"Three months would maybe change her tongue," replied the Warden; "but the enterprise seems desperate, Will."

"Desperate! my Lord," replied the other—"that word's no kenned on the Borders. Is it the doing o't, or the dool for the doing o't, that has the desperation in't?"

"The consequences to you would be great, Will," said Traquair. "You are confined here for stealing a cow, and would be hanged for it if I did not save ye. Our laws are equal and humane. For stealing a cow one may be hanged; but there's no such law against stealing a paper-lord."

"That shows the guid sense o' our lawgivers," replied Will, with a leer on his face. "The legislator has wisely weighed the merits o' the twa craturs; yet, were it no for your case, my Lord, I could wish the law reversed. I wad be in nae hurry stealing ane o' thae cummers, at least for my ain use; and, as for Peggy, she would rather see a cow at Gilnockie ony day."

"Weel, Will," said his Lordship, "I do not ask thee to steal for me old Leddie Gibson. I dare not. You understand me; but I am to save your life; and I tell thee that, if that big-wigged personage be not, within ten days, safely lodged in Graeme's Tower, my lands of Coberston will find a new proprietor, and your benefactor will be made a lordly beggar."

"Fear not, my Lord," replied Will. "I'm nae suner out than she's in. She'll no say a word against Coberston for the next three months, I warrant ye. But, by my faith, it's as teuch a job as boilin' auld Soulis in the cauldron at the Skelfhill; and I hae nae black spae-book like Thomas to help my spell. Yet, after a', my Lord, what spell is like the wit o' man, when he has courage to act up to 't!"

The Warden acknowledged the truth of Will's heroic sentiment; and, having satisfied himself that the bold riever would perform his promise, he departed, and in two days afterwards the prisoner was liberated, and on his way to his residence at the Hollows. It was apparent, from Will's part of the dialogue, that he had some knowledge of the object the Lord Warden had in view in carrying off a Lord of Session from the middle of the capital; yet it is doubtful if he troubled himself with more than the fact of its being the wish of his benefactor that the learned judge should be for a time confined in Graeme's Tower; and, conforming to a private hint of his Lordship before he departed from the jail, he kept up in his wife Margaret's mind the delusion that it was truly "an auld lurdon" whom he was to steal, as a condition for getting out of prison. On the morning after his arrival at Gilnockie, Will held a consultation with two tried friends, whose assistance he required in this most extraordinary of all the rieving expeditions he had ever yet been engaged in; and the result of their long sederunt was, that, within two hours after, the three were mounted on as many prancing Galloways, and with a fourth led by a bridle, and carrying their provisions, a large cloak, and some other articles. They took the least frequented road to the metropolis of Scotland. Having arrived there, they put up their horses at a small hostelry in the Grassmarket; and, next day, Will, leaving his friends at the inn, repaired to that seat of the law and learning of Scotland, where the "hail fifteen" sat in grim array, munching, with their toothless jaws, the thousand scraps of Latin law-maxims (borrowed from the Roman and feudal systems) which then ruled the principles of judicial proceedings in Scotland.

Planting himself in one of the litigants' benches—a line of seats in front of the semicircle where the fifteen Lords sat—the Liddesdale riever took a careful survey of all the wonders of that old laboratory of law. The first objects that attracted his attention, were, of course, the imposing semicircular line of judges, no fewer than fifteen (almost sufficient for a small standing army for puny Scotland in those days), who, wigged and robed, sat and nodded and grinned, and munched their chops in each other's faces, with a most extraordinary regularity of mummery, which yielded great amusement to the stalworth riever of the Borders. Their appearance in the long gowns, with sleeves down to the hands, wigs whose lappets fell on their breasts, displaying many a line of crucified curl, and white cambric cravats falling from below their gaucy double-chins on their bosoms, suggested at once the appellation of lurdons, often applied to them in those days, and now vivid in the fancy of the staring Borderer, whose wild and lawless life was so strangely contrasted with that of the drowsy, effeminate-looking individuals who sat before him. He understood very little of their movements, which had all the regularity and ceremony of a raree-show. One individual (the macer) cried out, at intervals, with a cracked voice, some words he could not understand; but the moment the sound had rung through the raftered hall, another species of wigged and robed individuals (advocates) came forward, and spoke a strange mixture of English and Latin, which Will could not follow; and, when they had finished, the whole fifteen looked at each other, and then began, one after another, but often two or three at a time, to speak, and nod, and shake their wigs, as if they had been set agoing by some winding-up process on the part of the advocates. Not one word of all this did Will understand; and, indeed, he cared nothing for such mummery, but ever and anon fixed his keen eye on the face of the middle senator, with an expression that certainly never could have conveyed the intelligence that that rough country-looking individual meditated such a thing as an abduction of the huge incorporation of law that sat there in so much state and solidity.

"Ha! ha! my old lass," said Will to himself; "ye little ken that the Laird o' Gilnockie, whom ye tried to deprive of his birthright, sits afore ye; and will a' the lear 'neath that big wig tell ye that that same Laird o' Gilnockie sits here contriving a plan to run awa wi' ye? Faith, an' it's a bauld project; but the baulder the bonnier, as we say in Liddesdale. I only wish I could tak her wig and gown wi' her—for, if the lurdon were seen looking out o' Graeme's Tower, wi' that lang lappet head-gear, there would be nae need o' watch or ward to keep her there."

Will had scarcely finished his monologue, when he heard the macer cry out, "Maxwell against Lord Traquair;" then came forward the advocates, and shook their wigs over the bar, and at length old Durie, the President, said, in words that did not escape Will's vigilant ear—

"This case, I believe, involves the right to the large barony of Coberston. Seven of my brethren, you are aware, have given their opinions in favour of the defendant, Lord Traquair, and seven have declared for the pursuer, Maxwell. My casting vote must, therefore, decide the case, and I have been very anxious to bring my mind to a conclusion on the subject, with as little delay as possible; but there are difficulties which I have not yet been able to surmount."

"Ay, and there's a new ane here, sittin' afore ye," muttered Will, "maybe the warst o' them a'."

"I still require some new lights," continued the judge. "I have already, as the case proceeded, partially announced an opinion against Lord Traquair; but I wish confirmation before I pronounce a judgment that is to have the effect of turning one out of possession of a large barony. I am sorry that my learned friends at the bar have not been able to relieve me of my scruples."

"Stupid fules," muttered Will; "but I'll relieve ye, my Lord Durie. It'll ne'er be said that a Lord o' Session stood in need o' relief, and a Border riever in the court, wha has a hundred times made the doubtin' stirk tak ae road (maybe Gilnockie-ways) in preference to anither."

The Traquair case being the last called that day, the court broke up, and the judges, followed still by the eye of Christie's Will, retired into the robing-room to take off their wigs and gowns. The Borderer now inquired, in a very simple manner, at a macer, at what door the judges came out of the court, as he was a countryman, and was curious to see their Lordships dressed in their usual every-day clothes. The request was complied with; and Will, as a stupid gazing man from the Highlands, who wished to get an inane curiosity gratified by what had nothing curious in it, was placed in a convenient place to see the Solomons pass forth on their way to their respective dwellings. They soon came; and Will's lynx eye caught, in a moment, the face of the President, whom, to his great satisfaction, he now found to be a thin, spare, portable individual, and very far from the unwieldy personage which his judge's dress made him appear to be when sitting on the bench—a reversing of the riever's thoughts, in reference to the spareness and fatness of his object of seizure, that brought a twinkle to his eye in spite of the serious task in which he was engaged. Forth went the President with great dignity, and Christie's Will behind him, dogging him with the keen scent of a sleuth-hound. To his house in the Canongate he slowly bent his steps, ruminating as he went, in all likelihood, upon the difficulties of the Traquair case, from which his followers were so anxious to relieve him. Will saw him ascend the steps and enter, and his next object was to ascertain at what time he took his walk, and to what quarter of the suburbs he generally resorted; but on this point he could not get much satisfaction, the good judge being in his motions somewhat irregular, though (as Will learned) seldom a day passed without his having recourse to the country in some direction or other. Will, therefore, set a watch upon the house. Another of his friends held the horses at the foot of Leith Wynd, while he himself paced between the watchman and the top of the passage, so that he might have both ends of the line always in his eye. A concerted whistle was to regulate their movements.

