Trees here are an order of nobility; and they wear their crowns right kingly. A few years ago, when Miss Sedg: wick was in this country, while admiring some splendid trees in a nobleman's park, a lady standing by said to her encouragingly: 'O well, I suppose your trees in America will be grown up after a while!' Since that time, another style of thinking of America has come up, and the remark that I most generally hear made is: 'Oh, I suppose we cannot think of shewing you anything in the way of trees, coming as you do from America!' Throwing out of account, however, the gigantic growth of our western river-bottoms, where I have seen sycamore trunks twenty feet in diameter-leaving out of account, I say, all this mammoth arboria-these English parks have trees as fine and as effective, of their kind, as any of ours; and when I say their trees are an order of nobility, I mean that they pay a reverence to them such as their magnificence deserves. Such elms as adorn the streets of New Haven, or overarch the meadows of Andover, would in England be considered as of a value which no money could represent; no pains, no expense would be spared to preserve their life and health; they would never be shot dead by having gaspipes laid under them, as they have been in some of our New England towns; or suffered to be devoured by canker-worms for want of any amount of money spent in their defence. Some of the finest trees in this place are magnificent cedars of Lebanon, which bring to mind the expression in the Psalms, 'Excellent as the cedars.' They are the very impersonation of kingly majesty, and are fitted to grace the old feudal stronghold of Warwick the king-maker. These trees, standing as they do amid magnificent sweeps and undulations of lawn, throwing out their mighty arms with such majestic breadth and freedom of outline, are themselves a living, growing, historical epic. Their seed was brought from the Holy Land in the old days of the Crusades; and a hundred legends might be made up of the time, date, and occasion of their planting. tion. When examined, the statement was found to be inaccurate in dates and in some of its leading features. Letters written by Lady Byron to Mrs Leigh in terms of the warmest affection, after the separation of the poet and his wife, were produced, and a formal contradiction to some of the principal allegations was given by the descendants and representatives of both Lord and Lady Byron. Mrs Stowe attempted a vindication next year, but it was a failure. No new evidence was adduced, and her defence consisted only of strong assertions, of aspersions on the character of Byron, and of extracts from the most objectionable of his writings. The whole of this affair on the part of the clever American lady was a blunder and a reproach. No one, however, ventured to think she had fabricated the story. Lady Byron was the delinquent; on that subject Lady Byron was a monomaniac. Her mind was not a weak one, but she had impaired it by religious speculations beyond her reach, and by long brooding over her trials, involving some real, and many imaginary wrongs. She could at first account for her gifted husband's conduct on no hypothesis but insanity; and now, by a sort of Nemesis, there is no other hypothesis on which the moralist can charitably account for hers; but there is this marked difference in their maladies-he morbidly exagger ated his vices, and she her virtues' (Quarterly Review). This seems to be the true view of the case. We add a few sentences from The Minister's Wooing. A Moonlight Scene. And ever and anon came on the still air the soft eternal pulsations of the distant sea-sound mournfullest, most mysterious, of all the harpings of Nature. It was the sea-the deep, eternal sea-the treacherous, soft, dreadful, inexplicable sea. Mary returned to the quietude of her room. The red of twilight had faded, and the silver moon, round and In 1856, Mrs Stowe published another novel fair, was rising behind the thick boughs of the apple written to expose the evils of slavery and the state trees. She sat down in the window, thoughtful and sad, of Southern society in America-namely, Dred, a and listened to the crickets, whose ignorant jollity often Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, a work much sounds as mournfully to us mortals as ours may to inferior to