“Not so the Holland fleet, who, tired and done,
Stretch’d on their decks, like weary oxen lie;
Faint sweats all down their mighty members run
(Vast hulks which little souls but ill supply).
“In dreams they fearful precipices tread,
Or, shipwreck’d, labour to some distant shore;
Or in dark churches walk among the dead;
They wake with horror, and dare sleep no more.”
We do not know whether the reader will agree with us, but we look upon these verses as wonderfully fine, and upon the Annus Mirabilis as, of its class, amongst the finest, if not the very finest, poem in the language.
Even from a meteorological point of view, this year, in our part of the country at least, has had not a little of the mirabilis about it. Byron, we know, awoke one morning and found himself famous, and we awoke one morning last week and found ourselves in mid-winter, albeit the previous day had been mild, and calm, and sunny, and bright as if it were Whitsuntide, rather than the Eve of St. Luke the Evangelist. Since then we have had incessant storms, shifting about and sometimes blowing from every point of the compass within the four-and-twenty hours, with such deluges of rain as Lochaber alone can supply in season, or sometimes, entre nous, out of season as well. The mountain summits are, at the moment we write, covered with a lamb’s-wool-like coating of virgin snow, and the air has become so chill and raw that we were fain some days ago to don our winter habiliments for the season. We have no right or reason to complain, however; a finer summer and autumn were never known in the Highlands, and since winter must come some time or other, it is better that it should come in season. The fourth week of October is not a bit too early for snow, and sleet, and storms, so that when we hear the winds howling over ferry and firth, and the waves breaking with sullen roar upon the vexed strand, and listen to the rattle and the dash of rain and sleet upon the window panes, we shall, first taking care that the shutters are properly closed and the curtains drawn, just draw our arm-chair a little nearer the fire, which our “lassie,” you may be sure, has trimmed betimes, like Horace’s boy, large reponens peats and coals thereon, and then, with the Courier, Scotsman, or Standard on our knee, or a stray copy of the Saturday Review or Spectator, which some distant friend has kindly sent us, or some fresh volume from Ardgour’s library, the worst we shall say will be in the words of poor old Lear, “Blow wind, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!” blessing God the while that if our lot be a humbler one, it is also a happier one than the poor old king’s.