commenced their journey; mothers were seen clasping their babes in their arms, and mingling tears with caresses; while the fathers were helping forward the tottering steps of children, whose little limbs could ill sustain the fatigue of travelling, though they had often wandered whole days through the wilds of Glenalbyn. Young women, weeping as they went, supported the steps of feeble age, whose querulous sorrow was mournfully expressed. This slow-moving procession was no joyous pastoral pilgrimage to the summer shealing. It was indeed a heart-rending spectacle: at every succeeding step some object started up to endear Glenalbyn, some lovely scene of infant sports, or youthful loves, rose smiling on every hand, to embitter the pang of separation. They had reached the rustic cemetery belonging to the hamlet. It was bordered by the rude path which wound up the glen, and its opposite boundary was the lake. Here they made an involuntary pause: grief burst forth afresh, and each threw himself on the grave of the parent, the child, or the brother, to pour forth the last tribute of affection,-to pull the wild flowers that grew on the hallowed sod, that, in a strange land they might be preserved, and loved, and wept over; and valued far beyond all its pomp of floral beauty. Affliction had now reached its acmé,-the last tie was severed which bound them to Glenalbyn. Yet long, long they lingered, and then slowly and silently proceeded. indicative of the strongest feature of the national character-pride of birth. I cannot presume to translate any of these effusions, which are probably alike silly in every language, and alike untranslatable. I recollect one of them, which is in very common use, and goes on, Sleep my daughter, my darling, my daughter, MADCONALD and MACLEAN are your kinsmen, &c. &c. And all the Highland chiefs are strung up in a rude rhyme, with abundant terms of endearment, and declared to be kinsmen to the nursling; and when the list is run over, it is again and again begun. Now, if a Highland child wont sleep upon that, it surely deserves to be whipped. I shall put an end to this rambling note with an anecdote, which, though trifling, is somewhat illustrative of the Highland character. A boy, from his appearance about six or seven years of age, was coming on a message to the house of a gentleman, and was met, at a short distance from the door, by a large swine. An animal of the size, in a part of the country where they are rare, must have been very alarming to a child of his years, and he betrayed many symptoms of terror. An English or Low-country boy would, in such circumstances, either boldly have fought his way, or run off; but the little Highlander did neither. Assuming a very soft and caressing tone of voice, and throwing a strange mixture of respect and complacency into his perturbed countenance, he cautiously sidled past the swine, complimenting her all the while on her high birth and landed property. "Madam yourself the sow, -h is yours! all Q- -h is yours. Madam yourself the sow! Machallan is your own cousin, Madam yourself the sow!" and with this flattery he got safely past, and took refuge in the house. all M Machallan is the name by which his Grace the Duke of Argyle is known among the clans. The grief of Norman was lively and distracting. Mary, the gentle being who had protected his infancy,-Ronald, the good old man!-every little sharer of his infant sports, and every young companion of his boyish enterprizes,-never again to be beheld,all torn at once from the clinging embrace! Mary fondly lingered, leaning heavily on the arm of Norman, who carried her little bundle; and they mingled their tears in silence till the exiles had reached the ivy-cliff, where Ronald stopped to take a last farewell. And now the emigrants had reached the crag of yews," where an angle of the mountains must hide the glen for ever from their sight. They again paused to take a last look, a last farewell of Glenalbyn. Hugh blew a few notes of that air so agonizing to the feelings of exiled Highlanders. It thrilled on the inmost pulse of Norman's heart. He flung his arms around his "little mother,"-it was a last, a severing embrace! He darted rapidly back towards the glen, threw himself in agony on the grass, and again started hastily up, lest affection should miss the last look;-the last look, so cherished by the tender heart, on which memory fondly lingers when years on years have revolved and all else is forgotten. Impressive indeed was that last look; years rolled away, and it was still present to Norman. Women half kneeling and weeping; men stretching forth their arms, as if to embrace, for the last time, the glen of their fathers; every attitude and every movement expressive of strong passion and vehement sorrow. Norman turned away his head, and when he looked again they were all gone, and a faint