66 Well, really this is the most extraordinary thing," said I to myself, as I walked up the lane from the farm house. "I shall be curious to ascertain of his going to stick to the farming till he's ruined. I thought no more of Changeable Charlie for above a year, when, coming towards the same neighbourhood, I resolved to go a short distance out of my way to pay him a visit. My road lay across a clear country stream which winded along a pleasant green valley beneath me; and as I drew near the rustic bridge, my ear caught the lively sound of a waterfall, which murmured from a picturesque spot among opening woods, a little way above the bridge. A little millrace, with its narrow channel of deep level water, next attracted my notice; and presently after, the regular splash of a water-wheel, and the boom of a corn-mill became objects of my meditative observation. The mill looked so quaint and rustic by the stream, the banks were so green and the water so clear, that I was tempted to wander towards it, down from the bridge, just to make the whole a subject of closer observation. A barefooted girl came forth from the house and stared in my face, as a Scottish lassie may be supposed to do at a reasonable man. "Can you tell me," said I, willing to make up an excuse for my intrusion, "if this road will lead me to the farm of Long rigs, which is occupied by one Mr Cheap ?" The lassie looked in my face with a thieveless smile, and, without answering a word, took a bare-legged race into the mill. Presently, a great lumbering miller came out, like a walking bag of flower from beside the hopper, and I immediately saw he was going to address me. Never did 1 see such a snowy man. His miller's hat was inch thick with flour; he whitened the green earth as he walked, the knees of his breeches were loose, and the stockings that hung about his heels, would have made a hearty meal for a starving garrison. "What can the impudent rascal be staring at?" I said, and I began to cast my eyes down on my person, to see if I could find any cause in my own appearance, that the miller and his lassie should thus treat me as a world's wonder. "Ye were asking I think," he said, "after Charlie Cheap, of the Longrigs?" "Yes," said I, "but his farm must be some miles from this. Perhaps as you are the miller of the neighbourhood, you can direct me the nearest road to it." The burley scoundrel first lifted up his eyewinkers, which were clotted with flour, shook out about a pound of it from his bushy whiskers, and then burst into a laugh in my very face as loud as the neighing of a miller's horse. "Ho, ho, hough!" grinned he, coughing upon me a shower of flour. "Is it possible, Dominie, that ye dinna ken me?" and opening a mouth at least as wide as his own hopper, I began to recognize the exaggerated features of Changeable Charlie. "Well really," said I, gazing at his grin, and the hills of flour that arose from his cheeks," really this beats everything! and so Charlie, ye're now turned into a miller." "As sure's a gun!" said he. "Lord bless your soul, Dominie! do you think I could bear to spread dung and turn up dirt all my life? no! I have a soul above that. Besides, your miller is a man in power. He is an aristocrat over the farmers, and with the power has its privileges too, for he takes a multre out of every man's sack, and levies his revenues like a prime minister. No one gets so soon fat as those that live by the labour of others, as you may see; for the landed interest supports me by day, and my water wheel works for me all night, so if I don't get rich now, the deuce is in it." "I suppose," said I, following him into the mill, “you are just making a fortune." "How can I help it?" said he, "making money while I sleep, for I hear the musical click of the hopper in my dreams, and my bairns learn their lessons by the jog of it. I wish every man who has passed a purgatory at college, were just as happy as the miller and his wife. Is not that the case, Lizzy?" he added, addressing his better half, who now came forth hung round by childen-“ as the song goes," "Merry may the maid be that marries the miller, For foul day and fair day, he's aye bringing till her His ample hands in ilk man's pock, His mill grinds muckle siller, "But dear me, Mr Cheap," said I, "what was it that put you out of the farm, where I thought you were so happy, and making a fortune?" "I was as happy as a man could be, and making money too, and nothing put me out of the farm, although I was quite glad of the change, but just a penny of fair debt, the which, you know, is a good man's case-and a little civil argument about the rent. But everything turned out for the best, for Willie Happer, the former miller, just ran awa the same week: I got a dead bargain of the mill, and so I came in to reign in his stead. Am I not a fortunate man ?" "Never was a man so lucky," said I; "but do you really mean to be a waiter on a mill-hopper all your days?" "As long as wood turns round and water runs; but, Lizzy," he added to his wife, "what are you standing glowering there for, and me like to choke. Gang and fetch us a jug of your best treacle ale." "It surely cannot be," said I to myself when I had left the mill, "that Changeable Charlie