and in with Christopher and the Fish. Now, Hamish, hand us the Crutch. After a cast or two, which, may they be successful as the night is auspicious, your presence, gentlemen, will be expected in the Tent. Now, Hamish, handle thou the ribbons-alias the hair-tether —and we will touch him behind, should he linger, with a weapon that might "Create a soul under the ribs of death." Linger! why the lightning flies from his heels, as he carries us along a fine natural causeway, like Ossian's car-borne heroes. From the size and state of the stones over which we make such a clatter, we shrewdly suspect that the parliamentary grant for destroying the old Highland torrent-roads has not extended its ravages to GlenEtive. O'Bronte, "Like panting Time, toils after us in vain ;" and the pointers are following us by our own scent, and that of the roe, in the distant darkness. Pull up, Hamish, pull up, or otherwise we shall overshoot our mark, and meet with some accident or other, perhaps a capsize on Bachaille-Etive, or the Black Mount. We had no idea the circle of greensward in front of the Tent was so spacious. Why, there is room for the Lord Mayor of London's state-coach to turn with its eight horses, and that enormous ass, Parson Dillon, on the dickey. What could have made us think at this moment of London? Certes, the association of ideas is a droll thing, and also sometimes most magnificent. Dancing in the Tent, among strange figures! Celebration of the nuptials of some Arab chief, in an oasis in the Great Desert of Stony Arabia ! Heavens! look at Tickler! How he hauls the Hizzies! There is no time to be lost-he and the Admiral must not have all the sport to themselves; and, by and by, spite of age and infirmity, we shall show the Tent a touch of the Highland Fling. Hollo! you landloupers! Christopher is upon you-behold the Tenth Avatar incarnated in North. But what Apparitions at the Tent-door salute our approach? "Back step these two fair angels, half afraid Goat-herdesses from the cliffs of Clencreran or Glenco, kilted to the knee, and not unconscious of their ankles, one twinkle of which is sufficient to bid " Begone dull care " for ever. One hand on a shoulder of each of the mountain-nymphs-sweet liberties-and then embraced by both, half in their arms, and half on their bosoms, was ever Old Man so pleasantly let down from triumphal car, on the soft surface of his mother-earth? Ay, there lies the Red-deer! and what heaps of smaller slain! But was there ever such a rush of dogs! We shall be extinguished. Down, dogs, down-nay, ladies and gentlemen, be seated-on one another's knees as before we beseech you-we are but men like yourselves-and "Without the smile from partial beauty won, Oh what were man?-a world without a sun!" What it is to be the darling of gods and men, and women and children! Why, the very stars burn brighter -and thou, O Moon! art like the Sun. We foresee a night of dancing and drinking-till the mountain-dew melt in the lustre of morn. Such a day should have a glorious death-and a glorious resurrection. Hurra! Hurra! THE MOORS FOR EVER! THE MOORS! THE MOORS! HIGHLAND SNOW STORM. WHAT do you mean by original genius? By that fine line in the Pleasures of Hope "To muse on Nature with a poet's eye?" Why-genius-one kind of it at least is transfusion of self into all outward things. The genius that does that -naturally, but novelly—is original; and now you know the meaning of one kind of original genius. Have we, then, Christopher North, that gift? Have you? Yea, both of us. Our spirits animate the insensate earth, till she speaks, sings, smiles, laughs, weeps, sighs, groans, goes mad, and dies. Nothing easier, though perhaps it is wicked, than for original genius like ours, or yours, to drive the earth to distraction. We wave our wizard hand thus and lo! list! she is insane. How she howls to heaven, and how the maddened heaven howls back her frenzy! Two dreadful maniacs raging apart, but in communion, in one vast bedlam! The drift-snow spins before the hurricane, hissing like a nest of serpents let loose to torment the air. What fierce flakes! furies! as if all the wasps that ever stung had been revivified, and were now careering part and parcel of the tempest. We are in a Highland Hut in the midst of mountains. But no land is to be seen any more than if we were in the middle of the sea. Yet a wan glare shows that the snow-storm is strangely shadowed by superincumbent cliffs; and though you cannot see, you hear the mountains. Rendings are going on, frequent, over your head —and all around the blind wilderness-the thunderous tumblings down of avalanches, mixed with the moanings, shriekings, and yellings of caves, as if spirits there were angry with the snow-drift choking up the fissures and chasms in the cliffs. Is that the creaking and groaning, and rocking and tossing of old trees, afraid of being uprooted and flung into the spate? "Red comes the river down, and loud and oft more fearful than at midnight in this nightlike day—— whose meridian is a total sun eclipse. The river runs short as is the by, bloodlike, through the snow-and, reach you can see through the flaky gloom, that short reach shows that all his course must be terrible--more and more terrible-as, gathering his streams like a chieftain his clan--erelong he will sweep shieling, and hut, and hamlet to the sea, undermining rocks, cutting mounds asunder, and blowing up bridges that explode into the air with a roar like that of cannon. You sometimes think you hear thunder, though you know that |