t
pitched battle, while artillery might keep playing against artillery
from innumerous affronting hills. Was it boggy? Yes, black bogs were
there, which extorted a panegyric from the roving Irishman in his
richest brogue--bogs in which forests had of old been buried, and armies
with all their banners. Was it hilly? Ay, there the white sheep nibbled,
and the black cattle grazed; there they baa'd and they lowed upon a
thousand hills--a crowd of cones, all green as emerald. Was it
mountainous? Give answer from afar, ye mist-shrouded summits, and ye
clouds cloven by the eagle's wing! But whether ye be indeed mountains,
or whether ye be clouds, who can tell, bedazzled as are his eyes by that
long-lingering sunset, that drenches heaven and earth in one
indistinguishable glory, setting the West on fire, as if the final
conflagration were begun! Was it woody? Hush, hush, and you will hear a
pine-cone drop in the central silence of a forest--a silent and solitary
wilderness--in which you may wander a whole day long, unaccompanied but
by the cushat, the corby, the falcon, the roe, and they are all shy of
human feet, and, like thoughts, pass away in a moment; so if you long
for less fleeting farewells from the native dwellers in the wood, lo!
the bright brown queen of the butterflies, gay and gaudy in her
glancings through the solitude, the dragon-fly whirring bird-like over
the pools in the glade; and if your ear desire music, the robin and the
wren may haply trill you a few notes among the briery rocks, or the bold
blackbird open wide his yellow bill in his holly-tree, and set the
squirrels a-leaping all within reach of his ringing roundelay. Any
rivers? one--to whom a thousand torrents are tributary--as he himself is
tributary to the sea. Any lochs? how many we know not--for we never
counted them twice alike--omitting perhaps some forgotten tarns, or
counting twice over some one of our more darling waters, worthy to dash
their waves against the sides of ships--alone wanting to the
magnificence of those inland seas! Yes, it was as level, as boggy, as
hilly, as mountainous, as woody, as lochy, and as rivery a parish, as
ever laughed to scorn Colonel Mudge and his Trigonometrical Survey.

Was not that a noble parish for apprenticeship in sports and pastimes of
a great master? No need of any teacher. On the wings of joy we were
borne over the bosom of nature, and learnt all things worthy and needful
to be learned, by instinct first