will ever adopt a new profession now, but live and die a miller." I was, however, entirely mistaken in my calculation, as I found before I was two years older; and though I have not time, at this present sitting, to tell the whole of Charlie's story and have a strong suspicion that my veracity might be put in jeopardy, were I to condescend thereto, I am quite ready to take my oath, that after this I found him in not less than five different characters, in all of which he was equally happy and equally certain of making a fortune. Where the mutations of Charlie might have run to, and whether, to speak with a little agreeable stultification, he might not, like another remarkable man, have exhausted worlds and then imagined new, it is impossible to predicate, if Fortune had not, in her usual injustice, put an end to his career of change, by leaving his wife Lizzy a considerable legacy. The last character then that I found Charlie striving to enact, was that of a gentleman-that is, a man who has plenty of money to live upon, and nothing whatever to do. It did not appear, however, that Charlie's happiness was at all improved by this last change; for, besides that it had taken from him all his private joys, in the hope of one day making a fortune, it had raised up a most unexpected enemy, in the shape of old father Time, whom he found it more troublesome and less hopeful to contend with, than all the obstacles that had formerly seemed to stand in his way to the making of an independent fortune. When the legacy was first showered upon him, however, he seemed as happy under the dispensation, as he had been before under any other of his changes. In the hey-day of his joy, he sent for me to witness his felicity, and to give him my advice as to the spending of his money. This invitation I was thoughtless enough to accept, but it was more that I might pick up a little philosophy out of what I should observe, than from any pleasure that I expected, or any good that I was likely to do. When I got to his house, I was worried to death by all the fine things I was forced to look at, that had been sent to him from Jamaica, and all that from him and his wife I was forced to hear. I tried to impress him concerning the good that he might do with his money, in reference to many who sorely wanted it: but I found that he had too little feeling himself to understand the feelings of others, and that affliction had never yet driven a nail into his own flesh, to open his heart to sympathy. Instead of en tering into any rational plans, his wife and he laughed all day at nothing whatever, his children turned the house upside down in their ecstasy at being rich; and, in short, never before had I been so wearied at seeing people happy. In all this, however, I heard not one single word of thankfulness for this unlooked-for deliverance from constant vicissitude, or one grateful expression to Providence, for being so unreasonably kind to this family; while thousands around them struggled incessantly, in ill-rewarded industry and unavailing anxiety. So I wound up the story of Changeable Charlie in reflective melancholy; for I had seen so many who would, for any little good fortune, have been most thankful and happy, yet never were able to attain thereto; and I inclined to the sombre conclusion, that in this world the wise and virtuous man was often less fortunate, and generally less happy than the fool. Athenæum. THE BLIND HIGHLANDER. The Author during a recent tour through Lochaber, saw the object who suggested the fol lowing stanzas. He was a mountaineer of the old stock-upwards of 100 years old-and stone blind with age. He had been out with Prince Charles in 1745-and had made many narrow escapes for his life in the year of blood which followed the battle of Culloden. A more venerable-looking being can scarcely be imagined-he would have been a splendid subject for an artist-who, without erring much, could have very easily substituted his bust for that of St Peter or St Paul OLD hunter of the desert!-time has squander'd Ay, thou hast pull'd the oar, and bravely weather'd Yes, thou hast scaled the cliff, and scour'd the furrow And sent, like death, thy swift destroying arrow, When thou cam'st sweeping through the narrow glen. Child of the lonely valley! thou hast trodden, And thou didst swell the cry of savage slaughter, Which told the charge of Scotland's plaided band; When swords were shiver'd, and the blood, like water, Was vainly pour'd for their devoted land. And thou didst meet the Saxon-ay, and trample They met they charged-they battled-and their glory Vanish'd, unclouded-like a summer's star O'er their own silent waters-but their story The trump of fame has heralded afar. Their grave is hallow'd ground-still in the sheilings That deck the lonely valleys of the west, Fair eyes are weeping-and a thousand feelings Rise, like revenge, within each mourner's breast. Still, from their own wild solitudes, that slumber Scion of perish'd fame! though thou art shrouded Still dost thou see those peaks of toil and danger A sunbeam passing o'er the uplands drear. Yes, 'mid those streams of foam, and misty deserts, After a century of wars and hazards, Thy memory, like a wild flower, nestles there. |