It was whilst engaged in robbery of this kind, that I was first checked by the tears and entreaties of Mary—of my dear cousin, Mary Morison. Alas! poor Mary! thou wast mild, beautiful, kind, merciful; yet thy days have been numbered, and thou art gone—
"Unde negant redire quenquam;"
and I, a lubber fiend in comparison with thy beauty and gentleness—I, a personification of cruelty and horror in comparison with thee—I am still alive, and thinking of thee—whilst thou art not even dust—"etiam periere ruinæ." Forty-five years confound even dust, and reduce to a fearful nonentity all that smiled, and charmed, and inspired. But of this enough—this way madness lies.
That was a terrible conflagration at Miramichi. I think I hear it crashing, thundering, crackling on; before it the wild beasts, the serpents, the cattle—man! poor, houseless, helpless, smoke-enveloped, and perishing man. The reason why I can conceive so vividly of this awful and comparatively recent visitation is this—I was accustomed to "set muirburn" when a boy of nine or ten. The primeval heath of our mountains was strong, bushy; and, when dry in spring, exceedingly inflammable. I was a mountain child; for, on one side of my dwelling the heather withered and bloomed up to the door; and when one thinks of the "bonny blooming heather," it is quite refreshing; it blooms when all things around it are withering, during the later months of harvest; but then, oh, then, it puts on such a russet robe of beauty—a dark evening cloud tipped and tinged with red—a mantle of black velvet spangled with gold; and its fragrance is honey steeped in myrrh. Yet when withered in March and April, it is an object of aversion to the sheep farmer, who prefers green grass and tender sward; and he issues to impatient boyhood the sentence of destruction. Peat follows peat, kindled at one end, and held by the other; the hillside or the level muir swarm with matches; carefully is the ignition communicated to the dry and widespread heath; from spot to spot—in lines and in circles—it extends and unites—the wind is up, and one continuous blaze is the almost immediate consequence. It is night, dark night—the clouds above catch and reflect the uncertain gleam. The heathfowl wing their terrified flight—through, above, and beneath the rolling and outspreading smoke. The flame gathers into a point; and, at the more advanced part of the curvature, the force and blaze is terrible. A thousand tongues of fire shoot up into the density, and immediately disappear. Who now so venturous as to dash headlong through the hottest flame, and to recover from beneath the choking night his former position? There goes—a hat—a cap—a bonnet! They have taken up their position in the pathway of the devouring flood of fire—and who so brave, so daring, as to extricate his own property from instant destruction? Hurrah! hurrah! from a score of throats, mixes with the thunder, the crackle, the roll—all is power, novelty, ecstasy; bare heads and bare feet dance and show conspicuously upon the still smoking turf. Here an adder is seen writhing and twisting in the agonies of death. There a half-burned hat evinces the fun and the folly of its owner. But, oh, horrible! what is that on the edge of vision, in the dim and hazy distance; it comes forward, bounding, turning, and bellowing, fearful and paralysing; it is the bull himself escaped from his fold, and maddened by the smoke and blazing atmosphere. He comes down upon the charge, tail erect, and head down, tossing all that is solid under his feet, and looking through the scattered earth with eyes glaring as well as reflecting fire. Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Wallace, Wellington, never entered a field of battle with such a terrific presence. He seems as if he had just escaped from a Roman or Spanish arena. He is desperately infuriated; and woe be to him who shall be overtaken by this muscular tornado in his weakness and his fears! We are off! diffugimus! We are nowhere to be found. One has made for a distant wall surrounding the heather park, and is in the act of climbing it. The bull is in full chase, armed with two short but powerful horns. The fugitive has just laid hold of an upper stone to assist his ascent; but the faithless help has given way; stone and he are lying alongside of the dyke. The bull is in full scent. The noise has directed him. He nears—he nears—he nears! My God! the urchin's life is not worth two minutes' purchase.
"Now, do thy speedy, Arnot Wull—
'Twill take it all to clear the bull!"
Bravo! the summit is gained; the feet of the pursued are seen flying in mid air; he has sprung from the summit at least twenty feet; but the whole weight of the pursuing brute is upon the crazy structure; it gives way with a crash, and down rush stones over stones, and the poor maimed, bruised brute over all. What! Mr. Bull! are you satisfied?—why not continue the sport? But the game is up; Will has regained his mother's dwelling, and now lives to record this wonderful, this all but miraculous escape. Catch me setting muirburn again!