Uncle Tom. Before the period of her superior beings. There the little, hoarse, black wretches European fame, the authoress had contributed were scraping and creaking, as if life and death were tales and sketches to American periodicals, the invented solely for their pleasure, and the world were most popular of which was The May Flower, or created only to give them a good time in it. Now and then a little wind shivered among the boughs, and Sketches of the Descendants of the Pilgrims, 1849; brought down a shower of white petals which shima number of children's books, religious poems, and mered in the slant beams of the moonlight; and now a anti-slavery tracts have proceeded from her fertile ray touched some small head of grass, and forthwith pen. Among her late separate works may be it blossomed into silver, and stirred itself with a quiet mentioned The Minister's Wooing, 1859-an ex-joy, like a new-born saint just awaking in Paradise. cellent novel, descriptive of Puritan life in New England; The Pearl of Orr's Island, 1862; Agnes of Sorrento, 1862; Little Foxes, or the Insignificant Little Habits which mar Domestic Happiness, 1865; Light after Darkness, 1867; Men of our Times, or Leading Patriots of the Day, 1868; Old Town Folks, 1869; Little Pussy Willow, 1870; My Wife and I, 1871; Pink and White Tyranny, 1871; Old Town Fireside Stories (humorous little tales), Palmetto Leaves, 1873; &c. One publication of Mrs Stowe's which appeared simultaneously in America and England-The True Story of Lady Byron's Life, 1869-excited a strong and painful interest. This was a narrative disclosing what the authoress termed 'a terrible secret' confided to her thirteen years before by Lady Byron. The secret was that Lord Byron was guilty of incest with his half-sister, Mrs Leigh, to whom he had dedicated some of the most touching and beautiful of his verses. So revolting an accusation called forth a universal burst of indigna Love. It is said that, if a grape-vine be planted in the neighbourhood of a well, its roots, running silently under ground, wreath themselves in a network around the cold clear waters, and the vine's putting on outward greenness and unwonted clusters and fruit is all that tells where every root and fibre of its being has been silently stealing. So those loves are most fatal, most absorbing, in which, with unheeded quietness, every thought and fibre of our life twines gradually around some human soul, to us the unsuspected well-spring be uprooted, and all its fibres wrenched away; but till our being. Fearful it is, because so often the vine must the hour of discovery comes, how is it transfigured by a new and beautiful life! of There is nothing in life more beautiful than that trance-like quiet dawn which precedes the rising of love in the soul, when the whole being is pervaded imperceptibly and tranquilly by another being, and we are happy, we know not and ask not why, the soul is then receiving all and asking nothing. At a later day she becomes self-conscious, and then come craving exactions, endless questions-the whole world of the material comes in with its hard counsels and consultations, and the beautiful trance fades for ever. . . . Do not listen to hear whom a woman praises, to know where her heart is; do not ask for whom she expresses the most earnest enthusiasm. But if there be one she once knew well, whose name she never speaks; if she seem to have an instinct to avoid every occasion of its mention; if, when you speak, she drops into silence and changes the subject-why, look there for something!-just as, when getting through deep meadow-grass, a bird flies ostentatiously up before you, you may know her nest is not there, but far off under distant tufts of fern and buttercup, through which she has crept, with a silent flutter in her spotted breast, to act her pretty little falsehood before you. MRS LYNN LINTON-MRS HENRY WOOD. MRS ELIZA LINTON, a popular novelist, is a native of the picturesque Lake country. She was born at Keswick in 1822, daughter of the Rev. J. Lynn, vicar of Crosthwaite in Cumberland. In 1858 she was married to Mr W. J. Linton, engraver. Mrs Linton appeared as an authoress in 1844, when she published Azeth the Egyptian, which was followed by Amymone, a Romance of the Days of Pericles, 1848; Realities, 1851; Witch Stories, 1861; Lizzie Lorton, 