66 Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter-and in Scotland he has no superior-will perhaps accompany you to what once was the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar_appurtenance to some cursed Wark-the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we know not what wretch-the White Loch larched-and the Black Loch of a ghastly blue, cruelly culti vated all close round the brim. From his moor and the burn has become a stream. You the same; for they are so essentially blended. wade now through longer grass-sometimes that we defy you to show what is biblicaleven up to the knees; and half-forgetting pas- what apocryphal-and what pure romance. toral life, you ejaculate Speed the plough!" How we transpose and dislocate while we Whitewashed houses-but still thatched-look limn in aerial colours! Where tree never down on you from among trees, that shelter grew we drop it down centuries old-or we them in front; while behind is an encampment tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, and of stacks, and on each side a line of offices, so steep what was once his shadow in sunshine that they are snug in every wind that blows. -hills sink at a touch, or at a beck mountains The Auld Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the spithough the turn was perilous sharp, time had rit of the place remains the same; for in that so coloured it, that in a sunny shower we have spirit has imagination all along been working, mistaken it for a rainbow. That's Humbie and boon nature smiles on her son as he imiHouse, God bless it! and though we cannot tates her creations-but "hers are heavenly, here with our bodily sense see the Manse, with his an empty dream." our spiritual eye we can see it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to stuff our pockets. The Cart!-ay, the river Cart-not that on which pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even silvan now; and though still sweet it murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, and the firth the sea;- "The parting genius is with sighing sent;" but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen vision that showed us the solitary region dear- disconsolately sitting in some yet mossy spot est to our imagination and our hearts, and among the ruins of his ancient reign. That opening them on completion of the charm that painter has studied the aspect of the Old Forworks within the spirit when no daylight is lorn, and has shown it more than once on bits there, rejoice to find ourselves again sole-sit- of canvas not a foot long; and such pictures ting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch. will survive after the Ghost of the Genius has Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish-bade farewell to the ruined solitudes he had pray, give us one of yours, that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as Holy Writ-false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? Perception, memory, imagination, are all modes-states of mind. But mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and haunted ever since the flood, or been laid beneath the yet unprofaned Green-Brae, above the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust he will reissue, though ages may have to elapse, to see all his quagmires in their primeval glory, and all his hags more hideously beautiful, as they yawn back again into their former selves, frowning over the burial in their bottoms of all the harvests that had dared to ripen above their heads. MAY-DAY. rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar murmur-art Thou with thy bold bleak exposure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous undulations to the portals of the East? How endless the interchange of woods and mea ART thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moor- | other kirkspire, yet how rich in streams, and land, siivan, and pastoral Parish! the Paradise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious dawning of life-can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in half an hour could fly the flap-dows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without ping dove-though the martens, wheeling to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, centra in its own domain, seem in their more distant flight to glance their crescent wings over a vale rejoicing apart in an number, among thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings-how rises the smoke, ever and anon, into the sky, all neighbouring on each other, so that the cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead-while as you wander onwards, each roof still rises like it is built, and guarded by some wonderfu unexpectedly-and as solitary, as if it had felicity of situation equally against all the been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thou-winds? No. Thither as yet have we no sand parishes-neither Highland, nor Lowland -but undulating-let us again use the descriptive word-like the sea in sunset after a day of storms-yes, Heaven's blessing be upon thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old! courage to direct our footsteps-for that vene rable Man has long been dead-not one of his ancient household now remains on earth There the change, though it was gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has been entire and complete. The changed and saddened heart, than at first to be driven from it into the outer world, if still permitted to carry thither something of that spirit that had glorified our prime. The same heavens! More blue than any colour that tinges the flowers of earth-like" old familiar faces" we can dream of, but ne the violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The ver more shall see-and the voices that are stillness of those lofty clouds makes them seem now heard within those walls, what can they whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to thy ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed corn, for thy brooding mate can no longer hear years? It is an appalling trial to approach a thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there is place where once we have been happier-hap little or no change on these coppice-woods, pier far than ever we can be on this earth with their full budding branches all impatient again; and a worse evil doth it seem to our for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-imagination to return to Paradise, with a hook levelled them with the mossy stones, since among the broomy and briary knolls we sought the gray linnet's nest, or wondered to spy, among the rustling leaves, the robin redbreast, seemingly forgetful of his winter benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now are gone-tall, farspreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie the ruminating cattle, with the small herdgirl