CAMPBELL OF SPERNIE'S THREE WIVES.

To J. Campbell, Esq. of Slough-darroch, Ben-Logie.

MY DEAR FRIEND AND COUSIN :

It was with inexpressible concern that I read your's of the 13th ult. in which you informed me of your intentions respecting Miss Logie of Logie. For God's sake! pause, before you voluntarily relinquish hope, health, comfort, quiet, and every earthly blessing! Matrimony is little better than a snare; a spring-trap laid in our paths to disable us from liberty and enjoyment; and when you quoted my having changed my condition three several times, as an encouragement, it wrung my heart to think my reserve on the subject should so fearfully have misled you. Yes, I have been married, I am married; but am I, have I been, the happier? No, Slough-darroch! at this moment I am miserable; and it is to prevent your being equally so that I write this letter, accompanied by my earnest prayers that you may escape from Ben-Logie with a free and unfettered person.

Old Campbell of Spernie, my lamented father, married an Englishwoman of family and fortune. He determined that I never should wear any thing but a kilt, or drink_any thing but whiskey. She resolved that I should be educated at Eton, and have an English tutor at home. I wore a kilt till I was twelve years of age, and on my twelfth birthday they packed my clothes in a trunk, myself in a chaise, and sent me under the care of my tutor to England. I still remember, as if it were yesterday, leaning out of the chaise-window, to take a last look at the lessening forms of my father and Allen the gamekeeper, as they stood ready for a shooting excursion at the door. I remember seeing them call the dogs and walk away, while my mother remained alone, holding a white handkerchief to her eyes. I leaned out as if spell-bound, till my mother became a white speck, which gradually disappeared; Castle Spernie was lost in the masses of fir plantations which surrounded it, and the purple and brown hills grew blue in the distance. Then my heart swelled; my eyes swam; and I felt as if I should be suffocated if I might not breathe the air round Spernie. I drew in my head and leaned back in the chaise, with the choking sensation that precedes weeping strong in my throat; but my eyes fell on Mr. Jenkins. There was something cold and unfeeling in his little prim figure; his important snub-nosed face; even in the tie of his odious white neckcloth; and I felt that, by the side of such a man, it was impossible to shed tears.

This, my friend, was my first loss of liberty. My first term at Eton was any thing but pleasant. I was ridiculed for my Scotch accent; I was disliked for my pride. I fought eight battles in a vain attempt to prove the Campbells of Spernie lineally descended from King Malcolm (a point I had never before heard disputed), and four more to defend my father's right to wear the eagle's feather. I won all but two, and yet they always spoke as if those facts were still uncertainties. I could not endure the change from the kilt to the English dress; I felt as if my limbs were fettered; and I distinctly recollect, after a hard-won battle with young Lord Linton (who tore up a Scotch thistle I had planted in my garden), sitting down by the side of the replanted emblem and weeping bitterly, from the mingled causes of vexation,

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exhaustion, ridicule, and-being obliged to wear trowsers. You smile, Slough-darroch, but this was my second loss of liberty.

My holidays were spent at home: and never shall I forget the delight I experienced as I once more bounded over the wild, free hills in my Highland dress; the heather under me, the sky over me, and the breezes of heaven playing round my head. I was more than happyI was intoxicated with joy. I have often uncovered my head during a heavy shower, and stood gazing upwards with my Scotch bonnet in my hand, with no feeling but intense delight. In the sunshine, I have felt a rapturous love for nature and the God of nature, which I shall never feel again; and in the storm, the strong, fierce storm of the mountain, I have experienced a consciousness of vigorous power, both of body and soul-a consciousness, too, of being free to exert both to the utmost, which Pshaw! it is a dream to me now.

My mother died, and I put on mourning: my father died, and I nearly broke my heart. I loved my father. I see him still at the head of his gay and hospitable table, with his kind smile and frank countenance. I hear his cheerful voice, telling some favourite anecdote of sport or danger. I feel the warm, hearty grasp of his hand; and his keen blue eye is bent on mine with that mixture of pride and affection it always wore when he looked on his only son. Slough-darroch! you knew my father!

My original prejudice against matrimony arose from the scenes I had witnessed between the uncongenial minds of my parents. That prejudice was, however, not strong enough to resist the charms of Lady Charlotte Linton. Her brother, Lord Linton, had been my dearest friend ever since our quarrel at Eton; he was high-spirited and generous; and when he was shot at Waterloo, poor fellow! I stood for five minutes without striking a blow, scarcely being able to convince myself I had lost him for ever. We served together in the glorious Forty-second; and when I returned, it is not to be supposed that Lady Charlotte would refuse a brave soldier, her brother's best friend, and one who, besides, had some personal advantages.

She accepted me, and I thought myself the happiest of men. After the mourning was over we were married, and proceeded to the Continent, according to her wishes, which were then my laws.

