eager complacency, which has since often been a key to unlock the fountain of my tearful memories, and sometimes a "Perge" to animate and cheer me on my way. It seemed to say, "Be, if you can, a hero, like those whose lives you are about to read." He and my mother were going on a visit, some miles off in the country. They returned at night, and were scarcely home, till my kind, good father was seized with his last illness. It was of an inflammatory nature. He had been engaged to preach in the village of, but had other business fixed, ere earth was, for that Sabbath-day, and kept the eternal engagement. Amidst a weeping family, an anxious, inquiring flock, and the still sunshine of an autumnal Sabbath-day, he drew his last breath. My very heart bleeds, at the date of twenty-nine years, when I see again that chamber as it was then the spirit of life fading on that open, manly countenance and earnest eye (fixed to the last on her he loved so tenderly); the spirit of death creeping up his strong frame, and breathing before it a ghastlier yellow than that of the leaves withering without, upon his cheek and brow; my mother fixed in speechless, tearless, astonished sorrow beside the bed; the rest of us dissolved in grief; the desk on which he had so often inscribed his ardent simplicities, standing near; the library, where he had melted down hours to moments in study and research, behind in the shadow; and the grey sunlight, trembling like a finger as it touched every object in the chamber of death. I recal what must have been then seen; but for the time, I was conscious of nothing but the centre of the room,—the mortified body and the departing spirit of a father.

Three days after, he was carried to his last resting-place. The day was clear, quiet, and somewhat cold. There was a certain sternness in the air, as if it refused to sympathise with the sorrows of frail mortality. Never had I seen the mountains looking more proud and defiant, and never did the Rennie seem to run with a calmer and more unmoved current. One whose own heart was sad, felt almost angry at Nature for

not being more in harmony with his feelings, and wished for a lowering sky, a wailing wind, or even a savage storm. It was a large funeral. Some of the gentry in the neighbourhood were there to testify respect to one whom the whole country-side esteemed. The elders of the church were of course there, and some of the neighbouring ministers, and the village en masse. Many a grey-plaided shepherd had come down from his hills to follow to the tomb one who had taught his family and counselled himself. But perhaps the most affecting figure was that of an aged man, who had been once a friend of his minister, but had, through some untoward circumstances, become estranged, nay, a keen opponent. He, too, had joined the crowd of mourners, and there were tears in his eyes as he saw the dust lowered into the grave. When the funeral was over, he came up to the chief mourner, one of my elder brothers, wrung his hand warmly, uttered a word or two in a choking voice, and hurried away. He had buried that day the enmity of many years. His own windingsheet was then high up on his breast, and not long after he was laid near his ancient minister.

My own feelings I can hardly venture to describe. At times the whole scene had a dream-like unreality, and again it burst on my consciousness like a storm of grief. And here, then, was my father, to whom I felt more as a companion and friend than in any cold, distant relationship of conventional respect or fear-my kind, playful, indulgent father-torn from my side for ever, and consigned to the companionship of the clods of the valley and of the nameless worms of the grave.. I felt a sensation of unutterable dreariness and desolation. I felt, too, "I am a child no more; I have lost in one day my father and my childhood. I must now make ready to leave these pastoral glens, where I have sheltered long, and cowered in the shadow of obscurity, and prepare to front, battle with, and, if possible, gain a victory over, that strange, hollow thing, that big bugbear, the world.”

