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light to fancy ; and yet, in the recollection of at least one 

 very pleasing poet, its hills, and islands, and blue arm of the 

 sea, its brown moory plain, and tall naked house rising in 

 the midst, must have been surrounded by a sunlit atmosphere 

 of love and desire, bright enough to impart to even its tamest 

 features a glow of exquisiteness and beauty. Malcolm the 

 poet was born, and spent his years of boyhood and early youth, 

 in the tall naked house ; and the surrounding landscape is 

 that to which he refers in his " Tales of Flood and Field," as 

 rising in imagination before him, bright in the red gleam of 

 the setting sun, when, on the steep slopes of the Pyrenees, 

 the " silent stars of night were twinkling high over his head," 

 and the " tents of the soldiery glimmering pale through the 

 gloom." The tall house is the manse of the parish of Frith 

 and Stennis ; and the poet was the son of the Rev. John 

 Malcolm, its minister. Here, when yet a mere lad, dream- 

 ing, in the quiet obscurity of an Orkney parish, far removed 

 from the seat of war and the literary circles, of poetic cele- 

 brity and military renown, he addressed a letter to the Duke 

 of Kent, the father of our Sovereign Lady the reigning Mo- 

 narch, expressing an ardent wish to obtain a commission in 

 the army then engaged in the Peninsula. The letter was such 

 as to excite the interest of his Royal Highness, who replied 

 to it by return of post, requesting the writer to proceed forth- 

 with to London ; for which he immediately set out, and was 

 received by the Duke with courtesy and kindness. He was 

 instructed by him to take ship for Spain, in which he arrived 

 as a volunteer ; and, joining the army, engaged at the time 

 in the siege of St Sebastian, under General Graham, he was 

 promoted shortly after, through the influence of his generous 

 patron, to a lieutenancy in the 42d Highlanders. He served 

 in that distinguished regiment on to the closing campaign of 

 the Pyrenees ; but received at the battle of Toulouse a wound 

 so severe as to render him ever after incapable of active bodily 



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