Perthshire in bygone days

276 PEETHSHIBE IN BYGONE DAYS.
Happy the man who leaves the world betimes,
Resigns its pleasures, and forsakes its crimes :
Who far from cities, courts, and vice refined,
Improves the heart, and cultivates the mind ;
Each thought exalted, every wish subdued,
Exerts, alone, his powers of doing good ;
Who, raised above the world, its cares, and wiles,
Defies its frowns, and scorns its tempting smiles :
Who looks beyond it to a bright abode,
Prepares for Heaven, and walks on earth with God.
A recent traveller says that the sun does not set at
Leghorn, but "tumbles into the Mediterranean before you
have time to look for your hat." It was not so with Dr.
Malcolm ; his ascent of the pyramid of life was gradual,
slow, and hard struggled for, and when he reached the
apex, he did not remain long ; neither did he tumble at
once to the base on the other side ; but he went down in a
protracted twilight, deeper and deeper, until he reached a
headland where the gidf of death lay before him, and on
either side poverty and degradation. In 1816, the last
year I was his scholar, he had begun his downward journey.
The powdered hair began to get dishevelled, — the fine, firm
expressive countenance to get flaccid and sinewless, — and
instead of walking in the school with the air and gait of a
bishop, he came into it slowly and stealthily, apparently
absorbed in some overwhelming consideration, over which
external circumstances exercised no control. Out of doors
everything was rapidly falling into decay. The old house,
with its whitewashed walls, which in my boyish vision
appeared second only to Abercairney, began to look faded
and yellow, and the harling to drop off, like a huge case of
small-pox. The great boxwood borders, three feet high,
got blanky and shapeless, the much-cherished honey-
suckle and climbing rosebushes flourished into inextricable
labyrinths, and the gravelled walks became weedy and foul.
Everything grew that was not wanted, and that which
was wanted declined.
Inside the house, matters were going the same way.
The boarders had dropped off one by one, and old Mrs.
Malcolm, who for many long years presided at the family
dinners, in the snug east-end parlour, well dressed and
stately as a duchess, began to fade both in her person and
dress, — the property in Crieff had been alienated, — and the
session books had fallen into arrear ; yet for seventeen
years did the poor decayed scholar struggle on, bending