to have remained for three months in the back room of a
Highland blacksmith, strolling daily about the hills, and performing
some of his prodigious pedestrian feats, to the great surprise of the
rustics. He is also said to have followed the lady who became his wife
all over the lake country of Scotland in the disguise of a waiter,
serving her at table wherever the party happened to be, until the
suspicions of her father were aroused by seeing the same waiter at every
inn. Wilson then made himself known, declared his admiration for the
lady, and finally became her accepted suitor. After their marriage he
took her with him all over the Highlands on foot, assuring her that only
so could she become really acquainted with their beauties. No man
perhaps ever loved the Highlands as Christopher North loved them,--with
the possible exception of Walter Scott.--and we can truly envy his young
bride to be thus escorted through their deepest labyrinths, and
introduced to their most delicate and hidden beauties. Here he
introduced his beloved also to the cottages of the peasants, and made
her acquainted with the poetry of that life which has inspired some of
the finest of modern literature. He knew as well as Hogg, or Scott, or
Lockhart, that the characteristic romance of a people like the Scotch is
to be sought chiefly in the cottages of the poor, and that the finest
poetry of such a people has for the most part a like inspiration. And
these same peasants showed to their best advantage always when
Christopher was around. They loved him instinctively, although they knew
him only as a sportsman, or in some cases, perhaps, as a naturalist. But
his large heart always shone forth in his intercourse with the poor, and
he seemed conscious of no superiority to them, meeting them always on
the common ground of humanity, and sympathizing, in his hearty and
genial way, in all their joys and sorrows. They _took to him_ just as
dogs and children did.

And his descriptions of their cramped and narrow lives, enlivened by his
characteristic humor, are among the best pictures the world has
cherished of Scottish rural life. He did not spare their vices, but gave
many dramatic pictures of the darker sides of peasant life, with which
he gained a close acquaintance during those long foot-journeys which he
was so fond of making, living really what we would call the life of a
tramp, for long periods. Sometimes he camped with gypsies for weeks, and
at all