I was very unwilling, at the age of nine, to be sent to school—I had formed for myself a home society with which I was perfectly satisfied; but the decree had gone forth, and to school I must go, to learn Latin, conducted by a scholar of some standing. I had three miles to walk, but I would have wished them ten. Shakspeare shows the characters with whom time gallops, and, amongst others, with a thief who is to be hanged on a certain day—he might have mentioned a schoolboy, with shiny morning face, going unwillingly to school. When I came within sight of the large, many-windowed building, my heart beat sorely with alarm. All was new to me—the boys, the masters, the house, the grounds around it; in fact, I was about to pass into a new state of being. I was bursting the shell, and coming forth into real life. Hitherto I had seen nobody but the herd-callan, the Gibson family, my mother and her aunts. I was exceeding smart and mischievous, no doubt; but my sphere of operations was confined; now it was about to be enlarged—I must face three hundred boys and girls in the park or school play-ground of Wallacehall. All eyes would be turned upon me; my very dress would undergo a scrutiny; nor would I easily escape the seasoning welcome, a hearty drubbing: all this I anticipated, and all this and more I soon experienced. When I set up my face in the play-ground about half-past eight (nine being the school hour), all was commotion. Alas! how many are now motionless who were then active—still, who were then vociferous—cold, whose hearts were then beating warm and buoyant! When the disk of my countenance appeared at the entrance into the park or play-ground, I was immediately smoked. One fellow came up with the most affected good-nature, and hoped my mither was with me. I would be in great danger, he said, without her. A second one bid me tie my shoe, and, whilst I was stooping, hauled me heels over head. I had not fairly recovered my natural position, when I was hit on the side of my head with a ball, till my eyes glanced fire; anon, the drive, the crowd, the scramble carried me along with it completely off my feet. I was pelted, bruised, buffeted, and even kicked. Human nature could stand it no longer—my spirit, even that of the Devil, was awakened within me—I struck out around me with all my might, and at random—somebody's nose happened to come in the way of my knuckles, and it bled; he struck back again, and the blood sprang from my lips. A ring was formed—to it we went—I, running in upon him head and shoulders, "knees and elbows an' a'," laid him flat; unfair play was proclaimed—my antagonist was raised; but he was pale and breathless; he said he was hearted, and had almost fainted; so I got a cheap victory, and eternal glory! I took my place amongst the boys, unmolested and respected in future. I would twaddle through a pretty decent volume, about public and private education, and everybody but my bookseller would think I was speaking sense; but I will spare my reader and myself, and only add, in one sentence, that a public seminary, well conducted, is the best of all schools for the world—preparation for the buffetings, kickings, and jostlings of life.
THE SUICIDE'S GRAVE.
The suicide's grave—where is it? It is at the meeting or crossing of three public roads; the body has been thrust down, under the darkness of night, into a coffinless grave. The breast, formerly torn and lacerated by passions, has lately been mangled into horrid deformity by the pointed stake; and the traveller, as he walks, rides, or drives along, regards the spot with an eye of suspicion, and blesses his stars that he is a living man. The suicide's grave—where is it? On the bare and cold top of that mountain which divides Lanark from Dumfriesshire. There you may see congregated the hoody craw, and the grey gled, and the eagle—but they are not congregated in peace and in friendship; they are fearful rivals, and terrible notes do they utter as they contend over the body of her who was fair, and innocent, and happy. Alas, for Alice Lorimer! Her story is a sad one, and it would require the pen of a Sterne or a Wilson to do it justice. But the circumstances are of themselves so full of mournful interest, that, even though stated in the most simple language, they cannot fail, I should think, to interest—nay, I will say it at once, to excite sympathy and pity; for why should we not pity the unhappy and unfortunate? They are pitied in poverty, in obscurity, in sickness, in death. Why should not we even pity the guilty and abandoned? They are pitied in prison, on the day of trial, and, most of all, in the hour of execution. There—even there—on that platform, the murderer himself obtains that sympathy which we refuse to the suicide. He who has only ruined, destroyed himself, is held in greater abhorrence than the man who has ruined innocence, and even murdered the unhappy mother and unborn babe. Away with such unjust and ungenerous distinctions! Away, and to the highway and to the mountain top, and to the raven, and the falcon, and the eagle, with the seducer and the murderer; and let the poor suicide's grave, in future, be in consecrated ground, where remembrance may soon overlook his woes and his very existence. Let him sleep unknowing and unknown in the churchyard of his fathers. Alice Lorimer, I myself knew—I was intimately acquainted with her—I was a companion and a favourite. In frosty weather we have frequented the same slides, and, when Alice was in danger of falling, I have caught her in my arms; we have hopped together for hours, playing at beds, and I even made Alice privy to all my birds' nests. Hers was indeed a playful, but a gentle nature. Her heart was light, her voice clear and cheerful, and her whole affections were engrossed by an only surviving parent, a widowed father. Alice was his first-born and his last. Her mother had given her life at the expense of her own; and her father, a shoemaker in the village of Croalchapel, devoted his whole spare time to the education of Alice. Often have I seen him, with the shoe on the last, and the elshun in his hand, pursuing his daily labours; but listening attentively all the while to Aly's readings. It was thus the child was taught to read the Bible, to say her prayers, and ultimately to make her father's dinner and her own. Their cottage stood at what was termed the "head of the town," on a sunny eminence looking to the west; behind it were the shade and the shelter of many trees, of the widespread oak, the tall ash, and the sweetly-scented birch. On Sabbath afternoons, John Lorimer might be seen with his beloved child, clean and neatly dressed, ascending to the top of the Bormoors braes; and, from the green summit of the eminence, looking abroad over a landscape, certainly not surpassed by any which has yet come under the writer's observation. On his one hand lay the worn and silver-clasped Bible, from which portions of the gospels were occasionally read, and on the other reposed Poodle, a little wire-haired dog of uncommon natural parts, which had been greatly improved by education. Poodle could bark, and do all manner of things. His eyes would "glisten in friendship, or beam in reply." His nose was a platform, from which many little pieces of bread had been tossed up into the air, and afterwards snapped. He was all obedience to little Alice in particular; and, at her bidding, would do anything but swim—he had, somehow or other, contracted an aversion for the water, probably referable to some mischievous boys having one day thrown him into Closeburn Loch.