ff--recollections mingled with a well-remembered imagery of
blue seas and purple hills, and a sun-lit town in the distance, and tall
wood-crested precipices nearer at hand, which flung lengthened shadows
across shore and sea--that not merely represent enjoyments which have
been, but that, in certain moods of the mind, take the form of enjoyment
still. They are favoured spots in the chequered retrospect of the past,
on which the sunshine of memory falls more brightly than on most of the
others.

When thus employed, there broke out very unexpectedly, a second war with
the Liberal Moderates of the town, in which, unwillingly rather than
otherwise, I had ultimately to engage. The sacrament of the Supper is
celebrated in most of the parish churches of the north of Scotland only
once a year; and, as many of the congregations worship at that time in
the open air, the summer and autumn seasons are usually selected for the
"occasion," as best fitted for open-air meetings. As, however, the
celebration is preceded and followed by week-day preachings, and as on
one of these week-days--the Thursday preceding the Sacramental
Sabbath--no work is done, kirk-sessions usually avoid fixing their
sacrament in a busy time, such as the time of harvest in the rural
districts, or of the herring-fishing in the seaport towns; and as the
parish of Cromarty has both its rural population and its fishing one,
the kirk-session of the place have to avoid both periods. And so the
early part of July, ere the herring-fishing or the harvest comes on, is
the time usually fixed upon for the Cromarty sacrament. In this year,
however (1838), it so chanced that the day appointed for the Queen's
coronation proved coincident with the sacramental Thursday, and the
Liberal Moderate party urged upon the Session that the preparations for
the sacrament should give way to the rejoicings for the coronation. We
had not been much accustomed to rejoicings of the kind in the north
since the good old times when respectable Tory gentlemen used to show
themselves drunk in public on the King's birthday, in order to
demonstrate their loyalty: the coronation days of both George IV. and
William IV. had passed off as quietly as Sabbaths; and the Session,
holding that it might be quite as well for people to pray for their
young Queen at church, and then quietly drink her health when they got
home, as to grow glorious in her behalf in taverns and tap-rooms,
refused to alter their da