A DAY OX THE MOORS. ()39 



provided, for nothing that has been omitted can be supplied in the 

 lonely glens or mountains. A number of contingencies may interrupt 

 it altogether : the want of a flint, the loss of a screw-driver, a defi- 

 ciency of wadding, all, or any in this dismal train of evils, are fatal ; 

 for there is no means of repairing them, save by returning to your 

 cot ; and some of these mishaps, even there, may not admit of remedy. 

 For some, or all of these reasons, every one feels the difference be- 

 tween grouse and partridge shooting. The latter amusement is merely 

 an affair of walking ; varied only from the highway to the. fields, 

 pursued amidst lanes and farm-yards ; conveyed to the ground in the 

 well-hung tilbury, refreshed by sandwiches and noyeau, directed to 

 the game by a keeper, who assists to pass the enclosures, and, occa- 

 sionally, with a more dexterous hand than our own, to fill the ample 

 bag. All this is but the work of a few hours, we have changed no- 

 thing except our dress ; fu stain takes the place of our morning coat, 

 and water-proof shoes, that too frequently keep in the water they 

 cannot keep out, displace our ordinary walking boots. We see from 

 our windows, perhaps, the very fields we mean to beat ; we are fami- 

 liar, from their first flight, with the covies we seek to destroy ; we do 

 not leave the bustle of society, by withdrawing from it for a short 

 space ; we quit the breakfast table, and join the dinner table in the 

 evening. In a word, there is no interruption to the ordinary current 

 of our ideas, nor any thing in the scenery to suggest new trains of 

 thinking, or awaken unfelt associations, by the powerful magic of 

 nature, in her wild and solitary modes of existence. I well recollect 

 my first campaigns on the Highland hills of Scotland j I had fixed 

 my quarters in a small inn by the road side, occasionally frequented 

 by a few travellers, and at this season of the year by one or two 

 sportsmen. Two beds, in the only apartment, were occupied by my- 

 self and friend ; the walls showed some symptoms of a taste for the 

 Arts, by the display of most valiant-looking portraits, arranged with 

 as little regard to chronology as to history. His late Majesty was 

 stuck beneath the Pope, and Bonaparte pranced most manfully beside, 

 King William ; stucco parrots, and wax birds'-nests, with gum- 

 flower roses, that seemed sadly out of place amid the surrounding 

 heather, completed the pendant ornaments of the chamber; and bare 

 benches, to accommodate the meetings of the country people on 

 Sundays, when returning from the kirk, eked out the furnishing of 

 the apartment. A square of glass was wanting to the window, which 

 had been supplied by a hat, pushed into the aperture from the inside ; 

 and the landlady, from a love of order, as I presume, had put aside 

 into it several small articles, so that the spectacles of the gudeman, a 

 Gaelic Bible, a string of muir-fowl eggs, and a night-cap, might be 

 seen arranged in this unassuming bureau. In spite of all this gar- 

 niture, the look of the room was abundantly waste and cheerless. The 

 chimney was filled (I could not say decorated) with a piece of haw- 

 thorn, whose withered flowers recorded the time when it was sepa- 

 rated from the parent stem, to conceal the unsecured grate ; and the 

 floor sanded over, made a grating noise, while we bustled about dis- 

 posing of our luggage, listening to the landlady's apologies, but, in 

 reality, coqueting with her bonnie daughter, who had followed her 



