“Whitaker, my friend! Harriet, my beloved sister!” cried Elliot, bursting out from beneath the overspreading beech, and snatching his sister in his arms—“I am here—I see all—I understand the whole of the events—how much too graciously brought about for me, Father of mercies! I acknowledge. Let us now go to my mother.”
It is in scenes such as this that we find how weak words are to describe the feelings of the actors—the rapid transition of events—the passions that chase one another over the minds and hearts of those concerned, like waves in a tempest. Nor is it necessary. The reader who can feel and comprehend such situations as those in which the actors in our little tale are placed, are able to draw, from their own hearts and imaginations, much fitter and more rapidly sketched portraitures of the passions which are awakened, the feelings that develop themselves in such situations and with such persons, than can be painted in words.
The harvest moon was gone, and another young moon was in the skies, when Whitaker, and the same young lady of whom we before spoke, trode down the avenue, locked in each other’s arms, and with cheek pressed to cheek. They talked of a thousand things most interesting to persons in their situation—for they were to be married on the morrow—but, perhaps, not so interesting to our readers, many of whom may have performed in the same scenes.
Elliot’s mother was recovered; and he himself was happy, or, at least, he put on all the trappings of happiness; for, in a huge deer-skin Esquimaux dress, which he had brought from Greenland, he danced at his sister’s wedding until the great bear had set in the sea, and the autumn sun began to peer through the shutters of the drawing-room of his ancient hall.
PHILIPS GREY.
“Death takes a thousand shapes:
Borne on the wings of sullen slow disease,
Or hovering o’er the field of bloody fight,
In calm, in tempest, in the dead of night,
Or in the lightning of the summer moon;
In all how terrible!”
Among the many scenes of savage sublimity which the lowlands of Scotland display, there is none more impressive in its solitary grandeur, than that in the neighbourhood of Loch Skene, on the borders of Moffatdale. At a considerable elevation above the sea, and surrounded by the loftiest mountains in the south of Scotland, the loch has collected its dark mass of waters, astonishing the lovers of nature by its great height above the valley which he has just ascended, and, by its still and terrible beauty, overpowering his mind with sentiments of melancholy and awe. Down the cliffs which girdle in the shores of the loch, and seem to support the lofty piles of mountains above them, a hundred mountain torrents leap from rock to rock, flashing and roaring, until they reach the dark reservoir beneath. A canopy of grey mist almost continually shrouds from the sight the summits of the hills, leaving the imagination to guess at those immense heights which seem to pierce the very clouds of heaven. Occasionally, however, this veil is withdrawn, and then you may see the sovereign brow of Palmoodie encircled with his diadem of snow, and the green summits of many less lofty hills arranged round him, like courtiers uncovered before their monarch. Amid this scene, consecrated to solitude and the most sombre melancholy, no sound comes upon the mountain breeze, save the wail of the plover, or the whir of the heathcock’s wing, or, haply, the sullen plunge of a trout leaping up in the loch.
At times, indeed, the solitary wanderer may be startled by the scream of the grey eagle, as dropping with the rapidity of light from his solitary cliff, he shoots past, enraged that his retreat is polluted by the presence of man, and then darts aloft into the loftiest chambers of the sky; or, dallying with the piercing sunbeams, is lost amid their glory.[H] At the eastern extremity of the loch, the superfluous waters are discharged by a stream of no great size, but which, after heavy showers, pours along its deep and turbid torrent with frightful impetuosity.