shipless sea. The story ended of course happily for the lovers, about whom, I rather think, I did not feel much interested. The red bull was certainly the favourite hero; for I can remember wondering, after I had been put into my crib, whether he bore any resemblance to Willie Laidlaw's muckle bull, a ferocious animal much given to assault and battery, whose roaring from the other side of the loch was terrible to our infant ears.

The impressions of childhood, imperfect though they are, almost always exercise a large influence over us in future years. It is observable that persons who have been exclusively reared in towns, rarely exhibit, in later life, any marked relish or desire for country sports and occupations; whereas those brought in childhood from the country to the city, never forego their early associations, but always contemplate a return to the scenes that delighted their infancy. "O Rus, quando ego te aspiciam !" was the ejaculation not of a town-bred man, but of one who never had forgotten the freshness of the Apulian breeze, the wooded heights of Mount Vultur, or its deep recesses gay with the asphodel and anemone. Virgil, among the pomps and luxuries of Rome, and beneath the roof of the lordly Meæcenas, still heard in his dreams the humming of the bees and the rustling of the beeches around his dear old Mantuan home; and often in the plenitude of his fame recalled the happy hours when he first courted the muse by the banks of the winding Mincius. I attribute to those early impressions the strong disinclination which I have always felt to a city life; the pleasures of which are, to my thinking, more than counterbalanced by its pains. The excitement of it fatigues one; and I soon become weary of that perpetual emulation and straining after effect which is the characteristic of city men, and which, in the great majority of cases, resolves itself into positive egotism. I much prefer the fresh air to an atmosphere contaminated with smoke, the morn

ing song of the birds to the jingling of the dust-cart, the mild lowing of oxen to the obscene cursing of the drunken operative; and I would rather stroll, pursuing my own run of thought, by the side of a wimpling burn, or over a common of sweetscented furze, than walk along George Street or Pall-Mall in the height of the fashionable season. Fortunately there is among men a vast diversity of taste, which I doubt not tends in the aggregate to the general comfort and happiness. There is an old saying, that what is one man's meat is another man's poison; and I daresay that a town devotee, if called upon to justify his preference, could assign most excellent reasons for adhering to that mode of existence which is most consonant to his inclination.

I was scarce nine years of age, when a letter from my uncle, Dr Buchanan, was received at the Birkenshaws, announcing that he was now ready to redeem his pledge, by taking me into his household in Edinburgh, as it was full time that my regular education should commence. I pass over the sorrow which this message brought to the whole family, for I had lived so long with the Osetts that I had become as it were a child of their own; and though I had been told that one day I must expect to be separated from them, that sounded rather like an obscure and indefinite hint than the warning of an event at hand. Fortunately our preparations for the journey were of the simplest kind, so that the interval of leave-taking was shortened. The devoted Eppie, refreshed by her long sojourn in the place of her nativity, once more took up the staff of pilgrimage; and on a fine summer morning, when the lambs were racing on the meadows, and the trees just clad in their lightgreen verdure, I was lifted, amidst a storm of tears, kisses, and benedictions, into the carrier's cart; and immediately afterwards we jolting along the shore of St Mary's Loch, on our way to the hoary metropolis of the north.

were

My uncle, Dr Andrew Buchanan, was, as I have already said, a bachelor; and long celibacy had developed certain eccentric habits which prevented him, though his talents were really considerable, from occupying a high place in society. Naturally shy, he never had made an effort to overcome that constitutional defect; so that his manner towards men was abrupt and unconciliatory, and towards women, awkward and diffident in the extreme. Left in early youth very much to his own guidance, with little fortune to sustain him or interest to push him on, yet proud, as most Scotsmen are, of a good ancestral name, he unfortunately conceived the idea that he was unduly slighted, and treated by the world at large with less consideration than was his due. Men of that temperament are apt to become exceedingly jealous and irritable, construing into a deliberate affront the most trivial mark of inattention, and never reflecting, that if people will not take the pains to make themselves agreeable, they cannot in reason expect to be overwhelmed by gratuitous courtesy.

If my uncle had betimes taken to himself a sensible wife, who would have found no difficulty whatever in exercising dominion over him, this incipient misanthropy, for such it really was, might have been cured, and the jaundice purged from his system. But here again he was unfortunate. He chose to fall in love with a consummate flirt, who, as her friends alleged, kept a regular list of her admirers; and after having been victimised and rendered ridiculous in every conceivable way, to the infinite amusement of a heartless circle who thought it excellent fun, the Doctor was brought up to the point of a formal proposal, and then unscrupulously rejected. In his rage and agony at finding himself so palpably befooled-for the young lady was barbarous enough not to spare him a single pang-Andrew Buchanan, like the Prince of Morocco, took a solemn vow,

"Never to speak to lady afterward In way of marriage;" which vow, being registered, he kept thenceforth inviolate.

