of the

volume, and one would wish he had taken up much more, especially when
one learns from a footnote that there is to be no biography and no further
publication of his letters. "—Athenattm.

" Shirley, the accomplished writer in Fraser and Blackwood, the brilliant
and learned counsel for the defence of Mary Queen of Scots, has had a
circle of literary friendships not less choice than extensive, and into that

circle the readers of his ' Table-Talk ' are very pleasantly welcomed

The tone of the whole book is singularly attractive. " — Spectator.

"This book is essentially one that no library should be without. Mr
Skelton (Shirley) has done contemporary biography and the readers of
to-day an inestimable service." — World.

"The two sketches in the Doric are admirable ; they remind us of Gait
at his best." — Saturday Review.

11 ' The Table-Talk of Shirley ' is a valuable addition to the literature of the

century If any reader wishes for what poor Jane Welsh Carlyle used

to call 'a good joy,' let him turn to the concluding chapter, 'A Scotch
Professor and an Oxford Don.' For genuine humour and fine harmless
satire the two sketches could hardly be surpassed." — Academy.

" A very interesting and welcome volume. The Reminiscences are good
throughout, but best when dealing with James Anthony Froude, of whom
they give a friend's impression." — Tablet.

"Dr Skelton's Reminiscences— 'The Table-Talk of Shirley'— are most
delightful reading."— Truth.

"There is of course a great charm for all lovers of literature and
admirers of men of genius in the letters and memories of the notable men
of whom Shirley talks, but one discovers how much of the charm lies
really in the speaker when one turns to the chapter about 'Our Poor
Relations.' " — Scotsman.

"The ' Table-Talk of Shirley ' is in great demand. This is not surpris-
ing, since Dr Skelton's reminiscences make up a volume of singular charm
and fascination." — Weekly Sun.

"Shirley's 'Table-Talk' is so full of good things that it is difficult to
know where to begin, and still more difficult to tear oneself away from the
company which this mellow and genial man of letters gathers around him.
Letters and memories of the deepest interest." — Daily Chronicle.

" This interesting and charming book."— British Weekly.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON AND
THE SCOTLAND OF MARY STUART.
By JOHN SKELTON, C.B., LL.D. EDITION DE
LUXE, with six Portraits of Mary Stuart, after
Janet and Others, and an Autotype Reproduc-
tion of Sir Noel Paton's Sketch of the Queen.
2 Vols. demy 8vo, 28s. net.

NOTICES OF FIRST EDITION.

" Le meilleur de ces livres est sans conteste 1'ouvrage de deux volumes
que M. John Skelton d'Edimbourg a ecrit sous le titre, * Maitland de
Lethington : L'Ecosse de Marie Stuart.' L'auteur, deja honorablement
connu par un grand nombre de travaux litte'raires et politiques, nous y
donne la biographic du Secretaire d'Etat de Marie, avec de nombreuses et
interessantes digressions sur 1'aspect general des affaires d'Ecosse au XVIe
siecle. L'ouvrage, ecrit d'un style vif et pittoresque, est fort attrayant, en
meme temps que sur beaucoup de points il ouvre des perspectives nou-
velles et importantes. " — Professor MARTIN PHILIPPSON, in the Revue
Historique.

" Wir schliessen unser Referat iiber eine in ihrer Art classische Schrift
die kein Freund der Wahrheit ohne reiche Belehrung aus der Hand legt."
— Professor BELLESHEIM, in Literarische Rundschau.

"It has been reserved for the ardent polemical zeal and brilliant literary
ability of Mr Skelton to extricate for us out of the coils of contemporary
vituperation and subsequent vague tradition, some image of the unique
personality of Maitland of Lethington, the arch-antagonist of John Knox."
— Professor DAVID MASSON, on Scotch Historical Research.

"To those who have not passed through the painful experiences of an
examiner, I may recommend the brief discussion of the genuineness of the
Casket Letters, in my friend Mr Skelton's interesting work on ' Maitland
of Lethington.' " — Professor HUXLEY, in the Nineteenth Century.

" Mr Skelton's now completed work forms one of the most original and
valuable contributions to Scottish history completed within living memory."
— Professor STORY, in the Scots Magazine.

"Mr Skelton's picturesque and fascinating volumes on ' Maitland of

Lethington. ' A striking historical portrait, limned with careful and

felicitous skill." — Mr T. F. HENDERSON, in The Casket Letters and Mary
Stuart.

" Mr Skelton has produced a work of much brilliancy ; his style is both
lucid and animated, his descriptions are vivid, and his characters are al-
ways distinctly and forcibly drawn. As a defence of Maitland it is at
least ingenious and well sustained." — The Rev. A. J. CARLYLE, in the
Historical Review.

" Of Mr Skelton's charming and animated work I desire to make special
mention. The Lethington of these pages owes his existence to Mr Skel-
ton's portrait. " — MICHAEL FIELD, in The Tragic Mary.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD 6c SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.

MARY STUART. By JOHN SKELTON, C.B,

LL.D. (BOUSSOD, VALLADON, & Co. : 1893.)

Edition on Japanese paper, £8 net (put of print}.
Ordinary Edition, ^2, 8s. net (out of print}.

"The splendid monograph on Mary Stuart by Mr Skelton is perhaps
the most sumptuous volume ever published in illustration of the life and

fortunes of the beautiful and unhappy Queen of Scots Mr Skelton's

contribution to the controversy is of great weight and moment, and cannot
be neglected by any serious student of the subject." — The Times.

"There are four portions of this book which, regarded strictly as litera-
ture, could hardly have been surpassed, — the account of Mary's life in
France, the description of the Scotland into which she was plunged, the

indictment of her enemies, and the narrative of her life in England

Mr Skelton has done much. Above all he has, in this superb book, ex-
hibited, as no one has ever exhibited before, the eternal charm of the
greatest, the most unfortunate, the best loved, the best hated, of all the
sorceresses of history." — The Spectator.

"We do not think the case for Queen Mary has ever been argued so
ably and convincingly as by Mr Skelton, or her story (especially that of
her youth in France) made so present, human, and touching in its insati-
able interest."— The World.

PR

5452

S6T4

1897

v.2

Skelton, (Sir) John

Summers and winters at
Balraawhapple

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE
CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY