of their plays could he take an active share; | of the bold and daring that Lawrie Logan was but sitting a little way off, still attached to the not, in our belief, able to perform? We were merry brotherhood, though in their society he all several years younger-boys from nine to had no part to enact, he read his book on the fifteen-and he had shot up into sudden manknoll, or, happy dreamer, sunk away among | hood-not only into its shape but its strength the visions of his own thoughts. There was yet still the boyish spirit was fresh within poetry in that child's spirit, but it was too es- him, and he never wearied of us in such exsentially blended with his whole happiness in cursions. The minister had a good opinion life, often to be imbodied in written words. of his principles, knowing how he had been A few compositions were found in his own brought up, and did not discountenance his small beautiful handwriting after his death- visits to the Manse, nor ours to Logan Braes. hymns and psalms. Prayers, too, had his Then what danger could we be in, go where heart indited-but they were not in measured we might, with one who had more than once language-framed, in his devout simplicity on shown how eager he was to risk his own life the model of our Lord's. How many hundred when 'that of another was in jeopardy? Genetimes have we formed a circle round him in rous and fearless youth! To thee we owed the gloaming, all sitting or lying on the greens- our own life-although seldom is that rescue ward, before the dews had begun to descend, now remembered-(for what will not in this listening to his tales and stories of holy or turmoiling world be forgotten?) when in pride heroic men and women, who had been greatly of the newly-acquired art of swimming, we had good and glorious in the days of old! Not un- ventured-with our clothes on too-some ten endeared to his imagination were the patriots, yards into the Brother-Loch, to disentangle our who, living and dying, loved the liberties of line from the water-lilies. It seemed that a the land-Tell-Bruce-or Wallace, he in hundred cords had got entangled round our whose immortal name a thousand rocks rejoice, legs, and our heart quaked too desperately to while many a wood bears it on its summits as suffer us to shriek-but Lawrie Logan had his they are swinging to the storm. Weak as a hand on us in a minute, and brought us to reed that is shaken in the wind, or the stalk of shore as easily as a Newfoundland dog lands a flower that tremblingly sustains its blossoms a bit of floating wood. beneath the dews that feed their transitory lustre, was he whose lips were so eloquent to read the eulogies of mighty men of war riding mailed through bloody battles. What matters it that this frame of dust be frail, and of tiny size-still may it be the tenement of a lordly spirit. But high as such warfare was, it satisfied not that thoughtful child-for other warfare there was to read of, which was to him a far deeper and more divine delight-the war--the very throat of death and perdition. But fare waged by good men against the legions of sin, and closed triumphantly in the eye of God let this world deem as it will-on obscurest death-beds, or at the stake, or on the scaffold, where a profounder even than Sabbath silence glorifies the martyr far beyond any shout that from the immense multitude would have torn the concave of the heavens. What a contrast to that creature was his elder brother! Lawrie was eighteen years old when first we visited Logan Braes, and was a perfect hero in strength and stature-Bob Howie alone his equal-but Bob was then in the West Indies. In the afternoons, after his work was over in the fields or in the barn, he had pleasure in getting us Manse-boys to accompany him to the Moor-Lochs for an hour's angling or two in the evening, when the large trouts came to the gravelly shallows, and, as we waded midleg-deep, would sometimes take the fly among our very feet. Or he would go with us into the heart of the great wood, to show us where the foxes had their earths-the party being sometimes so fortunate as to see the cubs disporting at the mouth of the briery aperture in the strong and root-bound soil. Or we followed him, so far as he thought it safe for us to do so, up the foundations of the castle, and in fear and wonder that no repetition of the adventurous feat ever diminished, saw him take the young starling from the crevice beneath the tuft of wall-flowers. What was there But that was a momentary danger, and I.awrie Logan ran but small risk, you will say, in saving us; so let us not extol that instance of his intrepidity. But fancy to yourself, gentle reader, the hideous