The first day passed without a single glimpse being had of the grave senator, who was probably occupied in the consultation of legal authorities, little conscious of the care that was taken about his precious person by so important an individual as the far-famed Christie's Will of Gilnockie. On the second day, about three of the afternoon, and two hours after he had left the Parliament House, a whistle from Will's friend indicated that the grave judge was on the steps of his stair. Will recognised him in an instant, and, despatching his friend to him who held the horses at the foot of the Wynd, with instructions to keep behind him at a distance, he began to follow his victim slowly, and soon saw with delight that he was wending his senatorial steps down towards Leith. The unconscious judge seemed drowned in study: his eyes were fixed on the ground; his hands placed behind his back; and, ever and anon, he twirled a gold-headed cane that hung suspended by a silken string from one of his fingers. Will was certain that he was meditating the fall of Coberston, and the ruin of his benefactor, Traquair; and, as the thought rose in his mind, the fire of his eye burned brighter, and his resolution mounted higher and higher, till he could even have seized his prey in Leith lane, and carried him off amidst the cries of the populace. But his opportunity was coming quicker than he supposed. To enable him to get deeper and deeper into his brown study, Durie was clearly bent upon avoiding the common road where passengers put to flight his ideas; and, turning to the right, went up a narrow lane, and continued to saunter on till he came to that place commonly known by the name of the Figgate Whins. In that sequestered place, where scarcely an individual was seen to pass in an hour, the deep thinking of the cogitative senator might trench the soil of the law of prescription, turn up the principle which regulated tailzies under the second part of the act 1617, and bury Traquair's right to Coberston. No sound but the flutter of a bird, or the moan of the breaking waves of the Frith of Forth, could there interfere with his train of thought. Away he sauntered, ever turning his gold-headed cane, and driving his head farther and farther into the deep hole where, like the ancient philosopher, he expected to find truth. Sometimes he struck his foot against a stone, and started and looked up, as if awakened from a dream; but he was too intent on his study to take the pains to make a complete turn of his wise head, to see if there was any one behind him. During all this time, a regular course of signals was in progress among Will and his friends who were coming up behind him, the horses being kept far back, in case the sound of their hoofs might reach the ear of the day-dreamer. He had now reached the most retired and lonely part of the common, where, at that time, there stood a small clump of trees at a little distance from the whin-road that gave the place its singular name. His study still continued, for his head was still bent, and he looked neither to the right nor to the left. In a single instant, he was muffled up in a large cloak, a hood thrown over his face, and his hands firmly bound by a cord. The operation was that of a moment—finished before the prisoner's astonishment had left him power to open his mouth. A whistle brought up the horses; he was placed on one of them with the same rapidity; a cord was passed round his loins and bound to the saddle; and, in a few minutes, the party was in rapid motion to get to the back part of the city.[E]

[E] This famous abduction was reported by Lord Fountainhall. Every circumstance is literally true.—ED.

During all this extraordinary operation, not a single word passed between the three rievers, to whom the proceeding was, in a great degree, perfectly familiar. Through the folds of the hood of the cloak in which the President's head was much more snugly lodged than it ever was in his senatorial wig, he contrived to send forth some muffled sounds, indicating, not unnaturally, a wish to know what was the meaning and object of so extraordinary a manoeuvre. At that time, be it understood, the belief in the power of witches was general, and Durie himself had been accessary to the condemnation of many a wise woman who was committed to the flames; but though he had, to a great extent, emancipated his strong mind from the thraldom of the prevailing prejudice, the mode in which he was now seized—in broad day, in the midst of a legal study, without seeing a single individual (his head being covered first), and without hearing the sound of man's voice—would have been sufficient to bring him back to the general belief, and force the conviction that he was now in the hands of the agents of the Devil. It is, indeed, a fact (afterwards ascertained), that the learned judge did actually conceive that he was now in the power of those he had helped to persecute; and his fears—bringing up before him the burning tar-barrels, the paid prickers, the roaring crowds, and the expiring victim—completed the delusion, and bound up his energies, till he was speechless and motionless. There was, therefore, no cause of apprehension from the terror-struck prisoner himself; and, as the party scoured along, they told every inquiring passenger on the way (for they were obliged, in some places, to ask the road) that they were carrying an auld lurdon to Dumfries, to be burnt for exercising the power of her art on the innocent inhabitants of that district. It was, therefore, no uncommon thing for Durie to hear himself saluted by all the appellations generally applied to the poor persecuted class to which he was supposed to belong.

"Ay, awa wi' the auld limmer," cried one, "and see that the barrels are fresh frae Norraway, and weel-lined wi' the bleezing tar."

"Be sure and prick her weel," cried another; "the foul witch may be fireproof. If she winna burn, boil her like Meg Davy at Smithfield, or Shirra Melville on the hill o' Garvock."

These cries coming on the ear of the astonished judge, did not altogether agree with his preconceived notions of being committed to the power of the Evil One; but they tended still farther to confuse him, and he even fancied at times that the vengeance of the populace, which thus rung in his ears, was in the act of being realized, and that he was actually to suffer the punishment he had so often awarded to others. Some expressions wrung from him by his fear, and overheard by the quick ear of Will, gave the latter a clue to the workings of his mind, and he did not fail to see how he might take advantage of it. As night began to fall, they had got far on their way towards Moffat, and, consequently, far out of danger of a pursuit and a rescue. Durie's horse was pricked forward at a speed not inconsistent with his power of keeping the saddle. They stopped at no baiting place, but kept pushing forward, while the silence was still maintained, or, if it ever was broken, it was to introduce, by interlocutory snatches of conversation, some reference to the doom which awaited the unhappy judge. The darkness in which he was muffled, the speed of his journey, the sounds and menaces that had met his ear, all co-operating with the original sensations produced by his mysterious seizure, continued to keep alive the terrors he at first felt, to over-turn all the ordinary ideas and feelings of the living world, and to sink him deeper and deeper in the confusion that had overtaken his mind in the midst of his legal reverie at the Figgate Whins.

The cavalcade kept its course all next day, and, towards the evening, they approached Graeme's Tower, a dark, melancholy-looking erection, situated on Dryfe Water, not very distant from the village of Moffat. In a deep cell of this old castle the President of the Court of Session was safely lodged, with no more light than was supplied by a small grating, and with a small supply of meat, only sufficient to allay at first the pangs of hunger. Will having thus executed his commission, sat down and wrote on a scrap of paper these expressive words—"The brock's in the pock!" and sent it with one of his friends to Traquair House. The moment the Earl read the scrawl, he knew that Will had performed his promise, and took a hearty laugh at the extraordinary scheme he had resorted to for gaining his plea. It was not yet, however, his time to commence his proceedings; but, in a short while after the imprisonment of the President, he set off for Edinburgh, which town he found in a state of wonder and ferment at the mysterious disappearance of the illustrious Durie. Every individual he met had something to say on the subject; but the prevailing opinion was, that the unhappy President had ventured upon that part of the sands near Leith where the incoming tide usually encloses, with great rapidity, large sand-banks, and often overwhelms helpless strangers who are unacquainted with the manner in which the tide there flows. Numbers of people had exerted themselves in searching all the surrounding parts, and some had traversed the whole coast from Musselburgh to Cramond, in the expectation of finding the body upon the sea-shore. But all was in vain: no President was found; and a month of vain search and expectation having passed, the original opinion settled down into a conviction that he had been drowned. His wife, Lady Durie, after the first emotions of intense grief, went, with her whole family, into mourning; and young and old lamented the fate of one of the most learned judges and best men that ever sat on the judgment-seat of Scotland.

There was nothing now to prevent Traquair from reaping the fruits of his enterprise. He pressed hard for a judgment in his case; and pled that the fourteen judges having been equally divided, he was entitled to a decision in his favour as defender. This plea was not at that time sustained; but a new president having been appointed, who was favourable to his side of the question, the case was again to be brought before the court, and the Earl expected to carry his point, and reap all the benefit of Will's courage and ingenuity.

Meantime, the dead-alive President was closely confined in the old tower of Graeme, and had never recovered from the feelings of superstition which held the sovereign power of his mind at the time of his confinement. He never saw the face of man, his food being handed into him by an unseen hand, through a small hole at the foot of the door. The small grating was not situated so as to yield him any prospect; and the only sounds that greeted his ears were the calls of the shepherds who tended their sheep in the neighbouring moor. Sometimes he heard men's voices calling out "Batty!" and anon a female crying "Maudge!" The former was the name of a shepherd's dog, and the latter was the name of the cat belonging to an old woman who occupied a small cottage adjoining to the tower. Both the names sounded strangely and ominously in the ears of the President, and sorely did he tax his wits as to what they implied. Every day he heard them, and every time he heard them he meditated more and more as to the species of beings they denominated. Still remaining in the belief that he was in the hands of evil powers, he imagined that these strange names, Batty and Maudge, were the earthly titles of the two demons that held the important authority of watching and tormenting the President of the Court of Session. He had heard these often, and suffered so much from their cruel tyranny, that he became nervous when the ominous sounds struck on his ear, and often (as he himself subsequently admitted) he adjured heaven, in his prayers, to take away Maudge and Batty, and torment him no longer by their infernal agency. "Relieve me, relieve me, from these conjunct and confident spirits, cruel Maudge and inexorable Batty," (he prayed,) "and any other punishment due to my crimes I will willingly bear." Exorcisms in abundance he applied to them, and used many fanciful tricks of demon-expelling agency to free him from their tyranny; but all to no purpose. The names still struck his ear in the silence of his cell, and kept alive the superstitious terror with which he was enslaved.

Traquair, meanwhile, pushed hard for a decision, and, at last, after a period of about three months, the famous cause was brought before the court, and the successor of the dead-alive President having given his vote for the defender, the wily Warden carried his point, and secured to him and his heirs, in time coming, the fine barony in dispute, which, for aught we know to the contrary, is in the family to this day.

It now remained for the actors in this strange drama to let free the unhappy Durie, and relieve him from the power of his enemies. The Warden accordingly despatched a messenger to Christie's Will, with the laconic and emphatic demand—"Let the brock out o' the pock"—a return of Will's own humorous message, which he well understood. Will and his associates accordingly went about the important deliverance in a manner worthy of the dexterity by which the imprisonment had been effected. Having opened the door of his cell, they muffled him up in the same black cloak in which he was enveloped at the Figgate Whins, and leading him to the door, placed him on the back of a swift steed, while they mounted others, with a view to accompany him. Setting off at a swift pace, they made a circuit of the tower in which he had been confined, and continuing the same circuitous route round and round the castle for a period of two or three hours, they stopped at the very door of his cell from which they had started. They then set him down upon the ground, and again mounting their horses, took to their heels, and never halted till they arrived at Gilnockie.

