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REV. JAMES MARTINEAU.

The REV. JAMES MARTINEAU (brother of Harriet Martineau), born in 1805, was for some time pastor of dissenting congregations (Unitarian) in Dublin and Liverpool, and afterwards Professor of Moral Philosophy in New College, Manchester, and in London. In 1861, he accepted the appointment of preacher in a chapel in Little Portland Street. Mr Martineau is an eloquent preacher and writer: his chief works are-The Rationale of Religious Inquiry, 1845; Endeavours after the Christian Life, 1847; Studies of Christianity, 1858; Essays, Philosophical and Theological, two series, 1868-69; &c. We subjoin two passages from the Endeavours after the Christian Life.

Nothing Human ever Dies.

Standing as each man does in the centre of a wide circumference of social influences, recipient as he is of innumerable impressions from the mighty human heart, his inward being may be justly said to consist far more in others' lives than in his own; without them and alone, he would have missed the greater part of the thoughts and emotions which make up his existence; and when he dies, he carries away their life rather than his own. He dwells still below, within their minds: their image in his soul (which perhaps is the best element of their being) passes away to the world incorruptible above.

All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great and good, are, in like manner, never lost.

The true records of mankind, the human annals of the earth, are not to be found in the changes of geographical names, in the shifting boundaries of dominion, in the travels and adventures of the baubles of royalty, or even in the undulations of the greater and lesser waves of population. We have learned nothing, till we have penetrated far beyond these casual and external changes, which are of interest only as the effect and symptoms of the great mental vicissitudes of our race. History is an account of the past experience of humanity; and this, like the life of the individual, consists in the ideas and sentiments, the deeds and passions, the truths and toils, the virtues and the guilt, of the mind and heart within. We have a deep concern in preserving from destruction the thoughts of the past, the leading conceptions of all remarkable forms of civilisation; the achievements of genius, of virtue, and of high faith. And in this nothing can disappoint us; for though these things may be individually forgotten, collectively they survive, and are in action still. All the past ages of the world were necessary to the formation of the present; they are essential ingredients in the events that occur daily before our eyes. One layer of time has Providence piled up upon another for immemorial ages: we that live stand now upon this 'great mountain of the Lord;' were the strata below removed, the fabric and ourselves would fall in ruins. Had Greece, or Rome, or Palestine been other than they were, Christianity could not have been what it is: had Romanism been different, Protestantism could not have been the same, and we might not have been here this day. The separate civilisations of past countries may be of colours singly indiscernible; but in truth they are the prismatic rays which, united, form our present light. And do we look back on the great and good, lamenting that they are gone? Do we bend in commemorative reverence before them, and wish that our lot had been cast in their better days? What is the peculiar function which Heaven assigns to such minds, when tenants of our earth? Have the great and the good any nobler office than to touch the human heart with deep veneration for greatness and goodness ?-to kindle in the

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understanding the light of more glorious conceptions, and in the conscience the fires of a holier virtue? that we grieve for their departure, and invoke their names, is proof that they are performing such blessed office still-that this their highest life for others, compared with which their personal agency is nothing, is not extinct. Indeed, God has so framed our memory that it is the infirmities of noble souls which chiefly fall excellent in their lives, comes forth from the gloom in into the shadows of the past; while whatever is fair and ideal beauty, and leads us on through the wilds and mazes of our mortal way. Nor does the retrospect, thus glorified, deceive us by any fallacy; for things present with us we comprehend far less completely, and appreciate less impartially, than things past. Nothing can become a clear object of our thought, while we ourselves are in it: we understand not our childhood till we have left it; our youth, till it has departed; our life itself, till it verges to its close; or the majesty of genius and holiness, till we look back on them as fled. Each portion of our human experience becomes in succession intelligible to us, as we quit it for a new point of view. God has stationed us at the intersecting line between the known and the unknown: He has planted us on a floating island of mystery, from which we survey the expanse behind in the clear light of experience and truth, and cleave the waves, invisible, yet ever breaking, of the unbounded future. Our very progress, which is our peculiar glory, consists in at once losing and learning the past; in gaining fresh stations from which to take a wiser retrospect, and become more deeply aware of the treasures we have used. We are never so conscious of the succession of blessings which God's providence has heaped on us, as when lamenting the lapse of years; and are then richest in the fruits of time, when mourning that time steals those fruits away.