asleep. Gone are they, and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held converse-whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead -hands so often grasped-arms linked in ours as we danced along the braes-have long ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of time. But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the hill-the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and almost as early as the alder or the birch-the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner. You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling-for eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappearedand then, when you stood beneath, was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself, continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence! It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some sad and solemn MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is deserve the name, bestowed on thee perhaps not at nightfall felt to have been the less de- long ago, not by any one of the humble pro lightful, because shadows now and then be-prietors, but by the general voice of praise, al' dimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush, took possession of field or forest. We are all alone-a solitary pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly along to the merry music of streams-or linger by the silent shores of lochs-or upon the hillsummit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight-or plunge into the old wood's magnificent exclusion from sky-where at mid-summer, day is as night-though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms; and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence. eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty. For from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision of fields and meadows, knolls, braes, and hills uncertain gleamings of a river, the smoke of many houses, and glittering perhaps in the sunshine, the spire of the House of God! To have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting with his solemn, his austere Sabbath face, beneath the pulpit, with his expressive eyes fixed on the Preacher, you could not but have judged him to be a man of a stern character and austere demeanour. To have seen him at labour on the working-days, you might almost have thought him the serf of some tyrant lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house, beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly What! shall we linger here within a little esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenmile of the MANSE, wherein and among its derly and reverently beloved. His wife was pleasant bounds our boyish life glided mur- the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman muring away, like a stream that never, till it of active habits and a strong mind, but tem leaves its native hills, knows taint or pollution, pering the natural sternness of her husband's and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-character with that genial and jocund cheer fulness, that of all the lesser virtues is the like the crocus, before the young thrushes had most efficient to the happiness of a household. left the nest in the honey-suckled corner of One daughter only had they, and we could the gavel end. Not a single hair in the churn. charm our heart even now, by evoking the va- Then what honey and what jam! The first, nished from oblivion, and imagining her over not heather, for that is too luscious, especially and over again in the light of words; but al- after such cream, but the pure white virgin though all objects, animate and inanimate, honey, like dew shaken from clover, but now seem always tinged with an air of sadness querny after winter keep; and oh! over a when they are past-and as at present we are layer of such butter on such barley-ban. resolved to be cheerful-obstinately to resist, nocks was such honey, on such a day, in such all access of melancholy-an enemy to the pa- company, and to such palates, too divine to thetic and a scorner of shedders of tears- be described by such a pen as that now wielded therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, by such a writer! The Jam! It was of gooseand let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-berries-the small black hairy ones-gathered L'ay afternoon, and enjoy it as it was enjoyed to a very minute from the bush, and boiled to of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the grandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. a very moment in the pan! A bannock studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The question, with the gawsy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was not "My dear laddie, which will ye hae-hinny or jam?" but, " Which will ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs, or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half a dozen white cans of more moderate dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming Sycamore. There the bees, were all at work for next May-day, happy as ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold, happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song; for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave forth tunes almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies. There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used on MAY-DAY o be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed in homespun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the distant mountain-head; and on various seats-stumps, stones, stools, creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and allegorical-took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping and bowing, blushing and curtseying, old, young and middle aged, of high and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Minister uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those horn spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk-to the mouth how apt the bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of delft, rather more than full of curds, many millions times more Never had Mary Morrison heard the old deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, ballad-airs sung, except during the mid-day and then filled to overflowing with a blessed hour of rest, in the corn or hay field-and rude outpouring of creamy richness that tenaciously singers are they all-whether male or female descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar voices-although sometimes with a touch of expression of whose physiognomy, particu- natural pathos that finds its way to the heart. larly the nose, we will carry with us to the But as the nightingale would sing truly its own grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT con- variegated song, although it never were to