Various

“ The vernal weather, that had come so early in the year as to induce a fear that it would not be lasting, seemed, contrary to that foreboding of change, to become every day more mild and genial, and the spirit of beauty, that had at first ventured out over the bosom of the earth with timid footsteps, was now blending itself more boldly with the deep verdure of the ground, and the life of the budding trees. ”

“ In summer there is beauty in the wildest moors of Scotland, and the wayfaring man who sits down for an hour’s rest beside some little spring that flows unheard through the brightened moss and water-cresses, feels his weary heart revived by the silent, serene, and solitary prospect. On every side sweet sunny spots of verdure smile towards him from among the melancholy heather; unexpectedly in the solitude a stray sheep, it may be with its lambs, starts half-alarmed at his motionless figure; insects, large, bright, and beautiful, come careering by him through the desert air ”

“ A large and very substantial dinner forms an agreeable variety in the entertainments of the day; and in the evening the scene of elegant conviviality is transferred to the ball-room, where dancing again commences with renovated spirit. The perpetual motion, also, seems at last to be discovered in that of the three-lugged cog, which circulates unceasing as the sun;—like that, diffusing life and gladness in its growing orbit round the room, and kissed in its course by so many fair lips, bears off upon its edges much of their balmy dew, affording a double-refined relish to its inspiring draughts. ”

“ One arm of little Edmund was instantly loosened from his grandfather’s shoulder, and passed round the neck of the faithful old Oriental, who kissed alternately the little cherub hand of his nursling, and the hitherto iron one of the proud laird. It softened, and the hard heart with it! It was long since love—pure unsophisticated love, and spontaneous reverence—had been Morison’s portion, and they were proportionally sweet. He buried his face in his grandson’s clustering ringlets. We heard a groan deep as when rocks are rending, and the earth heaves with long pent-up fires. ”

“ I sat down on a small grassy mound between the cottage ruins and the old garden plot, and gazed, with all the hitherto untasted pleasure of a stranger, on the beautiful scene before me. On the right, and beyond the river, the mouldering relics of the ancient religion of Scotland ascended, in unassimilating beauty, above the humble kirk of New Abbey and its squalid village; farther to the south rose the white sharp cliffs of Barnhourie; while on the left stood the ancient Keeps of Cumlongan and Torthorald, and the Castle of Caerlaverock. ”

“ Blessed be the tide that will break over and bury ye for ever! Sad to mariners, and sorrowful to maids and mothers, has the time been you have choked up this deep and bonnie bay. For evil were you sent, and for evil have you continued. Every season finds from you its song of sorrow and wail, its funeral processions, and its shrouded corses. Woe to the land where the wood grew that made ye? Cursed be the axe that hewed ye on the mountains, the bands that joined ye together, the bay that ye first swam in, and the wind that wafted ye here! Seven times have ye put my life in peril ”

“ At some seasons I would have bartered my life—nay, my soul’s weal—for one hour of their society.”
“And yet ye bid me do that which ye confess to be above your efforts! You lost but your wife and child; I lose my own life—my fame—my Mary.”
“But your father”——
“Peace! I have no father—no friend—no love. To-morrow’s sun will see me as I was before my being; all of me gone, except my name coupled with hated murderers and traitors. Away, away, old man! it drives me to madness. But, if the spirits of the dead can burst the sepulchre, I will be near my murderer. ”

“ Yet what peace to the murderer, whose red title not the fairest duellist, who has slain a human being, can to his own conscience reduce? The cold glittering leaves on the trees, struck with a quick, momentary gust, made him start as he passed; and the shadowy foot and figure of the lover, coming round from the back window of the lone cottage, was to his startled apprehension the avenger of blood at hand. As he looked afar along the glittering road, the black fir trees upon the edge of the moor seemed men coming running down to meet him ”

“ The eye of the passing traveller may mark them, or mark them not, but they stand peacefully in thousands over all the land; and most beautiful do they make it, through all its wide valleys and narrow glens—its low holms, encircled by the rocky walls of some bonny burn—its green mounts, elated with their little crowning groves of plane-trees—its yellow corn-fields—its bare pastoral hill-sides, and all its heathy moors, on whose black bosom lie shining or concealed glades of excessive verdure, inhabited by flowers, and visited only by the farflying bees. ”

“ With what agony must they have gazed upon the distant sails, gliding away over the deep, but keeping far aloof from the rock of desolation, and have heard the shrieks which they sent over the flood, in the vain hope of their reaching some distant ship, mocked by the doleful scream of the sea-fowl! How must their horrors have been aggravated by the far-off view of their native hills, lifting their lonely peaks above the wave, and awakening the dreadful consciousness that they were still within the grasp of humanity, yet no arm stretched forth to save them ”

