Chapter II: Part 2

From cat-killing to Coursing, we have seen that the transition is easy in the order of nature--and so is it from coursing to Fox-Hunting--by means, however, of a small intermediate step--the Harriers. Musical is a pack of harriers as a peal of bells. How melodiously they ring changes in the woods, and in the hollow of the mountains! A level country we have already consigned to merited contempt, (though there is no rule without an exception; and, as we shall see by-and-by, there is one too here), and commend us even with harriers, to the ups and downs of the pastoral or sylvan heights. If old or indolent, take your station on a heaven-kissing hill, and hug the echoes to your heart. Or, if you will ride, then let it be on a nimble galloway of some fourteen hands, that can gallop a good pace on the road, and keep sure footing on bridle-paths, or upon the pathless braes--and by judicious horsemanship, you may meet the pack at many a loud-mouthed burst, and haply be not far out at the death. But the schoolboy--and the shepherd--and the whipper-in--as each hopes for favour from his own Diana--let them all be on foot--and have studied the country for every imaginable variety that can occur in the winter's campaign. One often hears of a cunning old fox--but the cunningest old fox is a simpleton to the most guileless young hare. What deceit in every double! What calculation in every squat! Of what far more complicated than Cretan Labyrinth is the creature, now hunted for the first time, sitting in the centre! a-listening the baffled roar! Now into the pool she plunges, to free herself from the fatal scent that lures on death. Now down the torrent course she runs and leaps, to cleanse it from her poor paws, fur-protected from the sharp flints that lame the fiends that so sorely beset her, till many limp along in their own blood. Now along the coping of stone walls she crawls and scrambles--and now ventures from the wood along the frequented high-road, heedless of danger from the front, so that she may escape the horrid growling in the rear. Now into the pretty little garden of the wayside, or even the village cot, she creeps, as if to implore protection from the innocent children, or the nursing mother. Yes, she will even seek refuge in the sanctuary of the cradle. The terrier drags her out from below a tombstone, and she dies in the churchyard. The hunters come reeking and reeling on, we ourselves among the number--and to the winding horn that echoes reply from the walls of the house of worship--and now, in momentary contrition,

"Drops a sad, serious tear upon our playful pen!"

and we bethink ourselves--alas! all in vain, for

"_Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret_"--

of these solemn lines of the poet of peace and humanity:--

"One lesson, reader, let us two divide,
Taught by what nature shows and what conceals,
Never to blend our pleasure and our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

It is next to impossible to reduce fine poetry to practice--so let us conclude with a panegyric on Fox-Hunting. The passion for this pastime is the very strongest that can possess the heart--nor, of all the heroes of antiquity, is there one to our imagination more poetical than Nimrod. His whole character is given, and his whole history, in two words--Mighty Hunter. That he hunted the fox is not probable; for the sole aim and end of his existence was not to exterminate--that would have been cutting his own throat--but to thin man-devouring wild beasts--the Pards--with Leo at their head. But in a land like this, where not even a wolf has existed for centuries--nor a wild boar--the same spirit that would have driven the British youth on the tusk and paw of the Lion and the Tiger, mounts them in scarlet on such steeds as never neighed before the flood, nor "summered high in bliss" on the sloping pastures of undeluged Ararat--and gathers them together in gallant array on the edge of the cover,

"When first the hunter's startling horn is heard
Upon the golden hills."

What a squadron of cavalry! What fiery eyes and flaming nostrils--betokening with what ardent passion the noble animals will revel in the chase! Bay, brown, black, dun, chestnut, sorrel, grey--of all shades and hues--and every courser distinguished by his own peculiar character of shape and form--yet all blending harmoniously as they crown the mount; so that a painter would only have to group and colour them as they stand, nor lose, if able to catch them, one of the dazzling lights or deepening shadows streamed on them from that sunny, yet not unstormy sky.

You read in books of travels and romances, of Barbs and Arabs galloping in the desert--and well doth Sir Walter speak of Saladin at the head of the Saracenic chivalry; but take our word for it, great part of all such descriptions are mere falsehood or fudge. Why in the devil's name should dwellers in the desert always be going at full speed? And how can that full speed be anything more than a slow heavy hand-gallop at the best, the Barbs being up to the belly at every stroke? They are always, it is said, in high condition--but we, who know something about horse-flesh, give that assertion the lie. They have seldom anything either to eat or drink; are lean as church-mice; and covered with, clammy sweat before they have ambled a league from the tent. And then such a set of absurd riders, with knees up to their noses, like so many tailors riding to Brentford, _via_ the deserts of Arabia! Such bits, such bridles, and such saddles! But the whole set-out, rider and ridden, accoutrements and all, is too much for one's gravity, and must occasion a frequent laugh to the wild ass as he goes braying unharnessed by. But look there! Arabian blood, and British bone! Not bred in and in to the death of all the fine strong animal spirits--but blood intermingled and interfused by twenty crosses, nature exulting in each successive produce, till her power can no further go, and in yonder glorious grey,

"Gives the world assurance of a horse!"

