trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecutions, he got settled at last, when his head, not very old, was getting grey, and his face somewhat wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again into service, the lot, indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan had struggled and starved upon private teaching. His appointment to the parish-school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The office was respectable -and loftier ambition had long been dead. Now they are old people-considerably upwards of sixty-and twenty years' professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such very humble duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of an affectionate and once sorely wounded, but now healed heart, is never lost upon the susceptible imaginations of the young. Allan has sometimes sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he has read their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful competitors for prizes. During vacation-time, Allan and his spouse leave their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgot ten them in their poverty. During the rest of the year, his only out-ofdoors amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his dwelling, to visit his "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. Rumour says too, but rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the Schoolmaster, when he meets with pleasant company, either at home or a friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into eloVOL. XIX.

quence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all such occasions; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven.

We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the low-lying mist: and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up to HILL-FOOT, admire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonel pear-tree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is not cold; and except when the spring-frosts come late and sharp, there do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to Scotland. You will hardly know how to distinguish-or rather, to speak in clerkly phrase, to analyse the sound prevalent over the fields and air, for it is made up of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's wheel, and the hum of the busy school! But now it is the play-hour, and Allan Easton comes into his kit chen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan fries them in fresh butter and oatmeal-the grey-haired pedagogue asks a

blessing-and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan his spouse.

You look as if you wished to ask, who inhabits the Cottage-on the left handyonder-that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up its ears like a new-started hare. Why, sir, that was once a Shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sporting gentleman, of two excellent double-barrelled guns, and three staunch pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among the hills, from sunrise to sunset. He has been long married and dead; and the Box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an escutcheon. Picturesque people say, it ruins the whole beauty of the glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a purpose, it is unquestionably

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a skilful contrivance. The window shutters have been closed for many years, and the chimneys look as if they had breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to catch the rain-drippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted, pity the poor ghost. You may have it on a lease of seven years, for merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs several pounds in advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name, WINDY-KNOWE.

Let us descend, then, from that most inclement front, into the lown boundaries of the HOLM. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With its outhouses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a glorious dunghill, (Ò breathe not the name,) that will cover every field with luxuriant harvests-fifteen bolls of wheat to the acre. There the cattle-oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into obesity. There turkeys walk demure-there geese waddle, and there the featherylegged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly aloof from double-combed Chanticleer, that squire of dames, crowing to his partlets. There a cloud of pigeons often descends among the corny chaff, and then whirrs off to the uplands. No chained mastiff looking grimly from the kennel's mouth, but a set of cheerful and sagacious colleys are seen sitting on their hurdies, or worrying ither in diversion." A shaggy colt or two, and a brood mare, with a spice of blood, and a foal at her heels, know their shed, and evidently are favourites with the family. Out comes the master, a rosycheeked carl, upwards of six feet high, broad-shouldered, with a blue bonnet and velveteen breeches, a man not to be jostled on the crown o' the causeway, and a match for any horse-couper from Bewcastle, or gipsy from Yet holm. But let us into the kitchen. There's the wife-a bit tidy bodyand pretty withal-more authoritative in her quiet demeanour, than the

