Chapter V (1)

Deign to bless our dear Country,
Our Homes, our Priests, our Bishops;
And may Canadians ever be
Faithful Servants of Jesus and Mary!
Adorable Heart,
Always conserve
To the Land of the Maple
The Faith of our Fathers!

* * *

We reached Geneva last night and are leaving to-morrow morning for Berne. Geneva is a beautiful city, situated at the head of the lake of the same name. The atmosphere is wonderfully clear here to-day and the sun shines out of a cloudless sky. Afar off--though it seems not far, it must be some score of miles away--the snowy summit of Mont Blanc is distinctly visible. All around are Alpine peaks. The city is full of historic interest. Here Calvin preached his gloomy creed and ruled with an iron rod. Here, too, the very opposite of Calvin in every way, that sweetest and most lovable of Saints, Francis of Sales, wielded episcopal authority over a devoted flock. His spirit seems to breathe in the peace and calm of this June day. One can even fancy that one hears the accents of his gentle voice calling his sheep away from earthly pastures to heavenly ones, guiding them ever onward to the Great Shepherd of the sheep, in the fold upon the everlasting hills.

* * *

LUCERNE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27.

The parts of Switzerland that are capable of cultivation seem to be even more fertile than the parts of France that we have passed through. Both the hay and grain crops are heavier, at least this year, and the vine thrives marvellously on the hillsides of this beautiful and romantic land. For beautiful it is and romantic, this land of bright-blue skies, and snow-capped mountains, and leaping cataracts, and sylvan glades, and smiling valleys.

We spent Sunday at Geneva, and stayed two or three hours at Berne Monday on our way to Interlaken. Berne is the national capital. Its most notable buildings are the Federal House of Parliament and the Lutheran Cathedral. The latter dates from the beginning of the 15th century, and to this day bears about it tokens of the Faith that first set it up. Berne is the German word for "bear." The city takes its name "de bellua caesa," as an old monument bears witness, from a bear having been slain on the site where it stands. Thence the bear is the emblem and heraldic decoration of the Swiss capital. You can't turn in any direction without running across the figure of a bear. The poor beast is drawn in every conceivable shape and tortured into every conceivable attitude. One is reminded of the fable of the Lion and the Man, as told by Newman. There are bears couchant, bears passant, and bears regardant. There are old bears and young bears, big bears and little bears, bears climbing trees, bears standing on their hind legs, bears hugging each other, and bears making faces at each other. And to crown all, the city maintains four huge live bears and several young ones in an enclosure about twelve feet below the level of the ground. They are shown to every visitor who crosses the stone bridge that spans the Aar river, on the banks of which Berne stands.

Interlaken, as the name implies, is situated between two lakes. It is an ideal summer resort, a very paradise of tourists. It is hemmed in by mountains on every side. On the east, Jungfrau lifts her snowy summit to the skies. Jungfrau (pronounced yungfrau) is German for virgin. And a tall virgin she is, this Maiden of the Snows, ever holding her head erect some 13,000 feet above the level of the sea. She always wears her white mantle, and for apron a great glacier. On the evening of our arrival she had on a cap of cloud, and some time during the night further shrouded herself in a veil of mist. Nor would she lift it as we went away, eager though we were to catch a glimpse of her morning face.

Between Interlaken and Lucerne the scenery is uninterruptedly grand. Mountain, lake, and Alpine river quickly succeed one another, but without sameness. The most remarkable feature of this route is the over-mountain railway. The train climbs an Alpine hill from 1,200 to 1,500 feet in height, and makes its way down on the other side. Our train was divided into three sections, each section of which was pulled by a powerful locomotive. The wheels revolve on cogs set in the rails. At one time the train is on the very edge of a precipice, with a sheer descent of several hundred feet; at another, an overhanging cliff threatens to fall down on top of it and smash it into atoms. Now it seems to be on the verge of dropping into a lake hundreds of feet below; the next moment the dense Alpine forests hides even the heavens from one's view. It is a thrilling experience, and one feels a sense of relief once it is fairly over.

* * *

ROME, JULY 6TH, 1900.

It is more than a week since last I put pen to paper. We were then at Lucerne, amid the eternal hills. We are now in the Eternal City. Into this short space much has been crowded--too much even to touch on here or give in barest outline. There is the sublime scenery of the Alpine Passes between Lucerne and Como, with the passage through the great tunnel at St. Gothard's. There is Milan with its marvellous Duomo, "a dream in marble," as some prose poet has pictured it. There is the vast plain of Lombardy, stretching for miles and miles from the foot of the Alps to the Mediterranean, the garden of Italy, as Italy is the garden of Europe. Then there is Venice, Queen of the Adriatic, the city of doges and of gondolas. The doges are dead; we visited the church where monuments in marble and in bronze enshrine their ashes and perpetuate all that now remains of their former greatness--a fugitive and fitful memory. The gondolas are still there, with their graceful, swan-like shape and movement--just such as they were in the days when the Republic of Venice was mistress of the seas. There, again, is Padua, with its shrine of St. Anthony, whose incorrupt tongue still witnesses to the power with which this "trumpet of the Gospel" heralded Christ and Him crucified. There, too, is Loreto, with its Holy House, where the Word was made Flesh--a most gracious shrine. Lastly, as we hasten Romeward, midway between Ancona and Rome, amid the Umbrian hills, yet another shrine draws us to itself--Assisi, where live the memories of St. Francis and the spirit of St. Francis--live, too, as fresh and fragrant as are the blood-bedewed roses that bloom on thornless bushes in his garden, where he fought the good fight against temptation and won for the men of all time the Pardon of the Portiuncula.

