e rapt pedestrian a mouthful of exhilarating ether. One who is
really a poet and not merely a casual sonneteer, should try to get a
site for his tent on this particular shore, and retire to compose an
epoch-making epic. The mediaeval saints knew what they were doing when
they retired to little nooks and isles along this coast to pray and
meditate undisturbed: it is much easier to feel devout in a fresh
atmosphere, than in the squalor of a town.

PAST AND PRESENT SAINTS.

What indeed astonishes the visitor to these northern isles is the
immense number of ecclesiastical ruins. The Christian missionaries seem
speedily to have translated their enthusiasm into stone and lime. What
hymns were chanted and what sermons preached up there in bygone times,
passes the wit of man to reckon! It is a far cry from Palestine to the
Shetland creeks and voes, but the voice of the lowly Nazarene
effectually reached the Celts and Norsemen of these treeless
storm-lashed isles.

Many of the smaller islands have the appellation _papa_, which
indicates, as I hinted above, that some monk or hermit, withdrawing from
the world to pray and meditate, has bequeathed a whiff of sanctity to
headland and skerry.

"The hermit good lives in the wood," says Coleridge, but for the
Shetland _papa_ there was no _nemorum murmur_:--

No sun-illumined leafage met his eye
Raised from perusal of the Holy Word,
No murmur of the woodland zephyr-stirred
Blended with his devotions sped on high,
Only the chiding of the billows nigh.
The clangour of the wheeling ocean-bird,
Or soul-astounding shriek of storm-fiend heard
From the dun cloud-battalions hurrying by,
Greeted his ear: yet piously through all
His life the austere anchorite remained,
On his lone island, buffeted by squall
And sea, and faithful unto death obtained
The promised guerdon that the Lord bestows
Upon the pure in heart, and only those.

It has been asserted by those who have means of knowing, that the days
of theological rigidity are past and gone in the Shetlands. Thing
unheard of in the Hebrides--the shops are open on Sunday mornings for
the sale of Saturday's _Scotsman_ and _Herald_. In some parts of
Scotland you could not hire a trap for a Sunday drive; in others, you
_might_ manage, by salving the driver's conscience with a double fare.
In Shetland the tariff is the same for the first and the last days of
the week. To explain th