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most tyrannical mere housekeeper that ever thumped a servant lass with the beetle. These three are her daughters. First, Girzie, the eldest-seemingly older than her mother, for she is somewhat hard-favoured, and strong red hair dangling over a squint eye, is apt to give an expression of advanced years, even to a youthful virgin. Vaccination was not known in Girzie's babyhood, but she is, nevertheless, a clean-skinned creature, and her full bosom is white as snow. She is what is delicately called a strapper, rosy-armed as the morning, and not a little of an Aurora about the feet and ancles. She makes her way, in all household affairs, through every impediment, and will obviously prove, whenever the experiment is made, a most excellent wife. Mysie, the second daughter, is more composed, more genteel, and sits sewing, with her a favourite occupation, for she has very neat hands; and is, in fact, the mil liner and mantua-maker for all the house. She could no more lift that enormous pan of boiling water off the fire, than she could fly, which in the grasp of Girzie is safely landed on the hearth. Mysie has somewhat of a pensive look, as if in love-and we have heard that she is betrothed to young Mr Rentoul, the divinity student, who lately made a speech before the Anti-patronage Society, and therefore may reasonably expect very soon to get a kirk. But look-there comes dancing in from the ewe-bughts, the bright-eyed Bessy, the flower of the flock, the most beautiful girl in Almondale, and fit to be bosom-burd of the Gentle Shepherd himself! O that we were a poet, to sing the innocence of her budding breast! ButHeaven preserve us-what is the angelic creature about? Making rumblede-thumps! Now she bruises the potatoes and cabbages as with pestle and mortar! Ever and anon licking the butter off her fingers, and then dashing in the salt! Methinks her laugh is out of all bounds loud-and unless my eyes deceived me, that stout lout whispered in her delicate ear some coarse jest, that made the eloquent blood mount up into her not unde lighted countenance. Heavens and earth!-perhaps an assignation in the barn, or byre, or bush aboon Traquair. But the long dresser is set out with dinner-the gudeman's, bonnet is re

verently laid aside-and if any stomach assembled there be now empty, it is not likely, judging from appearances, that it will be in that state again be fore next Sabbath-and it is now but the middle of the week. Was it not my Lord Byron who liked not to see women eat? Poo-poo-nonsense. We like to see them not only eat-but devour. Not a set of teeth round that kitcheu-dresser, that is not white as the driven snow. Breath too (bating onions) sweet as dawn's-dew-the whole female frame full of health, freshness, spirit, and animation! Away all delicate wooers, thrice high-fantastical! The diet is wholesome-and the sleep will be sound-therefore eat away, Bessy-nor fear to laugh, although your pretty mouth be fullfor we are no poet, to madden into misanthropy at your mastication; and, in spite of the heartiest meal ever virgin ate, to us these lips are roses still,

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thy eyes are lode-stars, and thy breath sweet air." Would for thy sake we had been born a shepherdgroom! No-no-no! For some few joyous years mayest thou wear thy silken snood unharmed, and silence with thy songs the linnet among the broom, at the swcet hour of prime. And then mayest thou plight thy troth —in all the warmth of innocence-to some ardent, yet thoughtful youth, who will carry his bride exultingly to his own low-roofed home-toil for her and the children at her knees, through summer's heat and winter's cold-and sit with her, in the kirk, when long years have gone by, a comely matron, attended by daughters acknowledged to be fair-but neither so fair, nor so good, nor so pious, as their mother.

What a contrast to the jocund Holm -is the RowAN-TREE HUTr-so still, and seemingly so desolate! It is close upon the public road, and yet so low, that you might pass it without observing its turf-roof. There live old Aggy Robinson, the carrier, and her consumptive daughter. Old Aggy has borne that epithet for twenty years, and her daughter is not under sixty. That poor creature is bed-ridden and helpless, and has to be fed almost like a child. Old Aggy has for many years had the same white pony-well named Sampson-that she drives three times a-week, all the year round, to and from the nearest market-town, carrying all sorts of articles to nearly

twenty different families, living miles apart. Every other day in the weekfor there is but one Sabbath either to herself or Sampson-she drives coals, or peat, or wood, or lime, or stones for the roads. She is clothed in a man's coat, an old rusty beaver, and a red petticoat. Aggy never was a beauty, and now she is almost frightful, with a formidable beard, and a rough voice -and violent gestures, encouraging the overladen enemy of the Philistines. But the poor creature, as soon as she enters her hut, is silent, patient, and affectionate, at her daughter's bed-side. They sleep on the same chaff-mattress, and she hears, during the dead of night, her daughter's slightest moan. Her voice is not rough at all, when the poor old creature says her solitary prayers; nor, we may be well assured, is one single whisper unheard in heaven.