Those of us who spent Wednesday in Assisi did not reach Rome until a late hour that night. Imagine our surprise and almost consternation when we were told that all the pilgrims were to be received in audience by the Holy Father at eleven the next (yesterday) morning. We had counted on being at least a day or two in Rome before the audience took place, and we were not ready. We ran about for two or three hours in the morning, buying medals, etc., to be blessed--I with no little difficulty, getting English gold for the cheques containing the Peter Pence offering of our diocese, some two thousand one hundred and fifty francs. By eleven o'clock we are at the Vatican, and half an hour afterwards Pope Leo enters the Sala Clementina, borne on a chair, amid the 'evivas' of the assembled pilgrims. There are two pilgrimages, the Brazilian, ranged along one side of the great hall, and the Canadian along the other. First the Pope receives the Brazilians, then the Canadians. He is carried in his chair right around the hall, in front of the pilgrims who line the sides. To each he gives his hand to kiss; to each his blessing and some gracious token of tenderness--a word, a smile; to all, at the close, the Apostolic Benediction. Pope Leo is of course changed since I saw him last, sixteen years ago; the white hair is scantier and whiter still, the lines on the face are deeper, the hands are more tremulous, the voice has lost its resonance. But the light of the coal black eye is not dimmed, there is more of pathos in the voice, and the whole face has melted into tenderness. There has come into it a gentler and more winning look, which one likens to the mellowness of ripe fruit when it is ready to drop from the tree. This fruit is surely meet to be gathered, one says to oneself, yet none but the Master's hand may pluck it from the stem.

The scene in the Sala Clementina, at the close of the audience, as the aged Pontiff blessed the pilgrims, I will not attempt to describe. I shall never forget it, and no one who was there ever can forget it. When the Pope raised himself on his chair and stretched out his hand to give the Apostolic Benediction, there was a stillness as of death throughout the vast hall--a stillness soon broken by sobs, for tears filled the eyes of all that were there, and many wept aloud. The first words were spoken in distinct though somewhat low tones, but as the last words, in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti, were being uttered the Holy Father himself broke down completely. The voice grew husky with emotion, the eyes closed, and great tears rolled down the aged cheeks. Leo XIII felt that he was blessing for the last time these faithful children of his from the two Americas, and we felt that never in this life should we look upon his face again. I must close abruptly, without as much as one word about Rome itself- -Rome to which I have come, not merely as a pilgrim from afar to a holy place of pilgrimage, but as a son comes to his mother after long years of separation. For Rome is to me the mother of my soul.

* * *

GENOA, FRIDAY, JULY 13.

We left Rome Tuesday at 2 p.m., after a stay of six days, which was all too short. For one could spend months and months in Rome and still not see a tithe of what is worth seeing, or even begin to be weary of a place so rich in all that sages have thought and poets have dreamed of and artists have wrought and martyrs have bled for and saints have loved. We leave Rome with regret; feeling as all must feel in whom there is a spark of Divine Faith, that it is the City of the Soul, to which, in the words of the poet, "the exile of the heart" must forever turn.

The run from Rome to Florence is made in five or six hours. Florence, the city of flowers, is built on both banks of the Arno. It is a beautiful city much frequented by tourists. It is the birthplace of many of Italy's greatest sons, of Dante, of Michael Angelo, of Galileo. Here Savonarola lived and preached and wielded an influence more potent than that of any civil ruler. We saw, in one of the palaces of the Medici, the chapel where he spoke his last words to his brother monks, just before he was led out to be burnt at the stake in the Piazza of the Signoria, hard by. Here, too, first saw the light of day one who was the opposite of Savonarola in many ways, the sweet and gentle Philip Neri. Rome, the city of his adoption, of which he became the second Apostle, is still filled with the fragrance of his saintly life.

From Florence we come by rail to Pisa, and thence the same day to Genoa. From Spezia to the latter city, the railway, skirting the shores of the Mediterranean, is one series of tunnels. In the intervals between tunnels we catch glimpses of as beautiful and picturesque scenery as one could wish to gaze upon--a background of hills, rising in many places abruptly to a great height, sloping vineyards, groves of olive, clusters of fruit trees, and, in front, the waters of the Mediterranean, clear as crystal and mirroring in their depths the fleecy summer clouds that float in the blue above. Over all, like a great dome over Nature's own Cathedral, is the sky of Italy.

"Genoa la Superba"--Genoa the Superb--the Genoese call this city by the rippling Mediterranean, and well they may. It is, indeed, superb. In its marble palaces could be entertained to-day, in princely fashion, all the princes of the earth. It is the richest city of the peninsula, the great mart of the Mediterranean, the Liverpool of Italy. From the harbour, where float the flags of all nations, the city resembles a vast amphitheatre, tier upon tier of tall buildings rising one above another. Even the urchins in the street are proud of this queenly city. In the higher part of the town, away up among the hills, near the marvellous Campo Santo, a group of them stood talking rapidly, and to me unintelligibly, in their own Genoese dialect, as we passed by. "Che linguaggio parlate voi altri?" I asked somewhat bluntly. "Noi," says one of the number, with a sweep of the hand which took in the other members of the group, and then pointing proudly with his finger to his breast, "Noi siamo Genovesi--We are natives of Genoa."

