Here is a hint to prospective tourists. Take to the left when you quit the hall, get down the lane leading to the sea-crags, and walk for two miles in the direction of the rifle-range. It is a glorious and solitary walk--not altogether solitary, for the sea is invariably good company. Don't be so foolish as to keep on your hat: off with it, and let the air-borne sea-spume wet your brow. It is also a good thing to recite Byron's vigorous "Address to the Ocean,"--the odd cows you may pass will not stop their grazing for that. There is no finer air in King Edward's dominions than that which blows in this region, for the hill air meets the sea air that has come all the way from Norway, and the two coalesce to give the rapt pedestrian a mouthful of exhilarating ether. One who is really a poet and not merely a casual sonneteer, should try to get a site for his tent on this particular shore, and retire to compose an epoch-making epic. The mediæval saints knew what they were doing when they retired to little nooks and isles along this coast to pray and meditate undisturbed: it is much easier to feel devout in a fresh atmosphere, than in the squalor of a town. PAST AND PRESENT SAINTS. What indeed astonishes the visitor to these northern isles is the immense number of ecclesiastical ruins. The Christian missionaries seem speedily to have translated their enthusiasm into stone and lime. What hymns were chanted and what sermons preached up there in bygone times, passes the wit of man to reckon! It is a far cry from Palestine to the Shetland creeks and voes, but the voice of the lowly Nazarene effectually reached the Celts and Norsemen of these treeless storm-lashed isles. Many of the smaller islands have the appellation _papa_, which indicates, as I hinted above, that some monk or hermit, withdrawing from the world to pray and meditate, has bequeathed a whiff of sanctity to headland and skerry. "The hermit good lives in the wood," says Coleridge, but for the Shetland _papa_ there was no _nemorum murmur_:-- No sun-illumined leafage met his eye Raised from perusal of the Holy Word, No murmur of the woodland zephyr-stirred Blended with his devotions sped on high, Only the chiding of the billows nigh. The clangour of the wheeling ocean-bird, Or soul-astounding shriek of storm-fiend heard From the dun cloud-battalions hurrying by, Greeted his ear: yet piously through all His life the austere anchorite remained, On his lone island, buffeted by squall And sea, and faithful unto death obtained The promised guerdon that the Lord bestows Upon the pure in heart, and only those.