Form the Three Hundred into squadron, or squadrons, and in the hand of each rider a sabre alone, none of your lances, all bare his breast but for the silver-laced blue, the gorgeous uniform of the Hussars of England--confound all cuirasses and cuirassiers!--let the trumpet sound a charge, and ten thousand of the proudest of the Barbaric chivalry be opposed with spear and scimitar--and through their snow-ranks will the Three Hundred go like thaw--splitting them into dissolution with the noise of thunder.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating of it; and where, we ask, were the British cavalry ever overthrown? And how could the great north-country horse-coupers perform their contracts, but for the triumphs of the Turf? Blood--blood there must be, either for strength, or speed, or endurance. The very heaviest cavalry--the Life Guards and the Scots Greys, and all other dragoons, must have blood. But without racing and fox-hunting, where could it be found? Such pastimes nerve one of the arms of the nation when in battle; but for them 'twould be palsied. What better education, too, not only for a horse, but his rider, before playing a bloodier game in his first war campaign? Thus he becomes demi-corpsed with the noble animal; and what easy, equable motion to him is afterwards a charge over a wide level plain, with nothing in the way but a few regiments of flying Frenchmen! The hills and dales of merry England have been the best riding-school to her gentlemen--her gentlemen who have not lived at home at ease--but, with Paget, and Stewart, and Seymour, and Cotton, and Somerset, and Vivian, have left their hereditary halls, and all the peaceful pastimes pursued among the sylvan scenery, to try the mettle of their steeds, and cross swords with the vaunted Gallic chivalry; and still have they been in the shock victorious; witness the skirmish that astonished Napoleon at Saldanha--the overthrow that uncrowned him at Waterloo!

"Well, do you know, that, after all you have said, Mr North, I cannot understand the passion and the pleasure of fox-hunting. It seems to me both cruel and dangerous."

Cruelty! Is there cruelty in laying the rein on their necks, and delivering them up to the transport of their high condition--for every throbbing vein is visible--at the first full burst of that maddening cry, and letting loose to their delight the living thunderbolts? Danger! What danger but of breaking their own legs, necks, or backs, and those of their riders? And what right have you to complain of that, lying all your length, a huge hulking fellow, snoring and snorting half-asleep on a sofa, sufficient to sicken a whole street? What though it be but a smallish, reddish-brown, sharp-nosed animal, with pricked-up ears, and passionately fond of poultry, that they pursue? After the first Tally-ho, Reynard is rarely seen, till he is run in upon--once, perhaps, in the whole run, skirting a wood, or crossing a common. It is an Idea that is pursued, on a whirlwind of horses, to a storm of canine music--worthy, both, of the largest lion that ever leaped among a band of Moors, sleeping at midnight by an extinguished fire on the African sands. There is, we verily believe it, nothing Foxy in the Fancy of one man in all that glorious field of Three Hundred. Once off and away--while wood and welkin rings--and nothing is felt--nothing is imaged in that hurricane flight, but scorn of all obstructions, dykes, ditches, drains, brooks, palings, canals, rivers, and all the impediments reared in the way of so many rejoicing madmen, by nature, art, and science, in an enclosed, cultivated, civilised, and Christian country. There they go--prince and peer, baronet and squire--the nobility and gentry of England, the flower of the men of the earth, each on such a steed as Pollux never reined, nor Philip's warlike son--for could we imagine Bucephalus here, ridden by his own tamer, Alexander would be thrown out during the very first burst, and glad to find his way dismounted to a village alehouse for a pail of meal and water. Hedges, trees, groves, gardens, orchards, woods, farmhouses, huts, halls, mansions, palaces, spires, steeples, towers, and temples, all go wavering by, each demigod seeing, or seeing them not, as his winged steed skims or labours along, to the swelling or sinking music, now loud as a near regimental band, now faint as an echo. Far and wide over the country are dispersed the scarlet runners--and a hundred villages pour forth their admiring swarms, as the main current of the chase roars by, or disparted runlets float wearied and all astray, lost at last in the perplexing woods. Crash goes the top-timber of the five-barred gate--away over the ears flies the ex-roughrider in a surprising somerset--after a succession of stumbles, down is the gallant Grey on knees and nose, making sad work among the fallow--Friendship is a fine thing, and the story of Damon and Pythias most affecting indeed--but Pylades eyes Orestes on his back sorely drowned in sludge, and tenderly leaping over him as he lies, claps his hands to his ear, and with a "hark forward, tantivy!" leaves him to remount, lame and at leisure--and ere the fallen has risen and shaken himself, is round the corner of the white village-church, down the dell, over the brook, and close on the heels of the straining pack, all a-yell up the hill crowned by the Squire's Folly. "Every man for himself, and God for us all," is the devout and ruling apothegm of the day. If death befall, what wonder? since man and horse are mortal; but death loves better a wide soft bed with quiet curtains and darkened windows in a still room, the clergyman in the one corner with his prayers, and the physician in another with his pills, making assurance doubly sure, and preventing all possibility of the dying Christian's escape. Let oak branch smite the too slowly stooping skull, or rider's back not timely levelled with his steed's; let faithless bank give way, and bury in the brook; let hidden drain yield to fore-feet and work a sudden wreck; let old coal-pit, with briery mouth, betray; and roaring river bear down man and horse, to cliffs unscalable by the very Welsh goat; let duke's or earl's son go sheer over a quarry twenty feet deep, and as many high; yet "without stop or stay, down the rocky way," the hunter train flows on; for the music grows fiercer and more savage--lo! all that remains together of the pack, in far more dreadful madness than hydrophobia, leaping out of their skins, under insanity from the scent, for Vulpes can hardly now make a crawl of it; and ere he, they, whipper-in, or any one of the other three demoniacs, have time to look in one another's splashed faces, he is torn into a thousand pieces, gobbled up in the general growl; and smug, and smooth, and dry, and warm, and cosy, as he was an hour and twenty-five minutes ago exactly, in his furze bush in the cover--he is now piecemeal in about thirty distinct stomachs; and is he not, pray, well off for sepulture?