Space and Time.

the conception of vast time? The spectator who, in the Who can deny the effect of wide space alone in aiding dingy cellar of the city, under the oppression of a narrow dwelling, watching the last moments of some poor mendicant, finds incongruity and perplexity in the thought of the eternal state, would feel the difficulty vanish in an instant, were he transplanted to the mountain-top, where the plains and streams are beneath him, and the clouds are near him, and the untainted breeze sweeps by, and he stands alone with nature and with God. And when, in addition to the mere spectacle and love of nature, there is a knowledge of it too; when the laws and processes are understood which surround us with wonder and beauty every day, when the great cycles are known through which the material world passes without decay; then, in the immensity of human hopes, there appears nothing which needs stagger faith: it the material creation should survive its longest period, seems no longer strange, that the mind which interprets and be admitted to its remoter realms.

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Genesis, Examination of Mr Maurice's Theological Essays, Discourses on the Resurrection, &c. Dr Candlish died in 1873.-DR JOHN CUMMING, of the Scotch Church, London (born in Aberdeenshire in 1809), has distinguished himself by his zeal against popery, and by his interpretation of the Scriptures as to the duration of the world. He has written a great number of religious works— Apocalyptic Sketches, Voices of the Night, Voices of the Day, Voices of the Dead, Expository Readings on the Old and New Testament, and various controversial tracts. He is in theology what Mr G. P. R. James was in fiction-as fluent and as voluminous. Amidst all the fluctuations of opinion on theology and forms of worship, Dr Cumming has kept together a large congregation of various

classes in London.

DR GUTHRIE.

The REV. THOMAS GUTHRIE was born at Brechin, Forfarshire, July 12, 1803. His father was a banker and merchant. The son was educated for the Scottish Church. It occupied me,' he says, 'eight years to run my regular curriculum. I attended the university for two additional years before I became a licentiate, and other five years elapsed before I obtained a presentation to a vacant church, and became minister of the parish of Arbirlot. Here were fifteen years of my life spent the greater part of them at no small costqualifying myself for a profession which, for all that time, yielded me nothing for my maintenance.' And Guthrie adds: The inadequate means of creditably supporting themselves and their families of which most ministers have to complain is a very serious matter, threatening, in an enterprising and commercial, and wealthy country such as ours, to drain away talent from the pulpit.' This point is well worthy of consideration. In 1837 Mr Guthrie was appointed one of the ministers of Old Greyfriars parish in Edinburgh, and by his zeal and eloquence and philanthropy rose into high and general estimation. He left the Establishment at the period of the Disruption in 1843, and became one of the founders of the Free Church. His efforts to reclaim the wretched population of the worst parts of Edinburgh, and his exertions in the promotion of ragged schools, were appreciated by the public, and Dr Guthrie became not only one of the most popular preachers, but one of the best-beloved citizens of Edinburgh. He was a man of a large heart and truly catholic spirit. As a pulpit orator he has rarely been surpassed. His sermons were marked by poetic imagery and illustration-perhaps too profusely but generally striking, pathetic, and impressive in a high degree.

'He had all the external attractions of a pulpit orator; an unusually tall and commanding person, with an abundance of easy and powerful, because natural, gesture; a quickly and strongly expressive countenance, which age rendered finer as well as more comely; a powerful, clear, and musical voice, the intonations of which were varied and appropriate, managed with an actor's skill, though there was not the least appearance of art.'

The variety of his illustrations was immense, but he delighted most, and was most successful, in those of a nautical character. A storm at sea and a shipwreck from Guthrie were paintings

never to be forgotten. This eminent preacher and philanthropist died at St Leonard's-on-Sea, February 24, 1873. His principal works are-The Gospel in Ezekiel, 1855; Christ and the Inheritance of the Saints, 1858; The Way to Life, 1862; The City, its Sins and Sorrows; Pleas for Ragged Schools; Saving Knowledge, addressed to Young Men; and various other short religious treatises and tracts on intemperance.

Decadence of the Ancient Portion of Edinburgh.