We returned, and spent a season in London. Every one admired my wife; every one extolled her beauty and talents; and this would have gratified me, but that Lady Charlotte herself was so insatiable in her thirst for that admiration she was never satisfied at home; home was a place where she could not show herself, and she valued her loveliness only according to its effect upon others. It mattered little to her that her husband loved and admired her; I was a sure conquest, a toy thrown aside; besides, she was "the brilliant and accomplished Lady Charlotte," and I was only Campbell of Spernie, principally distinguished in London as having attained the honour of her hand. Only Campbell of Spernie! how I hated London! Then old Lady Linton and her two unmarried daughters were constantly meddling between us. They were always horror-struck and astonished when I thwarted my wife; and my ears were deafened with the shrill expostulations of the Dowager, while Lady Charlotte sat sobbing or fainting in the arms of one of her noble sisters, every time I attempted to bend her to my will.

"I will go home," said I to myself; "I will go back to Scotland, to my wild, beautiful Spernie, and try for happiness there. My wife is young; she was, at least, in love with me; her habits may be changed, and the want of food for her vanity may leave her time to think of her husband." Would you believe it, Slough-darroch? when I proposed this to her, she positively refused. She said she should die if she were immured in the Highlands-that the very thought killed her— that she should pine to death. I underwent another scene of remonstrance and reproaches from her mother and sisters; and at length, when I had given a decided promise never to let a year pass of which four months at least were not spent in town, they condescended to yield, and allow my wife to depart, talking all the while of her living in her husband's home for eight months in the year as the most frightful sacrifice woman ever made.

At Spernie I regained some part of my lost tranquillity; you would have laughed had you witnessed all my stratagems to preserve it. I never for the first fortnight took a gun in my hand, for fear my young wife should feel lonely; I walked or rode with her to every waterfall in the neighbourhood; I collected specimens of cairn-gorum for her inspection; I submitted to her all my plans for the improvement of my tenantry. There were times, when in spite of her determination not to be satisfied, I could detect a gleam of real pleasure in those beautiful eyes. She was proud of the devotion of the Spernie tenants, touched by their grateful remembrance of my father (not a man among them ever spoke of him without lifting his bonnet); she was interested about the children of the village, and loved the smell of the heather. That was a happy fortnight, Slough-darroch! but in an evil hour I proposed to her that her mother and sisters should visit us. The evening before they came, we sate together on the hill and talked over those plans which I began to flatter myself were mutually interesting, and the rapture with which I received her consent to our union was scarcely greater than that I felt when she drew in her sketch-book a plan for an ornamental fence round the dairy cottage. A light was in her eye, and a colour in her cheek, as she looked up in my face for approval-and as the wind blew aside the plumes of the Scotch bonnet she wore to please me, I thought I had never seen her look so handsome.

The next morning Lady Linton and her single daughters alighted at the door of the castle. We stood there to receive them. "Oh! Mr. Campbell, what roads !" said the Dowager. "Gracious! Charlotte, what a strange costume!" ejaculated one sister. "Spernie wished it," said my wife. "What do you call him Spernie for ?" retorted the other; "why, you are already demi-barbare." They laughed as they crossed the threshold-it put me in mind of my mother in her provoking moments, and I shrank from the sound of that laughter.

From that moment I had scarcely an hour's peace. Every thing was the subject of alternate ridicule and complaint; and Lady Charlotte wore a silk capote, took short walks, and called me "Mr. Campbell."

On the Wednesday after their arrival, I took a long ride through the rain to ask a few friends to dinner. I thought myself particularly fortunate in my choice. I asked Gordon of Drunhead; his cousin, Gordon of Fynne; Capt. Duguid of the Forty-second; Malcolm of CraigDhu and his handsome brother, and our wild chieftain laird, Dunega

of Mac Intyre. Ross of Ross Castle was staying at Craig-Dhu, so, of course, I asked him also. The dinner went off very well; the handsome Malcolms were particularly attentive to the young ladies, and my wife seemed pleased with Dunega; but the evening was not without a cloud -in the joy of my soul at feeling once more really at home, and having my old friends round me, I forgot the fastidiousness of my English relatives. The two Gordons and Duguid were too much intoxicated to leave the dining-room, and were carried to bed; and the younger Malcolm had a violent dispute with Dunega, in presence of the ladies, as to his right to call himself Dunega of the Hills. The latter was the only man who wore a kilt, and he placed his hand on the handle of his dirk. Lady Charlotte screamed, and one of her sisters fainted; and the next morning my ears were dinned for an hour with the family reproaches. For the first time, I answered passionately, and declared that the men my father had made welcome should never be strangers to me and mine: there was a most uncomfortable scene, and I took my gun and went out.