mouth of an old coal-pit, that had not been worked for time immemorial, overgrown with thorns, and briers, and brackens, but still visible from a small mount above it, for some yards down its throat can you fancy also the childish and superstitious terror with which we all regarded that coal-pit, for it was said to be a hundred fathom deep-with water at the bottom-so that you had to wait for many moments-almost a minute—before you heard a stone, first beating against its sides-from one to the other-plunge at last into the pool profound. In that very field, too, a murder had been perpetrated, and the woman's corpse flung by her sweetheart into that coal-pit. One day some unaccountable impulse had led a band of us into that interdicted field-which we remember was not arable-but said to be a place where a hare was always sure to be found sitting among the bin weeds and thistles. A sort of thrilling horror urged us on closer and closer to the mouth of the pit-when Wee Wise Willie's foot slipping on the brae, he bounded with inexplicable force along-in among the thorns, briers, and brackens-through the whole hanging mat and without a shriek, down-downdown into destruction. We all saw it happen every one of us-and it is scarcely too much to say, that we were for a while all mad with horror. Or horror. Yet we felt ourselves borne back instinctively from the horrible pit-and as aid we could give none, we listened if we could hear any cry-but there was none-and we all flew together out of the dreadful field, and again collecting ourselves together, feared to separate on the different roads to our homes. "Oh! can it be that our Wee Wise Willie has their sweet cousin too, Annie Raeburn, the orphan, were lying embraced in speechlessalmost senseless trances; for the agony of such a deliverance was more than could well by mortal creatures be endured. The child himself was the first to tell how his life had been miraculously saved. A few shrubs had for many years been growing out of the inside of the pit, almost as far down as the light could reach, and among them had he been entangled in his descent, and held fast. For days, and weeks, and months, after that deliverance, few persons visited Logan Braes, for it was thought that old Laurence's brain had received a shock from which it might never recover; but the trouble that tried him subsided, and the inside of the house was again quiet as before, and its hospitable door open to all the neighbours. Never forgetful of his primal duties had been that bold youth—but too apt to forget the many smaller ones that are wrapped round a life of poverty like invisible threads, and that cannot be broken violently or carelessly, without endangering the calm consistency of all its ongoings, and ultimately causing perhaps great losses, errors, and distress. He did not keep evil society-but neither did he shun it: and having a pride in feats of strength and activity, as was natural to a stripling whose corporeal faculties could not be excelled, he frequented all meetings where he was likely to fall in with worthy competitors, and in such trials of power, by degrees acquired a character for recklessness, and even violence, of which prudent men prognosticated evil, and that sorely disturbed his parents, who were, in their quiet retreat, lovers of all peace. With what wonder and admiration did all the Manseboys witness and hear reported the feats of Lawrie Logan! It was he who, in pugilistic combat, first vanquished Black King Carey the Egyptian, who travelled the country with two wives and a wagon of Staffordshire pottery, and had struck the "Yokel," as he called Lawrie, in the midst of all the tents on Leddrie Green, at the great annual Baldernoch fair. Six times did the bare and bronzed Egyptian bite the dust-nor did Lawrie Logan always stand against the blows of one whose provincial fame was high in England, as the head of the Rough-and-Ready School. Even now-as in an ugly dream-we see the combatants alternately prostrate, and returning to the encounter, covered with mire and blood All the women left the Green, and the old men shook their heads at such unchristian work; but Lawrie Logan did not want backers in the shepherds and the ploughmen, to see fair play against all the attempts of the Showmen and the Newcastle horse-cowpers, who laid their money thick on the King; till a right-hander in the pit of the stomach, which had nearly been the gipsy's everlasting quietus, gave the victory to Lawrie, amid acclamations that would have fitlier graced a triumph in a better cause. But that day was an evil day to all at Logan Braes. A recruiting sergeant got Lawrie into the tent, over which floated