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET.

FYTTE SECOND.

We are always unwilling to speak of ourselves, lest we should appear egotistical--for egotism we detest. Yet the sporting world must naturally be anxious to know something of our early history--and their anxiety shall therefore be now assuaged. The truth is, that we enjoyed some rare advantages and opportunities in our boyhood regarding field-sports, and grew up, even from that first great era in every Lowlander's life, Breeching-day, not only a fisher but a fowler; and it is necessary that we enter into some interesting details.

There had been from time immemorial, it was understood, in the Manse, a duck-gun of very great length, and a musket that, according to an old tradition, had been out both in the Fifteen and Forty-five. There were ten boys of us, and we succeeded by rotation to gun or musket, each boy retaining possession for a single day only; but then the shooting season continued all the year. They must have been of admirable materials and workmanship; for neither of them so much as once burst during the Seven Years' War. The musket, who, we have often since thought, must surely rather have been a blunderbuss in disguise, was a perfect devil for kicking when she received her discharge; so much so, indeed, that it was reckoned creditable for the smaller boys not to be knocked down by the recoil. She had a very wide mouth--and was thought by us "an awfu' scatterer;" a qualification which we considered of the very highest merit. She carried anything we chose to put into her--there still being of all her performances a loud and favourable report--balls, buttons, chucky-stanes, slugs, or hail. She had but two faults--she had got addicted, probably in early life, to one habit of burning priming, and to another of hanging fire; habits of which it was impossible, for us at least, to break her by the most assiduous hammering of many a new series of flints; but such was the high place she justly occupied in the affection and admiration of us all, that faults like these did not in the least detract from her general character. Our delight, when she did absolutely and positively and _bona fide_ "go off," was in proportion to the comparative rarity of that occurrence; and as to hanging fire--why, we used to let her take her own time, contriving to keep her at the level as long as our strength sufficed, eyes shut perhaps, teeth clenched, face girning, and head slightly averted over the right shoulder, till Muckle-mou'd Meg, who, like most other Scottish females, took things leisurely, went off at last with an explosion like the blowing up of a rock.

The "Lang Gun," again, was of a much gentler disposition, and, instead of kicking, ran into the opposite extreme on being let off, inclining forwards as if she would follow the shot. We believe, however, this apparent peculiarity arose from her extreme length, which rendered it difficult for us to hold her horizontally--and hence the muzzle being attracted earthward, the entire gun appeared to leave the shoulder of the Shooter. That such is the true theory of the phenomenon seems to be proved by this--that when the "Lang Gun" was, in the act of firing, laid across the shoulders of two boys standing about a yard the one before the other, she kicked every bit as well as the blunderbuss. Her lock was of a very peculiar construction. It was so contrived that, when on full cock, the dog-head, as we used to call it, stood back at least seven inches, and unless the flint was put in to a nicety, by pulling the trigger you by no means caused any uncovering of the pan, but things in general remained _in statu quo_--and there was perfect silence. She had a worm-eaten stock, into which the barrel seldom was able to get itself fairly inserted; and even with the aid of circumvoluting twine, 'twas always coggly. Thus too, the vizy (_Anglice_ sight) generally inclined unduly to one side or the other, and was the cause of all of us everyday hitting and hurting objects of whose existence even we were not aware, till alarmed by the lowing or the galloping of cattle on the hills; and we hear now the yell of an old woman in black bonnet and red cloak, who shook her staff at us like a witch, with the blood running down the furrows of her face, and, with many oaths, maintained that she was murdered. The "Lang Gun" had certainly a strong vomit--and, with slugs or swan-shot, was dangerous at two hundred yards to any living thing. Bob Howie at that distance arrested the career of a mad dog--a single slug having been sent through the eye into the brain. We wonder if one or both of those companions of our boyhood be yet alive--or, like many other great guns that have since made more noise in the world, fallen a silent prey to the rust of oblivion.

Not a boy in the school had a game certificate--or, as it was called in the parish--"a leeshance." Nor, for a year or two, was such a permit necessary; as we confined ourselves almost exclusively to sparrows. Not that we had any personal animosity to the sparrow individually--on the contrary, we loved him, and had a tame one--a fellow of infinite fancy--with comb and wattles of crimson cloth like a gamecock. But their numbers, without number numberless, seemed to justify the humanest of boys in killing any quantity of sprauchs. Why, they would sometimes settle on the clipped half-thorn and half-beech hedge of the Manse garden in myriads, midge-like; and then out any two of us, whose day it happened to be, used to sally with Muckle-mou'd Meg and the Lang Gun, charged two hands and a finger; and, with a loud shout, startling them from their roost like the sudden casting of a swarm of bees, we let drive into the whirr--a shower of feathers was instantly seen swimming in the air, and flower-bed and onion-bed covered with scores of the mortally wounded old cocks with black heads, old hens with brown, and the pride of the eaves laid low before their first crop of pease! Never was there such a parish for sparrows. You had but to fling a stone into any stack-yard, and up rose a sprauch-shower. The thatch of every cottage was drilled by them like honey-combs. House-spouts were of no use in rainy weather--for they were all choked up by sprauch-nests. At each particular barn-door, when the farmers were at work, you might have thought you saw the entire sparrow population of the parish. Seldom a Sabbath, during pairing, building, breeding, nursing, and training season, could you hear a single syllable of the sermon for their sakes, all a-huddle and a-chirp in the belfry and among the old loose slates. On every stercoraceous deposit on coach, cart, or bridle road, they were busy on grain and pulse; and, in spite of cur and cat, legions embrowned every cottage garden. Emigration itself in many million families would have left no perceptible void; and the inexterminable multitude would have laughed at the Plague.