There is a remarkable phenomenon to be seen on certain parts of our coast. Strange to say, it proves, notwithstanding such expressions as the stable and solid land,' that it is not the land but the sea which is the stable element. On some summer day, when there is not a wave to rock her, nor breath of wind to fill her sail or fan a cheek, you launch your boat upon the waters, and, pulling out beyond lowest tide-mark, you idly lie fish, or watch the movements of the many curious creaupon her bows to catch the silvery glance of a passing tures that travel the sea's sandy bed, or creeping out of their rocky homes, wander amid its tangled mazes. If the traveller is surprised to find a deep-sea shell imbedded in the marbles of a mountain peak, how great is your surprise to see beneath you a vegetation foreign to the deep! Below your boat, submerged many feet beneath the surface of the lowest tide, away down in these green crystal depths, you see no rusting anchor, no mouldering remains of some shipwrecked one, but in the standing stumps of trees, the mouldering vestiges of a forest, where singing their loves, had nestled and nursed their young. once the wild cat prowled, and the birds of heaven, In counterpart to those portions of our coast where seahollowed caves, with sides the waves have polished, and floors still strewed with shells and sand, now stand high above the level of strongest stream-tides, there stand these dead, decaying trees-entombed in the deep. A strange phenomenon, which admits of no other explanation than this, that there the coast-line has sunk beneath its ancient level.

Many of our cities present a phenomenon as melancholy to the eye of a philanthropist, as the other is economical, educational, moral, and religious aspects, interesting to a philosopher or geologist. In their certain parts of this city bear palpable evidence of a corresponding subsidence. Not a single house, nor a block of houses, but whole streets, once from end to end the homes of decency, and industry, and wealth, and rank, and piety, have been engulfed. A flood of ignorance, and misery, and sin now breaks and roars above the top of their highest tenements. Nor do the old stumps of a forest still standing up erect beneath the sea-wave, indicate a greater change, a deeper subsidence, than the relics of ancient grandeur, and the touching memorials of piety which yet linger about these like some traces of beauty on a corpse. The unfurnished wretched dwellings, like evening twilight on the hillsfloor, the begrimed and naked walls, the stifling, sickening atmosphere, the patched and dusty windowthrough which a sunbeam, like hope, is faintly stealing

the ragged, hunger-bitten, and sad-faced children, the ruffian man, the heap of straw where some wretched mother, in muttering dreams, sleeps off last night's debauch, or lies unshrouded and uncoffined in the ghastliness of a hopeless death, are sad scenes. We have often looked on them. And they appear all the sadder for the restless play of fancy. Excited by some vestiges broken plaster, the massive marble rising over the cold of a fresco-painting that still looks out from the foul and and cracked hearth-stone, an elaborately carved cornice too high for shivering cold to pull it down for fuel, some stucco flowers or fruit yet pendent on the crumbling ceiling, fancy, kindled by these, calls up the gay scenes and actors of other days-when beauty, elegance,

and fashion graced these lonely halls, and plenty smoked on groaning tables, and where these few cinders, gathered from the city dust-heap, are feebly smouldering, hospitable fires roared up the chimney.

But there is that in and about these houses which bears witness of a deeper subsidence, a yet sadder change. Bent on some mission of mercy, you stand at the foot of a dark and filthy stair. It conducts you to the crowded rooms of a tenement, where-with the exception of some old decent widow who has seen better days, and when her family are all dead, and her friends all gone, still clings to God and her faith in the dark hour of adversity and amid the wreck of fortune-from the cellar-dens below to the cold garrets beneath the roof-tree, you shall find none either reading their Bible, or even with a Bible to read. Alas! of prayer, of morning or evening psalms, of earthly or heavenly peace, it may be said the place that once knew them knows them no more. But before you enter the doorway, raise your eyes to the lintel-stone. Dumb, it yet speaks of other and better times. Carved in Greek or Latin, or our own mother-tongue, you decipher such texts as these: Peace be to this house;' 'Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it;' 'We have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;' 'Fear God;' or this, 'Love your neighbour.' Like the mouldering remnants of a forest that once resounded with the melody of birds, but hears nought now save the angry dash or melancholy moan of breaking waves, these vestiges of piety furnish a gauge which enables us to measure how low in these dark localities the whole stratum of society has sunk.