the co During that Psalm, father, mother, and both lours of the 42d Regiment, and in the intoxicatheir sons-the rescuer and the rescued-and | tion of victory, whisky, and the bagpipe, the 23 away, without speaking, down to the Bridge. young champion was as fairly enlisted into his | family within to themselves, and then walked Majesty's service, as ever young girl, without almost knowing it, was married at GretnaGreen; and as the 42d were under orders to sail in a week, gold could not have bought off such a man, and Lawrie Logan went on board a transport. After the lapse of an hour or more, and while we were all considering whether or no we should return to the house, the figure of Annie Raeburn was seen coming down the brae towards the party, in a way very unlike her usual staid and quiet demeanour, and stopping at some distance, to beckon with her hand more particularly, it was thought, on ourselves, as we stood a few yards apart from the rest. "Willie is worse, were the only words she said, as we hastened back together; and on entering the room, we found the old man uncertainly pacing the floor by himself, but with a composed countenance. "He expressed a wish to see you--but he is gone!" We followed into Willie's small bedroom and study, and beheld him already laid out, and his mother sitting as calmly beside him as if she were watching his sleep. "Sab not sae sair, Lawrie-God was gracious to let him live to this day, that he might dee in his brither's arms. The sun has mounted high in heaven, while thus we have been dreaming away the hours --a dozen miles at least have we slowly wandered over, since morning, along pleasant bypaths, where never dust lay, or from gate to gate of pathless enclosures, a trespasser fear guns. There is the turnpike-road-the great north and south road--for it is either the one or the other, according to the airt towards which you choose to turn your face. Behold a little WAYSIDE INN, neatly thatched, and with Logan Braes was not the same place-indeed, the whole parish seemed altered-after Lawrie was gone, and our visits were thenceforth any thing but cheerful ones, going by turns to inquire for Willie, who seemed to be pining away—not in any deadly disease, but just as if he himself knew, that without ailing much he was not to be a long liver. Yet nearly two years passed on, and all that time the principle of life had seemed like a flickering flame within him, that when you think it expiring or expired, streams up again with surprising brightness, and continues to glimmer ever steadily with a protracted light. Every week-nay, almost every day, they feared to lose him-yet there he still was at morning and evening prayers. The third spring after the loss of his brother was remarkably mild, and breathing with west-winds that came softened over many woody miles from the sea. He seemed stronger, and more cheerful, and expressed a wish that the Manse-boys, and some others of his companions, would come to Logan Braes, and once again celebrate May-less of those threatening nonentities, springday. There we all sat at the long table, and both parents did their best to look cheerful during the feast. Indeed, all that had, once been harsh and forbidding in the old man's looks and manners, was now softened down by the perpetual yearnings at his heart to-white-washed front, and sign-board hanging wards "the distant far and absent long," nor less towards him that peaceful and pious child whom every hour he saw, or thought he saw, awaiting a call from the eternal voice. Although sometimes sadness fell across us like a shadow, yet the hours passed on as May-day hours should do; and what with our manytoned talk and laughter, the cooing of the pigeons on the roof, and the twittering of the swallows beneath the eaves, and the lark-songs ringing like silver bells over all the heavens, it seemed a day that ought to bring good tidings-or, the Soldier himself returning from the wars to bless the eyes of his parents once more, so that they might die in peace. "Heaven hold us in its keeping, for there's his wraith!" ejaculated Annie Raeburn. "It passed before the window, and my Lawrie, I now know, is with the dead!"