"It's honour, mother!-It's honour, brother!-Honour bright, my own Kathleen!"

Although the poor fellow was a private, this appeal was so public, that I did not hesitate to go down and inquire into the particulars of the distress. It appeared that he had been home, on Furlough, to visit his family,-and having exceeded as he thought the term of his leave, he was going to rejoin his regiment, and to undergo the penalty of his neglect. I asked him when the Furlough expired.

"The first of March, your honour-bad luck to it of all the black days in the world,-and here it is, come sudden on me like a shot!"

It

"The first of March!-why, my good fellow, you have a day to spare then, the first of March will not be here till to-morrow. is Leap Year, and February has twenty-nine days."

The soldier was thunderstruck.-" Twenty-nine days is it?You're sartin of that same !-Oh, Mother, Mother!-the Divil fly away wid yere ould Almanack-a base cratur of a book, to be deceaven one, afther living so long in the family of us!"

His first impulse was to cut a caper on the roof of the coach, and throw up his cap, with a loud Hurrah!-His second, was to throw himself into the arms of Kathleen, and the third, was to wring my hand off in acknowledgment.

"It's a happy man I am, your Honour, for my word's saved, and all by your Honour's manes.-Long life to your Honour for the same!—May ye live a long hundred—and lape-years every one of them!"

CONCLUSION

OF THE

"SONGS OF ISRAEL."

My song hath closed, the holy dream
That raised my thoughts o'er all below

Hath faded like the lunar beam,

And left me mid a night of woe-
To look and long, and sigh in vain
For friends I ne'er shall meet again.

And yet the earth is green and gay;
And yet the skies are pure and bright;

But mid each gleam of pleasure gay,
Some cloud of sorrow dims my sight:

For weak is now the tenderest tongue
That might my simple songs have sung

And like Gilead's drops of balm,

They for a moment sooth'd my breast;
But earth hath not a power to calm
My spirit in forgetful rest

Until I lay me side by side

With those that loved me and have died.

They died—and this a world of woe,

Of anxious doubt and chilling fear;

I wander onward to the tomb,

With scarce a hope to linger here:

But with a prospect to rejoin

The friends beloved, that once were mine.

KNOX

TREES

TREES are indeed the glory, the beauty, and the delight of nature. The man who loves not Trees-to look at them-to lic under them to climb up them, (once more a school-boy,)—would make no bones of murdering Mrs Jeffs. In what one imaginable attribute, that it ought to possess, is a Tree, pray, deficient? Light, shade, shelter, coolness, freshness, music, all the colours of the rainbow, dew and dreams dropping through their umbrageous twilight at eve or morn,-drooping direct,-soft, sweet, soothing, and restorative, from heaven. Without Trees, how in the name of wonder, could we have had houses, ships, bridges, easy-chairs, or coffins, or almost any single one of the necessaries, conveniences, or comforts of life? Without Trees, one man might have been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but not another with a wooden ladle.

Tree by itself Tree, "such tents the patriarchs loved,"-Ipse nemus,—" the brotherhood of Trees," the Grove, the Coppice, the Wood, the Forest,-dearly, and after a different fashion, do we love you all!-And love you all we shall, while our dim eyes can catch the glimmer, our dull ears the murmur, of the leaves,-or our imagination hear at midnight, the far-off swing of old branches groaning in the tempest. Oh! is not Merry also Sylvan England' And has not Scotland, too, her old pine forests, blackening

up her Highland mountains? Are not many of her rivered valleys not unadorned with woods,-her braes beautiful with their birken shaws?-And does not stately ash or sycamore tower above the kirk-spire, in many a quiet glen, overshadowing the humble house of God, "the dial-stone aged and green," and all the deepsunk, sinking, or upright array of grave-stones, beneath which

"The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep ?"

We have the highest respect for the ghost of Dr Johnson; yet were we to meet it by moonlight, how should we make it hang its head on the subject of Scottish Trees! Look there, you old, blind, blundering blockhead! That Pine Forest is twenty miles square! Many million trees, there, have at least five hundred arms each, six times as thick as ever your body was, Sir, when you were at your very fattest in Bolt Court. As for their trunks-some straight as cathedral pillars-some flung all awry in their strength across cataracts--some without a twig till your eye meets the hawk's nest diminished to a black-bird's, and some overspread, from within a man's height of the mossy sward, with fantastic branches, conecovered, and green as emerald-what say you, you great, big, lum. bering, unwieldy ghost you, to trunks like these? And are not the Forests of Scotland the most forgiving that ever were selfsown, to suffer you to fit to and fro, haunting unharmed their ancient umbrage? Yet-Doctor-you were a fine old Tory every inch of you, for all that, my boy-so come glimmering away with you into the gloom after us-don't stumble over the rootswe smell a still at work-and neither you nor I-shadow nor substance (but, prithee, why so wan, good Doctor? Prithee, why so wan?) can be much the worse, eh, of a caulker of Glenlivat?