The other small birds of the parish began to feel their security from our shot, and sung their best, unscared on hedge, bush, and tree. Perhaps, too, for sake of their own sweet strains, we spared the lyrists of Scotland, the linnet and the lark, the one in the yellow broom, the other beneath the rosy cloud--while there was ever a sevenfold red shield before Robin's breast, whether flitting silent as a falling leaf, or trilling his autumnal lay on the rigging or pointed gable-end of barn or byre. Now and then the large bunting, conspicuous on a top-twig, and proud of his rustic psalmody, tempted his own doom--or the cunning stone-chat, glancing about the old dykes, usually shot at in vain--or yellow-hammer, under the ban of the national superstition, with a drop of the devil's blood beneath his pretty crest, pretty in spite of that cruel creed--or green-finch, too rich in plumage for his poorer song--or shilfa, the beautiful nest-builder, shivering his white-plumed wings in shade and sunshine, in joy the most rapturous, in grief the most despairing of all the creatures of the air--or redpole, balanced on the down of the thistle or flower of the bunweed on the old clovery lea--or, haply twice seen in a season, the very goldfinch himself, a radiant and gorgeous spirit brought on the breeze from afar, and worthy, if only slightly wounded, of being enclosed within a silver cage from Fairy Land.

But we waxed more ambitious as we grew old--and then woe to the rookery on the elm-tree grove! Down dropt the dark denizens in dozens, rebounding with a thud and a skraigh from the velvet moss, which under that umbrage formed firm floor for Titania's feet--while others kept dangling dead or dying by the claws, cheating the crusted pie, and all the blue skies above were intercepted by cawing clouds of distracted parents, now dipping down in despair almost within shot, and now, as if sick of this world, soaring away up into the very heavens, and disappearing to return no more--till sunset should bring silence, and the night air roll off the horrid smell of sulphur from the desolated bowers; and then indeed would they come all flying back upon their strong instinct, like black-sailed barks before the wind, some from the depth of far-off fir-woods, where they had lain quaking at the ceaseless cannonade, some from the furrows of the new-brairded fields aloof on the uplands, some from deep dell close at hand, and some from the middle of the moorish wilderness.

Happiest of all human homes, beautiful Craig-Hall! For so even now dost thou appear to be--in the rich, deep, mellow, green light of imagination trembling on tower and tree--art thou yet undilapidated and undecayed, in thy old manorial solemnity almost majestical, though even then thou hadst long been tenanted but by a humble farmer's family--people of low degree. The evening-festival of the First Day of the Books--nay, scoff not at such an anniversary--was still held in thy ample kitchen--of old the bower of brave lords and ladies bright--while the harper, as he sung his song of love or war, kept his eyes fixed on her who sat beneath the dais. The days of chivalry were gone--and the days had come of curds and cream, and, preferred by some people though not by us, of cream-cheese. Old men and old women, widowers and widows, yet all alike cheerful and chatty at a great age, for often as they near the dead, how more lifelike seem the living! Middle-aged men and middle-aged women, husbands and wives, those sedate, with hair combed straight on their foreheads, sunburnt faces, and horny hands established on their knees--these serene, with countenances many of them not unlovely--comely all--and with arms decently folded beneath their matronly bosoms--as they sat in their holiday dresses, feeling as if the season of youth had hardly yet flown by, or were, on such a merry meeting, for a blink restored! Boys and virgins--those bold even in their bashfulness--these blushing whenever eyes met eyes,--nor would they--nor could they--have spoken in the hush to save their souls; yet ere the evening star arose, many a pretty maiden had, down-looking and playing with the hem of her garment, sung linnet-like her ain favourite auld Scottish sang! and many a sweet sang even then delighted Scotia's spirit, though Robin Burns was but a youth--walking mute among the wildflowers on the moor--nor aware of the immortal melodies soon to breathe from his impassioned heart!

Of all the year's holidays, not even excepting the First of May, this was the most delightful. The First of May, longed for so passionately from the first peep of the primrose, sometimes came deformed with mist and cloud, or cheerless with whistling winds, or winter-like with a sudden fall of snow. And thus all our hopes were dashed--the roomy hay-waggon remained in its shed--the preparations made for us in the distant moorland farmhouse were vain--the fishing-rods hung useless on the nails--and disconsolate schoolboys sat moping in corners, sorry, ashamed, and angry with Scotland's springs. But though the "leafy month of June" be frequently showery, it is almost always sunny too. Every half-hour there is such a radiant blink that the young heart sings aloud for joy; summer rain makes the hair grow, and hats are of little or no use towards the Longest Day; there is something cheerful even in thunder, if it be not rather too near; the lark has not yet ceased altogether to sing, for he soars over his second nest, unappalled beneath the sablest cloud; the green earth repels from her refulgent bosom the blackest shadows, nor will suffer herself to be saddened in the fulness and brightness of her contentment; through the heaviest flood the blue skies will still be making their appearance with an impatient smile, and all the rivers and burns, with the multitude of their various voices, sing praises unto Heaven.

