But, leaving these painful retrospects, it may not be inappropriate to note briefly the career of the earl of Bellersdale, whom I had occasion to advert to in the earlier part of this story. He survived my father many years, and spent his life devoid of domestic happiness or public respect, in the accumulation of wealth and the pursuits of sordid ambition. He lived detested and despised of mankind; and, dying unlamented by any one human being, he destined the vast treasures which he had amassed, to constant accumulation, not to be enjoyed fully by his heirs, but for the creation of a princedom of indefinite extent and wealth. But the honours of the Bellersdale family were speedily tarnished. A spendthrift successor squandered all the revenues which he could touch; and the last time I visited that part of the country, the splendid mansion of Bellersdale Castle was stripped of all its movables; the collections of many years of aristocratic pride--the pictures, the statues, the very board destined for baronial hospitality--were all brought to the hammer for payment of a tailor's bill for gewgaws to grace a court pageant; and the nominal inheritor of the wide domains and honours of his lordship's house, is an obscure and useless, though good-natured dependent upon Hebrew usurers and Gentile pettifoggers--a mere cumberer of the ground--a sycophant of the vulgar! I need not point the moral of my tale. THE SEERS' CAVE. "The desert gave him visions wild-- The midnight wind came wild and dread, Swell'd with the voices of the dead; Far on the future battle-heath His eye beheld the ranks of death: Thus the lone seer, from mankind hurl'd, Shap'd forth a disembodied world." SCOTT. In a certain wild and romantic glen in the Highlands of Scotland, there is a cave opening beneath the brow of a huge overhanging cliff, and half concealed by wreathed roots and wild festoons of brier and woodbine. Several indistinct traditions remain of this cave's having been, in former days, the abode of more than one holy hermit and gifted seer. From these it derived the name which it commonly received, Coir-nan-Taischatrin, or, The Cave of the Seers. At a little distance within the glen, upon its sunny side, stood Castle Feracht. The elevation on which it was built, gave it a prospect of the whole glen, without detaching it from the hills and woods around; and a space had been cleared of trees, so that, though completely surrounded, their leafy screen only curtained, not obscured it.