340 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



the glades of a forest. Immediately on our return from 

 the banks of the Findhorn, I was almost afraid that I 

 had visited them to but little purpose. I had seen 

 so very much, and my attention had been so fatigued, 

 that my recollection of their many beautiful scenes re- 

 sembled the reflection on a lake, whose surface is par- 

 tially agitated by the wind. My mind might be com- 

 pared to the apartments of a house that has just been 

 taken possession of by a new tenant, when the pieces 

 of furniture lie higgkty pigglely on the floors, and we 

 marvel how they can ever be so arranged as to leave 

 room for anything else. But it is not so now. I have 

 now a complete picture of the river, with all its rocks 

 and its woods, its pools and and its rapids, from where 

 it sweeps through the meads of St John to where it 

 receives the waters of the Devy. The picture is rolled up 

 in a recess of my mind like a web of tapestry, and when 

 I but will it, it unfolds scene after scene, until the whole 

 is spread out. See, there are the meads, with the river 

 playing with us at bo-peep now hiding itself among 

 the bushes, now looking out and laughing as if at our 

 attempts to discover it ; and there is the heronry, with 

 the large, grey, ghost-like herons sailing over their 

 nests, that look like so many lawyers' wigs ; and yonder 

 is the little fairy-like village of Sluie, inhabited, despite 

 of its beauty, by people who have no more poetry in 

 them than if they were confined to a hempen manufac- 

 tory, and saw only walls of dingy brick and roofs of 

 red tile. 



' Observe now how suddenly the character of the 

 scenery has changed. We have just left the district 

 of secondary rock of abrupt sandstone cliffs and widely- 

 extended meadows for that of gneiss and granite ; the 

 crags have become more rugged, the banks more in- 



