guishes the part of Mrs. Martha Trapbois, and the inimitable scenes, though of a coarse and revolting complexion, with Duke Hildebrod and the miser of Alsatia. The Templar Lowestoffe, and Jin Vin, the aspiring apprentice, are excellent sketches of their kind. So are John Christie and his frail dame. Lord Dalgarno is more questionable. There are passages of extraordinary spirit and ability in this part; but he turns out too atrocious. Sir Mungo Malagrowther wearies us from the beginning, and so does the horologist Ramsay -because they are both exaggerated and unnatural characters. We scarcely see enough of Margaret Ramsay to forgive her all her irregularities, and her high fortune; but a great deal certainly of what we do see is charmingly executed. Dame Ursula is something between the vulgar gossipping of Mrs. Quickly in the merry Wives of Windsor, and the atrocities of Mrs. Turner and Lady Suffolk; and it is rather a contamination of Margaret's purity to have used such counsel. We have named them all now, or nearly-and must at length conclude. Indeed, nothing but the fascination of this author's pen, and the difficulty of getting away from him, could have induced us to be so particular in our notices of a story, the details of which will so soon be driven out of our heads by other details as interesting-and as little fated to be remembered. There are other two books coming, we hear, in the course of the winter; and by the time there are four or five, that is, in about eighteen months hence, we must hold ourselves prepared to give some account of them. (October, 1823.) 1. Annals of the Parish, or the Chronicle of Dalmailing, during the Ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder. Written by Himself. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 400. Blackwood. Edin.: 1819. 2. The Ayrshire Legatees, or the Pringle Family. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 395. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 3. The Provost. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "Ayrshire Legatees," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 4. Sir Andrew Wyllie of that Ilk. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edin.: 1822. 5. The Steam Boat. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 1 vol. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822. 6. The Entail, or the Lairds of Grippy. Andrew Wyllie," &c. 3 vols. 18mo. 7. Ringan Gilhaize, or the Covenanters. By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," "Sit By the Author of "Annals of the Parish," &c. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823. 8. Valerius, a Roman Story. 3 vols. 12mo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1820. 9. Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life. 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822. 10. Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, Minister of the Gospel at Cross-Meikle 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1822. 11. The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. By the Author of "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life." 1 vol. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823. 12. Reginald Dalton. By the Author of "Valerius," and "Adam Blair." 3 vols. 8vo. Blackwood. Edinburgh: 1823.* We have been sometimes accused, we ob- | set of lively and popular works, that have atserve, of partiality to the writers of our own country, and reproached with helping middling Scotch works into notice, while far more meritorious publications in England and Ireland have been treated with neglect. We take leave to say, that there could not possibly be a more unjust accusation: and the list of books which we have prefixed to this article, affords of itself, we now conceive, the most triumphant refutation of it. Here is a I have retained most of the citations in this article: the books from which they are taken not being so universally known as those of Sir Walter Scott and yet deserving, I think, of being thus recalled to the attention of general readers. The whole seem to have been originally put out anonymously:-But the authorship has been long ago acknowledged; so that it is scarcely necessary for me to mention that the first seven in the list are the works of the late Mr. Galt, Valerius and Adam Blair of Mr. Lockhart-and the Lights and Shadows, and Margaret Lindsay, of Professor Wilson. tracted, and very deservedly, a large share of The works themselves are evidently too numerous to admit of our now giving more than a very general account of them:-and indeed, some of their authors emulate their great prototype so successfully in the rapid succession of their performances, that, even if they had not been so far ahead of us at the starting, we must soon have been reduced to deal with them as we have done with him, casm, and a more distinct moral, or unity of didactic purpose, in most of his writings, than it would be easy to discover in the playful, capricious, and fanciful sketches of his great master. The other two authors have formed themselves more upon the poetical, reflective, and pathetic parts of their common model; and have aimed at emulating such beautiful pictures as that of Mr. Peter Pattison, the blind old women in Old Mortality and the Bride of Lammermoor, the courtship at the Mermaid and only to have noticed their productions when they had grown up into groups and families as they increased and multiplied in the land. In intimating that we