ers which have been so often and so well
described--a stern, grave, intelligent, religious Scottish shepherd.
The broad Lowland bonnet did not cover a shrewder head than old David
Riddell's; nor did the hodden grey coat, throughout wide Scotland,
wrap a warmer or more honest heart.

His honesty was manifest to all--the warmth of his feelings was
latent, and required to be struck by strong emotion, ere it was
developed externally. The solitary influences of nature, when
habitually contemplated in her more wild and solemn aspects, seem
calculated to mould minds of good natural capabilities, but which are
shut out from the social acquisition of knowledge, into forms like
that of David Riddell's. If they all, like the nature which has
breathed its spirit into them, seem somewhat rugged and stern, they
all, like her also, bear the sterling stamp of sincerity. The
elements, which "are not flatterers, but counsellors that feelingly
persuade him what he is," are his familiar companions--among the
remote valleys, and along the precipitous mountain-sides, and upon the
wide moorlands, their irresistible power leads him to look with awe up
to their Creator and Controller, and humility also is impressed upon
him; but with these a confident reliance on the mercy and benevolence
of the Being who regulates them is naturally produced: and thus it is,
that, with this awe and humility, a slavish fear is no portion of his
character; for he has been in the heart of a thousand mists, and has
yet returned safely to his cottage ingle--he has braved the storms of
many winters, and still looks, with a prophetic eye, upon the fresh
green of approaching springs, and the purple heath-blooms of coming
summers. In a mind thus constituted, duplicity can never dwell. There
are millions who, shut up in cities, and shrinking from the inclemency
of the seasons, look on the shepherd of the mountains as one worthy
only of commiseration--who paint him as a wretch whose soul is as
barren as his moorlands, and think of him as a slave, wandering, with
vacant mind and wearied frame, over gloomy solitudes, earning with
misery to-day the food which enables his body to bear the toil of
to-morrow.

How wide is this of the truth!--The sweet and tranquil joys of home
are his, enhanced a thousand-fold by previous privation--the delights
of connubial and filial love are more keenly felt by him, in the
simplicity of nature, than by the luxurious citizen or the ermined