who has had enough of the fresh air and the sun's rays during the day, conning over newspapers discoloured with brown finger marks, two or three days old. If we wend our way to the backs of the houses, we shall see in their small plots of garden the feuars of the village, enjoying their evening pipe, which ever and anon their vigorous lungs pull at strongly. An hour's digging with the spade, weeding the turnips, or pruning the tree branches, or pulling up grass from the onion bed, and then they bring their spades or hoes to the garden corner and chat sympathetically together. There you see the shoemaker, with his leathern apron and resin'd fingers and sleeves pulled up over the elbows, which display his brawny arms, but he has always the worst of boots and shoes on his own feet. There works the tailor, with trousers creased, and pale face, but like all village tailors, with stout, manly form. Then there are the miller, round of belly; the schoolmaster, with pleasant paunch and smiling face; and all the other village worthies recreating themselves with some little garden work.

But all the time we have been talking the sun has been setting, and now it throws its river-streams of gold down through the village and over the broad, well-tilled fields, and smiling, blooming trees in clumps in their midst. Every time the sun sets here it always seems new. It brings new thoughts with it. What it does to the outward world, gilding and glorifying the meanest and lowest of inanimate objects, we feel it does to our inner self; with its rich rays we feel our soul, our thoughts, our sympathies growing stronger, mellower, purer. It lets us see the richness of the depths of human love and human affection, until we begin to clasp our hands over our

possessions, when we find our hands empty, and the sun has set beyond the hill and night has come over the world. It is when the sun is setting that I like to walk in the village churchyard, when the sun, glancing over the dyke, tips the tombstones with a crown of glorious beams, and lights up the plainly coloured windows of the church with a living, holy stream of mellow rays. Then I like to set myself upon a recumbent tombstone; then my own thoughts always preach a sermon from that text which recurs to me whenever I see a burying ground

"Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs."

A village churchyard is often more impressive and productive of more lasting effect than all the polished rhetoric and close reasoning of a popular priest in a city cathedral, or the village church. In the one, nature's tongue preaches with ripe discourse in a seasonable time; in the other, man's earnestness often overdoes the crust of our patience; our thoughts wander out and out of the building, till we find them roaming in the green fields. At sunset our thoughts take a soft cast of sympathy with the dying day, and a solitary walk in the churchyard then peoples our thoughts with strange fantasies, which accord with our pensive feelings. Then we meditate on the simple epitaphs, the pious quotations carved on the stones, and find ample scope for discourse on a stray flower growing at the head of a child's grave.

In itself the village may not call for any special notice; for beauty and village splendour, it fades before the neighbouring hamlets of Dioleton and Aberlady. In Athelstaneford, however, have lived and preached two Scottish poets of immortal fame, whose names are

inseparably associated with it. The names of Robert Blair and John Home are yet living powers, and even at this present time they are mentioned within the parish with great reverence and affection.

In a spring morning or an autumn afternoon there are few walks within the radius of twenty miles from Edinburgh so fine as that from the county town of East Lothian to Athelstaneford, a distance by road of about three miles. On reaching the top of the Garleton Hills we obtain a most magnificent view. At our feet lies the grand old burgh of Haddington, sleeping beneath the smoky clouds-a burgh associated with some of the best men Scotland has produced, John Knox, John Brown, Edward Irving, Thomas Carlyle, and Samuel Smiles. Beyond the town the Lammermoor Hills stretch themselves out; in the valley flows the quiet little Tyne river; to the west, enveloped in great clouds of smoke, is the city of Edinburgh; to the north is the Firth of Forth, and a long belt of well-cultivated land broken by the Bass Rock, and North Berwick Law; and at the northern bottom snugly lies the modest village we have been speaking of.

The village, as seen from these hills, appears like a cloud on the horizon. It is one of these peaceful villages that may be met with in every county of Scotland; everything looks quiet, stolid; the smoke lazily issues from the chimneys, lazily floats in the air, and lazily vanishes into space.

But ever memorable is the scenery from these hills. The eye rests with pleasure on the delicious, well-cultivated scene; there is nothing rugged, rough, or wild, but everything unmistakably bears the marks of the ploughshare and the reapingmachine. The fields, for their neatness, are like large garden plots;

many trees are planted here aud there with a purpose, and with effect to the eye. The red-tiled, compact, and clean farm steadings lie scattered over the landscape in great profusion, like bright dots in a landscape scene, giving it warmth of colour. From the midst of a cluster of ploughmen's houses, and the farmer's handsome mansion, rise the tall chimney-stacks, rearing their heads proudly in the air. In our eyes few things are as poetical as a fine old farm steading. Within its circle worlds of poetry and romance lie concealed by a deep layer of reticence and quietness.

