4 2 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



ing party, with which he hallooes the dogs on to some luckless 

 " maukin," and keeps pace with the fleetest of her pursuers, 

 till she " carries away her cocked fud unscathed for the third 

 time ; nor can there any longer be the smallest doubt in the 

 world in the minds of the most sceptical, that she is what all 

 the country-side have long known her to be a witch." But 

 the activities of this true son of the heather are not half 

 exhausted. See him bird-nesting, salmon-fishing, " bickering" 

 with snowballs, fighting Jack the Tinker, shooting wild ducks 

 in the moonlight, when December's frost holds earth and water 

 in the hardest fetters, dog-fighting with gipsies after Falkirk 

 Tryst had ever any one more intense delight in thews and 

 sinews, and the mere animal joys of living? Sit down now on 

 this heather cushion, with the graceful birches waving above, 

 and look down on beautiful Loch Tummel, while the enchanter 

 tells of village love and the sanctities of cottage life in the High- 

 lands, and draws out the severe yet simple sentiments of piety 

 which bring together the minister's scattered flock every Sabbath 

 from distant shielings and shepherds' huts, seldom visited save 

 by the autumnal sportsman, and you recognise the tender, al- 

 most feminine undercurrent of feeling in the Professor's heart, 

 and own that he can skilfully touch the deepest chords of the 

 music of humanity. Now that political hatreds and insensate 

 party spirit have so greatly moderated their intensity, the man 

 emerges all the brighter from the clouds of partizanship. Long 

 may Scotland be proud of one of her warmest-hearted sons ! 



Besides poetry and eloquence, the sister art of painting has 

 caught marvellous inspiration in these later days of nature-study 

 from the heather which past generations looked on with con- 

 tempt, as signifying the nakedness of the land, and shutting 

 them out from the acquisition of gold. Turning to Shakespeare 

 as a guide to men's thoughts in the Elizabethan age, Gonzales 

 can only think of heath as the last straw a drowning man would 

 catch at. It is something more worthless than even Virgil's 



