ingle or on the summer brae, perhaps with as enlightenedcertainly with as imagination-overmastering a delight as ever enchained the spirits of the high-born and highly-taught to their splendid copies lying on richly-carved tables, and bound in crimson silk or velvet, in which the genius of painting strives to embody that of poetry, and the printer's art to lend its beauty to the very shape of the words in which the bard's immortal spirit is enshrined. "The art of seeing" has flourished for many centuries in Scotland. Men, women, and children, all look up to her loveful blue or wrathful black skies, with a weather-wisdom that keeps growing from the cradle to the grave. Say not that 'tis alone "The poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind Sees God in clouds, and hears Him in the wind!" In Scriptural language, loftier even than that, the same imagery is applied to the sights seen by the true believer. Who is it "that maketh the clouds His chariot ?" The Scottish peasantry-Highland and Lowland-look much and often on nature thus; and they live in the heart of the knowledge and of the religion of nature. Therefore do they love Thomson as an inspired bard-only a little lower than the Prophets. In like manner have the people of Scotland-from time immemorial-enjoyed the use of their ears. Even persons somewhat hard of hearing, are not deaf to her waterfalls. In the sublime invocation to Winter, which we have quoted-we hear Thomson recording his own worship of nature in his boyish days, when he roamed among the hills of his father's parish, far away from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here eternise on earth" his joy-but many millions have had souls to join religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded, "These, as they change, Almighty Father, these VOL. X. S THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT. BEAUTIFUL as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more delightful even than the green—and we prayed that the fine fleecy flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles. Then, it was a year in itself—a whole life. We remember slides a quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one leg now-not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream. They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry of "swoop-swoop" is heard still-but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars-those in the sky, as well as those below the ice-till again the tumult subsided— and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray, seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep, like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee! Again we see—again we sit in the Snow-house, built by us boys out of a drift in the minister's glebe, a drift-judging by the steeple, which was sixty-about twenty feet high—and purer than any marble. The roof was all strewed with diamonds, which frost saved from the sun. The porch of the palace was pillared-and the character of the building outside was, without any servile imitation-for we worked in the glow of original genius, and none of us had then ever seen itself or its picture-wonderfully like the Parthenon. Entering, you found yourself in a superb hall, lighted up-not with gas, for up to that era gas had not been used except in Pandemonium -but with a vast multitude of farthing candles, each in a turnip stuck into the wall-while a chandelier of frozen snowbranches pendent from the roof set that presence-chamber in a blaze. On a throne at the upper end sat young Christopher North-then the king of boys, as now of men—and proud were his subjects to do him homage. In niches all around the sidewalls were couches covered with hare, rabbit, foumart, and fox's skins-furnished by these animals slain by us in the woods and among the rocks of that sylvan and moorland parish -the regal Torus alone being spread with the dun-deer's hide from Lochiel Forest in Lochaber. Then old airs were sung-in sweet single voice-or in full chorus that startled the wandering night traveller on his way to the lone Kingswell; and then in the intermediate hush, old tales were told "of goblin, ghost, or fairy," or of Wallace Wight at the Barns of Ayr or the Brig o' Stirling—or, a glorious outlaw, harbouring in caves among the Cartlane Craigs-or of Robert Bruce the Deliverer, on his shelty cleaving in twain the skull of Bohun the English knight, on his thundering war-steed, armed cap-à-pie, while the King of Scotland had nothing on his unconquered head but his plain golden crown. Tales of the Snow-house! Had we but the genius to recall you to life in undying song! Nor was our frozen hall at times uncheered by the smiles of beauty. With