was not surprised to find that not one of them,
from Dougal up to a young strapping shepherd of eighteen, knew what it
was.

I told them that Sheffield was famous for making knives, and scissors,
and razors, and that cutlery meant the manufacture of anything that
cuts. Presto! and the blinds were all up, and eagerness, and _nous_, and
brains at the window. I happened to have a Wharncliffe, with "Rodgers
and Sons, Sheffield," on the blade. I sent it round, and finally
presented it to the enraptured Dougal. Would not each one of those boys,
the very boobiest there, know that knife again when they saw it, and be
able to pass a creditable competitive examination on all its ins and
outs? and wouldn't they remember "cutlery" for a day or two! Well, the
examination over, the minister performed an oration of much ambition and
difficulty to himself and to us, upon the general question, and a great
many other questions, into which his Gaelic subtilty fitted like the
mists into the hollows of Ben-a-Houlich, with, it must be allowed, a
somewhat similar tendency to confuse and conceal what was beneath; and
he concluded with thanking the Chief, as he well might, for his generous
support of "this aixlent CEMETERY of aedication." Cemetery indeed! The
blind leading the blind, with the ancient result; the dead burying their
dead.

Now, not greater is the change we made from that low, small, stifling,
gloomy, mephitic room, into the glorious open air, the loch lying asleep
in the sun, and telling over again on its placid face, as in a dream,
every hill and cloud, and birch and pine, and passing bird and cradled
boat; the Black Wood of Rannoch standing "in the midst of its own
darkness," frowning out upon us like the Past disturbed, and far off in
the clear ether, as in another and a better world, the dim Shepherds of
Etive pointing, like ghosts at noonday, to the weird shadows of
Glencoe;--not greater was this change, than is that from the dingy,
oppressive, weary "cemetery" of mere word-knowledge to the open air, the
light and liberty, the divine infinity and richness of nature and her
teaching.

We cannot change our time, nor would we if we could. It is God's time as
well as ours. And our time is emphatically that for achieving and
recording and teaching man's dominion over and insight into matter and
its forces--his subduing the earth; but let us turn now and then from
our necessary and honest toil in this neo-Platonic cavern where