1866; Patricia Kemball; and other works of fiction, with various piquant essays and critical contributions to the periodical press. Mrs Linton has also published an account of 'The Lake Country,' with illustrations by Mr Linton. The novels of this lady represent, in clear and vigorous English, the world of to-day. All the little frivolities, the varieties, the finesse of women, all the empty pretence and conscious self-deception of men, she paints with real power and with a peculiar tinge of cynicism, which is so regularly recurrent as to make the reader a little doubtful of its genuineness. In Patricia Kemball she lays bare the hollow hearts and secret vices of society; the real heroine, Dora, is insincere, and instigates to crime, yet is represented as a girl of the period.' Mrs Linton has real constructive faculty, with descriptive and satirical power. Her earlier novels are healthier in tone and feeling than her later ones. She appears to be passing into sensationalism and love-stories based on intrigue; and though professedly she would by these teach a high moral, we doubt if the bulk of her readers will draw the lesson she intends. The History of Joshua Davidson sufficiently shews that Mrs Lynn Linton has latterly been exercised | in seeking a solution of the great social problems of the day-the 'enigmas of life.' Her book cannot be regarded otherwise than as a rejection of Christianity as a creed impossible of application to our complex modern society, or as applicable only in the form of an undisguised communism. Rane, Roland Yorke, Lady Adelaide's Oath, &c. Mrs Wood has edited a monthly magazine, The Argosy, and has contributed, during an active literary life, to various other periodicals. In her novels she contrives to unite plot and melodrama with healthy moral teaching. She has shewn talent in dealing with character alone, as seen in her anonymous Johnny Ludlow Papers, which were highly praised by critics who had spoken contemptuously of the novels published under her own name. MISS ANNE MANNING-MISS RHODA A series of novels, most of them cast in an antique autobiographical form, commenced in 1850 with The Maiden and Married Life of Mary Powell, afterwards Mrs Milton, an ideal representation of Milton's first wife, written and printed in the style of the period. This has been followed by The Household of Sir Thomas More, 1851; Edward Osborne, 1852; The Provocations of Madame Palissy, 1853; Chronicles of Merrie England, 1854; Caliph Haroun Alraschid, 1855; Good Old Times, 1856; a Cottage History of England, Masque of Ludlow, &c., 1866. These works are stated to be written by a lady, MISS ANNE MANNING. MISS RHODA BROUGHTON has constructive talent, combined with no ordinary knowledge of society, with little sentiment and some defianceat least disregard-of conventionalisms. Her novels are-Nancy; Good-bye, Sweetheart; Red as a Rose is She; Cometh up as a Flower, &c. Not unlike Miss Broughton is MRS EDWARDS, who has written Steven Lawrence, Yeoman, Archie Lovell, &c. Mrs Edwards's heroes are of the masculine sort, and in her Archie Lovell (which was very popular) she has delineated some of the features of the fashionable Bohemianism of the day. HOLME LEE (whose real name is Harriet Parr) is one of the purest and brightest of the domestic school of novelists, and also a writer of some excellent essays. She has but slight skill in plot, but has a firm hold of certain ranges of character, and superior analytical faculty. The unwearying industry of Holme Lee' has enabled her to reside on a small property of her own in the Isle of Wight. Her novels are-Against Wind and Tide, Sylvan Holt's Daughter, Kathie Brande, Warp and Woof, Maude Talbot, The Beautiful Miss Barrington, &c. MRS RIDDELL made a reputation among the novel-readers by her novel, George Geith, a really powerful fiction. In her later works she has gone too far in the direction of plot and sensation merely. In 1875 an anonymous novel, Coming through the Rye, became at once popular, and various authors were named. At length it was found that it was written by MISS MATHER, a lady known as the author of some poems. CHARLES READE. MRS HENRY WOOD (née Price), born in The novels of MR CHARLES READE have been Worcestershire in 1820, has written a great num- among the most popular and most powerful of ber of novels (twenty are