i6o NETHER LOCHABER. 



" Resign the honours of their form 



At Winter's stormy blast, 

 And leave the naked leafless plain 



A desolated waste. 

 " Yet soon reviving plants and flow'rs 



Anew shall deck the plain ; 

 The woods shall hear the voice of Spring, 



And flourish green again/' 



We have no patience with your innovators, wliether in matters 

 of Church or State. We do not deny, indeed, that certain innova- 

 tions may he sometimes permissible, even if not absolutely necessary, 

 that by their adoption things may be done more decently and in 

 order ; nor do we object even to a radical change in a given direc- 

 tion, when such a change has by common consent become 

 imperative. We believe, in fact, in development and progress ; 

 only let that progress and development be slow and sure, that 

 they may be lasting ; gradual, that they may be graceful, and fall 

 easily into their place, without unnecessary jostling or disturbance 

 of the established order of things. Festina lente — hasten slowly — 

 was the motto of the learned Erasmus, and quoad hoc it is ours 

 also ; and, if you care to know it, is our creed in affairs political 

 and ecclesiastical. Some people, however, seem born to be in- 

 novators and nothing else, and the innovator, pure et simple, is 

 surely a pest. He seems to have been born never to know peace 

 himself, and never, as much as in him lies, to permit others a 

 moment's rest or peace, or quiet either. Your thoroughbred, 

 full-blooded innovator always reminds us of our first housekeeper 

 — a very good woman in her way, too, but who had a perfect 

 craze for shifting and reshifting, adjusting and readjusting, as well as 

 dusting and redusting every article of furniture throughout the house, 

 at all sorts of unseasonable hours, and when to ordinary mortals 

 such labour seemed utterly uncalled for, When we were at 

 home she went " at it " in out-of-the-way closets and bedrooms as 

 much and as often as the immediate calls of the moment per- 