It was universally allowed that he was a man of first-rate ability, a good scholar, and a sound physician, qualities which ought to have put him on the way to fortune, or at least raised him to eminence in the estimation of his professional brethren. But he did not possess sufficient tact to avail himself of these advantages; his manner was rather repulsive than conciliatory; he shrank back when he ought to have put himself forward; and sometimes committed the worse error of maintaining with spasmodic energy some opinion which already had been denounced as heterodox by the medical faculty at large. If called in to visit a patient, he exhibited none of that kindly interest and friendly solicitude which sits so well on the modern Machaon. He would ask a few gruff questions, feel the pulse, survey the tongue, write out some common prescription and then, without a word of civil consolation, depart, never to renew his visit unless he was specially summoned. No doctor who adopts such a method can hope to attain to an extensive domestic practice. What fond mother would a second time be party to calling in a monster who exhibited no kind of sympathy with dear little Tommy suffering from the measles? What dowager with shattered nerves could repose confidence in a Goth, who told her in so many words that she might have spared herself the trouble of sending for him? What mattered it if, when Azrael, the angel of Death, was really standing by the couch, Dr Buchanan was prompt and able to give him battle, and oftentimes to scare him away? Not at every sickbed is the gloomy-browed Azrael in attendance; and we form our estimate of the physician's skill, and accord him our confidence, rather from the manner in which he deals with our minor ailments and complaints, than from his acknowledged

reputation for ability in cases of a desperate nature.

Again, it would be false to assert that my worthy uncle was popular among his brethren. He was, I firmly believe, superior to most of them in scientific attainment-that is, he had read and experimented more-but he was somewhat deficient in judgment, and apt to be led astray by new discoveries, or what appeared to be such, before their phenomena had been accurately tested, or their principle satisfactorily ascertained. In fact, he was very credulous; a tendency which, in medical men, is dangerous, inasmuch as it leads to the suspicion, if not the reality, of empiricism. He was one of the very first who, in this country, professed their belief in the curative powers of Animal Magnetism; a daring avowal at the time, when the pretended miracles of Prince Hohenlohe were creating vast excitement on the Continent. If he did not absolutely assert, he certainly did not deny the possibility of clairvoyance, magic crystals, and spiritual communications; he was a diligent student of the writings of Swedenborg, whom he would by no means admit to be an impostor; and I suspect, from certain manuscripts of his which afterwards came into my possession, that he was more than tinctured with belief in the doctrines of Sympathy and Antipathy, as propounded by Sir Kenelm Digby. Such aberrations of the intellect might possibly, at the present day, when there is a renewed taste for wonders, be forgiven, or treated as harmless hallucinations; but at the time to which I allude, they were vehemently denounced by the medical faculty as wicked and presumptuous heresies, scandalous in themselves, and beyond the pale of forgiveness when avowed by a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians. Thus neglected by the public from his own fault, and disowned by his brethren on account of his singular and extravagant opinions, my poor uncle gradually became a recluse, and fell into those habits of slovenry and carelessness, from which, when once formed, an elderly scholar can no more escape than a fly from the web of a spider.

The maintenance of an establishment such as his does not necessitate a large expenditure. He kept two servants; one of whom, a strong untidy wench from the Highlands, whom no wooer was likely to assail, undertook the whole of the housework, which she was enabled to perform by restricting her dusting operations to a hebdomadal visitation with the broom. The other inmate was a decrepid old serving-man with a cantankerous temper aggravated by deafness, who was simply rude to his master, but insolent to every one else. Indeed, so far as usefulness went, Saunders Jaap was a domestic luxury that might have been dispensed with, only there was no way of getting rid of him; for though discharged twice a-year by my uncle, he obstinately refused to quit. Beyond cleaning shoes, pilfering snuff, appropriating aged garments, laying violent hands upon as much victual as he could procure, and insulting a stray visitor, I am not aware that Mr Jaap performed any distinct function in the house. Out of it, he was nominally doorkeeper of my uncle's lecture-room, to the deep disgust of the students, from whom, in the intervals of swearing (for the old wretch cursed like a second Shimei), he never ceased to demand sixpences in the way of subsidy.

