of their untaught voices, when they lifted them all up together in that old tune which immemorial custom has set apart for the last Psalm sung upon this sacred day,-a tune which is endeared to them by the memory of those from whose attachment its designation is derived, still more than by the low and affecting swell of its own sad composing cadences-"The plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name"*--The faint choral falls of this antique melody, breathed by such a multitude of old and young, diffused a kind of holy charm over the tall whispering groves and darkening fields around a thousand times more grand and majestic than all the gorgeous stops of an organ ever wakened in the echoing aisles of a cathedral. There was a breath of sober enduring heroism in its long-repeated melancholy accents-which seemed to fall like a sweet evening dew upon all the hearts that drank in the sacred murmurs. A fresh sunset glow seemed to mantle in the palest cheek around me--and every old and haggard eye beamed once more with a farewell splendour of enthusiasm, while the air into which it looked up, trembled and was enriched with the clear solemn music of the departed, devout. It seemed as if the hereditary strain connected all that sat upon those grassy tombs in bonds of stricter kindred with all that slept beneath them-and the pure flame of their Christian love derived, I doubt not, a new and innocent fervour from the deeply-stirred embers of their ancestral piety. I had with some difficulty secured for myself a lodging at the little inn of the village, (for the Manse was so filled that the hospitable owner could not offer me any accommodation there,) and I was preparing at the close of the service to seek shelter beneath its tempting sign-post- "Porter, Ale, and British Spirits- But one of the neighbouring gentlemen, (a Sir had, it seems, seen me in several parties during the spring at *This tune is a great favourite all over the west of Scotland, and was so among the ancient Covenanters, as the name imports, and the s tanza to which it is usually sung in their schools "This is the tune the Martyrs sang When they, condemned to die Did stand all at the gallows-tree, Edinburgh, and he now came up, introduced himself to me, and requested me to spend the night at his mansion, where he said I should be quite as welcome, and a little more comfortable, than at the public-house. There was something so very frank in the address of the Baronet, that I immediately accepted of his invitation, and as the ladies had already taken the carriage home with them, he proposed to walk across the fields-leaving John to bring up the shandrydan at his leisure. Our way lay at first up one of those beautiful narrow glens, covered on all sides with copse-wood, which are every where so common in this romantic country. A rude foot-path crept along the side of the burn, from which the glen takes its name, crossed and shaded at every step by some projecting arm of the luxuriant woods that ascended from its edge, up the airy height of the over-canopying bank. Here, we walked in silence, and single, for the path was too narrow to admit of our proceeding side by side--ruminating, I believe, with equal seriousness, on all the affecting circumstances of the solemnity we had been witnessing. We sat down, however, for a considerable time, upon a log of newly cut oak, when we had reached the other extremity of the glen, and talked ourselves into a familiarity that might almost be called a friendship ere we rose again. To say the truth, I was more than I can well express delighted, to find that the fine character of this religious peasantry is regarded as it ought to be by at least some of their superiors. It is not always that we find men of higher rank, and more refined habits, able to get over the first and external rudenesses which sometimes cover so much of real purity and elevation in the manners of those beneath them. This gentleman, however, appeared to have studied these good people with the eye of an elder brother, or a parent, rather than with any thing of the usual aristocratical indifference— an indifference, by the way, which was unknown to our ancestors, and which I detest among the aristocracy of the present day, because I regard it as more likely than any thing else to weaken, in the hearts of the peasantry, those feelings of old hereditary attachment, for which so poor a substitute is found or sought in the flimsy, would-be liberal theories of the day. Sir talked of these rural worthies as if their virtues, in his eyes, were the dearest ornaments of all his possessions -and repeated, with a proud enthusiasm, an expression of a Scottish author, which I feel to be true no less than you will admit it to be beautiful,-" It would take a long line," said he, "to sound the depths of a gray haired Scottish peasant's heart." Walking onwards we soon reached another little hamlet, at which its inhabitants had already arrived from the church by some nearer way-for we could perceive here and there, as we passed through it, some old goodman standing by himself in his little garden, or reposing with his wife and children upon some of the low stone-seats, with which the doors of their cottages are always flanked. It was a delightful thing to see the still thankful faces of these old people, enjoying the rich evening breath of the roses and sweet-brier, clustering about their windows-and the soft drowsy hum of their bee-hives. But here and there it was a still more delightful thing to hear, through the low door of the cottage, the solemn notes of a psalm sung by the family, or the deep earnest voice of the master of the household reading the Bible, or praying with his children and servants about him. "On the evenings of Saturday and Sunday," said Sir," these fine sounds are sure to proceed from every col-house in these villages-so that here every father is, in a certain sense, the Priest of