was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzingly: but now the radiance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine.

he stand during all his play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soulengrossing hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug-a tug! With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster-and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters and brothers, and cousins, and all the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten at the first blush of cold blood on his small fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up--pass over the curled darling's brow; and stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw-and at night, "cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep-a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!

Springs, summers, autumns, winters-each within itself longer, by many times longer than the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at last through one's fingers like a knotless thread

look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heeding aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistbandhigh, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white breakers of the sea. No hazel or willow wand, no half-crown rod of ash framed by village wright, is now in his practised hands, of which the very left is dexterous; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's proboscis-the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw-from butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses materialized! A fish-fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd-she is a salmon, therefore to be won"-but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead or worse than dead,

From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes of imaginary minnows, but a reality-an arta science of which the flaxen-headed schoolboy feels himself to be master-a mystery in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now all alone, in the power of successful passion to the distant brook-brook a mile offwith fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, between it and the house in which he is boarded or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy shallows-there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two pieces-yes, his line is of hair twisted-fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the plaited by his own soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! And the Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky. Fortuna favet fortibus-and with one long pull, and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelveincher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where such an exploit

lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or shower, even the most perishable of all perishable things in a world of perishing!—But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging-stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, relasping into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the water fall! Give her the butt-give her the butt-or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep!-Now comes the trial of your tackle-and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards-right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very course where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep-and the line goes steady, boys, steady-stiff and steady as a Tory

:

has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire arms, and from that hour he is a Shooter.

Then there is in most rural parishes-and of rural parishes alone do we condescend to speak—a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver on the butt-perhaps one that originally served in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, by the young shooter, who begins firing first at barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living

in the roar of Opposition. There is yet | in stem and round in head, visible and audible an hour's play in her dorsal fin-danger in too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, the flap of her tail-and yet may her silver alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered inshoulder shatter the gut against a rock. land vale, still loving the roof of the fisherWhy the river was yesterday in spate, and she man's or peasant's cottage. is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in waterfalls are now level with the flood, and shape like a very musket, such as soldiers she meets with no impediment or obstruction | bear-a Christmas present from parent, once -the course is clear-no tree-roots here-no a colonel of volunteers-nor feeble to discharge floating branches-for during the night they the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face have all been swept down to the salt loch. and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hinIn medio tutissimas ibis➡ay, now you feel she der-end of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully begins to fail-the butt tells now every time exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such you deliver your right. What! another mad ineffectual trigger-and his soul, as well as leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be compound-Gunpowder. He begins with burnan impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. ing off his eyebrows on the King's birthday; Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea- squibs and crackers follow, and all the pleacook!—you in the tattered blue breeches, with sures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the off a gun-" and follow to the field some wardevil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?-Ha! | like lord”-in hopes of being allowed to disWatty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God charge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto bless your honest laughing phiz! What Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council. Curse that colley! Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirksif that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then, "Madam! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made-ten thousand to the Foundling-ditto | things—a strange cur, who, from his lolling to the Thames Tunnel- -ha-ha-my Beauty! tongue may be supposed to have the hydrophobia Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver-a cat that has purred herself asleep on the side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if sunny churchyard wall, or is watching mice at all further resistance now were vain, and grace- their hole-mouths among the graves-a waterfully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! rat in the mill-lead-or weasel that, running to No faith in female-she trusts to the last trial his retreat in the wall, always turns round to look of her tail-sweetly workest thou, O Reel of at you-a goose wandered from his common Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning in disappointed love-or brown duck, easily sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our mistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild one, own worthy planet. Scrope-Bainbridge-in pond remote from human dwelling, or on Maule-princes among Anglers-oh! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphry? At his retort? By mysterious sympathy-far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy-why on thy pale face that melancholy smile!-Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl-whitening as she nears the sand-there she has it-struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus-and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before

the Flood!

"The child is father of the man,

And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety!" So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, formed of the last year's growth of a branch of the planetree-the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree-that stands straight

meadow by the river side, away from the clack of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, shouted out of his nest on some tree lower than usual, is a good flying mark to the more advanced class: or morning magpie, a-chatter at skreigh of day close to the cottage door among the chickens; or a flock of pigeons wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sitting so thick together, that every stock is blue with tempting plumage.