enumerated in Bentley's our recent works of fiction. In 1853 appeared catalogue), beginning with Danebury House, 1860; his Peg Woffington, a lively, sparkling story of East Lynne, which was published in 1861, and town-life and the theatres a century ago, when met with great success; The Channings (1862); Garrick, Quin, and Colley Cibber were their great Mrs Halliburton's Troubles, Verner's Pride, Bessy | names. The heroine, Peg Woffington, was an actress, remarkable for beauty and for her personation of certain characters in comedy. Walpole thought her an 'impudent Irish-faced girl,' but he admitted that 'all the town was in love with her.' Mr Reade's second heroine was of a very different stamp. His Christie Johnstone, 1853, is a tale of fisher-life in Scotland, the scene being laid at Newhaven on the Forth. A young lord, Viscount Ipsden, is advised by his physician, as a cure for ennui and dyspepsia, to make acquaintance with people of low estate, and to learn their ways, their minds, and their troubles. He sails in his yacht to the Forth, accompanied by his valet. Newhaven Fisherwomen. 'Saunders! do you know what Dr Aberford means by the lower classes?' 'Perfectly, my lord.' 'Are there any about here?' 'I am sorry to say they are everywhere, my lord.' 'Get me some '-(cigarette). Out went Saunders, with his usual graceful empressement, but an internal shrug of his shoulders. He was absent an hour and a half; he then returned with a double expression on his face-pride at his success in diving to the very bottom of society, and contempt of what he had fished up thence. He approached his lord mysteriously, and said, sotto voce, but impressively: 'This is low enough, my lord.' Then glided back, and ushered in, with polite disdain, two lovelier women than he had ever opened a door to in the whole course of his per fumed existence. On their heads they wore caps of Dutch or Flemish origin, with a broad lace border, stiffened and arched, over the forehead, about three inches high, leaving the brow and cheeks unencumbered. They had cotton jackets, bright red and yellow, mixed in patterns, confined at the waist by the apron-strings, but bobtailed below the waist; short woollen petticoats, with broad vertical stripes, red and white most vivid in colour; white worsted stockings, and neat though high-quartered shoes. Under their jackets they wore a thick spotted cotton handkerchief, about one inch of which was visible round the lower part of the throat. Of their petticoats, the outer one was kilted, or gathered up towards the front; and the second, of the same colour, hung in the usual way. Of these young women, one had an olive complexion, with the red blood mantling under it, and black hair, and glorious black eyebrows. The other was fair, with a massive but shapely throat, as white as milk; glossy brown hair, the loose threads of which glittered like gold; and a blue eye, which, being contrasted with dark eyebrows and lashes, took the luminous effect peculiar to that rare beauty. Their short petticoats revealed a neat ankle and a leg with a noble swell; for nature, when she is in earnest, builds beauty on the ideas of ancient sculptors and poets, not of modern poetasters, who, with their airy-like sylphs, and their smoke-like verses, fight for want of flesh in woman and want of fact in poetry as parallel beauties. They are, my lads. Continuez! These women had a grand corporeal trait; they had never known a corset! so they were straight as javelins; they could lift their hands above their heads-actually! Their supple persons moved as nature intended; every gesture was ease, grace, and freedom. What with their own radiance, and the snowy cleanliness and brightness of their costume, they came like meteors into the apartment. Lord Ipsden, rising gently from his seat, with the same quiet politeness with which he would have received two princes of the blood, said, 'How do you do?' and smiled a welcome. Fine, hoow's yoursel?' answered the dark lass, whose name was Jean Carnie, and whose voice was not so sweet as her face. 'What'n lord are ye?' continued she. Are ye a juke? I wad like fine to hae a crack wi' a juke.' Saunders, who knew himself the cause of this question, replied, sotto voce, 'His lordship is a viscount.' 