428 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



and it usually does those who entertain it some harm. 

 They rhyme, and rhyme, and rhyme, and deem them- 

 selves neglected because the world does not buy and 

 praise their rhymes. But for rhymes such as theirs and 

 papa's the world has no use whatever ; the article bears 

 no money value in the market ; though to devote twenty 

 minutes or so, in two years, to the manufacture of it, 

 as papa does, is productive of no manner of harm. 



' But I must pursue my narrative. I took the mail- 

 coach from Wick very early on Monday morning, and 

 travelled on, for the greater part of the way, under the 

 cloud of night to Helmsdale, where I passed a day. 

 On the morning of Wednesday I walked on along the 

 shore from Brora to Golspie, and saw at a place called 

 Strathstever a cave high up in a sandstone rock, to 

 which there ascended a flight of steps. A high wall 

 fenced round the bottom of the steps, but I contrived 

 to climb over it; and, ascending to the cave, found it 

 to be in part the work of nature, but also indebted to 

 art. The space within was about the size of a rather 

 large room, and there was a range of seats cut in the 

 live rock that ran all around it. I was told that in the 

 days of the late Duchess it used to be the scene of 

 many good pic-nics / and as it occurs in a sequestered 

 corner of the old coast line, with wild shrubs hanging 

 from the rocks all around, and with a green level 

 strip of land and the wide sea in front, one could, I 

 dare say, take one's dinner in it very sentimentally. I 

 passed Dunrobin Castle on my way ; it is an immense 

 pile, on which there has been expended money enough 

 to purchase a large estate. But though a part of it, 

 the part papa remembered of old, be very ancient, and 

 though the additions be in the newest style, the general 

 effect is that of a very large fine upstart modern build- 