-Bending his stately head beneath the lintel of the door, in the dress, and with the bearing of a soldier, Lawrie Logan stepped again across his father's threshold and, ere he well uttered "God be with you all!" Willie was within his arms, and on his bosom. His father and his mother rose not from their chairs, but sat still, with faces like ashes. But we boys could not resist our joy, and shouted his name aloud-while Luath, from his sleep in the corner, leapt on his master breast-high, and whining his dumb delight, frisked round him as of yore, when impatient to snuff the dawn on the hill-side. "Let us go out and play," said a boy's voice, and issuing somewhat seriously into the sunshine, we left the from a tree, on which are painted the figures of two jolly gentlemen, one in kilts and the other in breeches, shaking hands cautiously across a running brook. The meal of all meals is a paulo-post-meridian breakfast. The rosiness of the combs of the strapping hens is good augury;-hark, a cackle from the barnanother egg is laid--and chanticleer, stretching himself up on claw-tip, and clapping his wings of the bonny beaten gold, crows aloud to his sultana till the welkin rings. "Turn to the left, sir, if you please," quoth a comely matron; and we find ourselves snugly seated in an armchair, not wearied, but to rest willing, while the clock ticks pleasantly, and we take no note of time but by its gain; for here is our journal, in which we shall put down a few jottings for MAX-DAY. Three boiled eggs-one to each penny-roll--are sufficient, under any circumstances, along with the same number fried with mutton-ham, for the breakfast of a Gentleman and a Tory. Nor do we rememberwhen tea-cups have been on a proper scaleever to have wished to go beyond the Golden Rule of Three. In politics, we confess that we are rather ultra; but in all things else we love moderation. "Come in, my bonny little lassie-ye needna keep keekin' in that gate fra ahint the door"-and in a few minutes the curly-pated prattler is murmuring on our knee. The sonsie wife, well pleased with the sight, and knowing, from our kindness to children, that we are on the same side of politics with her gudeman-Ex-sergeant in the Black Watch. and once Orderly to Garth himself-brings out | tiled, and partly open to the elements, with its her ain bottle from the spence-a hollow square, naked rafters. Broken windows repaired with and green as emerald. Bless the gurgle of its an old petticoat, or a still older pair of breeches, honest mouth! With prim lips mine hostess and walls that had always been plastered and kisses the glass, previously letting fall a not better plastered and worse plastered, in frosty inelegant curtsey-for she had, we now learned, weather-all labour in vain, as crumbling been a lady's maid in her youth to one who is patches told, and variegated streaks, and stains indeed a lady, all the time her lover was abroad of dismal ochre, meanest of all colours, and in the army, in Egypt, Ireland, and the West still symptomatic of want, mismanagement, Indies, and Malta, and Guernsey, Sicily, Por- | bankruptcy, and perpetual flittings from a tenetugal, Holland, and, we think she said, Corfu. | ment that was never known to have paid any One of the children has been sent to the field, rent. Then what a pair of drunkards were where her husband is sowing barley, to tell | old Saunders and his spouse! Yet never once him that there is fear lest dinner cool; and the were they seen drunk on a Sabbath, or a fastmistress now draws herself up in pride of his day-regular kirk-goers, and attentive observnoble appearance, as the stately Highlander ers of ordinances. They had not very many salutes us with the respectful but bold air of children, yet, pass the door when you might, one who has seen some service at home and you were sure to hear a squall or a shriek, or abroad. Never knew we a man make other the ban of the mother, or the smacking of the than a good bow, who had partaken freely in a palm of the hand on the part of the enemy charge of bayonets. easiest of access; or you saw one of the Shenstone's lines about always meeting the ragged fiends pursued by a parent round the warmest welcome in an inn, are very natural corner, and brought back by the hair of the and tender—as most of his compositions are, head till its eyes were like those of a Chinese. when he was at all in earnest. For our own Now, what decency-what neatness- - what part, we cannot complain of ever meeting any order-in this household-this private public! other welcome than a warm one, go where we into which customers step like neighbours on may; for we are not obtrusive, and where we a visit, and are served with a heartiness and are not either liked, or loved, or esteemed, or good-will that deserve the name of hospitality, admired, (that last is a strong word, yet we all for they are gratuitous, and can only be repaid have our admirers,) we are exceeding chary in kind. A limited prospect does that latticedof the light of our countenance. But at an window command-and the small panes cut inn, the only kind of welcome that is indis-objects into too many parts-little more than