Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431: Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852Various
General
Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431: Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852
Various
Periodicals
'The importance of this subject with regard to aero-locomotion can
hardly be overrated; for these currents, when clearly ascertained and
correctly mapped out, would constitute so many great natural routes,
where the aeronaut would be borne onward in the required direction
with immense velocity, and without danger of encountering squalls or
counter-currents.
'But here, fearful of exhausting the patience of our readers, we bring
our somewhat lengthened disquisitions to a close, and take our leave
for the present of the tempting, though debatable ground of the CUBIC
HIGHWAY.'
A MEMOIR FOR THE MILLION.
On the meeting-line between a moorland and lowland district of
Perthshire, stands an old baronial seat, dignified with the name of
castle, to which, no doubt, it was entitled long after the date of its
erection, in the fifteenth century, although no longer boasting of
either the strength or magnificence which such a name implies. Its
position, however, is picturesque--standing on the bank of a romantic
and finely-wooded Highland glen, and commanding a view on one side of
a mountain-range, and on the other of a cultivated country, with its
towns and villages in the distance. The mansion is flanked on one side
by a court-yard and 'louping-on-stane;' and on the other, by a velvety
bowling-green, stretching along to an antique garden of cut yews and
hollies overhanging the glen. It boasts, of course, its haunted
chamber, and traditional stories of love and murder; but we have not
now to do with life or death above stairs, though many a tale might be
founded on truths 'stranger than fiction.' Our present purpose is with
the neighbourhood of the kitchen. There, too, we find some relics of
olden times; a fireplace which would legalise the Scottish invitation,
to 'come in to the fire,' inasmuch as within the chimney-arch was the
seat of honour and comfort, where a dozen cronies could sit beside the
embers, while an ox might roast in front. From that cozy neuk did the
old fiddler play in the evening, when the spinning-wheels were put
away, and the maids, generally tenants' daughters, had their dance
with the stragglers from the stables and cottages. Near the kitchen
was a much colder and more dismal place, that went by the name of 'the
Pit'--a half-subterranean recess, several steps lower than the
kitchen, into which scarcely a ray of light penetrated through the
small 'bole' that was drilled in the massive walls for a window. The
cheerless aspect of the place seemed to confirm the tradition, that it
had sometimes served of yore as a place of involuntary restraint. Its
present occupant, however, the son of a day-labourer, found no fault
with the accommodation it afforded him. He was a young boy, who
cleaned shoes, scoured knives, and received with great deference the
commands of Daniel Don, the butler. This boy was called John Dickson.
The Pit was his domicile, as well as his work-room, and he made it
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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