swell of female voices rose on the air, wailing, "We return, we return, we return no more!" Slowly did Norman wind round the lake, shunning the deserted hamlet with that delicacy which the wounded heart involuntarily displays towards itself; and sadly did he rejoin the aged and solitary inhabitants of Eleenalin. The emigrants had taken leave of the Lady on the preceding evening, when she visited the clan for the last time. It was a solemn scene. On each individual did she bestow her energetic benediction; and, standing up, surrounded by her clansmen, she prayed "that the God of their fathers would be their guide on the deep waters, and in the land of the stranger. That the Lord God of Israel, who, with his pillar of fire and of cloud, had led his people through the wilderness, would go forth with the remnant of her race to the strange land whither they journeyed." They lamented and bitterly wept; and the Lady likewise wept, but was silent. When Norman returned to the island he found the Lady gently comforting the disconsolate Moome. She entreated him to seek repose, as he had watched all night with Mary. Their common loss was still too recent for conversation; and he gladly retired, and leaned on his sleepless couch till evening. When he rose, he found that the Lady had walked out, and he intended to follow her. The evening was glowing and balmy. The rich tints of gold and purple which illumined the western sky were reflected by the waters of the lake with mellowed and magic lustre : a rosy light was effused on every pendant cliff and waving tree pictured on its smooth bosom. Moome sat on a low stool in the woodbine porch, trying to spin. Norman, with folded arms, leaned against an old elm that grew near the door of the cottage, and strove to give his mind to the lovely scene around him. Something still was wanting; involuntarily he turned his eye to the hamlet; he looked for its curling smoke, he listened for the doubling clink of Ronald's hammer, for the hum of infant voices, or the song at the evening fold, which in such an evening, might be distinctly heard across the lake. All was still. It was a stillness which chilled the heart, and froze all the pulses of life. "I have seen the blue smokes of Glenalbyn," said Moome, "rising every morning for fourscore and ten years. This morning I looked, and they were all gone out!" She sighed deeply, and a long pause followed. 66 ; A mavis, that sweet songster of the Scottish glens, was perched on a neighbouring birch-tree, cheering his mate with a soft loud" song, and awakening all the fairy echoes of Eleenalin. Moome looked mournfully round. "Oh, well may you sing," cried she you still make your nest in Glenalbyn!" Norman burst into tears and darted away, his indignant spirit soaring beyond the passions of a boy, as, in bitterness of soul, he cursed the mercenary temper which had exiled his countrymen. 66 On the following day the piper returned to his lady; he had escorted his clansmen to their first stage. He talked to Moome of their parting; and in a few days Norman and the Lady joined in the conversation. And But Hugh hung his pipe against the wall, and many, many months elapsed ere he could draw a single note from it. Even then Norman fancied it still sounded "We return no more." during many months nothing was heard of the emigrants; but at last Allan wrote, and they learned that their feelings were enviable when compared with those of the expatriated band. It was Glenalbyn,-it was the blue and distant mountains that sheltered their home, it was the rugged shores of Alybin and the last of her isles, to which their hearts clung in melancholy succession. Allan simply described these feelings, and the grief of Norman was renewed. But by the end of winter they had so far recovered their tranquillity that Moome sung to the Lady all the particulars of the emigration in Gaelic verse of her own composition; and Hugh played a pipe tune which he had composed, and called "The Departing Day." THAT part of Norman's education which Buchanan superintended was now finished. He returned no more to Ballyruag, but Flora Buchanan fixed her residence in Eleenalin, for the benefit of the Lady's instructions in those female accomplishments that were deemed necessary for her condition. Lady Augusta originally intended to give her adopted son a medical education, and from her slender annuity had long been making provision for that purpose. But the emigration intervened, and the lady, who valued money only as the instrument of benevolence, and expended it in the way likely to produce most good, gave that sum to the necessities of her poor neighbours which had been set apart to train her young friend to a liberal profession. As it now was, she was in no haste to launch her pupil into the world. He was still very young, and she perceived that he had a strong bias to a military