Covent-garden Market. But I forget. (I take
this to be an improvement upon "But I am
digressing.") My heart is at present in the
Highlands; my heart is not here (in London), and
so I proceed at once to chase the wild deer, and
follow the roe.

I leave Banff, and make my way westward by
such a queer little railway! An innocent railway
I should call it; a railway that wouldn't kill
a fly, much less a human passenger. I believe
there never was but one accident on this railway,
and that was on the opening-day, when the
engine, not being used to it, ran off the rails,
and tumbled all the directors into the ditch.
The legend goes that the directors picked
themselves up, adjourned to a neighbouring and
hospitable farm-house, and celebrated the auspicious
occasion over several tumblers of toddy, while
their anxious relatives were searching in vain
among the wreck of the carriages for any trace of
their mangled remains.

I am the only passenger this morning at the
Banff station. Solely on my account a square
box upon wheels, drawn by two horses, and
known here as " the omnibus," has rattled up
from the Fife Arms Hotel; solely on my
account is the ticket-office opened; and for me
and me alone do fire burn and water boil, and
guard and stoker and engine-driver attend to
perform their various duties. Seated in my
carriage, waiting for the train to start, I overhear
something like the following conversation, the
interlocutors being the guard and the
engine-driver: "Ony body else comin'?" "I dinna see
ony body." " Weel, time's up, we maun start."
"Stop a minute." " Didna ye say the druggist
was ga'in' wi' us this morning?" (This to the
clerk, who responds in the affirmative.) " Weel,
jist rin out and see if he's coming." "Stop a
minute, Geordie, here's somebody." Somebody
walks in and takes his seat quite leisurely. " Ony
mair coming?" " Na, nae mair that I can see."
"Oh, weel, we winna wite ony lauger." And
the train, with two passengers in it (there would
have been only one if time had been kept), moves
slowly out of the station. This northern railway
has many simple and innocent ways. It has
only a single line of rails; the engine-driver and
guard are on the most intimate terms with the
passengers who come in at the stations; and, if
any one desires to be set down near his place of
residence, he has only to mention it to the driver,
and the train will be stopped to accommodate
him.

A journey of eighteen miles, which I had made
many a time in my school-days on a grey sholty
(pony) in a gig, in a cart, in a yellow chariot
at election-time, on shanks's mare at other times,
brings me to my native Grange in the strath of
the Isla—a lovely valley covered with a patchwork
carpet of green and gold, fringed at its
upland edges with purple heather. You might
imagine that there were giants on the four hills
holding up the corners. The monks of old, who
always had a keen eye for a good location,
founded a monastery here, and divided the lands
among the brethren. The farms to this day
retain the names which they originally derived
from their clerkly occupants. The monastery
stood on a mound, partly natural, partly
artificial, which is now crowned by the parish kirk.
I had a belief long ago, and I am confirmed
in it now, that if the mound were excavated,
wonderful things would be found in it—old
coins, old arms, records, treasure perhaps. The
country hereabouts is rich in silent monuments
of the misty days of old. There are mounds and
cairns, and a lingering nomenclature pointing to
ancient battle-fields, on which kings and abbots
fought and fell, in what cause Heaven only
knows. There are holy wells, and kings' cairns,
and clerks' seats, and there is a "gallow hill"
where cattle-stealers were hanged by the authority
of some local potentate, who did not allow
any one to rob but himself, and whose law was
the law of Lynch. If the peripatetic
philosophers of the British Association would
condescend to visit this part of the country, I am
disposed to believe they would hear of something to
their advantage, something that might enable
them to add a chapter or two to the very meagre
chronicle of the land of the Picts and the Scots
at the period of the Danish invasions, and might
supply a few links to the broken chain of
history, which leaves so wide a gap between the
era of Episcopacy and the reconstruction which
followed the Reformation. There are histories
as well as sermons in the stones which lie about
here, marking the graves of kings and chieftains;
and kirk sessions' papers, stowed away in
dark caverns under pulpit and lectern, are filled
with records of Presbyterian tyranny as
absolute, as ruthless, and as inexorable as that of the
Papacy itself in the worst days of the Inquisition.
By reference to one of my pocket companions,
the Journey to the Hebrides, I find that
I am following as nearly as possible the route
by which Dr. Johnson travelled. But it is not
a desire to tread in the sacred footsteps of the
great lexicographer—much as I am awed by a
vision of his burly figure haunting the old
turnpikes—that shapes my course in this particular
direction. It is the railway that takes me this
way, leaving me no choice unless I prefer the
medium of locomotion which left no choice
whatever to Dr. Johnson—a gig. The doctor
says that he came to Elgin about noon. In that
case he must have left Banff very early indeed,
for I, travelling by rail, did not come to Elgin
until past noon. The doctor complains that in
the best inn's best room he had a dinner which
he could not eat. Remembering this, I was
almost ashamed to sit down to hare-soup, and
haunch of heather-fed mutton, and grouse-pie,
and all sorts of nice things. And after dinner I
did precisely what the doctor did, and what
every visitor has done any time these two
hundred years, and what visitors will probably
do for a hundred years to come—I went to see
the ruins of the Cathedral. These ruins are
Elgin's lion par excellence, the one that roars
loudest of all. A native will scarcely let a
stranger rest until he has shown him the Cathedral.
I am conducted over the grand old ruin