A DAY IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF LOCH SKENE. THERE are few in this world, where sorrow has || them. Things as they are in the work-day world erected her mournful sovereignty, to whom the som- appear insipid, flat, dull, and uninteresting. They bre sights and sounds of a sick chamber are un- have no power to awake the emotions of long slumknown. All have more or less experienced the bering sentiment. Uneasy, restless, and dissatisfied, melancholy impressions produced by the death-like we long for the wanton winds of heaven, as they stillness, the shaded sadness, the strange indefin- sweep in joyful freedom, murmuring wild music able mystery that reigns around the couch of a human along the tufted summits of sequestered hills-for but immortal sufferer, when the spiritual elasticity, the strange ravings of the impassioned torrent, the tumultuous buoyancy of heart, and the joyous rest- "the hiss of homeless streams," and all the wild lessness of vigorous vitality, are only reminiscences and wayward melodies of the harp of nature. We of a past that may never have a corresponding fu- | fly from the matter-of-fact scenes of ordinary life, ture. We remember well, when afflicted with a to lose ourselves for a while amid the idealities of grievous and depressing malady, with what anxiety || existence. Agitated by similar feelings, we resolved we longed for the shut of day's garish eye, the on a tour through the more interesting districts of silence of the distant jarring murmur of busy ex- the Scottish and English Borders. These localities istence, which too vividly recalled the hours when || had long been hallowed in imagination by the roa clear health pervaded our functions as we strug-mantic and bewitching poetry of Scott, the wild and gled with tense nerve and lightening eye among|| wizard ballads of the Ettrick Shepherd, the exquithe animated throng of combatants on life's dusty sitely true, touching, simple, and sweet strains of arena, or revelling in the luxurious consciousness of Wordsworth, and the weird "auld warld" creations power to feel, to enjoy the beauties of nature's of the Border Minstrelsy. We had read many books scenery, we smiled on the laughing fields, sung with of travels descriptive of the scenery of our native the warbling brooks, and, with eyes streaming with || land; but in some of them these enchanting regions grateful tears, looked up to heaven and blessed the|| had been altogether overlooked, while in others they day that ever we were born. We loved the mild were dismissed with the briefest notice. Tourists melancholy moonbeam that palely sat upon our unfortunately deprive themselves of much gratificaemaciated fingers, the dim twilight of the pensive tion, and the public of much useful and delightful stars that symbolised the shade that rested on the information, by following too closely in the wake of half-lit landscape of thought, and the tingling silent-stage coaches and railroads. Are Yarrow and Etness of solemn midnight that lulled the spirit into|| trick, St. Mary's and Loch Skene, to be unvisited, soft quietude and repose. But the day of deliver- because, forsooth, they do not happen to lie someance was at hand. The pulse beat with a steadier where between Carlisle and Gretna Green, Cornthrob, the disease slowly retreated, baulked of its hill and Kelso, or Belford and Berwick? No real prey, the faces of solicitous relations beamed sun- lover of nature will refuse to leave the beaten nily with the light of hope, and immediately the track, and gladly weary himself out among her eye of day was welcomed, the shutters, so long half- pathless solitudes, till he sinks down on the closed, were thrown open for his smile, and the pro- || heath for his pillow, fanned to sleep by the lullaspect of once more tasting the felicities of social in- by winds, and curtained by the clouds of the open tercourse, and conversing with scenes of beauty and sky. sublimity immortalised in the memory of the heart, Accoutred as a pedestrian, in a shepherd's dress, animated us with energetic joy, and robed the future with a sturdy oaken stick as our only companion, in a vesture of glad enchantment. Pleased with and a petit sac, with its complement of edibles, and our newly-recovered faculties, we resolved to enjoy potatoes to boot, which were found of essential serthe rapture of their healthy exercise. The aliena-vice when far from the shielings of the hills, we set tion to which we had been subjected for a while || out with high expectations destined to be more than unfitted us for the delights of human communion. realised. We shall never forget the intensity of We longed for the calm solitudes of nature, the sug-delicious emotion diffused