he peaceful dwellings of industrious
men. Here the bases of the mountains, and even their sides high up, are
without heather--a rich sward, with here and there a deep bed of
brackens, and a little sheep-sheltering grove. Skeletons of old trees of
prodigious size lie covered with mosses and wildflowers, or stand with
their barkless trunks and white limbs unmoved when the tempest blows.
Glenfinlas was anciently a deer-forest of the Kings of Scotland; but
hunter's horn no more awakens the echoes of Benledi.

A more beautiful vale never inspired pastoral poet in Arcadia, nor did
Sicilian shepherds of old ever pipe to each other for prize of oaten
reed, in a lovelier nook than where yonder cottage stands, shaded, but
scarcely sheltered, by a few birch-trees. It is in truth not a
cottage--but a very SHIELING, part of the knoll adhering to the side of
the mountain. Not another dwelling--even as small as itself--within a
mile in any direction. Those goats, that seem to walk where there is no
footing along the side of the cliff, go of themselves to be milked at
evening to a house beyond the hill, without any barking dog to set them
home. There are many footpaths, but all of sheep, except one leading
through the coppice-wood to the distant kirk. The angler seldom disturbs
those shallows, and the heron has them to himself, watching often with
motionless neck all day long. Yet the Shieling is inhabited, and has
been so by the same person for a good many years. You might look at it
for hours, and yet see no one so much as moving to the door. But a
little smoke hovers over it--very faint if it be smoke at all--and
nothing else tells that within is life.

It is inhabited by a widow, who once was the happiest of wives, and
lived far down the glen, where it is richly cultivated, in a house astir
with many children. It so happened, that in the course of nature,
without any extraordinary bereavements, she outlived all the household,
except one, on whom fell the saddest affliction that can befall a human
being--the utter loss of reason. For some years after the death of her
husband, and all her other children, this son was her support; and there
was no occasion to pity them in their poverty, where all were poor. Her
natural cheerfulness never forsook her; and although fallen back in the
world, and obliged in her age to live without many comforts she once had
known, yet all the past gradually was softened into peace, and the widow
and her