420 RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 



The father was succeeded in his parish by the brother of 

 Malcolm, a gentleman to whom, during my stay in Ork- 

 ney, I took the liberty of introducing myself in his snug little 

 Free Church manse at the head of the bay, and in whose 

 possession I found the only portrait of the poet which exists. 

 It is that of a handsome and interesting-looking young man, 

 though taken not many years before his death ; for, like the 

 greater number of his class, he did not live to be an old one, 

 dying under forty. His brother the clergyman kindly ac- 

 companied me to two quarries in the neighbourhood of his 

 new domicile, which I found, like almost all the dry-stone 

 fences of the district, speckled with scales, occipital plates, 

 and gill-covers, of Osteolepides and Dipteri, but containing 

 no entire ichthyolites. He had taken his side in the Church 

 controversy, he told me, firmly, but quietly ; and when the 

 Disruption came, and he found it necessary to quit the old 

 manse, which had been a home to his family for well nigh 

 two generations, and in which both he and his brother had 

 been born, he scarce knew what his people were to do, nor 

 in what proportion he was to have followers among them. 

 Somewhat to his surprise, however, they came out with him 

 almost to a man ; so that his successor in the parish church 

 had sometimes, he understood, to preach to congregations 

 scarcely exceeding half a dozen. I had learned elsewhere 

 how thoroughly Mr Malcolm was loved and respected by his 

 parishioners ; and that unconsciousness on his own part of 

 the strength of their affection and esteem, which his state- 

 ment evinced, formed, I thought, a very pleasing trait, and 

 one that harmonized well with the finely-toned unobtrusive- 

 ness arid unconscious elegance which characterized the genius 

 of his deceased brother. A little beyond the Free Church 

 manse the road ascends between stone walls, abounding in 

 fragments of ichthyolites, weathered blue by exposure to the 

 sun and wind ; and the top of the eminence forms the water- 



