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wanted to give him money, you may
guess, the only thing one could do
for him, and on he marched blank
and passive, in the dull misery of
his old age.
Old age, I allow, has
a depth of dreariness not to be
reached in any other period of mor-
tal existence; but the old man's
faculties were calmed down, you
know. A little rest and comfort,
I daresay, would have made the
end of his days bearable enough.

"Yes, that is the ordinary philanthropical way," said Arabella, sharply "when one's heart is bleeding for sympathy you give a little vulgar money; that's the way with all you practical people; when a few precious words of fellow-feeling might bind up the wounded heart!” "My dear, words seldom stanch wounds," said I, "unless it might perhaps be the kind of wounds and words that circulate among young people like our friends over there. After all, a little external comfort is the best thing that most of us can do to soften the troubles of our neighbours. It shows goodwill at least."

"The most difficult thing I know is to offer consolation," cried the Archdeacon, from the bow. "Perhaps nobody can understand all the hardships of it as a clergyman does. We are called up under all circumstances, my dear Miss Arabella. I have to comfort people whose situation would make me, who endeavour to console them, turn my face to the wall and hate the light. What am I to do? Must I argue them into patience because they cannot help it, or tell them it is all for the best? My little wife - there goes and cries over them, and tells them of other people's sorrows. I believe hers is the wisest way."

"Dear, we are commanded to weep with those who weep," said Mrs Archdeacon, in her dove's voice. "Consolation seldom comes well in words," said I. "I have seen a wistful woman come stealing up, with her heart in her eyes, all silent and tearful, and the cup of tea in her hand, which, knowing nothing

VOL. XC.-NO. DLII.

else to do, she has gone to prepare for the mourner. I have seen servants and homely people do so scores of times. I have been so moved myself by that humble consolation, that I could have poured it out as David did the water from the Bethlehem well before the Lord. Talk does little. When the kind neighbour came in to console that old man at Dunkeld, I daresay she swept his hearth and set his old chair and made his little meal look comfortable. It comes more natural than philosophy; with that homeliest ineffable touch of religion which says, 'It is the Lord's will,' and says no more."

"Putting the clergy out of court," said the Archdeacon. "Never mind, you can do nothing serious in life without us. Look at that peak of Ben An, my dear ladies, and don't let us discuss such grave matters. As for Ben Venue, he fronts us like an old heathen, shadowing inexorable over this pale feminine creature that owns his sway. What, Reginald! beginning to sing? a thousand times better than philosophy! And now for Allie's little pipe. Come now, we are beginning to enjoy the night."

"The pale feminine creature that owns his sway," said Arabella over to herself as the two voices burst forth into the silence; and the dear old creature looked at us all round, and then at Alice trilling with her little linnet's note. No! I declare there was not among us a single pale feminine creature darkly reflecting some big image like Loch Achray under Ben Venue. Poor dear Arabella thought it a very poetical simile. She has never been disenchanted, the good soul. She believes as much as ever in that ideal hero whom one expects to worship all one's life when one is young. As for me, I smiled at the Archdeacon's poetry. Loch Achray gleamed darkling under the big shadow. I have seen a patient soul just so, throwing up pale reflections to catch the eye of her master; but I suspect other thoughts as well were in the

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female mind under that subjection; up, far off, the soft wave caught a star or two, and solaced itself with that light, and darkly mirrored the rustling foliage on the island, and sighed along the plaintive shores, not without a little pensive self-assertion. And the young people sang; pleasant young voices, full and liquid. Perhaps the creatures will never be so happy. Why can't they linger there, just where they are, upon the lake that carries them no further? I have no daughters, you know. I don't feel any duty upon me to plunge them into thoughts of the future. They are better if they so abide, in my opinion, as long as it is practicable; but you will see they don't agree with me. I shouldn't wonder if, even

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before we have left this delightful lake, where there is no hurrying current, but one can float at one's ease with no fear of the consequences, they were off, these unguarded souls, on their earliest venture into the river of life — the earliest venture, so far as poor little Alice is concerned-and go hurrying on henceforward with no more such delicious pauses. They don't know what they are doing. Knowing what they are about, and where that stream that tempts them leads to, I should like to keep them floating about the safe motionless loch, the darkling island, the steady mountain shadow. I like to go lingering about, for my own part, here, where is no tide.

