in which we had the inestimable advantage of passing our
boyhood--there' were a good many falcons--of course the kite or
glead--the buzzard--the sparrowhawk--the marsh harrier--that imp the
merlin--and, rare bird and beautiful! there, on a cliff which, alas! a
crutched man must climb no more, did the Peregrine build her nest. You
must not wonder at this, for the parish was an extensive one even for
Scotland--half Highland half Lowland--and had not only "muirs and mosses
many o," but numerous hills, not a few mountains, some most
extraordinary cliffs, considerable store of woods, and one, indeed, that
might well be called the Forest.

Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead through thy own sweet stormy skies,
Auld Scotland! and as sternly and grimly thou look'st far over the
hushed or howling seas, remember thee--till all thy moors and mosses
quake at thy heart, as if swallowing up an invading army--a fate that
oft befell thy foes of yore--remember thee, in mist-shrouded dream, and
cloud-born vision, of the long line of kings, and heroes, and sages, and
bards, whose hallowed bones sleep in pine-darkened tombs among the
mountain heather, by the side of rivers, and lochs, and arms of
ocean--their spirits yet seen in lofty superstition, sailing or sitting
on the swift or settled tempest. Lift up thy rock-crowned forehead, Auld
Scotland! and sing aloud to all the nations of the earth, with thy voice
of cliffs, and caves, and caverns,

"Wha daur meddle wi' me?"

What! some small, puny, piteous windpipes are heard cheeping against
thee from the Cockneys--like ragged chickens agape in the pip. How the
feeble and fearful creatures would crawl on their hands and knees, faint
and giddy, and shrieking out for help to the heather stalks, if forced
to face one of thy cliffs, and foot its flinty bosom! How would the
depths of their long ears, cotton-stuffed in vain, ache to the
spray-thunder of thy cataracts! Sick, sick would be their stomachs,
storm-swept in a six-oared cutter into the jaws of Staffa! That sight
is sufficient to set the most saturnine on the guffaw--the Barry
Cornwall himself, crossing a chasm a hundred yards deep,

"On the uncertain footing of a spar,"

on a tree felled where it stood, centuries ago, by steel or storm, into
a ledgeless bridge, oft sounding and shaking to the hunter's feet in
chase of the red-deer! The Cockneys do not like us Scotchmen--because of
our high cheek-bones. They are sometimes very