380 THE JOURNEYMAN. 



spirits of the previous season ; but it has not been with- 

 out its pleasures. I have seen much that interested me, 

 and experienced much kindness. There is comfort, too, 

 in the conviction that my friend, though she has to suf- 

 fer, can suffer patiently and well ; and can indulge in 

 the hope that even pain, as the dispensation of a benevo- 

 lent God, who does not afflict willingly, must have its 

 work of mercy to perform. How good a thing it is to 



be enabled to repose our trust upon Him ! 



' My imagination is still full of the wild sand-wastes 

 of Culbin a scene so very unlike any I ever saw 

 before, but which corresponds so entirely with all I had 

 read and heard of the arid, wide-extended deserts of 

 Africa and the East. I could almost fancy, when, stand- 

 ing in one of the larger hollows, I looked round me, and 

 saw only hills of barren sand and heaps of gravel, with 

 here and there a dingy rocky-looking flat which had 

 once been vegetable soil, but which could no longer 

 support vegetable life, I could almost fancy that, having 

 anticipated the flight of time by many centuries, I had 

 arrived at the old age of creation, and witnessed the 

 earth in its dotage/ 



' Cromarty, August 25, 1834. 



1 Do not deem me careless and ungrateful. Not one 

 of your friends has thought more regarding you during 

 the last four weeks than I have, though a hundred un- 

 looked-for demands on my time, and (what proved 

 much more harassing) a nervous indolence, which of late 

 has hung much about me, prevented me from writing. 

 Burns seems to have been quite in the right in deeming 

 those disorders which we term nervous, diseases of the 

 mind, though they perhaps rather depress our confidence 

 in our powers than prostrate the powers themselves, 

 cannot reason," says he in one of his letters to Mrs 



