e and a large family. Yet, tormented as he is by present poverty
and past arrears, he eyes the future with serenity. I heard him sing a
Gaelic poem of his own composition, containing twenty-five verses of
intricate versification, and at the conclusion he was far less exhausted
than any of the company. Then, again, Torquil M'Gillivray, schoolmaster
of a rainy township on the sea-edge of one of the Skye _nishes_, has
tranquillity of mind as great as any of the Seven Sages ever enjoyed. He
is perfectly contented with his lot of rural dominie, and when I, in my
presumption, ventured to speak critically of certain social conditions
in his beloved island, he rebuked me by crooning tenderly the following
lines:

"Jerusalem, Athens, and Rome,
I would see them before I die,
But I'd rather not see any one of the three,
Than be exiled for ever from Skye!"

We all know what a unique poetical gem Wordsworth composed after he
heard a Highland girl singing at Inversnaid. I witnessed many fine
examples of concentrated joy which might have resulted in metre if I had
not had the presence of mind to pull myself up and refrain. One was at
Acharacle, where in front of a croft a young fellow was dancing the
Highland fling with such whole-souled and consuming zeal that I stood
transfixed with wonder and awe. He was alone, and I came suddenly upon
him at a sharp bend of the road. He threw his legs about him with such
regardless glee, that for a moment I was afraid one of them would get
unfixed and come spinning through the air to hit me. I watched him like
one fascinated for fully ten minutes. When at length he saw me, the
glory flowed suddenly off his legs; he subsided into a country bumpkin,
and beat a hasty retreat indoors. "If Greek dances were as artistic as
this one," said I, "and if the lines of each chorus had a reference to
the diversity of the steps, it is little wonder that God in His
providence should have sent us so many commentators to explain the
mysteries of ancient scansion."

Another instance of natural and spontaneous bliss came under my notice
about two miles along from Kinlochewe, on the banks of Loch Maree. It
was a glorious, sun-illumined spring morning, and every crevice in the
rough flanks of Ben Slioch was mirrored in the unwrinkled surface of the
noble loch. Ben Eay had a bright covering of Nature's whitest, softest
lawn. No sounds were heard except the low droning of a vagrant bee, the
whizzi