On being left alone, Durie proceeded to undo the cords by which the cloak was fastened about his head; and, for the first time after three months, breathed the fresh air and saw the light of heaven. He had ridden, according to his own calculation, about twenty miles; and, looking round him, he saw alongside of him the tower of Graeme, an old castle he had seen many years before, and recollected as being famous in antiquarian reminiscence. The place he had been confined in must have been some castle twenty miles distant from Graeme's Tower—a circumstance that would lead him, he thought, to discover the place of his confinement, though he was free to confess that he was utterly ignorant of the direction in which he had travelled. Thankful for his deliverance, he fell on his knees, and poured out a long prayer of gratitude for being thus freed from his enemies, Batty and Maudge. The distance he had travelled must have taken him far away from the regions of their influence—the most grateful of all the thoughts that now rose in his wondering mind. No more would these hated names strike his ear with terror and dismay, and no more would he feel the tyranny of their demoniac sway. As these thoughts were passing through his mind a sound struck his ear.

"Hey, Batty, lad!—far yaud, far yaud!" cried a voice by his side.

"God have mercy on me! here again," ejaculated the president.

"Maudge, ye jaud!" cried another voice, from the door of a poor woman's cottage.

The terrified president lifted his eyes, and saw a goodly shepherd, with a long staff in his hand, crying to his dog, Batty, to drive his sheep to a distance; and, a little beyond, a poor woman sat at her door, looking for her black cat, that sat on the roof of the cottage, and would not come down for all the energies of her squeaking voice.

"What could all this mean?" now ejaculated Durie. "Have I not been for three months tortured with these sounds, which I attributed to evil spirits? I have ridden from them twenty miles, and here they are again, in the form of fair honest denominations of living animals. I am in greater perplexity than ever. While I thought them evil spirits, I feared them as such; but now, God help me, they have taken on the forms of a dog and cat, and this shepherd and this old woman are kindred devils, under whose command they are. What shall I do, whither run to avoid them, since twenty miles have been to them as a flight in the air?"

"It's a braw morning, sir," said the shepherd. "How far hae ye come this past night?—for I ken nae habitation near whar ye may hae rested."

"It's seldom we see strangers hereawa," said the old woman, "at this early hour—will ye come in, sir, and rest ye?"

Durie looked first at the one and then at the other, bewildered and speechless. The fair face of nature before him, with the forms of God's creatures, and the sounds of human voices in his ears, were as nothing to recollections and sensations which he could not shake from his mind. He had, for certain, heard these dreadful sounds for three months; he had ridden twenty miles, and now he heard them again, mixed up with the delusive accompaniments of the enticing speeches of a man and a woman. He would fly, but felt himself unable; and, standing under the influence of the charm of his own terrors, he continued to look, first at the shepherd and then at the old woman, in wonder and dismay. The people knew as little what to think of him as he did in regard to them. He looked wild and haggard, his eyes rolled about in his head, his voice was mute; and the cloak, which he had partially unloosed from his head, hung in strange guise down his back, and flapped in the wind. The old castle had its "red cap," a fact known to both the shepherd and the old woman, who had latterly heard strange sounds coming from it. Might not Durie be the spirit in another form? The question was reasonable, and was well answered by the wildly-staring president, who was still under the spell of his terrors.

"Avaunt ye!—avaunt! in the name o' the haly rude o' St. Andrews!" cried the woman, now roused to a state of terror.

The same words were repeated by the simple-minded shepherd, and poor Durie's fears were, if possible, increased; for it seemed that they were now performing some new incantation, whereby he would be again reduced to their power; but he was now in the open air, and why not take advantage of the opportunity of escaping from their thraldom? The moment the idea started in his mind, he threw from him the accursed cloak, and flew away over the moor as fast as his decayed limbs, inspired by terror, would carry him. As he ran, he heard the old woman clapping her hands, and crying "Shoo, shoo!" as if she had been exorcising a winged demon. After running till he was fairly out of the sights and sounds that had produced in him so much terror, he sat down, and took a retrospect of what had occurred to him during the preceding three months; but he could come to no conclusion that could reconcile all the strange things he had experienced with any supposition based on natural powers. It was certain, however, that he was still upon the earth, and it was probable he was now beyond the power of his evil genius. His best plan, therefore, under all the circumstances, was to seek home, and Lady Durie and his loving family, who would doubtless be in a terrible condition on account of his long absence; and even this idea, pleasant as it was, was qualified by the fear that he might, for aught he knew, have been away, like the laird of Comrie, for many, perhaps a hundred years, and neither Lady Durie, nor friend or acquaintance, would be alive to greet him on his return. Of all this, however, he must now take his chance; and, rising and journeying forward, he came to a house, where he asked for some refreshment by way of charity; for he had nothing in the world to pay for what he required. He was fortunate in getting some relief from the kind woman to whom he had applied, and proceeded to speak to her on various topics with great sense and propriety, as became the ex-President of the Court of Session; but when, to satisfy his scruples, he asked her the day of the month, then the month of the year, and then the year of the Lord, the good woman was satisfied he was mad; and, with a look of pity, recommended him to proceed on his way, and get home as fast as he could.

So on the president went, begging his way from hamlet to hamlet, getting alms from one and news from another, but never gratified with the year of the Lord in which he lived; for, when he put that question, he was uniformly pitied, and allowed to proceed on his way for a madman. He heard, however, several times that President Durie had been drowned in the Frith of Forth, and that a new President of the Court of Session had been appointed in his place. Whether his wife was married again or not, he could not learn, and was obliged to wrestle with this and other fears as he still continued his way to the metropolis. At last Edinburgh came in view, and glad was he to see again the cat's head of old St. Arthur's, and the diadem of St. Giles rearing their heights in the distance. Nearer and nearer he approached the place of his home, happiness, and dignity; but, as he came nearer still, he began to feel all the effects of his supposed demise. Several of his old acquaintances stared wildly at him as they passed, and, though he beckoned to them to stand and speak, they hurried on, and seemed either not to recognise him, or to be terrified at him. At last he met Lord F——, the judge who had sat for many years next to him on the bench; and, running up to him, he held out his hand in kindly salutation, grinning, with his long thin jaws and pallid cheeks, a greeting which he scarcely understood himself. By this time it was about the gloaming, and such was the extraordinary effect produced by his sudden appearance and changed cadaverous look, that his old brother of the bench got alarmed, and fairly took to his heels, as if he had seen a spectre. Undaunted, however, he pushed on, and by the time he reached the Canongate it was almost dark. He went direct to his own house, and peeping through the window, saw Lady Durie sitting by the fire dressed in weeds, and several of his children around, arrayed in the same style. The sight brought the tears of joy to his eyes, and, forgetting entirely the effect his appearance would produce, he threw open the door, and rushed into the room. A loud scream from the throats of the lady and the children rang through the whole house, and brought up the servants, who screamed in their turn, and some of them fainted, while others ran away; and no one had any idea that the emaciated haggard being before them was other than the grim ghost of Lord President Durie, come from the other world to terrify the good people of this. The confusion, however, soon ceased; for Durie began to speak softly to them, and, taking his dear lady in his arms, pressed her to his bosom in a way that satisfied her that he was no ghost, but her own lord, who, by some mischance, had been spirited away by some bad angels. The children gradually recovered their confidence, and in a short time joy took the place of fear, and all the neighbourhood was filled with the news that Lord Durie had come alive again, and was in the living body in his own house. Shortly after the good lord sat down by the fire and got his supper, and, by the quantity he ate, satisfied his lady and family still more that he carried a good body, with as fair a capability of reception as he ever exhibited after a walk at the Figgate Whins. He told them all he had undergone since first he was carried away, not forgetting the two spirits, Batty and Maudge, that had tormented him so cruelly during the period of his enchantment. The lady and family stared with open mouths as they heard the dreadful recital; but a goodly potation of warm spiced wine drove off the vapours produced by the dismal story, and, by-and-by, Lord Durie and his wife retired to bed—the one weary and exhausted with his trials, and the other with her terrors and her joys.



RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS.[F]

CHAPTER I.

"Wear we not graven on our hearts The name of Robert Burns!"—American Poet.

The degrees shorten as we proceed from the higher to the lower latitudes—the years seem to shorten in a much greater ratio as we pass onward through life. We are almost disposed to question whether the brief period of storms and foul weather that floats over us with such dream-like rapidity, and the transient season of flowers and sunshine that seems almost too short for enjoyment, be at all identical with the long summers and still longer winters of our boyhood, when day after day and week after week stretched away in dim perspective, till lost in the obscurity of an almost inconceivable distance. Young as I was, I had already passed the period of life when we wonder how it is that the years should be described as short and fleeting; and it seemed as if I had stood but yesterday beside the death-bed of the unfortunate Ferguson, though the flowers of four summers and the snows of four winters had now been shed over his grave.

[F] Our author, Hugh Miller, never communicated to the Editor his authority for these "Recollections." Probably it was of the same kind as that possessed by Lucian, Lord Lyttleton, and Walter Savage Lander; but whether so or not, we must at least be well satisfied that the parts of the conversation sustained by the principal interlocutor are true to the genius and character of Burns, and that, however searching the thoughts or beautiful the sentiments, they do not transcend what might have been expected from the Bard himself.—ED.