pensable, is a civil one. When that is not the breadth of the turnpike road, and a hunforthcoming, we shake the dust, or the dirt, dred yards of the same, to the north and to the off our feet, and pursue our journey, well as-south, with a few budding hedgerows, half a sured that a few milestones will bring us to a dozen trees, and some green braes. Yet could humaner roof. Incivility and surliness have we sit and moralize, and intellectualize, for occasionally given us opportunities of behold- hours at this window, nor hear the striking ing rare celestial phenomena-meteors-fall- clock. ing and shooting stars-the Aurora Borealis, There trips by a blooming maiden of middle in her shifting splendours-haloes round the degree all alone-the more's the pity—yet permoon, variously bright as the rainbow-elec-fectly happy in her own society, and one we trical arches forming themselves on the sky in venture to say who never received a love-leta manner so wondrously beautiful, that we ter, valentines excepted, in all her innocent should be sorry to hear them accounted for by days. A fat man sitting by himself in a gig! philosophers-one half of the horizon blue, and somewhat red in the face, as if he had dined without a cloud, and the other driving tempes-early, and not so sure of the road as his horse, tuously like the sea-foam, with waves mountain- who has drunk nothing but a single pailful of high-and divinest show of all for a solitary water, and is anxious to get to town that he night-wandering man, who has any thing of a may be rubbed down, and see oats once more. soul at all, far and wide, and high up into the Scamper away, ye joyous schoolboys, and, for gracious heavens, Planets and Stars all burn-your sake, may that cloud breathe forth rain ing as if their urns were newly fed with and breeze, before you reach the burn, which light, not twinkling as they do in a dewy or a you seem to fear may run dry before you can vapoury night, although then, too, are the see the Pool where the two-pounders lie. Mesoftened or veiled luminaries beautiful-but thinks we know that old woman, and of the large, full, and free over the whole firmament first novel we write she shall be the heroine. -a galaxy of shining and unanswerable argu-Ha! a brilliant bevy of mounted maidens, in ments in proof of the Immortality of the Soul. riding-habits, and Spanish hats, with "swaling The whole world is improving; nor can there feathers"-sisters, it is easy to see, and daughbe a pleasanter proof of that than this very wayside inn-ycleped the SALUTATION. What a miserable pot-house it was long ago, with a rusty-hinged door, that would neither open nor shut-neither let you out nor in-immovable and intractable to foot or hand-or all at once, when you least expected it to yield, slamming to with a bang; à constant puddle in front during rainy weather, and heaped up dust in dry-roof partly thatched, partly slated, partly ters of one whom we either loved, or thought we loved; but now they say she is fat and vulgar, is the devil's own scold, and makes her servants and her husband lead the lives of slaves. All that we can say is, that once on a time it was tout une autre chose; for a smaller foot, and a slimmer ankle, a more delicate waist, arms more lovely, reposing in their gracefulness beneath her bosom, tresses of brighter and more burnished auburn-such starlike eyes, thrilling without seeking to reach | poltroon; two of the Seven Young Men-all the soul-But phoo! phoo! phoo! she mar- that now survive-impatient of the drudgery ried a jolted-headed squire with two thousand of the compting-house, and the injustice of acres, and, in self-defence, has grown fat, vul- the age-but they, we believe, are in the band gar, and a scold. There is a Head for a painter!-the triangle and the serpent; twelve cottonand what perfect peace and placidity all over spinners at the least; six weavers of woollens; the Blind Man's countenance! He is not a He is not a a couple of colliers from the bowels of the beggar, although he lives on alms-those sight- earth; and a score of miscellaneous rabbleless orbs ask not for charity, nor yet those flunkies long out of place, and unable to live withered hands, as, staff-supported, he stops on their liveries-felons acquitted, or that have at the kind voice of the traveller, and tells his dreed their punishment-picked men from the story in a few words. On the ancient Dervise shilling galleries of playhouses-and the élite moves, with his long silvery hair, journeying of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look contentedly in darkness towards the eternal how all the rogues and reprobates march like light. A gang of gipsies! with their numer- one man! Alas! was it of such materials that ous assery laden with horn-spoons, pots, and our conquering army was made?