said of the occasional merriment of slaves in America and elsewhere, and fully to credit the often-repeated statement, that the abject serfs of despotic Governments laugh more than the subjects of a free country. Poor fellows! If the British people were as unhappy as slaves or serfs, they would, I daresay, learn in time to be quite as merry. There are, however, two circumstances that serve to prevent the bothy life of the north-country mason from essentially injuring his character in the way it almost never fails to injure that of the farm-servant. As he has to calculate on being part of every winter, and almost every spring, unemployed, he is compelled to practise a self-denying economy, the effect of which, when not carried to the extreme of a miserly narrowness, is always good; and Hallow-day returns him every season to the humanizing influences of his home. CHAPTER X. "The muse, nae poet ever fand her, Till by himsel' he learned to wander Adown some trottin' burn's meander, An' no think lang: Oh, sweet to muse, and pensive ponder A heartfelt sang!"--BURNS. There are delightful walks in the immediate neighbourhood of Conon-side; and as the workmen--engaged, as I have said, on day's wages--immediately ceased working as the hour of six arrived, I had, during the summer months, from three to four hours to myself every evening, in which to enjoy them. The great hollow occupied by the waters of the Cromarty Firth divides into two valleys at its upper end, just where the sea ceases to flow. There is the valley of the Peffer, and the valley of the Conon; and a tract of broken hills lies between, formed of the Great Conglomerate base of the Old Red System. The conglomerate, always a picturesque deposit, terminates some four or five miles higher up the valley, in a range of rough precipices, as bold and abrupt, though they front the interior of the country, as if they formed the terminal barrier of some exposed sea-coast. A few straggling pines crest their summits; and the noble woods of Brahan Castle, the ancient seat of the Earls of Seaforth, sweep downwards from their base to the margin of the Conon. On our own side of the river, the more immature but fresh and thickly-clustered woods of Conon House rose along the banks; and I was delighted to find among them a ruinous chapel and ancient burying-ground, occupying, in a profoundly solitary corner, a little green hillock, once an island of the river, but now left dry by the gradual wear of the channel, and the consequent fall of the water to a lower level. A few broken walls rose on the highest peak of the eminence; the slope was occupied by the little mossy hillocks and sorely lichened tombstones that mark the ancient grave-yard; and among the tombs immediately beside the ruin there stood a rustic dial, with its iron gnomon worn to an oxydized film, and green with weather-stains and moss.