But the pistol is discharged for a fowling piece-brown and rusty, with a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up into the air-and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him-an opinion strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game-and still more, the longed-winged legless black

devilet, that, if it falls to the ground, cannot rise again, and therefore screams wheeling round the corners and battlements of towers and castles, or far out even of cannon shot, gambles in companies of hundreds, and regiments of a thousand, aloft in the evening ether, within the orbit of the eagle's flight. It seems to boyish eyes, that the creatures near the earth, when but little blue sky is seen between the specks and the wallflowers growing on the coign of vantage-the signal is given to fire; but the devilets are too high in heaven to smell the sulphur. The starling whips with a shrill | cry into his nest, and nothing falls to the ground bnt a tiny bit of mossy mortar inhabited by a spider!

fastening a knowing eye on dunce and ne'erdo-weel, holds up, in silent warning, the terror of the taws. Frequent flogging will cowe the spirit of the best man and dog in Britain. Ponto travels now in fear and trembling but a few yards from his tyrant's feet, till, rousing himself to the sudden scent of something smelling strongly, he draws slowly and beautifully, and

"There fix'd, a perfect semicirle stands.” Up runs the Tyro ready-cocked, and, in his eagerness, stumbling among the stubble, when, hark and lo! the gabble of grey goslings, and the bill-protruded hiss of goose and gander! Bang goes the right-hand barrel at Ponto, who now thinks it high time to be off to the tune of "ower the hills and far awa'," while the

the rate of eighteenpence a pound to his justly irritated owner, on whose farm he had led a long and not only harmless, but honourable and useful life.

But the Day of Days arrives at last, when the school-boy, or rather the college boy, return-young gentleman, half-ashamed and half-ining to his rural vacation, (for in Scotland censed, half-glad and half-sorry, discharges the college winters tread close, too close, on the left-hand barrel, with a highly improper curse, heels of academies,) has a gun-a gun in a at the father of the feathered family before him, case-a double-barrel too-of his own-and is who receives the shot like a ball in his breast, provided with a license, probably without any throws a somerset quite surprising for a bird other qualification than that of hit or miss. On of his usual habits, and after biting the dust some portentous morning he effulges with the with his bill, and thumping it with his bottom, sun in velveteen jacket and breeches of the breathes an eternal farewell to this sublunary same-many-buttoned gaiters, and an unker-scene-and leaves himself to be paid for at chiefed throat. "Tis the fourteenth of September, and lo! a pointer at his heels-Ponto, of course-a game-bag like a beggar's wallet at his side-destined to be at eve as full of charity -and all the paraphernalia of an accomplished It is nearly as impossible a thing as we sportsman. Proud, were she to see the sight, know, to borrow a dog about the time the sun would be the "mother that bore him;" the has reached his meridian, on the First Day of heart of that old sportsman, his daddy, would the Partridges. Ponto by this time has sneaked, sing for joy! The chained mastiff in the yard unseen by human eye, into his kennel, and yowls his admiration; the servant lasses uplift coiled himself up into the arms of " tired Nathe pane of their garret, and, with suddenly ture's sweet restorer, balmy sleep." A farmer withdrawn blushes, titter their delight in their makes offer of a colley, who, from numbering rich paper curls and pure night-clothes. Rab among his paternal ancestors a Spanish pointer, Roger, who has been cleaning out the barn, is quite a Don in his way among the cheepers, comes forth to partake of the caulker; and and has been known in a turnip field to stand away go the footsteps of the old poacher in an attitude very similar to that of setting. and his pupil through the autumnal rime, off Luath has no objection to a frolic over the to the uplands, where-for it is one of the ear- fields, and plays the part of Ponto to perfection. liest of harvests-there is scarcely a single At last he catches sight of a covey basking, acre of standing corn. The turnip fields are and, leaping in upon them open-mouthed, debright green with hope and expectation-and spatches them right and left, even like the facoveys are couching on lazy beds beneath mous dog Billy killing rats in the pit at Westthe potato-shaw. Every high hedge, ditch- minster. The birds are bagged with a gentle guarded on either side, shelters its own brood-remonstrance, and Luath's exploit rewarded imagination hears the whir shaking the dewdrops from the broom on the brae-and first one bird, and then another, and then the remaining number, in itself no contemptible covey, seems to fancy's ear to spring single, or in the clouds, from the coppice brushwood with 'here and there an intercepting standard tree.