regard them as imitations of the inimitable novels,-which ne, who never presume to peep under masks, still hold to be by an author unknown,-we have already exhausted more than half their general character. They are inferior certainly (and what is not?) to their great originals. But they are the best copies which have yet been produced of them; and it is not a little creditable to the genius of our be-en's Well, and, generally, his innumerable loved country, that, even in those gay and airy walks of literature from which she had been so long estranged, an opening was no sooner made, by the splendid success of one gifted Scotsman, than many others were found ready to enter upon them, with a spirit of enterprise, and a force of invention, that promised still farther to extend their boundariesand to make these new adventurers, if not formidable rivals, at least not unworthy followers of him by whose example they were roused. There are three authors, it seems, to the works now before us;-so at least the titlepages announce; and it is a rule with us, to give implicit faith to those solemn intimations. We think, indeed, that without the help of that oracle, we should have been at no loss to ascribe all the works which are now claimed by the author of the Annals of the Parish, to one and the same hand; But we should certainly have been inclined to suppose, that there was only one author for all the rest,with the exception, perhaps, of Valerius, which has little resemblance, either in substance or manner, to any of those with which it is now associated. In the arduous task of imitating the great novelist, they have apparently found it necessary to resort to the great principle of division of labour; and yet they have not, among them, been able to equal the work of his single hand! The author of the Parish Annals seems to have sought chiefly to rival the humorous and less dignified parts of his original; by large representations of the character and manners of the middling and lower orders in Scotland, intermingled with traits of sly and sarcastic sagacity, and occasionally softened and relieved by touches of unexpected tenderness and simple pathos, all harmonised by the same truth to nature and fine sense of national peculiarity. In these delineations there is, no doubt, more vulgarity, both of style and conception, and less poetical invention, than in the corresponding passages of the works he aspires to imitate; but, on the other hand, there is more of that peculiar humour which depends on the combination of great naïveté, indolence, and occasional absurdity, with natural good sense, and taste, and kind feelings in the principal characters such combinations as Sir Roger de Coverley, the Vicar of Wakefield, and My Uncle Toby, have made familiar to all English readers, but of which we have not hitherto had any good Scottish representative. There is also more systematic, though very good-humoured, sar and exquisite descriptions of the soft, simple, and sublime scenery of Scotland, as viewed in connection with the character of its better rustic population. Though far better skilled than their associate, in the art of composition, and chargeable, perhaps, with less direct imitation, we cannot but regard them as much less original, and as having performed, upon the whole, a far easier task. They have no great variety of style, and but little of actual invention, and are mannerists in the strongest sense of that term. Though unquestionably pathetic in a very powerful degree, they are pathetic, for the most part, by the common recipes, which enable any one almost, to draw tears, who will condescend to employ them. They are mighty religious too, but apparently on the same principle; and, while their laboured attacks on our sympathies are felt, at last, to be somewhat importunate and puerile, their devotional orthodoxies seem to tend, every now and then, a little towards cant. This is perhaps too harshly said; and is more, we confess, the result of the second reading than the first; and suggested rather by a comparison with their great original, than an impression of their own independent merits. Compared with that high standard, it is impossible not to feel that they are somewhat wanting in manliness, freedom, and liberality; and, while they enlarge, in a sort of pastoral, emphatic, and melodious style, on the virtues of our cottagers, and the apostolical sanctity of our ministers and elders, the delights of pure affection, and the comforts of the Bible, are lamentably deficient in that bold and free vein of invention, that thorough knowledge of the world, and rectifying spirit of good sense, which redeem all that great author's flights from the imputation either of extravagance or affectation, and give weight, as well as truth, to his most poetical delineations of nature and of passion. But, though they cannot pretend to this rare merit, which has scarcely fallen to the share of more than one since the days of Shakespeare, there is no doubt much beautiful writing, much admirable description, and much both of tender and of lofty feeling, in the volumes of which we are now speaking; and though their inferior and borrowed lights are dimmed in the broader blaze of the luminary, who now fills our Northern sky with his glory, they still hold their course distinctly within the orb of his at traction, and make a visible part of the splen dour which draws to that quarter of the hea vens the admiration of so many distant eyes of the author. That