life. Arms was not the profession the lady coveted for Norman, yet none other was open to his hopes; and she flattered herself that his principles would preserve him from the dangerous impressions to which the young soldier is always exposed; and that talent and integrity would enable him to rise in the army, though destitute alike of interest or fortune. For some years after her retreat from the busy haunts of life, Lady Augusta had been visited by the neighbouring gentry; but a new race had now sprung up, who knew not "the Lady," consequently her interest was as slender as her acquaintances were few; yet she might have procured him an opportunity of entering on the profession he panted after thus early; but to leave him to himself at so tender an age,―or, rather, to expose his unsuspecting innocence to the contagion of evil example, without one friend to direct, with moral habits still unformed, and those stronger powers of the mind which prove the guardian of honour and the guide of conduct, still undeveloped,-Lady Augusta shrunk from the rash experiment. Educated among a martial people, and taught to consider arms as the only profession worthy of a gentleman destitute of fortune, Norman felt an early and strong vocation to glory. His first lessons had been the military exercise; while yet a child, he had been an ideal soldier; the splendid habit of him he fondly called father was military; and all pointed one way. Yet, with all the impatient ardour incident to his age and character, with all his impassioned desire to rush into life and action, he cheerfully submitted to the will of her whom it was his happiness to obey. She said that he was too young to be left alone; and Norman felt that she was too aged to be consigned to solitude. But the present carelessness of his life was not without design on the part of his enlightened protectress. Hugh was his companion in field sports; and on the hills and moors of his country he was inured to the toils he might hereafter encounter in its defence. By the same universal genius, he was instructed in music. On the violin, he played the wild, devious, heart-breathing strains of his native mountains, with exquisite feeling; into them his soul was transfused. This, indeed, was a talent he possessed in common with many a poor Highlander; for in every farm of the Isles and remote Highlands, some tuneful enthusiast may still be found, who has had no instructor save ardent feeling, and native taste. Music, which, in wealthy societies, is the elegant occupation of the rich and great, is here the amusement of the lowly. In the former, it is chiefly cultivated by females; here, by the men; but from the same motive in both,-abundant leisure, and a certain degree of refinement. In no northern country is music so generally cultivated. The Lady Augusta, whom long residence abroad had given an intimate acquaintance with several continental languages, became the assistant of Norman in mastering their first difficulties. witchery of Ariosto, and the sublimity of Corneille, did the rest. Norman, who had abundance of youthful ambition, and a peculiarly active imagination, was also a painter; but in this difficult and delightful art he had no aid, no guide, save a lively fancy, rectified by the highly cultivated taste of Lady Augusta, and the inspiration caught from views of nature in her most striking attitudes. But reading, social reading, was the charm of the domestic evening," gleaning the spoils of time,"-the most delightful occupation of the young mountaineer.-The Lady had nothing which deserved the pompous name of a library; but she had an excellent collection of books, the better perhaps, that her means of procuring this, her only luxury, were extremely limited, and that much thought was employed in selecting. The early misfortunes, and consequent habitudes of her life, had made books necessary to her comfort; and if ever the equable and all-enduring spirit of this hard-fated woman was ruffled by trivial matters,-if ever she was betrayed by personal feelings into any censure of the expensive tastes of the age, it was when luxury precluded her favourite indulgence, and pursued her in the shape of broad margins, and all those typographical and other embellishments which make modern publications accessible only to the wealthy. She could not forbear to protest against the taste, which tries to degrade the intellectual treasures of mankind to the level of furniture and equipments for the ignorant and ostentatious. It was perhaps a very natural taste, which made the Archbishop of Grenada delight in seeing his homilies written out in a fine and fair hand; but it would have been most alarming to other people had any one else cared about them. Happily, however, for Lady Augusta, the best books are also the lowest in price;—and still more happily, the purest and most last |