COQUET SIDE. 495 



English wardens of the marches, the rambler/ with fishing-rod in 

 hand,, and creel on back, containing a pair or two of stockings, a 

 shirt, and the volume he loves best (say Childe Harold, for it is 

 fittest for the mountains and streams), in a few hours finds himself 

 among the verdant hills of Kidland lordship, with the immense 

 heights of Cushit-Law and Cheviot, looking down upon his solitary 

 path. Coquet is yet but a burn, though the hill-streams, which, at 

 every hundred yards, leap into her embrace, will presently make her 

 a very respectable matronly river. From the top of Cheviot, or of 

 its rival in loftiness, Cushit-Law, the view is grand beyond descrip- 

 tion. Lie down, or kneel, for that is the posture the overpowering 

 magnificence of the scene causes you to choose, and look round, above, 

 and beneath. What a tumbled tempest of mountains ! as if the waves 

 of some mighty ocean had been arrested in a storm, and fixed for 

 ever, silent and motionless, in the forms which they now wear. Such 

 the poet, if not the philosopher, may deem was the manner of their 

 formation. Vast and powerful, but calm and peaceful, they seem 

 to repose, their crushing energy and massy strength quiescent, like 

 that of sleeping lions. The small silver stream of the Coquet pur- 

 sues its course far down the winding valley ; and the mind, over- 

 powered with the magnificence around, loses its image with regret as 

 it escapes from the sight among the distant hills. A thousands rills 

 are seen sliding into it on both sides, till the river seems like the 

 trunk of some tree, of which the innumerable silver branches are 

 formed by the smaller streams. What sound is that a hundred feet 

 beneath, and what form is it that breaks away from the cliff with the 

 rapidity of thought, and dives deep down into the dark valley ? See ! 

 he has stopped in his sheer descent, and hovers for a moment ere he 

 rises into the clouds. It is a gray eagle; he has sped away from his 

 eyrie, as if he spurned the presence of man, and was enraged that his 

 solitary retreat was polluted by human footstep ; and now he rises in 

 circling rounds, as if by a spiral aerial staircase, until the gazer's eye is 

 dazzled by the sunlight which he can look upon, and his form seems to 

 have melted away in the overpowering radiance. But lo ! what is this ? 

 he has again come into sight, and is descending with fluttering wing 

 and shrieks that echo through the hollows of the neighbouring cliffs. 

 Rapid, rapid, his fall increases in speed as he nears the earth ; and 

 there, at length he has struck the hill side within twenty yards of his 

 nest, and after a rebound from the elastic sod, which of itself must 

 have killed him, he lies still and stone-dead. Wonderful ! he has 

 been stricken with death even when at the pinnacle of his proud 

 flight, and hurled down to the earth from the very gates of heaven. 

 It is not so. Look at the small dark animal, which lies beside him, 

 its body crushed to a mummy, but its teeth still fixed in the throat 

 of the regal bird, whence the blood is yet flowing. That insignificant 

 reptile, whose form declares it to be one of the weazel tribe, has 

 slain the monarch of the air. It must have fastened upon him in his 

 own eyrie, and clung to him during his descent and his long flight 

 upwards, until at last it reached a vital part. We remember once to 

 have skinned a red deer with a pen-knife on the summit of Ben-a- 

 Venochar in the forest of Athole, and to have carried the hide and 