through every fibre of our gestive loneliness of quiet pastoral regions, where, newly-invigorated frame when we found our limbs, without restraint, we might lay open our whole soul for the first time for many months, promptly obeyto their genial expansive influences, and give un-ing the active dictates of a resuscitated volition; fettered expression to those extacies of gratitude that swelled the heart almost to bursting. The mind that has lost its equilibrium by struggling with the intangible abstractions of infinitude dislikes, at first, on the restoration of its faculties, to associate much with mankind. It still remained in the region where the disturbing forces first acted upon it during the whole of its self-oblivion, or what visions floated daily and nightly before its wild, frenzied eye; visions, the remembrance of whose lawless, fitful, and fantastic forms, imposes a kind of illusion on the realities of life even after we are consciously breathing, or moving, and acting among VOL. XVI.-NO. CLXXXII. our lungs eagerly inhaling the untainted breath of the morning; our eyes, of late dewless and dead, lustrously sparkling as they returned the sheen shed from the radiant beauties of the outer world; our eyes regaled with the well-known, but long unheard, voices of the early birds, and our mind, with something like its former buoyancy and vigour, going out in tumultuous joy to commune with the glorious universe. What a transition from the sad experiences of a melancholy illness! The suppressed whisper, and stealthy noiseless step of foreboding friends, were exchanged for the full choral swell of a happy creation; the white drapery, contrasting powerfully H with the leaden gloom of our lonely chamber, for || voiced loneliness. Surrounded by such a scene, on the curtain-clouds of the sky hung round the roseate couch of Aurora, radiant with the crimson blush of the early day. such a morning, we have often wondered since that no pious sentiments were awakened. We luxuriated in the free play of feeling and fancy. We revelled It is not our intention to fatigue the reader with in the exulting transport of an almost spirituallized a recital of the many singular rencontres we had body; but the cloudless sun, the hymning birds, with the simple-hearted inhabitants of these dis- the warbling streams, and the tranquil smiling hills tricts; nor with a detail of the varied emotions pro- provoked no thought of Deity. How was this? duced by each successive picture as it floated past Singular to tell, it often happens that the fountain in the beautiful pastoral panorama; but, selecting of religious sentiment is sealed during the period a few of those spots which struck us as most remark- of mental aberration. The heart that wont to turn able for classic interest, sublimity, or beauty, and spontaneously towards the origin of all its blessedwhich have left their image indelibly portrayed on ness becomes proud, self-centred, sullenly obdurate, our memory, we shall briefly describe their principal and reserved. Every object is shunned that would features, and expose those sentiments and impres- suggest the idea of a present God. Oppressed with sions with which they will for ever be associated this cold dislike and dead insensibility, even here, in our mental history. Fancy us, then, refreshed, amid the scenes that appeared the best fitted to after a long day's journey, by a night's rest at revive our former sentiments of love and adoration, the far-famed cottage of Lilly Shiel's, awake with the frost of death still freezed up the genial current But the hour was at the earliest dawn-while the family are still in of the spiritual affections. the arms of the drowsy god-striding vigorously hand, the means were prepared, and amid the towards the scene which fancy had often de- solitary wilds of Loch Skene we were again to expicted as the realization of our ideal of dark sub-perience what the joyous dawn, with its mingled limity, where we hoped to dream away the remembrance of a work-day world amid the absorbing wild melody of the cataract, and the solemn meditative loneliness of Loch Skene. It was a bright, dewy morning in June. The few song-birds that frequent those scenes, "where flourished once a forest fair," were trilling their matin music from the scattered grey birches, the ruddy mountain ash, and the gaunt, grim, black pines that still, in stunted dwarfishness, relieve the solitary nakedness of the hills of Ettrick. The curlew's scream, usually suggestive of musing melancholy, seemed no longer drear and dissonant. The grasshopper was pettering his monotonous contralto among the tall herbage of the valleys, and the industrious bee added his sonorous bass as he hummed happily