affects you, as you creep or canter by, without the smallest necessity for that painful process-ratiocination! The senses are indeed most admirable contrivances; and we cannot be sufficiently thankful for "the harvests of a quiet eye" or ear, reaped at her leisure by the Imagination! There is a cottage -you cannot help seeing its wreathing smoke, neither can you help descending the chimney, and plumping down into the midst of four laughing country girls, devouring soup or sowens. Only look at the gudewife-twelve feet in circumference, more or less, and a face that baffles all competition. After romping a moment for it is all you can spare-with one of the four who has taken your fancy you know not how-perhaps by the steadfast gaze of her large hazel eyes swimming in delicious lustre-instead of taking your departure up the chimney, you evanish, generally, after the fashion of a Brownie-and find yourself once more sitting cheek-by-jowl, in medio tutissimus, of your two Bagmen.

There again, that wreath of smoke attracts your eye, wavering over a small coppice-wood, and betraying an unseen dwelling. Dove-like you wing your way thitherwards, and behold an aged couple sitting opposite to each other by the ingle, each in a high-backed arm-chair, while a small maiden is sewing in silence on her stool, exactly midway between, and never lifting her eyes from her pleasant task-work. Is she servant or grandchild, or both together? An indescribable likeness on her pretty small-featured infantine face, tells you that she is of the same humble line as the old people. But why so silent? She is listening to the story of Joseph sold by his brethren into captivity. The Bible is on the old man's knees, and his spectacled eyes are fixed on the page, almost needlessly, for verse after verse rises of itself before his memory. The chapter is finished, and the child, wiping away a tear, lays by the kerchief she had been hemming, and trips away to the garden for dinner herbs, and with a pitcher to the well. The open daylight awakens a song in her gladdened heart, at the very moment the lark is leaving earth for sky; and flinging back her auburn ringlets, the joyful orphan watches the lessening bird, and all the while unconsciously accompanies with her own sweet pipe the ascending song.—But back to your own two Bagmen.

You cannot choose but see a nest-like Hut, embowered in

birches, on the brae-side, and stooping your head you cross the threshold. Not a mouse stirring! You look into a little back-room, with a window that shows but the blue sky, and there, sound asleep, beside her silent wheel, with her innocent face leaning on her shoulder, hands clasped on her lap, and her white unstockinged ankles dazzling the mud-floor-there sits the Gentle Shepherdess, unconscious of a hundred kisses on forehead, lips, and bosom. Oh! that you could read the creature's dream, written as it is in characters of light on that cloudless forehead! See, an old ballad has fallen from her hand-doubtless a tale of love. Ay, and although breathed a hundred years ago, from the heart of a homely swain, who perhaps married a plain coarse lass, and became father of ever so many yelping imps of hungry children-a very clodhopper, who could not write his own name, and as for conversation, was never known to finish a sentence-a vulgar wretch, who shaved once a-week, and ate a firlot of meal every fortnight— and who played the fiddle occasionally, when the regular Apollo was drunk or dead, at fairs and kirns-ay, although framed by such a poet, yet tender and true to nature, and overflowing with the sad delight of his inspired soul. Contributor to all the Magazines but one! Author of various pieces in prose and verse! Inditer of Petrarchan sonnets and Sapphic songs! that terræ filius, who has gone back to the dust without his fame, was dearer than ever thou wilt be to all the heavenly Nine. They purified the clown's soul from all gross and earthly passions, and with their own breath fanned the spark of genius, that slumbered there, into a flame. Then flowed the sweet murmuring words-then came the pensive pauses-and then the bursts from the beating and burning heart. Nature knew it was Poetry-and she gave it to Time and Tradition to scatter over a thousand glens. How, pray ye, do you account for the caprice of genius, thus glorifying the low-born, low-bred peasant-and why should low birth, and low-breeding, in cottage, hut, or shieling, be thus made beautiful by the light of undying song? But the solitary maiden awakes and takes you for a robber-so up again, my dear sir, up again to your Bagmen.

In short, you keep repeating the same process, with variations, all the stage; and by the time you arrive at the inn, you have made yourself thoroughly acquainted with all the real or

imaginary domestic economy and private histories of all the families in three successive parishes, from the sexton to Sir John Haveril-himself of that Ilk. will or

In like manner you become enlightened, whether you no, by merely keeping your eyes open in your head, on the state of agriculture. Stone walls, where no stone walls should be, or tumbling down in rickles and gaps; open gates, with broken bars that would not turn a tinkler's cuddy; wide weedy ditches, full of frogs and foliage; burweeds thick-set in every pasture-field, as a congregation at a tent-preaching; thistles six feet to the grenadiers, and five feet eight inches to the light-infantry, and Matthew Brambles, through whom many a sheep has become a prey to the ravens, are seen by your eyes in spite of your teeth, and your mind passes judgment for you on the stupidity or laziness of the tenant, who, you see, is behind with his rent, and has orders to quit at Mayday. Or, hedgerows here and there, with a princely elm or oak, all clean as those round a garden, and easily-shifted hurdles dividing the smiling fields into temporary enclosures-and padlocked gates defying the cunning of stray horses, or the carelessness. of wandering lovers-and compost heaps, on which may the hind's spring-spade not disturb the nest of the water-wagtail

and old lea-riggs, whose bright verdure is embroidered with the glowing gowans; and downy brairds, that in three weeks will be bearded barley; and a general character of permanent and principled well-doing over all the beautiful farm. Every field holds forth for itself, in a style of rich or simple eloquence. The great principle of rotation evolves itself to the very senses visibly among the crops. The potato-field speaks for itself, with the true Irish accent; and wheat reminds you of the blades of Cockaigne. You turn round upon the Bagmen, and are so copious on agricultural produce, that the one takes you for Sir John Sinclair, and the other for Mr Coke of Holkham.

