dark as midnight, or glowing with the solemn purple of thunder; while right in the centre of all, where it has burned a clear way for itself, the broad fluctuating orb, paining the eye with concentrated splendours, and sinking gradually down, a black spire cutting his disk in two. But for this one cannot wait, and the apparition will be unbeheld but by the rustic stalking across the field in company with his prodigious shadow, and who, turning his face to the flame, will conceive it the most ordinary thing in the world. We keep the upper road on our return, and in a short time are again at Carmyle; we have no intention of tracing the river bank a second time, and so turn up the narrow street. But what is to do? [Sidenote: The acrobat.] The children are gathered in a circle, and the wives are standing at the open doors. There is a performance going on. The tambourine is sounding, and a tiny acrobat, with a fillet round his brow, tights covered with tinsel lozenges, and flesh-coloured shoes, is striding about on a pair of stilts, to the no small amazement and delight of the juveniles. He turns his head, and--why, it's the little boy I assisted across the brook at Dalbeth three hours ago, and of course that's the old lady who is thumping and jingling the tambourine, and gathering in the halfpennies! God bless her jolly old face! who would have thought of meeting her here? I am recognised, the boy waves me farewell, the old lady smiles and curtsies, thumps her tambourine, and rattles the little bells of it with greater vigour than ever. The road to Glasgow is now comparatively uninteresting. The trees wear a dingy colour; you pass farm-houses, with sooty stacks standing in the yard. 'Tis a coaly, dusty district, which has characteristics worth noting. For, as the twilight falls dewily on far-off lea and mountain, folding up daisy and buttercup, putting the linnet to sleep beside his nest of young in the bunch of broom, here the circle of the horizon becomes like red-hot steel; the furnaces of the Clyde iron-works lift up their mighty towers of flame, throwing "Large and angry lustres o'er the sky, And shifting lights across the long dark roads;" and so, through chase of light and shade, through glimmer of glare and gloom, we find our way back to Glasgow--its low hum breaking into separate and recognisable sounds, its nebulous brightness into far-stretching street-lamps, as we draw near. [Sidenote: Paisley.] The tourist who travels by train from Glasgow to Greenock must pass the town of Paisley. If he glances out of the carriage window he will see beneath him a third-rate Scotch town, through which flows the foulest and shallowest of rivers.