KATHERINE S

CHAPTER III.-INCHMAHOME.

I am amused at the quiet composure with which dear Kate lays down the law. She thinks she has so much experience. She has, of course, seen a little external life beyond that which has come under my personal investigation; but what she calls her practical faculty, is highly edifying to me. The sort of sentiment expressed in her last words will shock many people, I don't doubt. It is only her way of appearing superior to common notions. Of course, if Mr Reginald and Miss Alice fancy each other, it is to be supposed that the Archdeacon will allow none of that foolishness; to permit a young man to go lightly about the world deluding sensitive hearts, is a wickedness and folly which I could not suppose Kate would lend her sanction to. But I forbear. The extent to which flirtation is countenanced in these days, is something quite extraordinary to an old-fashioned person like myself. Had I been Alice, I should have been ashamed of myself; but girls are not what they used to be. I am not disposed to mix up my own opinions about so

cial matters, with any account I may be able to give of the charms of nature; but I must protest against the very good-natured allowance for what might be sport to one and death to another, which appears in these singular sentiments of dear Kate.

The only other day I mean to record was altogether a charming one such beauty, such associations, such touching and tender memories! We drove to Callander in the sweetest early morning, with the dew sparkling on the wooded banks, and gleaming over Ben Venue with a freshness of light in which all dews and morning influences were included. We drove past the sweet Loch Vennachar, shining in the delicious early light, with the hills over it greening into breaks of unlooked-for verdure, and emerald glimpses of turf so sweetly reflected in the water, that one could not tell where the margin of fact parted the real greensward from the shadow; and ere we had well left the shadow of Ben Venue, came upon the heaving shoulder of Benledi, slowly emerging out of the morning mists

over the little fresh-awakened vil lage, where we were to pause for breakfast. I do not pause to remark upon the mountains, because, as the lochs are the main object of our expedition, it would but complicate the narrative; but if Ben Venue had not already gained a prominence in the Lady of the Lake, which involuntarily disappoints one even with one's own admiration, I would pause to remark upon that noble hill, throwing a backward glance as it does over Loch Katrine, but reserving its loftiest aspect for fair Loch Achray, that wedded partner in whom the lofty solitary sees himself reflected in every mood and aspect of his mightiness. If Genius had not thrown "the light which never was on sea and shore" over this lovely union of mountain and water, it would be possible to admire it as it deserves; but Sir Walter has glorified and exhausted the Trosachs. They are like some classic maid, wooed by a god, and incapable of humbler worship. I escape, for my own part, to streams unsung, and localities unhallowed, with a fresher zest.

Dear Kate made herself very merry at breakfast with the boy John, whose boyish appetite and inclinations she has chosen to pet for the moment. Such vulgar divergences from our purpose naturally do not tempt me. I hasten to the real object of our journey. We drove to Aberfoyle under threatening skies. The dear Archdeacon twisted his thumbs and hummed a tune, as he contemplated the lowering firmament; and Kate, with an utter abandonment of all the sentiments becoming the occasion, put up her umbrella with savage calmness, and, totally indifferent to the fact that it shut out a hemisphere of scenery from me, who chanced to sit opposite, put down my murmurs by a hard-hearted reference to certain passages in the past. young people were in the rumble behind, looking very contented and totally indifferent to the rain, as,

