Their voices and the soft, slow hoot of the owls, who live, as they ought, in an ivied tower of their own, give an impression of remoteness, both in time and place, which adds its romantic touch to the cheerful peace of this old French home. himself adds much to the picturesqueness of the scene. Tall, fair, with handsome features and a short, brown beard, he might staud as a model for one of the younger Apostles. He is dressed in white, with a large straw hat and bare feet, which he thrusts respectGoing back to the other side of the fully into a pair of felt shoes when maavenue, to the field where the men are dame comes into the garden. Farther mowing, we find its lower side bounded down, the avenue has the nature of a by a row of elms almost as tall and cause way. It runs between small, low stately as one would see in Warwick- meadows deep in grass, and by two shire. They may have been planted, bridges with stone balustrades now it is suggested, in the time of Henry growing mossy, it crosses first the IV., when les ormes were much in back-water which supplies the garden fashion. One does not know if then, as now, they sheltered a garden from the east winds; a most quaint garden which lies low and square, sheltered also from the north by the avenue, surrounded by narrow canals and approached by wooden bridges. Here in the brown, weedy water the frogs croak even more agreeably than in the pond on the other side; they have less anxieties perhaps, for the ducks, their natural enemies, seldom come here. One old frog in this shady retreat has a most powerful voice, and his talk reminds one of a dog crunching a bone. He seems really happy in his slowly moving stream, as it washes the dark, trailing, overhanging banks of the garden. This is chiefly a kitchengarden, and here grows some of the fine supply of vegetables which is necessary to a French house. There is also a great deal of small fruit, but beyond the strawberry-beds are lines of rose-bushes laden with roses of every color. Here the gardener is generally to be found, assisted in his work by his little brown-faced wife and a troop of cropped, blue-clad children. Jules canals, then the river itself, its cool, a very small ringing People pass up and down the avenue all day; and if you happen to be sitting there, which is not seldom, you exchange a kind word with every one. Though they have the air of being accustomed to a hot climate, this oppressive, tropical air is too much for most of them. "Un temps malade, pardié!"—and the description strikes one as just. ARTIFICIAL CLOUDS.-Experiments have been made at the Jardin d'Acclimation in producing artificial clouds as a protection against frost. A series of pinewood fires were lighted, occasioning columns of black smoke, which, according to the inventor of the method, is converted into a thick, stationary fog, raising the temperature by four or five degrees. That morning, however, there was too much wind, and the smoke was driven towards the seal-pond to the great discomfort of its inmates. Some of the agriculturists present stated, however, that the vine-growers in the Gironde had successfully adopted the plan. For EIGHT DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for- warded for a year, free of postage. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made THE OLD GARDEN. No change you say? nothing of loss that tells? Trees, flowers, are they as lovely as of yore? Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods And smiles, lay on the bowsprit-end, and called And cursed the Harbor-master by his gods. Does Spring still deck with corals and green And, rotten from the gunwhale to the keel, bells Our favorite sycamore? The early lilacs, bloom they rank on rank, Purple and white as they have bloomed for years? Old Crown-Imperial on the mossy bank, The rose-acacia, does it carpet now The pathway with its waxen blossoms red? Drop the smooth berries from the laurel bough Into the violet bed? Suffer the birds no loss, bereft so long Rat-riddled, bilge bestank, And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed, And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel, As she thumped onward with her lumber⚫ing draught. And now, behold! a shadow of repose She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose She sleeps, and dreams away, Of us? is not the blackbird mute for Soft-blended in a unity of rest doubt ? Is no part wanting to the thrush's song? No liquid note left out? All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes 'Neath the broad benediction of the West Does the moon show behind the hedgerow Sleeps; and methinks she changes as she elms, Black bars against a spectral sea of light? Reigns our one star over the heavenly realms King, on a clear, cold night ? They bloom, sing, shine, our absence hin- Till from Night's leash the fine-breath'd dering not; morning leaps, They are but waiting till ourselves have And that strong hand within unbars the SOME From Blackwood's Magazin about eight miles' rowing, we arrived at Barrisdale, one of our tacksmen's REMINISCENCES OF A HIGHLAND houses, where we generally spent a CHIEF. THE following account of life in the Highlands of Scotland at the beginning of this century, and the notices of Colonel Ranaldson Macdonell, chief of Glengarry and Clanronald, are based entirely upon the unpublished autobiography of Miss Macdonell of Glengarry, this chief's daughter, and upon material supplied by her. I was born at Glengarry, says Miss Macdonell, on Loch Oich, the highest point on the Caledonian Canal, in 1814. I was the fourth daughter of Colonel Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry and Clanronald. There were seven daughters of us and seven sons, of whom six boys died under three years of age, one boy and six girls grew to full age, and the youngest sister died at twelve years of age. night. A precious night it was! The governess and three of us children occupied two box-beds in the parlor proper, the wall-paper of which was covered with roses. Immediately after breakfast we all got into the boat again to row round to Inverie by Loch Nevis. But on the occasion of my early remembrance there was a terrific storm. The maids were groaning and screaming with fear, and the men declared that we children must all sit in the bottom of the boat. When about half way, it was resolved that we should leave the boat and go across country to Inverie. How the rest of the party