their power against
us--rivers, lochs, seas, islands, cliffs, clouds, and mountains. The pen
drops from our hand, and here we are--not on the battlements of the
air-palace on the summit of Cruachan, but sitting on a tripod or
three-legged stool at the mouth of our Tent, with our MS. before us, and
at our right hand a quaich of Glenlivet, fresh drawn from yonder
ten-gallon cask--and here's to the health of "Honest men and bonny
lasses" all over the globe.

So much for description--an art in which the Public (God bless her,
where is she now--and shall we ever see her more?) has been often
pleased to say that we excel. But let us off to the Moor. Piro! Ponto!
Basta! to your paws, and O'Bronte, unfurl your tail to heaven. Pointers!
ye are a noble trio. White, O Ponto! art thou as the foam of the sea.
Piro! thou tan of all tans! red art thou as the dun-deer's hide, and
fleet as he while thou rangest the mountain-brow, now hid in heather,
and now reappearing over the rocks. Waur hawk, Basta!--for
finest-scented though be thy scarlet nostrils, one bad trick alone hast
thou; and whenever that grey wing glances from some pillar-stone in the
wilderness, headlong goest thou, O lawless negro! But behave thyself
to-day, Basta! and let the kestrel unheeded sail or sun herself on the
cliff. As for thee, O'Bronte! the sable dog with the star-bright breast,
keep thou like a serf at our heels, and when our course lies over the
fens and marshes, thou mayest sweep like a hairy hurricane among the
flappers, and haply to-day grip the old drake himself, and, with thy
fan-like tail proudly spread in the wind, deposit at thy master's feet,
with a smile, the monstrous mallard.

But in what direction shall we go, callants--towards what airt shall we
turn our faces? Over yonder cliffs shall we ascend, and descend into
Glen-Creran, where the stony regions that the ptarmigan loves melt away
into miles of the grousey heather, which, ere we near the salmon-haunted
Loch so beautiful, loses itself in woods that mellow all the heights of
Glen Ure and Fasnacloigh with sylvan shades, wherein the cushat coos,
and the roe glides through the secret covert? Or shall we away up by
Kinloch-Etive, and Melnatorran, and Mealgayre, into the Solitude of
Streams, that from all their lofty sources down to the far-distant Loch
have never yet brooked, nor will they ever brook, the bondage of
bridges, save of some huge stone flung across some chasm, or trunk of a
tree--