Rev. Alexander Stewart

“ The country, at all events, is looking very beautiful just now, everything so green and glad, so fresh and fair, and full of promise of a yet gladder, and gayer, and brighter day at hand, when the swallow, twittering, shall dart, a glossy meteor, in the sunlight, and the cuckoo shall challenge the truant schoolboy to repeat its well-known notes, correctly if he can. Now is the time to hear our native song-birds at their best, warbling their sweetest strains, and to decide, once for all, if it be possible, which you like best ”

“ We have never, much as we should like it, had an opportunity of enjoying a Rialto midnight meditation ramble. There is poetry and romance in the very thought of it; but we know something more poetical and in every way better still, namely, a midnight meditative stroll along our own beautiful silvery sanded beach, what time the sea is so calm that its breathings are low and soft as the respirations of a child whose sleep is undisturbed save by angel-whispered dreams; the cloudless sky above, with its waning moon and thousands of sparkling stars, each star a living intelligence ”

“ Before us lay the whole expanse of the Linnhe Loch, shimmering as if gently aboil in a flood of pale golden light. Beyond, rose what seemed the one vast unbroken range of the mountains of Ardgour, Kingerloch, and Morven, bathed in a rich dark purple [373] hue, that for the moment so thoroughly obliterated every trace of their native ruggedness, that our companion prettily observed, “Haven’t you the idea, sir, as I have, that if one were only near enough these beautiful mountains to pat them lovingly with the hand, they would feel to the touch soft and warm as a roll of velvet?” ”

“ To be all it ought to be, and be at its best, it must well up a living stream from the hot, impassioned heart; not from the marble fountain of mere intellect, which, if always clear, is not the less always cold. If ever song came, in Quintilian’s phrase, direct a pectore—from the heart, it is the song at this moment of the rival competitors in yonder thorn. It is only when one has seen and studied a bird singing after this fashion that the full force and meaning of a line in Gray’s Ode to Spring can be understood and appreciated. ”

“ Last, however, it did, longer than either they or we thought at all likely, and before the end of the week the chirping had developed into actual song, and the fluttering into a business-like activity, as if they had fully thought it over, and had decided that it was best, proverb wise, to be making some hay while the sun shone. Our attention was first of all attracted by a pair of house sparrows passing and repassing our study window, now with a stray feather, now with a bit of straw in their bills, with which they disappeared in a clump of ivy high up on a corner of the garden wall. ”

“ Nothing, indeed, can be finer than the drive through Lochaber and Badenoch to Kingussie, except perhaps the drive back again. With mountain scenery on all hands, unsurpassed even in the Highlands for wild, and savage, and solitary grandeur; with foaming torrents dashing down the steeps, torrents that at a distance and at this season look like so many threads of purest silver constantly being absorbed and inwefted with the river, that, with a voice more hushed, and a quieter, kindlier step, still gladdens and fertilises the valley as it seeks the sea ”

“ Remembering that bird-catching is a sort of profession or trade, by which a livelihood, however precarious, is encompassed, an affair of demand and supply, with the usual prosaic result of pounds, shillings, and pence—or rather of shillings and pence without the pounds, these last seldom tickling the palms or troubling the purses of the order—one would expect to find the bird-catcher a dull, mechanical rogue, a mere bird-trapper and bird-seller in the dearest market, with no more of poetry or sentiment about him than about a white-aproned poulterer. ”

“ But as one fine day succeeds another, we are very ready to fall into the error that after all it is best to take things leisurely. Where’s the need, we ask ourselves, for so much hurry and bustle? The fine weather has lasted a week; it may last a month, is indeed likely so to last; it is no more like rain to-day than it was yesterday; and thus we lapse, often unconsciously, perhaps, into a spirit of dilatoriness and procrastination, out of which only a lowering sky, and a shower that for all we know may become a flood, can fairly rouse us. ”

“ Mackenzie the bird-catcher, facile princeps the king and head of his order, called upon us to-day, and made us a present of the bonniest little redpole we ever set eyes upon. Its colouring is exquisitely beautiful, differing from the usual plumage of the species in having several little snow-white spots irregularly sprinkled over the coverts of either wing, and its neck and breast of a mingled shade of pink and crimson of exceeding richness, that makes it far and away the handsomest bird of the order we ever saw. ”