his House. But among the goodmen, there are not wanting some who renew them every night of the week-and that in my youth was still more generally the custom." It is thus that the habitual spirit of devotion is kept up, and strengthened from year to year among these primitive people. These cotters are priests indeed, "Detached from pleasure, and to love of gain And by ambitious longings undisturbed; P. M. LETTER LXXVII. TO THE SAME. I SPENT a very pleasant night at the Baronet's-sleeping in a fine old vaulted bed-chamber, in one of the towers of his castle, from the window of which I had a command of one of the most beautiful tracts of scenery I have ever seen in Scotland. Close beneath, the narrow little glen was seen winding away with its dark woody cliffs, and the silver thread of its burn here and there glittering from under their impending masses of rock and foilage. At the far-off extremity, the glen opens into the wider valley of the larger stream, from which the whole district takes its name of this, too, a rich peep was afforded and its fields and woods again carried the eye gradually upwards upon the centre of a range of mountains, not unlike those over the Devil's Bridge-hoary and craggy, traced all over with the winter paths of innumerable now silent torrents. I walked out before breakfast and bathed in one of the pools of the burn-a beautiful round natural basin, scooped out immediately below a most picturesque water-fall, and shaded all around with such a canopy of hazels, alders, and mountain ashes, as might have fitted it to be the chosen resort of Diana and all her nymphs. Here I swam about enjoying the luxury of the clear and iey stream, till I beard a large bell ring, which I suppose was meant only to rouse the sleepers, for when I had hurried on my clothes, in the idea that its call was to breakfast, and ran up the hill with an agility which nothing but my bath could have enabled me to display-I found the breakfast parlour quite deserted-not even the cloth laid. By and by, however, the whole magnificent paraphernalia of a Scottish déjeune were brought in-the family assembled from their several chambers-and we fell to work in high style. In addition to the usual articles, we had strawberries, which the Scots eat with an enormous quantity of cream-and, of course, a glass of good whisky was rendered quite excusable in the eyes of a medical man, by this indulgence. After breakfast, the Baronet informed me that the Sacrament was not yet over; and that we must all to church again once more. As the Sunday set apart for this great festival is preceded by several days of preparatory worship, so, in order to break off the impression produced by its solemnities, and allow of an easier fall into the ordinary concerns of life, the day immediately following it is also considered as in some measure a holy one-its observances, however, being conducted with a less profound air of seriousness, and its evening devoted to a kind of pleasant and innocent relaxation of mind, rather than to any studious preservation of the austere and unremitting spirit of devotion, exercised on the other days connected with the ceremony. There are two sermons, for sermons are great luxuries in the eyes of the Scottish peasantry, and they can never have too much of them. But after the sermons are over, it is expected that sober mirth shall occupy the rest of the evening. So far, in short, their Monday after the Sacrament may be considered as bearing some resemblance to our style of keeping Easter Monday. We went to church, therefore, and heard two sermons-or rather I should say to the church-yard-for both preachers addressed us from the tent. The shandrydan was drawn up among the other vehicles to the right of the minister, and I flatter myself cut a very knowing and novel appearance there --but John would by no means occupy his place in it during the sermons, having already, as he said, had a copious bellyfull of that sort of diet. And yet he might have had amusement as well as edification, had he had the grace to listenfor one of the preachers was certainly as comical an original, in his way, as I have ever chanced to meet with. He was an old man, with a fine rotund friar-like physiognomy, which, for a time, he in vain attempted to clothe with the true Presbyterian saturnity of expression. But after he had fairly got into the thread of his discourse, there was no occasion for so much constraint-the more jovial and sarcastic the language of his countenance, the better did it barmonize with the language of his tongue. This was a genuine relic of that old joking school of Puritans, of whose eloquence so many choice specimens have been preserved by certain malicious antiquarians. With bim every admonition was conveyed in the form of a banter--every one of his illustrations, of however serious a subject, was evidently meant to excite something like a smile on the cheeks of his hearers; and, as if fearful that the sermon itself might be too scanty of mirth, the old gentleman took care to interrupt it every now and then, and address some totally extemporaneous rebuke or expostulation to some of the little noisy lads and lasses that were hovering around the outskirts of the congregation. As he has the character of being a great divine, and an eminently devout man in his own person, this peculiarity of his manner produced no want of respectfulness in the faces and attitudes of his auditors; but, on the contrary, even the grimmest of the elderhood seemed to permit their stern and iron cheeks to wrinkle into a solemn grin, at the conclusion of every paragraph. As for the young damsels of the country, they tittered scandalously at some of the coarsest of his jokes--the severest of which, indeed, were almost all levelled against their own passion for dress, finery, and gadding about fairs, markets, and sacraments. He quoted not a few texts against these fine ladies, which, I take it, |