“ All our readers have heard and sung of “Tibby Fowler o’ the glen;” but they may not all be aware that the glen referred to lies within about four miles of Berwick. No one has seen and not admired the romantic amphitheatre below Edrington Castle, through which the Whitadder coils like a beautiful serpent glittering in the sun, and sports in fantastic curves beneath the pasture-clad hills, the gray ruin, the mossy and precipitous crag, and the pyramid of woods, whose branches, meeting from either side, bend down and kiss the glittering river, till its waters seem lost in their leafy bosom. ”

“ The green mountain of Criffell ascended beside us; and the bleat of the flocks from its summit, together with the winding of the evening horn of the reapers, came softened into something like music over land and sea. We pushed our shallop into a deep and wooded bay, and sat silently looking on the serene beauty of the place. The moon glimmered in her rising through the tall shafts of the pines of Caerlaverock; and the sky, with scarce a cloud, showered down on wood, and headland, and bay, the twinkling beams of a thousand stars, rendering every object visible. ”

“ Every eye was turned with a scrutinizing glance upon the stranger. In height he could not exceed five feet nine, but his whole frame was the model of muscular strength; his features open and manly, but deeply sunburnt and weather-beaten; his long, glossy, black hair, curled into ringlets by the breeze and the billow, fell thickly over his temples and forehead; and whiskers of a similar hue, more conspicuous for size than elegance, gave a character of fierceness to a countenance otherwise possessing a striking impress of manly beauty. ”

“ O, it is wonderful, it’s truly wonderful! that bare and death-cold body, dragged from the darkest pool of Corrie, with its hands filled with fine wool, wears the perfect similitude of my own Elphin! I’ll tell ye—the spiritual dwellers of the earth, the fairyfolk of our evening tale, have stolen the living body, and fashioned this cold and inanimate clod to mislead your pursuit. In common eyes, this seems all that Elphin Irving would be, had he sunk in Corriewater; but so it seems not to me. Ye have sought the living soul, and ye have found only its garment. ”

“ When I look on the pale cheek, which now and then regains more than its former colour in some feverish flush—on the sunk eye which occasionally beams with a short and transient hope—on the pale lips which utter low sounds of comfort to those around—and, more especially, on that whole countenance and appearance which bespeak patient resignation and a trust in that Word which has said there is another and a better world—I cannot help thinking that the being, even in her mortality, is already a deserving inmate of that place where all is immortality. ”

“ Wretch that I am, I bring evil tidings into the dwelling of my dearest friend! These ribbons, they are worn for his sake—they become well, as he thinks, the auburn of your bonny hair;—that blue gown is worn to-night because he likes it;—but, Mary, will you curse me to my face, when I declare before the God that made us, that that man is pledged unto me by all that is sacred between mortal creatures; and that I have here in my bosom written promises and oaths of love from him, who, I was this morning told, is in a few days to be thy husband? ”

“ A few warm sunny days, and a few breezy and melting nights, have seemed to create the sweet season of spring out of the winter’s bleakest desolation. We can scarcely believe that such brightness of verdure could have been shrouded in the snow, blending itself, as it now does, so vividly with the deep blue of heaven. With the revival of nature our own souls feel restored. Happiness becomes milder, meeker, and richer in pensive thought; while sorrow catches a faint tinge of joy, and reposes itself on the quietness of earth’s opening breast. ”

“ It was on Sabbath that her face brightened, and her step became accelerated—that her spectacles were carefully wiped with the corner of a clean neck-napkin, and her Bible was called into early and almost uninterrupted use. It was on Sabbath that her devotions were poured forth—both in a family and private capacity—with an earnestness and a fervency which I have never seen surpassed in manse or mansion, in desk or pulpit. There is, indeed, nothing in nature so beautiful and elevating as sincere and heartfelt, heart-warming devotion. ”

“ But Walter Harden was oftener with her than before, and ere the harvest moon should hang her mild, clear, unhaloed orb over the late reapers on the upland grain-fields, had Amy promised that she would become his wife. She saw him now in his own natural light—the best, the most intelligent, the most industrious, and the handsomest shepherd over all the hills; and when it was known that there was to be a marriage between Walter Harden and Amy Gordon, none felt surprised, although some, sighing, said it was seldom, indeed, that fortune so allowed those to wed whom nature had united. ”

“ The cold became intense, and her little feet and hands were fast being benumbed into insensibility.
“It is a fearful change,” muttered the child to herself; but still she did not fear, for she had been born in a moorland cottage, and lived all her days among the hardships of the hills. “What will become of the poor sheep!” thought she,—but still she scarcely thought of her own danger, for innocence, and youth, and joy, are slow to think of aught evil befalling themselves, and, thinking benignly of all living things, forget their own fear in their pity for others’ sorrow. ”