away from the purple heath, already charged with the treasured sweets of the morning. The scattered flocks were lifting at intervals their tranquil bleat, which the herds, hung on the sides of the quiet hills, promptly returned, as they raised their mild, innocent gaze to welcome the glories of the reddening dawn. The sun presented a singular appearance, which we do not remember to have observed before. His gold seemed transmuted into silver. flaming disc, like a circular map of molten argent, gradually rose above the tops of the mountains, whose soft, rich verdure glistened changefully, like the ever varying hues of shot silk, in his sheeny white rays, that filled the whole surrounding atmosphere with a blinding lustre. The upland streams, narrowed by the recent drought to tiny rivulets, forgot their wintry turbulence, and sung "a quiet tune," as they gently curved round the splintered, wave-worn fragments of their rocky channels. The sides of the hills were striped by small cascades, gleaming like suspended crystal rods in the sunbeam, weeping so softly that "the sound but lulled the car asleep," chastened the exhilaration of the soul, and disposed to sweet, solemn meditation. "The feeling of the hour" was of a mixed character. There was much to elate, more to tranquillize. It was sunlit solitude-it was His accompaniments, had failed to produce. Mending our pace, we rounded the tortoise-shaped hills that rise in unbroken succession between the Lowes and the entrance into the Pass of Moffatdale, and soon stood at the opening of the vista formed by the undulating mountains, clothed with verdure to their summits, that stretch away into the fertile plains of Dumfriesshire. From this point, which is regarded as the highest ground between Ettrick Forest and Moffatdale, the whole romantic scenery of the defile is presented in varied beauty and diversified grandeur. During the former part of the morning we had been completely encircled by hills, which shut in the view on all sides. A feeling of lassitude and ennui was beginning imperceptibly to take the edge off our enjoyment. It is a fact, that the same phase of beauty or sublimity which at first, and for a while, charms the senses and awakes the most delicious emotions, by being repeated in unbroken uniformity for several miles, gradually ceases to exercise its former influence, and the eye, wearied and sated by the constant presentment of the same unvaried objects, languidly longs for variety. A tall black cliff cowering over a rifted cavern, a splintered rock heaving its gashed forehead to the sky, a rugged ravine torn by the kelpie's scream, a fantastic cloud gambolling capriciously along the shaggy brows of a sullen mountain, or a distant prospect of green woods, of cultivated, calm, and placid plains, suddenly bursting on the eye in the midst of uniformity, freshens the feelings, revives the interest, stimulates the curiosity, feeds the desire of novelty, and inspires a glow and an elasticity of spirits peculiarly sympathetic of a renovated life. Insensibly sinking under the pressure of this fatiguing similarity of scene, the view from this spot provided exactly the stimulus required. We stopped to gaze for a while on the beautifully curved ranges of hills that flanked the pass, rolling their alternate waves towards the well watered and richly diversified landscape of the west, where the fashionable and picturesque village of Moffat invites, by its medicinal springs and sweet sequestered walks, ||ment arrested on the wing, she glances her fearful the regards of the invalid. eye into the savage scene, and then hies precipiInvigorated with this pleasing variety, we be- tately to her silent fastness. Here is loneliness, gan trippingly to descend into the valley. A dis-here is solitude; but it is a loneliness we love, a sotant murmur was now perceptible, and, on reach-litude we covet. The hum, the buzz, the shock of ing the table-land, the weltering waters, covered men never can be encountered here. The world is with foam, were seen flashing impetuously down excluded. We are alone with nature. She conthe black, sinuous gorge of the mountain, as if, verses with us; she unrolls her mysterious stores, glad at their escape from the noise and fury of the and makes her strange secrets known. The socataract, hurrying happily away to smoother litary, the unknown of a city, feels his loneliness channels, and softer scenes in the quiet plains oppressive, distressful, melancholy; he would fain below. Striking off towards the right, we encoun- | recognise one countenance, meet one responsive eye, tered an ascent of considerable difficulty. Pleased In despair, he scans the features of the stranger with the tumult of the waters, we