with a whang of cheese. Elated by the pressure on his shoulder, the young gentleman laughs at the idea of pointing; and fires away, like winking, at every uprise of birds, near or remote; works a miracle by bringing down three at a time, that chanced, unknown to him, to be crossing, and wearied with such slaughter, Poor Ponto is much to be pitied. Either lends his gun to the attendant farmer, who can having a cold in his nose, or having ante-break-mark down to an inch, and walks up to the fasted by stealth on a red herring, he can scent nothing short of a badger, and, every other field, he starts in horror, shame, and amazement, to 'hear himself, without having attended to his points, enclosed in a whirring covey. He is still duly taken between those inexorable 'knees; out comes the speck-and-span new dog-whip, heavy enough for a horse; and the yowl of the patient is heard over the whole parish. Mothers press their yet unchastised fants to their breasts; and the schoolmaster,

dropped pout as if he could kick her up with his foot; and thus the bag in a few hours is half full of feathers; while, to close with eclat the sport of the day, the cunning elder takes him to a bramble bush, in a wall nook, at the edge of the wood, and returning the gun into his hands, shows him poor pussy sitting with open eyes, fast asleep! The pellets are in her brain, and turning herself over, she crunkles out to her full length, like a piece of untwisting Indian rubber, and is dead. The posterior

pouch of the jacket, yet unstained by blood, | ing birds-young larks, perhaps, walking on the yawns to receive her-and in she goes plump; lea-or young linnets hanging on the broompaws, ears, body, feet, fud, and all—while Luath, down by yonder in the holm lands, where there all the way home to the Mains, keeps snoking are no trees, except indeed that one glorious sinat the red drops oozing through; for well he gle tree, the Golden Oak, and he is guarded by knows, in summer's heat and winter's cold, Glowrer, and then what a most capital chase! the smell of pussy, whether sitting beneath a Stretching herself up with crooked back, as tuft of withered grass on the brae, or burrowed | if taking a yawn-off she jumps, with tremenbeneath a snow wreath. A hare, we certainly dous spangs, and tail, thickened with fear and must say, in spite of haughtier sportsman's anger, perpendicular. Youf-youf-youf-go scorn, is, when sitting, a most satisfactory shot. the terriers-head over heels perhaps in their But let us trace no further thus, step by step, fury-and are not long in turning her-and the Pilgrim's Progress. Look at him now-a bringing her to bay at the hedge-root, all finished sportsman-on the moors-the bright ablaze and abristle. A she-devil incarnate !black boundless Dalwhinnie moors, stretching Hark-all at once now strikes up a trio-Caaway, by long Loch Erricht side, into the dim talani caterwauling the treble-Glowrer taking and distant day that hangs, with all its clouds, the bass-and Tearer the tenor-a cruel conover the bosom of far Loch Rannoch. Is that cert cut short by a squalling throttler. Awaythe pluffer at partridge-pouts who had nearly away along the holm-and over the knowebeen the death of poor Ponto? Lord Kennedy and into the wood-for lo! the gudewife, branhimself might take a lesson now from the dishing a besom, comes flying demented withstraight and steady style in which on the moun-out her mutch down to the murder of her tabby tain brow, and up to the middle in heather, he|—her son, a stout stripling, is seen skirting the brings his Manton to the deadly level! More un- potato-field to intercept our flight—and, most erring eye never glanced along brown barrel! formidable of all foes, the Man of the House Finer forefinger never touched a trigger! Fol- himself, in his shirt-sleeves and flail in his low him a whole day, and not one wounded bird. hand, bolts from the barn, down the croft, All most beautifully arrested on their flight by across the burn, and up the brae, to cut us off instantaneous death! Down dropped right from the Manse. The hunt's up—and 'tis a and left, like lead on the heather-old cock and capital steeple chase. Disperse-disperse ! hen, singled out among the orphaned brood, as Down the hill, Jack-up the hill, Gill-dive calmly as a cook would do it in the larder from the dell, Kit-thread the wood, Pat--a hunamong a pile of plumage. No random shot dred yards' start is a great matter—a stern within-no needless shot out of distance- chase is always a long chase-schoolboys are covered every feather before stir of finger- generally in prime wind-the old man begins and body, back, and brain, pierced, broken, to puff and blow, and snort, and put his paws shattered! And what perfect pointers! There to his paunch-the son is thrown out by a they stand, as still as death-yet instinct with double of dainty Davy's-and the "sair belife-the whole half dozen! Mungo, the black-grutten mither" is gathering up the torn and tanned-Don, the red-spotted-Clara, the snowwhite-Primrose, the pale yellow-Basto, the bright brown, and Nimrod, in his coat of many colours, often seen afar through the mists like a meteor.

