entered; but with a lowering and dark countenance, seemingly in sorrow, in misery, and remorse. Agitated, confounded, and awe-struck by the melancholy scene, he sat down on a chair, and looked with a ghastly face towards his father's death-bed. The Elder said, with a solemn voice, "Thou art come in time to receive thy father's blessing May the remembrance of what will happen in this room, before the morning again shine over the Hazel-glen, win thee from the error of thy ways! Thou art here to witness the mercy of thy God and thy Saviour, WHOM THOU HAST FORGOTTEN.”

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The young man, with much effort, advanced to the bedside; and, at last, found voice to say, Father, I am not without the affections of nature;-and I hurried home, the moment I heard that the Minister had been seen riding towards our house. I hope that you will yet recover; and if I have ever made you unhappy, I ask your forgiveness; for, though I may not think as you do on matters of religion, I have a human heart. Father, I may have been unkind, but I am not cruel. I ask your forgiveness."

"Come near to me;-William, kneel down by the bedside, and let my hand feel the head of my beloved son; for blindness is coming fast upon me. Thou wert my first-born, and thou art my only living child. All thy brothers and sisters are lying in the churchyard-beside her, whose sweet face, thine own, William, did once so much resemble! Long wert thou the joy, the pride of my soul,-ay, too much the pride! for there was not, in all the parish, such a man, such a son, as my own William. If thy heart has since been changed, God may inspire it again with right thoughts. I have sorely wept for thee-ay, William, when there was none near me ;-even as David wept for Absalom-for thee, my son! my son!"

A long, deep groan was the only reply: but the whole body of the kneeling man was convulsed; and it was easy to see his sufferings, his contrition, his remorse, and his despair. The Pastor said, with a sterner voice and austerer countenance than were natural to him, "Know you whose hand is now lying on your rebellious head? But what signifies the word father,' to him who has denied God, the Father of us all?"— "Oh! press him not too hardly," said his weeping wife, coming forward from a dark corner of the room, where she tried to conceal herself in grief, fear, and shame. "Spare, oh! spare my husband!-he has ever been kind to ME;" and, with that, she knelt down beside him, with her long, soft, white arms, mournfully and affectionately laid across his neck. "Go thou

likewise, my sweet little Jamie," said the Elder, "go even out of my bosom, and kneel down beside thy father and thy mother; so that I may bless you all at once, and with one yearning prayer.' The child did as the solemn voice commanded, and knelt down, somewhat timidly, by his father's side; nor did the unhappy man decline encircling with his arm his son, too much neglected, but still dear to him as his own blood-in spite of the deadening and debasing influence of infidelity!

"Put the Word of God into the hands of my son, and let him read aloud, to his dying father, the eleventh chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John." The Pastor went up to the kneelers, and said, "There was a time when none, William, could read the Scriptures better than couldst thou;-can it be that the son of my friend hath forgotten the lessons of his youth?" He had not forgotten them; there was no need of the repentant sinner to lift up his eyes from the bedside. sacred stream of the Gospel had worn a channel in his heart, and the waters were again flowing. With a choked voice, he read, "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this? She said unto Him, Yea, Lord: I believe thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world."

The

"That is not an unbeliever's voice," said the dying man, triumphantly; "nor, William, hast thou an unbeliever's heart. Say that thou believest in what thou hast read, and thy father will die happy!" "I do believe, and as THOU forgivest me, so may I be forgiven by my FATHER Who is in heaven." The Elder seemed like a man suddenly inspired with a new life. His faded eyes kindled,-his pale cheeks glowed,-his palsied hands seemed to wax strong, and his voice was clear, as that of manhood in its prime."Into thy hands, O God, I commit my spirit-" and so saying, he gently sank back on his pillow :—and I thought I heard a sigh. There was then a long, deep silence; and the father, the mother, and the child, rose from their knees. The eyes of us all were turned towards the white, placid face of the figure, now stretched in everlasting rest; and, without lamentations,-save the silent lamentations of the resigned soul,—we stood around THE DEATH-BED OF THE ELDER!

XIX.-PUNISHMENT OF A SPY.-Sir Walter Scott.

I SHALL never forget the delightful sensation with which I exchanged the dark, smoky, smothering atmosphere of the Highland hut, for the refreshing fragrance of the morning air; and the glorious beams of the rising sun, which, from a tabernacle of purple and golden clouds, were darted full on such a scene of natural romance and beauty, as had never before greeted my eyes. To the left lay the valley, down which the Forth wandered on its easterly course, surrounding the beautiful detached hill with all its garland of woods. On the right, amid a profusion of thickets, knolls, and crags, lay the bed of a broad mountain-lake, lightly curled into tiny waves by the breath of the morning breeze; each glittering in its course, under the influence of the sunbeams. High hills, rocks, and banks, waving with natural forests of birch and oak, formed the borders of this enchanting sheet of water; and, as their leaves rustled to the wind and twinkled in the sun, gave to the depth of solitude a sort of life and vivacity. Man alone seemed to be placed in a state of inferiority, in a scene where all the ordinary features of nature were raised and exalted.