character is, as we have already hinted, as happily conceived as it is admirably executed-contented, humble, and perfectly innocent and sincere-very orthodox, and zealously Presbyterian, without learning or habits of speculation-soft-hearted and full of indulgence and ready sympathy, without any enthusiasm or capacity of devoted attachment-given to old-fashioned prejudices, with an instinctive sagacity in practical affairsand unconsciously acute in detecting the char acters of others, and singularly awake to the beauties of nature, without a notion either of observation or of poetry-very patient and primitive in short, indolent and gossiping, and scarcely ever stirring either in mind or person, beyond the limits of his parish. The style of the book is curiously adapted to the character of the supposed author-very genuine homely Scotch in the idiom and many of the expressions - but tinctured with scriptural phrases, and some relics of college learningand all digested in the grave and methodical order of an old-fashioned sermon. We must now, however, say a word or two preponderate over the tragic and comic genius on the particular works we have enumerated; among which, and especially in the first series, there is a very great difference of design, as well as inequality of merit. The first with which we happened to become acquainted, and, after all, perhaps the best and most interesting of the whole, is that entitled "Annals of the Parish," comprising in one little volume of about four hundred pages the domestic chronicle of a worthy minister, on the coast of Ayrshire, for a period of no less than fifty-one years, from 1760 to 1810. The primitive simplicity of the pastor's character, tinctured as it is by his professional habits and sequestered situation, form but a part of the attraction of this work. The brief and natural notices of the public events which signalised the long period through which it extends, and the slight and transient effects they produced on the tranquil lives and peaceful occupations of his remote parishioners, have not only a natural, we think, but a moral and monitory effect; and, while they revive in our own breasts the almost forgotten impressions of our childhood and early youth, as to the same transactions, make us feel the actual insignificance of those successive occurrences which, each in its turn, filled the minds of his contemporaries, and the little real concern which the bulk of mankind have in the public history of their day. This quiet and detailed retrospect of fifty years, brings the true moment and value of the events it embraces to the test, as it were, of their actual operation on particular societies; and helps to dissipate the illusion, by which private persons are so frequently led to suppose, that they have a personal interest in the wisdom of cabinets, or shipmaster, that was lost at sea with his vessel. She the madness of princes. The humble sim- morning to night she sat at her wheel, spinning the was a genty body, calm and methodical. plicity of the chronicler's character assists, no finest lint, which suited well with her pale hands. doubt, this sobering effect of his narrative. She never changed her widow's weeds, and she The natural and tranquil manner in which he was aye as if she had just been ta'en out of a bandputs down great things by the side of little box. The tear was aften in her e'e when the bairns and considers as exactly on the same level, spirit was lighted up with gladness, although, poor were at the school; but when they came home, her the bursting of the parish mill-dam and the woman, she had many a time very little to give commencement of the American troubles-them. They were, however, wonderful well-bred the victory of Admiral Rodney and the dona-things, and took with thankfulness whatever she tion of 50l. to his kirk-session,-are all equally edifying and agreeable; and illustrate, in a very pleasing way, that law of intellectual, as well as of physical optics, by which small things at hand uniformly appear greater than large ones at a distance. The great charm of the work, however, is in the traits of character which it discloses, and the commendable brevity with which the whole chronicle is digested. We know scarcely any instance in which a modern writer has shown such forbearance and consideration for his readers. With very considerable powers of humour, the ludricous incidents are never dwelt upon with any tediousness, nor pushed to the length of burlesque or caric ature-and the more seducing touches of pathos with which the work abounds, are intermingled and cut short, with the same sparing and judicious hand-so that the temperate and natural character of the pastor is thus, by a rare merit and felicity, made to After so much praise, we are rather afraid to make any extracts for the truth is, that there is not a great deal of matter in the book, and a good deal of vulgarity—and that it is only good-natured people, with something of the annalist's own simplicity, that will be as much pleased with it as we have been. For the sake of such persons, however, we will venture on a few specimens. Here is the description of Mrs. Malcolm. "Secondly. I have now to speak of the coming of Mrs. Malcolm. She was the widow of a Clyde From set before them, for they knew that their father, the breadwinner, was away, and that she had to work sore for their bit and drap. I dare say, the only vexation that ever she had from any of them, on their own account, was when