it could, making a drain sparkle for a moment, turning a far-off pool into gold leaf, and rendering, by contrast of universal warmth and glow, yet more beautiful the smoke which swathed the houses. Yet after all the impression made upon one was cheerless enough. Sunset goes but a little way in obviating human wretchedness. It fires the cottage window, but it cannot call to life the corpse within; it can sparkle on the chain of a prisoner, but with all its sparkling it does not make the chain one whit the lighter. Misery is often picturesque, but the picturesqueness is in the eyes of others, not in her own. The black moorland and the banished huts abode in my mind during the remainder of my drive. [Sidenote: The Landlord's house.] Everything about a man is characteristic, more or less; and in the house of the Landlord I found that singular mixture of hemispheres which I had before noticed in his talk and in his way of looking at times. His house was plain enough externally, but its furniture was curious and far-brought. The interior of his porch was adorned with heads of stags and tusks of elephants. He would show you Highland relics, and curiosities from sacked Eastern palaces. He had the tiny porcelain cup out of which Prince Charles drank tea at Kingsburgh, and the signet ring which was stripped from the dead fingers of Tippoo Saib. In his gun-room were modern breech-loaders and revolvers, and matchlocks from China and Nepaul. On the walls were Lochaber axes, claymores, and targets that might have seen service at Inverlochy, hideous creases, Afghan daggers, curiously-curved swords, scabbards thickly crusted with gems. In the library the last new novel leaned against the "Institutes of Menu." On the drawing-room table, beside _carte-de-visite_ books, were ivory card-cases wrought by the patient Hindoo artificer as finely as we work our laces, Chinese puzzles that baffled all European comprehension, and comical squab-faced deities in silver and bronze. While the Landlord was absent, I could fancy these strangely-assorted articles striking one with a sense of incongruity: but when at home, each seemed a portion of himself. He was related as closely to the Indian god as to Prince Charles's cup. The ash and birch of the Highlands danced before his eyes, the palm stood in his imagination and memory. [Sidenote: The Landlord's pets.]