the Elgin Cathedral;--to the
veritable John Shanks, the eccentric keeper of the building, who could
never hear of the Wolf of Badenoch, who had burnt it four hundred years
before, without flying into a rage, and becoming what the dead man would
have deemed libellous;--to the font, too, under a dripping vault of
ribbed stone, in which an insane mother used to sing to sleep the poor
infant, who, afterwards becoming Lieutenant-General Anderson, built for
poor paupers like his mother, and poor children such as he himself had
once been, the princely institution which bears his name. And then,
after passing from the stone font to the institution itself, with its
happy children, and its very unhappy old men and women, Mr. Forsyth
conveyed us to the pastoral, semi-Highland valley of Pluscardine, with
its beautiful wood-embosomed priory--one of perhaps the finest and most
symmetrical specimens of the unornamented Gothic of the times of
Alexander II. to be seen anywhere in Scotland. Finally, after passing a
delightful evening at his hospitable board, and meeting, among other
guests, my friend Mr. Patrick Duff--the author of the "Geology of
Moray"--I returned with my young wife to Cromarty, and found her mother,
Mr. Ross, Mr. Stewart, and a party of friends, waiting for us in the
house which my father had built for himself forty years before, but
which it had been his destiny never to inhabit. It formed our home for
the three following years. The subjoined verses--prose, I suspect,
rather than poetry, for the mood in which they were written was too
earnest a one to be imaginative--I introduce, as representative of my
feelings at this time: they were written previous to my marriage, on one
of the blank pages of a pocket-Bible, with which I presented my future
wife:--

TO LYDIA.

Lydia, since ill by sordid gift
Were love like mine express'd,
Take Heaven's best boon, this Sacred Book,
From him who loves thee best.
Love strong as that I bear to thee
Were sure unaptly told
By dying flowers, or lifeless gems,
Or soul-ensnaring gold.

I know 'twas He who formed this heart
Who seeks this heart to guide;
For why?--He bids me love thee more
Than all on earth beside.[16]
Yes, Lydia, bids me cleave to thee,
As long this heart has cleaved:
Would, dearest, that His other laws
Were half so well received!

Full many a change, my only