scenery of the crags and green valleys around Arthur's Seat, we came at length to St Anthony's well, and sat down on the great black stone beside it to have a talk with the ragged boys who pursue their calling there. Their 'tinnies' [tin dishes] were ready with a draught of the clear cold water in hope of a halfpenny. . . We began to question them about schools. As to the boys themselves, one was fatherless, the son of a poor widow; the father of the other was alive, but a man of low habits and bad character. Both were poorly clothed. The one had never been at school; the other had sometimes attended a Sabbath-school. Encouraged by the success of Sheriff Watson, who had the honour to lead the enterprise, the idea of a Ragged School was then floating in my brain; and so, with reference to the scheme, and by way of experiment, I said: 'Would you go to school if-besides your learning-you were to get breakfast, dinner, and supper there?' It would have done any man's heart good, to have seen the flash of joy that broke from the eyes of one of them, the flush of pleasure on his cheek, as-hearing of three sure meals a day-the boy leaped to his feet and exclaimed: Ay, will I, sir, and bring the hail land [the whole tenement or flat] too;' and then, as if afraid I might withdraw what seemed to him so large and munificent an offer, he exclaimed: 'I'll come for but my dinner, sir!'

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DR NORMAN MACLEOD.

The REV. NORMAN MACLEOD (1812-1872), a distinguished member of the Scottish Church, was a native of Campbelton, Argyleshire. He was descended from a family of Highland clergymen, Dr Guthrie's First Interest in Ragged Schools. of whose life and labours he has drawn an interMy first interest in the cause of Ragged Schools was esting picture in his Reminiscences of a Highland awakened by a picture which I saw in Anstruther, on Parish, 1867. His paternal grandfather was the shores of the Firth of Forth. It represented a minister of Morven, where his uncle, the Rev. cobbler's room; he was there himself, spectacles on John Macleod, still labours. His father, an ennose, an old shoe between his knees; that massive fore-thusiastic Celtic scholar and a shrewd able man, head and firm mouth indicating great determination of became minister of Campsie, in Stirlingshire, but character; and from beneath his shaggy eyebrows Norman spent several of his boyish years at benevolence gleamed out on a group of poor children, Morven, where he enjoyed an open-air life with some sitting, some standing, but all busy at their lessons around him. Interested by this scene, we turned the excitement of fishing and boating. A love from his picture to the inscription below; and with of the sea and of ships and sailors remained with growing wonder read how this man, by name John him throughout all his life, and was of importance Pounds, by trade a cobbler in Portsmouth, had taken to him in the way of oratorical illustration, both He studied at Glaspity on the ragged children, whom ministers and magis- as a preacher and writer. trates, ladies and gentlemen, were leaving to run wild, gow and Edinburgh Universities-not with any and go to ruin on their streets; how, like a good shep- marked distinction-and is described as a special herd, he had gone forth to gather in these outcasts, how favourite with his fellow-students, 'ever ready he had trained them up in virtue and knowledge, and with apt quotations from Shakspeare, Wordshow, looking for no fame, no recompense from man, he, worth, Coleridge, and Keats.' He was a short single handed, while earning his daily bread by the time tutor to the son of a Yorkshire squire, with sweat of his face, had, ere he died, rescued from ruin He sang well to the and saved to society no fewer than five hundred whom he visited Weimar. guitar, sketched cleverly, was as keen a waltzer as I confess that I felt humbled. I felt ashamed of any attaché in Weimar, and threw himself with a myself. I well remember saying to my companion, in vivid sense of enjoyment into the gaieties of the the enthusiasm of the moment, and in my calmer and little capital. But with it all, he held fast to his cooler hours I have seen no reason for unsaying it: "That own convictions of right and truth, and only once man is an honour to humanity. He has deserved the attended the duke's court on Sunday. To the tallest monument ever raised on British shores!' Nor simple forms and service of the Presbyterian was John Pounds only a benevolent man. He was a Church he was strongly attached, though he genius in his way; at anyrate he was ingenious; and if gradually dropped some of the strict Calvinistic he could not catch a poor boy in any other way, like doctrines, and inclined to the more genial theolPaul, he would win him by guile. He was sometimes seen hunting down a ragged urchin on the quays of ogy of men like Stanley, Maurice, and others of Portsmouth, and compelling him to come to school, not what is termed the Broad Church. He thus deby the power of a policeman, but a potato! He knew scribes a confirmation scene in York Cathedral: 'The scene was beyond all description. Fancy the love of an Irishman for a potato, and might be seen running alongside an unwilling boy with one held under upwards of three thousand children under fifteen, his nose, with a temper as hot and a coat as ragged as the females dressed in white, with ladies and gentlemen, all assembled in that glorious minster Strolling one day with a friend among the romantic-the thousand stained-glass windows throwing a 96