It was under the burning influence of revenge that the wife of Macgregor commanded that the hostage, exchanged for her husband's safety, should be brought into her presence. I believe her sons had kept this unfortunate wretch out of her sight, for fear of the consequences; but, if it was so, their humane precaution only postponed his fate. They dragged forward, at her summons, a wretch already half dead with terror, in whose agonised features I recognised, to my horror and astonishment, my old acquaintance, Morris!

He fell prostrate before the female chief, with an effort to clasp her knees, from which she drew back, as if his touch had been pollution; so that all he could do, in token of the extremity of his humiliation, was to kiss the hem of her plaid. I never heard entreaties for life poured forth with such agony of spirit. The ecstasy of fear was such, that, instead of paralysing his tongue, as on ordinary occasions, it even rendered him eloquent; and, with cheeks as pale as ashes, hands compressed in agony, eyes that seemed to be taking their last look of all mortal objects, he protested, with the deepest oaths, his total ignorance of any design on the life of Rob Roy, whom he swore he loved and honoured as his own soul. In the inconsistency of his terror, he said he was but the agent of others, and he muttered the name of Rash

leigh. He prayed but for life-for life he would give all he had in the world;-it was but life he asked-life, if it were to be prolonged under tortures and privations;-he asked only breath, though it should be drawn in the damps of the lowest caverns of their hills.

It is impossible to describe the scorn, the loathing, and contempt, with which the wife of Macgregor regarded this wretched petitioner for the poor boon of existence. "I could have bid you live," she said, "had life been to you the same weary and wasting burden that it is to me-that it is to every noble and generous mind. But you-wretch!-you could creep through the world, unaffected by its various disgraces, its ineffable miseries, its constantly accumulating masses of crime and sorrow; you could live and enjoy yourself, while the noble-minded are betrayed-while nameless and birthless villains tread on the neck of the brave and long-descended, you could enjoy yourself, like a butcher's dog in the shambles, battening on garbage, while the slaughter of the brave went on around you! This enjoyment you shall not live to partake of; you shall die, base dog! and that before yon cloud has passed over the sun."

She gave a brief command to her attendants, two of whom seized upon the prostrate suppliant, and hurried him to the brink of a cliff which overhung the flood. He set up the most piercing and dreadful cries that fear ever uttered;—I may well term them dreadful, for they haunted my sleep for years afterwards. As the murderers, or executioners,-call them as you will,-dragged him along, he recognised me even in that moment of horror, and exclaimed, in the last articulate words I ever heard him utter, "Oh, Mr. Osbaldiston, save me!—save me!"

I was so much moved by this horrid spectacle, that, although in momentary expectation of sharing his fate, I did attempt to speak in his behalf; but, as might have been expected, my interference was sternly disregarded. The victim was held fast by some; while others, binding a large heavy stone in a plaid, tied it round his neck; and others again eagerly stripped him of some part of his dress. Half naked, and thus manacled, they hurried him into the lake, there about twelve feet deep, drowning his last death-shriek with a loud halloo of vindictive triumph; over which, however, the yell of mortal agony was distinctly heard. The heavy burden splashed in the dark-blue waters of the lake; and the Highlanders, with their pole-axes and swords, watched an instant, to guard, lest, extri

cating himself from the load to which he was attached, he might have struggled to regain the shore. But the knot had been securely bound; the victim sunk without effort; the waters, which his fall had disturbed, settled calmly over him; and the unit of that life, for which he had pleaded so strongly, was for ever withdrawn from the sum of human existence.

XX.- —ON THE EFFECTS OF RELIGION.-Wilberforce.

WHEN the pulse beats high, and we are flushed with youth, and health, and vigour; when all goes on prosperously, and success seems almost to anticipate our wishes, then we feel not the want of the consolations of religion: but, when fortune frowns, or friends forsake us; when sorrow, or sickness, or old age, comes upon us; then it is that the superiority of the pleasures of religion is established over those of dissipation and vanity, which are ever apt to fly from us when we are most in want of their aid.

There is scarcely a more melancholy sight, to a considerate mind, than that of an old man who is a stranger to those only true sources of satisfaction. How affecting, and at the same time how disgusting is it, to see such a one awkwardly catching at the pleasures of his younger years, which are now beyond his reach; or feebly attempting to retain them, while they mock his endeavours, and elude his grasp! To such a one, gloomily, indeed, does the evening of life set in! All is sour and cheerless. He can neither look backward with complacency, nor forward with hope: while the aged Christian, relying on the assured mercy of his Redeemer, can calmly reflect that his dismission is at hand; "that his redemption draweth nigh." While his strength declines, and his faculties decay, he can quietly repose himself on the fidelity of God; and, at the very entrance of the valley of the shadow of death, he can lift up an eye, dim, perhaps, and feeble, yet occasionally sparkling with hope, and confidently looking forward to the near possession of his heavenly inheritance, "to those joys which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.

What striking lessons have we had, of the precarious tenure of all sublunary possessions! Wealth, and power, and prosperity, how peculiarly transitory and uncertain! But religion dispenses her choicest cordials in the seasons of exigence, in poverty, in exile, in sickness, and in death. The essential superiority of that support which is derived from religion, is