all-and now we but imperfectly know-the cause of the Beautiful. Then we believed the Beautiful to be wholly extern; something we had nothing to do with but to look at, and lo! it shone divinely there! Happy creed if false-for in it, with holiest reverence, we blamelessly adored the stars. There they were in millions as we thought-every one brighter than another, when by chance we happened to fix on any individual among them, that we might look through its face into its heart. All above gloriously glittering, all below a blank. Our body here, our spirit there how mean our birth-place, our death-home how magnificent! "Fear God and keep his commandments," said a small still voice--and we felt that if He gave us strength to obey that law, we should live for ever beyond all those stars.

But were there no Lochs in our parish? Yea. Four. The Little Loch-the White Loch-the Black Lochand the Brother Loch. Not a tree on the banks of any one of them-yet he had been a blockhead who called them bare. Had there been any need for trees, Nature would have sown them on hills she so dearly loved. Nor sheep nor cattle were ever heard to complain of those pastures. They bleated and they lowed as cheerily as the moorland birdies sang-and how cheerily that was nobody knew who had not often met the morning on the brae, and shaken hands with her the rosy-fingered like two familiar friends. No want of loun places there, in which the creatures could lie with wool or hair unruffled among surrounding storms. For the hills had been dropt from the hollow of His hand who "tempers the wind to

the shorn lamb"-and even high up, where you might see tempest-stricken stones-some of them like pillarsbut placed not there by human art-there were cozy bields in wildest weather, and some into which the snow was never known to drift, green all the winter through— perennial nests. Such was the nature of the region where lay our Four Lochs. They were some quarter of a mile-some half mile-and some whole mile-not more -asunder; but there was no great height—and we have a hundred times climbed the highest-from which they could be all seen at once-so cannily were they embosomed, so needed not to be embowered.

The LITTLE LOCH was the rushiest and reediest little rascal that ever rustled, and he was on the very edge of the Moor. That he had fish we all persisted in believing, in spite of all the successless angling of all kinds that from time immemorial had assailed his sullen depthsbut what a place for powheads! One continued bank of them while yet they were but eyes in the spawnthem—while encircled it instead of water lilies; and at "the season of the year," by throwing in a few stones you awoke a croaking that would have silenced a rookery. In the early part of the century a pike had been seen basking in the shallows, by eye-measurement about ten feet long -but fortunately he had never been hooked, or the consequences would have been fatal. We have seen the Little Loch alive with wild-ducks; but it was almost impossible by position to get a shot at them—and quite impossible, if you did, to get hold of the slain. Fro himself the best dog that ever dived-was baffled by

the multiplicity of impediments and obstructions—and at last refused to take the water-sat down and howled in spiteful rage. Yet Imagination loved the Little Loch, and so did Hope. We have conquered it in sleep both with rod and gun-the weight of bag and basket has wakened us out of dreams of murder that never were realized yet once, and once only, in it we caught an eel, which we skinned, and wore the shrivel for many a day round our ankle-nor is it a vain superstition-to preserve it from sprains. We are willing the Little Loch should be drained; but you would have to dig a fearsome trench, for it used to have no bottom. A party of us-six-ascertained that fact, by heaving into it a stone which six-and-thirty schoolboys of this degenerate age could not have lifted from its moss-bed-and though we watched for an hour not a bubble rose to the surface. It used sometimes to boil like a pot on breathless days, for events happening in foreign countries disturbed the spring, and the torments it suffered thousands of fathoms. below, were manifested above in turbulence that would have drowned a schoolboy's skiff.

The WHITE LOCH-SO called from the silver sand of its shores-had likewise its rushy and reedy bogs; but access to every part of the main body was unimpeded, and you waded into it, gradually deeper and deeper, with such a delightful descent, that up to the arm-pits and then to the chin, you could keep touching the sand with your big-toe, till you floated away off at the nail, out of your depth, without for a little while discovering that it was incumbent on you, for sake of your personal

safety, to take to regular swimming-and then how buoyant was the milk-warm water, without a wave but of your own creating, as the ripples went circling away before your breast or your breath! It was absolutely too clear -for without knitting your brows you could not see it on bright airless days-and wondered what had become of it when all at once, as if it had been that very moment created out of nothing, there it was! endued with some novel beauty-for of all the lochs we ever knew-and to be so simple too-the White Loch had surely the greatest variety of expression-but all within the cheerful-for sadness was alien altogether from its spirit, and the gentle Mere for ever wore a smile. Swans but that was but once our own eyes had seen on it—and were they wild or were they tame swans, certain it is they were great and glorious and lovely creatures, and whiter than any snow. No house was within sight, and they had nothing to fear-nor did they look afraid-sailing in the centre of the loch-nor did we see them fly away-for we lay still on the hillside till in the twilight we should not have known what they were, and we left them there among the shadows seemingly asleep. In the morning they were gone, and perhaps making love in some foreign land.

The BLACK LOCH was a strange misnomer for one so fair-for black we never saw him, except it might be for an hour or so before thunder. If he really was a loch of colour the original taint had been washed out of him, and he might have shown his face among the purest waters of Europe. But then he was deep; and know

ing that, the natives had named him, in no unnatural confusion of ideas, the Black Loch. We have seen wild-duck eggs five fathoms down so distinctly that we could count them—and though that is not a bad dive we have brought them up, one in our mouth and one in each hand, the tenants of course dead—nor can we now conjecture what sank them there; but ornithologists see unaccountable sights, and they only who are not ornithologists disbelieve Audubon and Wilson. Two features had the Black Loch which gave it to our eyes a pre-eminence in beauty over the other three-a tongue of land that half-divided it, and never on hot days was without some cattle grouped on its very point, and in among the water—and a cliff on which, though it was not very lofty, a pair of falcons had their nest. Yet in misty weather, when its head was hidden, the shrill cry seemed to come from a great height. There were some ruins too-tradition said of some church or chapel-that had been ruins long before the establishment of the Protestant faith. But they were somewhat remote, and likewise somewhat imaginary, for stones are found lying strangely distributed, and those looked to our eyes not like such as builders use, but to have been dropped there most probably from the

moon.

But the best beloved, if not the most beautiful, of them all was the BROTHER LOCH. It mattered not what was his disposition or genius, every one of us boys, however different might be our other tastes, preferred it far beyond the rest, and for once that we visited any of