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dazzling light of various hues on the white massthe great organ booming through the neverending arches! The ceremony is intensely simple: they come in forties and fifties and surround the bishop, who repeats the vows, and lays his hand successively on each head. I could not help comparing this with a sacramental occasion in the Highlands, where there is no minster but the wide heaven, and no organ but the roar of the eternal sea, the church with its lonely churchyard and primitive congregation, and-think of my Scotch pride-I thought the latter scene more grand and more impressive.'

He received his first appointment in the church as minister of Loudon in Ayrshire, a district inhabited by a small proportion of Covenanting farmers and a large number of political weavers. With both, of course, he had his difficulties. The strict theologians examined him on the 'fundamentals,' and the weavers scoffed at religion, and disputed his political opinions. Visiting one wellknown Chartist, he was requested to sit down on a bench at the front of the door, and discuss the 'seven points.' The weaver, with his shirt sleeves turned up, his apron rolled about his waist, and his snuff-mull in his hand, vigorously propounded his favourite political dogmas.

'When he had concluded, he turned to the

minister and demanded an answer. "In my opinion," was the reply, "your principles would drive the country into revolution, and create in the long-run national bankruptcy.' "Nay-tion-al bankruptcy!" said the old man meditatively, and diving for a pinch. "Div-ye-think-sae?" then, briskly, after a long snuff, "Dod, I'd risk it!" The naiveté of this philosopher, who had scarcely a sixpence to lose," risking" the nation for the sake of his theory was never forgotten by his companion.'

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The frankness and geniality of the young minister melted down all opposition. Campsie he removed to Dalkeith, and in 1851 he succeeded to the Barony parish, in Glasgow, with which in future his name was to be identified, and in which he laboured with unflagging zeal. His first publication was a volume entitled The Earnest Student, being an account of the life of his brother-in-law, John Mackintosh. The proceeds of the work, amounting to £200, he sent as a contribution to the Indian missions of the Free Church, of which Mackintosh had been a student. In 1858 he received the honorary degree of D.D. He was appointed one of the deans of the Chapel Royal, and one of Her Majesty's chaplains for Scotland. From 1860 till his death, he was editor of Good Words, a periodical projected by Mr Strahan, the publisher, and which under Dr Macleod became (as it now continues under his brother and biographer, the Rev. Donald Macleod) eminently successful. To its pages he contributed his stories, The Old Lieutenant, The Highland Parish, The Starling, &c. He was more a man of action than a student, but these works-especially his reminiscences of the Highland parish of his youth-form pleasant and instructive reading His Peeps in the Far East, describing scenes he had visited, and sketches of society, during a mission to India, are of the same character. His mission to India' greatly increased his popularity, and he was equally a favourite with the court and aristocracy and with the inmates of the darkest

closes and miserable lodgings in Glasgow. He charmed all circles, and sympathised with all. He was honoured with the friendship of the Queen. I am never tempted,' he says, 'to conceal my convictions from the Queen, for I feel she sympathises with what is true, and likes the speaker to utter the truth exactly as he believes it.' In another place, he says: 'She has a reasoning searching mind, anxious to get at the root and reality of things, and abhors all shams, whether in word or deed. . . . It was really grand to hear her talk on moral courage and living for duty.' The domestic life of Her Majesty at Balmoral is indicated in a little note which states that 'the Queen sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel, while I read Robert Burns to her-Tam 'Shanter, and A Man's a Man for d that' These particulars are given in a Memoir of Norman Macleod by his brother (1876), a work executed with admirable taste and judgment. The Indian mission of Dr Macleod, and his incessant work at home, undermined his naturally robust constitution. On the 3d of June 1872 he completed his sixtieth year, and on the 16th he expired-leaving behind him a noble example of devotion to duty, and of self-sacrificing efforts to promote the good of mankind.

Life in a Highland Bothy Fifty Years Since.

