It was thus with incoherent reasoning he mused, and murmured as he moved onward, heedless of his way, deaf alike to joy as to the sweet harmony that swelled from bough to bough, in grateful praise. But, alas! poor Robin felt he had nothing to excite his gratitude, save a leopard's skin fastened round his middle with a leathern thong; his flowing locks of silvery whiteness, more the effect of grief than age; and the long beard that covered his otherwise half-naked breast, which had not felt for years the razor's edge.

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Rambling thus unheedful, he reached an opening of the wood, and strolled through a long copse, with many a winding path, that terminated on an extensive plain. The sun, that had not quite sunk beneath the horizon, caught his eye, and wrought upon his fancy. his fancy. Such,” he cried, "should have been the autumn, of poor Robin; his spring was fair, his summer days were blighted, his autumn, on the graceful winter of his life, are lost-lost-standing a withered plant on an unfriendly soil-a most unnatural soil!"

Again lost in melancholy musing, he

moved as chance directed; and, descending into a vale by a steep and narrow path, his attention was roused by the dashing of falling waters. He paused, gazed, admired; and, for awhile, the surrounding objects sealed his sense of sorrow: the scene was new, or if not, his weakened imagination called not to mind the slightest recollection of it.

A glassy stream ran through the centre of this deep narrow glen; the sister hill, that proved a barrier against the northern blast, was crowned with lofty pines, forming a rich contrast to the verdant one he had just descended. A momentary transport beguiled him of his cares, which were but too ready to return and overwhelm him; he gazed and listened with composure, soothed by the cadence of the small cascades, which, at each winding of the vale, broke the smooth waters; thrown over which, as beauty and convenience required, were arched footways for the curious wanderer, formed by the rude branches of neighbouring beach in rustic intersections.

A little onward, in the centre of a small but picturesque lake, stood a rustic cottage,

erected with the same rude materials, to cross to which, a bark of curious workmanship, fixed by a line and counterline, stood on the margin. The garden round the cot, with infant shrubbery, alone indicated the fostering hand of art; all else seemed the rude perfection of a power invisible. The moonbeams, her horns just topping the lofty woods, played on the rimpled stream.

On contemplating the surrounding scenery, his mind was enabled to address his Creator with rationality.—" Oh, thou Supreme! great in mystery, as in goodness wonderful! wherefore this vast profusion, where neither man or beast avails him of those treasures so lavishly bestowed? Why plays the moon her mild radiance o'er this unsought stream?—Why does its reflective bosom give back to the sense each surrounding beauty?-Why should the gentle echo rest her wild plaintive notes in this lone retreat, unpitied, unadmired?—I'll tell thee, worldling, why. It is meant to point out to the passing traveller a glorious truth, that God reigns bounteous everywhere. First, behold the phantom Wealth, who proudly vaunts what

she can ne'er bestow; and her pale meagre brother, with his big-toned voice, called Honour, scaring the pigmy world; and then the ghastliest of all worldly spectres, the phantom Friendship; that—that gnaws my vitals-it sickens on the feeble sense. Hold, ruffian, traitor! set not my brain on fire; it burns, and reason dims apace; all now within is anarchy and confusion."

Again he paused, beating his breast, till, spent with the wild ravings of his half-reasoning mind, he sunk against an oaken branch that supported his suffering frame from falling to the ground. Shortly his perturbed spirits, as they were wont, sinking into a calm, he piously proceeded

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Oh, Power supreme, immutable and just! why hath thy will ordained the being of such things? or having been, why is not this weak mind able to support thy will irrevocable?-Impart, oh gracious Ruler of this vast universe! to me, thy offending and afflicted servant, that portion of thy grace which will enable me to bend submissive to thy wisdom infinite; for, alas! much I fear, when this my better sense forsakes me, the tumult and distrac

tion of my soul may hurry me on to acts of desperate violence; thy hand has humbled me even to the dust, so heavily thy mandate sits on my saddened soul."

Again he was silent, when suddenly, on the wings of the passing gale, a shepherd's pipe assailed his ear. Cautiously shunning all intercourse with man, save one poor toiler of the uncertain deep, he fled, swift as the mountain doe, unheeding whither, till, checked by a stupendous rude cascade, the work of liberal nature, that terminated this rural glen, whose foaming waters liquified the vale, here constrained to stop, and having far outstripped the sounds which caused his flight, he paused in pleasing melancholy, admiring the shining beauties the dashing waters made. At length, by the rock's side, espying a flight of craggy steps, hewn, or by art or time, from out the massy projections which gave awful beauty to the gushing torrent, he ascended them, and gaining the summit of the cliff, found himself on the borders of the Spey, whose neighbouring castle presented to his view the