358 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



for indulging in this mood; I am light-hearted and 

 foolish, and indulge in it too seldom ; and yet there is 

 surely nothing which should be so conducive to lightness 

 of heart as the truths on which it dwells. 



' When last in the parish of Nigg with John (Swan- 

 son), we ascended together the eminence from whence 

 two short months before I had the pleasure in your 

 company of looking over so wide and diversified a pros- 

 pect. But oh, what a melancholy change has that 

 brief period produced. You remember how the distant 

 mountain seemed melting into the sky and of a hue 

 scarcely less transparent ; how the patches of wood on 

 the range of hills which rise towards the north, touched 

 and but barely touched by the Midas-like hand of Au- 

 tumn, seemed so many pieces of embroidery on a ground 

 of purple ; how the Frith of Cromarty lay in all its 

 extent before us, a huge mirror over which two little 

 silvery clouds were coquetting with their own shadows ; 

 how the mirror-frame on either side was embossed 

 with trees and fields and villages, all enveloped in 

 brightness and beauty ; how the distant friths and the 

 great sea beyond were sleeping beside their shores as if, 

 having sworn an eternal peace with them, they were 

 soliciting confidence by showing how much they trusted; 

 and how even the very rocks themselves, bold and 

 rugged, and abrupt, as they are at all times, were so 

 coloured by the season, and so relieved by the sunshine 

 that their very savageness seemed but a sterner beauty ! 

 But why all this ? a single recollection will do more 

 for you than fifty such descriptions. You remember, 

 then, that the scene w r as one of the most pleasing, 

 beautiful in all its parts, sublime as a whole. When I 

 last gazed on it I deemed it one of the dreariest I ever 

 saw. All the higher grounds were covered with snow 