When I was young, I was sent to live among the peasantry in the parish (in the West Highlands) so as to acquire a knowledge of the language, and living, as I did, very much like themselves, it was my delight to spend the long evenings in their huts, hearing their tales and songs. These huts were of the most primitive description. They were built of loose stones and clay; the walls were thick, the door low, the rooms numbered one only, or in more aristocratic cases two. The floor floor, and the smoke, when amiable and not bullied by was clay; the peat-fire was built in the middle of the hole in the roof. The window was like a port-hole, a sulky wind, escaped quietly and patiently through a part of it generally filled with glass and part with peat. One bed, or sometimes two (with clean home-made sheets, blankets, and counterpane), a 'dresser' with bowls and plates, a large chest, and a corner full of peat, filled up the space beyond the circle about the fire. Upon the rafters above, black as ebony from peat-reek, a row of hens and chickens with a stately cock roosted in a paradise of heat.

Let me describe one of these evenings. Round the fire are seated, some on stools, some on stones, some on the floor, a happy group. Two or three girls, fine healthy blue-eyed lassies, with their hair tied up with ribbon is busking hooks; big Archy is peeling willow-wands snood, are knitting stockings. Hugh, the son of Sandy, and fashioning them into baskets; the shepherd Donald, the son of Black John, is playing on the Jew's harp; while beyond the circle are one or two herd-boys in kilts, reclining on the floor, all eyes and ears for the stories. The performances of Donald begin the evening, and form interludes to its songs, tales, and recitations. He has two large Lochaber trumps, for Lochaber trumps were to the Highlands what Cremona violins were to musical Europe. He secures the end of each that the tiny instruments are invisible, he applies the with his teeth, and grasping them with his hands so little finger of each hand to their vibrating steel tongues. He modulates their tones with his breath, and brings out of them Highland reels, strathspeys, and jigs-such wonderfully beautiful, silvery, distinct, and harmonious sounds as would draw forth cheers and an encore even in St James's Hall, But Donald, the son of Black John,

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is done, and he looks to bonny Mary Cameron for a blink of her hazel eye to reward him, while in virtue of his performance he demands a song from her. Now Mary has dozens of songs, so has Kirsty, so has Flory -love songs, shearing songs, washing songs, Prince Charlie songs, songs composed by this or that poet in the parish; and therefore Mary asks What song?' So until she can make up her mind, and have a little playful flirtation with Donald, she requests Hugh, the son of Sandy, to tell a story. Although Hugh has abundance of this material, he too protests that he has none. But having betrayed this modesty, he starts off with one of those which are given by Mr Campbell (Highland Tales), to whose admirable and truthful volumes I refer the reader. When the story is done, improvisation is often tried, and amidst roars of laughter the aptest verses, the truest and most authentic specimens of tales, are made, sometimes in clever satire, sometimes with knowing allusions to the weaknesses or predilections of those round the fire. Then follow riddles and puzzles; then the trumps resume their tunes, and Mary sings her song, and Kirsty and Flory theirs, and all join in chorus, and who cares for the wind outside or the peat-reek inside! Never was a more innocent or happy group. This fondness for music from trump, fiddle, or bagpipe, and for song-singing, story-telling, and improvisation, was universal, and imparted a marvellous buoyancy and intelligence to the people.

These peasants were, moreover, singularly inquisitive and greedy of information. It was a great thing if the schoolmaster or any one else was present who could tell them about other people and other places. I remember an old shepherd who questioned me closely how the hills and rocks were formed, as a gamekeeper had heard some sportsmen talking about this. The questions which were put were no doubt often odd enough. A woman, for example, whose husband was anxious to emigrate to Australia, stoutly opposed the step until she could get her doubts solved on some geographical point that greatly disturbed her. She consulted the minister, and the tremendous question which chiefly weighed on her mind was, whether it was true that the feet of the people there were opposite to the feet of the people at home? And if so, what then?

Wee Davie.

'Wee Davie' was the only child of William Thorburn, blacksmith. He had reached the age at which he could venture, with prudence and reflection, on a journey from one chair to another; his wits kept alive by maternal warnings of Tak care, Davie; mind the fire, Davie.' When the journey was ended in safety, and he looked over his shoulders with a crow of joy to his mother, he was rewarded, in addition to the rewards of his own brave and adventurous spirit, by such a smile as equalled only his own, and by the well-merited approval of 'Weel done, Davie !'