My prospects in life had begun to brighten. I served in the capacity of mate in a large West India trader, the master of which, an elderly man of considerable wealth, was on the eve of quitting the sea; and the owners had already determined that I should succeed him in the charge. But fate had ordered it otherwise. Our seas were infested at this period by American privateers—prime sailors, and strongly armed; and, when homeward bound from Jamaica with a valuable cargo, we were attacked and captured when within a day's sailing of Ireland, by one of the most formidable of the class. Vain as resistance might have been deemed—for the force of the American was altogether overpowering—and though our master, poor old man! and three of the crew, had fallen by the first broadside, we had yet stood stiffly by our guns, and were only overmastered when, after falling foul of the enemy, we were boarded by a party of thrice our strength and number. The Americans, irritated by our resistance, proved on this occasion no generous enemies; we were stripped and heavily ironed, and, two days after, were set ashore on the wild coast of Connaught, without a single change of dress, or a sixpence to bear us by the way.

I was sitting, on the following night, beside the turf fire of a hospitable Irish peasant, when a seafaring man, whom I had sailed with about two years before, entered the cabin. The meeting was equally unexpected on either side. My acquaintance was the master of a smuggling lugger then on the coast; and on acquainting him with the details of my disaster, and the state of destitution to which it had reduced me, he kindly proposed that I should accompany him on his voyage to the west coast of Scotland, for which he was then on the eve of sailing. "You will run some little risk," he said, "as the companion of a man who has now been thrice outlawed for firing on his Majesty's flag; but I know your proud heart will prefer the danger of bad company at its worst, to the alternative of begging your way home." He judged rightly. Before daybreak we had lost sight of land, and in four days more we could discern the precipitous shores of Carrick stretching in a dark line along the horizon, and the hills of the interior rising thin and blue behind, like a volume of clouds. A considerable part of our cargo, which consisted mostly of tea and spirits, was consigned to an Ayr trader, who had several agents in the remote parish of Kirkoswald, which at this period afforded more facilities for carrying on the contraband trade than any other on the western coast of Scotland; and, in a rocky bay of the parish, we proposed unlading on the following night. It was necessary, however, that the several agents, who were yet ignorant of our arrival, should be prepared to meet with us; and, on volunteering my service for the purpose, I was landed near the ruins of the ancient castle of Turnberry, once the seat of Robert the Bruce.

I had accomplished my object; it was evening, and a party of countrymen were sauntering among the cliffs, waiting for nightfall and the appearance of the lugger. There are splendid caverns on the coast of Kirkoswald; and, to while away the time, I had descended to the shore by a broken and precipitous path, with a view of exploring what are termed the Caves of Colzean, by far the finest in this part of Scotland. The evening was of great beauty; the sea spread out from the cliffs to the far horizon, like the sea of gold and crystal described by the prophet; and its warm orange hues so harmonized with those of the sky, that, passing over the dimly-defined line of demarcation, the whole upper and nether expanse seemed but one glorious firmament, with the dark Ailsa, like a thunder-cloud, sleeping in the midst. The sun was hastening to his setting, and threw his strong red light on the wall of rock which, loftier and more imposing than the walls of even the mighty Babylon, stretched onward along the beach, headland after headland, till the last sank abruptly in the far distance, and only the wide ocean stretched beyond. I passed along the insulated piles of cliff that rise thick along the basis of the precipices—now in sunshine, now in shadow—till I reached the opening of one of the largest caves. The roof rose more than fifty feet over my head—a broad stream of light, that seemed redder and more fiery from the surrounding gloom, slanted inwards, and, as I paused in the opening, my shadow, lengthened and dark, fell athwart the floor—a slim and narrow bar of black—till lost in the gloom of the inner recess. There was a wild and uncommon beauty in the scene that powerfully affected the imagination; and I stood admiring it in that delicious dreamy mood in which one can forget all but the present enjoyment, when I was roused to a recollection of the business of the evening by the sound of a footfall echoing from within. It seemed approaching by a sort of cross passage in the rock, and, in a moment after, a young man, one of the country people whom I had left among the cliffs above, stood before me. He wore a broad Lowland bonnet, and his plain homely suit of coarse russet seemed to bespeak him a peasant of perhaps the poorest class; but, as he emerged from the gloom, and the red light fell full on his countenance, I saw an indescribable something in the expression that in an instant awakened my curiosity. He was rather above the middle size, of a frame the most muscular and compact I have almost ever seen, and there was a blended mixture of elasticity and firmness in his tread, that to one accustomed, as I had been, to estimate the physical capabilities of men, gave evidence of a union of immense personal strength with great activity. My first idea regarding the stranger—and I know not how it should have struck me—was that of a very powerful frame, animated by a double portion of vitality. The red light shone full on his face, and gave a ruddy tinge to the complexion, which I afterwards found it wanted—for he was naturally of a darker hue than common; but there was no mistaking the expression of the large flashing eyes, the features that seemed so thoroughly cast in the mould of thought, and of the broad, full, perpendicular forehead. Such, at least, was the impression on my mind, that I addressed him with more of the courtesy which my earlier pursuits had rendered familiar to me, than of the bluntness of my adopted profession. "This sweet evening," I said, "is by far too fine for our lugger; I question whether, in these calms, we need expect her before midnight; but, 'tis well, since wait we must, that 'tis in a place where the hours may pass so agreeably." The stranger, good-humouredly, acquiesced in the remark, and we sat down together on the dry, water-worn pebbles, mixed with fragments of broken shells and minute pieces of wreck, that strewed the opening of the cave.

"Was there ever a lovelier evening!" he exclaimed; "the waters above the firmament seem all of a piece with the waters below. And never surely was there a scene of wilder beauty. Only look inwards, and see how the stream of red light seems bounded by the extreme darkness, like a river by its banks, and how the reflection of the ripple goes waving in golden curls along the roof!"

"I have been admiring the scene for the last half hour," I said; "Shakspeare speaks of a music that cannot be heard, and I have not yet seen a place where one might better learn to comment on the passage."

Both the thought and the phrase seemed new to him.

"A music that cannot be heard!" he repeated; and then, after a momentary pause, "you allude to the fact," he continued, "that sweet music, and forms such as these, of silent beauty and grandeur, awaken in the mind emotions of nearly the same class. There is something truly exquisite in the concert of to-night."

I muttered a simple assent.

"See," he continued, "how finely these insulated piles of rock, that rise in so many combinations of form along the beach, break and diversify the red light, and how the glossy leaves of the ivy glisten in the hollows of the precipices above! And then, how the sea spreads away to the far horizon, a glorious pavement of crimson and gold!—and how the dark Ailsa rises in the midst, like the little cloud seen by the prophet! The mind seems to enlarge, the heart to expand, in the contemplation of so much of beauty and grandeur. The soul asserts its due supremacy. And, oh! 'tis surely well that we can escape from those little cares of life which fetter down our thoughts, our hopes, our wishes, to the wants and the enjoyments of our animal existence; and that, amid the grand and the sublime of nature, we may learn from the spirit within us that we are better than the beasts that perish!"

I looked up to the animated countenance and flashing eyes of my companion, and wondered what sort of a peasant it was I had met with. "Wild and beautiful as the scene is," I said, "you will find, even among those who arrogate to themselves the praise of wisdom and learning, men who regard such scenes as mere errors of nature. Burnet would have told you that a Dutch landscape, without hill, rock, or valley, must be the perfection of beauty, seeing that Paradise itself could have furnished nothing better."

"I hold Milton as higher authority on the subject," said my companion, "than all the philosophers who ever wrote. Beauty, in a tame unvaried flat, where a man would know his country only by the milestones! A very Dutch Paradise, truly!"

"But would not some of your companions above," I asked, "deem the scene as much an error of nature as Burnet himself? They could pass over these stubborn rocks neither plough nor harrow."

"True," he replied; "there is a species of small wisdom in the world that often constitutes the extremest of its folly; a wisdom that would change the entire nature of good, had it but the power, by vainly endeavouring to render that good universal. It would convert the entire earth into one vast corn field, and then find that it had ruined the species by its improvement."

"We of Scotland can hardly be ruined in that way for an age to come," I said. "But I am not sure that I understand you. Alter the very nature of good in the attempt to render it universal! How?"

"I daresay you have seen a graduated scale," said my companion, "exhibiting the various powers of the different musical instruments, and observed how some of limited scope cross only a few of the divisions, and how others stretch nearly from side to side. 'Tis but a poor truism, perhaps, to say that similar differences in scope and power obtain among men—that there are minds who could not join in the concert of to-night—who could see neither beauty nor grandeur amid these wild cliffs and caverns, or in that glorious expanse of sea and sky; and that, on the other hand, there are minds so finely modulated—minds that sweep so broadly across the scale of nature, that there is no object, however minute, no breath of feeling, however faint, but that it awakens their sweet vibrations—the snow-flake falling in the stream, the daisy of the field, the conies of the rock, the hysop of the wall. Now, the vast and various frame of nature is adapted not to the lesser, but to the larger mind. It spreads on and around us in all its rich and magnificent variety, and finds the full portraiture of its Proteus-like beauty in the mirror of genius alone. Evident, however, as this may seem, we find a sort of levelling principle in the inferior order of minds, and which, in fact, constitutes one of their grand characteristics—a principle that would fain abridge the scale to their own narrow capabilities—that would cut down the vastness of nature to suit the littleness of their own conceptions and desires, and convert it into one tame, uniform, mediocre good, which would be good but to themselves alone, and ultimately not even that."