Dr Buchanan was not a Professor in the University. His peculiar notions prevented him from aspiring to such a situation; and even had it been otherwise, the number of those who were really his friends was so small that he could not reckon upon sufficient interest. But limited though his expenses were, he could not make ends meet without some source of income beyond the receipts of his dwindling practice, so he set up a private class, wherein he lectured on chemistry-a branch of science which, of all others, he was most competent to explain. After a year or two, those lectures became sufficiently popular to attract a considerable audience, and to return something like a competence; and the necessary exertion, besides preventing him from lapsing into total indolence, had a salutary effect both upon his health and spirits. He occupied a small house in St John

brute. Saunders Jaap, you quit this house to-morrow!"

"Blythe wad I be to get rid of ye," grumbled Jaap, "but your temper's getting sae bad that nae one else will live wi' ye. Hoo was I to ken your nephoy frae ony ither bairn in the Canongate? Tak' him in, gin it be your will-I'm sure I hae nae objection; and I'll quit the morn, if that be your mind-weel I wat it's little I get for staying! But I rede ye first to hire somebody to pu' ye out when ye chance to stoiter into the fire."

The rapid disparition of Mr Jaap saved him in all probability from a severe contusion, for my uncle had caught up a bag which he seemed disposed to hurl at the audacious serving-man. We were taken into the house and supplied with refreshments, Dr Buchanan watching me, as I ate, with an interest which was somewhat embarrassing. Presently, however, he seemed to lapse into a fit of abstraction; and after having summoned Peggie, the servant-of-allwork, and desired her to show me to my room, he took up a book and was instantly absorbed in its contents.

Eppie Osett and I followed the damsel up-stairs to a little attic, where there was a table, a chair, and one diminutive crib without curtains. It looked very cheerless, and though the season was early summer, there was a feeling of cold, and a damp odour in the apartment.

"Are ye sure, my woman," said Eppie Osett, after having carefully scrutinised the room, "that this is where my bairn is to sleep? He's no used-like to lying by his lane, and I think for a week or twa it wad be mair convenient if he lay in the room wi' me. Whaur am I to be putten up?"

"Troth, I dinna ken," replied the Highland damsel; "I heerd tell o' naebody coming but the laddie. It's my mind that ye wasna expected."

A flush came over Eppie's face as she seized the tin candlestick with one hand, and my jacket with the other.

"Come wi'me, my blessed bairn!" she said, "I maun hae this redd up afore ye lay your head on a pillow! It's no ony uncle ye hae that is strong enough to twine us twa."

"Maister Buchanan!" said Eppie,

marching into the apartment, "ye'll understand that it's no for mysel' I speak, for may His name be praised, there's them at the Birkenshaws wad be ower glad to hae me wi' them. But is it your pleasure that this sweet lamb is to be left here, wi' naebody to look after him but a Hieland lass, and that uncircumceesed Philistine, Jaap, wha's lug I wuss ye had smitten aff this day, as the Apostle Peter did that of Malchus, wha was servant to the high-priest? If that be your

wull, sir, say it at ance. I ken whare Watty Shaw puts up; he'll be glad to gie us a cast; and by the morn's night we baith may see the Yarrow."

God bless me! what's that you say?" said my uncle, starting from his studies. "I told them to make everything comfortable for NormanIs there anything wrong? The fact is, Mrs Osett, that I know little about domestic arrangements, but if you have any suggestions to make

"I hae naething but a simple question to ask, Doctor Buchanan, and ye can answer it, ay or no. Am I to be separated from my dear bairn? These auld hands were the first that received him when he cam' into this weary warld, the child o' sorrow and pain-these hands lifted him from the bosom of his dead mother, sinless angel that she was-and wi' these hands I am ready to work for his daily bread, if kith and kin should forsake him. But as to my gieing him up, it's no to be thought o'; for where he goes I will go, and where he lodges I will lodge. The Lord do so to me and more also, if ought but death shall part us!"

"Confound my stupidity!" said Dr Buchanan, "I never once thought about that. Yes, yes, Mrs Osett, you are right, perfectly right-somebody must look after the boy; for I, God help me! have enough to do to look after myself; and Peggie, though a decent lass, is but a tawpie. No doubt of it, Mrs Osett, you must stay, and I'll settle with you about wages to-morrow."

I'm muckle obligated to your honour," replied Eppie, "but dinna ye think that I'll tak' plack or bawbee for looking after my ain bairn. I'll stay wi' you, sin' it is your pleasure, and I'll do what I can to hae the house redd up, for it's no just