high indeed, very coarse,
and very ugly, and give a Scotchman a grim and gaunt look, assuredly not
to be sneezed at, with any hope of impunity, on a dark day and in a
lonesome place, by the most heroic chief of the most heroic clan in all
the level land of Lud, travelling all by himself in a horse and gig, and
with a black boy in a cockaded glazed hat, through the Heelands o'
Scotland, passing of course, at the very least, for a captain of
Hussars! Then Scotchmen canna keep their backs straught, it seems, and
are always booin' and booin' afore a great man. Cannot they, indeed? Do
they, indeed? Ascend with that Scottish shepherd yon mountain's
breast--swim with him that mountain loch--a bottle of Glenlivet, who
first stands in shallow water, on the Oak Isle--and whose back will be
straughtest, that of the Caledonian or the Cockney? The little Luddite
will be puking among the heather, about some five hundred feet above the
level of the sea--higher for the first time in his life than St Paul's,
and nearer than he ever will again be, either in the spirit or the
flesh, to heaven. The little Luddite will be puking in the hitherto
unpolluted loch, after some seven strokes or so, with a strong Scottish
weed twisted like an eel round its thigh, and shrieking out for the
nearest resuscitating machine in a country, where, alas! there is no
Humane Society. The back of the shepherd--even in presence of that
"great man"--will be as straught as--do not tremble, Cockney--this
Crutch. Conspicuous from afar like a cairn, from the inn-door at
Arrochar, in an hour he will be turning up his little finger so--on the
Cobler's head; or, in twenty minutes, gliding like a swan, or shooting
like a salmon, his back being still straught--leaving Luss, he will be
shaking the dewdrops from his brawny body on the silver sand of Inch
Morren.

And happy were we, Christopher North, happy were we in the parish in
which Fate delivered us up to Nature, that, under her tuition our
destinies might be fulfilled. A parish! Why it was in itself a
kingdom--a world. Thirty miles long by twenty at the broadest, and five
at the narrowest; and is not that a kingdom--is not that a world worthy
of any monarch that ever wore a crown? Was it level? Yes, league-long
levels were in it of greensward, hard as the sand of the sea-shore, yet
springy and elastic, fit training-ground for Childers, or Eclipse, or
Hambletonian, or Smolensko, or for a charge of cavalry in some grea