"I think I can now understand you," I said; "you describe a sort of swinish wisdom that would convert the world into one vast sty. For my own part, I have travelled far enough to know the value of a blue hill, and would not willingly lose so much as one of these landmarks of our mother land, by which kindly hearts in distant countries love to remember it."

"I daresay we are getting fanciful," rejoined my companion; "but certainly, in man's schemes of improvement, both physical and moral, there is commonly a littleness and want of adaptation to the general good that almost always defeats his aims. He sees and understands but a minute portion—it is always some partial good he would introduce; and thus he but destroys the just proportions of a nicely-regulated system of things by exaggerating one of the parts. I passed of late through a richly-cultivated district of country, in which the agricultural improver had done his utmost. Never were there finer fields, more convenient steadings, crops of richer promise, a better regulated system of production. Corn and cattle had mightily improved; but what had man, the lord of the soil, become? Is not the body better than food, and life than raiment? If that decline for which all other things exist, it surely matters little that all these other things prosper. And here, though the corn, the cattle, the fields, the steadings had improved, man had sunk. There were but two classes in the district: a few cold-hearted speculators, who united what is worst in the character of the landed proprietor and the merchant—these were your gentleman farmers; and a class of degraded helots, little superior to the cattle they tended—these were your farm servants. And for two such extreme classes—necessary result of such a state of things—had this unfortunate, though highly-eulogized district, parted with a moral, intelligent, high-minded peasantry—the true boast and true riches of their country."

"I have, I think, observed something like what you describe," I said.

"I give," he replied, "but one instance of a thousand. But mark how the sun's lower disk has just reached the line of the horizon, and how the long level rule of light stretches to the very innermost recess of the cave! It darkens as the orb sinks. And see how the gauze-like shadows creep on from the sea, film after film!—and now they have reached the ivy that mantles round the castle of The Bruce. Are you acquainted with Barbour?"

"Well," I said; "a spirited, fine old fellow, who loved his country and did much for it. I could once repeat all his chosen passages. Do you remember how he describes King Robert's rencounter with the English knight?"

My companion sat up erect, and, clenching his fist, began repeating the passage, with a power and animation that seemed to double its inherent energy and force.

"Glorious old Barbour!" ejaculated he, when he had finished the description; "many a heart has beat all the higher when the bale-fires were blazing, through the tutorage of thy noble verses! Blind Harry, too—what has not his country owed to him!"

"Ah, they have long since been banished from our popular literature," I said; "and yet Blind Harry's 'Wallace,' as Hailes tells us, was at one time the very Bible of the Scotch. But love of country seems to be getting old-fashioned among us, and we have become philosophic enough to set up for citizens of the world."

"All cold pretence," rejoined my companion; "an effect of that small wisdom we have just been decrying. Cosmopolitism, as we are accustomed to define it, can be no virtue of the present age, nor yet of the next, nor perhaps for centuries to come. Even when it shall have attained to its best, and when it may be most safely indulged in, it is according to the nature of man, that, instead of running counter to the love of country, it should exist as but a wider diffusion of the feeling, and form, as it were, a wider circle round it. It is absurdity itself to oppose the love of our country to that of our race."

"Do I rightly understand you?" I said. "You look forward to a time when the patriot may safely expand into the citizen of the world; but, in the present age, he would do well, you think, to confine his energies within the inner circle of country."

"Decidedly," he rejoined; "man should love his species at all times, but it is ill with him if, in times like the present, he loves not his country more. The spirit of war and aggression is yet abroad—there are laws to be established, rights to be defended, invaders to be repulsed, tyrants to be deposed. And who but the patriot is equal to these things? We are not yet done with the Bruces, the Wallaces, the Tells, the Washingtons—yes, the Washingtons, whether they fight for or against us—we are not yet done with them. The cosmopolite is but a puny abortion—a birth ere the natural time, that at once endangers the life and betrays the weakness of the country that bears him. Would that he were sleeping in his elements till his proper time! But we are getting ashamed of our country, of our language, our manners, our music, our literature; nor shall we have enough of the old spirit left us to assert our liberties or fight our battles. Oh, for some Barbour or Blind Harry of the present day, to make us, once more, proud of our country!"

I quoted the famous saying of Fletcher of Salton—"Allow me to make the songs of a country, and I will allow you to make its laws."

"But here," I said, "is our lugger stealing round Turnberry Head. We shall soon part, perhaps for ever, and I would fain know with whom I have spent an hour so agreeably, and have some name to remember him by. My own name is Matthew Lindsay; I am a native of Irvine."

"And I," said the young man, rising and cordially grasping the proffered hand, "am a native of Ayr; my name is Robert Burns."

CHAPTER II.

If friendless, low, we meet together, Then, sir, your hand—my friend and brother! Dedication to G. Hamilton.

A light breeze had risen as the sun sunk, and our lugger, with all her sails set, came sweeping along the shore. She had nearly gained the little bay in front of the cave, and the countrymen from above, to the number of perhaps twenty, had descended to the beach, when, all of a sudden, after a shrill whistle, and a brief half minute of commotion among the crew, she wore round and stood out to sea. I turned to the south, and saw a square-rigged vessel shooting out from behind one of the rocky headlands, and then bearing down in a long tack on the smuggler. "The sharks are upon us," said one of the countrymen, whose eyes had turned in the same direction—"we shall have no sport to-night." We stood lining the beach in anxious curiosity; the breeze freshened as the evening fell; and the lugger, as she lessened to our sight, went leaning against the foam in a long bright furrow, that, catching the last light of evening, shone like the milky way amid the blue. Occasionally we could see the flash, and hear the booming of a gun from the other vessel; but the night fell thick and dark; the waves too began to lash against the rocks, drowning every feebler sound in a continuous roaring; and every trace of both the chase and the chaser disappeared. The party broke up, and I was left standing alone on the beach, a little nearer home, but in every other respect in quite the same circumstances as when landed by my American friends on the wild coast of Connaught. "Another of Fortune's freaks!" I ejaculated; "but 'tis well she can no longer surprise me."

A man stepped out in the darkness as I spoke, from beside one of the rocks; it was the peasant Burns, my acquaintance of the earlier part of the evening.

"I have waited, Mr. Lindsay," he said, "to see whether some of the country folks here, who have homes of their own to invite you to, might not have brought you along with them. But I am afraid you must just be content to pass the night with me. I can give you a share of my bed and my supper, though both, I am aware, need many apologies." I made a suitable acknowledgment, and we ascended the cliff together. "I live, when at home with my parents," said my companion, "in the inland parish of Tarbolton; but, for the last two months, I have attended school here, and lodge with an old widow woman in the village. To-morrow, as harvest is fast approaching, I return to my father."

"And I," I replied, "shall have the pleasure of accompanying you in at least the early part of your journey, on my way to Irvine, where my mother still lives."

We reached the village, and entered a little cottage, that presented its gable to the street, and its side to one of the narrower lanes.

"I must introduce you to my landlady," said my companion, "an excellent, kind-hearted old woman, with a fund of honest Scotch pride and shrewd good sense in her composition, and with the mother as strong in her heart as ever, though she lost the last of her children more than twenty years ago."

We found the good woman sitting beside a small but very cheerful fire. The hearth was newly swept, and the floor newly sanded; and, directly fronting her, there was an empty chair, which seemed to have been drawn to its place in the expectation of some one to fill it.

"You are going to leave me, Robert, my bairn," said the woman, "an' I kenna how I sall ever get on without you; I have almost forgotten, sin you came to live with me, that I have neither children nor husband." On seeing me, she stopped short.

"An acquaintance," said my companion, "whom I have made bold to bring with me for the night; but you must not put yourself to any trouble, mother; he is, I daresay, as much accustomed to plain fare as myself. Only, however, we must get an additional pint of yill from the clachan; you know this is my last evening with you, and was to be a merry one at any rate." The woman looked me full in the face.

"Matthew Lindsay!" she exclaimed—"can you have forgotten your poor old aunt Margaret!" I grasped her hand.

"Dearest aunt, this is surely most unexpected! How could I have so much as dreamed you were within a hundred miles of me?" Mutual congratulation ensued.

"This," she said, turning to my companion, "is the nephew I have so often told you about, and so often wished to bring you acquainted with. He is, like yourself, a great reader and a great thinker, and there is no need that your proud, kindly heart should be jealous of him; for he has been ever quite as poor, and maybe the poorer of the two." After still more of greeting and congratulation, the young man rose.

"The night is dark, mother," he said, "and the road to the clachan a rough one; besides you and your kinsman will have much to say to one another. I shall just slip out to the clachan for you; and you shall both tell me on my return whether I am not a prime judge of ale."

"The kindest heart, Matthew, that ever lived," said my relative, as he left the house; "ever since he came to Kirkoswald, he has been both son and daughter to me, and I shall feel twice a widow when he goes away."