So much for the Angler's and the Shooter's Progress now briefly for the Hunter's. Hunting, in this country, unquestionably commences with cats. Few cottages without a cat. If you do not find her on the mouse watch at the gable end of the house just at the corner, take a solar observation, and by it look for her on bank or brae-somewhere about the premises-if unsuccessful, peep into the byre, and up through a hole among the dusty divots of the roof, and chance is you see her eyes glittering far-ben in the gloom; but if she be not there either, into the barn and up on the mow, and surely she is on the straw or on the baulks below the kipples. No. Well, then, let your eye travel along the edge of that little wood behind the cottage-ay, yonder she is!-but she sees both you and your two terriers-one rough and the other smooth-and, slinking away through a gap in the old hawthorn hedge in among the hazels, she either lies perdu, or is up a fir-tree almost as high as the magpie's or corby's nest. Now-observe-shooting cats is one thing— and hunting them is another-and shooting and hunting, though they may be united, are here treated separately; so, in the present case, the cat makes her escape. But get her watch

tattered remains of Tortoise-shell Tabby, and invoking the vengeance of heaven and earth on her pitiless murderers. Some slight relief to her bursting and breaking heart to vow, that she will make the minister hear of it on the deafest side of his head-ay, even if she have to break in upon him sitting on Saturday night, getting aff by rote his fushionless sermon, in his ain study.

Now, gentle reader, again observe, that though we have now described, con amore, a most cruel case of cat-killing, in which we certainly did play a most aggravated part, some Sixty Years since, far indeed are we from recommending such wanton barbarity to the rising generation. We are not inditing a homily on humanity to animals, nor have we been appointed to succeed the Rev. Dr. Somerville of Currie, the great Patentee of the Safety Double Bloody Barrel, to preach the annual Gibsonian sermon on that subject— we are simply stating certain matters of fact, illustrative of the rise and progress of the love of pastime in the soul, and leave our readers to draw the moral. But may we be permitted to say, that the naughtiest schoolboys often make the most pious men; that it does not follow according to the wise saws and modern instances of prophetic old women of both sexes, that he who in boyhood has worried a cat with terriers, will, in manhood, commit murder on one of his own species; or that peccadilloes

run away with in carts by colts against turnpike gates-buying bad ballads from young gipsy-girls, who, on receiving a sixpence, give ever so many kisses in return, saying, "Take your change out of that;"-on a borrowed broken-knee'd pony, with a switch-tail-a devil for galloping-not only attending countryraces for a saddle and collar, but entering for and winning the prize-dancing like a devil in barns at kirns-seeing his blooming partner home over the blooming heather, most perilous adventure of all in which virgin-puberty can be involved-fighting with a rival in corduroy breeches, and poll shorn beneath a caup, till his eyes just twinkle through the swollen blue

and, to conclude "this strange eventful history," once brought home at one o'clock in the morning, God knows whence or by whom, and found by the shrieking servant, sent out to listen for him in the moonlight, dead-drunk on the gravel at the gate!