That Campo Santo, by the same token, is one of the wonders of the world. Truly the dead of Genoa dwell in marble halls, and this city of the dead is a miracle in marble. Every monument is a work of art. The pose of that figure, how graceful and natural! Those faces in marble and bronze, how life-like are they! The dead seem to live in them again, and to look down at you with their solemn eyes from the other world.

We loved that hall, tho' white and cold
Those niched shapes of noble mould
A princely people's awful princes,
The grave, severe Genoese of old.
--Tennyson, "The Daisy."

Quieti et Memoriae--you meet it everywhere, this terse and beautiful epigraph. Recalling the memory of some dear departed one, it breathes a prayer for that rest after which the human heart ever hungers here below--that rest which we look for "where beyond these voices there is peace."

For full nine hundred years, from 900 to 1,800, Genoa maintained herself an independent Republic. Already six centuries had rolled over this Old World Republic when the boldest of her sailors embarked at Palos on his voyage of discovery. "Were it not for him we might all of us to-day be--Indians," is the curious thought that comes to one of the pilgrims as he gazes on the massive monument, near the railway station, which bears the legend in huge letters:

A CHRISOFORO COLOMBO LA PATRIA

Ah, those might-have-beens of an unborn past! It is bootless to speculate upon them.

LOURDES, JULY 19, 1900.

"Lourdes is a small town in the diocese of Tarbes, Hautes Pyrenees, picturesquely situated on the right bank of the river Gave." I quote the words from a booklet which purports to be "A Short Account of the Apparitions and Miracles at Lourdes." We arrived here from Toulouse about five o'clock on the afternoon of the day before yesterday. It had been a very hot day in the cars, but all covered with sweat and dust as we were we went straight in procession to the Grotto of Our Lady, without waiting to go to our hotel. There, on our knees before the statue, which smiles down sweetly upon us, as did erstwhile the Virgin Mother for whom it stands, upon the simple peasant girl of the Pyrenees, we recite the Rosary and sing the Magnificat. All about us throngs are kneeling in prayer, and there are signs of a subdued excitement, for just five minutes before our arrival a young girl who had suffered severe injuries by a fall three years ago, and was carried thither in her little carriage, a few hours before, was seen to rise to her feet and walk. But neither before nor after the cure did she report at the Bureau des Constatations Medicales.

The words that I have quoted at the head of this page were written twenty-four years ago by an English priest who visited the shrine. Were he now writing he would no longer say that Lourdes is a small town. The old town of Lourdes is, indeed, small, just a bit of a village in the Pyrenees. But the new Lourdes that has sprung up as if by magic on the banks of the Gave, over against the famous Grotto, has pretensions to rank as a city. It has its banks, its public buildings, its electric cars, rows upon rows of stores, though the wares are almost wholly of a devotional character, hotels and boarding houses without number, and a population of about ten thousand souls. And yet twenty-six years ago, just two years before our English priest wrote his account, there was not, as an old inhabitant told us, a stone upon a stone of the modern, and, for the most part, handsome buildings that one sees to-day.

Nature has lavished her charms on this favoured spot. Nothing is wanting of all that can please the eye or soothe and rest the mind in natural scenery. Lofty hills in front and in the rear, some bare and bald, others clothed with forest to their very tops; in the background, the snow-clad peaks and spurs of the Pyrenees; at your feet a narrow valley, studded with stately trees and carpeted with green-sward; and ever in your ears, though the eye wearied with gazing, should seek repose, the rushing waters of the Gave. Surely a fitting entourage for this most gracious of all our Lady's shrines!

The waters of the Gave, how swiftly and noisily they flow, flinging themselves passionately upon the rude rocks that would stay their onward course! The murmur of the Gave has been in my ears from a boy, for I seemed to hear the rushing of its waters when in boyhood's days I lingered over the pages of Henri Lasserre's fascinating story of the wonders of Lourdes. And to-day as I sit on the bank and gaze down upon the swift stream that flings itself into the Adour to mingle finally with the waters of the mighty Atlantic, the Gave of my boyish dreams is a reality. It is something more. It is an emblem at once and a sermon--an emblem of the surging multitude of pilgrims which ever keeps streaming to the Grotto of our Lady, flowing hither from the ends of the earth; a sermon on the true purpose of life. See how this eager mountain stream, like a thing of life, runs joyously to its rest in the bosom of the great ocean! Not less surely was it meant by Nature to find there its repose than we are meant by the Author of Nature to find our repose in Him. Yet we linger by the way and loiter, while the Gave leaps onward, oh, how swiftly and how surely! to its goal and the home of its rest.

