c, is now upturned
in dim confusion, and imagination, working among the hoarded gatherings
of the heart, creates out of them moods kindred and congenial with the
hurricane, intensifying the madness of the heaven and the earth, till
that which sees and that which is seen, that which hears and that which
is heard, undergo alternate mutual transfiguration; and the blind
Roaring Day--at once substance, shadow, and soul--is felt to be one with
ourselves--the blended whole either the Live-Dead, or the Dead-Alive.

We are in a Highland Hut--if we called it a Shieling we did so merely
because we love the sound of the word Shieling, and the image it at once
brings to eye and ear--the rustling of leaves on a summer sylvan bower,
by simple art slightly changed from the form of the growth of nature,
or the waving of fern on the turf-roof and turf-walls, all covered with
wildflowers and mosses, and moulded by one single season into a
knoll-like beauty, beside its guardian birch-tree, insupportable to all
evil spirits, but with its silvery stem and drooping tresses dear to the
Silent People that won in the land of peace. Truly this is not the sweet
Shieling-season, when, far away from all other human dwellings, on the
dip of some great mountain, quite at the head of a day's-journey-long
glen, the young herdsman, haply all alone, without one single being with
him that has the use of speech, liveth for months retired far from kirk
and cross--Luath his sole companion--his sole care the pasturing
herds--the sole sounds he hears the croak of the raven on the cliff, or
bark of the eagle in the sky. O sweet, solitary lot of lover! Haply in
some oasis in the wilderness, some steadfast gleam of emerald light amid
the hyacinthine-hue of the heather, that young herdsman hath pitched his
tent, by one Good Spirit haunted morning, noon, and night, through the
sunny, moonlight, starry months,--the Orphan-girl, whom years ago her
dying father gave into his arms--the old blind soldier--knowing that the
boy would shield her innocence when every blood-relation had been
buried--now Orphan-girl no more, but growing there like a lily at the
Shieling door, or singing within sweetlier than any bird--the happiest
of all living things--her own Ronald's dark-haired Bride.

We are in a Highland Hut among a Highland Snow-storm--and all at once
amidst the roar of the merciless hurricane we remember the words of
Burns--the peerless Peasant. Simple as they are, wit