y from the manse. In those strange and stormy delights did not
thousands of thousands of the Scottish boyhood familiarly live among the
mists and snows? Of all that number he alone had the genius to "here
eternise on earth" his joy--but many millions have had souls to join
religiously in the hymns he chanted. Yea, his native land, with one
mighty voice, has for upwards of a century responded,

"These, as they change, Almighty Father, these
Are but the varied God!"

THE SNOWBALL BICKER OF PEDMOUNT.

Beautiful as Snow yet is to our eyes, even through our spectacles, how
grey it looks beside that which used to come with the long winters that
glorified the earth in our youth, till the white lustre was more
delightful even than the green--and we prayed that the fine fleecy
flakes might never cease falling waveringly from the veil of the sky! No
sooner comes the winter now, than it is away again to one of the Poles.
Then, it was a year in itself--a whole life. We remember slides a
quarter of a mile long, on level meadows; and some not less steep, down
the sides of hills that to us were mountains. No boy can slide on one
leg now--not a single shoe seems to have sparables. The florid style of
skating shows that that fine art is degenerating; and we look in vain
for the grand simplicity of the masters that spread-eagled in the age of
its perfection. A change has come over the spirit of the curler's dream.
They seem to our ears indeed to have "quat their roaring play." The cry
of "swoop-swoop" is heard still--but a faint, feeble, and unimpassioned
cry, compared with that which used, on the Mearns Brother-Loch, to make
the welkin ring, and for a moment to startle the moon and stars--those
in the sky, as well as those below the ice--till again the tumult
subsided--and all the host of heaven above and beneath became serene as
a world of dreams. Is it not even so, Shepherd? What is a rink now on a
pond in Duddingston policy, to the rinks that rang and roared of old on
the Loch o' the Lowes, when every stone circled in a halo of spray,
seemed instinct with spirit to obey, along all its flight, the voice of
him that launched it on its unerring aim, and sometimes, in spite of his
awkward skillessness, when the fate of the game hung on his own single
crank, went cannonading through all obstacles, till it fell asleep,
like a beauty as it was, just as it kissed the Tee!

Again we see--again we sit in the Snow-house, bu