mer's day, a rapid rolling river; where one false step would plunge you into a boiling and bottomless whirlpool. You have never gazed upon the spirit-stirring scenes, through which we ply our toil; where the cloud-capt mountains above, and the mighty flood around, are the sole spectators of our struggle. Your heart has never panted during the dubious hour of strife, nor your breast swelled with victory, as your spangled captive lay before you on the smooth green grass!

Yet these considerations, duly weighed, will go far towards accounting for the fashionable modern frenzy in this branch of his art—which it certainly never entered into the heart of the Father himself of fishermen to conceive; and for the enthusiasm with which, the two officers once more returned, after a long winter's interval, to their favourite sport. With change of place, Flood had laid aside all thought and care for Plowden, and the quiet green room; and had merged all memories of the past, and all anxieties for the future, in the enjoyment of the

G

scenes before him. Six hundred miles had reduced to its just dimensions the importance of a Chancery Suit: and Injunctions, and 'Laches' looked small in the midst of a Life in the Highlands!

CHAPTER VII.

"As 'a trot becomes a gallop soon, in spite of curb and rein,' so a Scotch mist becomes a shower-and a shower, a flood-and a flood, a storm-and a storm, a tempest-and a tempest, thunder and lightning—and thunder and lightning, heaven-quake and earth-quake."

Recreations of CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

USAN Ritchie's information was correct. A large and brilliant party of the aristocracy were assembled at Galloway Castle for the amusements of 'flood and field,' to celebrate Lord Athelstane's majority, who had not forgotten to secure on the occasion the presence of several of his College friends amongst whom none had received a more pressing invitation than Harold St. Just, whom the good steam-ship Caledonia was, by every stroke of her paddle-wheels, and every

breath of her cylinders, bringing nearer and nearer to the shores of Aberdeen.

Few of the many things, which arrest the traveller's attention on his first visit to the North, are more striking, than the territorial extent of the domains of the great landed proprietors. In England a man's lands are measured by the rood and perch. In Scotland they are counted by the mile. A laird, who, according to his rent-roll, would pass for a man of straw, will command a tract of country equal to that of the wealthiest commoner on the South of the Tweed. Much of it of course is unprofitable, but there it is, unmistakeable tangible real property, and he tells it out by his thousands, and not by his scores, of acres.

If this be true of the smaller heritors, some idea may be formed of the immeasurable extent of the lands of the greater lords. In fact their superficial contents are not certainly known, and can only be approximately conjectured. For a whole summer's day, and so for several days in succession, you may travel past the land

marks of a single peer. You may climb to the highest peak of some commanding moor, and thence survey an horizon of miles upon miles, carry yourself in thought again to it, and from it overlook another tract as wide, and you will have been gazing on perhaps but a fraction of the incredible inheritance of one and the same man. Nor is it till one well considers this, that any just idea can be formed of the enormous power, which the great Barons wielded in Feudal ages, or what dangerous rivals they must at all times have proved to the Sovereign himself. Situate at a vast and, in those days, unapproachable, distance from the Court, and living among their own people, to whom they were endeared by all the ties of nationality and neighbourhood, each one possessed the attributes, if not the name, of Royalty, and could exercise at any moment the most formidable influence through the length and breadth of the land.

The domains of Galloway Castle were of this character. They were upon the largest possible