Davie was the most powerful and influential member of the household. Neither the British fleet, nor the French army, nor the Armstrong gun had the power of doing what Davie did. They might as well have tried to make a primrose grow or a lark sing!

He was, for example, a wonderful stimulus to labour. The smith had been rather disposed to idleness before his son's arrival. He did not take to his work on cold mornings as he might have done, and was apt to neglect many opportunities, which offered themselves, of bettering his condition; and Jeanie was easily put off by some plausible objection when she urged her husband to make an additional honest penny to keep the house. But 'the bairn' became a new motive to exertion; and the thought of leaving him and Jeanie more comfortable, in case sickness laid the smith aside, or death took him away, became like a new sinew to his powerful arm, as he wielded the hammer, and made it ring the music of hearty work on the sounding anvil. The meaning of

benefit-clubs, sick-societies, and penny-banks was fully explained by 'wee Davie.'

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Davie also exercised a remarkable influence on his father's political views and social habits. The smith had been fond of debates on political questions; and no more sonorous growl of discontent than his could be heard against the powers that be,' the injustice done to the masses, or the misery which was occasioned by class legislation. He had also made up his mind not to be happy or contented, but only to endure life as a necessity laid upon him, until the required reforms in church and state, at home and abroad, had been attained. But his wife, without uttering a syllable on matters which she did not even pretend to understand; by a series of acts out of Parliament; by reforms in household arrangements; by introducing good bills into her own House of Commons; and by a charter, whose points were chiefly very commonplace ones such as a comfortable meal, a tidy home, a clean fireside, a polished grate, above all, a cheerful countenance and womanly love-by these radical changes she had made her husband wonderfully fond of his home. He was, under this teaching, getting every day too contented for a patriot, and too happy for a man in an ill-governed world. His old companions at last could not coax him out at night. He was lost as a member of one of the most philosophical clubs in the neighbourhood. His old pluck,' they said, 'was gone.' The wife, it was alleged by the patriotic bachelors, had cowed' him, and driven all the spirit out of him. But wee Davie' completed this revolution. I shall tell you how.

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One failing of William's had hitherto resisted Jeanie's silent influence. The smith had formed the habit, before he was married, of meeting a few companions, 'just in a friendly way,' on pay-nights at a public-house. It was true that he was never 'what might be called a drunkard' -'never lost a day's work'-never was the worse for liquor,' &c. But, nevertheless, when he entered the snuggery in Peter Wilson's whisky-shop, with the blazing fire and comfortable atmosphere; and when, with half-a-dozen talkative, and, to him, pleasant fellows and old companions, he sat round the fire, and the glass circulated; and the gossip of the week was discussed; and racy stories were told; and one or two songs sung, linked together by memories of old merry-meetings; and current jokes were repeated, with humour, of the tyrannical influence which some would presume to exercise on 'innocent social enjoyment'-then would the smith's brawny chest expand, and his face beam, and his feelings become malleable, and his sixpences begin to melt, and flow out in generous sympathy into Peter Wilson's fozy hand, to be counted greedily beneath his sodden eyes. And so it was that the smith's wages were always lessened by Peter's gains. His wife had her fears-her horrid anticipations—but did not like to 'even to' her husband anything so dreadful as what she in her heart dreaded. She took her own way, however, to win him to the house and to good, and gently insinuated wishes rather than expressed them. The smith, no doubt, she comforted herself by thinking, was only merry,' and never ill-tempered or unkind-yet at times'-' and then, what if-!' Yes, Jeanie, you are right! The demon sneaks into the house by degrees, and at first may be kept out, and the door shut upon him; but let him only once take possession, then he will keep it, and shut the door against everything pure, lovely, and of good reportbarring it against thee and 'wee Davie,' ay, and against One who is best of all-and will fill the house with sin and shame, with misery and despair! But 'wee Davie,' with his arm of might, drove the demon out. It happened thus:

One evening when the smith returned home so that 'you could know it on him,' Davie toddled forward; and his father, lifting him up, made him stand on his knee. The child began to play with the locks of the Samson, to pat him on the cheek, and to repeat with glee the name of 'dad-a.' The smith gazed on him

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