hear sisted of twenty cows-almost all spring any one of its own kind warbling from among calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed-so you the shrub-roots, and the lark though alone on may guess what cream! The spoon could earth, would sing the hymn well known at the not stand in it-it was not so thick as that- gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the nafor that was too thick-but the spoon when ture within her, and inspired by her own de placed upright in it, retained its perpendicu- lightful genius alone, did Mary Morrison feel larity for a while, and then, when uncertain on all the measures of those ancient melodies, and which side to fall, was grasped by the hand of give them all an expression at once so simple hungry schoolboy, and steered with its fresh and profound. People who said they did not and fragrant freight into a mouth already open care about music, especially Scottish music, it in wonder. Never beneath the sun, moon, and was so monotonous and insipid, laid aside their stars, were such oatmeal-cakes, peas-scones, indifferent looks before three notes of the sim and barley-bannocks, as at MoUNT PLEASANT. plest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she You could have eaten away at them with plea-sat faintly blushing, less in bashfulness than sure, even although not hungry-and yet it in her own emotion, with her little hands play. was impossible of them to eat too much-ing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed Manna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount Pleasant-such, and so rich was the old lea-pasture—was coloured on the ground, or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would most people say, "she is but a very oiuinary girlbut her musical turn is really very singular Indeed:"-bat her happy father and mother knew, that in all common things-that is, in all the duties of an humble and innocent life, their Mary was by nature excellent as in the melodies and harmonies of song-and that while her voice in the evening-psalm was as angel's sweet, so was her spirit almost pure as an angel's, and nearly inexperienced of sin. Proud, indeed, were her parents on that May-day to look upon her-and to listen to her-as their Mary sat beside the young English boy-admired of all observers-and happier than she had ever been in this world before, in the charm of their blended music, and the unconscious affection-sisterly, yet more than sisterly, for brother she had none-that towards one so kind and noble was yearning at her heart. ticular place, innumerable years ago! It wa at the close of one of those midsummer days which melt away into twilight, rather than into night, although the stars are visible, and bird and beast are asleep. All by herself, as she walked along between the braes, was she singing a hymn And must this body die? This mortal frame decay? And must these feeble limbs of mine Not that the child had any thought of death, Beautiful were they both; and when they sat side by side in their music, insensible must that heart have been by whom they were not both admired and beloved. It was thought that they oved one another too, too well; for Harry Did both her parents lose all love to life, Wilton was the grandson of an English Peer, when their sole daughter was taken away! and Mary Morrison a peasant's child; but they And did they die finally of broken hearts? No could not love too well-she in her tenderness-such is not the natural working of the hu-he in his passion-for, with them, life and love was a delightful dream, out of which they were never to be awakened. For as by some secret sympathy, both sickened on the same day-of the same fever-and died at the same hour; and not from any dim intention of those who buried them, but accidentally, and because the burial-ground of the Minister and the Elder adjoined, were they buried almost in the same grave-for not half a yard of daisied turf divided them-a curtain between the beds on which brother and sister slept. In their delirium they both talked about each other-Mary Morrison and Harry Wilton-yet their words were not words of love, only of common kindness; for a though on their deathbeds they did not talk about death, but frequently about that May-day Festival, and other pleasant meetings in neighbour's houses, or in the Manse. Mary sometimes rose up in bed, and in imagination joined her voice to that of the flute which to his lips was to breath no more; and even at the very self-same moment-so it wonderfully was-did he tell all to be hushed, for that Mary Morrison was about to sing the Flowers of the Forest. Methinks that no deep impressions of the past, although haply they may sleep for ever, and seem as if they had ceased to be, are ever utterly obliterated; but that they may, one and all, reappear at some hour or other however distant, legible as at the very moment they were first engraven on the memory. Not by the power of meditation are the long ago vanished thoughts or emotions restored to us, in which we found delight or disturbance; but of themselves do they seem to arise, not undesired indeed, but unbidden, like sea-birds that come unexpectedly floating up into some inland vale, Decause, unknown to us who wonder at them, the tide is flowing and the breezes blow from he main. Bright as the living image stands now before us the ghost-for what else is it than the ghost-of Mary Morrison, just as she stood before us on one particular day-in one par man spirit, if kept in repair by pure and pious thought. Never were they so happy indeed as they had once been-nor was their happiness of the same kind. Oh! different far in resignation that often wept when it did not repine-in faith that now held a tenderer commerce with the skies! Smiles were not very long of being again seen at Mount Pleasant. An orphan cousin of Mary's-they had been as sisterstook her place, and filled it too, as far as the living can ever fill the place of the dead. Common cares continued for a while to occupy the Elder and his wife, for there were not a few to whom their substance was to be a blessing. Ordinary observers could not have discerned any abatement of his activities in field or market; but others saw that the toil to him was now but a duty that had formerly been a delight. Mount Pleasant was let to a relative, and the Morrisons retired to a small house, with a garden, a few hundred yards from the kirk. Let him be strong as a giant, infirmi ties often come on the hard-working man before you can well call him old. It was so with Adam Morrison. He broke down fast we have been told, in his sixtieth year, and after that partook but of one sacrament. Not in tales of fiction alone do those who have long loved and well, lay themselves down and die in each other's arms. Such happy deaths are recorded on humble tombstones; and there is one on which