Charlie, the eldest laddie, had won fourpence at pitch and toss at the school, which he brought home with a proud heart to his mother. I happened to be daunrin' bye at night. And there was she sitting with the silent the time, and just looked in at the door to say gude tear on her cheek, and Charlie greeting as if he had done a great fault, and the other four looking on with sorrowful faces. Never, I am sure, did Charlie Malcolm gamble after that night. "I often wondered what brought Mrs. Malcolm to our clachan, instead of going to a populous town, where she might have taken up a huxtry-shop, as she was but of a silly constitution, the which would have been better for her than spinning from morning to far in the night, as if she was in verity drawing the thread of life. But it was, no doubt, from an daughter Effie was ill with the measles-the poor honest pride to hide her poverty; for when her lassie was very ill-nobody thought she could come through; and when she did get the turn, she was for many a day a heavy handful; our session being The good youth gets into the navy, and distinguishes himself in various actions. This is the catastrophe. rich, and nobody on it but cripple Tammy Daidles, | thought it was but a foreign hawk, with a yellow that was at that time known through all the country head and green feathers."-Ibid. pp. 44, 45. side for begging on a horse, I thought it my duty to call upon Mrs. Malcolm in a sympathising way, and offer her some assistance-but she refused it. No, sir,' said she. I canna take help from the poor's box, although it's very true that I am in great need; for it might hereafter be cast up to my bairns, whom "But, oh! the wicked wastry of life in war! In t may please God to restore to better circumstances less than a month after, the news came of a victory when I am no to see't; but I would fain borrow over the French fleet, and by the same post I got a five pounds, and if, sir, you will write to Mr. Mait- letter from Mr. Howard, that was the midshipman land, that is now the Lord Provost of Glasgow, and who came to see us with Charles, telling me that tell him that Marion Shaw would be obliged to poor Charles had been mortally wounded in the achim for the lend of that soom, I think he will not tion, and had afterwards died of his wounds. He fail to send it.' was a hero in the engagement,' said Mr. Howard, "I wrote the letter that night to Provost Mait-and he died as a good and a brave man should.'land, and, by the retour of the post, I got an answer, These tidings gave me one of the sorest hearts I with twenty pounds for Mrs. Malcolm, saying, that ever suffered; and it was long before I could gather it was with sorrow he heard so small a trifle could fortitude to disclose the tidings to poor Charles' be serviceable.' When I took the letter and the mother. But the callants of the school had heard of money, which was in a bank-bill, she said, 'This the victory, and were going shouting about, and had is just like himsel.' She then told me, that Mr. set the steeple bell a-ringing, by which Mrs. MalMaitland had been a gentleman's son of the east colm heard the news; and knowing that Charles' country, but driven out of his father's house, when ship was with the fleet, she came over to the Manse a laddie, by his step-mother; and that he had served in great anxiety, to hear the particulars, somebody as a servant lad with her father, who was the Laird telling her that there had been a foreign letter to me of Yillcogie, but ran through his estate, and left by the post-man. her, his only daughter, in little better than beggary with her auntie, the mother of Captain Malcolm, her husband that was. Provost Maitland in his servitude, had ta'en a notion of her; and when he recovered his patrimony, and had become a great Glasgow merchant, on hearing how she was left by her father, he offered to marry her, but she had promised herself to her cousin the Captain, whose widow she was. He then married a rich lady, and in time grew, as he was, Lord Provost of the City; but his letter with the twenty pounds to me, showed that he had not forgotten his first love. It was a short, but a well-written letter, in a fair hand of write, containing much of the true gentleman; and Mrs. Malcolm said, Who knows but out of the regard he once had for their mother, he may do something for my five helpless orphans." "—Annals of the Parish, pp. 16-21. "When I saw her I could not speak, but looked at her in pity! and the tear fleeing up into my eyes, she guessed what had happened. After giving a deep and sore sigh, she inquired, How did he be have? I hope well, for he was aye a gallant laddie!'-and then she wept very bitterly. However, growing calmer, I read to her the letter, and when I had done, she begged me to give it her to keep, saying. It's all that I have now left of my pretty boy; but it's mair precious to me than the wealth of the Indies;' and she begged me to return thanks to the Lord, for all the comforts and manifold mercies with which her lot had been blessed, since the hour she put her trust in Him alone, and that was when she was left a pennyless widow, with her five fatherless bairns. It was just an edification of the spirit, to see the Christian resignation of this wor thy woman. Mrs. Balwhidder was confounded, and said, there was more sorrow in seeing the deep Charles afterwards goes to sea, and comes grief of her fortitude, than tongue could tell. home unexpectedly. "One evening, towards the gloaming, as I was