s
pastoral melancholy. And let me note the fact that here, too, is the
tiniest and daintiest parish church in Scotland--the outpost of the
Presbytery of Auchterarder in this direction.

Between us and the gap, but much nearer the gap, is a bit of rising
ground, running eastward almost parallel with the Ochils, with a downward
slope from west to east, upon which may be seen, if the atmosphere is
clear, smoking chimneys and a faint ruddy hue, as if with the memory of
tiles now discarded for the prosaic if more permanent roofing slate.
That is the "lang toon" of Auchterarder, climbing up the slope somewhat
after the fashion of the Canongate and High Street of Edinburgh, not so
conspicuously or hurriedly, however, as if aware that there was no Castle
Rock from which to view the fertile Strath below. An ancient place,
truly, pedigreed, but by no means penniless, the Presbytery seat, famous
in ecclesiastical annals for its creed, crotchets, and conflicts;
resonant, too, in profane history for its fifty drawbridges--the gift of
the imagination and pawky Scotch humour of George Buchanan, Latinist,
publicist, and tutor to that high and mighty Prince, the British Solomon,
James I. of England and VI. of Scotland. The drawbridges are no more,
for the "lang toon" is a burgh now, with a douce Provost of its own, and
Bailies, and such like novel things and persons. But this we cannot tell
from our present standpoint, and we might easily persuade ourselves this
afternoon that Auchterarder has suffered no sea change, were it not that
every now and again the columns of our local newspaper foam under the
rage of its municipal contendings.

In the far east, the Strath seems to be shut off by the Moncrieffe
Hill--wooded still, as in the days when it was first named. But the Earn
slips between this seeming obstacle and the spurs of the Ochils, making
such haste as it can through carse-like land to join the lordly Tay hard
by Abernethy--the ancient capital of the Southern Picts--the centre of
missionary enterprise, when darkness was thick upon the land after Ninian
had died at Whithorn, on the Solway, and before Columba had set foot upon
Iona. The valley at our feet, the limits of which I have attempted to
mark off, is Strathearn--a right noble expanse of fertile soil, richly
wooded, abundantly watered, dotted over with villages and guardian Parish
Churches, like that of Muthill; bright with Castles that have left their
names in histor