selected our multitude that rush heedlessly past him in endless route by the banks of the descending current, and succession down the stream of busy existence, and gradually climbed our way to the jutting crag that though all are members of the same family and conceals the cataract. A multitude of strange heirs of the same ultimate destiny, they have no sensations took possession of us as we tugged up interest in him, and if his name were blotted out the rugged acclivity, produced by the gradual in- from the register of life, would drop no tear over his crease of the wild music of the waters, as they new-closed grave. Dreariness, desolation possess raved wrathfully against the insensate rocks into his soul, and drive him where he least wants to go, the boiling cauldron. The sound, varying with into the recesses of his own being. How totally the fitful breeze, was stilling the soul and inducing the reverse of all this is felt by the solitary traveller oblivion and entrancement, when, of a sudden, on among the wilds of nature. His eye never rests on rounding the projecting mass of intervening rock, an object with which he cannot commune; and the charger's snowy tail whisking into our eyes a even silence has a voice for his ear-sweet, soothing, shower of blinding spray instantaneously aroused solemn, and sublime. Embosomed in the absolute a new set of feelings and reflections. This fall, solitude we have described, we made no effort to commonly called the "Grey Mare's Tail," is the think; our inner man lay exposed to all the influhighest in Scotland, descending from a precipice ences of the place. At first, we were exclusively nearly 300 feet in height. The rocks round it are | engaged with the object before us. We seemed rugged, black, stern, and splintered, surmounted identified for a while in dreaming bewilderment by a few tufts of coarse peat, hanging in matted with the thundering waters. But the eternal hiss, shagginess over their dark brows, that contrast the perpetual dash, the motionless contemplation strangely with the foamy whiteness of the cata- of continual motion in the flood, and of everlasting ract, or the misty clouds of powdery spray that stability in the rocks, induced by degrees a feeling perpetually ascend from the vexed waters of the of utter abstraction from all the sights and sounds abyss. Cora Linn, Foyers, and Lowdore are, in by which we were surrounded. In thought we our opinion, not to be compared with the Grey wandered far from the present, but, strange to say, Mare's Tail. None of them possess the same bewil-naturally lapsed into meditation on the past. The dering power, the same rugged grandeur, the same future was totally excluded. The genius of the utter solitude, or the same combination of all that place was retrospection. He swept the chords of can produce that deep silent awe which usurps the the spiritual harp that lay bared to his potent soul on the contemplation of the mysterious, unde-touch, but no new strange melody broke on the finable solemnities of nature. In the others we ear. The music seemed familiar. It was an echo think there is too much scope for the eye; as the of the strains we had heard in other and departed wide range of objects that immediately, in consider- years. It awoke the memories that slumbered in able diversity, surround you, prevents that fixity of the cells of mind. The visions of infancy floated attention which is necessary to the absorption of the past us with all their joyous recollections-the soul in the grandeur of one majestic object. Here, spring-time of life again stood clad in its glittering sitting opposite the cataract, you are deep down in illusions; the family circle seemed still unbroken; a chasm of the mountains, with rude rocks rising on a mother's smile played on our ruddy cheek, and all sides perpendicularly to the sky, where a small a father's voice, like solemn music, spoke in kindest blue patch alone can be seen, canopying the shaded accents, with warnings and sage counsels. The vault, which the sunbeams, even at noon, penetrate companions of our early years rose from their with a sickly light, scarcely relieving the dim, dark lonely graves, "where pearls lie deep," or where gloom of the cavern; the leaping flood breaking we often walked when the sombre hues of evening over the torn ledge in a sheet of foam, dispersing in steeped the saddened landscape, and wept and its descent dense clusters of snowy pearls, or long prayed. We spoke to them; they smiled and spoke strings of diamonds, emitting faintly prismatic hues, again. The world, that late had seemed a wintry and dancing through the mist and darkness into the wilderness where our fairest flowers had faded, roaring hell below. With