“ I also talked to James of Montrose concerning thee; for I hold that he hath overstretched the limit of his power, and that there is no cause of death in thee: but he treated me as one that mocketh, when I unfolded the revealed will of God, that the earth will not cover Innocent blood; wherefore turn, I beseech thee, thine eyes to the Lord,—for vain is the help of man. Look to the glory on the other side of the grave. Fear not them which can kill the body, but after that can have no power; but fear Him that can cast both soul and body into hell. ”

“ Peter’s soul was free, bounding, and buoyant as the wind that carolled in a zephyr, or shouted in a hurricane, upon his native hills; and his body was thirteen stone of healthy substantial flesh, steeped in the spirits of life. He had been long married, but marriage had wrought no change upon him. They who suppose that wedlock transforms the lark into an owl, offer an insult to the lovely beings who, brightening our darkest hours with the smiles of affection, teach us that that only is unbecoming in the husband which is disgraceful in the man. ”

“ Even a stranger could scarcely fail to note with curious interest that small round face with nose and chin attenuated by years—those peering eyes, where a twinkle of youth yet breaks through the dim of eld—that wrinkled brow, shaded with a brown frontage-braid of borrowed hair—and that compact little head, encased in a snow-white cap with its broad band of black ribbon. ”

“ Hark ye, Hawkins, you are a stranger in this city, I presume, and cannot reasonably be expected easily to provide yourself with a second; moreover, no one would back such a villain;—now, will you follow me this moment to my lodgings, accept from my hand one of a pair of pistols, and let us, without farther formality, retire to a convenient place, and do ourselves a pleasure and a justice. I am weary of living under the same sun with you, and if I can shed your foul blood beneath yon chaste stars of God, I would willingly die for it. ”

“ Beautiful as of yore the valley smiles around, with its girdling ridges belted with woods, and dotted with pleasant dwellings; and away to westward, shutting in the peaceful scene from the tumult of the great world, rise the twin Lomond hills, glorious at morn and eve, when bathed in the beams of the rising and setting sun. The good old lady, who had spent a large portion of her life in “Auld Reekie,” when narrow Bristo Street and Potterrow and the adjoining courts were inhabited by the better class of citizens, took kindly to the country cottage, and she was fond of the garden and flowers. ”

“ At the same instant a scream of more than earthly note arose from the vessel anchored near the island; a lady descended from its side into a boat, and, rowing to the land, rushed up to the bloody scene, where she fell upon the neck of the conqueror, and pressed him with the most frantic eagerness to her bosom. The widow of Stephen Bruntfield at length found the yearnings of twenty years fulfilled,—she saw the murderer of her husband, the slayer of her two sons, dead on the sward before her, while there still survived to her as noble a child as ever blessed a mother’s arms. ”

“ It was a heavy trial, but my duty to myself in the first place, and to my neighbours in the second, roused me up to withstand it; so, making a spend like a greyhound, I left the hindside of my shirt in her grasp, like Joseph’s garment in the nieve of Potiphar’s wife, and up the stairs head-foremost among the flames.
Mercy keep us all! what a sight for mortal man to glower at with his living eyes! The bells were tolling amid the dark, like a summons from above for the parish of Dalkeith to pack off to another world ”

“ Need her anguish and despair be painted, when she saw her lovely boy borne aloft in the air in the talons of an eagle? To run, to scream, to shout, was the first movement of the frenzied mother; but vain had been her efforts, had she not been almost immediately joined by some of her neighbours, whose united efforts made the fatigued bird quit its prey and drop it into the loch. Many a willing heart, many an active hand, was ready to save the boy. He was delivered to his mother, but, alas! only as a drenched and nerveless corse. Human nature could endure no more. ”

“ Such were the thoughts that calmly followed each other in my reverie, as I stood beside the Elder’s grave, and the trodden grass was again lifting up its blades from the pressure of many feet, now all, but a few, departed. What a simple burial had it been! Dust was consigned to dust—no more. Bare, naked, simple, and austere is in Scotland the service of the grave. It is left to the soul itself to consecrate, by its passion, the mould over which tears, but no words, are poured. ”

“ It was not nine o’clock when the storm came down from Glen-Scrae upon the Black-moss, and now in a pause of silence the clock struck twelve. Within these three hours William and Hannah had led a life of trouble and of joy, that had enlarged and kindled their hearts within them; and they felt that henceforth they were to live wholly for each other’s sakes. His love was the proud and exulting love of a deliverer, who, under Providence, had saved from the frost and the snow, the innocence and the beauty of which his young passionate heart had been so desperately enamoured ”