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indeed, I could very well believe them to be, for what is rain or any other disagreeable circumstance to people in their position? I confess it required all my self-command in face of Kate's umbrella, and her little remarks and reminiscences, to keep my temper; but I triumphed, being sorry for her, poor dear, who, in the prospect of such scenery as we were about to visit, could occupy her mind with the trifling recollections of a few transitory days—days which have passed and left no trace behind. At length we reached the Lake of Monteith. The hills had withdrawn a little from the quiet landscape; all lowland and gentle, with its wooded island rising out of the soft water, spread before us this calmest, tranquil lake. I do not call it a loch-somehow the word does not seem applicable. No mountain shadows overawe its quietness, nor claim those sweet waters as their natural thrall. A different soul possesses the meditative scene. As the boat draws near the shore, grey vestiges of art and antiquity rise silent among the trees. There stands the massive basement of a tower, from which holy bells once rung into the echoes; here rises the lofty wall, with its great window, once perhaps dazzling with painted saint and martyr, but now filled up dully with rude stone-work. It is the religion of the past that lingers there, writing its sermons on the carved and desecrated stones. As one approaches, ruined pillars of nature, grand as the ruined capitals of stone, lie half-smothered in the luxuriant grass; here is nothing but decay, neglect, a plaintive desert, sweet with all the pathetic compensations of nature. I enter softly into the green monastic isle. I wonder to myself whether the sweet seclusion of that cloister might not have given honour and credit to one's loneliness. I follow my companions with a little natural reluctance on the common road, where the guide is to explain everything, and the sentiments of the scene are

to be desecrated into sight-seeing. If I had my own will, I would wander over the pensive limits, and dream it out by myself. But dear Kate, who has put down her umbrella, and is more active and bustling than usual, calls me forwardand there is nothing for it but to submit.

Oh, Duke of Montrose ! I do not know your Grace, and in a general way I wish you no harm-but what is the use of being a duke if one cannot preserve the matchless relics which dukedoms could not purchase? Here, in this vision of an island, in this chapel of ancient consecration, in this pensive centre of recollections, what can a man say for himself who suffers senseless hoofs to desecrate the sod with which nature has replaced the ancient pavement? Bad enough to find the pavement and the roof equally gone, despite the noble steadfast walls which declare the ancient builder's skill; but fancy a sacred spot of consecrated soil, where gallant Grahams lie buried, and where dead Love, clasping stony arms about its recumbent partner, puts up a pathetic human appeal for sympathy to living Love, which makes no answer-fancy, I say, such a spot, to name nothing of its other claims, trodden into mire with hoofs of cattle, and left to gather all the showers of the rainy west, without the faintest attempt at shelter or safe keeping! On the mudded trodden sod lie the nameless knight and his wedded lady in their immemorial embrace, once doubtless tenderly sheltered beneath the canopy of an altar-tomb, but now, all mossgrown and soiled, with pools of rain in every hollow, a desecrated image. In the old sedilia, other broken emblems lie rudely laid aside as if on shelves, precariously refuged out of the mire about. Here, where once a high altar rose -where Augustine friars, in their white mantles, chanted solemn masses, and little Scottish Mary, baby queen, bowed her infant dawn

of beauty in innocent prayers-could any one believe such vulgar sacrilege was possible? Presently I will tell you the story of the childish visit, which makes Inchmahome a wistful point in the saddest tragic story-but in the mean time let us make our appeal to earth and heaven. I cannot tell what is written on the new white marble tablet, curiously stuck up in square mediocrity upon the ancient wall; but however ugly it may be, it proves that somebody living has laid their dead in that desecrated place. Duke! Inchmahome does not grow you an apple in these days, but it might produce you honour and gratitude if you were true steward and worthy officer of your country's scantiest, fairest annals. But if the cattle still tread down the consecrated sod; if the rain-clouds of the west still pour down all unobstructed upon wall and monument; if you see it drop into foul and weedy destruction, and never lend a hand to save, then heavy be the marble, and bad the artist, that carves cenotaph or monument for you!

"Oh, be the earth like lead to lead
Upon the dull destroyer's head-

A minstrel's malison is said!"

