A -DAY ON THE MOORS. 



destiny, by which both parties were irresistibly led for some end in- 

 scrutable to human penetration. 



The author of the anonymous letter was discovered to be a wretched 

 empiric, who had but lately found his way into the district, and who 

 had hoped, by bringing Clinton into disgrace, to have supplanted 

 him in his practice. Appalled at the fatal and unthought-of result 

 of his villany, he was found suspended from a bed-post in his 

 apartment, having previously forwarded a confession to the injured 

 husband. 



Colonel Ashe having thrown himself upon the laws of his country, 

 was, after a minute investigation, acquitted by an intelligent and sym- 

 pathizing juty> who every where expressed their conviction that no 

 evidence of guilt attached to the memories of the deceased sufferers, 

 further than the indiscretion of having, under very extraordinory cir- 

 cumstances, cherished a romantic passion, however refined and ex- 

 alted, which it was their duty to have crushed and exterminated an 

 opinion that found its echo in the minds and hearts of every one 

 acquainted with the parties and their melancholy fate. 



W. B. H. 



A DAY ON THE MOORS. 



" The gentlemen got up betimes to shoot, 



Or hunt ; the young because they liked the sport 

 The first thing boys like, after play and fruit." Don Juan, c. 13. 



GROUSE shooting may be had in many parts of England, but it is 

 a very different affair from the same amusement in the Highland hills 

 of Scotland, holding nearly the same relation to each other as angling 

 in a well-protected fish-pond and the same sport on the banks of a 

 river, amid the wild and beautiful scenery it frequently exhibits. One 

 great charm of the muir is its entire novelty, its obvious and irre- 

 concileable difference from our every-day experience. There is a 

 feeling something similar to that produced by gazing on the ocean, 

 excited by looking over the boundless waste of heather. We are like 

 monarchs, in those solitudes, where we meet no one to dispute our 

 pretensions, and seem to breathe more freely in a region where we are 

 discharged from the ordinary trammels of society. Even in the game 

 which is the object of our pursuit, there is a peculiarity of character : 

 no one, for the first time, ever heard the bold, proud call of the grouse, 

 amid the imposing stillness of an extended muir, without being struck 

 by it: it is the note of alarm and defiance by the lord of the soil. 



No wonder that an amusement capable of producing such excite- 

 ments should be purchased by so many sacrifices of time and solici- 

 tation, that the relish should be poignant, when the gratifications are 

 so unusual in their kind. A day in the muir has something of the 

 air of an enterprise: we take the field with at least as much of pre- 

 paration as of expectation ; every thing essential to the sport must be 