'I dinna ken't,' was Jean's 'What mair remark; but it has a bonny soond.' would ye hae?' said the fair beauty, whose name was Christie Johnstone. Then appealing to his lordship as soond itsel, I'm tauld.' The viscount finding himself the likeliest to know, she added: Nobeelity is just a expected to say something on a topic he had not attended much to, answered drily: 'We must ask the republicans; they are the people that give their minds to such subjects.' And yon man,' asked Jean Carnie, 'is he a lord, too?' 'I am his lordship's servant,' replied Saunders gravely, not without a secret misgiving whether fate had been just. 'Na!' replied she, not to be imposed upon. 'Ye are statelier and prooder than this ane.' 'I will explain,' said his master. 'Saunders knows his value; a servant like Saunders is rarer than an idle viscount.' Mr Reade is not very happy with his Scotch dialogue. His novel, however, is lively and interesting, and Christie, like Peg Woffington, is ably drawn. This type of energetic impassioned women is characteristic of all Mr Reade's novels. In 1856 appeared It is Never Too Late to Mend, the scene of which is partly laid in Australia, and which introduces us to life in the bush, and to a series of surprising adventures. This was followed by White Lies, 1857; The Course of True Love Never did Run Smooth, 1857; Jack of all Trades, 1858; Love me Little, Love me Long, 1859; and The Cloister and the Hearth, a Tale of the Middle Ages, 1861. The last is a powerful romancethe author's noblest work. It was followed by Hard Cash, 1863; and by Griffith Gaunt, or Jealousy, 1868-both remarkable fictions, though deformed by coarse, overdrawn scenes, and painful disclosures of immorality, crime, and suffering. The other novels of Mr Reade are Foul Play, 1868; Put Yourself in his Place, 1870; and A Terrible Temptation, 1871. Before his successful career as a novelist, Mr Reade had produced some dramatic pieces-Gold, 1850; and, in association with Mr Tom Taylor, a drama entitled Two Loves and a Life, 1854; The King's Rivals, 1854; Masks and Faces, 1854; on the last of these was founded the story of Peg Woffington. Mr Reade is an Oxfordshire man, a D.C.L. of the university, youngest son of a squire of the same name; born in 1814, graduated at Magdalen Hall, elected to one of the Vinerian Fellowships in 1842, and called to the bar in 1843. G. R. GLEIG-W. H. MAXWELL-JAMES GRANT. Various military narratives, in which imaginary scenes and characters are mixed up with real events and descriptions of continental scenery, have been written by the above gentlemen. The REV. GEORGE ROBERT GLEIG (son of Bishop Gleig of Brechin, and born in 1796) in the early part of his life served in the army, but afterwards entered the church, and is now Chaplain-General to the Forces. A portion of his military experience is given in his work, The Subaltern, 1825, which gives an accurate and lively account of some of the scenes in the Peninsular war. He has since proved one of our most voluminous writers. Among his works are-The Chelsea Pensioners, 1829; The Country Curate, 1834; The Chronicles of Waltham, 1835; The Hussar, 1837; Traditions of Chelsea College, 1838; The Only Daughter, 1839; The Veterans of Chelsea Hospital, 1841; The Light Dragoon, 1844; Story of the Battle of Waterloo; &c. Mr Gleig has also written Lives of British Military Commanders, a History of British India, a Familiar History of England, a Life of Sir Thomas Munro, Memoirs | of Warren Hastings, a Military History of Great Britain, an account of Sale's Brigade in Afghanistan, Campaigns of the British Army in Washington, a Life of Lord Clive, three volumes of travels in Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary; two volumes of Essays contributed to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, several volumes of sermons and educational treatises, &c. Many of these works of Mr Gleig bear traces of haste and mere book-making; the Memoirs of Hastings, though poor, had the merit of producing one of Macaulay's best essays. The latest of Mr Gleig's works is a Life of Sir Walter Scott, 1871, reprinted from the Quarterly Review. bury, and became the minister of a Congregational church at Arundel in Sussex. He remained three years in Arundel, and then removed to Manchester. He was compelled, however, to give up preaching on account of the state of his health, which has always been delicate and