"There is something very American in the manners of the tradespeople: they do not care for your custom, they will never send any purchase to your abode, they give little or no credit, and are more ready to affront than to serve you. It is the same with the servants. It is a place that Tories, like us, should shun; and, but for the valued friends I have mentioned, who have done their best to smooth all difficulties, enhance all pleasures, and reconcile all incongruities, we should have been extremely wretched here.

"An old grocer, of great prétention-(for he had attempted to visit us on an equal footing, even while vending his sugar and soap)-Mr. S., who had implored our custom, when we owed him a small sum, anxious to get his money, and yet not, by showing any distrust, to lose our custom, called on me, and, making up a piteous story, asked me to lend him ten pounds. I was taken in, and about to comply, although very inconvenient

to me to assist him to this extent; but, on consulting a Swiss friend, I learnt that he was very wealthy; that it was a ruse, caused by distrust of foreigners; and that he meant only to get our grocery paid in advance. Convinced of this, I sent him the exact amount of his bill, and forbade his ever addressing us again.

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"I mention this as a proof how much all republics, great and small, resemble each other in their effect on the feelings and manners of the tradespeople.

"Poor Augusta! I fear she is, indeed, unhappy! Alas! how could she be otherwise! We long much to hear from you again; and all unite in best love, with your ever affectionate and anxious

"ELLEN."

By the same post came a letter from Babie Douglas. It was written by the request of poor Grizzy, and dictated principally by her. Grizzy's forebodings had not deceived her

Grizzy Douglas was on her deathbed! Ah! what an inscrutable thing is a human heart!

Poor Grizzy! she had not been able to brave the shock: the Past had long been her world, and the Past was for her no more!

Moss-grown and ruined were the shrines where her fancy had dwelt, and now the unsparing hand of Truth had laid them waste. As she had said, the habits of her uneventful life were broken up, for she was a being of thoughts rather than of actions. It had ever been her habit to rise early and pray for the Absent, perhaps the Dead; but she could not pray for the False-at least, not with her wonted prayer. Often she awoke at dawn, from her troubled sleep, and, by a sort of instinct, was about to rise, to kneel on the accustomed cushion, worn by those old knees, when the truth, the, to her, terrible and hopeless truth, would rush (as alas! at early dawn such truths ever do) across her mind, and she would lie down again, and close those once

tearless eyes. But now an unwonted moisture was there, and murmuring to herself, "Ah! I didna remember; it was a' a dream. God forgive him! but I canna pray for him noo." She would lie awake, but quite still, till her hour of rising; an early hour, but one she never changed, hardly nurtured and selfdenying as she was, until the fever of her spirit, and the exhausting nature of her inward grief, laid her on that bed on which she had so often dreamt such happy dreams, not of the Future but the Past.

And yet this old woman, whose heart at sixty-five was broken by a grief younger hearts are tough enough to resist, (are they to be envied?)—this same old and lonely being bore the gradual approach of the Destroyer with a calm and fortitude few men have ever shown. Her steady eye seemed to count the sands as they ebbed in Life's glass; her only link with the Actual was Babie; and her last effort in this mortal

world was a letter to Ellen, which she dictated

thus,

"From my Deathbed.

"My dear Ellen Lindsay,

"Dinna start at the sight o' that place

o' rest whence this is dated to me it is a welcome one. But ere lang I shall have left it for one mair welcome still! I told you, Ellen Lindsay, that Death was in my heart. I felt a strange cold hand, and I kenned wha's it war; but I was unco strang, and he has had a warld o' trouble to put out the light that burned sae brightly, though in so old and worn a lamp. Inward tears, for I am a Douglas, and too proud to weep outwardlyinward tears hae helped to quench that light, and noo a' is well nigh dune.

"In these last weeks of waking and pondering, the thought has come again and again, knocking at the door o' my heart (and at last I hae let it in), that a' this, which has killed my body, has saved my soul. I see that lang, too lang,