taking my walk of meditation, I saw a brisk sailor laddie coming towards me. He had a pretty green parrot, sitting on a bundle, tied in a Barcelona silk handkerchief, which he carried with a stick over his shoulder, and in this bundle was a wonderful big nut, such as no one in our parish had ever seen. It was called a cocker-nut. This blithe callant was Charlie Malcolm, who had come all the way that day his leaful lane, on his own legs from Greenock, where the Tobacco trader was then 'livering her cargo. I told him how his mother, and his brothers, and his sisters were all in good health, and went to convoy him home; and as we were going along, he told me many curious things: and he gave me six beautiful yellow limes, that he had brought in his pouch all the way across the seas, for me to make a bowl of punch with! and I thought more of them than if they had been golden guineas-it was so mindful of the laddie. "When we got to the door of his mother's house, she was sitting at the fire-side, with her three other bairns at their bread and milk, Kate being then with Lady Skimmilk, at the Breadland, sewing. It was between the day and dark, when the shuttle stands still till the lamp is lighted. But such a shout of joy and thankfulness as rose from that hearth, when Charlie went in! The very parrot, ye would have thought, was a participator, for the beast gied a skraik that made my whole head dirl; and the neighbours came flying and flocking to see what was the matter, for it was the first parrot ever seen within the bounds of the parish, and some "Having taken a glass of wine with her, I walked out to conduct her to her own house, but in the way we met with a severe trial. All the weans were out parading with napkins and kail-blades on sticks, rejoicing and triumphing in the glad tidings of victory. But when they saw me and Mrs. Malcolm coming slowly along, they guessed what had happened, and threw away their banners of joy; and, standing all up in a row, with silence and sadness, along the kirk-yard wall as we passed, showed an instinct of compassion that penetrated to my very soul. The poor mother burst into fresh afflic tion, and some of the bairns into an audible weeping; and, taking one another by the hand, they followed us to her door, like mourners at a funeral. Never was such a sight seen in any town before. The neighbours came to look at it, as we walked along; and the men turned aside to hide their faces, while the mothers pressed their babies fondlier to their bosoms, and watered their innocent faces with their tears. "I prepared a suitable sermon, taking as the words of my text, Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, for your strength is laid waste.' But when I saw around me so many of my people, clad in complimentary mourning for the gallant Charles Malcolm, and that even poor daft Jenny Gaffaw, and her daughter, had on an old black ribbon; and when I thought of him, the spirited laddie, coming home from Jamaica, with his parrot on his shoulder, and his limes for me, my heart filled full, and I was obliged to sit down in the pulpit and drop a tear."-Ibid. pp. 214-218. We like these tender passages the bestbut the reader should have a specimen of the humorous vein also. The following we think a cartel, took up a dancing-school at Ireville, the excellent. "In the course of the summer, just as the roof was closing in of the school-house, my lord came to the castle with a great company, and was not there a day till he sent for me to come over on the next Sunday, to dine with him; but I sent him word that I could not do so, for it would be a transgression of the Sabbath; which made him send his own gentleman, to make his apology for having taken so great a liberty with me, and to beg me to come on the Monday, which I accordingly did, and nothing could be better than the discretion with which I was used. There was a vast company of English ladies and gentlemen, and his lordship, in a most jocose manner, told them all how he had fallen on the midden, and how I had clad him in my clothes, and there was a wonder of laughing and diversion: But the most particular thing in the company, was a large, round-faced man, with a wig, that was a dignitary in some great Episcopalian church in London, who was extraordinary condescending towards me, drinking wine with me at the table, and saying weighty sentences in a fine style of language, about the becoming grace of simplicity and innocence of heart, in the clergy of all denominations of Christians, which I was pleased to hear; for really he had a proud red countenance, and I could not have thought he was so mortified to humility within, had I not heard with what sincerity he delivered himself, and seen how much reverence and attention was paid to him by all present, particularly by my lord's chaplain, who was a pious and pleasant young divine, though educated at Oxford for the Episcopalian persuasion. which art he had learned in the genteelest fashion, in the mode of Paris, at the French court. Such a thing as a dancing-school had never, in the memory of man, been known in our country side; and there was such a sound about the steps and cotillions of Mr. Macskipnish, that every lad and lass, that could spare time and siller, went to him, to the great neglect of their work. The very bairns on the loan, instead of their wonted play, gaed linking and louping in the steps of Mr. Macskipnish, who was, to be sure, a great curiosity, with long spindle legs, his breast shot