"I am mistaken, aunt," I said, "if he be not the strongest minded man I ever saw. Be assured he stands high among the aristocracy of nature, whatever may be thought of him in Kirkoswald. There is a robustness of intellect, joined to an overmastering force of character, about him, which I have never yet seen equalled, though I have been intimate with at least one very superior mind, and with hundreds of the class who pass for men of talent. I have been thinking ever since I met with him, of the William Tells and William Wallaces of history—men who, in those times of trouble which unfix the foundations of society, step out from their obscurity to rule the destiny of nations."

"I was ill about a month ago," said my relative—"so very ill that I thought I was to have done with the world altogether; and Robert was both nurse and physician to me—he kindled my fire, too, every morning, and sat up beside me sometimes for the greater part of the night. What wonder I should love him as my own child? Had your cousin Henry been spared to me, he would now have been much about Robert's age."

The conversation passed to other matters, and in about half an hour, my new friend entered the room; when we sat down to a homely, but cheerful repast.

"I have been engaged in argument, for the last twenty minutes, with our parish schoolmaster," he said—"a shrewd, sensible man, and a prime scholar, but one of the most determined Calvinists I ever knew. Now, there is something, Mr. Lindsay, in abstract Calvinism, that dissatisfies and distresses me; and yet, I must confess, there is so much of good in the working of the system, that I would ill like to see it supplanted by any other. I am convinced, for instance, there is nothing so efficient in teaching the bulk of a people to think as a Calvinistic church."

"Ah, Robert," said my aunt, "it does meikle mair nor that. Look round ye, my bairn, an' see if there be a kirk in which puir sinful creatures have mair comfort in their sufferings or mair hope in their deaths."

"Dear mother," said my companion, "I like well enough to dispute with the schoolmaster, but I must have no dispute with you. I know the heart is everything in these matters, and yours is much wiser than mine."

"There is something in abstract Calvinism," he continued, "that distresses me. In almost all our researches we arrive at an ultimate barrier, which interposes its wall of darkness between us and the last grand truth, in the series which we had trusted was to prove a master-key to the whole. We dwell in a sort of Goshen—there is light in our immediate neighbourhood, and a more than Egyptian darkness all around; and as every Hebrew must have known that the hedge of cloud which he saw resting on the landscape, was a boundary not to things themselves, but merely to his view of things—for beyond there were cities, and plains, and oceans, and continents—so we in like manner must know that the barriers of which I speak exist only in relation to the faculties which we employ, not to the objects on which we employ them. And yet, notwithstanding this consciousness that we are necessarily and irremediably the bound prisoners of ignorance, and that all the great truths lie outside our prison, we can almost be content that, in most cases, it should be so—not, however, with regard to those great unattainable truths which lie in the track of Calvinism. They seem too important to be wanted, and yet want them we must—and we beat our very heads against the cruel barrier which separates us from them."

"I am afraid I hardly understand you," I said;—"do assist me by some instance of illustration."

"You are acquainted," he replied, "with the Scripture doctrine of Predestination, and, in thinking over it, in connection with the destinies of man, it must have struck you that, however much it may interfere with our fixed notions of the goodness of Deity, it is thoroughly in accordance with the actual condition of our race. As far as we can know of ourselves and the things around us, there seems, through the will of Deity—for to what else can we refer it?—a fixed, invariable connection between what we term cause and effect. Nor do we demand of any class of mere effects, in the inanimate or irrational world, that they should regulate themselves otherwise than the causes which produce them have determined. The roe and the tiger pursue, unquestioned, the instincts of their several natures; the cork rises, and the stone sinks; and no one thinks of calling either to account for movements so opposite. But it is not so with the family of man; and yet our minds, our bodies, our circumstances, are but combinations of effects, over the causes of which we have no control. We did not choose a country for ourselves, nor yet a condition in life—nor did we determine our modicum of intellect, or our amount of passion—we did not impart its gravity to the weightier part of our nature, or give expansion to the lighter—nor are our instincts of our own planting. How, then, being thus as much the creatures of necessity as the denizens of the wild and forest—as thoroughly under the agency of fixed, unalterable causes, as the dead matter around us—why are we yet the subjects of a retributive system, and accountable for all our actions?"

"You quarrel with Calvinism," I said; "and seem one of the most thorough-going necessitarians I ever knew."

"Not so," he replied; "though my judgment cannot disprove these conclusions, my heart cannot acquiesce in them—though I see that I am as certainly the subject of laws that exist and operate independent of my will, as the dead matter around me, I feel, with a certainty quite as great, that I am a free, accountable creature. It is according to the scope of my entire reason that I should deem myself bound—it is according to the constitution of my whole nature that I should feel myself free. And in this consists the great, the fearful problem—a problem which both reason and revelation propound; but the truths which can alone solve it, seem to lie beyond the horizon of darkness—and we vex ourselves in vain. 'Tis a sort of moral asymptotes; but its lines, instead of approaching through all space without meeting, seem receding through all space, and yet meet."

"Robert, my bairn," said my aunt, "I fear you are wasting your strength on these mysteries to your ain hurt. Did ye no see, in the last storm, when ye staid out among the caves till cock-crow, that the bigger and stronger the wave, the mair was it broken against the rocks?—it's just thus wi' the pride o' man's understanding, when he measures it against the dark things o' God. An' yet it's sae ordered, that the same wonderful truths which perplex and cast down the proud reason, should delight and comfort the humble heart. I am a lone, puir woman, Robert. Bairns an' husband have gone down to the grave, one by one; an' now, for twenty weary years, I have been childless an' a widow. But trow ye that the puir lone woman wanted a guard, an' a comforter, an' a provider, through a' the lang mirk nichts, an' a' the cauld scarce winters o' these twenty years? No, my bairn—I kent that Himsel' was wi' me. I kent it by the provision He made, an' the care He took, an' the joy He gave. An' how, think you, did He comfort me maist? Just by the blessed assurance that a' my trials an' a' my sorrows were nae hasty chance matters, but dispensations for my guid, an' the guid o' those He took to Himsel', that, in the perfect love and wisdom o' His nature, He had ordained frae the beginning."

"Ah, mother," said my friend, after a pause, "you understand the doctrine far better than I do! There are, I find, no contradictions in the Calvinism of the heart."

CHAPTER III.

"Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore, O'erhung with wild woods thick'ning green; The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar Twined, amorous, round the raptured scene;

The flowers sprang wanton to be prest, The birds sang love on every spray— Till, too, too soon, the glowing west Proclaimed the speed of winged day." To Mary in Heaven.

We were early on the road together; the day, though somewhat gloomy, was mild and pleasant, and we walked slowly onward, neither of us in the least disposed to hasten our parting by hastening our journey. We had discussed fifty different topics, and were prepared to enter on fifty more, when we reached the ancient burgh of Ayr, where our roads separated.

"I have taken an immense liking to you, Mr. Lindsay," said my companion, as he seated himself on the parapet of the old bridge, "and have just bethought me of a scheme through which I may enjoy your company for at least one night more. The Ayr is a lovely river, and you tell me you have never explored it. We shall explore it together this evening for about ten miles, when we shall find ourselves at the farm-house of Lochlea. You may depend on a hearty welcome from my father, whom, by the way, I wish much to introduce to you, as a man worth your knowing; and, as I have set my heart on the scheme, you are surely too good-natured to disappoint me." Little risk of that, I thought; I had, in fact, become thoroughly enamoured of the warm-hearted benevolence and fascinating conversation of my companion, and acquiesced with the best good-will in the world.

We had threaded the course of the river for several miles. It runs through a wild pastoral valley, roughened by thickets of copse-wood, and bounded on either hand by a line of swelling, moory hills, with here and there a few irregular patches of corn, and here and there some little nest-like cottage peeping out from among the wood. The clouds, which during the morning had obscured the entire face of the heavens, were breaking up their array, and the sun was looking down, in twenty different places, through the openings, checkering the landscape with a fantastic, though lovely carpeting of light and shadow. Before us there rose a thick wood, on a jutting promontory, that looked blue and dark in the shade, as if it wore mourning; while the sunlit stream beyond shone through the trunks and branches, like a river of fire. At length the clouds seemed to have melted in the blue—for there was not a breath of wind to speed them away—and the sun, now hastening to the west, shone in unbroken effulgence over the wide extent of the dell, lighting up stream and wood, and field and cottage, in one continuous blaze of glory. We had walked on in silence for the last half hour; but I could sometimes hear my companion muttering as he went; and when, in passing through a thicket of hawthorn and honeysuckle, we started from its perch a linnet that had been filling the air with its melody, I could hear him exclaim, in a subdued tone of voice, "Bonny, bonny birdie! why hasten frae me?—I wadna skaith a feather o' yer wing." He turned round to me, and I could see that his eyes were swimming in moisture.

"Can he be other," he said, "than a good and benevolent God, who gives us moments like these to enjoy? Oh, my friend, without these sabbaths of the soul, that come to refresh and invigorate it, it would dry up within us! How exquisite," he continued, "how entire the sympathy which exists between all that is good and fair in external nature, and all of good and fair that dwells in our own! And, oh, how the heart expands and lightens! The world is as a grave to it—a closely-covered grave—and it shrinks, and deadens, and contracts all its holier and more joyous feelings under the cold, earth-like pressure. But, amid the grand and lovely of nature—amid these forms and colours of richest beauty—there is a disinterment, a resurrection of sentiment; the pressure of our earthly part seems removed, and those senses of the mind, if I may so speak, which serve to connect our spirits with the invisible world around us, recover their proper tone, and perform their proper office."