A conversation I overheard between the sisters determined me on trying the effect of indulgence on my wife's heart. I told her kindly that if she liked to return with her mother to England, I would join her there in the latter end of the autumn, and that I hoped the next year would find her fonder of the Highlands: she accepted the proposal with an eagerness that wrung my very soul.

The day of their departure came. Lady Charlotte's foot was on the step of the carriage, her hand on my arm; she looked at me; our eyes. met in spite of pride, mine filled with tears. She turned round, and flinging her arms round my neck, sobbed out, "I will not go, Spernie!" It was the last time my wife ever spoke tenderly to me, the last time she ever called me Spernie.

when I sate down to There was a silence, gusts of the autumn

Slough-darroch, may you never feel as I did my first solitary meal in the home of my fathers. a desolation round me, broken only by the fitful wind whistling through the fir plantation at the back of the house, which was oppressive to me. The thirst of the dying wretch in the desert is nothing to the pining for voices which have ceased. I felt forlorn, deserted; I thought over old days, and lifted the glass to my lips with a bitter smile. I started, and the glass fell and shivered on the ground; for at that moment, distinctly as ever I heard it in his lifetime, there fell on my ear the sound of my father's laugh. I heard it (Slough-darroch you know I am not superstitious), and I rose and stretched out my arms, as if I could once more have been folded to his generous heart-but in vain.

My chief pleasure was in superintending the building of the dairycottage, and the fence, as she had planned it. I have stood gazing on. those palisades till I have forgot the world round me, and transported myself in idle dreams to a future of happiness never to be mine.

I returned to England, to find my wife more than ever estranged from me; and after long months of coldness, reproaches, and quarrelling, her refusal to accompany me to Spernie Castle the ensuing year was followed by an expressed determination on my part to separate. I provided for her to the utmost limit my fortune would allow, and we became strangers. God be praised! we had no children.

It was two or three years after this, that in riding from Spernie to

the Falls of Fynne, I was thrown from my horse and received a severe blow on the head. I was picked up senseless and conveyed to the nearest cottage. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in a low, small hovel; the windows were about a foot in length, and were partly boarded with fir-wood, and partly glazed with irregular fragments of dim, greenish glass; the peat-reek was so thick and suffocating that I could scarcely bear it, far less distinguish objects; and the feeble chirp of a dozen newly-hatched chickens, who ran in all directions over the clay floor, mingled with the satisfied "cluck" of their happy mother, (established in a hen-coop close to my bed), and the suppressed shrillness of a number of young Gaelic voices from another compartment of this dreary little dwelling.

I rose, and in spite of the dizziness in my head, contrived to grope my way to the open door-the last beams of a clouded sun were lingering on a bleak, unplanted hill, at the foot of which stood my present place of shelter. A middle-aged woman, who united in her own person the dignities of mistress of the house, mother of the family, and owner of the hen-coop, stepped forward, wiping her hands in her apron, and requested I would not think of moving till " the morn." She assured me her youngest son was gone for a doctor who lived about twelve miles off; that the bed I saw was at my service, and that I would find it impossible to ride home till I was better. I felt painfully the truth of her assertion, and sate down again, resigned to my fate, with a tumbler of toddy by way of refreshment. There was an air of preparation and glad anxiety on the faces of all the inmates of the cottage; a glad, quick smile as they exchanged glances; a sort of quiet bustle, the eagerness of which was repressed out of respect to my presence; and a continual running to the open door, as if to watch the coming of some welcome visitor, which struck me as peculiar. At last I could not resist asking a little barefooted lassie, who passed to and fro before me with an air of extreme importance, whether they expected any one besides the doctor? "Ou aye," said the child eagerly, we'll maybe see Beenie the nicht." The ice once broken, the whole family united in praise of this absent object of affection. She was returning for a while, after her first term of service with a farmer at some distance, and her visit was the cause of general rejoicing. The elder brothers swore she was the bonniest, the mother said she was the canniest, and the little ones declared her the doucest of all the lasses far or I began to watch almost as eagerly as the beings round me, and at length in bounded one of the wee laddies on the look-out: "She's come! mither, she's come!" shouted he. Immediately after him, stepped in a gentle, demure-looking girl, about sixteen-and the family circle closed round her like newly-hived bees.

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near.

The next morning, at the early breakfast which preceded my departure, I had a full view of Beenie, as she sate opposite me supping parritch. She was not particularly pretty; both her face and figure were what I should term common-place-and the tone of her voice and the sweetness of her slow, affectionate smile, were all that to me appeared attractive. Nevertheless, to her family she evidently appeared "the cunningest pattern of excelling Nature." If she spoke, all eyes turned on her, gleaming with happiness and admiration; if she laughed, the laugh was echoed even by those who had not heard the jest; if she moved for any thing, all hands were immediately extended to