the ocean. A most intrepid mariner, it is yet the most wary and vigilant of birds. Even on the open sea, and though there should not be a boat in sight, it is perpetually on the alert. The moment it rises after a dive, and before it commences to discuss the prey it has secured, it glances suspiciously round and round before and behind in every direction. When it desires to remain unseen, it can swim wonderfully low-its back entirely submerged, its neck stretched forward horizontally, and resting as it were on the waves. The best time, however, to estimate its skill and hardihood is during the course of an easterly gale. Not a boat or living being is visible far or near on the sea-even the gulls have been blown away by the blast, and scattered among the inland marshes. One intrepid sailor, however, has not been scared. Take your glass, and watch the wary mariner as he beats out bravely in the teeth of the wind. How superbly he breasts the billows! How buoyantly he scatters the foam that gathers thick about his neck! How he exults in the fierce pressure of the waves! Through the white surf of the breakers the undaunted diver - the only creature there into whom God has breathed the breath of life-holds on his perilous path, and makes his way across the forlorn and tumultuous waste in spite of wind and wave.

I have told you of our winter shooting by day, but to the lover of wild fowl the night is not to be neglected. For night-shooting, the best spot I know is a low sand-bank near the mouth of the bay, running for some distance into the sea, and

separating it from a large fresh-water lake which seldom freezes; such a place as that to which the wounded Arthur was borne in his rent armour :

a dark strait of barren land

On one side lay the ocean, and on one

Lay a great water, and the moon was full.

It is not merely the excitement of sport that makes night work so fascinating to those who engage in it; but all the accessories are striking and impressive. The round winter moon keeps along the eastern sky the even tenor of her way, and in her light the white night-gear of the earth looks dim and spectral-especially when contrasted with the troubled blackness of the water. The dash of the waves against the sand is stayed into a low murmur by the gripe of the frost; the measured beat of the wild duck's wings is heard with wonderful distinctness as they fly to and fro in the flood of moonlight overhead; from the bay there arises a confused Babel of cries, among which the sportsman hears at times-hears with a beating heart as he retreats from or approaches the shore, the shrill trumpet-like call of the wild swan. Such winter nights are never forgotten, though as years pass in this world one contrives somehow to forget much. And then, after midnight, when the moon is on the wane, and "a breeze of morning moves," he returns, with a golden-eye and a brace of mallard in the pockets of his shooting-coat, to the red fire that smoulders on the kitchen hearth-before which Jack, his shaggy retriever, shakes himself out for a snooze

-and the profound and fragrant bowl of Anatolian Latakia.

Pleasant, very pleasant, too, are those winter evenings, when the wind whistles keenly high up in the chimney, and the fire sparkles bravely on the red drapery that shuts out the night. You sit be

fore the wide antique grate, and fashion all manner of fantastic imaginations and quaint romance between the glowing bars. How the past comes back upon you! A noble gentleman, indeed, the sole survivor of the Homeric dynasty of the gods, with eagle eye, and Jove-like curls, and lips intense,

With garrulous god-innocence;

and the rich voice of "the old man eloquent" rings once again pleasantly in your ears. Very fair, in sooth, was the lady-the fair Ivy of your “kingdom by the sea"-all too fair in her delicate maidenhood for any shore save that to which the angels took her. Do you start as though it were in very truth the remembered sweep of those Cashmere folds you heard again? Tush! 'tis but the wind outside among the drenched leaves of the ivy. And from the reverie of a youth that has escaped, you scarce know how, you are wakened by the monotonous sound of voices in the hall below, where the ancient forester is narrating to a faithful audience some legend

Of old unhappy far-off things,

And battles long ago.

Such is our seaboard.

We have, of course,

other topics to interest us besides those of which

I have written. A new book comes to us at times, -an idyll by Tennyson, a sermon by Robertson or Maurice, a romance like Elsie Venner or Silas Marner, a bit of history by Froude, or Motley, or Tulloch. And then we have-life. Our sky is gray; but the life that is transacted beneath it,— truly there is enough of light and shadow there to satisfy Salvator Rosa.

I have often wondered why, in a world like this, where there are victories and defeats, and tragic issues of all sorts continually on the cards, our modern poets should be unable to discover material of the right quality with which to work. And yet it lies at their doors, as at ours. The hearts of obscure cottars and fishers by the wintry sea, are 'big' with the pain of Ophelia and the passion of Lear. We all know, we have all seen, that this is true.

Only yesterday, for instance, an inquiry took place here as to the death of a man who had poisoned himself. It came out in evidence that he had been actively employed as a gamekeeper till the previous summer, when he was attacked with disease of the hip-joint, which incapacitated him for work. He had borne his affliction for a time pretty well; but the strong man grew weary of this sick life; and on the previous day, when his wife was in the byre milking the cows, he had quietly taken a dose of strychnine. I have seldom heard anything more moving than his wife's narrative. She was yet a young woman; they had been married only a few years; their eldest child was not more than six or seven. "He had been sair down-hearted," she said, "sin spring-time. He thought the doctor's stuff

was na doing him good.

Sometimes he was better,
Ae day he said to me

- sometimes he was waur. quite serious that he thought he was going mad; he felt sometimes as if he could bite-just like a mad dog. I said till him, 'O Jamie, man' (here she bursts into tears, and the words came out between the sobs), 'but you wouldna' bite me?' and he said, 'No, Mary, I wouldna touch you.' When I came in yestreen," she continued, "he was turning about on the bench, where he used to lie, and he says to me, 'Mary, I've tried a rash cure. I've ta'en poison.' I ran up till him, and put my arms round his head, and says till him, 'O Jamie, what gar'd you do that?' 'Mary,' says he (here she burst into another violent fit of sobbing), 'Mary, I was weary o' my life. I could wark nane for mysel, and I was just hinderin' you.' Poor soul! How little he knew her. She would have worked on till doomsday, till her feet were weary, till her eyes were dim, joyfully, with all her heart, if he would only have believed it. But he didn't; and so, with a mixture of selfishness and unselfishness, the poor wretch put himself out of the way.

Let me tell you another. A woman died suddenly last week in the upper part of the parish, and an official investigation in such cases now takes place in Scotland. It was a lovely autumn evening when we arrived, after making our way along roads which I trust, for the sake of human comfort, are found only in this part of the world. A wild out-of-the-way place it appeared, lying on the verge of the cultivated country, along low