this inscription may be read—“ HERE LIE THE BODIES OF ADAM MORRISON AND от HELEN ARMOUR HIS SPOUSE. THEY DIED ON THE 1ST OF MAY 17-. HERE ALSO LIES THE BODY OF THEIR DAUGHTER, MARY MORRISON, WHO DIED JUNE 2, 17-," The headstone is a granite slab-as they almost all are in that kirkyard-and the kirk itself is of the same enduring material. But touching that grave is a Marble Monument, white almost as the very snow, and, in the midst of the emblazonry of death, adorned with the armorial bearings belonging to a family of the high-born. Sworn Brother of our soul! during the A pensive shade has fallen across MAY-DAY' and while the sun is behind those castellated clouds, our imagination is willing to retire into the saddest places of memory, and gather together stories and tales of tears. And many such there are, annually sprinkled all round the humble huts of our imaginative and religious land, even like the wild-flowers that, in endless succession, disappearing and reappear every brae. And as ofttimes some one particular tune, some one pathetic but imperfect and fragmentary part of an old melody, will nearly touch the heart, when it is dead to the finest and most finished strain; so now a faint and dim tradition comes upon us, giving birth to uncertain and mysterious thoughts. It is an old Tradition. They were called the BLESSED FAMILY! Far up at the head of yonder glen of old was their dwelling, and in their garden oright ardours of boyhood, when the present | now awaken from the hanging tower of the was all-sufficient in its own bliss, the past soon Old Castle" Wilton, Wilton!" The name forgotten, and the future unfeared, what might of the long-ago buried faintly and afar-off rehave been thy lot, beloved Harry Wilton, had peated by an echo! thy span of life been prolonged to this very day? Better-oh! far better was it for thee and thine that thou didst so early die; for it seemeth that a curse is on that lofty lineage; and that, with all their genius, accomplishments, and virtues, dishonour comes and goes, a familiar and privileged guest, out and in their house. Shame never veiled the light of those bold eyes, nor tamed the eloquence of those sunny lips, nor ever for a single moment bowed downing in their beauty, Spring drops down upon that young princely head that, like a fast-growing flower, seemed each successive morning to be visibly rising up towards a stately manhood. But the time was not far distant, when to thee life would have undergone a rueful transformation. Thy father, expatriated by the spells of a sorceress, and forced into foreign countries, to associate with vice, worthlessness, profligacy, and crime! Thy mother, dead of a broken heart! And that lovely sister, who came to the Manse with her jewelled hair-sparkled the translucent well that is the But all these miserable things who could prophesy, at the hour when we and the weeping villagers laid thee, apart from the palace and the burial-vault of thy high-born ancestors, without anthem or organ-peal, among the humble dead? Needless and foolish were all those floods of tears. In thy brief and beautiful course, nothing have we who loved thee to lament or condemn. In few memories, indeed, doth thy image now survive; for in process of time what young face fadeth not away from eyes busied with the shows of this living world? What young voice is not bedumbed to ears for ever filled with its perplexing din? Yet thou, Nature, on this glorious May-day, rejoicing in all the plenitude of thy bliss-we call upon thee to bear witness to the intensity of our never-dying grief! Ye fields, that long ago we so often trode together, with the windswept shadows hovering about our path-Ye streams, whose murmur awoke our imaginations, as we lay reading, or musing together in day-dreams, among the broomy braes-Ye woods, where we started at the startled cushat, or paused, without a word, to hear the creature's solitary moans and murmurs deepening the far off hush, already so profound-Ye moors and mosses, black yet beautiful, with your peat-trenches overshadowed by the heather-blossoms that scented the wilderness afar -where the little maiden, sent from the shieling on errands to town or village in the country below, seemed, as we met her in the sunshine, to rise up before us for our delight, like a fairy from the desert bloom-Thou loch, remote in thy treeless solitude, and with nought reflected in thy many-springed waters but those low pastoral hills of excessive green, and the white-barred blue of heaven-no creature on its shores but our own selves, keenly angling in the breezes, or lying in the shaded sunshine, with some book of old ballads, or strain of some Immortal yet alive on earth-one and all, bear witness to our undying affection, that silently now feeds on grief! And, oh! what verflowing thoughts did that shout of ours source of the stream that animates the parish with a hundred waterfalls. Father, mother, and daughter-it was hard to say which of the three was the most beloved! Yet they were not native here, but brought with them, from some distant place, the soft and silvery accents of the pure English tongue, and manners most gracious in their serene simplicity; while over a life composed of acts of charity was spread a stillness that nothing ever dis turbed-the stillness of a thoughtful pity for human sins and sorrows, yet not unwilling to be moved to smiles by the breath of joy. In those days the very heart of Scotland was dis tracted persecution scattered her prayers— and during the summer months, families remained shut up in fear within their huts, as if the snowdrifts of winter had blocked up and buried their doors. It was as if the shadow of a thunder-cloud hung over all the land, so that men's hearts quaked as they looked up to heaven-when, lo! all at once, Three gracious Visitants appeared! Imagination invested their foreheads with a halo; and as they walked on their missions of mercy, exclaimed-How beautiful are their feet! Few words was the Child ever heard to speak, except some words of prayer; but her image-like stillness breathed a blessing wherever it smiled, and all the little maidens loved her, when hushed almost into awe by her spiritual beauty, as she knelt with them in their morning and evening orisons. The Mother's face, too, it is said, was pale as a face of grief, while her eyes seemed always happy, and a tone of thanksgiving was in her voice. Her Husband leant upon her on his way to the grave-for his eye's excessive brightness glittered with death-and often, as he prayed beside the sick-bed, his cheek became like ashes, for his heart in a moment ceased to beat, and then, as if about to burst in agony, sounded audibly in the silence. Journeying on did they all seem to heaven; yet as they were passing by, how loving and how full of mercy! To them belonged some blessed power to wave away the sword tha |