CHAPTEE XLVII. 



Autumnal Night Meteors The Spanish Mackerel Professor Blackie's Translations from 

 the Gaelic The " Translations " of the Gaelic Society of Inverness. 



" On the Rialto, every night at twelve, 

 I take my evening's walk of meditation." 



So says the love-sick knight in Venice Preserved. We have never, 

 much as we should like it, had an opportunity of enjoying a 

 Rialto midnight meditation ramble. There is poetry and romance 

 in the very thought of it ; but we know something more poetical 

 and in every way better still, namely, a midnight meditative stroll 

 along our own beautiful silvery sanded beach, what time the sea is 

 so calm that its breathings are low and soft as the respirations 

 of a child whose sleep is undisturbed save by angel-whispered 

 dreams ; the cloudless sky above, with its waning moon and 

 thousands of sparkling stars, each star a living intelligence ; its 

 sparkling speech, and no sound to disturb the solemn silence, 

 except now and again the wakeful sea-bird's eerie scream, and the 

 voice of many waters, as the mountain torrents leap adown their 

 channels to the sea, a voice so mellowed by the distance that it 

 becomes solemn and musical as the fast-falling concluding notes 

 of a grand organ hymn the Pentecostal " Veni, Creator Spiritus, 

 for example. During the fine weather of this exceptionally fine 

 season [August 1875] we have rarely gone to bed before midnight, 

 more frequently, indeed, long after, and our last thing at night 

 has been a sea-shore stroll, a half or quarter hour so thoroughly 

 enjoyable that we have come to miss it sadly, if by adverse 