these the eye is filled, now rose, at the command of the magician, into the while no sound falls on the ear but the incessant happy valley, robed in the joyousness of a sunny dash of the tormented waters thundering and surg- spring. Love an object, memory and imagination ing away through the gashed mountain, or the will make it immortal; the being loved can never wild affrighted scream of the curlew, as, for a mo- || die-the heart's affection is eternal as itself, and can bestow perpetuity on all its objects. What a varied uniformity over the smooth deep waters of the provision against the ills of this scene of evanes-loch, lying sadly under the combined frown of the cence and transition. We have a power against louring heavens and the gloomy mountains. There which death strives in vain-a power to immortalize was nothing to remind us of the pastoral beauty of the beings that we love, a power to rescue the vic-St. Mary's. Large tracts clad with heath, patches of tim from the grave, a power to retain the image we adore, to converse with those with whom we delighted to commune, to live to dwell for ever by their side; once united, the tie never can be severed. The union of hearts knows not, and never shall know, disruption. An object loved "is a thing of joy for ever." Awaking from our long trance, we started up in half unconsciousness, with difficulty recalling our situation and our purposes. The illusions of the past still lingered around. The cadence of the fall met our ear as if for the first time. Its voice seemed to have been entirely hushed during our reverie; and now that the spell was broken, it again drew breath, and rushed wildly as before into its rocky receptacle. The day was advancing; we wished to remain, but the aspect of the heavens warned us away, and Loch Skene was yet unvisited. dangerous morass, and white cannach scattered in all directions; gigantic rocks rising wildly on the sides and summits of the mountains that completely enclose the lake, and cast a perpetual shadow on the stunted vegetation of the valley, a solitary isle rearing its black, bleak crest above the dull sullen waters, and the occasional cry of some feathered inhabitant of loneliness, and the apparent absence of any outlet, complete the picture of utter desolation. Isolated from every sight and sound that could remind us we had a brother-man, and awed by the augustness of the solitude that sat throned upon the scene, the stilled thoughts rose reverentially and slowly to the idea of Deity in whose presence we felt lost, absorbed, annihilated, mingling with the infinite, with the Great Spirit that fills the "wide waste" and dwells amid "the city full." Neither the glories of the morning around sweet St. Mary's, The rocks rising round the basin of the linn, as nor the varied grandeur of the fall, had availed to we have already said, are almost perpendicular. produce one religious sentiment. But resistless They present nothing to assist the traveller in his was the "majesty of darkness," that now covered ascent but a thin brittle projection here and there, this solitary place, to inspire an overwhelming conwhich frequently yields and crumbles into frag-sciousness that we stood in the temple of Nature's ments the instant it is laid hold of, and unless he be unusually agile and dexterous, he will often be in extreme danger of losing his life. We have known many instances in which this attempt was attended with the most perilous results. Several times we clutched a ledge of slaty rock, which gave way, and it was only after a desperate struggle, in which every muscle of the system was strung to its utmost, that we could regain our former footing. Never did we feel more forcibly that "Facilis descenus Averno, God. Abstracting ourselves from our age and interests, we rose, amid the stillness that reigned, into the period of the divine solitude in the anterior eternity where we saw the Deity existing alone, engaged solely in the calm contemplation of His own infinite perfections, while the universe was yet unvoiced and unpeopled. Then no angels hymned His praise, circling His throne, rejoicing; then no pomp of worlds gemmed the sky; then no blazing orbs wheeled through the tracts of immensity. All was silence and all was solitude, and yet all Iwas voiced and all was full. The universe was empty, and yet the universe was filled; for God was alone, and the universe was filled with God. We stood on the utmost line that bounds imagination's flight into unepoched, motionless duration in the past, and thence, casting our eye on the solitary Infinite, as if we had been the only being ex Sed revocare gradu, hoc opus et difficile est." Seated at last on a level with the brink of the cataract, we