are the progenitors of capital crimes. Nature | castles after wall-flowers and starlings-being allows to growing lads a certain range of wickedness, sans peur et sans reproche. She seems, indeed, to whistle into their ear, to mock ancient females-to laugh at Quakers-to make mouths at a descent man and his wife riding double to church-the matron's thick legs ludicrously bobbing from the pillion, kept firm on Dobbin's rump by her bottom, "ponderibus librata suis,”—to tip the wink to young women during sermon on Sunday-and on Saturday, most impertinently to kiss them, whether they will or no, on high-road or by-path--and to perpetrate many other little nameless enormities. No doubt, at the time, such things will wear rather a suspicious character; and the boy who is detected in the fact, must be punished by pawmy, or privation, or imprisonment from play. But when punished, he is of course left free to resume his atrocious career; nor is it found that he sleeps a whit the less soundly, or shrieks for Heaven's mercy in his dreams. Conscience is not a craven. Groans belong to guilt. But fun and frolic, even when trespasses, are not guilt; and though a cat have nine lives, she has but one Ghost--and that will haunt no house where there are terriers. What! surely if you have the happiness of being a parent you would not wish your only boy--your son and heir-the blended image of his mother's loveliness and his father's manly beauty-to be a smug, smooth, prim, and proper prig, with his hair always combed down on his forehead, hands always unglaured, and without spot or blemish on his white-thread stockings? You would not wish him, surely, to be always moping and musing in a corner with a good book held close to his nose-botanizing with his maiden aunts-doing the pretty at tea-tables with tabbies, in handing round the short-bread, taking cups, and attending to the kettle-telling tales on all naughty boys and girls-laying up his penny a-week pocket-money in a penny pig-keeping all his clothes neatly folded up in an untumbled drawer having his own peg for his uncrushed drawer—having hat saying his prayers precisely as the clock strikes nine, while his companions are yet at blind-man's buff-and puffed up every Sabbatheve by the parson's praises of his uncommon memory for a sermon-while all the other boys are scolded for having fallen asleep before Tenthly? You would not wish him, surely, to write sermons himself at his tender years, nay-even to be able to give you chapter and verse for every quotation from the Bible? No. Better far that he should begin early to break your heart, by taking no care even of his Sunday clothes-blotting his copy-impiously pinning pieces of paper to the Dominie's tail, who to him was a second father-going to the fishing not only without leave but against ordersbathing in the forbidden pool, where the tailor was drowned-drying powder before the school-room fire, and blowing himself and two crack-sculled cronies to the ceiling-tying kettles to the tails of dogs-shooting an old woman's laying hen-galloping bare-backed shelties down stony steeps-climbing trees to the slenderest twig on which bird could build, and up the tooth-of-time-intended sides of old

|

Nay, start not, parental reader-nor, in the terror of anticipation, send, without loss of a single day, for your son at a distant academy, mayhap pursuing even such another career. Trust thou to the genial, gracious, and benign vis medicatrix nature. What though a few clouds bedim and deform "the innocent brightness of the new-born day?" Lo! how splendid the meridian ether! What though the frost seem to blight the beauty of the budding and blowing rose? Look how she revives beneath dew, rain, and sunshine, till your eyes can even scarce endure the lustre! What though the waters of the sullen fen seem to pollute the snow of the swan? They fall off from her expanded wings, and, pure as a spirit, she soars away, and descends into her own silver lake, stainless as the water-lilies floating round her breast. And shall the immortal soul suffer lasting contamination from the transient chances of its nascent state-in this, less favoured than material and immaterial things that perish? No-it is undergoing endless transmigrations,-every hour a being different, yet the same-dark stains blotted outrueful inscriptions effaced-many an erasure of impressions once thought permanent, but soon altogether forgotten-and vindicating, in the midst of the earthly corruption in which it is immersed, its own celestial origin, character, and end, often flickering, or seemingly blown out, like a taper in the wind, but all at once self-reillumined, and shining in inextinguishable and self-fed radiance-like a star in heaven.

:

Therefore, bad as boys too often are-and a disgrace to the mother who bore them-the cradle in which they were rocked-the nurse by whom they were suckled-the schoolmas ter by whom they were flogged-and the hangman by whom it was prophesied they were tc be executed-wait patiently for a few years, and you will see them all transfigured-one into a preacher of such winning eloquence, that he almost persuades all men to be Chris tians-another into a parliamentary orator. who commands the applause of listening sen ates, and

"Reads his history in a nation's eyes,"