precarious. A short residence in Algiers restored Mr MacDonald to comparative vigour, and returning to London, he took to literature as a profession. In 1856, his first work, Within and Without, a poem, appeared. This was followed by Phantastes, a Faerie Romance, as wild as Hogg's Kilmeny, but also, like it, full of poetic beauty and power. A long series of novels and imaginative works succeeded. David Elginbrod, 1862; The Portent, a Story of Second Sight, 1864; Adela Cathcart, 1864; Alec Forbes of Howglen, 1865; Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood; Robert Falconer; Seaboard Parish; Wow o Riven, or the Idiot's Home; At the Back of the North Wind; The Princess and the Goblin; Wilfrid Cumbermede; Malcolm; St Michael and the Dragon, 1875 ; &c. Besides his numerous novels, Mr MacDonald has published a volume of poems and some theological works, as, Unspoken Sermons, 1869; The Miracles of Our Lord, 1870. In depicting certain phases of religious belief and development, and in exposing the harsher features of Calvinism, Mr MacDonald is original and striking, and scenes of that nature in his novels are profound as well as touching and suggestive. The following extract is from Robert Falconer: Death of the Drinking, Fiddling Soutar (Shoemaker). Silence endured for a short minute; then he called his wife. Come here, Bell. Gie me a kiss, my bonny lass. I hae been an ill man to you.' WILLIAM HAMILTON MAXWELL (1795-1861) is said to have been the first who suggested the military novel, afterwards so popular with Charles Lever. Mr Maxwell travelled for some time with the British army in the Peninsula, but took orders in the church, and became rector of Ballagh in Connaught. He was a voluminous writer, author, among other works, of Stories of Waterloo, 1829; Wild Sports of the West, 1833; The Dark Lady of Doona, 1836; The Bivouac, or Stories of the Peninsular War, 1837; Life of the Duke of Wellington, 3 vols., 1839–41; Rambling Recollections of a Soldier of Fortune, 1842; Hector O'Halloran, 1844; History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (illustrated by Cruikshank), 1845; Adventures of Captain O'Sullivan, 1846; Hillside and Border Sketches, 1847; Bryan O'Lynn, 1848; &c. A number of military novels and memoirs of eminent_commanders have been written by MR JAMES GRANT (born in Edinburgh in 1822), who served for a short time in the 62d Regiment. Among these are-The Romance of War, 1846, to which a sequel was added the following year; Adventures of an Aide-de-camp, 1848; Walter Fenton, or the Scottish Cavalier, 1850; Bothwell, 1851; Jane Seton, 1853; Philip Rollo, 1854; The Yellow Frigate, 1855; The Phantom Regiment, 1856; and every succeeding year a military novel, the latest being Under the Red Dragon, 1872. Besides these, Mr Grant has written Memoirs of Kirkaldy of Grange, 1849; Memorials of Edin-Robert, play a spring.' burgh Castle, 1850; Memoirs of Sir John Hep burn, 1851. Familiar with military affairs and with Scottish history, some of Mr Grant's novels present animated pictures of the times, though often rambling and ill constructed. GEORGE MACDONALD. 'Na, na, Sandy. Ye hae aye been gude to mebetter nor I deserved. Ye hae been naebody's enemy but yer ain.' 'Haud yer tongue. Ye're speykin' waur blethers nor the minister, honest man! And, eh! ye war a bonny lass when I merried ye. I hae blaudit (spoiled) ye a'thegither. But gin I war up, see gin I wadna gie ye a new goon, an' that wad be something to make ye like yersel' again. I'm affrontet wi' mysel' 'at I had been sic a brute o' a man to ye. But ye maun forgie me noo, for I do believe i' my hert 'at the Lord's forgien me. Gie me anither kiss, lass. God be praised, and mony thanks to you. Ye micht hae run awa' frae me lang or noo, an' a'body wad hae said ye did richt.— Absorbed in his own thoughts, Robert began to play The Ewie wi' the Crookit Horn. 'Hoots! hoots!' cried Sandy angrily. What are you aboot? Nae mair o' that. I hae dune wi' that. What's i' the heid o' ye, man?' 'What'll I play then, Sandy?' asked Robert meekly. 'Play the The Lan' o' the Leal, or My Nannie's Awa', or something o' that kin'. I'll be leal to ye noo, Bell. An' we winna pree o' the whusky nae mair, lass.' 