those smiles was heard the harmless lovewhisper, and the harmless kiss of love; for the cottages poured forth their little lasses in flower-like bands, nor did their parents fear to trust them in the fairy frozen palace, where Christopher was king. Sometimes the old people themselves came to see the wonders of the lamp, and on a snow-table stood a huge bowl-not of snow-steaming with nectar that made Hyems smile as he hung his beard over the fragrant vapour. Nay, the minister himself—with his mother and sister—was with us in our fantastic festivities, and gave to the architecture of our palace his wondering praise. Then Andrew Lyndsey, the blind Paisley musician, a Latin scholar, who knew where Cremona stood, struck up on his famous fiddle jig or strathspey -and the swept floor, in a moment, was alive with a confused flight of foursome reels, each begun and ended with kisses, and maddened by many a whoop and yell-so like savages were we in our glee, dancing at the marriage of some island king! Countless years have fled since that Snow-palace melted away—and of all who danced there, how many are now alive! Pshaw as many probably as then danced anywhere else. It would never do to live for ever-let us then live well and wisely; and when death comes-from that sleep how blessed to awake! in a region where is no frost-no snow-but the sun of eternal life. Mercy on us! what a hubbub !—Can the harriers be hunting in such a snowfall as this, and is poor pussy in view before the whole murderous pack, opening in full cry on her haunches? Why-Imagination, thou art an ass, and thy long ears at all times greedy of deception! 'Tis but a country Schoolhouse pouring forth its long-imprisoned stream of life as in a sudden sunny thaw, the Mad Master flying in the van of his helterskelter scholars, and the whole yelling mass precipitated, many of them headlong, among the snow. Well do we know the ; fire-eyed Poet pedagogue, who, more outrageous than Apollo, has "ravished all the Nine." Ode, elegy, epic, tragedy, or farce-all come alike to him ; and of all the bards we have ever known-and the sum total cannot be under a thousand-he alone, judging from the cock and the squint of his eye, labours under the blessing or the curse-we wot not whilk it be—of perpetual inspiration. A rare eye, too, is his at the setting of a springe for woodcocks, or tracking a maukin on the snow. Not a daredevil in the school that durst follow the indentations of his toes and fingers up the wall of the old castle, to the holes just below the battlements, to thrust his arm up to the elbows harrying the starlings' nests. The corbies ken the shape of his shoulders, as craftily he threads the wood; and let them build their domicile as high as the swinging twigs will bear its weight, agile as squirrel, and as foumart ferocious, up speels, by the height undizzied, the dreadless Dominie; and should there be fledged or puddock-haired young ones among the wool, whirling with guttural cawings down a hundred feet descent, on the hard rooty ground floor from which springs pine, oak, or ash, driven out is the life, with a squelsh and a squash, from the worthless carrion. At swimming we should not boggle to back him for the trifle of a cool hundred against the best survivor among those water-serpents, Mr Turner, Dr Bedale, Lieutenant Ekenhead, Lord Byron, Leander, and Ourselves—while, with the steel shiners on his soles, into what a set of ninnies in their ring would he not reduce the Edinburgh Skating Club? Saw ye ever a Snowball Bicker? Never! Then look there with all the eyes in your head-only beware of a bash on the bridge of your nose, a bash that shall dye the snow with your virgin blood. The Poet-pedagogue, alias the Mad Dominie, with Bob Howie as his Second in Command, has chosen the Six stoutest striplings for his troop, and, at the head of that Sacred Band, offers battle to Us at the head of the whole School. Nor does that formidable force decline the combat. War levels all foolish distinctions of scholarship. Booby is Dux now, and Dux Booby-and the obscure dunce is changed into an illustrious hero. "The combat deepens-on, ye brave, And charge with all thy schoolery!" Down from the mount on which it had been drawn up in battle array, in solid square comes the School army, with shouts that might waken the dead, and inspire with the breath of life the nostrils of the great Snow-giant built up at the end of yonder avenue, and indurated by last night's frost. But there lies a fresh fall—and a better day for a bicker never rose flakily from the yellow East. Far out of distance, and prodigal of powder lying three feet deep on the flats, and heaped up in drifts to tree and chimney-top, the tirailleurs, |