Your eyes are wandering away to the eastern side of the vale, and they have fixed themselves on the Cottage of the SEVEN OAKS. The grove is a noble one; and, indeed, these are the only timber-trees in the valley. There is a tradition belonging to the grove, but we shall tell it some other time; now, we have to do with that meanlooking Cottage, all unworthy of such magnificent shelter. It is slated, and has a cold cheerless look,-almost a look of indigence. The walls are sordid in the streaked white-wash,- -a wisp of straw supplies the place of a broken pane,-the door seems as if it were inhospitable,-and every object about is in untended disorder. The green pool in front, with its floating straws and feathers, and miry edge, is at once unhealthy and needless; the hedgerows are full of gaps, and open at the roots; the few garments spread upon them seem to have stiffened in the weather, forgotten by the person who placed them there; and halfstarved young cattle are straying about in what once was a garden. Wretched sight it is; for that dwelling, although never beautiful, was once the tidiest and best kept in all the district. But what has misery to do with the comfort of its habitation?

The owner of that house was once a man well to do in the world; but he minded this world's goods more than was fitting to do, and made mammon his god. Abilities he possessed far beyond that of the common run of

men, and he applied them all, with all the energy of a strong mind, to the accumulation of wealth. Every rule of his life had that for its ultimate end; and he despised a bargain unless he outwitted his neighbour. Without any acts of downright knavery, he was not an honest man-hard to the poor -and a tyrannical master. He sought to wring from the very soil more than it could produce; his servants, among whom were his wife and daughter, he kept at work, like slaves, from twilight to twilight; and was a forestaller and a regrater-a character which, when Political Economy was unknown, was of all the most odious in the judgment of simple husbandmen. His spirits rose with the price of meal, and every handful dealt out to the beggar was paid like a tax. What could the Bible teach to such a man? What good could he derive from the calm air of the house of worship? He sent his only son to the city, with injunctions instilled into him to make the most of all transactions, at every hazard, but that of his money; and the consequence was, in a few years, shame, ruin, and expatriation. His only daughter, imprisoned, dispirited, enthralled, fell a prey to a sensual seducer; and being driven from her father's house, abandoned herself, in hopeless misery, to a life of prostitution. His wife, heartbroken by cruelty and affliction, was never afterwards altogether in her right mind, and now sits weeping by the hearth, or wanders off to distant places, lone houses and villages, almost in the condition of an idiot-wild-eyed, loosehaired, and dressed like a very beggar. Speculation after speculation failed he had to curse four successive plentiful harvests-and his mailing was now destitute. The unhappy man grew sour, stern, fierce, in his calamity; and when his brain was inflamed with liquor, a dangerous madman. He is now a sort of cattle-dealer-buys and sells miserable horses-and at fairs associates with knaves and reprobates, knowing that no honest man will deal with him except in pity or derision. He has more than once attempted to commit suicide-but palsy has stricken him-and in a few weeks he will tot ter into the grave.

There is a Cottage in that hollow, and you see the smoke-even the chimney-top, but you could not see the Cottage itself, unless you were

within fifty yards of it, so surrounded is it with knolls and small green eminences, in a den of its own, a shoot or scion from the main stem of the valley. It is called The BROOм, and there is something singular, and not uninteresting, in the history of its owner. He married very early in life, indeed when quite a boy, which is not, by the way, very unusual among the peasantry of Scotland, prudent and calculating as is their general character. Gabriel Adamson, before he was thirty years of age, had a family of seven children, and a pretty family they were as might be seen in all the parish. Gabriel's life was in theirs, and his mind never wandered far from his fire-side. His wife was of a consumptive family, and that insidious and fatal disease never showed in her a single symptom during ten years of marriage; but one cold evening awoke it at her very heart, and in less than two months it hurried her into the grave. Poor creature, such a spectre ! when her husband used to carry her, for the sake of a little temporary relief, from chair to couch, and from her couch back again to her bed, twenty times in a day, he never could help weeping, with all his consideration, to feel her frame as light as a bundle of leaves. The medical man said, that in all his practice he never had known soul and body keep together in such utter attenuation. But her soul was as clear as ever-and pain, racking pain, was in her fleshless bones. Even he, her loving husband, was relieved from woe when she expired, for no sadness, no sorrow, could be equal to the misery of groans from one so pa tient and so resigned. Perhaps consumption is infectious; so, at least, it seemed here; for first one child began to droop, and then another-the elder ones first-and within the two following years, there were almost as many funerals from this one house as from all the others in the parish. Yesthey all died-of the whole family not one was spared. Two, indeed, were thought to have pined away in a sort of fearful foreboding-and a fever took off a third-but four certainly died of the same hereditary complaint with the mother; and not a voice was heard in the house. Gabriel Adamson did not desert the Broom; and the farm-work was still carried on, nobody could tell how. The servants,

