52 COUNTRY ESSAYS. 



vast crags where the sea-fowl are wheeling and clanging in 

 countless flocks, prescient of the tempest, deepens their sombre 

 thoughts by the contrast it presents to its recent beauty. But 

 who shall dare to describe seas which have lately been so well 

 painted by Mr. Black ? Where the moor dies out, and cultiva- 

 tion begins to snatch stinted crops of oats from its wide ex- 

 panse, rises the Kirk, surrounded by grey lichen-tinted walls. 

 As they pass through the burial-ground, the tombstones attract 

 the strangers' notice. Wonderful figures of Death are carved 

 on some, like a boy in buttons holding a scythe, and the artist 

 has devoted extreme pains to the waistcoat buttons. Near 

 these, in letters yet deeply cut into a granite slab, they read 



" HEIR LYES ANE VERTEOOS MAN IAMES SHIOCH SOM 

 TYME BAYLIE OF HIS BROUGHE OF GLASGOW 1686." 



Spite of the sombre afternoon, with that instinctive habit of 

 playing Old Mortality so natural to man, they linger amongst 

 the graves. The mists descend from the hills they have left, 

 and draw nearer the dark enclosure, the deep, hoarse roar of the 

 river resounds from below, and where the mist -wreaths 

 occasionally lift, it seems to rush down from the skies in a 

 turbid cataract, while the wrinkled gneiss of the Ben behind 

 looms like the Matterhorn against its dark cloud-curtain, and 

 the little burn that ordinarily sparkles happily down its face 

 to-day flings itself down in masses of foam. Much heather 

 mingles with the coarse grass in the sacred enclosure, as if man 

 had made many attempts to extirpate it, but was now compelled 

 to acquiesce in its usurpation. Outside it is much blackened in 

 places where it has been burnt, while on the hill-tops it is soft 

 and carpet-like, grateful to blackcock and grouse, and ankle- 

 deep ; whereas on the border land are tufts and bushes knee- 

 deep, running into bogs where, like the Isle of Arran heather, 

 it is nearly waist-high. A few pink flowers yet linger, but most 

 of the shoots bear blanching blossom, and at every dozen 



