164 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



" A town of fairy-land, a thing of earth and sky," 



while the aerial hue of the distant hills spake of the skill of 

 nature's painting a hue evidently intended to sort with, 

 to melt into the hues of the firmament. The sun lingered 

 a while on the top of his hill, as if admiring the scene, 

 and then sunk beneath it. For a time the golden clouds, 

 like the ministers of a good king deceased, strove to be 

 what he had been ; but the attempt was above their 

 power, they languished, and the scene became duller and 

 blacker, until at length the grey mantle of evening was 

 spread over it/ Are there not tones and touches 

 here of what Mr Carlyle calls nature's ' master-piece and 

 darling, the poetic soul?' That such a soul should have 

 been placed amid the desolate circumstances of William 

 Ross hopelessly poor, hopelessly ill suggests some of 

 the deepest questionings in the stern mystery of human life. 

 It was in September of 1826 that Hugh Miller made 

 his first attempt to address his countrymen in the 

 columns of a newspaper. He wrote an Ode on Greece, 

 and commissioned William Ross to hand it into the office 

 of the Scotsman. A note was at the same time addressed 

 to the editor. ' The enclosed Ode/ writes Hugh with 

 the anxious dignity of the young author, ' was written at 

 a time when the cause of the Greeks appeared desperate, 

 by one who has looked upon their glorious struggle for 

 independence with a wish and a sigh. Had his powers 

 of mind equalled his feelings in strength or vivacity, his 

 poem would rouse like the blast of a trumpet, but, alas I 

 you will soon perceive that it displays little of the art 

 perhaps little of the spirit of the poet. He who can 

 only court the Muses in the few intervals of rest which a 

 laborious occupation affords must be indeed fortunate if 

 he prove a favoured suitor/ The Ode is hardly above 

 the average standard of juvenile compositions, though 



