er could have any
idea of; but it is a long time since the ploughshare traced those almost
obliterated furrows on the hill-side; and such cultivation is now wisely
confined, you observe, to the lower lands. We fear the Yearn--for that
is his name now--heretofore he was anonymous--is about to get flat. But
we must not grudge him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by
the murmur of millions of humble-bees--we speak within bounds--on their
honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we
spoke of "lint being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream how
sweetly do the seasons all slide into one another! After sleep comes
play, and see and hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling over rocks,
nor will rest in any one linn, but impatient of each beautiful prison in
which one would think he might lie a willing thrall, hurries on as if he
were racing against time, nor casts a look at the human dwellings now
more frequent near his sides. But he will be stopped by-and-by, whether
he will or no; for there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a mill.
But the wheel is at rest--the sluice on the lade is down--with the lade
he has nothing more to do than to fill it; and with undiminished volume
he wends round the miller's garden--you see Dusty Jacket is a
florist--and now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any rocks. 'Tis
but some hundred yards across from bank to brae--and as you angle along
on either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating high overhead; for
though, the braes are steep, they are all intersected with sheep-walks,
and ever and anon among the broom and the brackens are little platforms
of close-nibbled greensward, yet not bare--and nowhere else is the
pasturage more succulent--nor do the young creatures not care to taste
the primroses, though were they to live entirely upon them, they could
not keep down the profusion--so thickly studded in places are the
constellations--among sprinklings of single stars. Here the
hill-blackbird builds--and here you know why Scotland is called the
lintie's land. What bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. But
here there are no larks--a little further down and you will hear one
ascending or descending over almost every field of grass or of the
tender braird. Down the dell before you, flitting from stone to stone,
on short flight seeks the water-pyet--seemingly a witless creature with
its bonnie white breast--to wile you away from the crevice