could well have imagined could have been rendered for
anything done in life below. Another drawback in the case was, that one
could never be very seriously angry with him. If more real than
pretended at any time, his broad bright eye and bluff face,
magnificently lifted up, like the sun on frost-work, melted down
displeasure and threatened to betray all the policy depending on it; for
in the main never a bit of ill heart had Colin, though doubtlessly he
had in him, deeply established, a trim of rebellion against education
that seemed ever on the alert, and which repulsed even its portended
approach with a vigour resembling the electric energy of the torpedo.

"As we did not much like this place, we did not remain long in it. I had
meanwhile, however, resources which brought relief. Those friends whose
society I most enjoyed occasionally paid us a visit from Edinburgh; and
in leisure hours I haunted the banks of the Esk, which, with wood, and
especially with wild-roses, are very beautiful around the church of
Inveresk. This beauty was heightened by contrast--for I have ever hated
the scenery of, and the effect produced by, sunny days and dirty
streets. Nor do the scenes where mankind congregate to create bustle,
'dirdum and deray,' often fail of making me more or less melancholy. In
the week of the Musselburgh Races, I only went out one day to toss about
for a few hours in the complicated and unmeaning crowd. I insert the
protest which I entered against it on my return:--

"'What boots this turmoil
Of uproar and folly--
That renders the smile
Of creation unholy?
If that which we love
Is life's best assistant,
The thought still must rove
To the dear and the distant.
Would, then, that I were
'Mid nature's wild grandeur--
From this folly afar,
As I wont was to wander;
Where the pale cloudlets fly,
By the soft breezes driven,
And the mountains on high
Kiss the azure of heaven.
Where down the deep glen
The rivulet is rolling,
And few, few of men
Through the solitudes strolling.
Oh! bliss I could reap,
When day was returning;
O'er the wild-flowers asleep,
'Mong the dews of the morning;
And there were it joy,
When the shades of the gloaming,
With the night's lullaby,
O'er the world were coming--
To roam through the brake,
In the paths long forsaken;
My hill-h