greyhaired
minister of God, whom all Scotland venerates, hath been here from the
great city on one of his holy pilgrimages. And, lo! at his bidding, and
that of his coadjutors in the heavenly work, a Schoolhouse has risen
with its blue roof--the pure diamond-sparkling slates of
Ballahulish--beneath a tuft of breeze-breaking trees. But whence come
they--the little scholars--who are all murmuring there? We said that the
shores of Loch-Etive were desolate. So seem they to the eye of
Imagination, that loves to gather up a hundred scenes into one, and to
breathe over the whole the lonesome spirit of one vast wilderness. But
Imagination was a liar ever--a romancer and a dealer in dreams. Hers are
the realms of fiction,

"A boundless contiguity of shade!"

But the land of truth is ever the haunt of the heart--there her eye
reposes or expatiates, and what sweet, humble, and lowly visions arise
before it, in a light that fadeth not away, but abideth for ever!
Cottages, huts, shielings, she sees hidden--few and far between
indeed--but all filled with Christian life--among the hollows of the
hills--and up, all the way up the great glens--and by the shores of the
loneliest lochs--and sprinkled, not so rarely, among the woods that
enclose little fields and meadows of their own--all the way down--more
and more animated--till children are seen gathering before their doors
the shells of the contiguous sea.

Look and listen far and wide through a sunshiny day, over a rich wooded
region, with hedgerows, single trees, groves, and forests, and yet haply
not one bird is to be seen or heard--neither plumage nor song. Yet many
a bright lyrist is there, all mute till the harbinger-hour of sunset,
when all earth, air, and heaven, shall be ringing with one song. Almost
even so is it with this mountain-wilderness. Small bright-haired,
bright-eyed, bright-faced children, come stealing out in the morning
from many hidden huts, each solitary in its own site, the sole dwelling
on its own brae or its own dell. Singing go they one and all, alone or
in small bands, trippingly along the wide moors; meeting into pleasant
parties at cross-paths or at fords, till one stated hour sees them all
gathered together, as now in the small Schoolhouse of Gleno, and the
echo of the happy hum of the simple scholars is heard soft among the
cliffs. But all at once the hum now ceases, and there is a hurry out of
doors, and an exulting cry; for the shadow of Hamis