a certain kindliness of disposition which her husband wanted, was
loquacious and weak. Had my quondam acquaintance, the vigorous-minded
maniac of Ord, seen William and his parents, she would have triumphantly
referred to them in evidence that Flavel and the Schoolmen were wholly
in the right in holding that souls are not "derived through parental
traduction."

My friend had much to show me: he had made an interesting series of
water-colour sketches of the old castles of the neighbourhood, and a
very elaborate set of drawings of what are known as the Runic obelisks
of Ross: he had made some first attempts, too, in oil-painting; but
though his drawing was, as usual, correct, there was a deadness and want
of transparency about his colouring, which characterized all his after
attempts in the same department, and which was, I suspect, the result of
some such deficiency in his perceptions of the harmonies of colour as
that which, in another department of sense, made me so insensible to the
harmonies of sound. His drawings of the obelisks were of singular
interest. Not only have the thirty years which have since elapsed
exerted their dilapidating effect on all the originals from which he
drew, but one of the number--the most entire of the group at that
time--has been since almost wholly destroyed; and so, what he was then
able to do, there can be no such opportunity of doing again. Further,
his representations of the sculptured ornaments, instead of being (what
those of artists too often are) mere picturesque approximations, were
true in every curve and line. He told me he had spent a fortnight in
tracing out the involved mathematical figures, curves, circles, and
right lines--on which the intricate fretwork of one of the obelisks was
formed, and in making separate drawings of each compartment, before
commencing his draught of the entire stone. And, looking with the eye of
the stone-cutter at his preliminary sketches, from the first meagre
lilies that formed the ground-work of some involved and difficult knot,
to the elaborate knot itself, I saw that, with such a series of drawings
before me, I myself could learn to cut Runic obelisks, in all the
integrity of the complex ancient style, in less than a fortnight. My
friend had formed some striking and original views regarding the
theology represented by symbol on these ancient stones--at that time
regarded as Runic, but now held to be rather of Celtic origin. In the
centre of e