[[13]] P. 325, Life, etc., by Thomas Wright, London, 1892.
[[14]] William Hayley, b. 1745; d. 1820. Life of Cowper, 1803.
CHAPTER VII
Beyond Dunkeld—which is the southern gateway of the Scottish Highlands—there stretches a great wood, within the domain of the Duke of Athole, where one can wander for miles; the path sometimes mossy, always inviting; now threading dark glens, and again winding under hoary forest trees that grow on uplands; now giving glimpses of brook or pool, and now of grassy glade on which some group of century-old larches slant their shadows; one may hear noises of chattering squirrels, of whirring pheasants, of roaring wood-streams, of pines soughing in the wind; and at last, going up a side-path, the visitor will come to the door of a Hermitage, bedded in densest mass of foliage. Fifty years ago—to a month—the guide opened that door for me, entered with me, and closed it behind us. I then observed that the whole inner surface of the door was one great mirror, and that there were other mirrors around; while directly opposite was a life-size painting of Ossian fingering his harp; and as I was scanning the details of this picture, the guide touched some hidden spring; Ossian straightway disappeared, sliding into the wall, and through the chasm one looked out upon clouds of spray, behind which an Alpine water-fall with roar and foam plunged down sheer forty feet into a seething pool below. The water-fall through an artful collocation of mirrors seemed to pour down behind you as well; and from the ceiling to pour down above you, and to gird you all about with its din and splash and spray. With the cliffs and the pine boughs it made a pretty grouping of Ossianic charms; and I am sorry to hear that since 1869 or thereabout, the Hermitage, by reason of some vandal outrage, has wholly disappeared.
The only memorial the traveller will find now in that region of the Ossianic harping, of which we spoke in the last chapter, is the Macpherson Stone, which some twenty-five miles farther northward, on the Highland trail, peers out from green copses in the upper valley of the Spey.
I spoke also in our last talk of the literary ferment that had declared itself, and was in active progress along the Scottish border, and in Edinboro'. We had somewhat to say of the poet Crabbe, and of his long and successful poems—now little read; and of those other poems by Cowper, some of which will be always read, and which, when their art shall grow old-fashioned and out of date, will show a tender humanity and a kindly purpose, which I trust will never go out of date.
Parson White.
White of Selborne.