"Senses of the mind," I said, repeating the phrase; "the idea is new to me; but I think I catch your meaning."

"Yes; there are—there must be such," he continued, with growing enthusiasm; "man is essentially a religious creature—a looker beyond the grave, from the very constitution of his mind; and the sceptic who denies it is untrue not merely to the Being who has made and who preserves him, but to the entire scope and bent of his own nature besides. Wherever man is—whether he be a wanderer of the wild forest or still wilder desert, a dweller in some lone isle of the sea, or the tutored and full-minded denizen of some blessed land like our own—wherever man is, there is religion—hopes that look forward and upward—the belief in an unending existence, and a land of separate souls."

I was carried away by the enthusiasm of my companion, and felt, for the time, as if my mind had become the mirror of his. There seems to obtain among men a species of moral gravitation, analogous, in its principles, to that which regulates and controls the movements of the planetary system. The larger and more ponderous any body, the greater its attractive force, and the more overpowering its influence over the lesser bodies which surround it. The earth we inhabit carries the moon along with it in its course, and is itself subject to the immensely more powerful influence of the sun. And it is thus with character. It is a law of our nature, as certainly as of the system we inhabit, that the inferior should yield to the superior, and the lesser owe its guidance to the greater. I had hitherto wandered on through life almost unconscious of the existence of this law, or, if occasionally rendered half aware of it, it was only through a feeling that some secret influence was operating favourably in my behalf on the common minds around me. I now felt, however, for the first time, that I had come in contact with a mind immeasurably more powerful than my own; my thoughts seemed to cast themselves into the very mould—my sentiments to modulate themselves by the very tone of his. And yet he was but a russet-clad peasant—my junior by at least eight years—who was returning from school to assist his father, an humble tacksman, in the labours of the approaching harvest. But the law of circumstance, so arbitrary in ruling the destinies of common men, exerts but a feeble control over the children of genius. The prophet went forth commissioned by Heaven to anoint a king over Israel, and the choice fell on a shepherd boy who was tending his father's flocks in the field.

We had reached a lovely bend of the stream. There was a semicircular inflection in the steep bank, which waved over us, from base to summit, with hawthorn and hazle; and while one half looked blue and dark in the shade, the other was lighted up with gorgeous and fiery splendour by the sun, now fast sinking in the west. The effect seemed magical. A little grassy platform that stretched between the hanging wood and the stream, was whitened over with clothes, that looked like snow-wreathes in the hollow; and a young and beautiful girl watched beside them.

"Mary Campbell!" exclaimed my companion, and in a moment he was at her side, and had grasped both her hands in his. "How fortunate, how very fortunate I am!" he said; "I could not have so much as hoped to have seen you to-night, and yet here you are! This, Mr. Lindsay, is a loved friend of mine, whom I have known and valued for years; ever, indeed, since we herded our sheep together under the cover of one plaid. Dearest Mary, I have had sad forebodings regarding you for the whole last month I was in Kirkoswald, and yet, after all my foolish fears, here you are, ruddier and bonnier than ever."

She was, in truth, a beautiful, sylph-like young woman—one whom I would have looked at with complacency in any circumstances; for who that admires the fair and the lovely in nature—whether it be the wide-spread beauty of sky and earth, or beauty in its minuter modifications, as we see it in the flowers that spring up at our feet, or the butterfly that flutters over them—who, I say, that admires the fair and lovely in nature, can be indifferent to the fairest and loveliest of all her productions? As the mistress, however, of by far the strongest-minded man I ever knew, there was more of scrutiny in my glance than usual, and I felt a deeper interest in her than mere beauty could have awakened. She was, perhaps, rather below than above the middle size; but formed in such admirable proportion, that it seemed out of place to think of size in reference to her at all. Who, in looking at the Venus de Medicis, asks whether she be tall or short? The bust and neck were so exquisitely moulded, that they reminded me of Burke's fanciful remark, viz., that our ideas of beauty originate in our love of the sex, and that we deem every object beautiful which is described by soft-waving lines, resembling those of the female neck and bosom. Her feet and arms, which were both bare, had a statue-like symmetry and marble-like whiteness; but it was on her expressive and lovely countenance, now lighted up by the glow of joyous feeling, that nature seemed to have exhausted her utmost skill. There was a fascinating mixture in the expression of superior intelligence and child-like simplicity; a soft, modest light dwelt in the blue eye; and in the entire contour and general form of the features, there was a nearer approach to that union of the straight and the rounded, which is found in its perfection in only the Grecian face, than is at all common in our northern latitudes, among the descendants of either the Celt or the Saxon. I felt, however, as I gazed, that when lovers meet, the presence of a third person, however much the friend of either, must always be less than agreeable.

"Mr. Burns," I said, "there is a beautiful eminence a few hundred yards to the right, from which I am desirous to overlook the windings of the stream. Do permit me to leave you for a short half hour, when I shall return; or, lest I weary you by my stay, 'twere better, perhaps, you should join me there." My companion greeted the proposal with a good-humoured smile of intelligence; and, plunging into the wood, I left him with his Mary. The sun had just set as he joined me.

"Have you ever been in love, Mr. Lindsay?" he said.

"No, never seriously," I replied. "I am, perhaps, not naturally of the coolest temperament imaginable; but the same fortune that has improved my mind in some little degree, and given me high notions of the sex, has hitherto thrown me among only its less superior specimens. I am now in my eight-and-twentieth year, and I have not yet met with a woman whom I could love."

"Then you are yet a stranger," he rejoined, "to the greatest happiness of which our nature is capable. I have enjoyed more heartfelt pleasure in the company of the young woman I have just left, than from every other source that has been opened to me from my childhood till now. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the whole law."

"Mary Campbell, did you not call her?" I said. "She is, I think, the loveliest creature I have ever seen; and I am much mistaken in the expression of her beauty, if her mind be not as lovely as her person."

"It is, it is," he exclaimed—"the intelligence of an angel with the simplicity of a child. Oh, the delight of being thoroughly trusted, thoroughly beloved by one of the loveliest, best, purest-minded of all God's good creatures! To feel that heart beating against my own, and to know that it beats for me only! Never have I passed an evening with my Mary without returning to the world a better, gentler, wiser man. Love, my friend, is the fulfilling of the whole law. What are we without it?—poor, vile, selfish animals; our very virtues themselves, so exclusively virtues on our own behalf as to be well nigh as hateful as our vices. Nothing so opens and improves the heart, nothing so widens the grasp of the affections, nothing half so effectually brings us out of our crust of self, as a happy, well-regulated love for a pure-minded, affectionate-hearted woman!"

"There is another kind of love, of which we sailors see somewhat," I said, "which is not so easily associated with good."

"Love!" he replied—"no, Mr. Lindsay, that is not the name. Kind associates with kind in all nature; and love—humanizing, heart-softening love—cannot be the companion of whatever is low, mean, worthless, degrading—the associate of ruthless dishonour, cunning, treachery, and violent death. Even independent of its amount of evil as a crime, or the evils still greater than itself which necessarily accompany it, there is nothing that so petrifies the feeling as illicit connection."

"Do you seriously think so?" I asked.

"Yes, and I see clearly how it should be so. Neither sex is complete of itself—each was made for the other, that, like the two halves of a hinge, they may become an entire whole when united. Only think of the scriptural phrase, one flesh—it is of itself a system of philosophy. Refinement and tenderness are of the woman, strength and dignity of the man. Only observe the effects of a thorough separation, whether originating in accident or caprice. You will find the stronger sex lost in the rudenesses of partial barbarism; the gentler wrapt up in some pitiful round of trivial and unmeaning occupation—dry-nursing puppies, or making pincushions for posterity. But how much more pitiful are the effects when they meet amiss—when the humanizing friend and companion of the man is converted into the light degraded toy of an idle hour; the object of a sordid appetite that lives but for a moment, and then expires in loathing and disgust! The better feelings are iced over at their source, chilled by the freezing and deadening contact—where there is nothing to inspire confidence or solicit esteem; and, if these pass not through the first, the inner circle—that circle within which the social affections are formed, and from whence they emanate—how can they possibly flow through the circles which lie beyond? But here, Mr. Lindsay, is the farm of Lochlea, and yonder brown cottage, beside the three elms, is the dwelling of my parents."



CHAPTER IV.

"From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her lov'd at home, revered abroad." Cotter's Saturday Night.

There was a wide and cheerful circle this evening round the hospitable hearth of Lochlea. The father of my friend, a patriarchal-looking old man, with a countenance the most expressive I have almost ever seen, sat beside the wall on a large oaken settle, which also served to accommodate a young man, an occasional visitor of the family, dressed in rather shabby black, whom I at once set down as a probationer of divinity. I had my own seat beside him. The brother of my friend (a lad cast in nearly the same mould of form and feature, except, perhaps, that his frame, though muscular and strongly set, seemed in the main less formidably robust, and his countenance, though expressive, less decidedly intellectual) sat at my side. My friend had drawn in his seat beside his mother, a well-formed, comely brunette, of about thirty-eight, whom I might almost have mistaken for his elder sister; and two or three younger members of the family were grouped behind her. The fire blazed cheerily within the wide and open chimney; and, throwing its strong light on the faces and limbs of the circle, sent our shadows flickering across the rafters and the wall behind. The conversation was animated and rational, and every one contributed his share. But I was chiefly interested in the remarks of the old man, for whom I already felt a growing veneration, and in those of his wonderfully-gifted son.

