Oh! human wit, thou can'st invent much ill,
Thou searchest strange arts: who would think by skill,
An heavy man like a light bird should stray,
And through the empty heavens find a way?

I alighted at Perth; and, though much fatigued by a constant exposure to
the air for many hours, I would not rest, but merely altering my mode of
conveyance, I went by land instead of air, to Dunkeld. The sun was rising
as I entered the opening of the hills. After the revolution of ages Birnam
hill was again covered with a young forest, while more aged pines, planted
at the very commencement of the nineteenth century by the then Duke of
Athol, gave solemnity and beauty to the scene. The rising sun first tinged
the pine tops; and my mind, rendered through my mountain education deeply
susceptible of the graces of nature, and now on the eve of again beholding
my beloved and perhaps dying friend, was strangely influenced by the sight
of those distant beams: surely they were ominous, and as such I regarded
them, good omens for Adrian, on whose life my happiness depended.

Poor fellow! he lay stretched on a bed of sickness, his cheeks glowing with
the hues of fever, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular and
difficult. Yet it was less painful to see him thus, than to find him
fulfilling the animal functions uninterruptedly, his mind sick the while. I
established myself at his bedside; I never quitted it day or night. Bitter
task was it, to behold his spirit waver between death and life: to see his
warm cheek, and know that the very fire which burned too fiercely there,
was consuming the vital fuel; to hear his moaning voice, which might never
again articulate words of love and wisdom; to witness the ineffectual
motions of his limbs, soon to be wrapt in their mortal shroud. Such for
three days and nights appeared the consummation which fate had decreed for