want of proper public spirit, are year by year falling a prey to any fanatic or mad doctrinaire who may choose to indulge his whims at their expense. Here in Aberdeen I find two examples of this staring me in the face. One set of persons, in a purely iconoclastic spirit, have destroyed a university; another—a single individual, rejoicing in the name of Forbes Mackenzie-has imposed upon the people an odious law, which none but slaves, or the inmates of an asylum for dipsomaniacs, could be forced to submit to. I consider this wretched Forbes Mackenzie Act to be a reproach and a shame to my countrymen. It casts upon them the impu tation of being a nation of drunkards and night-brawlers, and proclaims them before the world unfit to be trusted with the rights and liberties of free men. Such a law could never be imposed upon Englishmen; but poor Scotland seems to be at the mercy of any half-dozen of her Parliamentary representatives who may league themselves together to degrade her and make her ridiculous. Let me beseech the English members to keep watch over these mischievous fanatics, and protect my countrymen from their fantastic tricks.

In its outward aspect I see no change in Aberdeen. Dr. Johnson admired its granite streets nearly a hundred years ago, and I think it probable that those granite houses will be as white, as new-looking, and as intact five centuries hence as they are to-day. Lord Macaulay's New Zealander, I believe, is to find London Bridge in ruins. Should he venture as far north as Aberdeen, I have no doubt he will find Union Street in a perfect state of preservation. Some of the moral and social aspects of Aberdeen strike me as being recent developments. In the day I notice a great many temperance hotels; and I argue from this that the people have become distinguished for their sobriety. I am further confirmed in this impression by a shore-porter, who, on my inviting him to partake of a glass of whisky, replied,

"Na, I dinna tak' none."

I begin to suspect that a town where you cannot get even a glass of beer with your dinner at an hotel, and where the very porters decline whisky, must be a very exemplary place, and consequently not a very desirable spot for a gentleman of liberal tastes to take up his abode in for any length of time. When the gas is turned on, however, I discover that I have been labouring under a slight mistake. I find that there is such a thing as adjourning from the temperance hotel, under cover of night, to other hotels, which may be called intemperance hotels, where exemplary citizens gulp down "tumblers" in sly corners, and make the most of their time and their opportunities. I ask about Forbes (which please pronounce in two syllables) Mackenzie; and a genial friend replies, with a crack of his thumb, as he ladles out another glassful,

"Dinna care that for him, sir!"

And so I found. The Forbes Mackenzie Act is almost a dead letter in Aberdeen, and its only influence, so far as I could see, is to promote the hypocrisy of temperance hotels, and foster habits of sly drinking for

drinking's sake. I know Aberdeen, by repute, to be a great seat of religion, and the head-quarters, in Scotland, of the Revival; and I see traces of this in churches and chapels, and in the announcements of week-day sermons and prayer-meetings, and Christian tea-gatherings. But I also see a vast deal of hard drinking, and the disastrous results of hard drinking; and under the lamps of Union Street the social evil has all the flaunting impudence of the Haymarket, with the brutal degradation of Ratcliff Highway superadded.

Further north (by an innocent, steady-going railway, where the engine-driver will stop between stations to set a friend down convenient to his house), and I am in a region where even the trees and the stonedykes and the stiles are familiar to me. The warm-hearted hospitality extended to me is quite overpowering in this land flowing with-well, with whisky-toddy, with hare-soup, with cock-a-leekie, with flour scones, with marmalade, with haggis, with-whisky-toddy! I mentioned the last item before; but it deserves repetition, for it came in often.

Toddy is an institution hereabouts. It is a fixed item in the programme of a day's life, and may be marked with a "ditto, ditto." Toddy is a regular thing after dinner, and occasionally I find it considered a regular thing after tea, and, here and there, not such a bad thing to take about an hour after breakfast. And the drinking of toddy, at all times, partakes of the ceremonious nature of a sacrifice to the gods. It is not the random affair of a glass of mixture irregularly and inconsiderately swallowed at a counter, or in a smoking sanctum, as in England; but the table is regularly spread for it, the tumblers are of a special shape, a wineglass and a silver ladle are indispensable, and the bright brass kettle on the centre of the table is sacred to Toddy, and to Toddy alone. The gudeman of the house has but one injunction to lay upon a new cook :

"Lassie, a' that I expect o' ye is, aye to hae biling water ready; at a' 'oors, mind; if it wis the deed o' the nicht."

There is a good deal of Revival about in this neighbourhood, as well as Toddy, and I begin to suspect that there is some mysterious connexion between them. I think, if I had space for a disquisition, I could prove that a connexion really does exist; and that the Revival, which is chiefly upheld by the womenfolks, is just a violent revolt against Toddy, which is chiefly upheld by the men.

