move; but what would be its aspect if I saw it in the line of the plane? What would be its appearance if I saw it edgewise? There arises in my mine one of those uncertainties which so frequently convince me that I am ignorant. I cannot complete my picture, for I do not know whether all the planets move in one plane. How determine the point? A ray of light breaks in. Huzza! I have found it. If the courses of the planets as seen in the heavens form parallel lines, then must they all move in one plane; and vice verså. But hold! That would be as seen from the sun,-if the planets could be seen from the sun. The earth is but one of their own number, and from it the point of view must be disadvantageous. The diurnal motion must perplex. But no. The apparent motion of the heavens need not disturb the observation. Let the course of the planets through the fixed stars be marked, and though, from the peculiarity of the point of observation, their motion may at one time seem more rapid, and at another more slow, yet if their plane be, as a workman would say, out of twist, their lines will seem parallel. Still in some doubt, however: I long for a glance at an Orrery, to determine the point; and then I remember that Ferguson, an untaught man like myself, had made more Orreries than any one else, and that mechanical contrivances of the kind were the natural recourse of a man unskilled in the higher geometry. But it would be better to be a mathematician than skilful in contriving Orreries. A man of the Newtonian cast of mind, and accomplished in the Newtonian learning, could solve the problem where I sat, without an Orrery. "From the thing contemplated, I pass to the consideration of the mind that contemplates. O! that wonderful Newton, respecting whom the Frenchman inquired whether he ate and slept like other men. I consider how one mind excels another; nay, how one man excels a thousand; and, by way of illustration, I bethink me of the mode of valuing diamonds. A single diamond that weighs fifty carats is deemed more valuable than two thousand diamonds each of which only weighs one. My illustration refers exclusively to the native powers; but may it not, I ask, bear also on the acquisition of knowledge? Every new idea added to the stock already collected is a carat added to the diamond; for it is not only valuable to itself, but it also increases the value of all the others, by giving to each of them a new link of association. "The thought links itself on to another, mayhap less sound:- Do not the minds of men of exalted genius, such as Homer, Milton, Shakspeare, seem to partake of some of the qualities of infinitude? Add a great many bricks together, and they form a pyramid as huge as the peak of Teneriffe. Add all the common minds together that the world ever produced, and the mind of a Shakspeare towers over the whole, in all the grandeur of unapproachable infinity. That which is infinite admits of neither increase nor diminution. Is it not so with genius of a certain altitude? Homer, Milton, Shakspeare, were perhaps men of equal powers. Homer was, it is said, a beggar; Shakspeare an illiterate wool-comber; Milton skilled in all human learning. But they have all risen to an equal height. Learning has added nothing to the illimitable genius of the one; nor has the want of it detracted from the infinite powers of the others. But it is time that I go and prepare supper." I visited the policies of Conon House a full quarter of a century after this time,―walked round the kiln, once our barrack, -scaled the outside stone-stair of the hay-loft, to stand for half a minute on the spot where I used to spend whole hours seated on my chest, so long before; and then enjoyed a quiet stroll among the woods of the Conon. The river was big in flood: it was exactly such a river Conon as I had lost sight of in the winter of 1821, and eddied past dark and heavy, sweeping over bulwark and bank. The low-stemmed alders that rose on islet and mound seemed shorn of half their trunks in the tide; here and there an elastic branch bent to the current, and rose and bent again; and now a tuft of withered heath came floating down, and now a soiled wreath of foam. How vividly the past rose up before me!-boyish day-dreams, forgotten for twenty years, the fossils of an early formation of mind, produced at a period when the atmosphere of feeling was warmer than now, and the immaturities of the mental kingdom grew rank and large, like the ancient cryptogamia, and bore no specific resemblance to the productions of a riper time. The season I had passed in the neighborhood so long before, the first I had anywhere spent among strangers,-belonged to an age when home is not a country, nor a province even, but simply a little spot of earth, inhabited by friends and relatives; and the verses, long forgotten, in which my joy had found vent when on the eve of returning to that home, came chiming as freshly into my memory as if scarce a month had passed since I had composed them beside the Conon. Here they are, with all the green juvenility of the home-sickness still about them,-a true petrifaction of an extinct feeling : TO THE CONON. Conon, fair flowed thy mountain stream, Through blossomed heath and ripening field, Thy peaceful waves I first beheld. Calmly they swept thy winding shore, When harvest's mirthful feast was nigh,When, breeze-borne, with thy hoarser roar Came mingling sweet the reapers' cry. But now I mark thy angry wave Rush headlong to the stormy sea; Wildly the blasts of winter rave, Sad rustling through the leafless tree. Loose on its spray the alder leaf Hangs wavering, trembling, sear and brown; And dark thy eddies whirl beneath, And white thy foam comes floating down. Thy banks with withered shrubs are spread; Hark! ceaseless roars thy stream below; And yet, though red thy stream comes down,- Unmourn'd the sweets of autumn die; Not that dull grief delights to see Vex'd Nature wear a kindred gloom; Not that she smiled in vain to me, When gaily prank'd in summer's bloom. Nay, much I lov'd, at even tide, Through Brahan's lonely woods to stray, To mark thy peaceful billows glide, And watch the sun's declining ray. But yet, though roll'd thy billows fair To mark a scene that childhood loved, Now winter reigns: these hills no more Shall sternly bound my anxious view; Soon, bent my course to Croma's shore, Shall I yon winding path pursue. Fairer than here gay summer's glow To me there wintry storms shall seem: Then blow, ye bitter breezes, blow, And lash the Conon's mountain stream! も CHAPTER XI. "The bounding pulse, the languid limb, MONTGOMERY. THE аpprenticeship of my friend William Ross had expired during the working season of this year, when I was engaged at Conon-side; and he was now living in his mother's cottage in the parish of Nigg, on the Ross-shire side of the Cromarty Frith. And so, with the sea between us, we could no longer meet every evening as before, or take long night-walks among the woods. I crossed the Frith, however, and spent one happy day in his society, in a little, low-roofed domicile, witl. a furzeroughened ravine on the one side, and a dark fir-wood on the other; and which, though picturesque and interesting as a cottage, must, I fear, have been a very uncomfortable home. His father, whom I had not before seen, was sitting beside the fire as I entered. In all except expression he was wonderfully like my friend; and yet he was one of the most vapid men I ever knew,—a man literally without an idea, and almost without a recollection or a fact. And my friend's mother, though she showed a certain kindliness of disposition which her husband wanted, was loquacious and weak. Had my quondam acquaintance, the vigorous-minded maniac of Ord, seen William and his parents, she would have triumphantly referred to |