Therefore, bathing our feet in beauty, we went bounding over the flowery fields and broomy braes to the grove-girdled Craig-Hall. During the long noisy day, we thought not of the coming evening, happy as we knew it was to be; and during the long and almost as noisy evening, we forgot all the pastime of the day. Weeks before, had each of us engaged his partner for the first country dance, by right his own when supper came, and to sit close to him with her tender side, with waist at first stealthily arm-encircled, and at last boldly and almost with proud display. In the churchyard, before or after Sabbath-service, a word whispered into the ear of blooming and blushing rustic sufficed; or if that opportunity failed, the angler had but to step into her father's burnside cottage, and with the contents of his basket leave a tender request, and from behind the gable-end carry away a word, a smile, a kiss, and a waving farewell.

Many a high-roofed hall have we, since those days, seen made beautiful with festoons and garlands, beneath the hand of taste and genius decorating, for some splendid festival, the abode of the noble expecting a still nobler guest. But oh! what pure bliss, and what profound, was then breathed into the bosom of boyhood from that glorious branch of hawthorn, in the chimney--itself almost a tree, so thick--so deep--so rich its load of blossoms--so like its fragrance to something breathed from heaven--and so transitory in its sweetness too, that as she approached to inhale it, down fell many a snow-flake to the virgin's breath--in an hour all melted quite away! No broom that nowadays grows on the brae, so yellow as the broom--the golden broom--the broom that seemed still to keep the hills in sunlight long after the sun himself had sunk--the broom in which we first found the lintwhite's nest--and of its petals, more precious than pearls, saw framed a wreath for the dark hair of that dark-eyed girl, an orphan, and melancholy even in her merriment--dark-haired and dark-eyed indeed, but whose forehead, whose bosom, were yet whiter than the driven snow. Greenhouses--conservatories-- orangeries--are exquisitely balmy still--and, in presence of these strange plants, one could believe that he had been transported to some rich foreign clime. But now we carry the burden of our years along with us--and that consciousness bedims the blossoms, and makes mournful the balm, as from flowers in some fair burial-place, breathing of the tomb. But oh! that Craig-Hall hawthorn! and oh! that Craig-Hall broom! they send their sweet rich scent so far into the hushed air of memory, that all the weary worn-out weaknesses of age drop from us like a garment, and even now--the flight of that swallow seems more aerial--more alive with bliss his clay-built nest--the ancient long-ago blue of the sky returns to heaven--not for many a many a long year have we seen so fair--so frail--so transparent and angel-mantle-looking a cloud! The very viol speaks--the very dance responds in Craig-Hall: this--this is the very Festival of the First Day of the Rooks--Mary Mather, the pride of the parish--the county--the land--the earth--is our partner--and long mayest thou, O moon! remain behind thy cloud--when the parting kiss is given--and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, dropped into her bosom!

But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and must pause to search for it, even like a spinster of old, in the dis arranged spindle of one of those pretty little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms in every town and city of the land. Another year, and we often found ourselves--alone--or with one chosen comrade; for even then we began to have our sympathies and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, or to cats and cheese, but with or to the eyes, and looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, and motions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving them with a perfect love--we must not say hating them with a perfect hatred--alone or with a friend, among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the Whaup! At first sight of his long bill aloft above the rushes, we could hear our heart beating quick time in the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body being yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether--and we grew sick with hope when near enough to see the wild beauty of his eye. Unfolded, like a thought, was then the brown silence of the shy creature's ample wings--and with a warning cry he wheeled away upon the wind, unharmed by our ineffectual hail, seen falling far short of the deceptive distance, while his mate that had lain couched--perhaps in her nest of eggs or young, exposed yet hidden--within killing range, half-running, half-flying, flapped herself into flight, simulating lame leg and wounded wing; and the two disappearing together behind the hills, left us in our vain reason thwarted by instinct, to resume with live hopes rising out of the ashes of the dead, our daily disappointed quest over the houseless mosses. Yet now and then to our steady aim the bill of the whaup disgorged blood--and as we felt the feathers in our hand, and from tip to tip eyed the outstretched wings, Fortune, we felt, had no better boon to bestow, earth no greater triumph.

Hush--stoop--kneel--crawl--for by all our hopes of mercy--a heron--a heron! An eel dangling across his bill! And now the water-serpent has disappeared! From morning dawn hath the fowl been fishing here--perhaps on that very stone--for it is one of those days when eels are a-roaming in the shallows, and the heron knows that they are as likely to pass by that stone as any other--from morning dawn--and 'tis now past meridian, half-past two! Be propitious, oh ye Fates! and never--never--shall he again fold his wings on the edge of his gaping nest, on the trees that overtop the only tower left of the old castle. Another eel! and we too can crawl silent as the sinuous serpent. Flash! Bang! over he goes dead--no, not dead--but how unlike that unavailing flapping, as head-over-heels he goes spinning over the tarn, to the serene unsettling of himself from sod or stone, when, his hunger sated, and his craw filled with fish for his far-off brood, he used to lift his blue bulk into the air, and with long depending legs, at first floated away like a wearied thing, but soon, as his plumes felt the current of air homewards flowing, urged swifter and swifter his easy course--laggard and lazy no more--leaving leagues behind him, ere you had shifted your motion in watching his cloudlike career, soon invisible among the woods!