'I canna bide the smell o't,' cried Bell sobbing. Robert struck in with The Land o' the Leal. When he had played it over two or three times, he laid the fiddle in its place, and departed-able just to see, by the light of the neglected candle, that Bell sat on the bedside stroking the rosiny hand of her husband, the rhinoceros-hide of which was yet delicate enough to let the love through to his heart. After this the soutar never called his fiddle his auld wife. One of the most original novelists of the day, especially in describing humble Scottish life and feeling, whose genius 'loves to dwell on the border-land between poetry and prose, between this world and romance,' is MR GEORGE MACDONALD. Born at Huntly, county of Aberdeen, December 10, 1824, Mr MacDonald went to college at Aberdeen in his sixteenth year, and pursued his studies with a view to devoting his Robert walked home with his head sunk on his breast. life to science, particularly chemistry. He after- Dooble Sanny [Double Sandy], the drinking, ranting, wards attended the Theological College at High- | swearing soutar, was inside the wicket-gate.... Hence FROM 1830 CYCLOPÆDIA OF forth Robert had more to do in reading the New Testament than in playing the fiddle to the soutar, though they never parted without an air or two. Sandy continued hopeful and generally cheerful, with alternations which the reading generally fixed on the right side for the night. Robert never attempted any comments, but left him to take from the Word what nourishment he could. There was no return of strength, and the constitution was gradually yielding. The rumour got abroad that he was a 'changed character '-how, is not far to seek, for Mr Macleary fancied himself the honoured instrument of his conversion, whereas paralysis and the New Testament were the chief agents, and even the violin had more share in it than the minister. For the spirit of God lies all about the spirit of man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the walls that shut him out from his own-walls which even the tone of a violin afloat on the wind of that spirit is sometimes enough to rend from battlement to base, as the blast of the rams' horns rent the walls of Jericho. And now, to the day of his death, the shoemaker had need of nothing. Food, wine, and delicacies were sent him by many who, while they considered him outside of the kingdom, would have troubled themselves in no way about him. What with visits of condolence and flattery, inquiries into his experience, and long prayers by his bedside, they now did their best to send him back among the swine. The soutar's humour, however, aided by his violin, was a strong antidote against these evil influences. 'I doobt I'm gaein' to dee, Robert,' he said at length one evening, as the lad sat by his bedside. 'Weel, that winna do ye nae ill,' answered Robert; adding, with just a touch of bitterness: 'ye needna care aboot that.' 'I do not care aboot the deein' o't. But I jist want to live lang eneuch to lat the Lord ken 'at I'm in doonricht earnest aboot it. I hae nae chance o' drinkin' as lang as I'm lyin' here.' 'Never ye fash yer heid aboot that. Ye can lippen (trust) that to him, for it's his ain business. He'll see 'at ye 're a' richt. Dinna ye think at' he'll lat ye off.' The Lord forbid,' responded the soutar earnestly. 'It maun be pitten richt. It wad be dreidfu' to be latten off. I wadna hae him content wi' cobbler's wark. I hae't,' he resumed, after a few minutes' pause: 'the Lord's easy pleased, but ill to satisfee. I'm sair pleased wi' your playin', Robert, but it's naething like the richt thing yet. It does me gude to hear ye, though, for a' that.' The very next night he found him evidently sinking fast. Robert took the violin, and was about to play, but the soutar stretched out his left hand, and took it from him, laid it across his chest and his arm over it, for a few moments, as if he were bidding it farewell, then held it out to Robert, saying: 'Hae, Robert, she's Think o' a yours. Death's a sair divorce. Maybe they'll hae an orra fiddle whaur I'm gaein', though. Rothieden soutar playing afore his Grace!' Robert saw that his mind was wandering, and mingled the paltry honours of earth with the grand simplicities of heaven. He began to play the Land o' the Leal. For a little while Sandy seemed to follow and comprehend the tones, but by slow degrees the light departed from his face. At length his jaw fell, and with a sigh the body parted from Dooble Sanny, and he went to God. His wife closed mouth and eyes without a word, laid the two arms straight by his sides, then seating herself on the edge of the bed, said: 'Dinna bide, Robert. He's gane hame. Gin I war only It's a ower noo. She burst into tears, but wi' him, wharever he is!" dried her eyes a moment after. Bible Class in the Fisher Village.