cheek;
fire-flies light their lamps all around, and night suddenly overtakes
us,--"_ruit nox_." Scarcely ten minutes have elapsed since we stood
here, and already the dilated nostril and meaning eye of the restive
coursers, then so strikingly exhibited, are scarcely any longer
distinguishable; while the dark curvilinear outline of their bodies,
and the towering forms of "the great Twin Brethren" at their heads,
gain not only in stature, but in grandeur too, by this very
indistinctness,--the obscure being a well-known element of the
sublime,--and the eye becomes more and more conscious of their vast
proportions the less it is enabled to enter minutely into details.

HIGHLAND DESTITUTION.

The appalling horrors with which the Irish famine of last season set
in, seemed to exceed any similar scene of national affliction that had
been witnessed in modern times. It appeared as if the worst tragedies
that had been enacted in sieges and shipwrecks were to be realised in
the midst of comparative abundance, and within reach of friendly aid.
It was right, however, that the clamant demands for relief, uttered by
her starving millions, should not stifle the smaller voice of
suffering that issued from our Scottish shores. Nor was this the case:
the Christian philanthropy of Britain did justice to the cause of
patience and fortitude. The fountains of private beneficence were
opened, and Scotland was better protected from the miseries of this
visitation by individual exertion, than Ireland with all the aid and
apparatus of government interference.

Making every abatement for the natural exaggeration incident to such a
calamity, no doubt can be entertained as to the general condition of
our Highlands and Islands in the early part of the past year. Great
distress was almost every where prevalent, and every day that passed
was tending to increase it. A large portion of the food of the people
had failed, and the remnant of the preceding year's corn crop was
their only means of subsistence. That resource could not long be
relied on; and the great problem was, in what manner the destitute
thousands of our countrymen were to be fed till the returning harvest
should visit them with its scanty and precarious bounty. Too many of
them were habitually on the verge of starvation, and the crumbling
away of the slender support on which alone they stood, brought them at
once to the low abyss of wretchedness in which they would have been
l