which might task the skill of a sinewy leaper on terra firma; and here a sheer precipice, one hundred and fifty feet in height, yawns beneath. But the Badger's shoeless feet cling like a hawk's or a squirrel's to the cliff, and in another moment-for he dare not give himself a moment to realise the extremity of the peril -he has crossed the gulf and is safe. So are the eggs in his cap, (he has carried it between his teeth all the time),-forthwith taken possession of by the Commodore, who looks, however, I fancy, as if in his opinion they had nearly cost too much.

And now we prepare to return,-for the light of the early spring afternoon begins to fail, and the breeze moans mournfully among the deserted and darkening caves. All day we have been, as it were, cut off from any fellowship with our fellow-creatures,— for no hut or sheiling is visible among these desolate rocks. But now, as we gain the offing, the towers of a great sea-keep are visible on the farthest crag, and, in the sheltered ravine below, the ruins of an ancient abbey. Here the great House of Comyn lived, -here their bones rest.

The castle for their stormy life,

The convent for its close;

That with battle and bloodshed rife,

This keeping for them, who were done with strife,
Shelter and long repose.

And then the Commodore,-as the boat rushed swiftly through the freshening swell before the keen breeze of

the coming night,-began a yarn about the kingly Comyns, and some fair, far-off Beatrix or Muriel,-for these old Scotch nobles gave their pretty daughters even prettier names,-whose pathetic love-story still keeps her memory sweet.

108

VI.

L

LADY GRISEL.

ETTY and I went to the Roman Catholic chapel last Sunday. It is prettily situated on the brow of the Raven's Craig; the music is good; the light rich and dim; the view from the terrace, in spring-timeover land and sea, and the blushing hawthorn hedgesvery glorious.

There are times when the gloom of a Catholic shrine is favourable to devotional feeling. Letty, when at home, is often the least little bit of an unbeliever-a charming rebel. But to-day, while the mournful notes of the Stabat Mater fretted the narrow aisle, and violet and purple dyes streamed through the stained glass upon the upturned face of the kneeling girl, I saw that earnest, rapt expression which sometimes gathers into the dreamy eyes of the mystic. It is at these times that the invisible comes near to us. At these times we are able to rise above the fellowships of sense, and to behold, beyond the smoke of the incense and the gloom of the sanctuary, the vision of a martyred God.

But the fit does not last long-we quickly return to

earth.

Earth is our mother-or at least our fostermother—and she does all she can, as the poet has said, to obscure the glories of our ancestry, and to divide us from the heritage to which we were born. I cannot say that on this day the discourse of the good priestFather Eustace, they called him-did much to prolong the sway of the unseen. Yet the idea of his discourse —a sort of heathen Io Paan in a Christian church— was fine, and it was worked out with no inconsiderable skill. We are actors, it said, in a great and sombre tragedy. We are marching onwards-ever onwardsto Death. The Grave is before us. This is no light Bacchanalian dance on which we have entered. It is a solemn procession, marshalled by a Divine, omnipotent leader, conducting to a sure but mysterious ending. Why, then, O my brothers! why, then, turn it into a comedy or a farce? You may strive to do so,—you may drape it in grotesque attire, and play those fantastic tricks before high heaven that make the angels weep, but it remains what God has designed it to be; you cannot escape from its grave conditions and its dire solemnities. When we know that each one of us has to undergo this cruel ordeal-this mysterious fatewhy vex our souls with ambition? why weary our hearts with love? Be sure that we shall need every faculty we possess,-braced and nerved as a warrior's in battle,—to meet with courage the bitter doom which most certainly awaits us. Let us rather take hands, my brothers; let us take hands, and, with resolved and sober mien, go forth to greet the inevitable,-not without

psalms, and lofty misereres, and a chanted chorus, if you will.

Not Christian it may be; yet more than heathen in its wail of triumph. So Letty and I went home in a dream. From this exalted mood we were quickly awakened. We had barely reached the highroad on our return, when we were overtaken by Lady Betty and Lady Grisel. We confessed where we had been. Lady Betty was scandalised at our perversion, and made covert allusions to the scarlet woman, and the little horn, and the great bear, and the seven vials, and the seven-and-twenty candlesticks. But Lady Grisel took the matter with perfect composure. 'Hoots, Betty!' she remarked, 'let sleepin' dogs lie. They might gang farther, and fare waur. I'm sure MacWhirter is as dry as a whunbush.' This was an 'aside' for Lady Betty, who sat under MacWhirter, and waited for his millennium.

My dear Lady Grisel, how can I do justice to the kindest of hearts and the roughest of tongues? One has said of you elsewhere, 'A charming old lady, one of the finest specimens of the ancient Scottish gentlewoman. She is as neat, as natty, as daintily dressed (though the dress be made after another fashion) as her granddaughters; and her eyes, which have seen seventy summers, are nearly as bright as theirs, and disclose a fund of shrewd intelligence and sarcastic life. She belongs, in fact, to an earlier matronhood—a matronhood of vigorous actors and vigorous speakers-a matronhood which witnessed a good deal of hard living and hard drinking and hard swearing, without being prudishly