marks the difference between English institutions and ours.* Every steamboat, stage coach, and hotel has its aristocratic place de reserve. Those who occupied the quarter deck of this boat, paid, I think, four times as much for their passage, as those who stood two feet below them on the main deck. Were such an arrangement to be made in one of our boats, the end of it, I suppose, would be, that everybody would go on the quarter deck.

* I am told, however, that such a usage does prevail in the boats on the Mississippi.

CHAPTER III.

Scotland-A Stage Coach Conversation-Edinburghrivalled beauty-Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Cragence between objects of Romance and of real Life-H -St. Leonard's Crag-Excursion to the Highlands-The Trosacks-Lock Katrine-Lock Lomond-H Cottage at Inversnaid-Hamilton-Bothwell Brig-Tweedale-Abbotsford-Melrose and Dryburgh Al Comparison between the People of Scotland and of Ney land.

As I took my place on the top of the coa Glasgow for Edinburgh, I found a handsome y man seated opposite to me-a boy of twelve and a modest looking Scotch girl, with eyes s ling like diamonds, and a freckled cheek, v coloured and changed at every turn; and to w the young gallant was evidently attemptin make himself agreeable. On the fore part o coach sat a young fellow, who I soon saw much given to ranting sentiment. We tool on the way a sturdy looking middle aged dressed in coarse but substantial broadcloth, said, to my surprise, as he took his seat, "Th

the first time I ever was on a coach." What American that ever was dressed at all, could say that? However, this made up our dramatis personæ ; for we had a dialogue on the way, in which I took so much interest, that I shall record it.

I forget how the conversation began, but I soon observed some sharp sparring between the gallant and the sentimentalist, in which the former was expressing some ideas of the strongest skeptical taint, and especially insisting that there was no life beyond the present.

"Ay," said the sentimentalist, "I know what you are; I have seen such as you before; you believe nothing, and destroy everything. Do you believe there is a God?"

"Oh! certainly I don't deny that," was the re

ply.

66

'Well," said the other," you'll find there is a God yet, and you'll find what it is to die yet, and you'll see that after death cometh the judgment ;" and he then, without much delicacy, warned the Scotch girl to beware of such a fellow.

"You may.talk," said the gallant, "but you know nothing about it, and nobody knows anything about it. I know as much as you do, and that is nothing. There is a man dying! Now look at him. Everything that you know about him dies

with him. His speech dies; his thoughts die; the man dies, and there is an end of him."

It was easy to see that our rustic fellow-traveller was very much shocked. He seemed never to

have heard anything like this before. He was evidently a representative of the true homebred Scotch faith, who had duly learned his catechism in childhood, and duly attended upon the kirk ever since, and never thought there was anything to be mentioned in religion, but the kirk and catechism. He looked this way, and that way, and shifted from side to side on his seat, and at length said, without addressing any one in particular, "I am sure this man does not know what he says; he is demented I'm thinking." He then adverted to the little boy sitting by, and said that “ he ought not to hear such things."

I have more than I wish I had, of the English aversion to taking part in conversation with strangers in a coach; but as I saw that both our rustic and ranter were rather failing and sinking before the firm assurance of the young skeptic, I thought I ought to speak. So I said to him, "You seem, from your confident assertions, to know much about death-what is death?"

“Why, death,” said he-" what is death? Why

everybody knows that: it is when a man diesceases to live; and there is an end of him."

"But this," said I, "is no definition. You should at least define what you talk about so confidently. Else you attempt to argue from-you know not what; to draw a certainty from an uncertainty. Is not death," said I," the dissolution of the body? Is not that what you mean by death?"

66

"Yes," said he; "that is it; it is the dissolution of the body."

"Well, then,” I said, "are the body and the soul the same thing? Is the principle of thought, the same thing with the hand, or foot, or head ?"

"To be sure it is not; and what then?" he rejoined.

"Why then," said I, "it follows that the dissolution of the body has nothing to do with the soul. The soul does not consist of materials that can be dissolved. Therefore death, while it passes over the body, does not, you see, as we define it--does not touch the soul."

He seemed something at a stand with this; but like many others in the same circumstances, he only began to repeat what he had already said with more vehement assertions and a louder tone. Meanwhile, there was a little by-play, in which he endeavoured to reassure the Scotch girl, with