KEEPSAKES.-THOUGHTS ARE IMPERISHABLE.

265

Shepherd. Or close to the heart! Especially if he be dead! Nae thocht sae unsupportable as that o' entire, total, blank forgetfulness—when the cretur that ance laucht, and sang, and wept to us, close to our side, or in our verra arms, is as if her smiles, her voice, her tears, her kisses, had never been! She and them a' swallowed up in the dark nothingness o' the dust!

North. It is not safe to say, James, that any one single thought that ever was in the mind is forgotten. It may be gone, utterly gone-like a bird out of a cage. But a thought is not like a bird, a mortal thing; and why may it not, after many many long years have past by - so many and so long that we look with a sort of quiet longing on the churchyard heaps-why may it not return all at once from a "far countrée," fresh, and fair, and bright, as of yore, when first it glided into being, up from among the heaven-dew-opened pores in the celestial soil of the soul, and "possessed it wholly," as if there for ever were to have been its blissful abiding-place, in those sunny regions where sin and sorrow as yet had shown their evil eyes, but durst not venture in, to scare off from the paradise even one of all its divinest inmates! Why may not the thought, I ask, return-or rather, rise up again on the spirit, from which it has never flown, but lain hushed in that mysterious dormitory, where ideas sleep, all ready to awake again into life, even when most like death,-for Ideas are as birds of passage, and they are also akin to the winter-sleepers, so that no man comprehends their exits or their entrances, or can know whether any one of all the tribe is at any one moment a million of miles off, or wheeling round his head, and ready to perch on his hand! 1

1

Shepherd. Alloo me, sir, noo to press you to anither glass o' Mrs Gentle's elder-flower wine.

1 "It is probable," says S. T. Coleridge, "that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable; and that if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned organisation-the body celestial instead of the body terrestrial—to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And this, perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded! Yea, in the very nature of a living spirit, it may be more possible that heaven and earth should pass away, than that a single act, a single thought, should be loosened or lost from that living chain of causes, to all whose links, conscious or unconscious, the free-will, our only absolute self, is co-extensive and co-present."-Biographia Literaria, vol. i. p. 115, first edition.

266

THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS.

North. Frontignac !—Now, do you, James, take up the ball -for I'm out of breath.

Shepherd. To please you, sir, I hae read lately-or at least tried to read-thae books, and lectures, and what not, on the Association o' Ideas, and yon explanations and theories of Tammas Broon's, and Mr Dugald Stewart's, and Mr Alison's, and the lave, seem, at the time the volume's lyin open afore you, rational aneuch sae that you canna help believin that each o' them has flung doun a great big bunch o' keys, wi' a clash on the table, that 'ill enable you to open a' the locks o' a' the doors o' the Temple o' Natur. But, dog on't! the verra first lock you try, the key 'ill no fit! Or if it fits, you cannot get it to turn roun', though you chirt wi' your twa hands till you're baith black and red in the face, and desperate angry. A' the Metapheesicks that ever were theoreezed into a system o' Philosophy 'ill never clear up the mystery o' memory ae hue, or enable me nor onybody else to understand hoo, at ae time, ye may knock on your head wi' your loof or nieve till it's sair, without awaukenin a single thocht, ony mair than you would awauken a dormouse in the heart o' the bole of an aik,' by tappin on the rough hide; while, at another time, you canna gie your head a jee2 to the ae side, without tens o' thousans o' thochts fleein out o' your mouth, your nose, and your een, just like a swarm o' bees playin whurr-and bum-into the countless sky, when by chance you hae upset a skep, or the creturs o' their ain accord, and in the passion o' their ain instinck, are aff after their Queen, and havin tormented half the kintra-side for hours, a' at last settle doun on the branch o' an apple-tree perhaps the maist unlikely, to all appearance, they could find — and perplexin to the man wi' the ladder, and the towel outower his face, because the QueenBee preferred, for some inscrutable reason, that ackward branch to a' ither resting-places on which she could hae rested her doup, although it was physically and morally impossible that she could ever hae seen the tree afore, never havin been alloo'd to set her fit3 ayont the door o' the skep, for reasons best known to her subjects, or at least her Ministers, wha, unlike some ithers I micht mention, dinna despise the voice o' the people, even though it should be nae louder nor a murmur or a hum!

1 Aik-oak.

2 A jee-a turn.

3 Fit-foot.

KEEPSAKES.-IMAGINATION'S STORES.

267

North. Come, James, no politics-keep to philosophy. Shepherd. The Queen-Thocht's the same's the Queen-Bee -and when she's let lowse intil heaven, out flees the haill swarm o' winged fancies at her tail, wi' a noise like thunder. North. But we were speaking of Keepsakes

Shepherd. And sae we are still. I see the road windin alang on the richt haun yonner-but we're like passengers loupin aff the tap o' the cotch at the fit o' a hill, and divin devious through a wood by a short cut, to catch her again afore she get through the turnpike.

North. The pleasantest way either of travel or of talk.