accomplished the five miles, I do not know; but I was packed up in a plaid on a Highlander's back, and the sister a year younger than I was carried by the nurse. Our house at Inverie was a very curious one. A considerable portion Garry cottage, a charming villa near of it was built like an ordinary house Perth, is the first place of which I recol- of stone and lime; but the dininglect anything. There at three years of room, drawing-room, and four bedage I had the measles very severely, rooms were built by my father on the and my eyesight was nearly lost. I old-fashioned wattled system. Magnifnext remember travelling from Glen-icent beams of Scotch fir sprang from garry to Inverie, one of my father's the clay floor to a roof with similar houses, where we generally spent a beams. Between the beams was reg few weeks every summer. The jour-ular basket-work of hazel-wood. The ney in those days was a very curious outside of the walls and the roof were one. We started from Glengarry in slated. The front door opened into our own carriage; twenty-seven miles this part of the house, and opposite it to Loch Hourn head -stopping half-was another door entering into the way at Tomdown to feed the horses and stone-and-lime part. get something for ourselves at the little The scenery of this part of Knoidart inn, which consisted of three rooms, is perfectly beautiful. There were was built of turf, and was always brim-slightly sloping grass hills at the back ful of peat-smoke; this hurt our eyes of our house rising to perhaps two so much, that we children kept running thousand feet high; with North Morar out and in. I remember on one occa- in front, nearly shutting in the loch, sion our father telling us that we had and the mountains of Rum in the far better lie on our backs on the earthen distance. floor, and we acted on this suggestion The return from Inverie was often for a little. When we reached Loch made over Mambarrisdale, a low pass Hourn we got into a large boat rowed between hills, and about five miles by four men, generally singing Gaelic long. How the elder members of the songs to keep time. My elder sister and I, who had splendid voices, used to sing the whole way, each placed on a bench beside one of the rowers. After family travelled I cannot tell; but my next sister and I were each put in a creel- one on each side of a pony, over whose back we could talk and play to gether nicely. On these journeys there | songs, and paid attention to make us was always plenty of men at hand to carry us if we wished. My mother was a daughter of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, and before her marriage, at twenty-two, had always lived in Edinburgh. On coming to the Highlands she was somewhat bewildered by the sort of life she had to lead. Instead of going to shops for butcher-meat, whole animals were brought into the larder at once; and, that she might really understand how to arrange the pieces for use at table, she got a sheep cut up exactly as if it had been a bullock. The smallness of the sirloins and rounds that this produced may be imagined, but she learned her lesson. Soon after she went north the housekeeper said she was short of néedles. To my mother's amazement she heard that none could be got nearer than Inverness, forty-two miles distant! The needles being an absolute necessity, a man with a cart and horse had to be sent for them. Our education was of the most practical kind. At five years of age we were formally taken into the schoolroom, and handed over to the governess, in whose bedroom we now slept, instead of in the nursery. We at once began to learn the alphabet and to sew, and at six or seven years of age we were not contemptible needle women. We made our own pinafores ourselves, and lots of the family underclothing was made in the schoolroom; parts of everything were done by us at that early age. Every Saturday forenoon, from ten to twelve o'clock, was spent in mending our clothes and darning our stockings. Broken strings had to be unpicked, the worn part cut off by our governess, and the good bit of tape neatly sewed on again. Frocks and pinafores, torn in getting over or through fences, had all to be nicely darned; these we considered very troublesome, and to avoid such work, we often took more care of our clothes. But the two hours of mending were far from dull, as we sang song after song the whole time, at least after Miss P. became our governess. She sang no end of Scotch sing correctly, by the ear, no end of Jacobite ones, of which our father was very fond. And she also did, at enormous trouble to herself, teach us to sing Gaelic ones, though she knew nothing of that language. Sometimes our father wished us to learn a good old Gaelic song he had once heard one of our maidservants, or perhaps a shepherd's daughter, sing; the servant or country girl was sent into the schoolroom on various occasions till Miss P. and one or more of us mastered the air by the ear, and then she wrote down the words, also by the ear, till we had it fit to sing after dinner, when our father corrected any wrong pronunciation; the air was certain to be correct. I know I was working my sampler before M. was sent to school in London, about 1819, when I probably was hardly six years of age. I was always far behind with reading and spelling, in consequence of bad sight. I think we began arithmetic at seven years of age, as well as writing, and never touched the piano till we were nine; French, I think, when we were about eleven; dancing, vocal music, Italian, when we were about sixteen, at which age most of us had final class masters, and were at school in London. This arrangement was not calculated to make us first-rate musicians or linguists. Most of our aunts admired my mother's children for their practical usefulness, which their own, though far more accomplished, failed in. My mother cut out most of the family underclothing, and had one of us down from the schoolroom to fold up the pieces neatly as they were cut; so at nine years of age we had a very good idea of cutting out, which we practised in making our own dolls' clothes, which, when new, were dressed as ladies, with bonnets, tippets, cloaks, etc. When these dolls got old and tashed, we painted their faces to look like men, with whiskers, and dressed them as sailors or Highlanders, and even got the gamekeeper to dress the skin of a mouse (head and all), of which we made a suitable purse for our Highlander. |