Few situations could be better fitted for the purpose of a quiet and sequestered retreat. The scene is now as vividly before me as it was on that day when I last saw it, and felt that, in all probability, I viewed it for the last time. A snug kailyard, surrounded by a fullgrown bushy hedge of bourtree, saugh, and thorn, lay along the border of a small mountain stream, and hard by a thatched cottage, with a peat-stack at the one end and a small byre at the other. All this was nestled as it were in the bosom of mountains, which, to the north and the east in particular, presented a defence against all winds, and an outline of bold grandeur exceedingly impressive. The south and the west were more open; consequently the mid-day and afternoon sun reposed, with delightful and unobstructed radiance, on the green border of the stream, and the flowery foliage of the brae. And when the evening was calm, and the season suitable, the blue smoke winded upwards, and the birds sang delightfully amidst hazel, and oak, and birch, with a profusion of which the eastern bank was covered. It was here that I spent my early days; and it was in this scene of mountain solitude, with no immediate associate but my mother, and for a few years of my existence my grandmother, that my "feelings and fortunes were formed and shaped out." To be brought up amidst mountain scenery, apart and afar from the busy or polluted haunts of man; to place one's little bare foot, with its first movement, on the greensward, the brown heath, or in the pure stream; to live in the retired glen, a perceptible part of all that lives and enjoys; to feel the bracing air of freedom in every breeze; to be possessed of elbow room from ridge to summit, from bank to brae,--this is, indeed, the most delightful of all infant schools, and, above all, prepares the young and infant mind for enlarged conception and resolute daring. "To sit on rocks; to muse o'er flood and fell; To slowly trace the forest's shady scene, Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, And mortal foot hath ne'er or seldom been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean: This is not solitude--'tis but to hold Converse with Nature's God, and see his works unrolled."