out like a duck's, and his head powdered and frizzled up like a tappit-hen. He was, indeed, the proudest peacock that could be seen, and he had a ring on his finger, and when he came to drink his tea at the Breadland, he brought no hat on his head, but a droll cockit thing under his arm, which, he said, was after the manner of the courtiers at the petty suppers of one Madame Pumpadour, who was at that time the concubine of the French king. "I do not recollect any other remarkable thing that happened in this year. The harvest was very abundant, and the meal so cheap, that it caused a great defect in my stipend, so that I was obligated to postpone the purchase of a mahogany scrutoire for my study, as I had intended. But I had not the heart to complain of this; on the contrary, I rejoiced thereat, for what made me want my scrutoire till another year, had carried blitheness into the hearth of the cotter, and made the widow's heart sing with joy; and I would have been an unnatural creature, had I not joined in the universal gladness, because plenty did abound."-Ibid. pp. 30—32. We shall only try the patience of our readers farther with the death of Nanse Banks, the old parish school-mistress. and mother. However, about the decline of the year her complaints increased, and she sent for me to consult about her giving up the school; and I went to see her on a Saturday afternoon, when the bit lassies, her scholars, had put the house in order, and gone home till the Monday. "One day soon after, as I was sitting in my closet conning a sermon for the next Sunday, I was surprised by a visit from the dean, as the dignitary "She had been long in a weak and frail state, was called. He had come, he said, to wait on me but, being a methodical creature, still kept on the as rector of the parish, for so it seems they call a pastor in England, and to say, that, if it was agree-school, laying the foundation for many a worthy wife able, he would take a family dinner with us before he left the castle. I could make no objection to his kindness, but said I hoped my lord would come with him, and that we would do our best to entertain them with all suitable hospitality. About an hour or so after he had returned to the castle, one of the flunkies brought a letter from his lordship to say, that not only he would coine with the dean, but that they would bring the other guests with them, and that, as they could only drink London wine, the butler would send me a hamper in the morning, assured, as he was pleased to say, that Mrs. Balwhidder would otherwise provide good cheer. "This notification, however, was a great trouble to my wife, who was only used to manufacture the produce of our glebe and yard to a profitable pur: pose, and not used to the treatment of deans and lords, and other persons of quality. However, she was determined to stretch a point on this occasion, and we had, as all present declared, a charming dinner; for fortunately one of the sows had a litter of pigs a few days before, and, in addition to a goose, that is but a boss bird, we had a roasted pig, with an apple in its mouth, which was just a curiosity to see; and my lord called it a tythe pig, but I told him it was one of Mrs. Balwhidder's own clecking, which saying of mine made no little sport when expounded to the dean."-Annals of the Parish, pp. 136-141. We add the description of the first dancingmaster that had been seen in these parts in the year 1762. "She was sitting in the window-nook, reading THE WORD to herself, when I entered; but she clos ed the book, and put her spectacles in for a mark when she saw me: and, as it was expected I would come, her easy chair, with a clean cover, had been set out for me by the scholars, by which I discerned that there was something more than common to happen, and so it appeared when I had taken my troubles me sairly. I have warsled with poortith in seat. Sir,' said she. I hae sent for you on a thing this shed, which it has pleased the Lord to allow me to possess; but my strength is worn out, and I fear I maun yield in the strife;' and she wiped her eve with her apron. I told her, however, to be of good cheer; and then she said, that she could no longer and ready to lay herself down to die whenever the thole the din of the school; and that she was weary, Lord was pleased to permit. But,' continued she, 'what can I do without the school? and, alas! I can neither work nor want; and I am wae to go on the Session, for I am come of a decent family. I comforted her, and told her, that I thought she had done so much good in the parish, that the Session was deep in her debt, and that what they might give her was but a just payment for her service. I would rather, however, sir,' said she, try first what some of my auld scholars will do, and it was for that I wanted to speak with you. If some of "Also a thing happened in this year, which de- them would but just, from time to time, look in serves to be recorded, as manifesting what effect the upon me, that I may not die alane; and the little smuggling was beginning to take on the morals of pick and drap that I require would not be hard upor the country side. One Mr. Macskipnish, of High-them-I am more sure that in this way their gratiland parentage, who had been a valet-de-chambre tude would be no discredit, than I am of having any with a Major in the campaigns, and taken a prisoner claim on the Session.' with him by the French, he having come home in "As I had always a great respect for an honest |