Calm and tranquil lies Inchmahome amid its secluded island waters. Here troubled Scotland, three centuries ago, sent her Mary, tenderest blossom, to the gentle custody of the daughters of Augustine. She was five years old, the fair doomed creature in her tiny hood and wimple- the little maid of Scotland, with her baby train of Maries. It was in September weather, when the convent orchards were sweet. The nuns were not human if the very soil they trod did not thrill with tremors of joy and welcome. At matins and even song, the winter through, hereabouts they must have knelt, with baby chimes echoing into the music, that loveliest, hapless group, royal and noble. "Mary Beatoun and Mary Seatoun"-Mary

Stewart first of all; five harmless, tender souls, that might have grown into so many sweet recluses or domestic creatures as women use. Oh, sorrowful, inevitable years! One's heart weeps over the children in that sweet pause of their fate. The little island was an orchard in those tender primeval days, where the sisters garnered their apples in the fresh autumnal mornings, and laboured in dainty devices of husbandry to enrich those sweet convent gardens, which were, like their pictures and their carvings, to the glory of God. Amid that poetic harvest, fancy those children, wonderful buds of beauty, with gentle novice-maidens and mild nuns surprised into ideal maternity, wondering over their lovely promise and their lofty fate. The dullest spectator could not forbear a thrill of emotion to think of those fairy footsteps dancing over the sweet immemorial sod. The little train in mimic state, with its sweet masquerade of baby dignity, its outbreaks of infant laughter, and all the anguish and the misery lying unforeseen before the lovely procession. Such a point in a grievous story overpowers all after-opinion. One puts forth one's hand in a vain effusion of pity and tenderness to ward off the dreadful years. There the child stands innocent upon the threshold of her fate; soft Scottish waters rippling on the shore-still shadows of conventual trees-echoes of sacred bells and lauds and psalms charming the vivaciousStewart blood in her baby veins-and all the white Augustinian sisterhood, innocent and ignorant, between her and harm. Another year, and fatal Guises and Medicis would envelop the little maid. Pause and uncover, gentlemen! The Queen and her Maries hold pathetic possession of this little territory; and mournful history weeps over those flowers of Scotland blooming beneath the orchard trees. The quaint after-thought which has appropriated a nook of ground to her memory, and called this little

enclosure her "child-garden," is to me an almost impertinence. I cannot imagine that royal creature cultivating common flowers like any modern child. One cannot reduce that group, in their quaint splendour of baby dignity, to the wholesome but unpoetic level of even a royal nursery nowadays. But the dark tragedy we all know so well-the terrible spectres watching round that momentary refuge of safetyspectres among which Love and Beauty themselves, changed into awful forms and faces of anguish, are not the least terrible-make the sweet sunshine within all the sweeter and more heart-breaking in the contrast. Island of peace! Why, out of blood and passion, out of dread love, and despair, could not some remorseful angel have found graves for those infants under the mournful trees?

This wonderful little episode in the story of such a tiny speck of earth is enough of history for the conventual isle. The orchard is gone, like the sisterhood; but the whole extent of the little island is covered with that mossy delicious grass, out of which, by natural right, the trees of an immemorial orchard should have sprung. Nowhere could there be a spot more perfect, or possessed with a sweeter unity. On the soft bank at one end, which the homely cicerone calls the Nun's Hill, what a bower of seclusion might be built! Not a lover's bower. Too delicate, too absolute, for invasions of passion, is this virgin solitude. A retreat for Una in her loneliness-Una always young in immortal lily-bloom. On the other side of the sweet water, the shore bends out in a wooded point, leaving a fair retreating curve of white sand, a delicate margin, to mark the limit of the lake. A group of pines throw out their distinct forms from the soft world of foliage upon that fairy promontory, adding an exquisite touch of completeness to the landscape. Never was any scene more virgin-fair. Within, some forlorn

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