"Unquestionably, Mr. Burns," said the man in black, addressing the farmer, "politeness is but a very shadow, as the poet hath it, if the heart be wanting. I saw, to-night, in a strictly polite family, so marked a presumption of the lack of that natural affection of which politeness is but the portraiture and semblance, that truly I have been grieved in my heart ever since."

"Ah, Mr. Murdoch," said the farmer, "there is ever more hypocrisy in the world than in the church, and that, too, among the class of fine gentlemen and fine ladies who deny it most. But the instance"—

"You know the family, my worthy friend," continued Mr. Murdoch—"it is a very pretty one, as we say vernacularly, being numerous, and the sons highly genteel young men; the daughters not less so. A neighbour of the same very polite character, coming on a visit when I was among them, asked the father, in the course of a conversation to which I was privy, how he meant to dispose of his sons; when the father replied that he had not yet determined. The visitor said, that were he in his place, seeing they were all well-educated young men, he would send them abroad; to which the father objected the indubitable fact, that many young men lost their health in foreign countries, and very many their lives. 'True,' did the visitor rejoin; 'but, as you have a number of sons, it will be strange if some one of them does not live and make a fortune.' Now, Mr. Burns, what will you, who know the feelings of paternity, and the incalculable, and assuredly I may say, invaluable value of human souls, think when I add, that the father commended the hint, as showing the wisdom of a shrewd man of the world!"

"Even the chief priests," said the old man, "pronounced it unlawful to cast into the treasury the thirty pieces of silver, seeing it was the price of blood; but the gentility of the present day is less scrupulous. There is a laxity of principle among us, Mr. Murdoch, that, if God restore us not, must end in the ruin of our country. I say laxity of principle; for there have ever been evil manners among us, and waifs in no inconsiderable number, broken loose from the decencies of society—more, perhaps, in my early days than there are now. But our principles at least were sound; and not only was there thus a restorative and conservative spirit among us, but, what was of not less importance, there was a broad gulf, like that in the parable, between the two grand classes, the good and the evil—a gulf which, when it secured the better class from contamination, interposed no barrier to the reformation and return of even the most vile and profligate, if repentant. But this gulf has disappeared, and we are standing unconcernedly over it, on a hollow and dangerous marsh of neutral ground, which, in the end, if God open not our eyes, must assuredly give way under our feet."

"To what, father," inquired my friend, who sat listening with the deepest and most respectful attention, "do you attribute the change?"

"Undoubtedly," replied the old man, "there have been many causes at work; and, though not impossible, it would certainly be no easy task to trace them all to their several effects, and give to each its due place and importance. But there is a deadly evil among us, though you will hear of it from neither press nor pulpit, which I am disposed to rank first in the number—the affectation of gentility. It has a threefold influence among us: it confounds the grand eternal distinctions of right and wrong, by erecting into a standard of conduct and opinion that heterogeneous and artificial whole which constitutes the manners and morals of the upper classes; it severs those ties of affection and good-will which should bind the middle to the lower orders, by disposing the one to regard whatever is below them with a true contemptuous indifference, and by provoking a bitter and indignant, though natural jealousy in the other for being so regarded; and, finally, by leading those who most entertain it into habits of expense, torturing their means, if I may so speak, on the rack of false opinion—disposing them to think, in their blindness, that to be genteel is a first consideration, and to be honest merely a secondary one—it has the effect of so hardening their hearts, that, like those Carthaginians of whom we have been lately reading in the volume Mr. Murdoch lent us, they offer up their very children, souls and bodies, to the unreal, phantom-like necessities of their circumstances."

"Have I not heard you remark, father," said Gilbert "that the change you describe has been very marked among the ministers of our church?"

"Too marked and too striking," replied the old man; "and in affecting the respectability and usefulness of so important a class, it has educed a cause of deterioration, distinctly from itself, and hardly less formidable. There is an old proverb of our country—'Better the head of the commonality than the tail of the gentry.' I have heard you quote it, Robert, oftener than once, and admire its homely wisdom. Now, it bears directly on what I have to remark—the ministers of our church have moved but one step during the last sixty years; but that step has been an all-important one—it has been from the best place in relation to the people, to the worst in relation to the aristocracy."

"Undoubtedly, worthy Mr. Burns," said Mr. Murdoch, "there is great truth, according to mine own experience, in that which you affirm. I may state, I trust, without over-boasting or conceit, my respected friend, that my learning is not inferior to that of our neighbour the clergyman—it is not inferior in Latin, nor in Greek, nor yet in French literature, Mr. Burns, and probable it is he would not much court a competition, and yet, when I last waited at the manse regarding a necessary and essential certificate, Mr. Burns, he did not so much as ask me to sit down."

"Ah!" said Gilbert, who seemed the wit of the family, "he is a highly respectable man, Mr. Murdoch—he has a fine house, fine furniture, fine carpets—all that constitutes respectability, you know; and his family is on visiting terms with that of the laird. But his credit is not so respectable, I hear."

"Gilbert," said the old man, with much seriousness, "it is ill with a people when they can speak lightly of their clergymen. There is still much of sterling worth and serious piety in the Church of Scotland; and if the influence of its ministers be unfortunately less than it was once, we must not cast the blame too exclusively on themselves. Other causes have been in operation. The church, eighty years ago, was the sole guide of opinion, and the only source of thought among us. There was, indeed, but one way in which a man could learn to think. His mind became the subject of some serious impression:—he applied to his Bible, and, in the contemplation of the most important of all concerns, his newly awakened faculties received their first exercise. All of intelligence, all of moral good in him, all that rendered him worthy of the name of man, he owed to the ennobling influence of his church; and is it wonder that that influence should be all-powerful from this circumstance alone? But a thorough change has taken place;—new sources of intelligence have been opened up; we have our newspapers, and our magazines, and our volumes of miscellaneous reading; and it is now possible enough for the most cultivated mind in a parish to be the least moral and the least religious; and hence necessarily a diminished influence in the church, independent of the character of its ministers."

I have dwelt too long, perhaps, on the conversation of the elder Burns; but I feel much pleasure in thus developing, as it were, my recollections of one whom his powerful-minded son has described—and this after an acquaintance with our Henry Mackenzies, Adam Smiths, and Dugald Stewarts—as the man most thoroughly acquainted with the world he ever knew. Never, at least, have I met with any one who exerted a more wholesome influence, through the force of moral character, on those around him. We sat down to a plain and homely supper. The slave question had, about this time, begun to draw the attention of a few of the more excellent and intelligent among the people, and the elder Burns seemed deeply interested in it.

"This is but homely fare, Mr. Lindsay," he said, pointing to the simple viands before us, "and the apologists of slavery among us would tell you how inferior we are to the poor negroes, who fare so much better. But surely 'man liveth not by bread alone!' Our fathers who died for Christ on the hillside and the scaffold were noble men, and never, never shall slavery produce such, and yet they toiled as hard, and fared as meanly as we their children."

I could feel, in the cottage of such a peasant, and seated beside such men as his two sons, the full force of the remark. And yet I have heard the miserable sophism of unprincipled power against which it was directed—a sophism so insulting to the dignity of honest poverty—a thousand times repeated.

Supper over, the family circle widened round the hearth; and the old man, taking down a large clasped Bible, seated himself beside the iron lamp which now lighted the apartment. There was deep silence among us as he turned over the leaves. Never shall I forget his appearance. He was tall and thin, and though his frame was still vigorous, considerably bent. His features were high and massy—the complexion still retained much of the freshness of youth, and the eye all its intelligence; but the locks were waxing thin and grey round his high, thoughtful forehead, and the upper part of the head, which was elevated to an unusual height, was bald. There was an expression of the deepest seriousness on the countenance, which the strong umbery shadows of the apartment served to heighten; and when, laying his hand on the page, he half turned his face to the circle, and said, "Let us worship God," I was impressed by a feeling of awe and reverence to which I had, alas! been a stranger for years. I was affected too, almost to tears, as I joined in the psalm; for a thousand half-forgotten associations came rushing upon me; and my heart seemed to swell and expand as, kneeling beside him when he prayed, I listened to his solemn and fervent petition, that God might make manifest his great power and goodness in the salvation of man. Nor was the poor solitary wanderer of the deep forgotten.

On rising from our devotions, the old man grasped me by the hand. "I am happy," he said, "that we should have met, Mr. Lindsay. I feel an interest in you, and must take the friend and the old man's privilege of giving you an advice. The sailor, of all men, stands most in need of religion. His life is one of continued vicissitude—of unexpected success, or unlooked-for misfortune; he is ever passing from danger to safety, and from safety to danger; his dependence is on the ever-varying winds, his abode on the unstable waters. And the mind takes a peculiar tone from what is peculiar in the circumstances. With nothing stable in the real world around it on which it may rest, it forms a resting-place for itself in some wild code of belief. It peoples the elements with strange occult powers of good and evil, and does them homage—addressing its prayers to the genius of the winds, and the spirits of the waters. And thus it begets a religion for itself;—for what else is the professional superstition of the sailor? Substitute, my friend, for this—(shall I call it unavoidable superstition?)—this natural religion of the sea, the religion of the Bible. Since you must be a believer in the supernatural, let your belief be true; let your trust be on Him who faileth not—your anchor within the vail; and all shall be well, be your destiny for this world what it may."