Meantime, as two years make a considerable change in human life in regard to friends, acquaintances, and circumstances, as well as the feelings of our own mind, I had begun to perceive that I might as well have commenced shoe-making for myself in St. Boswell's here, which I believed to be, in most respects, after all, rather preferable to Bowden. In spite of my philosophy, I still was retaining a hankering desire after an occasional out-start to the trouting, for which St. Boswell's lay so convenient on the grand river, and I felt that whatever my necessity for constant work might continue to be, there still might be some favourable leisure hours out of the many twenty-fours of the long twelvemonths which might be spared for such congenial amusement as angling, which I found I could improve to purpose; and besides, I was still followed out from the river sides to Bowden for fly-dressing by all my fishing acquaintances, so that in a short time I found I would be obliged to do a great deal in the line gratis, unless I should make it a proper stated branch of my business for daily bread through life, as it eventually has been down to the present hour. I had several other reasons for cherishing a preference to St. Boswell's, such as my father's desire that I should be near him, for our mutual convenience, of course, as well as occasional assistance in daily occurring cases of less or more consequence.

But as there is always some main idea lurking, or moling, or nestling about the bottom of our soul, forming a quiet point of concentration for the swarm of vague desires, these out-aërial affections that are so ready to alight everywhere on their attractions,

like fluttering butterflies on flowers, so these other reasons were at best only as auxiliaries in sanction of the main argument, which, being heavier, lay deeper, and more shadowed in the mind.

This main weighty idea, then, was still a reasonable one, a desire of marriage, forsooth!—since, as I had formed such a taste for the right rational enjoyment of myself, I felt as if it would be gratifying to have more of self to enjoy. I conceived a wife to be a more real, substantial, and positive addition to a man, as a man, than all other possible acquisitions that he is capable of making on this side of time taken together. "And they twain shall be one flesh." What a delightfully grand addition to a man's corpus, besides the idea of double souls winging space together, and listening to the harmony of the spheres.

Here I had grown up slowly since first recollection, like the oak from the acorn, to a middle stature, and this by imperceptible degrees; but here, by splicing a wife alongside myself, I might, in an instant, make a most convenient addition, equal to another fiveand-twenty years' growth. Could anything be imagined so personally delightful, not to speak of the extra degrees of delight by being mutual? Oh! nothing on earth. And then another convenience was, I had one ready courted, or rather never courted; for the beauty of the matter was this, that whatever faults or failings she might have as a daughter of Eve, she was just wise enough to require no regular course of courtship, with its foolish accompaniments of worthless praise and protestations, such as it might be as amusing to teach a tame magpie, as to pour into the ear of the rational being whom

we wish to make a proper part of ourself for the term of our existence.

Your father had then died in the month of April of that year, 1811, and your sister was left alone in his rented cottage-room at St. Boswell's, with all her brothers scattered abroad amongst the French wars over the world; so that all that was a-wanting with her and myself was the appointment of the day of our union, and to manage that ceremony in as homely, cheap, and quiet a manner as possible.

Her house was already furnished with most of the few necessaries that people in our condition at the time required, and therefore I could leave my sister in my rented cottage at Bowden, with all the necessaries of furnishing that had been mutually ours, where she could still, for a time at least, keep our nephew conveniently at school, as he was getting on delightfully with his Latin and other branches.

When I married and left Bowden I had been two years and three months in it, in which time, according to my strictly-kept books, after deducting my expense of materials-leather, hemp, and rosinjourneyman's wages, &c., I found I had just earned at the rate of 1s 6d a day, or £28 a year, with which to keep house and haddin'; and £14 10s of this is never paid me to this day, nor ever will!

There was a country business for you!-this, too, while victual was very high under French war prices. I can at present recollect the exact price of only one article of provision, which I then bought from a neighbour, a strong bacon ham, for which I paid him one shilling per lb. By-the-by, I trusted him also seven and sixpence over and above the price of the

ham, which is also unforthcoming till the general restitution of all things! Is the world worse now

than it was then? No, nor likely ever to be!

CHAPTER XXV.

PIECE of autobiography, without something like exploit, intrigue, or loose living of one kind or other, may be considered dry and unfashionable-too tame even for ancient martyrs and "defenders of the faith" such as Daniel Defoe, John Bunyan, and Henry the Eighth, and may lead to a suspicion that the writer is either suppressing the darker shades of his character, or else has lived a life so tame and unimpassioned as to be unworthy of being recounted. But there is one thing worthy of remark, that a life of comparative continence by no means implies a feebleness of desire for the objects of sense, for one may easily ascertain from observation that there is often more loose living amongst people of merely medium propensities than individuals who might have the excuse of stronger passions to plead for their usual casual aberrations, or even for any career of vice. This matter depends not so much on the waywardness of passion, as on the moral virtue of the mind, exciting to nobler feelings, feelings that can only be gratified in the exercise of restraining the less virtuous inclinations. This is more a matter of balance of passion and principle