The disgorged eels are returned--some of them alive--to their native element--the mud. And the dead heron floats away before small winds and waves into the middle of the tarn. Where is he--the matchless Newfoundlander--_nomine gaudens_ FRO, because white as the froth of the sea? Off with a collie. So--stript with the first intention, we plunge from a rock, and,

"Though in the scowl of heaven, the tarn
Grows dark as we are swimming,"

Draco-like, breast-high, we stem the surge, and with the heron floating before us, return to the heather-fringed shore, and give three cheers that startle the echoes, asleep from year's end to year's end, in the Grey-Linn Cairn.

Into the silent twilight of many a wild rock-and-river scene, beautiful and bewildering as the fairy work of sleep, will he find himself brought who knows where to seek the heron in all its solitary haunts. For often when the moors are storm-swept, and his bill would be baffled by the waves of tarn and loch, he sails away from his swinging-tree, and through some open glade dipping down to the secluded stream, alights within the calm chasm, and folds his wings in the breezeless air. The clouds are driving fast aloft in a carry from the sea--but they are all reflected in that pellucid pool--so perfect the cliff-guarded repose. A better day--a better hour--a better minute for fishing could not have been chosen by Mr Heron, who is already swallowing a par. Another--and another--but something falls from the rock into the water; and suspicious, though unalarmed, he leisurely addresses himself to a short flight up the channel--round that tower-like cliff standing strangely by itself, with a crest of self-sown flowering shrubs; and lo! another vista, if possible, just a degree more silent--more secluded--more solitary--beneath the mid-day night of woods! To shoot thee there--would be as impious as to have killed a sacred Ibis stalking in the shade of an Egyptian temple. Yet it is fortunate for thee--folded up there, as thou art, as motionless as thy sitting-stone--that at this moment we have no firearms--for we had heard of a fish-like trout in that very pool, and this--O Heron--is no gun but a rod. Thou believest thyself to be in utter solitude--no sportsman but thyself in the chasm--for the otter, thou knowest, loves not such very rocky rivers; and fish with bitten shoulder seldom lies here--that epicure's tasted prey. Yet within ten yards of thee lies couched thy enemy, who once had a design upon thee, even in the very egg. Our mental soliloquy disturbs not thy watchful sense--for the air stirs not when the soul thinks, or feels, or fancies about man, bird, or beast. We feel, O Heron! that there is not only humanity--but poetry, in our being. Imagination haunts and possesses us in our pastimes, colouring them even with serious, solemn, and sacred light--and thou assuredly hast something priest-like and ancient in thy look--and about thy light-blue plume robes, which the very elements admire and reverence--the waters wetting them not--nor the winds ruffling--and moreover we love thee--Heron--for the sake of that old castle, beside whose gloom thou utteredst thy first feeble cry! A Ruin nameless, traditionless--sole, undisputed property of Oblivion!

Hurra!--Heron--hurra! why, that was an awkward tumble--and very nearly had we hold of thee by the tail! Didst thou take us for a water-kelpie? A fright like that is enough to leave thee an idiot all the rest of thy life. 'Tis a wonder thou didst not go into fits--but thy nerves must be sorely shaken--and what an account of this adventure will certainly be shrieked unto thy mate, to the music of the creaking boughs! Not, even wert thou a secular bird of ages, wouldst thou ever once again revisit this dreadful place. For fear has a wondrous memory in all dumb creatures--and rather wouldst thou see thy nest die of famine, than seek for fish in this man-monster-haunted pool. Farewell! farewell!

Many are the hundreds of hill and mountain lochs to us as familiarly known, round all their rushy or rocky margins, as that pond there in the garden of Buchanan Lodge. That pond has but one goose and one gander, and nine goslings--about half-a-dozen trouts, if indeed they have not sickened and died of Nostalgia, missing in the stillness the gurgle of their native Tweed--and a brace of perch, now nothing but prickle. But the lochs--the hill, the mountain lochs now in our mind's eye and our mind's ear,--heaven and earth! the bogs are black with duck, teal, and widgeon--up there "comes for food or play" to the holla of the winds, a wedge of wild geese, piercing the marbled heavens with clamour--and lo! in the very centre of the mediterranean, the Royal Family of the Swans! Up springs the silver sea-trout in the sunshine--see Sir Humphrey!--a salmon--a salmon fresh run in love and glory from the sea!

