ciple, the fire in the midst,-as handed down from the "days of other years," that in the plan of a new two-storied house for his father, which he had procured from a London architect, one of the nether rooms was actually designed in the circular form; and a hearth like a millstone, placed in the centre, represented the place of the fire. But there was, as I remarked to Cousin George, no corresponding central hole in the room above, through which to let up the smoke; and I ques tioned whether a nicely-plastered apartment, round as a band box, with a fire in the middle, like the sun in the centre of an Orrery, would have been quite like anything ever seen in the Highlands before. The plan, however, was not destined to encounter criticism, or give trouble in the execution of it.

On Sabbaths my cousin and his two brothers attended the parish church, attired in the full Highland dress; and three handsome, well-formed men they were; but my aunt, though mayhap not quite without the mother's pride, did not greatly relish the exhibition; and oftener than once I heard her say so to her sister my mother; though she, smitten by the gallant appearance of her nephews, seemed inclined rather to take the opposite side. My uncle, on the other hand, said nothing either for or against the display. He had been a keen Highlander in his younger days; and when the inhibition against wearing tartan and the philabeg had been virtually removed, in consideration of the achievements of the "hardy and dauntless men" who, according to Chatham, conquered for England "in every quarter of the globe," he had celebrated the event in a merry-making, at which the dance was kept up from night till morning; but though he retained, I suspect, his old partialities, he was now a sobered man; and when I ventured to ask him, on one occasion, why he too did not get a Sunday kilt, which, by the way, he would "have set," notwithstanding his years, as well as any of his sons, he merely replied with a quiet "No, no; there's no fool like an old fool."

CHAPTER VI

"When they sawe the darksome nicht,
They sat them downe and cryed."

BABES IN THE WOOD.

I SPENT the holidays of two other autumns in this delightful Highland valley. On the second, as on the first occasion, I had accompanied my mother, specially invited; but the third journey was an unsanctioned undertaking of my own and a Cromarty cousin, my contemporary, to whom, as he had never travelled the way, I had to act as protector and guide. I reached my aunt's cottage without mishap or adventure of any kind; but found, that during the twelvemonth that had just elapsed, great change had taken place in the circumstances of the household. My cousin George who had married in the interim, had gone to reside in a cottage of his own; and I soon ascertained that my cousin William, who had been for several months resident with his father, had not nearly so many visitors as before; nor did presents of salmon and haunches of venison come at all so often the way. Immediately after the final discomfiture of Napoleon, an extensive course of speculation in which he had ventured to engage had turned out so ill, that, instead of making him a fortune, as at first seemed probable, it had landed him in the Gazette; and he was now tiding over the difficulties of a time of settlement, six hundred miles from the scene of disaster, in the hope of being soon enabled to be

gin the world anew. He bore his losses with quiet magnanimity; and I learned to know and like him better during his period of eclipse than in the previous time, when summer friends had fluttered around him by scores. He was a generous, warm-hearted man, who felt, with the force of an implanted instinct not vouchsafed to all, that it is more blessed to give than to receive; and it was doubtless a wise provision of nature, and worthy, in this point of view, the special attention of moralists and philosophers, that his old associates, the rand gentlemen, did not now often come his way; seeing that his inability any longer to give would have cost him, in the circumstances, great pain.

I was much with my cousin George in his new dwelling. It was one of the most delightful of Highland cottages, and George was happy in it, far above the average lot of humanity, with his young wife. He had dared, in opposition to the general voice of the district, to build it half-way up the slope of a beautiful Tomhan, that, waving with birch from base to summit, rose regular as a pyramid from the bottom of the valley, and commanded a wide view of Loch Shin on the one hand, with the moors and mountains that lie beyond; and overlooked, on the other, with all the richer portions of the Barony of Gruids, the church and picturesque hamlet of Lairg. Half-hidden by the graceful birchen trees that sprang up thick around, with their silvery boles and light foliage, it was rather a nest than a house; and George, emancipated, by his reading, and his residence for a time in the south, from at least the wilder beliefs of the locality, failed to suffer, as had been predicted, for his temerity; as the "good people," who, much to their credit, had made choice of the place for themselves long before, never, to his knowledge, paid him at visit. He had brought his share of the family library with nim; and it was a large share. He had mathematical instru ments, too, and a color-box, and the tools of his profession; in especial, large hammers fitted to break great stones; and I was generously made free of them all,-books, instruments, color-box, and hammers. His cottage, too, commanded, from

its situation, a delightful variety of most interesting objects. It had all the advantages of my uncle's domicile, and a great many

more.