But the Gave has not always been at this point the deep, narrow, noisy stream that it is to-day. Once it roamed at will over its rocky bed, making for itself a wider and more spacious pathway. Now stout stone walls fence it in and confine it to a narrow channel, and it frets and foams as does the wild beast of the forest when imprisoned behind iron bars. In these hot July days, too, the Gave runs deeper and swifter, fed by the melting snows of the Pyrenees. But on that February day, forty-two years ago, it was a feeble and mild-mannered stream. Bernadette and her two little companions crossed the main stream by the stone bridge. But a narrow side channel still separated them from the Grotto in the rocks of Massabielle, where was plenty of the drift wood they were in search of. Stooping down slowly to pull off her shoes and stockings with a view of wading this stream, Bernadette heard a noise as of a sudden gust of wind. "It was a calm grey day, and not a twig of the poplars was stirring, yet she felt certain that she had heard the rush of air. She stooped down again, and again the mysterious current startled her. This time the child looked up towards the niche-shaped cave. To her amazement a clear bright light issued from the aperture, in the midst of which stood a woman more wondrously beautiful than any one Bernadette had ever seen, or could have imagined. She was clad in white, with a long white veil falling over her shoulders; a blue scarf encircled her waist and reached to her knees, and upon either bare foot was a gold-coloured rose." I am quoting from my little book. But the story has been often told and is trite now, though it can never be commonplace.

The number of pilgrims who visit Lourdes yearly is estimated at two hundred and fifty thousand. They come from every country under the sun. The two ends of America are wide enough asunder, yet the fact of our being from the same continent is a real bond between ourselves and our fellow-pilgrims from Brazil, whom we meet here at the shrine of our Lady as we met them at Paray le Monial and again in the audience chamber of the Vatican.

* * *

LOURDES, SATURDAY, JULY 21.

Every day since our coming here has been for us a day of prayer, and, at the same time, a day of rest--rest for body and for soul. There is something in the very atmosphere of Lourdes which inspires devotion and invites repose. Every morning the pilgrims assist at Mass in the Grotto and many receive Holy Communion. We all of us take our places, too, in the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and at night, in the torch-light procession. This morning at ten o'clock we had Solemn High Mass in the Grotto, with a Canadian as celebrant, Canadians as ministers at the altar, and Canadians as singers. The service was, of course, in the open air, and very solemn and impressive it was. While we joined in the chant of the Mass, the wind in the trees around about us seemed to sing an accompaniment, and the hoarse-sounding Gave lent its deep bass voice as it sped on its way to the ocean.

To-morrow at eleven o'clock we bid adieu to Lourdes. With Lourdes our pilgrimage ends. At Paris, where we are due Monday evening, our pilgrim party breaks up. Some will stay there for a season, others will sail from Liverpool on the following Thursday, and yet others will visit parts of Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, or of France itself, before turning their steps homeward. Of this number is the present writer. But here at Lourdes, as I have said, our pilgrimage ends. And so from Lourdes, from this sweet shrine of Our Lady by the sounding waters of the Gave, let me send after its fellows this last leaf from

THE DIARY OF A PILGRIM.

JOTTINGS OF A TRIP IN SCOTLAND.

Leaving Liverpool with its din and smoke behind, we begin our journey by rail, through the northwestern part of England toward the Scottish border. It is near the end of July, and the weather, for England, is hot. But coming as we do direct from the stifling heat of Paris, we find it cool by comparison. We are travelling by fast express, and can catch but passing glimpses of the towns and hamlets, the broad farms and comfortable homesteads, of Old England. Now we are dashing through one of the many manufacturing towns with which the land is studded. There are long rows of red brick houses, with here and there a huge chimney belching forth black smoke. The next moment we are once more in the open country. On either hand as far as the eye can reach, are great stretches of farmland and green pastures where cattle are grazing. The grain is ripening in the fields, and ever and anon there comes, through the open window of the car, the sweet savour of new-mown hay. As we go further north the country grows more rugged. Dark ravines open at our feet, and shaggy hills frown down upon us. By three o'clock we have passed Carlisle, once the great stronghold of England against the fierce incursions of its warlike neighbour to the north. Soon after we cross the border and find ourselves on Scottish soil. It is the land of our fathers--

Land of brown heath and shaggy wood,
Land of the mountain and the flood,--

a land of stirring memories and teeming with romance. It is not without emotion, therefore, that we enter it for the first time. Nor does the dense Scotch mist into which we run before reaching Edinburgh damp our enthusiasm in the least--though we should not be able to say as much for our persons were we exposed to it but for a moment.

We spend the Sunday in Edinburgh. That droll Frenchman who writes under the pen-name of Max O'Rell, defines a Scotchman as one who keeps the Sabbath and everything else he can lay his hands on! Well, at any rate he keeps the Sabbath, and that is more than many a Frenchman does. For the people of Edinburgh the Sunday is still emphatically a day of rest. To a Protestant gentleman from Toronto who had just come from Paris himself and put up at the same hotel with us, we remark upon the contrast between the Parisian Sunday and the solemn quiet of the Scotch Sabbath. "Quite so," he says, "but you should have been here yesterday while the Labor Parade was passing through the streets. You would have seen one after another of the men dropping out of the procession in a state of beastly intoxication. In all the time that I was in Paris I saw no single instance of such drunkenness." He had come away from Paris greatly edified, and was leaving Edinburgh utterly disgusted and horrified at what he had seen. Sobriety was more to him than Sunday observance. And yet human frailty may account for drunkenness, and palliate it at least in part. But the violation of the Sunday has its root cause, it is to be feared, in a spirit of contempt for the ordinances of the Christian Religion.