For how many admirable articles are there themes in the above short paragraph! Duck, teal, and widgeon, wild-geese, swans! And first, duck, teal, and widgeon. There they are, all collected together, without regard to party politics, in their very best attire, as thick as the citizens of Edinburgh, their wives, sweethearts, and children, on the Calton Hill, on the first day of the King's visit to Scotland. As thick, but not so steady--for what swimming about in circles--what ducking and diving is there!--all the while accompanied with a sort of low, thick, gurgling, not unsweet, nor unmusical quackery, the expression of the intense joy of feeding, freedom, and play. Oh! Muckle-mou'd Meg! neither thou nor the "Lang Gun" are of any avail here--for that old drake, who, together with his shadow, on which he seems to be sitting, is almost as big as a boat in the water, the outermost landward sentinel, near as he seems to be in the deception of the clear frosty air, is yet better than three hundred yards from the shore--and, at safe distance, cocks his eye at the fowler. There is no boat on the loch, and knowing that, how tempting in its unapproachable reeds and rushes, and hut-crested knoll--a hut built perhaps by some fowler, in the olden time--yon central Isle! But be still as a shadow--for lo! a batch of Whig-seceders, paddling all by themselves towards that creek--and as surely as our name is Christopher, in another quarter of an hour they will consist of killed, wounded, and missing. On our belly--with unhatted head just peering over the knowe--and Muckle mou'd Meg slowly and softly stretched out on the rest, so as not to rustle a windle-strae, we lie motionless as a maukin, till the coterie collects together for simultaneous dive down to the aquatic plants and insects of the fast-shallowing bay; and, just as they are upon the turn with their tails, a single report, loud as a volley, scatters the unsparing slugs about their doups, and the still clear water, in sudden disturbance, is afloat with scattered feathers, and stained with blood.

Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro--who with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards heaven--then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky lines--precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling art--next--nobly done, glorious Fro--that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings--and now, if we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name--finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means and appliances to boot, carved finely--most finely--by razor-like knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide--tasted by a tongue and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning rose--swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its intense delight--and received into a stomach yawning with greed and gratitude,--Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!

How nobly, like a craken or sea-serpent, Fro reareth his massy head above the foam, his gathered prey seized--all four--by their limber necks, and brightening, like a bunch of flowers, as they glitter towards the shore! With one bold body-shake, felt to the point, of each particular hair, he scatters the water from his coat like mist, reminding one of that glorious line in Shakespeare,

"Like dewdrops from the Lion's mane,"

advancing with sinewy legs seemingly lengthened by the drenching flood, and dripping tail stretched out in all its broad longitude, with hair almost like white hanging plumes--magnificent as tail of the Desert-Born at the head of his seraglio in the Arabian Sands. Half-way his master meets his beloved Fro on the slope; and first proudly and haughtily pausing to mark our eye, and then humbly, as beseemeth one whom nature, in his boldest and brightest bearing, hath yet made a slave--he lays the offering at our feet, and having felt on his capacious forehead the approving pressure of our hand,

"While, like the murmur of a dream,
He hears us breathe his name,"

he suddenly flings himself round with a wheel of transport, and in many a widening circle pursues his own uncontrollable ecstasies with whirlwind speed; till, as if utterly joy-exhausted, he brings his snow-white bulk into dignified repose on a knoll, that very moment illuminated by a burst of sunshine!

Not now--as fades upon our pen the solemn light of the dying day--shall we dare to decide, whether or not Nature--O most matchless creature of thy kind!--gave thee, or gave thee not, the gift of an immortal soul!--Better such creed--fond and foolish though it may be--yet scarcely unscriptural, for in each word of Scripture there are many meanings, even when each sacred syllable is darkest to be read,--better such creed than that of the atheist or sceptic, distracted ever in his seemingly sullen apathy, by the dim, dark doom of dust. Better that Fro should live, than that Newton should die--for ever. What though the benevolent Howard devoted his days to visit the dungeon's gloom, and by intercession with princes, to set the prisoners free from the low damp-dripping stone roof of the deep-dug cell beneath the foundation rocks of the citadel, to the high dewdropping vault of heaven, too, too dazzlingly illumined by the lamp of the insufferable sun! There reason triumphed--those were the works of glorified humanity. But thou--a creature of mere instinct--according to Descartes, a machine, an automaton--hadst yet a constant light of thought and of affection in thine eyes; nor wert thou without some glimmering and mysterious notions--and what more have we ourselves?--of life and of death! Why fear to say that thou wert divinely commissioned and inspired--on that most dismal and shrieking hour, when little Harry Seymour, that bright English boy, "whom all that looked on loved," entangled among the cruel chains of those fair water-lilies, all so innocently yet so murderously floating round him, was, by all standing or running about there with clenched hands, or kneeling on the sod--given up to inextricable death? We were not present to save the dear boy, who had been delivered to our care as to that of an elder brother, by the noble lady who, in her deep widow's weeds, kissed her sole darling's sunny head, and disappeared. We were not present--or by all that is holiest in heaven or on earth--our arms had been soon around thy neck, when thou wert seemingly about to perish!

But a poor dumb despised dog--nothing, as some say, but animated dust--was there,--and without shout or signal--for all the Christian creatures were alike helpless in their despair--shot swift as a sunbeam over the deep, and by those golden tresses, sinking and brightening through the wave, brought the noble child ashore, and stood over him, as if in joy and sorrow, lying too like death on the sand! And when little Harry opened his glazed eyes, and looked bewildered on all the faces around--and then fainted--and revived and fainted again--till at last he came to dim recollection of this world on the bosom of the physician brought thither with incomprehensible speed from his dwelling afar off--thou didst lick his cold white hands and blue face, with a whine that struck awful pity into all hearts, and thou didst follow him--one of the group--as he was borne along--and frisking and gambolling no more all that day, gently didst thou lay thyself down at the feet of his little bed, and watch there unsleeping all night long! For the boy knew that God had employed one of his lowly creatures to save him--and beseeched that he might lie there to be looked at by the light of the taper, till he himself, as the pains went away, might fall asleep! And we, the watchers by his bedside, heard him in his dreams mentioning the creature's name in his prayers.