The nearer shores of Loch Shin were scarce half a mile away; and there was a low long promontory which shot out into the lake, that was covered at that time by an ancient wood of doddered time-worn trees, and bore amid its outer solitudes, where the waters circled round its terminal apex, one of those towers of hoary eld, memorials, mayhap, of the primeval stoneperiod in our island, to which the circular erections of Glenelg and Dornadilla belong. It was formed of undressed stones of vast size, uncemented by mortar; and through the thick walls ran winding passages, the only covered portions of the building, for the inner area had never been furnished with a roof,in which, when a sudden shower descended, the loiterer amid the ruins could find shelter. It was a fascinating place to a curious boy. Some of the old trees had become mere whitened skeletons, that stretched forth their blasted arms to the sky, and had so slight a hold of the soil, that I have overthrown them with a delightful crash, by merely running against them; the heath rose thick beneath, and it was a source of fearful joy to know that it harbored snakes full three feet long; and though the loch itself is by no means one of our finer Highland lochs, it furnished, to at least my eye at this time, a delightful prospect in still October mornings, when the light gossamer went sailing about in white filmy threads, and birch and hazel, glorified by decay, served to embroider with gold the brown hill-sides which, standing up on either hand in their long vista of more than twenty miles, form the barriers of the lake; and when the sun, still struggling with a blue diluted haze, fell delicately on the smooth surface, or twinkled for a moment on the silvery coats of the little trout, as they sprang a few inches into the air, and then broke the water into a series of concentric rings in their descent. When I last passed the way, both the old wood and the old tower were gone; and for the latter, which, though much a ruin, might have survived for ages, I found only a long extent of dry-stone dike, and

the wide ring formed by the old foundation-stones, which had proved too massive to be removed. A greatly more entire erection of the same age and style, known of old as Dunaliscag,-which stood on the Ross-shire side of the Dornoch Frith, and within whose walls, forming, as it did, a sort of half-way stage, I used, on these Sutherlandshire journeys, to eat my piece of cake with a double relish,-I found, on last passing the way, similarly represented. Its gray venerable walls, and dark winding passages of many steps,—even the huge pear-shaped lintel, which had stretched over its little door, and which, according to tradition, a great Fingalian lady had once thrown across the Dornoch Frith from off the point of her spindle,—had all disappeared, and I saw instead, only a dry-stone wall. The men of the present generation do certainly live in a most enlightened age,—an age in which every trace of the barbarism of our early ancestors is fast disappearing; and were we but more zealous in immortalizing the public benefactors who efface such dark memorials of the past as the tower of Dunaliscag and the promontory of Loch Shin, it would be, doubtless, an encouragement to others to speed us yet further on in the march of improvement. It seems scarce fair that the enlightened destroyers of Arthur's Oven, or of the bas-relief known as Robin of Redesdale, or of the Town-cross of Edinburgh, should enjoy all the celebrity attendant on such acts, while the equally deserving iconoclasts of Dunaliscag and the tower of Loch Shin should be suffered to die without their fame.

I remember spending one singularly delightful morning with Cousin George beside the ancient tower. He pointed out to me, amid the heath, several plants to which the old High landers used to attach occult virtues,—plants that disenchant ed bewitched cattle, not by their administration as medicines to the sick animals, but by bringing them in contact, as charms with the injured milk; and plants which were used as philters either for procuring love or exciting hatred. It was, he showed me, the root of a species of orchis that was employed in making the philters. While most of the radical fibres of