A SUMMER RAMBLE AMONG THE HEBRIDES. 89 



fellow-men, and in which, there shall be no such wrongs per- 

 petrated as it is my present purpose to record, " new hea- 

 vens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." Well 

 sung the Ayrshire ploughman, when musing on the great 

 truth that the present scene of being " is surely not the last," 

 a truth corroborated since his day by the analogies of a 

 new science, 



" The poor, oppressed, honest man, 



Had never sure been horn, 

 Had not there been some recompense 

 To comfort those that mourn." 



It was Sabbath, but the morning rose like a hypochondriac 

 wrapped up in his night-clothes, gray in fog, and sad with 

 rain. The higher grounds of the island lay hid in clouds, far 

 below the level of the central hollow ; and our whole pro- 

 spect from the deck was limited to the nearer slopes, dank, 

 brown, and uninhabited, and to the rough black crags that 

 frown like sentinels over the beach. Now the rime thicken- 

 ed as the rain pattered more loudly on the deck ; and even 

 the nearer stacks and precipices showed as unsolid and spectral 

 in the cloud as moonlight shadows thrown on a ground of 

 vapour ; anon it cleared up for a few hundred yards, as the 

 shower lightened ; and then there came in view, partially at 

 least, two objects that spoke of man, a deserted boat-har- 

 bour, formed of loosely piled stone, at the upper extremity of 

 a sandy bay; and a roofless dwelling beside it, with two ruin- 

 ous gables rising over the broken walls. The entire scene 

 suggested the idea of a laud with which man had done for 

 ever ; the vapour-enveloped rocks, the waste of ebb-un- 

 covered sand, the deserted harbour, the ruinous house, 

 the melancholy rain-fretted tides eddying along the strip of 

 brown tangle in the foreground, and, dim over all, the thick, 

 slant lines of the beating shower ! I know not that of them- 

 selves they would have furnished materials enough for a finish- 