Yet at times--O Fro--thou wert a sad dog indeed--neither to bind nor to hold--for thy blood was soon set aboil, and thou--like Julius Caesar--and Demetrius Poliorcetes--and Alexander the Great--and many other ancient and modern kings and heroes--thou wert the slave of thy passions. No Scipio wert thou with a Spanish captive. Often--in spite of threatening eye and uplifted thong--uplifted only, for thou went'st unflogged to thy grave--didst thou disappear for days at a time--as if lost or dead. Rumours of thee were brought to the kirk by shepherds from the remotest hills in the parish--most confused and contradictory--but, when collected and compared, all agreeing in this--that thou wert living, and lifelike, and life-imparting, and after a season from thy travels to return; and return thou still didst--wearied often and woe-begone--purpled thy snow-white curling--and thy broad breast torn, not disfigured, by honourable wounds. For never yet saw we a fighter like thee. Up on thy hind-legs in a moment, like a growling Polar monster, with thy fore-paws round thy foeman's neck, bull-dog, collie, mastiff, or greyhound, and down with him in a moment, with as much ease as Cass, in the wrestling ring at Carlisle, would throw a Bagman, and then woe to the throat of the downfallen, for thy jaws were shark-like as they opened and shut with their terrific tusks, grinding through skin and sinew to the spine.

Once, and once only--bullied out of all endurance by a half-drunken carrier--did we consent to let thee engage in a pitched battle with a mastiff victorious in fifty fights--a famous shanker--and a throttler beyond all compare. It was indeed a bloody business--now growling along the glaur of the road--a hairy hurricane--now snorting in the suffocating ditch--now fair play on the clean and clear crown of the causey--now rolling over and over through a chance-open white little gate, into a cottage-garden--now separated by choking them both with a cord--now brought out again with savage and fiery eyes to the scratch on a green plat round the signboard-swinging tree in the middle of the village--auld women in their mutches crying out, "Shame! whare's the minister?"--young women, with combs in their pretty heads, blinking with pale and almost weeping faces from low-lintelled doors--children crowding for sight and safety on the louping-on-stane--and loud cries ever and anon at each turn and eddy of the fight, of "Well done, Fro! well done, Fro!--see how he worries his windpipe--well done, Fro!" for Fro was the delight and glory of the whole parish, and the honour of all its inhabitants, male and female, was felt to be staked on the issue--while at intervals was heard the harsh hoarse voice of the carrier and his compeers, cursing and swearing in triumph in a many-oathed language peculiar to the race that drive the broad-wheeled waggons with the high canvass roofs, as the might of Teeger prevailed, and the indomitable Fro seemed to be on his last legs beneath a grip of the jugular, and then stretched motionless and passive--in defeat or death. A mere _ruse_ to recover wind. Like unshorn Sampson starting from his sleep, and snapping like fired flax the vain bands of the Philistines, Fro whammled Teeger off, and twisting round his head in spite of the grip on the jugular, the skin stretching and giving way in a ghastly but unfelt wound, he suddenly seized with all his tusks his antagonist's eye, and bit it clean out of the socket. A yowl of unendurable pain--spouting of blood--sickness--swooning--tumbling over--and death. His last fight is over! His remaining eye glazed--his protruded tongue bitten in anguish by his own grinding teeth--his massy hind-legs stretched out with a kick like a horse--his short tail stiffens--he is laid out a grim corpse--flung into a cart tied behind the waggon--and off to the tanyard.

No shouts of victory--but stern, sullen, half-ashamed silence--as of guilty things after the perpetration of a misdeed. Still glaring savagely, ere yet the wrath of fight has subsided in his heart, and going and returning to the bloody place, uncertain whether or not his enemy were about to return, Fro finally lies down at some distance, and with bloody flews keeps licking his bloody legs, and with long darting tongue cleansing the mire from his neck, breast, side, and back--a sanguinary spectacle! He seems almost insensible to our caresses, and there is something almost like upbraiding in his victorious eyes. Now that his veins are cooling, he begins to feel the pain of his wounds--many on, and close to vital parts. Most agonising of all--all his four shanks are tusk-pierced, and, in less than ten minutes, he limps away to his kennel, lame as if riddled by shot--

"Heu quantum mutatus ab illo
Hectore!"

gore-besmeared and dirt-draggled--an hour ago serenely bright as the lily in June, or the April snow. The huge waggon moves away out of the clachan without its master, who, ferocious from the death of the other brute he loved, dares the whole school to combat. Off fly a dozen jackets--and a devil's dozen of striplings from twelve past to going sixteen--firmly wedged together like the Macedonian Phalanx--are yelling for the fray. There is such another shrieking of women as at the taking of Troy. But

"The Prince of Mearns stept forth before the crowd,
And, Carter, challenged you to single fight!"

Bob Howie, who never yet feared the face of clay, and had too great a heart to suffer mere children to combat the strongest and most unhappy man in the whole country--stripped to the buff; and there he stands, with

"An eye like Mars, to threaten and command;"