56

A SPRING-SHOWER.-THE RAINBOW.

the heevens, made audible, and visible, and tangible on their face and bosom." That's weather.

North. Something very beautiful might be written about weather-climate.

Shepherd. But no by you-by me. Oh! heavens and earth! O God and man! what I-a shepherd-hae felt in a springshower! The dry warld a' at ance made dewy-dewy-dewy as the light in the Angel o' Mercy's een, beheld by contrite sinner in a midnight dream!

North. James, your paw.

Shepherd. A saft, fresh, silent change has been wrocht a' ower the outward creation-and a congenial change-as saft, as fresh, as silent, has likewise been wrocht within your ain heart. Music is maist harmonious-but not mair harmonious nor licht; for licht wears a coat o' many colours-and lo! yonder is the web from which it was cut-hung aloft in the skies. North. There spake at once the Ettrick Shepherd and the Tailor of Yarrow-Ford!

Shepherd. The Rainbow! Is she not the Lady o' Licht, the Queen o' Colour, the Princess o' Prisms, the Heiress Apparent o' Air, and her Royal Highness of Heaven? O Thou! who bendest Beauty like a bridge across the valley-on which imagination's eye may ken celestial shapes moving to and fro alang the braided battlements-Sun-begotten, Cloud-born Angel! Emblem, sign, and symbol of mercy and of peace! Storm-seeker and storm-subduer! Pathway-so sacred Superstition sings-between Heaven and Earth! Alike beautiful is thy coming and thy going-and no soul so savage as not for a while to saften, as thy Apparition comes gradually breathing and blushing out of the sky! Immortal art thou in thy evanescence! The sole light, either in heaven or on earth, of which the soul may not sicken when overcome with the agonies of grief or guilt! O that on my death-bed I may behold a Rainbow!

North. Nay, James, the jug is empty; and at that moment, with the sudden jerk of your arm, expecting a heavier load on the way to your mouth, you had nearly given yourself a bloody nose. Be more cautious in future-but replenish.

Shepherd. In a single instant, a' the earth is green as emerald, and covered wi' a glorious glitter o' its ain, sic as never shone or could shine, over the bricht but barren sea. A's

IMAGES SUGGESTED BY SPRING-SHOWER.

57

joy: The knowes, the banks, the braes, the lawns, the hedges, the woods, the single trees, the saughs,' the heather, the broom, the bit bushes, the whins, the fern, the gerse, the flowers, the weeds-sic as dockens, nettles, ay, the verra hemlockare a' harmless and a' happy! They seem a' imbued wi' a sort o' strange serene spirit o' life, and nought in a' creawtion seems-dead!

North. Life-imbued by a poet's soul!

Shepherd. Then look at the animal creturs. Isna that a bonny bit beastie, cavin its large-ee'd gracefu' head in the air, frae the elastic turf liftin up and lettin doun again its lang thin legs sae elegantly, its tail a' the while a perfeck streamer -in many a winding ring it gallops round its dam-and then, half frolicsome, half afraid, returns rapidly to her side, and keeps gazing on the stranger. Some day or ither that bit silly foal wull be wunnin a king's plate or a gold cup; for you see the Aurab bluid in his fine fetlocks, and ere long that neck, like his sire's, will be clothed with thunder.

North. You must ride him yourself, James, next year at Musselburgh.

Shepherd. Fling your crutch, sir, intil a rose-bush, till a' the blossoms flee intil separate leaves, and a' the leaves gang careerin in air outower the lea, and that would be an eemage o' the sudden flicht o' a heap o' snaw-white lambs, a' broken up in a moment as they lay amang the sunshine, and scattered far and wide o'er the greensward-sune to be regathered on the Starting-Knoll; but there the eemage wunna haud, for rose-leaves ance dissipated dee like love-kisses lavished in dreams.

North. Rose-leaves and rose-lips-lambs and lasses-and love-kisses lavished in dreams! And all these images suggested in a shepherd's recollection of a Spring-Shower! Prevailing pastoral Poet, complete thy picture.

Shepherd. See how the trouties are loupin in the pools-for a shower o' insecks hae come winnowing their way on the wings o' the western wind, frae the weel-watered wavings o' Elibank's whisperin woods."

North. No such imitative melodies in Homer! The sentence is like a sugh.

Shepherd. 'Twas nae faut o' mine, sir, for ma mouth got 1 Saugh-willow. 2 On the Tweed near Ashiestiel.

58

A SKYLARK.-NO UGLY WOMEN.

fou o' double-Ws-and I had to whiff and whustle them out. But hush and list, sir-list and hush! For that finest, faintest, amaist evanescent music-merry, or mournful, just as ye may be disposed to think and feel it—but now it is merry—dear me! it's clean gane-there-there it is heard again-like the dying tone o' the sma'est chord o' the harp o' an angel happy in the heart o' the highest heavens-and what may it be— since our ears are too dull to hear seraphic string or strain— but the hymn, to us amaist hushed by the altitude—although still pourin and pourin out like a torrent-o' the lyrical Laverock, wha, at the first patterin o' the spring-shower upon the braird about his nest, had shot, wi' short, fast-repeated soarings, a-singing up the sky, as if in the delirium o' his delicht he would hae forsaken the earth for ever-but wha, noo that he has reached at last the pinnacle o' his aerial ambition, wull sune be heard descendin, as if he were naething but a sangand then seem a musical speck in the sky-till again ring a' the lower regions wi' his still loud, but far tenderer strains-for soarin he pours, but sinkin he breathes his voice, till it ceases suddenly in a flutter and a murmur ower the head o' his brooding mate-lifted lovingly up wi' its large saft een to welcome her lover-husband to their blessed nest!

