on the mountain-side, or
in the forest, could abash the proudest son of Science, by pointing to
the Sermon of our Saviour on the Mount--and saying, "I see my duties to
man and God _here_!" The religious establishments of Christianity,
therefore, have done more not only to support the life of virtue, but to
show all its springs and sources, than all the works of all the
Philosophers who have ever expounded its principles or its practice.

Ha! what has brought thee hither, thou wide-antlered king of the
red-deer of Braemar, from the spacious desert of thy hills of storm? Ere
now we have beheld thee, or one stately as thee, gazing abroad, from a
rock over the heather, to all the points of heaven, and soon as our
figure was seen far below, leading the van of the flight thou went'st
haughtily away into the wilderness. But now thou glidest softly and
slowly through the gloom--no watchfulness, no anxiety in thy large
beaming eyes; and, kneeling among the hoary mosses, layest thyself down
in unknown fellowship with one of those human creatures, a glance of
whose eye, a murmur of whose voice, would send thee belling through the
forest, terrified by the flash or sound that bespoke a hostile nature
wont to pursue thy race unto death.--The hunter is upon
thee--away--away! Sudden as a shooting-star up springs the red-deer, and
in the gloom as suddenly is lost.

On--on--on! further into the Forest!--and now a noise as of "thunder
heard remote." Waterfalls--hundreds of waterfalls sounding for
ever--here--there--everywhere--among the remoter woods. Northwards one
fierce torrent dashes through the centre--but no villages--only a few
woodmen's shielings will appear on its banks; for it is a torrent of
precipices, where the shrubs that hang midway from the cleft are out of
the reach of the spray of its cataracts, even when the red Garroch is in
flood.

Many hours have we been in the wilderness, and our heart yearns again
for the cheerful dwellings of men. Sweet infant streamlet, that flows by
our feet without a murmur, so shallow are yet thy waters--wilt
thou--short as hitherto has been thy journeying--wilt thou be our guide
out into the green valleys and the blue heaven, and the sight once more
of the bright sunshine and the fair fleecy clouds? No other clue to the
labyrinth do we seek but that small, thin, pure, transparent thread of
silver, which neither bush nor brier will break, and which will wind
without entanglement round the r