e, where all are free. As the wind bloweth wherever it
listeth, so move the moods of men's minds, when there is nought to
shackle them, and when the burden of their cares has been dropt, that
for a while they may walk on air, and feel that they too have wings.

"A voice calls on me from the mountain depths,
And it must be obeyed."

The voice was our own--and yet though but a whisper from the heart, it
seemed to come from the front of yon distant precipice--sweet and wild
as an echo.

On rising at dawn in the shieling, why think, much less determine, where
at night we are to lay down our head? Let this be our thought:

"Among the hills a hundred homes have I;
My table in the wilderness is spread;
In these lone spots one honest smile can buy
Plain fare, warm welcome, and a rushy bed."

If we obey any powers external to our own minds, let them be the powers
of Nature--the rains, the winds, the atmosphere, sun moon, and stars. We
must keep a look-out--

"To see the deep fermenting tempest brew'd,
In the grim evening sky;"

that next day we may cross the red rivers by bridges, not by fords; and
if they roll along unbridged, that we may set our face to the mountain,
and wind our way round his shoulder by sheep-tracks, unwet with the
heather, till we behold some great strath, which we had not visited but
for that storm, with its dark blue river streaked with golden
light,--for its source is in a loch among the Eastern Range; and there,
during the silent hours, heather, bracken, and greensward rejoiced in
the trembling dews.

There is no such climate for all kinds of beauty and grandeur, as the
climate of the Highlands. Here and there you meet with an old shepherd
or herdsman, who has beguiled himself into a belief, in spite of many a
night's unforeseen imprisonment in the mists, that he can presage its
changes from fair to foul, and can tell the hour when the
long-threatening thunder will begin to mutter. The weather-wise have
often perished in their plaids. Yet among a thousand uncertain symptoms,
there are a few certain, which the ranger will do well to study, and he
will often exult on the mountain to feel that "knowledge is power." Many
a glorious hour has been won from the tempest by him before whose
instructed eye--beyond the gloom that wide around blackened all the
purple heather--"far off its coming shone." Leagues of continuous
magnificence have gradually unveiled themsel