leisurely surveyed the boiling waters, that seemed urged on by some remorseless demon in a fierce fit of uncontrollable frenzy through the fractured rocks. Scott, to whom the whole of the district was familiar from his earliest days, assigns this wild spot as the most congenial to his "Mys-isting apart from Himself, we contemplated His terious Man of Woe": "And well that palmer's form and mien Had suited with the stormy scene, Just on the edge, straining his ken To view the bottom of the den, Where, deep, deep down, and far within Toils with the rocks the roaring linn; Then, issuing forth one foaming wave, And wheeling round the Giant's Grave, White as the snowy charger's tail, Drives down the pass of Moffat Dale." We soon grew dizzy, and retiring from the edge of the fall, we sat down to rest our wearied powers for a little, and then turning northwards, proceeded along the banks of the stream for nearly a mile, while a scene of unusual grandeur and sublimity was gradually disclosing its imposing features. The spot is unimaginably wild and lonely. The sun had been languishing for some time, and now struggled ineffectually with a dull leaden sky that hung in un glorious perfections, His underived sufficiency, His culiar sacredness. Infidels and atheists! we invite you here; and, through grace from on high, we believe you will return to the world sadder, perhaps, but wiser men. None but those who have finally and hopelessly sealed up their hearts against the sentiments of piety can stand surrounded with such scenes and associations without involuntarily exclaiming, "The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” We rose slowly from the posture of devotion, looked somewhat dreamily around, and, ere we were lonely wild. We subsequently visited York Ca-,, recollections invest the place with an aspect of pethedral, one of the proudest fanes of these islands; but its vaulted roofs, "its long-drawn aisles," its "dim religious light," evoked no sentiments so awful, so solemn, so memorable as the temple of Loch Skene. We had often before admired the noble simplicity of worship practised by our Druidical fathers, but not till that day had we learnt fully to appreciate their choice of the altar and the temple that Nature had provided for the worshippers of her God. Of the ancient Germans it is finely said, "Nec colubere parietibus deos, neque in ul-aware, the re-action of our powers, that had been lam humani oris speciem assimilare, ex magnitudine celestium arbitrantur; lucos ac nemero consecrant; deorumque nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod solâ reverentiâ vident." It is more than probable that on this very spot the Covenanters of the southern districts of Scotland frequently assembled on Sabbath. It is pleasant to think that perhaps these waters have been used in holy bap kept so long on the stretch, suddenly commenced, and away we sprang, with the speed of an arrow, across the bogs and fens, climbed, with incredible velocity, the intervening hills, descended, with inconceivable rapidity, the most frightful precipices, and, dashing down the sloping sides of the mountains guarding the pass, found ourselves, in a state of utter exhaustion, slowly pursuing our way to tism, that these wilds have echoed with the "grave || Moffat, which we reached at a late hour, after sweet melody" of sacred song, that this very turf having spent a day that shall never be forgotten has been pressed by the knee of many a persecuted || in the annals of our moral and religious history. saint of whom the world was not worthy. These J. B. D. MESSIAH'S A GLORY circles round His names, With glimpses of his Father's face. Sown in the spangled fields of night; Rolling a tide of blended light. Apart, each blooms a lovely flower, Apart, each shines a brilliant gem, Rare, polished, smooth, and beaming bright; Combined, like jewelled diadem, With studded circlet raying light. Apart, each wears a perfect dye, Deck'd in its own essential hue; Combined, like Iris o'er the sky, Arched in the deep celestial blue. Apart, each flows a silvery rill, NAME S. Combined, like torrents from the hill, That breathes soft, simple melodies; Apart, each swells a favourite song, Chaunted by way-worn pilgrim souls; That o'er the voiceless desert rolls. Apart, each shows a magic sign- All varied, and yet all are one; Love is the fragrance of each name; The notes distinct, the lyre the same. THE "GOOD OLD TIMES." A fig for the "good old times," In these "good old times," say they, "Starvation was then unknown Taxation but a name; A plague on your "good old times!"- We're shorn to the very skin, While still the Debt remains; And never again, let's pray, J. W. D. Now sheds its glorious light! |