Shepherd. Ten hunder thousan' million thochts and feelings, and fancies, and ideas, and emotions, and passions and what not, a' lie thegither, heads and thraws, in the great, wide, saft, swellin, four-posted, mony-pillowed bed o' the Imagination. Joys, sorrows, hopes, fears, raptures, agonies, shames, horrors, repentances, remorses-strange bed-fellows indeed, sir-some skuddy-naked,' some clothed in duds, and some gorgeously apparelled, ready to rise up and sit down at feasts and festivals

North. Stop, James, stop

Shepherd. 'Tis the poet alane, sir, that can speak to ony purpose about sic an association o' ideas as that, sir; he kens at every hotch amang them, whilk is about to start up like a sheeted cadaver shiverin cauldrife as the grave, or a stoled queen, a rosy, balmy, fragrant-bosomed queen, wi' lang, white, satin arms, to twine roun' your verra sowl! But the metaphyseecian, what kens he about the matter? Afore he has putten the specks astraddle o' his nose, the floor o' the imagination is a' astir like the foaming sea-and aiblins hushed again into a calm as deep as that o' a sunny hill, where lichts and lambs are dancin thegither on the greensward, and to the music of the lilting linties amang the golden groves o' broom, proud to see their yellow glories reflected in the pools, like blossoms bloomin in anither warld belonging to the Naïads and the mermaids!

North. But, James, we were speaking of Keepsakes.

Shepherd. And sae we are still. For what is a keepsake but a material memorial o' a spiritual happenin? Something substantial, through whose instrumentality the shadowy past 1 Skuddy-naked-stark-naked.

268

KEEPSAKES.-A VISION FROM THE GRAVE.

may resettle on the present-till a bit metal, or a bit jewel, or a bit lock o' hair, or a bit painted paper, shall suddenly bring the tears into your startled and softened een, by a dear, delightfu', overwhelmin image o' Life-in-Death!

North. Of all keepsakes, memorials, relics, most tenderly, most dearly, most devoutly, James, do I love a little lock of hair!—and oh! when the head it beautified has long mouldered in the dust, how spiritual seems the undying glossiness of the sole remaining ringlet! All else gone to nothing-save and except that soft, smooth, burnished, golden, and glorious fragment of the apparelling that once hung in clouds and sunshine over an angel's brow!

Shepherd. Ay-as poor Kirke White says

But dinna think

"It must have been a lovely head

That had such lovely hair!"

ony mair upon her the noo, sir. What fules we are to summon up shadows and spectres frae the grave, to trouble

North. Her image troubles me not. Why should it? Methinks I see her walking yonder, as if fifty years of life were extinguished, and that were the sun of my youth! Looklook-James !—a figure all arrayed, like Innocence, in white garments! Gone-gone! Yet such visions are delightful visitants-and the day, and the evening, and the night, are all sanctified on which the apparition comes and goes with a transient yet immortal smile!

Shepherd. Ay, sir! a lock o' hair, I agree wi' you, is far better than ony pictur. It's a pairt o' the beloved object hersel-it belanged to the tresses that aften, lang, lang ago, may hae a' been suddenly dishevelled, like a shower o' sunbeams, ower your beatin breast! But noo solemn thochts sadden the beauty ance sae bricht-sae refulgent; the langer you gaze on't, the mair and mair pensive grows the expression of the holy relic-it seems to say, almost upbraidingly, "Weep'st thou no more for me?" and then, indeed, a tear, true to the imperishable affection in which all nature seemed to rejoice, "when life itself was young," bears witness that the object towards which it yearned is no more forgotten, now that she has been dead for so many many long weary years, than she was forgotten during an hour of absence, that came like a

THE SHORTCOMINGS OF PORTRAIT-PAINTING.

269

passing cloud between us and the sunshine of her living, her loving smiles!

North. Were a picture perfectly like our deceased friendno shade of expression, however slight, that was his, awanting-none there, however slight, that belonged not to the face. that has faded utterly away-then might a picture

Shepherd. But then that's never the case, sir. There's aye something wrang, either about the mouth, or the een, or the nose-or, what's warst o' a', you canna fin' faut wi' ony o' the features for no being like; and yet the painter, frae no kennin the delightfu' character o' her or him that was sittin till him, leaves out o' the face the entire speerit—or aiblins, that the portrait mayna be deficient in expression, he pits in a sharp clever look, like that o' a blue-stocking, into saft, dewy, divine een, swimmin wi' sowl! spoils the mouth a'thegither by puckerin't up at the corners, sae that a' the innocent smiles, mantlin there like kisses, tak flight frae sic prim lips, cherry-ripe though they be; and, blin' to the delicate, straught, fine-edged hicht o' her Grecian-ay, her Grecian. nose-what does the fule do, but raises up the middle o' the brig, or-may Heaven never forgie him-cocks it up at the pint sae, that you can see up the nostrils-a thing I dinna like at a'; and for this, which he ca's a portrait, and proposes sendin to the Exhibition, he has the conscience to charge you-withouten the frame-the reasonable soum o' ae hundred pounds sterling!

North. Next to a lock of hair, James, is a brooch, or a ring, that has been worn by a beloved friend.

Shepherd. Just sae; and then you can put the hair intil the brooch or the ring—or baith-and wear them on your finger and on your breast a' nicht lang, dream, dream, dreamin awa back into the vanished world o' unendurable, and incomprehensible, and unutterable things!

North. Or what think you of a book, my dear James

Shepherd. Ay, a bit bookie o' ane's ain writin, a poem perhaps, or a garland o' ballants and sangs, with twa-three lovin verses on the fly-leaf, by way o' inscription-for there's something unco affectionate in manuscripp-bound on purpose for her in delicate white silver-edged cauf, wi' flowers alang the border, or the figure o' a heart perhaps in the middle, pierced wi' a dart, or breathin out flames like a volcawno.