Or, if you are like us, not only a politician and a philosopher, but also a painter and a poet, why, what hinders you all the while the mail is at nine knots, to leap down into yonder glen, on whose brink three hundred feet high of chasmed cliffs frowns, or rather say smiles, so green is the ivy on one rounded corner, and so red the wall-flower on the sharp edges of the other, and so bright the sunshine over all the revivified walls -a Castle so old that tradition has forsaken its donjon-keep,

nor could Jonathan Oldbuck himself tell the tale of the spurs and dagger dug up along with the great yellow bones !—sketch the old Castle and bring away, if not in your paper-book, in your astounded spirit, that grim, black, groaning abyss, into which sullenly descends the waterfall! Tumble in there, my boy, head-over-heels, and thenceforth you will be invisible as the merit of the last damned tragedy. But you shan't be hissed-unless in your descent, reverberating the slimy rock walls, you enrage a nest of owls-or irritate a surly old bat, taking a cool nap beneath the portico of his cavern. It is a gross mistake to dream that the river in flood will drive your mangled corse down to the low-lying lands, where being picked up, it may be conveyed to the Modern Athens for Christian burial. We tell you, for the second time, your corse will never be seen on this side of eternity-for at the bottom of that huge rock, that rises like a steeple from the channel to the Castle's foundation, time and the torrent have scooped out a catacomb, from which there is no egress, for a fierce gurgle of foam shuts up its mouth like a stone, and secures all the skeletons! So up, if you be wise, between the Bagmen.

You observe we have a pannier on our shoulder, and a fishing-rod in its numerous pieces, not unlike the Roman fasces. You must know that we are on the way to the Crook Inn in Tweedsmuir. Ostensibly, we are going to angle; but the truth is, that that is almost a pretence. An elderly gentleman, ever since Dr Johnson's verses, looks absurd in his hat and wig by the side of a murmuring stream; so we have mounted a foraging-cap, and let our few silver hairs take their chance in this genial weather. With our angle in our hand, we shall be able to dauner down the streams, without awakening suspicions of sanity or suicide in the minds of the shepherds; and not improbably we may kill, without intending it, a glowing, golden, starry-sided Prince of the Pool, who has reigned a lustrum over a populous empire of trouts and minnows.

We have lost somewhat of our enthusiasm even in the 66 angler's silent trade," and never hope to fill our pannier to the very lid again in this world. Ours, indeed, is now "the sober certainty of waking bliss," in all the pursuits of this life. But we envy not in others those eager transports, which we never more can share. We remember the days, of our youth, and are grateful. No rushing down now, with

breathless anxiety, to the water-side, to see with our own eyes if it be indeed in trim for the delicate gossamer midge-fly tackle. No desire to murder any previous angler in the very act of landing a giant on the shelving sand of our favourite and unfailing pool. No strict compact to fish stream and stream about; no proposal made in bitterness of rivalry, to toss up for precedence, down the bright, beautiful, breezy, Tweed, murmuring along through the lights and shadows. No wading to the arm-pits, or swimming to the opposite bank from which alone we could command the certain eddy at the head of the Saugh Linn. No-no-no! Then we were young Charles Cotton-but now we are old Isaac Walton. We now put our rod together by the water-edge, as composedly as if exhibiting its taper longitude to admiring children in our parlour. We draw the reel-line through the rings, one after one, as solemnly as if moralising on the thread of life, so apt, with all possible preservation, to get rotten, or to snap in its strength. And after we have got all ready, and the deadly red spinner, or March brown, or Phin's delightis circling the air about to descend on the curl, would you believe it, we have grown so fastidious, that not one pool in a dozen will we condescend to try, and only drop in our tail-fly, as light as a snow-flake, above the dimple made by the piglike snout of a four-pounder that we have doomed to death. And when we lay him gasping on the gravel-no keen exultation, no fervent triumph! We regard him with serious eyes, and almost wonder, with a slight self-upbraiding, why we could not have left him for another year to enjoy the murmurs of his native linn, and salmon-like, fling himself in sport among the spray-rainbows of the waterfall.

mur.

"The Tweed, the Tweed, be blessings on the Tweed!" Bagmen, behold the Tweed! It issues from the blue mist of yonder mountain, Scotticè Erickstane. The very wheels of the mail-the axle himself, is loth to disturb the liquid murThat sound-call it a noise-for it is brawling jocundly -is from some scores of tiny waterfalls, up among the braes, all joining, like children's voices the leader of an anthem, the clear strong tenor of the Tweed. A blind man, with a musical ear, might almost be said to see the river. Yonder it isone bright gleam, like that of a little tarn; but a cloud has been passing, and the gleam disappearing, there you behold