'Tis a beautiful morning in early June. The sun is peeping over Arthur's Seat, and glancing from the turrets of the old Castle. The carriage is ready, and Sandy the driver is cracking his whip with impatience. So, take your place, and let us be off. Passing 'Bruntsfield Links' we plunge into the very heart of the country, so rich and varied, with park and woodland scenery, handsome villas, and sweet acclivities. Yonder is Merchiston Castle, the birth-place of the celebrated Napier, the inventor of Logarithms. A little further on, we reach the smiling village of Morningside, and pass some pretty country residences, with pleasant grounds and picturesque views. We enter a narrow and thickly wooded dell, through which tinkles a small rivulet, called the Braid Burn. At the bottom we come to the Braid Hermitage, as sweet a sylvan retreat as ever greeted the eye of the rural wanderer. Those rocky heights above us are the Braid Hills, from which can be enjoyed some of the most splendid views in Scotland. Leaving the carriage a few minutes we ascend that lofty eminence, and gaze, with delight upon the vast and beautiful landscape, including the city of Edinburgh, the Firth of Forth, with its "emerald islands," and the winding shores of Fife in the distance. Blackford hill, a little to the north of us is the spot mentioned in "Marmion:"
"Still on the spot Lord Marmion stay'd,
For fairer scene he ne'er survey'd,
When sated with the martial show
That peopled all the plains below,
The wandering eye could o'er it go,
And mark the distant city glow
With gloomy splendor red;
For on the smoke wreaths, huge and slow,
That round her sable turrets flow,
The morning beams were shed,
And tinged them with a lustre proud,
Like that which streaks a thunder cloud;
Such dusky grandeur clothed the height,
Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Piled deep and massy, close and high,
Mine own romantic town!
But northward far with purer blaze
On Ochil mountains fell the rays,
And as each heathy top they kiss'd,
It gleamed a purple amethyst.
Yonder the shores of Fife you saw;
Here Preston Bay, and Berwick-Law,
And broad between them roll'd
The gallant Firth the eye might note,
Whose islands on its bosom float,
Like emeralds chased in gold."
Descending from the hill we resume our journey, musing on the days of old, when "shrill fife and martial drum" awakened the echoes of these peaceful vales, now resounding with the melody of birds. How delightful the gushing music of those sky-larks, which descends upon us from "heaven's gates," like a shower of "embodied gladness." Why, it seems as if a hundred of them were soaring "i' the lift," and singing with a joyous energy, akin to that of the blessed spirits in heaven. To me, the lark is the noblest of all birds, the most pure and spirit-like of all aerial songsters. In Scotland, too, she seems to sing the sweetest and strongest. Others may praise the nightingale, if they please, and my own heart has often thrilled, to hear, at the "witching time of night," her wild and melancholy strain from some English copsewood, or Italian grove. But nothing so rich and beautiful, so spirit-like and divine ever greeted my ear as the glad singing of the heaven-aspiring lark. It seemed as if the very spirit of song had taken wings, and were ascending to God, in a flood of melody. But listen to the following strains written by Shelley under the inspiration of the sky-lark's song:
Hail to thee, blithe spirit,
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven or near it
Pourest thy full heart
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.
Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire!
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing, still dost soar; and soaring, ever singest.
In the golden lightning
Of the sunken sun,
O'er which clouds are brightening,
Thou dost float and run;
Like an embodied joy, whose race has just begun.
All the earth and air
With thy voice is loud,
As, when night is bare
From one lonely cloud,
The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed.
What thou art, we know not.
What is most like thee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
Drops so bright to see,
As from thy presence showers a rain of melody
Like a poet hidden
In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden
Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.