to be sure, knew their duty, and often performed it without orders. Sometimes the master put his hand to the plough, but oftener he led the life of a shepherd, and was by himself among the hills. He never smiled-and at every meal, he still sat like a man about to be led out to die. But what will not retire away-recede-disappear from the vision of the souls of us mortals! Tenacious as we are of our griefs, even more than of our joys, both elude our grasp. We gaze after them with longing or self-upbraiding aspirations for their return, but they are shadows, and like shadows evanish. Then human duties, lowly though they may be, have their sanative and salutary influence on our whole frame of being. Without their performance conscience cannot be still; with it, conscience brings peace in extremity of evil. Then occupation kills grief, and industry abates all passion. No balm for sorrow like the sweat of the brow poured into the furrows of the earth, in the open air, and beneath the sunshine of heaven. These truths were felt by Gabriel Adamson, the childless widower, long before they were understood by him; and when two years had gone drearily, ay dismally, almost despairingly, by-he began at times to feel something like happiness when sitting among his friends in the kirk, or at their fire-sides, or in the labours of the field, or even on the market-day, among this world's concerns. Thus, they who knew him and his sufferings, were pleased to recognize what might be called resignation and its grave tranquillity, while strangers discerned in him nothing more than a staid and solemn demeanour, which might be natural to many a man never severely tried, and offered no interruption to the cheerfulness that pervaded their ordinary life.

Gabriel Adamson had a cousin, a few years younger than himself, who had also married when a girl, and when little more than a girl had been left a widow. Her parents were both dead, and she had lived for some years, as an upper servant, or rather companion and friend, in the house of a relation. As cousins, they had all their lives been familiar and affectionate, and Alice Gray had frequently lived for months at a time, at the Broom, taking care of the children, and in all respects one of the family. Their conditions

were now almost equally desolate, and a deep sympathy made them now more firmly attached than they ever could have been in better days. Still, nothing at all resembling love was in either of their hearts, nor did the thought of marriage ever pass across their imaginations. They found, however, increasing satisfaction in each other's company; and looks and words of sad and sober endearment gradually bound them together in affection stronger far than either could have believed. Their friends saw and spoke of the attachment, and of its probable result, long before they were aware of its full nature; and nobody was surprised, but, on the contrary, all were well pleased, when it was understood that Gabriel Adamson and Alice Gray were to be man and wife. There was

something almost mournful in their marriage-no rejoicing-no merrymaking-but yet visible symptoms of gratitude, contentment, and peace. An air of cheerfulness was not long of investing the melancholy Broom-the very swallows twittered more gladly from the window-corners, and there was joy in the cooing of the pigeons on the sunny roof. The farm awoke through all its fields, and the farmservants once more sang and whistled at their work. The wandering beggar, who remembered the charity of other years, looked with no cold expression on her who now dealt out his dole ; and as his old eyes were dimmed with tears for the sake of those who were gone, gave a fervent blessing on the new mistress of the house, and prayed that she might live for many years. The neighbours, even they who had best loved the dead, came in with cheerful countenances, and acknowledged in their pensive hearts, that since change is the law of life, there was no one, far or near, whom they could have borne to see sitting in that chair but Alice Gray. Gabriel knew their feelings from their looks, and his fireside blazed once more with a cheerful lustre.

O, gentle reader, young perhaps, and inexperienced of this world, wonder not at this so great change! Thy heart is full, perhaps, of a pure and holy affection, nor can it die, even for an hour of sleep. May it never die but in the grave! Yet die it may, and leave thee blameless. The time may come when that bosom, now thy Elysium, will awaken not, with all its