-From Malcolm.' He now called up the Bible class, and Malcolm sat beside and listened. That morning they had read one of the chapters in the history of Jacob. 548 over. the as 'Was Jacob a good man?' he asked as soon An apparently universal expression of asat reading, each of the scholars in turn taking a verse, wa followed; halting in its wake, however, came the voice of a boy near the bottom of the class: Wasna he some double, sir?' 'You are right Sheltie,' said the master; he was double. I must, I find, put the question in Again came such a burst of 'yeses' that it might have another shape: was Jacob a bad man?' been taken for a general hiss. But limping in the rear came again the half dissentient voice of Sheltie : Pairtly, sir.' You think then, Sheltie, that a man may be both bad and good?' 'I dinna ken, sir; I think he may be whiles ane and whiles the other, and whiles twa minds whether he 'll do what he's telled or no." maybe it wad be ill to say which. Our colly's whiles in 'That's the battle of Armageddon, Sheltie, my man. Gien ye die maun up and do your best in 't, my man. It's aye raging, as gun roared or bayonet clashed. fechting like a man, ye'll flee up with a quiet face and wide open een; and there's a great One that will say to ye, 'Weel done, laddie!' But gien ye gie in to the enemy, he'll turn ye into a creeping thing that eats dirt; and there 'll no be a hole in a' the crystal wa' of the New 'I reckon, sir,' said Sheltie, 'Jacob hadna foughter Jerusalem near enough to let ye creep through.' out his battle.' Ye 'That's just it, my boy. And because he would not Ye've heard tell of generals, when their troops were get up and fight manfully, God had to take him in hand. and lick another, till he turned them a' right face about, rinnin' awa', having to cut this man down, shoot that ane, the trouble God took wi' Jacob was not lost upon him at and drave them on to the foe like a spate (flood). And last.' 'An' what came o' Esau, sir?' asked a pale-faced maiden with blue eyes. 'He wasna an ill kind o' a chield, was he, sir?' 'No, Mappy,' answered the master; 'he was a fine treatment to make onything o' him. Ye see he had a chield as you say, but he needed mair time and gentler guid heart, but was a duller kind o' creature a'thegither, and cared for naething he couldna see or handle. He never thought muckle about God at a'. Jacob was another sort-a poet kind o' a man, but a sneck-drawing creature for a' that. It was easier, however, to get the slyness out o' Jacob than the dullness out o' Esau. Punishment telled upon Jacob like upon a thin-skinned horse, whereas Esau was mair like the minister's powny, that can hardly be made to understand that ye want him to gang on.' The Old Churchyard.-From Malcolm. to come. The next day, the day of the Resurrection, rose had poured all night long, but at sunrise the clouds glorious from its sepulchre of sea-fog and drizzle. It had broken and scattered, and the air was the purer for the cleansing rain, while the earth shone with that peculiar lustre which follows the weeping which has endured its appointed night. The larks were at it again, singing as if their hearts would break for joy as Especially about the they hovered in brooding exultation over the song of the future; for their nests beneath hoarded a wealth of larks for summers old church-half buried in the ancient trees of Lossie House, the birds that day were jubilant; their throats seemed too narrow to let out the joyful air that filled all their hollow bones and quills; they sang as if they must sing or choke with too much gladness. Beyond the short spire and its shining cock, rose the balls and stars and arrowy vanes of the house, glittering in gold The inward hush of the Resurrection, and sunshine. broken only by the prophetic birds, the poets of the as in a trance; and the centre from which radiated both groaning and travailing creation, held time and space the hush and the carolling expectation seemed to |