being churches militant with a vengeance, and
Scots believers perpetual crusaders the one against the other, and
missionaries the one to the other. Perhaps Robert's originally tender
heart was what made the difference; or, perhaps, his solitary and
pleasant labour among fruits and flowers had taught him a more sunshiny
creed than those whose work is among the tares of fallen humanity; and
the soft influences of the garden had entered deep into his spirit,

"Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade."

But I could go on for ever chronicling his golden sayings or telling of
his innocent and living piety. I had meant to tell of his cottage, with
the German pipe hung reverently above the fire, and the shell box that
he had made for his son, and of which he would say pathetically: "_He
was real pleased wi' it at first, but I think he's got a kind o' tired
o' it now_"--the son being then a man of about forty. But I will let all
these pass. "'Tis more significant: he's dead." The earth, that he had
digged so much in his life, was dug out by another for himself; and the
flowers that he had tended drew their life still from him, but in a new
and nearer way. A bird flew about the open grave, as if it too wished to
honour the obsequies of one who had so often quoted Scripture in favour
of its kind: "Are not two sparrows sold for one farthing? and yet not
one of them falleth to the ground."

Yes, he is dead. But the kings did not rise in the place of death to
greet him "with taunting proverbs" as they rose to greet the haughty
Babylonian; for in his life he was lowly, and a peacemaker and a servant
of God.

VI

PASTORAL

To leave home in early life is to be stunned and quickened with
novelties; but to leave it when years have come only casts a more
endearing light upon the past. As in those composite photographs of Mr.
Galton's, the image of each new sitter brings out but the more clearly
the central features of the race; when once youth has flown, each new
impression only deepens the sense of nationality and the desire of
native places. So may some cadet of Royal Ecossais or the Albany
Regiment, as he mounted guard about French citadels, so may some officer
marching his company of the Scots-Dutch among the polders, have felt the
soft rains of the Hebrides upon his brow, or started in the ranks at the
remembered aroma of peat-smoke. And the rivers of home are dear in
particular to al