At any rate, I find that many changes that have taken place since I left Scotland are ascribed to the influence of either the one or the other. I must, therefore, regard them as the two great moral powers which sway the destinies of my countrymen, at least in these parts. I inquire after old friends and people whom I knew years ago, and ten times a day I receive one or the other of these replies: "Oh, he is gane a' to the nonsense through drink;" or, "He (more often she) has taken up with the Revivals, and is gane clean daft." Anxious to be informed of these matters by personal observation, I submitted myself with entire impartiality to both influences. In the course of a fortnight I drank

more whisky-toddy and went to church oftener than I could have conceived my constitution, whether physical or spiritual, capable of withstanding. My impartiality as regards toddy was not more strict and complete than as regards my church-going. I partook of Keith, Ben Nevis, Fairntosh, and Islay; and I listened to sermons in all the kirks: the Established, the Free, the Dissenting, and the Revival. If I might compare doctrine with whisky, I would place the Revival sermon in the position of the liquor when it comes from the still-hot and fiery, and take the Established Kirk as representing the mellow and matured article after passing through the other two stages. But, sooth to say, the Revivalism I met with was scarcely respectable. The ministers were coarse, uneducated men, without manners and without feeling; mere raggamuffin ranters of the most vulgar stamp. They were too low and contemptible to catch any but the most ignorant. But I should have thought the Free Kirk went far enough in the fire-and-brimstone direction to please the hottest taste. From a Free-Kirk pulpit I heard the volunteers denounced as the "curse of the town," and the congregation warned that if any of them went to a ball that was about to be given by the gentry of the neighbourhood in honour of the wife of a resident nobleman, they would do so at the peril of excommunication! Free-Kirk ministers are little popes in their way; but it is only just to say that many of them are but mere puppets in the hands of their congregations and of their ignorant and fanatical elders. A Free-Kirk minister, who was in the habit of solacing his fretted soul, in his leisure moments, by playing the violin, was lately waited upon by some members of his congregation, who told him that it was very sinful to play the fiddle, and that he must give up the practice, if he wished to continue their minister. I heard of another who was fond of singing "Annie Laurie" at evening parties. An elder of his kirk heard of this, and waited upon him to remonstrate:

"I hear, sir, that ye are in the habit of singing a song called 'Annie Laurie,' and I am really astonished at ye, sir. Do you know what ye say in that song? Ye say, 'for bonnie Annie Laurie I would lay me down and dee! Noo that's nae the truth, sir; ye surely wudna' lay yersel' down and dee for bonnie Annie Laurie?"

Another reverend gentleman of the Free Church was taken to task for wearing his hair long, and was obliged to have it cropped to save his situation!

In the course of a fortnight I travel through several counties, visit many districts, and mix with all classes of the community, and I find my countrymen still the same hospitable, warm-hearted people that they ever were; but I also see that there is a heavy drag upon the wheels of public enterprise; that in the majority of towns to which the railway has recently penetrated, there are no signs of improvement of any kind,no new buildings, no new works, no symptoms of increased prosperity nor of quickened life. It would be hypocrisy to say that the cause of this is difficult to discover. It lies on the surface, and must be palpable

to the most ordinary observer. The energies of Scotland are paralysed by the distractions of opposing religious sects; by the gloomy and irrational teaching of a fanatical clergy; by the dissensions which rival religious systems have created in almost every parish, town, and village, and which sometimes even divide families, and send the husband to one church, and the wife to another, while the children perhaps dissent from both, and go to a third. I would not attempt to conceal or gloze over the influence of that great national institution-Toddy-in the same baleful direction. But the peculiar character of the religious teaching of the country is in a great degree responsible even for this. All kinds of rational amusement are under the ban of the clergy. It is sinful to read novels, sinful to go to the theatre, sinful to play the fiddle, sinful to dance, sinful to sing an innocent song, sinful even to bear arms in defence of Queen and country. What wonder that a community, hedged about with such restrictions, should seek to drown the misery of their vacant life in the toddy-tumbler!

“Drowned ! drowned !”

INTO the silvery wave she stept;
The listening breezes sighed and wept;
And e'en the current as it swept
Made moan.

The lilies shut their petals white,
And sank beneath the wave that night;
She stood there in the pale moonlight
Alone.

Her raven tresses float behind,-
Float calmly on the weeping wind;
For ever from its seat the mind
Hath flown.

She seeks beneath yon silvery wave
To find a lone one's peaceful grave,
And he now is no more to save
His own.

She steppeth on into the stream,
And, circling round, the pale moonbeam,
Of rare and glistening light, did seem
Her throne.

She bendeth in the current strong,
Upon its breast is borne along;
To her will soon be pain and wrong
Unknown.

Her white robes flutter in the air;

Her spirit is no longer there;
And o'er her grave the lilies fair
Have blown.

All night, above the lonely tomb,
The waters through that evening gloom

Make murmur at her silent doom,

And moan.