ten
grasped--arms linked in ours, as we danced along the braes--have long
ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so
much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the
holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of
time.

It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some
sad and solemn thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is not at
nightfall felt to have been the less delightful, because shadows now and
then bedimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of an unhymning hush,
took possession of field or forest. We are all alone--a solitary
pedestrian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, whose motives are
changeable as the cameleon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly
along to the merry music of streams--or linger by the silent shores of
lochs--or upon the hill-summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of a
panorama painted by Spring, for our sole delight--or plunge into the old
wood's magnificent exclusion from sky--where, at midsummer, day is as
night--though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms;
and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the
sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will
be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the
dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.

What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein
and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away,
like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint
or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest-like it is
built, and guarded by some wonderful felicity of situation equally
against all the winds? No. Thither as yet have we not courage to direct
our footsteps--for that venerable Man has long been dead--not one of his
ancient household now remains on earth. There the change, though it was
gradual and unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of nature, has
been entire and complete. The "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but
never more shall see--and the voices that are now heard within those
walls, what can they ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the
silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed years? It is an
appalling trial to approach a place where once we have been
happier--happier far than ever we can be on this earth again; and a
worse evil doth it see