Before repairing to College, where I had been destined to

go ere my father's death, I spent some pensive yet pleasing days in the country. I enjoyed a melancholy but profound pleasure in listening to some remarkable funeral discourses, preached on my father's memory, especially to those of a Mr. Elphinstone, a man of genius, whose name will be found in an after-part of these Memoirs. I looked at all my favourite scenes, under the light of the fading autumn, blended with that of the "joy of grief," and found them more beautiful than ever. Everything-the river, swollen, red, and with redder leaves swimming on its current-the woods, clad like "Joseph's coat in their many colours"-the leaves, rustling along the path, or falling to their own sad music-the stubble-fields, silently watching the silent weaving of the gossamer-webs above them—the mountains, stripped of the rich green of summer, and wearing thin, sere grass and russet fern upon their granite ribs-the sloe, bramble, and hawthorn bushes bearing their belated fruit while all around was barren-and the weak but beautiful sun shivering on the verge of the southern sky, were all suffused with a tenderer sadness, a softer, dimmer, holier day, from my recent loss; and when night fell, I saw the great stars of the Plough trembling, like mighty tears, such "tears as angels weep," over the northern mountains. I bade adieu to my early friends; had one parting meeting with Fergus MacAlpin at the river-side; one strange talk with "Lucifer;" one subdued "Gaudeamus" even with Henry Thomson and Michael Green; and then, on a November morning, after kissing through tears my mother's lips, I crossed the wild moorlands to the south of Strath-Rennie, and proceeded on my way to Glasgow College. My father had been himself educated there, and preferred it to the nearer college of Aberdeen; and thither, therefore, partly too because I had a maternal uncle and some other friends in that city, I wended my solitary way.

CHAPTER II.

EDUCATION, AND GLASGOW.

THE day I left the village was one of those quiet, sober, but bright days, which seem, not to speak it profanely, shuffled out of October into the darker month. The scene

of my walk was a wilderness of mosses and moors, through which a clear white road passed, like an innocent life through the confusions, sins, and miseries of a wicked world. But on this day the solitary place itself seemed quietly glad in the last smile of the season. The heather had lost its purple bloom, but the grass was green; the stones shone in the sunshine; the dun hill-sides were illuminated; and the streams bickered cheerfully by. I had only to turn my head, too, to see the giant peaks of the hill-country I had left behind, lifting themselves up through the clear sky, some of them already tinged with the slightest touch of the great snowbrush of winter. I had much in the past and in the future which might well have made me melancholy; but what can depress the bubbling blood of fourteen? I walked on accordingly with lively steps, occasionally glancing at a little copy of Horace I had with me, sometimes fixing my eyes on the landscape, so wildly beautiful as it perforce appeared in that serene and belated autumn light, and sometimes venting my feelings aloud, secure here of no audience except the sheep, which went baa-ing to and fro along the sides of the braes. At a particular point, where the road curves round a corner, and brings you to a little nook, a fine clear stream, after glimmering through a grassy margin, sinks below a small bridge, to find its way to a larger watercourse in the hollow of the glen; there I sat down and ate my mid-day meal,

E

which consisted of bread and cheese, and a draught of the cold water rushing by. This was a spot where I had often so rested when I passed through this desolate tract in summer days, when the water, not quite so cold, was far more grateful, as I dipped my bread in it; and when, as I sat luxuriously on the ledge of the little bridge, or on the greensward beside it, I had the summer bee humming around me, the summer wind swooning on my temples, and the butterfly skimming past through the air. Now all was silent save the trickling of the little stream, and the whole life of the wilderness seemed slumbering in a sleepy yet cold sun. Yet I spent there one happy hour; and although I slept not as I had done in the same place in the summer at other times, I did not omit to dream; and my dream, whatever it was, refreshed me for prosecuting my farther walk. I reached Dee-side that evening, after a walk of forty miles, and slept at Banchory.

The next day I pursued my way across the wilder, but far more interesting mountain tract stretching from the Dee to the Esk. It is a district to the last degree uneven, like the tossings of an ocean arrested and stiffened-steep hills hanging over narrow hollows, and rivers winding through difficult passes to gain the lower country, and often seeming to jar with the rocks and stern convolutions which oppose their progress to the eastern main. This day I lingered rather more than the last, and dined at a farm-house situated at the foot of the gigantic Cloch-na-ben-a hill noted for a vast stone which stands like a wart on its brow, and which sends down a stream into a wooded glen, dividing two very steep heights from each other. This glen, in summer, is a winding fringe of exquisite beauty, amidst the steep, frowning mountains. The stream passes by a shooting-lodge, and then runs under a solitary and picturesque farm-house, called Bridge of Dye, which crowns the northern of the two heights. The scene, even in winter, had a stern and sullen beauty, and was gilded by a bright day. About sunset, I found myself on the top of the Cairn-a-Mount-the summit of