Edinburgh is not only the capital of Scotland, but the queen of Scottish cities. There are few finer cities, indeed, in all the world. Its broad and well paved streets are kept scrupulously clean. The buildings, almost all of them of granite, are tall and stately. And the site with its picturesque setting of hills is superb. On one of these hills, west from Prince street and Scott's Monument, stands the historic Castle like a grim sentinel guarding the approaches of the City. Climbing the hill and entering by the draw-bridge, we see, among other interesting relics of the past, the Chapel of the saintly Queen Margaret, and stand in the room where the ill-fated Mary Stuart took refuge after the murder of Rizzio, and where was born James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England. In another room hard by we gaze upon the ancient Regalia of Scotland, "worthy of a nation's pride and jealous preservation."

The run from Edinburgh to Glasgow by rail is made in a little more than one hour. Our route lies through Lanarkshire, famed for its coal mines and iron foundries. Glasgow, with a population of over one million, is the second city of the Empire. Unlike Edinburgh, it has no pretentions to beauty. Still, it has some fine streets and very beautiful parks. It contains, too, not a few notable buildings, and there are in and around it many places of great historic interest. Its water supply, brought from Loch Katrine, thirty miles distant, is not surpassed perhaps by that of any other city in the world.

Early in the morning we leave Glasgow for Oban by boat. Steaming down the Clyde, we get a good view of the docks and of the ships both great and small that are a-building on either bank. A few miles down the river is Douglas Castle, and a little beyond, on the summit of a rock 260 feet in height, rises Dumbarton Castle, famed in Scottish story. We touch at Greenock and Dunoon, and thence make for Rothesay, the capital of Bute. On our left, as we near the Bute shore, we see Mount Stuart House, the seat of the Marquis.

Leaving Rothesay, the steamer runs up the Kyles or narrows (from the Gaelic caolas, a strait) of Bute, round the northern end of the island, and down the other side towards Ardlamont Point on the mainland. The scenery on this strait is very fine, wooded mountain, loch, and glen blending their varied beauties into one picturesque whole. Rounding Ardlamont Point, we steer straight for the harbour of Tarbert, on the coast of Kintyre. Away to the south, and but dimly visible in the haze, is the island of Arran. From Tarbert we proceed up Loch Fyne to Ardrishaig, 180 miles from Glasgow, at the head of the Crinan Canal. This canal, which connects Loch Fyne with Loch Crinan, and is nine miles in length, runs, for a great part of the way, along the base of forest-clad hills.

By this time, unluckily for us, it has begun to rain heavily, which mars our enjoyment of the rest of the trip to Oban. As the boat stops for the opening of the locks of the canal, we hear people on shore talking in Gaelic and realize that we have left the Lowlands behind. In spite of the rain two little barefooted girls and a little boy who has shoes on (shame on him!) follows us from lock to lock, selling milk by the glassful to the passengers. The children are quite brave at first, and stare at us, as much as to say, "What do we care what these English strangers say or think of us." But the moment I speak to them in Gaelic, they grow shy of me, and the poor little girls look as if they were ashamed to be seen in their bare feet.

Leaving Crinan, the western terminus of the canal, we have on our right the mainland of Argyle; on our left are the islands of Jura and Scarba. Between the two is the famous whirlpool of Corryvrechan, the roar of which may be heard at a distance of many miles. Away in the west, beyond Ross of Mull, lies far-famed Iona, with Ulva dark and Colonsay

And all the group of islets gay
That guard famed Staffa round.

Presently we descry Dunollie Castle, once the chief stronghold of the Lords of Lorn, and soon after land in Oban.

Oban has been called the Charing Cross of the Highlands. And such it is in the sense of being the great distributing centre for tourists and travellers by rail or boat. But in every other sense how unlike is this quiet little town, with its cosy harbour and crescent beach, where the wavelets play at hide-and-seek with the pebbles, to the bustling railway station in the heart of the biggest and busiest of all earth's cities! During the summer months this cosy harbour is crowded with pleasure yachts from all parts of the world, and the hotels that line the pebbly beach are thronged with tourists from every land.

For Oban is a dainty place
In distant or in nigh lands,
No town delights the tourist race
Like Oban in the Highlands.

So wrote the late Professor Blackie, himself a frequent visitor in his day to this charming resort on the shore of the western sea.

At Oban in the early morning we take the 'Gael' steamship for far Gairloch in Rosshire. Dunollis Castle is on our right as we steam out of Oban Bay and make for Lismore Light, on the extreme southern end of the island of that name. Thence our way lies through the Sound of Mull to Ardnamurchan Point. The scenery along this Sound, where you have the mountains of Mull on the one hand, and on the other those of misty Morven, is surpassingly grand. Here on the Morven shore, in Ardtornish Castle, ancient seat of the Lords of the Isles, is laid the opening scene of Scott's well-known poem, which begins with the lines:

"Wake, maid of Lorn," the minstrels sung.
Thy rugged halls, Ardtornish, rung,
And the dark seas thy towers that lave,
Heaved on the beach a softer wave,
As 'mid the tuneful choir to keep
The diapason of the deep.

