ong are felt to fill life to overflowing with a perpetual
succession--an infinite series--of enjoyments. Nowhere is she destitute
of that power--not on naked sea-shores--not in central deserts. But our
boyhood was environed by the beautiful--its home was among moors and
mountains, which people in towns and cities called dreary, but which we
knew to be the cheerfullest and most gladsome parish in all braid
Scotland--and well it might be, for it was in her very heart. Mountains
they seemed to us in those days, though now we believe they are only
hills. But such hills!--undulating far and wide away till the highest
even on clear days seemed to touch the sky, and in cloudy weather were
verily a part of heaven. Many a valley, and many a glen--and many a
hollow that was neither valley nor glen--and many a flat, of but a few
green acres, which we thought plains--and many a cleft waterless with
its birks and breckans, except when the rains came down, and then they
all sang a new song in merry chorus--and many a wood, and many a grove,
for it takes no great number of trees to make a wood, and four firs by
themselves in a lonesome place are a grove--and many a single sycamore,
and many a single ash, kenned afar-off above its protected cottage--and
many an indescribable spot of scenery at once pastoral and agricultural
and sylvan, where, if house there was, you hardly knew it among the
rocks;--so was Our Parish, which people in towns and cities called
dreary, composed; but the composition itself,--as well might we hope
thus to show it to your soul's eye, as by a few extracts however fine,
and a few criticisms however exquisite, to give you the idea of a
perfect poem.

But we have not given you more than a single hint of a great part of our
Parish--the Moor. It was then ever so many miles long, and ever so many
miles broad, and nobody thought of guessing how many miles round--but
some twenty years ago it was absolutely measured to a rood by a
landlouper of a land-surveyor--distributed--drained--enclosed--utterly
ruined for ever. No, not for ever. Nature laughs to scorn acts of
Parliament, and we predict that in a quarter of a century she will
resume her management of that moor. We rejoice to hear that she is
beginning already to take lots of it into her own hands. Wheat has no
business there, and should keep to the carses. In spring, she takes him
by the braird till he looks yellow in the face long before his time--in
summer, by th