Little Rivers [23]
the glen are all become his clansmen, and his gentle lady
would be the patron saint of the district--if the republican
theology of Scotland could only admit saints among the elect.
Every year he sends trophies of game to his friends across the sea--
birds that are as toothsome and wild-flavoured as if they had not
been hatched under the tyranny of the game-laws. He has a pleasant
trick of making them grateful to the imagination as well as to the
palate by packing them in heather. I'll warrant that Aaron's rod
bore no bonnier blossoms than these stiff little bushes--and none
more magical. For every time I take up a handful of them they
transport me to the Highlands, and send me tramping once more, with
knapsack and fishing-rod, over the braes and down the burns.
I.
BELL-HEATHER.
Some of my happiest meanderings in Scotland have been taken under
the lead of a book. Indeed, for travel in a strange country there
can be no better courier. Not a guide-book, I mean, but a real
book, and, by preference, a novel.
Fiction, like wine, tastes best in the place where it was grown.
And the scenery of a foreign land (including architecture, which is
artificial landscape) grows less dreamlike and unreal to our
perception when we people it with familiar characters from our
favourite novels. Even on a first journey we feel ourselves among
old friends. Thus to read Romola in Florence, and Les Miserables
in Paris, and Lorna Doone on Exmoor, and The Heart of Midlothian
in Edinburgh, and David Balfour in the Pass of Glencoe, and The
Pirate in the Shetland Isles, is to get a new sense of the
possibilities of life. All these things have I done with much
inward contentment; and other things of like quality have I yet
in store; as, for example, the conjunction of The Bonnie Brier-Bush
with Drumtochty, and The Little Minister with Thrums, and The
Raiders with Galloway. But I never expect to pass pleasanter
days than those I spent with A Princess of Thule among the Hebrides.
For then, to begin with, I was young; which is an unearned
increment of delight sure to be confiscated by the envious years
and never regained. But even youth itself was not to be compared
with the exquisite felicity of being deeply and desperately in love
with Sheila, the clear-eyed heroine of that charming book. In this
innocent passion my gray-haired comrades, Howard Crosby, the
Chancellor of the University of New York, and my father, an ex-
Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, were ardent but
generous rivals.
How great is the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an
ethereal affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the
conscience. It is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its
dregs. It spends the present moment with a free hand, and yet
leaves no undesirable mortgage upon the future. King Arthur, the
founder of the Round Table, expressed a conviction, according to
Tennyson, that the most important element in a young knight's
education is "the maiden passion for a maid." Surely the safest
form in which this course in the curriculum may be taken is by
falling in love with a girl in a book. It is the only affair of
the kind into which a young fellow can enter without
responsibility, and out of which he can always emerge, when
necessary, without discredit. And as for the old fellow who still
keeps up this education of the heart, and worships his heroine with
the ardour of a John Ridd and the fidelity of a Henry Esmond, I
maintain that he is exempt from all the penalties of declining
years. The man who can love a girl in a book may be old, but never
aged.
So we sailed, lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and
whatever ship it was that carried us, her figurehead was always the
Princess Sheila. Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and
lochs that wind among the roots of unpronounceable mountains,
would be the patron saint of the district--if the republican
theology of Scotland could only admit saints among the elect.
Every year he sends trophies of game to his friends across the sea--
birds that are as toothsome and wild-flavoured as if they had not
been hatched under the tyranny of the game-laws. He has a pleasant
trick of making them grateful to the imagination as well as to the
palate by packing them in heather. I'll warrant that Aaron's rod
bore no bonnier blossoms than these stiff little bushes--and none
more magical. For every time I take up a handful of them they
transport me to the Highlands, and send me tramping once more, with
knapsack and fishing-rod, over the braes and down the burns.
I.
BELL-HEATHER.
Some of my happiest meanderings in Scotland have been taken under
the lead of a book. Indeed, for travel in a strange country there
can be no better courier. Not a guide-book, I mean, but a real
book, and, by preference, a novel.
Fiction, like wine, tastes best in the place where it was grown.
And the scenery of a foreign land (including architecture, which is
artificial landscape) grows less dreamlike and unreal to our
perception when we people it with familiar characters from our
favourite novels. Even on a first journey we feel ourselves among
old friends. Thus to read Romola in Florence, and Les Miserables
in Paris, and Lorna Doone on Exmoor, and The Heart of Midlothian
in Edinburgh, and David Balfour in the Pass of Glencoe, and The
Pirate in the Shetland Isles, is to get a new sense of the
possibilities of life. All these things have I done with much
inward contentment; and other things of like quality have I yet
in store; as, for example, the conjunction of The Bonnie Brier-Bush
with Drumtochty, and The Little Minister with Thrums, and The
Raiders with Galloway. But I never expect to pass pleasanter
days than those I spent with A Princess of Thule among the Hebrides.
For then, to begin with, I was young; which is an unearned
increment of delight sure to be confiscated by the envious years
and never regained. But even youth itself was not to be compared
with the exquisite felicity of being deeply and desperately in love
with Sheila, the clear-eyed heroine of that charming book. In this
innocent passion my gray-haired comrades, Howard Crosby, the
Chancellor of the University of New York, and my father, an ex-
Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, were ardent but
generous rivals.
How great is the joy and how fascinating the pursuit of such an
ethereal affection! It enlarges the heart without embarrassing the
conscience. It is a cup of pure gladness with no bitterness in its
dregs. It spends the present moment with a free hand, and yet
leaves no undesirable mortgage upon the future. King Arthur, the
founder of the Round Table, expressed a conviction, according to
Tennyson, that the most important element in a young knight's
education is "the maiden passion for a maid." Surely the safest
form in which this course in the curriculum may be taken is by
falling in love with a girl in a book. It is the only affair of
the kind into which a young fellow can enter without
responsibility, and out of which he can always emerge, when
necessary, without discredit. And as for the old fellow who still
keeps up this education of the heart, and worships his heroine with
the ardour of a John Ridd and the fidelity of a Henry Esmond, I
maintain that he is exempt from all the penalties of declining
years. The man who can love a girl in a book may be old, but never
aged.
So we sailed, lovers all three, among the Western Isles, and
whatever ship it was that carried us, her figurehead was always the
Princess Sheila. Along the ruffled blue waters of the sounds and
lochs that wind among the roots of unpronounceable mountains,