“ Everybody is now astir, and “speed the plough” is the order of the day, as well, indeed, it may, for the bud has already opened into leaf, and primroses are plentiful—so plentiful that they may be gathered in handfuls from the hazel copse and woodland glade. As for our wild-bird friends, they are in ecstasies with it all, everywhere in full and fluent song, and making love with an ardour and directness of purpose that rarely fails of its reward. ”

“ How beautiful, by the way, and how suggestive of spring and vernal delights in a land of plenitude and peace, is the following from the Song of Solomon:—“For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; the fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grapes give a good smell.” ”

“ His peculiar mode of flight, besides, and his extreme timidity, mark him out as an easy and desirable prey for any keen-eyed hawk or falcon that may be at the moment impransus, as Johnson in his early days once signed a note in London—dinnerless. The common pigeon, too, wings his flight at a comparatively low altitude, and becomes an easy shot to any one with a gun ready to hand when it passes by. Not so the true carrier pigeon, which flies at a great height, far out of range of needle-gun or artillery—out of range of human sight, in fact ”

“ Amongst our pets at present is a goldfinch cock, a very fine bird, still perfect at all points, though he must be at least a dozen years old, during ten of which he has been in our possession as a favourite cage-bird. He is a magnificent singer, and the wisest little fellow in the world; you only wonder, indeed, how such a rich flood of song, clear and long sustained, can issue from such a tiny throat, and how such a little scarlet-capped head can contain so much intelligence and sagacity. ”

“ On the beach, a little above high-water mark, just under Appin House, and within an easy stone’s cast of the public road, there is an immense spherical boulder of granite, to which there is attached a curious old story, which invests with additional interest an object deserving enough of attention for its own sake—for the sake, that is, of its huge size and almost perfect spherical form, this latter peculiarity, in the huge solid mass, making it the most remarkable thing of the kind on the mainland, at least of the West Highlands. ”

“ The raven, in short, when he pairs, which he does at the earliest moment permitted by the laws of ravendom, pairs for life, and while his first choice is spared to him he will no more think of paying court to another, be her charms what they may, than he will of dying of hunger while there is a bone to pick, a tender lamb, or braxied sheep within a circuit of a hundred miles of his eyrie, in the most inaccessible cleft of yonder beetling precipice. ”

“ Looking over the boat’s side on a fine day, we have seen them in our own Loch Leven in incalculable numbers, thick as autumnal leaves in Vallambrosa, or the stars in the Milky Way—of all shapes and sizes too, swimming about aimlessly by a slow but constant contraction and expansion, regular as the beat of a pendulum, of their umbrella-like bodies, fringed like a lady’s parasol, with a close edging of thread-like cilia, and frequently having long, pendulous tentaculæ attached to their under surface, giving the healthy animal, when busy in its proper element, a very curious appearance. ”

“ With the exception of one or two pet days, the weather of the past fortnight has been stormy and wild, with heavy falls of rain on the lowlands, and sleet and snow among the mountains. In no one season since we first became a student of the heavens, now more than a quarter of a century ago, have we had so many splendid exhibitions of aurora borealis as the last three weeks have presented us with in a series of tableaux vivants, which, while they charmed and delighted the intelligent observer, made the vulgar gape in astonishment and alarm. ”

“ When we find a man of refinement and culture and high moral character like Cowley crediting such nonsense, can we much wonder at the lengths to which fanaticism and superstition carried people in those unhappy times? To understand why Virgil, of all the ancient poets, Roman or Greek, was selected as the oracle in this mode of divination, we must remember that the Mantuan bard had the credit amongst his countrymen of having been a sorcerer or necromancer and prophet as well as a poet, something like the British Merlin, or our own Thomas the Rhymer and Michael Scott, only more famous, perhaps. ”

“ Never have we seen so many beautiful “fairy rings,” many of them almost mathematically perfect circles. Although they are always interesting and beautiful, you cannot help being a little startled, and feeling a shade of awe mingling with your curiosity and admiration, as you suddenly come upon one of these emerald rings in burnside meadow or upland glade, and contrast the vivid green and well-defined periphery of the charmed circle with the general every-day colour of the surrounding verdure. ”