Near the other end of the sound is Tobermory (Mary's Well), the chief seaport of Mull, a very pretty town, in whose land-locked harbour ships of any tonnage find securest anchorage. This port has for us a very special interest, as we have reason to believe that from hence our grand-parents sailed in the dawn of the century to make for themselves a home, beyond the stormy Atlantic, in what was then the wild woods of Nova Scotia.

All day long, from early morn till set of sun, we follow our sinuous course through the sounds and lochs and bays of this western sea, calling here or there to land or take on passengers. After leaving Torbermory while rounding Ardnamurchan Point, and until we gain the shelter of towering Scaur-Eigg, a perpendicular cliff some five hundred feet high at the southwestern extremity of the island of that name, we are in the open Atlantic, with no land to the west of us nearer than America. North of Ardnamurchan lies Moidart, where Prince Charlie landed on the 25th of July, 1745, and whence after many wanderings and hair-breadth escapes he sailed, on the 20th September of the following year, a hopeless and broken man.

From Eigg we cross over to Arisaig. Judging by what one can see of it from the deck of a steamer, it is far from being as fertile as the district that has been named after it in Nova Scotia. But perhaps there is no other spot on the western coast of Scotland where the view landward and seaward is so varied and so magnificent.

After landing passengers at Arisaig, we steam along the coast of Morar on the mainland, having on our left the islands of Eigg, Rum, and Canna, and in front of us the southern extremity of Skye. Soon we enter the Sound of Sleat, and passing through the Kyle of Lochalsh, hug the eastern or inner shore of Skye till we reach Portree. It is a perfect day. The sun shines brightly, and the face of the laughing waters is gently fanned by the summer winds. And the scenery is as grand as it is diversified. Leaving Portree (King's Port), so-called from having been visited by James V. of Scotland while cruising round these isles, we enter once more the Sound of Raasay. On the Skye shore, near the little island of Holm, is to be seen the entrance to a cave famed as one of the hiding places of the unfortunate Prince Charlie. Presently we pass out of the Sound of Raasay and enter the Minch. On the left, beyond the northern promontory of Skye, some of the Hebridean Islands are visible in the dim distance. Behind us the mountains of Skye rise in gloomy grandeur. As one gazes upon them, there comes to one's mind these words of MacCrimmon's Lament, done into English by Sir Walter Scott:

Farewell to each cliff, on which breakers are foaming,
Farewell to each dark glen in which red deer are roaming;
Farewell lovely Skye, to lake, mountain, and river--
Return, return, return, we shall never.
(Cha till, cha till, cha till sinn tuille.)

Gairloch has a fine hotel--with prices to match. It is a charming place, this quiet hamlet by the sea, but lonely withal. For here, away up north, one has that sense of isolation, of being cut off from the great world, which is itself twin-sister to the feeling of loneliness.

We leave Gairloch early in the morning for Inverness, travelling by coach for 30 miles to Achnasheen (Field of the Fairies) and thence by rail. In the first five miles the road runs, part of the time, through a fine forest of larches, which seem to be related to our juniper tree, but are very tall and stately. On emerging from the wood and beginning the descent of a steep hill, we come of a sudden upon a loch which seems to surpass all the Scottish lochs in the wild and rugged grandeur of the scenery along its shores. It was some such sight as here greets our eyes that inspired Sir Walter's muse to sing,--

Stranger; if e'er thine ardent step hath traced
The northern realms of ancient Caledon,
Where the proud Queen of Wilderness hath placed,
By lake and cataract her lonely throne;
Sublime but sad delight thy soul hath known,
Gazing on pathless glen and mountain high,
Listing where from the cliffs the torrents thrown
Mingle their echoes with the eagle's cry,
And with the sounding lake, and with the moaning sky.

For where more fittingly than here by Loch Maree, on some lonely mountain peak, could the Queen of Wilderness set up her throne? Here, in sooth, are pathless glen and mountain high and torrents flung from cliffs. And the very spirit of Desolation seems to brood over the place. You may travel miles on this loch without seeing a single human habitation. Steep mountains, bare of trees and even of vegetation, shut it in on all sides. The loftiest peak in Ruadh Stac Mor, which rises to a height of 3,309 feet; but there are several other peaks almost as high. Half way up the loch is a summer hotel for tourists, where Queen Victoria stayed a week something more than a score of years ago. Over against this hotel, near the other side of the loch, is a wooded islet, called Isle Maree, on which may be seen the ruins of a monastery, "in days of yore," says our guide book, "an oasis of learning in the desert of heathenism." Tradition has it that the waters of a well on this little island (mayhap another Tobair Moire or Mary's Well!) cured insanity--a tradition which the gentle Quaker poet Whittier has embalmed in these lines:

Calm on the breast of Isle Maree
A little Well reposes:
A shadow woven of the oak
And willow o'er it closes,
And whoso bathes therein his brow,
With care or madness burning,
Feels once again his healthful thought
And sense of peace returning.
Life's changes vex, its discords stun,
Its glaring sunshine blindeth;
And blest is he who on his way
That fount of healing findeth!

I suspect that Loch Maree is an English corruption of the Gaelic Loch Mairi (Loch Mary or Mary's Loch). The monks were ever and everywhere devout clients of the Blessed Mary. It is not at all unlikely, therefore, that the community of monks who anciently made their home in this romantic spot named both the loch and the little isle on which they built their monastery after their Heavenly Patroness.

