d features, and with
a gentle glamoury blending with the greensward what once was the grey
granite, and investing with apparent woodiness what an hour ago was the
desolation of herbless cliffs--yet not all the changes that wondrous
nature, in ceaseless ebb and flow, ever wrought on her works, could
metamorphose out of our recognition that Glen, in which, one
night--long--long ago--

"In life's morning march, when our spirit was young!"

we were visited by a dream--a dream that shadowed forth in its
inexplicable symbols the whole course of our future life--the
graves--the tombs where many we loved are now buried--that churchyard,
where we hope and believe that one day our own bones will rest.

But who shouts from the shore, Hamish--and now, as if through his
fingers, sends forth a sharp shrill whistle that pierces the sky? Ah,
ha! we ken his shadow in the light, with the roe on his shoulder. 'Tis
the schoolmaster of Gleno, bringing down our quarry to the boat--kilted,
we declare, like a true Son of the Mist. The shore here is shelving but
stony, and our prow is aground. But strong-spined and loined, and strong
in their withers, are the M'Dougals of Lorn; and, wading up to the red
hairy knees, he has flung the roe into the boat, and followed it himself
like a deer-hound. So bend to your oars, my hearties--my heroes--the
wind freshens, and the tide strengthens from the sea; and at eight knots
an hour we shall sweep along the shadows, and soon see the lantern,
twinkling as from a lighthouse, on the pole of our Tent.

In a boat, upon a great sea-arm, at night, among mountains, who would be
so senseless, so soulless as to speak? The hour has its might,

"Because not of this noisy world, but silent and divine!"

A sound there is in the sea-green swell, and the hollows of the rocks,
that keep muttering and muttering, as their entrances feel the touch of
the tide. But nothing beneath the moon can be more solemn, now that her
aspect is so wan, and that some melancholy spirit has obscured the
lustre of the stars. We feel as if the breath of old elegiac poetry were
visiting our slumber. All is sad within us, yet why we know not; and the
sadness is stranger as it is deeper after a day of almost foolish
pastime, spent by a being who believes that he is immortal, and that
this life is but the threshold of a life to come. Poor, puny, and paltry
pastimes indeed are they all! But are they more so than those pursuits
of whic