Every man of landed property, that lies fairly out of arm's length of a town, whether free or copyhold, be its rental above or below forty shillings a-year, should be a planter. Even an old bachelor, who has no right to become the father of a child, is not only free, but in duty bound to plant a Tree. Unless his organ of philoprogenitiveness be small indeed, as he looks at the young, tender plants in his own nursery-garden, his heart will yearn towards them with all the longing and instinctive fondness of a father. As he beholds them putting forth the tender buds of hope, he will be careful to preserve them from all blight, he will "teach the young idea how to shoot,"-and, according to their different natures, he will send them to different places to complete their education, according as they are ultimately intended for the church, the bar, or the navy. The old gentleman will be surprised to see how soon his young plants have grown as tall as

himself, even though he should be an extraordinary member of the Six Feet Club. An oak sapling, of some five or six springs, shall measure with him on his stocking-soles,—and a larch, considerably younger, laugh to shake its pink cones far over his wig. But they are all dutiful children, never go stravaiging from home after youthful follies,-and standing together in beautiful bands, and in majestic masses, they will not suffer the noon-day sun to smite their father's head, nor the winds of heaven to "visit his face too roughly."

People are sometimes prevented from planting trees by the slowness of their growth. What a mistake that is! People might just as well be prevented from being wed, because a man-child takes one-and-twenty years to get out of his minority, and a woman-child, except in hot climates, is rarely marriageable before fifteen. Not the least fear in the world, that Tommy and Thomasine and the Tree will grow up fast enough-wither at the top -and die! It is a strange fear to feel-a strange complaint to utter-that any one thing in this world, animate or inanimate, is of too slow growth; for the nearer to its perfection, the nearer to its decay.

No man, who enjoys good health, at fifty, or even sixty, would hesitate, if much in love, to take a wife, on the ground that he could have no hope or chance of seeing his numerous children all grown up into hobbledehoys and Priscilla Tomboys. Get your children first, and let them grow at their own leisure afterwards. In like manner, let no man, Bachelor or Benedict, be his age beyond the limit of conversational confession, fear to lay out a nursery-garden,-to fill it with young seedlings,-and thenceforward, to keep planting away, up hill and down brae, all the rest of his life.

Besides, in every stage, how interesting, both a wood and sap tree, and a flesh and blood child! Look at pretty, ten-year-old, rosy cheeked, golden-haired Mary, gazing, with all the blue brightness of her eyes, at that large dew-drop, which the sun has let escape unmelted even on into the meridian hours, on the topmost pink-bud, within which the teeming leaf struggles to expand into beauty,--the topmost pink-bud of that little lime-tree, but three winters old, and half a spring!-Hark! that is Harry, at home on a holiday, rustling like a roe in the coppicewood, in search of the nest of the blackbird or mavis;-yet ten years ago that rocky hillside was unplanted, and "that bold boy, so bright and beautiful," unborn. Who, then,-be his age what it may,-would either linger, "with fond, reluctant, amorous delay," to take unto himself a wife, for the purpose of having children, or to enclose a waste for the purpose of having trees.

At what time of life a human being,-man or woman,-looks best, it might be hard to say. A virgin of eighteen, straight and tall, bright, blooming, and balmy, seems, to our old eyes, a very beautiful and delightful sight. Inwardly we bless her, and pray that she may be as happy as she is innocent. So, too, is an Oaktree, about the same age, standing by itself, without a twig on its straight, smooth, round, glossy, silver stem, for some feet from the ground, and then branching out into a stately flutter of dark-green leaves; the shape being indistinct in its regular but not formal over-fallings, and over-foldings, and over-hangings, of light and shade. Such an Oak-tree is indeed truly beautiful, with all its tenderness, gracefulness, and delicacy,-ay, a delicacy almost seeming to be fragile,-as if the cushat, whirring from its concealment, would crush the new spring-shoots, sensitive almost as the gossamer, with which every twig is intertwined. Leaning on our staff, we bless it, and call it even by that very virgin's name; and ever thenceforth behold Louisa lying in its shade. Gentle reader, what it is to be an old, dreamy, visionary, prosing poet!

That sycamore,

Good God! let any one who accuses trees of laziness in growing, only keep out of sight of them for a few years; and then, returning home to them under cloud of night, all at once open his eyes, of a fine, sunny, summer's morning, and ask them how they have been since he and they mutually murmured farewell! He will not recognise the face, or the figure, of a single tree. whose top-shoot a cow, you know, browsed off, to the breaking of your heart, some four or five years ago, is now as high as the "riggin" of the cottage, and is murmuring with bees among its blossoms quite like an old tree. What precocity! That Wych elm, hide-bound as it seemed of yore, and with only one arm that it could hardly lift from its side, is now a Briareus. Is that the farch you used to hop over?-now almost fit to be a mast of one of the fairy fleet on Windermere!-You thought you would never have forgotten the Triangle of the Three Birches, but you stare at them now as if they had dropped from the clouds!-and since you think that beech-that round hill of leaves-is not the same shabby shrub you left sticking in the gravel, why call the old gardener hither, and swear him to its identity on the Bible.

Before this confounded gout attacked our toe, we were great pedestrians, and used to stalk about all over the banks and braes from sunrising to sunsetting, through all seasons of the year. Few sights used to please us more than that of a new Mansionhouse, or Villa, or Cottage ornee, rising up in some sheltered, but open-fronted nook, commanding a view of a few bends of a stream or river winding along old lea, or rich holm ploughed-fields,