On leaving Loch Maree the road follows the bed of a brook for some distance up a dark glen. On either hand are "rising mountains red with heather bells," on the slopes of which the hardy Highland sheep are grazing. Once the summit of the ridge is gained, it is down hill to Achnasheen, where we take the train for Inverness. Our way for several miles lies through a wilderness, but all at once we come upon a lovely strath, in as high a state of cultivation as any district we have seen in the Lowlands or even in England. It looks all the more beautiful by contrast with the barren and desolate region through which we have just passed. The name of it I cannot for the moment recall. But the valley itself as I saw it, with the bloom of summer upon it, and the light of the westering sun, is vividly present to my imagination.

Inverness, at the mouth of the River Ness, is, after Edinburgh, the handsomest city in Scotland. Prof. Blackie sings its praises in the following sonnet:

Some sing of Rome, and some of Florence; I
Will sound thy Highland praise, fair Inverness;
And till some worthier bard thy thanks may buy,
Hope for the greater, but not spurn the less.
All things that make a city fair are thine,
The rightful queen and sovereign of this land
Of bens and glens, and valiant men, who shine
Brightest in Britain's glory roll, and stand
Best bulwarks of her bounds--wide-circling sweep
Of rich green slopes and brown empurpled brae,
And flowering mead, and far inwinding bay,
Temple and tower are thine, and castled keep,
And ample stream, that round fair gardened isles
Rolls its majestic current, wreathed in smiles.

Scotland, as a glance at a map of the globe will show, is several degrees farther north than Nova Scotia. Up here at Inverness, during the first week of August, the twilight lasts till after 10 p.m. Towards the end of June, when the day is at its longest, the sun does no more than dip for a few hours below the horison, and at no time of the night does its light fade away altogether from the northern sky.

Four miles from Inverness is Culloden Moor. But we visit not that "field of the dead" so fraught with saddening memories to every Highlander.

Leaving the capital of the Highlands, we go by boat to Fort William through the Caledonian Canal. This passage is sixty-two miles long. There are twenty-four miles of canal, and thirty-eight of natural lake, namely, Loch Ness (24 miles), Loch Oich (4 miles), and Loch Lochy (10 miles). On these lochs and along the stretches of land between them the scenery is of surpassing beauty. On either side is a range of purple hills rising in places to a great height. Now they close in about us as if to dispute our passage. The next moment they fall back and form into line in the rear, keeping ward over the great highway of waters that cleaves the land of the Scottish Gael in twain and weds two seas together. And now Ben Nevis (4,406 ft.) looms afar off on the left, lording it over all the hills. At his feet and under his very shadow stands Fort William, known to the old folk as An Gearristan. Along the plain below rolls the Lochy River till it empties its waters into Loch Linnhe. Those glens that lie at the foot of the mountain range northeastward from Ben Nevis are Ruaidh and Spean, along the rivers of the same name. And this is Lochaber, "synonym for an exile's wail." Children we of those sad-eyed exiles, is it any wonder that our hearts beat more quickly as we gaze on the heather-clad hills now rising before us? Even we, of the third generation, still feel within us something of their heart-hunger for the old home they loved so well--the heart-hunger which found a voice and still finds an echo in that saddest of sad refrains,

Lochaber, Lochaber, Lochaber no more,
We'll maybe return to Lochaber no more.

The Highlands, and the islands on the west of Scotland, are to-day but sparsely populated. A hundred years ago these lovely straths and glens were filled with people. Even the braes and moorlands, now so bare and barren, yielded a frugal livelihood to a hardy race of men whose wants were few and tastes most simple. To-day whole districts are given over to sheep and deer.

In Highland glens 'tis far too oft observed,
That man is chased away and game preserved.

So wrote the Hon. John Bright, in blunt but honest English fashion. More pathetic is the tale of desolation as told in Gaelic verse--in lines of exquisite tenderness and beauty--by one who is a native of those glens and "to the manner born"--one who has in our own day successfully wooed the Highland Muse "'mang the bonnie Highland heather"--Macleod, the spirited bard of Skye. I quote two or three stanzas from his poem, Anns a Ghleann 'san Robh Mi Og:

Tha na fardaichean 'n an fasaich
Far an d'araicheadh na seoid,
Far'm bu chridheil fuaim an gaire,
Far'm bu chairdeal iad mun bhord;
Far a fhaigheadh coigreach baigh,
Agus anrach bochd a lon;
Ach cha'n fhaigh iad sin's an am so
Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.

Chaochail maduinn ait ar n-oige
Mar an ceo air bharr nam beann,
Tha ar cairdean 's ar luchd-eolais
Air a fogradh bhos us thall;
Tha cuid eile dbuibh nach gluais,
Tha'n na cadal buan fodh'n fhod,
'Bha gun uaill, gun fhuath, gun anthlachd,
Anns a' ghleann's an robh iad og.

Mo shoraidh leis gach cuairteig,
Leis gach bruachaig agus cos:
Mu'n tric an robh mi 'cluaineis
'N am 'bhi buachailleachd nam bo--
'Nuair a thig mo reis gu 'ceann,
Agus feasgar fann mo lo,
B'e mo mhiann a bhi's an am sin
Anns a' ghleann's an robh mi og.

