rds found anticipated as contrivances
of the Divine Mind, in some organism, animal or vegetable. In the same
way his sense of beauty in form or colour originates some pleasing
combination of lines or tints; and then he discovers that _it_ also has
been anticipated. He gets his chariot tastefully painted black and
yellow, and lo! the wasp that settles on its wheel, or the dragon-fly
that darts over it, he finds painted in exactly the same style. His
neighbour, indulging in a different taste, gets _his_ vehicle painted
black and blue, and lo! some lesser libellula or ichneumon fly comes
whizzing past, to justify his style of ornament also, but at the same
time to show that it, too, had existed ages before.

The evenings gradually closed in as the season waned--at first
abridging, and at length wholly interdicting, my evening walks; and
having no other place to which to retire, save the dark, gousty hay-loft
into which a light was never admitted, I had to seek the shelter of the
barrack, and succeeded usually in finding a seat within at least _sight_
of the fire. The place was greatly over-crowded; and, as in all
over-large companies, it had commonly its four or five groups of
talkers; each group furnished with a topic of its own. The elderly men
spoke about the state of the markets, and speculated, in especial, on
the price of oatmeal; the apprentices talked about lasses; while knots
of intermediate age discussed occasionally both markets and lasses too,
or spoke of old companions, their peculiarities and history, or
expatiated on the adventures of former work seasons, and the characters
of the neighbouring lairds. Politics proper I never heard. During the
whole season a newspaper never once entered the barrack door. At times a
song or story secured the attention of the whole barrack; and there was
in especial one story-teller whose powers of commanding attention were
very great. He was a middle-aged Highlander, not very skilful as a
workman, and but indifferently provided with English; and as there
usually attaches a nickname to persons in the humbler walks that are
marked by any eccentricity of character, he was better known among his
brother workmen as Jock Mo-ghoal, _i.e._ John my Darling, than by his
proper name. Of all Jock Mo-ghoal's stories Jock Mo-ghoal was himself
the hero; and certainly most wonderful was the invention of the man. As
recorded in his narratives, his life was one long epic poem, filled with
stran