North. My dear James, you have illustrated

of weather by an exquisite example

Shepherd. But I'm no half dune yet

North. For the present, if you please, James.

your definition

Shepherd. But I dinna please-and I insist on being alloo'd to feenish my Spring-Shower.

North. Well, if it must be so-first tell me what you meant by averring that there is no such thing in nature as bad weather. I am rather disposed to believe that whatever may have been the case once-now there is no such thing as good. Why, James, you might as well seek to prove by a definition that there is no such thing in nature as an ugly woman.

Shepherd. Neither there is, sir. There are different degrees o' beauty, Mr North, frae the face that outshines that o' an angel's seen in a dream-doun-doun-doun- -ever sae mony hunder thousan' degrees doun, till you meet that o' the tinkler-randy, whase looks gar you ratherly incline to the ither side o' the road—but nae ugliness. Sometimes I've kent mysel likely to fa' intil a sair mistak-na, a sair fricht - by

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59

stumblin a' at ance on a lassie geyan far doun in the degrees, and wha really did seem at first sicht unco fearsome ;—but then, sir, the mistak arose frae the suddenness, and frae considerin the face o' her by its ain individual sel, and no as ane o' many on the mysterious scale o' beauty. But then a man 'ony powers o' memory and reflection, and ony experience amang the better half o' creation, soon corrects that error; and finds, afore he has walked hardly a mile alangside o' the hizzie, that she's verra weel-faured, and has an expression, mair especially about the een and mouth

North. James! James!

Shepherd. The truth is, Mr North, that you and the likes o' you, that hae been cavied' a' your days in toons, like poutry, hae seldom seen ony real weather-and ken but the twa distinctions o' wat and dry. Then, the instant it begins to drap, up wi' the umbrella and then vanishes the sky. Why, that's aften the verra best time to feel and understaun' the blessed union o' earth and heaven, when the beauty is indeed sae beauteous, that in the perfect joy o' the heart that beats within you, ye wad lauch in an atheist's face, and hae nae mair dout o' the immortality o' the sowl, than o' the mountain-tap that, far up above the vapours, is waiting in its majestic serenity for the reappearance o' the Sun, seen brichtenin and brichtenin himsel during the shower, through behind a cloud that every moment seems mair and mair composed o' radiance, till it has melted quite away, and then, there indeed is the Sun, rejoicing like a giant to run a race—

North. A race against time, James, which will terminate in a dead heat on the Last Day.

Shepherd. Time will be beat to a stand-still.

North. And the Sun at the Judge's stand swerve from the course into chaos.

Shepherd. That's queer talk-though no withouten a wild dash o' the shooblime. But how do you account, sir, for the number o' mad dowgs this summer? And what's your belief about the Heedrofoby?

North. I have for many years, James, myself, laboured under a confirmed hydrophobia

Shepherd. Tuts, nae nonsense-I want to hear you speak seriously on canine madness.

1 Cavied-cooped up.

North. Dogs, James, are subject to some strange and severe disease which is popularly called madness; and the question is, can they inoculate the human body with that disease by their bite? Perhaps they can-and I confess I should not much like to try the experiment. But an acute writer in the Westminster Review has declared his conviction that the disease called hydrophobia in the dog has nothing to do with the disease of the same name in the human species—and I am strongly disposed to agree with him

Shepherd. What? Believe in a pairodowgs1 o' that outrageous natur?

North. Yes, James, to use his own words, that the madness of the biter has no effect on the madness of the bitten, and that a man who has been bitten by a dog in perfect health, is just as likely to have all the symptoms of the hydrophobia as if he had been bitten by a mad one.

Shepherd. A perfeck pairodowgs, sir-a perfeck pairodowgs! North. He gives his reasons, James, and they are not easily set aside.

Shepherd. Let's hear them, sir.

North. He observes, in the first place, if I remember rightly—and if I forget his words, I have his meaning—that the effects of all poisons, which we are acquainted with, are certain and determinate. Do you grant that, James?

Shepherd. Be it sae.

North. For example-suppose a thousand persons swallow each the same quantity of arsenic-sufficient to cause death -they either all die, or are all similarly affected, or nearly so, by the poison. No person can use arsenic in his tea instead of sugar-empty half-a-dozen of cups at breakfast, and that evening enjoy the wit and humour of a Noctes Ambrosianæ.

Shepherd. Hardly.

North. But many persons, hundreds, have been bitten by mad dogs, and well bitten too, who have not been one whit the worse.

Shepherd. But then they have swallowed anecdotes.

North. Which is more than I have been able to do in such cases. But it is admitted on all hands, James, that there are no such antidotes. Can we believe, then, that the saliva of

1 Paradox.