The song has been done into English, or rather into mixed English and broad Scotch, but it has lost somewhat in the rendering. The foregoing stanzas run thus in the translation:

Now in ruins are the dwellin's,
Where ance lived a gallant clan;
Their's was aye the friendly welcome,
Their's was aye the open han';
There the stranger and the puir
Found a place at the fire-en';
Now alas! there's nane tae greet them
In my bonnie native glen.

Like the mist upon the mountain
Youth's glad morn of promise died,
And our kinsfolk and acquaintance,
They are scattered far and wide;
Some of them are sleepin' soun'
Neath the shadow of the ben,
That were ance baith leal and hearty
In their bonnie native glen.

But now fare ye weel each fountain,
Each sweet dell an' grassy brae,
Where fu' aft the kye I herded,
In my boyhood's happy day.
When life's gloamin' settles down,
An' my race is at an en',
'Tis my wish that death should find me
In my bonnie native glen.

Wherever you travel in the Western Highlands you hear Gaelic spoken. And ever as it strikes upon your ears, there arises within you--at least if you happen to be a Highlander yourself--the question, Will the old tongue live on here amid the bens and glens that have echoed with it since immemorial time? Or is it doomed to die out in this its ancient home? It is hard to say. For my own part, I believe Gaelic will be spoken in the Highlands so long as there are Highlanders there. But I don't know how long that will be. Certainly they are far fewer to-day than they were at the beginning of the last century. And the country is becoming more and more a mere summer resort for tourists and sportsmen. As matters stand at present there is no future for the Highland youth in their Highland home. On growing up to manhood and womanhood, they drift into the cities of the Lowlands, or cross the ocean. And ever as they go, their sad hearts echo the wailing notes of MacCrimmon's Lament, or Lochaber No More. I wish I could share the confidence in the ultimate repeopling of the Highlands that is expressed--perhaps rather than felt--by the Skye bard already quoted, in the following lines:

'S bidh fhathast a cairdean
Mar bha iad bho chian,
An' duthaich nan ardbheann
An aite nam fiadh;
Gu curanta' laidir,
Gu blath-chridheach fial,
'S an comhradh gach la
Ann an canan nam Fionn.

With the Gaelic language there also survives in the Highlands the hospitable spirit for which Highlanders, and all Celts indeed, are noted wherever they are found. But while the people there give of their Highland cheer to all who visit them, they have a particularly warm place in their hearts for "muinntir America," their kinsmen from across the seas.

Leaving Fort William, we go by boat on Loch Linnhe to Oban. The boat calls at several places, among them Ballachulish, at the entrance to Loch Leven, whence we get a glimpse in the distance of Glencoe. Even on this bright summers day the narrow pass, hemmed in by frowning mountains, looks gloomy and dark--fitting theatre for the black and fearful tragedy that was enacted there.

From Oban we return to Glasgow through the Trossachs, part of the way by rail, part of the way by boat on Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and part of the way by coach between the lochs. The whole country through which we pass is classic ground, familiar to every lover of Scott. To describe the scenery of the Trossachs, therefore, after the exquisite word-painting of it in prose and verse that we have from the pen of Sir Walter, were as "wasteful and ridiculous excess" as

To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To add a perfume to the violet.

As I write these last words the solemn bells are tolling the death-knell of our beloved Queen. The whole Empire mourns, and the grief is heartfelt, for all own and feel to-day the truth of the lines written by the worthiest poet laureate of the long and glorious reign that is now ended,

"Her court was pure; her life serene:
God gave her peace, her land reposed;
A thousand claims to reverence closed
In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen."

ROME.

A CHRISTMAS REMINISCENCE.

It is not often I am in a reminiscent mood. Even should the mood come upon me, I can seldom indulge it. In this work-a-day world the cares and duties of the present crowd out the memories of the past. But ever as the blessed season of Christmas comes round the mind is in a measure freed from the tyrant grasp of the present. And at the approach of this festival mine loves to go back, swiftly overleaping the barriers of space and time, to the dear old City on the Tiber, where I spent five of the happiest years of my life. I can remember as distinctly as though it were yesterday the day when first I set foot in Rome. It was toward the end of October, 1879. The sun shone out brightly from the deep blue of the Italian sky, and the soft, balmy breath of summer still lingered in the air. From early morning we had traversed a land of almost ideal loveliness, now skirting the shores of the sparkling Mediterranean, now dashing past villas and vineyards where the air was laden with the fragrance of the vintage. The sun was slowly sinking in the west as we passed Civita Vecchia, the seaport of Rome, and sped on our way through the dreary waste of the Roman Campagna. Soon the Alban Hills loomed up in front, while the line of sea-coast stretching away on the right was fast fading from the view. There, where the Tiber flings its tawny waters into the Mediterranean, once stood the City of Ostia, the ancient seaport of Rome, facing, as every student of Virgil knows, in the far distance, Carthage, Rome's most dreaded rival while yet she was "dives opum studiisque asperrima belli."

And now we are within the city walls, the train draws up to the depot, and I step forth, a stranger indeed, yet not with the feelings of one who sets foot in a strange city: for Rome, though force has made it the capital of United Italy, is and always will be the capital of Christendom, the centre from which radiate the lights of Catholicity over all the earth, and the home of the pilgrim from every land.