des of expiration!)

"In quietness he lays him down
Gently, as a weary wave
Sinks, when the summer breeze has died,
Against an anchor'd vessel's side."

Ay--Hamish--you may start to your feet--and see realised the vision of
your sleep. What a set of distracted dogs! But O'Bronte first catches
sight of the quarry--and clearing, with grasshopper spangs, the patches
of stunted coppice, stops stock-still beside the roe in the glade, as if
admiring and wondering at the beauty of the fair spotted creature! Yes,
dogs have a sense of the beautiful. Else how can you account for their
loving so to lie down at the feet and lick the hands of the virgin whose
eyes are mild, and forehead meek, and hair of placid sunshine, rather
than act the same part towards ugly women, who, coarser and coarser in
each successive widow-hood, when at their fourth husband are beyond
expression hideous, and felt to be so by the whole canine tribe? Spenser
must have seen some dog like O'Bronte lying at the feet and licking the
hand of some virgin--sweet reader, like thyself--else never had he
painted the posture of that Lion who guarded through Fairyland

"Heavenly Una and her milk-white lamb."

A divine line of Wordsworth's, which we shall never cease quoting on to
the last of our inditings, even to our dying day!

But where, Hamish, are all the flappers, the mawsies, and the mallards?
What! You have left them--hare, grouse, bag, and all, at the Still! We
remember it now--and all the distillers are to-night to be at our Tent,
bringing with them feathers, fur, and hide--ducks, pussy, and deer. But
take the roe on your stalwart shoulders, Hamish, and bear it down to the
sylvan dwelling at the mouth of Gleno. Surefoot has a sufficient burden
in us--for we are waxing more corpulent every day--and ere long shall be
a Silenus.

Ay, travel all the world over, and a human dwelling lovelier in its
wildness shall you nowhere find, than the one that hides itself in the
depth of its own beauty, beneath the last of the green knolls
besprinkling Gleno, dropt down there in presence of the peacefulest bay
of all Loch-Etive, in whose cloud-softened bosom it sees itself
reflected among the congenial imagery of the skies. And, hark! a murmur
as of swarming bees! 'Tis a Gaelic school--set down in this loneliest of
all places, by that religious wisdom that rests not till the seeds of
saving knowledge shall be sown over all the wilds. That