for the happiness which was, he felt, to be enjoyed only
there. It has been long known that gaiety is not solid enjoyment; but
that the gaiety should indicate little else than the want of solid
enjoyment, is a circumstance not always suspected. My experience of
barrack-life has enabled me to receive without hesitation what has been
said of the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere,
and fully to credit the often-repeated statement, that the abject serfs
of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of a free country.
Poor fellows! If the British people were as unhappy as slaves or serfs,
they would, I daresay, learn in time to be quite as merry. There are,
however, two circumstances that serve to prevent the bothy life of the
north-country mason from essentially injuring his character in the way
it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to
calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring,
unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the
effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly
narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to
the humanizing influences of his home.

CHAPTER X.

"The muse, nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel' he learned to wander
Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
An' no think lang:
Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder
A heartfelt sang!"--BURNS.

There are delightful walks in the immediate neighbourhood of Conon-side;
and as the workmen--engaged, as I have said, on day's wages--immediately
ceased working as the hour of six arrived, I had, during the summer
months, from three to four hours to myself every evening, in which to
enjoy them. The great hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty
Firth divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the sea
ceases to flow. There is the valley of the Peffer, and the valley of the
Conon; and a tract of broken hills lies between, formed of the Great
Conglomerate base of the Old Red System. The conglomerate, always a
picturesque deposit, terminates some four or five miles higher up the
valley, in a range of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they
front the interior of the country, as if they formed the terminal
barrier of some exposed sea-coast. A few straggling pines crest their
summits; and the noble woods of Brahan Castle, the ancient seat of the
Earls of Seafort