Like spirits of hope from the mists of drear sorrow, Sing on, for a joy to the sorrowing is given: There's a sweetness in sadness that few hearts can know; The sweetness of sadness bereft, shall in Heaven Charm angels to silence, with rapturous flow. An Incident in the Bighlands. BY HENRY D. MOORE. I've seen sae mony changefu' years, I wander in the ways o' men, Alike unknowing and unknown; I bear alane my lade o' care; For silent, low on beds o' dust, Lie a' that would my sorrows share.-BURNS. THE banks and braes, all o'er the sunny highlands, were clothed in the gayest dress of the luxuriant summer time. Beauty and fragrance and song, wooed the senses with delight, and threw around existence the charms of Paradise. The face of nature-sky and earth-was clothed with smiles, and gladsomeness beamed forth from opening flower, rolling river, and sloping hill-side, as far as eye could reach, even to the far mountains, which, like pillars, seemed to tower in their misty heights, to meet and bear the descending sky. There is such beauty, grace and charm in Scottish scenery, that it is privileged to contest the palm with all other scenery, not excepting that which blooms beneath Italia's softening, glowing sky. Here is a rest indeed for the painter's eye, and the poet's spirit. Genius is here ravished of her noblest conceptions of natural beauty, and the numbers of poesy roll in strains as sweet as the flow of its mid-hill river, and as soft as the bloom of its lily and rose. Here the painter casts his eye of fire, and kindling with the warmth and glow of the fast-coming blessing of his inspiration, feels his mind and soul expanding to embrace the scene around him. This child of genius catches by the swift tenacity of his fire-eye, the colours that adorn the scene, in all their variety of light and shadow, and lo! the canvas images the landscape, which almost kindles beneath its own sunlight, is beautiful with its own roses, is fragrant with its own lilies, and is musical with its own birds; and one, in gazing there, would almost warm in its sun, or repose and slumber in its grateful shade. But the scenery of this romantic spot of earth is not attractive in the summer-tide only. For when Autumn, stealing o'er the hills and waters, has chased away the summer glory, and plucked the blossoms from the bush, and the leaves from the forest, and scattered them with its winds o'er wave and mead; and when, with his loud. roaring blast through the bending forest at midnight, or the spreading of his black banner against the mid-day sun, he announces the approach of stern, chilling winter, even then, in the extreme oppositeness of the scene, is there majesty and grandeur. And so, when all is duly prepared and announced by the forerunner, and Winter steps from the north throne, where the everlasting snows descend, and the eternal icebergs linger, and upon the swiftness of the north wind hangs his clouds, and comes with trumpet blast and fleecy robe to the caverns of Ben Nevis, to the silent retreats of Cairngorm, and to the spectral grandeur of Ben Lawers; and there treasuring up his wrath in gathering storms, descends at times over the moss and over the moor, rearing in his path the impregnable snow-drift, and swiftly driving his form and power on his winds, touches Loch Lomond with his sceptre, which, quickly ceasing its dark, tumultuous flow, lies still in bonds of ice; or throws his shadow over the Clyde, or moves over the flow of Ayr, making both as pulseless marble; or steps his foot and blows his magic wind upon the waters of Doon, whose swift rolling torrents refuse awhile his chains and frown upon his encroachments, but soon subdued, bend in silence to his mandate,-here does the soul expand under the influence of true sublimity and terrible grandeur. The hawthorn hangs in shrouds of snow, and glitters with depending icicles; the hill-side is overspread, the foresttop is crowned, the distant and dark mountain presents here and there a barren rock, a sudden precipice, a fearful crag, relieved by shadowy drifts, tossed by the winds into shapes fantastic, of ruined castles and crumbling walls and desolated palaces. Summer and Winter, the grace and beauty, the grandeur and terrible majesty of Scottish scenery. But to my simple story. It was in the time of warmth and beauty and fragrance, and towards the close of a most delightful day, that I with staff in hand, ascended a cheerful height,-one of a chain of hills lifted up one after and above another, like waves in the after swell of the storm,-green and sunny, between which lay most beautiful vales glowing with flowers and bending with perfume, and from which was overlooked the peaceful flow of Ayr. The sun was preparing to bid adieu to the happy land over which he had shed his beams, and soon would descend behind the far-west hills. The joy and serenity of nature were undisturbed. All sounds were nature's sweetest tones, combining to utter forth nature's simplest, sweetest harmony. The rippling river which lay beneath me and moved on afar its silvery course, was singing, as its little jewelled waves fell against some moss-grown stone, or bathed the grass and flowers which bordered along its gently sloping banks. The hills about me, covered with flowery thickets and overhung with vines, received the sunset light, as if baptized with liquid gold, and there the wild birds mingled their carols of joy, syllabling praise to Heaven. The rustling of the leaves of the forest was heard as if the bass-string of the wind-harp was stirred. The concentrated beauty of sight and sound and sentiment were here; nature within, in harmony with nature without. Thoughts crowded thick and fast upon me. My soul was pinioned. All feeling was blessing, and all thought seemed sudden inspiration. My eye caught the mirrored heavens in the still surface of the beautiful Ayr. The sunset glory, shed abroad over the firmament, seemed more |