—were such pans, and black-eyed children. We should not the heroes of Talavera, Salamanca, Vittoria, be surprised to read some day in the newspa- and Waterloo? pers, that the villain who leads the van had been executed for burglary, arson, and murder. That is the misfortune of having a bad physiognomy, a sidelong look, a scarred cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer-long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails-a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken-so noiseless his stealthy advances-the unchained mastiff in his kennel. Why not, and what then? Heroes are but men after all. Men, as men go, are the materials of which heroes are made; and recruits in three years ripen into veterans. Cowardice in one campaign is disciplined into courage, fear into valour. In presence of the enemy, pickpockets become patriots-members of the swell mob volunteer on forlorn hopes, and step out from the ranks to head the storm! Lord bless you! have you not studied sympathy and l'esprit de corps? An army fifty thousand strong consists, we shall suppose, in equal portions of saints and sinners; and saints and sinners are all English, Irish, Scottish. What wonder, then, that they drive all resistance to the devil, and go on from victory to victory, keeping all the cathedrals and churches in England hard at work with all their organs, from Christmas to Christmas, blowing Te Deum? You must not be permitted too curiously to analyze the composition of the British army or the British navy. Look at them, think of them as Wholes, with Nelson or Wellington the head, and in one slump pray God to bless the defenders of the throne, the hearth, and the altar. The baggage-wagons halt, and some refreshments are sent for to the women and children. Ay, creatures not far advanced in their teens are there-a year or two ago, at school or service, happy as the day was long, now mothers, with babies at their breasts-happy still perhaps; but that pretty face is wofully wan-that hair did not use to be so dishevelled-and bony, and clammy, and blue-veined is the hand that lay so white, and warm, and smooth, in the grasp of the seducer. Yet she thinks she is his wife; and, in truth, there is a ring on her marriage-finger. But, should the regiment embark, so many women, and no more, are suffered to go with a company; and, should one of the lots not fall on her, she may take of her husband an everlasting farewell. But, hark! the spirit-stirring music of fife and drum! A whole regiment of soldiers on their march to replace another whole regiment of soldiers-and that is as much as we can be expected to know about their movements. Food for the cannon's mouth; but the maw of war has been gorged and satiated, and the glittering soap-bubbles of reputation, blown by windy-cheeked Fame from the bowl of her pipe, have all burst as they have been clutched by the hands of tall fellows in red raiment, and with feathers on their heads, just before going to lie down on what is called the bed of honour. Melancholy indeed to think, that all these fine, fierce, ferocious, fire-eaters are doomed, but for some unlooked-for revolution in the affairs of Europe and the world, to die in their beds! Yet there is some comfort in thinking of the composition of a Company of brave defenders of their country. It is, we shall suppose, Seventy strong. Well, jot down three ploughmen, genuine clodhoppers, chawbacons sans peur et sans reproche, except that the overseers of the parish were upon them with orders of affiliation; and one shepherd, who made contradictory statements about the number of the spring lambs, and in whose house had been found during winter certain fleeces, for The Highflier Coach! carrying six in, and which no ingenuity could account; a laird's twelve outsides-driver and guard excluded— son, long known by the name of the Ne'er- rate of motion eleven miles an hour, with stopdoweel; a Man of tailors, forced to accept the pages. Why, in the name of Heaven, are all bounty-money-during a protracted strike people now-a-days in such haste and hurry? not dungs they, but flints all the nine; a bar- Is it absolutely necessary that one and all of ber, like many a son of genius, ruined by this dozen and a half Protestants and Catholics his wit, and who, after being driven from pole-alike anxious for emancipation-should be to pole, found refuge in the army at last; a at a particular place, at one particular moment bankrup, butcher, once a bully, and now a of time out of the twenty-four hours given to |