circumstance that, previous to the reception of your letter, I had been entirely miserable in the idea that you had not received my first letter, and that my second had also been impeded in its progress to you. A thousand notions and suppositions entered my brain, which it were needless now to detail; suffice it to say that your kind favour was a "Doctor" to them all. I am, my dear friend, glad that our correspondence is again renewed; and this is all my time permits me to say. The post is just going off for London, and your humble servant sets off to-morrow morning for the Island of Mull-that spot in the Hebrides so celebrated by Dr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell.

Mull is to be my place of residence this summer! I go to stay with a young widow lady, a namesake and connexion of my own.-Quare? would it be impossible to make an elopement from the Hebrides to Gretna Green in a coach and four? This is only a hint by the way.-I expect, in Mull, a calm retreat for study and the muses. I shall write you as soon as I can from that place. May the muse assist me to please your ear! I am at present employed in packing up my trunk-but I could not set off without popping you these hurried lines-forgive their inconsistency of style.-Write me soon. God bless you,

my dear friend! You shall hear from me as soon as I can find an opportunity.

THOS. CAMPBELL.

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CHAPTER VI.

RESIDENCE IN THE HEBRIDES.

IN full anticipation of the romantic country now before him, and already familiar with their feudal history and poetic legends, a residence in the Hebrides seemed to the ardent mind of Campbell, to promise a new world of thought and observation. However uncongenial the duties upon which he was to enter might at first appear, they were to be only temporary; and after the lapse of a few months he would return to College-as he flattered himself -with a vast fund of materials, fresh from the wild heaths and still wilder shores of Mull, which he could turn to good account among the periodical works of the day. He set out from Glasgow on the eighteenth of May, in the company of his old class-fellow, Joseph Finlayson, and took the road to Inverary. The journey abounds in interest, and that interest is greatly increased by being enabled to express it in the Poet's own words :-"I was fain, from my father's reduced circumstances, to accept, for six months, of a tutorship in a Highland family, at the farthest end of the Isle of Mull. To this, it is true, my poverty, rather than my will, consented. I was so little proud of it, that, in passing through Greenock, I purposely omitted to call on my mother's cousin, Mr. Robert Sinclair-at that time a wealthy merchant and first magistrate of the town, with a family of handsome daughters, one of whom I married some nine years afterwards. But, although I knew that the

Sinclairs would have welcomed me hospitably, I did not like to tell my pretty cousins that I was going out in that capacity. I well remember spending a long evening-sub dio, for economy's sake-on the Greenock Quay, in company with my College friend, Joseph Finlayson*-now a reverend minister of the Scottish Kirk-who was also going off to a Highland Tutorship. When the night came on, we repaired together to the little inn, where we had bespoken our beds; and there our famine overcame our frugality. Poor dogs! We had ate nothing since noon, and were ravenously sharpset. In the course of the evening we had saved the life of a little boy, by plunging after him into the water; and we thought it hard that two such heroes should go supperless to bed. So we ordered a dish of beef-steaks. What the landlady chose to call a pound, was brought in, set upon Then came in another

the table, and vanished like smoke. -then a third, together with a tankard of ale, that set us both singing and reciting poetry.

"I still retain the opinion that life is pleasanter in the real transition, than in the retrospect; but still I am bound to regard this part of my recollections of life as very agreeable. I was, it is true, very poor, but I was gay as a lark, and hardy as the Highland heather. After plunging into the sea, to save the urchin who would otherwise have been drowned, I continued in my wet clothes until they dried on my back, and felt no bad result from it.

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Finlayson and I crossed the Frith of Clyde, to Argyllshire our trunks being sent by land to Inverary; and our whole travelling equipage, consisting of a few articles tied in our handkerchiefs, we slung on sticks over our shoulders. The wide world contained not two merrier boys. We sang and recited poetry throughout the long wild Highland glens. I had still a half-belief in Ossian, and an Ossianic interest

* The late Rev. Joseph Finlayson, D.D.

in the Gaelic people. To be sure, travelling in the Highlands, at that time, was about as comfortable as it is, now, among the Arab tribes in Africa-with this difference in favour of Ossian, that it was not over safe to lay yourself down in a Highland bed, without being troubled with cutaneous sensations next morning-so my companion and I slept all night on chairs, by the side of a peat fire. The miracles of steam-boats and Highland hotels, were then unknown. When you came to an inn, the only bill of fare announced was-"Skatan agas, spuntat agas, usquebaugh "—which is to say-herrings and potatoes, and whiskey! Nevertheless, the roaring streams and torrents, with the yellow primroses, and chanting cuckoos on their banks-the heathy mountains, with the sound of the goats bleating at their tops, delighted me beyond measure. I felt a soul in every muscle of my body; and my mind was satisfied that I was going to earn my bread by my own labour.

"At last, after crossing Cowal, and reaching Inverary, we regained a spot of comparative civilization, where there was a high road, with mile-stones. On that road, I remember, we came up with a little boy, in a postman's dress, whose pony was left grazing on the road-side, whilst red-jacket himself was quietly playing at marbles with some other boys. You little rascal!' we said to him; 'are you the post-boy, and thus playing away your time?' 'Na! sir,' he answered; 'I'm no the post-I'm only an express!'

"At Inverary I parted with my worthy companion, Finlayson, and travelled on to Oban, across Lochawe, under rain that soaked me to the marrow. From Oban I crossed over to Mull; and, in the course of a long summer's day, traversed the whole length of the island—which must be nearly thirty miles-with not a foot-path to direct me. At times I lost all traces of my way, and had no guide but

the sun going westward. About twilight, however, I reached the point of Callioch *-the house of my hostess, Mrs. Campbell, of Sunipol-a worthy, sensible widow lady, who treated me with great kindness. I am sure I made a conscience of my duty towards my pupils; I never beat them remembering how much I loved my father for having never beaten me.

"At first, I felt melancholy in this situation-missing my college chums-and wrote a poem on my exile, as doleful as anything in Ovid's Tristia. But I soon got

reconciled to it. The Point of Callioch commands a magnificent prospect of thirteen Hebrid-islands, among which are Staffa and Icolmkill, which I visited with enthusiasm. I had also, now and then, a sight of wild-deer, sweeping across that wilder country, and of eagles perching on its shore. These objects fed the romance of my fancy, and I may say that I was attached to Sunipol, before I took leave of it. Nevertheless, God wot, I was better pleased to look on the kirk steeples, and whinstone causeways of Glasgow, than on all the eagles and wild-deer of the Highlands."

I shall now interrupt the Poet's narrative, by a few extracts from letters to his friends, during his residence in Mull, which express more distinctly the feelings and circumstances upon which he has slightly touched in the posthumous notes above quoted. The first in the series is addressed to his friend, Mr. James Thomson.

* "The Point of Callioch" is on the northern shore of Mull, where the house of Sunipol may be easily seen by any one sailing from Tobermory to Staffa. It stands quite upon the shore, and occupies the centre of a bay immediately before you turn that Point of Mull, where you first get a view of the wondrous Island, which contains the Cave of Fingal.-T. W.

+ See the letter to his friend Paul, containing a copy of this poem, and dated Mull, pp. 136-7.