CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



Highland mountains have since dawn been astir, and 

 thundering to the impetuous sportsmen's joys! Our 

 spirit burns within us, but our hmbs are palsied, and 

 our feet must brush the heather no more. Lo! how 

 beautifully these fast-travelling pointers do their work 

 on that black mountain's breast! intersecting it into 

 parallelograms, and squares, and circles, and now all 

 astoop on a sudden, as if frozen to death! Higher up 

 among the rocks, and cliffs, and stones, we see a strip- 

 ling, w^hose ambition it is to strike the sky with his 

 forehead, and wet his hair in the misty cloud, pursuing 

 the ptarmigan now in their variegated summer-dress, 

 seen even among the unmelted snows. The scene shifts 

 — and high up on the heath above the Linn of Dee, 

 in the Forest of Braemar, the Thane — God bless him 

 — has stalked the red-deer to his lair, and now lays 

 his unerring rifle at rest on the stump of the Witch's 

 Oak. Never shall Eld deaden our sympathies with the 

 pastimes of our fellow men any more than with their 

 highest raptures, their profoundest griefs. Blessings 

 on the head of every true sportsman on flood, or field, 

 or fell; nor shall we take it at all amiss should any 

 one of them, in return for the pleasure he may have 

 enjoyed from these our Fyttes, perused in smoky 

 cabin during a rainy day, to the peat-reek flavour 

 of the glorious Glenlivet, send us, by the Inverness 

 coach, Aberdeen steam-packet, or any other rapid 

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