THE FALLEN BEBCH-TEEE. 271 



Of this year the record may be fitly closed by the fol- 

 lowing letter to his young friend, Miss Taylor: — 



" Woodtille, 22d October 1850. 

 " I am glad now that you did not pay us a visit last 

 summer, because by this time it would have been over, 

 and you might have found it so tiresome as to have never 

 renewed it, and so we would have parted perhaps for ever 

 — a thought too mournful to be indulged in during a me- 

 lancholy autumn-day, when all I see before me is a jack- 

 daw moping over some withered leaves. But next summer 

 is still to come. I shall be another year down hill, you 

 another year up. The woods of Killiecrankie will probably 

 be much the same as they have been for several seasons, 

 nature being rather a renewable kind of thing, in spite of 

 floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes. By the by, a friend 

 of mine was passing through Killiecrankie several months 

 ago, on the top of Her Majesty's mail, when an enormous 

 beech-tree, which had been long declining from the hill- 

 side, gave way in a moment, and came down upon the 

 road head-foremost with such a crash as had not been 

 heard in that country for a thousand years. It took several 

 woodmen several hours to clear a path for man and beast; 

 and there is now a piece of bright blue sky looking down 

 upon the brightened verdure of a mossy glade, where for- 

 merly the roe- deer might have screened themselves alike 



