3i8 NETHER LOCHABER. 



bell-sound with wliich we are all so familiar. Mickle, in his fine 

 ballad Qumnor Hall, has a reference to the same superstition : — 



" The death-bell thrice was heard to ring, 

 An aerial voice was heard to call, 

 And thrice the raven flapp'd its wing 

 Around the towers of Cumnor Hall." 



To sneer at such beliefs, and pooh-pooh them superciliously and 

 from a philosophical stand-point, is easy; it has been tried with 

 but little satisfactory result. The true philosopher will be more 

 and more disposed, the more he deals with such matters, and the 

 closer he examines them, to fall back on Hamlet's dictum, " That 

 there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in 

 our philosophy." So ineradicable is superstition of this sort, that 

 you may battle with it long enough — we have battled with it for 

 years — and find it at last by no means the weaker of your assaults, 

 no matter how cautiously and circuitously you select to deal 

 with it. 



After an unusually mild and open season, we have just had a 

 taste of downright winter in the bitterly cold gales and drifting 

 snow-storms of the last few days. Our weatherwise old folks are 

 of course delighted that winter in proper dress and form has come 

 at long last ; better late than never, is the cry, and a bright and 

 warm spring in due course is confidently predicted. 



