A MORNING SONG. 109 



is dead. No particulars, but merely the fact that he is 

 not iu 53 Queen Street. Of Shilly I have less fear ; he is 

 in better hands ; at the same time, if he too should have 

 lost his life as well as his tail, make a clean breast of it : 

 my forgiveness is unbounded where there is no malice 

 ■prepense. 



" This morning, soon after sunrise — it was a morning 

 worthy of paradise — I landed for an hour in Brodick Bay, 

 in Arran, and walked up a valley which would do honour 

 to the central glories of Switzerland. The hunters might 

 be up in Arabia, but the few cottages which nature rather 

 than art seemed to have placed in the centre of this mag- 

 nificent solitude, gave no sign of life. It seemed as if the 

 creative sun, which gladdens all the other valleys of the 

 earth, had never darted his beams over the gigantic battle- 

 ments of those desert dwellings. The cottages were scarcely 

 distinguishable from the gray crags of granite which lay 

 scattered around them. A few aged sycamores, where 

 ' ruin greenly dwelt/ overshadowed some grassy plots where 

 cattle might have pastured, had death and desolation not 

 reigned supreme. I had finally made my way into the 

 centre of this enormous grave ; the morning, as I thought, 

 was growing darker and darker still. I feared ' total 

 eclipse,' and was about to retrace my steps toward the 

 narrow pass by which I had entered, at this time entirely 

 concealed by a rocky barrier, when all at once a low sweet 



