sible in a mist of wonderful sun, and the Castle stood
up against the sky, as thin and sharp in outline as a castle cut out of
paper. Baxter made a good remark about Princes Street, that it was the
most elastic street for length that he knew; sometimes it looks, as it
looked to-night, interminable, a way leading right into the heart of
the red sundown; sometimes, again, it shrinks together, as if for
warmth, on one of the withering, clear east-windy days, until it seems
to lie underneath your feet.

I want to let you see these verses from an _Ode to the Cuckoo_ written
by one of the ministers of Leith in the middle of last century--the
palmy days of Edinburgh--who was a friend of Hume and Adam Smith and the
whole constellation. The authorship of these beautiful verses has been
most truculently fought about; but whoever wrote them (and it seems as
if this Logan had) they are lovely--

"What time the pea puts on the bloom,
Thou fliest the vocal vale,
An annual guest, in other lands
Another spring to hail.

Sweet bird! thy bower is ever green,
Thy sky is ever clear;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

O could I fly, I'd fly with thee!
We'd make on joyful wing
Our annual visit o'er the globe,
Companions of the spring."

_Sunday._--I have been at church with my mother, where we heard "Arise,
shine," sung excellently well, and my mother was so much upset with it
that she nearly had to leave church. This was the antidote, however, to
fifty minutes of solid sermon, varra heavy. I have been sticking in to
Walt Whitman; nor do I think I have ever laboured so hard to attain so
small a success. Still, the thing is taking shape, I think; I know a
little better what I want to say all through; and in process of time,
possibly I shall manage to say it. I must say I am a very bad workman,
_mais j'ai du courage_: I am indefatigable at rewriting and bettering,
and surely that humble quality should get me on a little.

_Monday, October 6._--It is a magnificent glimmering moonlight night,
with a wild, great west wind abroad, flapping above one like an immense
banner, and every now and again swooping furiously against my windows.
The wind is too strong perhaps, and the trees are certainly too leafless
for much of that wide rustle that we both remember; there is only a
sharp, angry, sibilant hiss, like breath drawn with the strength of the
elements through shut tee