38 THE MANSE GARDEN. 



their warm nest, beneath the ivy, in the vernal sun ; 

 and others, white as the snow, perched on the green 

 summit, like sea-mews on the ridge of the wave. 

 For your own shelter, rather collect peat fuel all 

 summer than plant trees all winter. If your glebe 

 could spare an hundred acres you would do well to 

 cover them with larch, which, occupying such breadth, 

 will grow well at any height, and soon improve both 

 soil and climate ; but spare yourself the misery of a 

 strip, or clump, or hedge-row, of which the branches, 

 lying all to one side, like the rigging of a sloop, in- 

 stead of making you warmer, will only chill you by 

 demonstrating the effects of the incessant blast. As 

 it is easier to bear want than failure, be content with 

 bleakness; and of mental food, healthful exercise, and 

 the relish of beauty, even in the bleakest season, 

 there will be no want in your library, in pastoral 

 visitations, and the sight of clear blue sky, glassy 

 snow, the social circle, and a blazing fire, 



But circumstances so untoward as the above de- 

 scribed do but rarely attend the abodes of the Scottish 

 clergy. The kirk and manse are generally objects of 

 pleasing interest to the traveler. A great advance- 

 ment both of taste and liberality, on the part of landed 

 proprietors, appears in all the recently erected churches 

 of our picturesque country ; and the adjacent manse 

 stands, amidst the gradations of wealth, a model of 

 the golden mean as if Providence had chosen to 

 illustrate, by his servants in the church, the wisdom 

 of the prayer, "give me neither poverty nor riches." 

 The situation of the manse is, for the most part, low, 

 sheltered, and beautiful, by the woody bank of lake 

 or stream. The country being every where mountain- 