We cannot omit to record the freshness of our feelings as the glorious breeze swept across the hills, and tuned our thoughts with the sweetest harmony. The air was charged with a music-like odour as it swept past us from the Firth of Forth. The beautiful fragrancies of earth, and the splendid tints and streaks of the heavens, created thoughts within us that no words could utter. There is a property in the horizon for every man if he cares to receive it, and once he has received it it is his for ever. Nature is a great teacher. Roaming over a land so fair, under the hallowed influence of free fresh air, life is sweetened, one's soul is swollen. from out its ordinary cabined recess, and he "finds sermons in stones," "and good in everything."

The village owes its name to the following incident. Athelstane, a Danish chief, who had received a grant of Northumberland from King Alured, in one of his predatory incursions, arrived at that part of the county of East Lothian; and having engaged in battle with the Picts, was pulled from his horse and slain. The battle was fought near the rivulet in the immediate vicinity of the village, and tradition

reports that it ran with blood for several days after. Buchanan, the historian, says that Hungus, King of the Picts, was encouraged to hazard this battle by a vision of St. Andrew appearing to him the previous night, and promising him success; and that the victory was facilitated by the miraculous appearance of a cross in the air over the farm hamlet, which is yet called Markle, a super-contraction of miracle. Achaius, King of the Scots, in commemoration of the event, is said to have instituted the Order of St. Andrew. Thus far tradition explains the name of the village near the ford where Athelstane was slain in battle. Others, again, hold by the etymology of the word, which gives a simpler account. Ath-ail meaning in Gaelic a stone ford, and the Saxon settlers, it is said, finding the Ath-ail already in existence, superadded to it stoneford, in their own language. When a roadman was opening a new quarry, forty years ago,near the spot where Althelstane is said to have been buried, a stone coffin was found, buried in a cavity cut in the rock to the depth of about six feet. History records that the lands on which the battle was fought were given by the King of Scots to the Culdee Priory of St. Andrews, as an acknowledgment of gratitude to Heaven for the victory obtained. When monkish lands were abolished at the Reformation, they were conferred on the Chapel Royal of Holyrood House.

A story of olden times gives us an insight into the state of the country centuries ago. There is a rivulet in the parish called the Peffer, which divides itself, and flows eastward and westward. Stag horns and large oak trees were found many years ago, when it was deepened and widened. Before the waters of the district were so carried

off by widening and deepening the

river-bed, the strath, extending to about eleven miles, was a large morass, covered with trees, and occupied by wild animals. It was the den of wild boars, one of which is said to have been of formidable size, and exceedingly dangerous to the people who dwelt in the neighbourhood. So greatly was this animal an object of terror, that no one was found willing to enter the forest. At last the right of pasturage on a track of land from Gullane to North Berwick Law-a few miles of good land-was offered as a reward to him who should kill it. A man named Livingstone appeared, who was possessed of the daring to undertake, and the skill to execute, the mission. We need hardly say that at that time firearms were unknown; spears and swords, bows and arrows, were the only instruments then employed; and forth he went, armed with a strong spear, having his arms and hands shielded with thick leather. He killed the ferocious beast, and obtained the reward. The family of Livingstones of Saltcoats became extinct about the middle of last century; and we find it recorded when the household furniture was sold, that the ancient spear and glove were sold to a gentleman of the family name in Edinburgh, they having been found in the garret of the mansion house. This story is true beyond doubt.

To this bare account the tradition of the village has added a few bright colours. The place where Living. stone killed the boar is now known as Bluidyside, and where he fell as the Boarstanes. Tradition also reports that he ran from Bluidyside to the Boarstanes with his entrails in his hands, his wound being so

severe.

Over the village and parish there hang delicious the memories of her bygone minister-poets, Blair and Home. Although they lived a

century ago, their names are more familiar to the villagers than the last incumbent. History's ears are longer than village chat. Scottish history and Scottish poetry keep fresh the memories of their minister-poets, Robert Blair and John Home, as the rain and sun make the fields to shine and the crops to The schoolboys grow every season. smartly pick up their names, and vie with each other in obtaining all the village and farmstead traditional tittle-tattle of the former eminent parish ministers. Proud are the thinking boys of being born in the village where "Young Norval" was written, and not less delighted are the romancing girls of attending the church in which preached the author of "Lady Randolph " for many years. The memories of these men hang over the minds of both old and young as the sunny summer sky, giving warmth to their feelings and specks of imagination to their daily monotonous lives. One wonders at the strange workings of Providence in sending to this remote village as simple pastors in the bleak past two such remarkable men. But we do not wonder that they should have taken to poesy; the district breathes poetry; the old castles, the traditions of the neighbourhood, the living, smiling landscape, are the very nurseries wherein poesy is wont to be cradled into song. The memories of the eminent men of the past fitting close to an imaginative mind give it strength, and press it into poesy's land. Then they lived as they chose, enjoyed the fruits of quiet study, and fingered their ideal poems in the seclusion of their garden. Time's wheels revolve; their names are now numbered with the past, and now their memories are in turn preserved in the corner niches of the Temple of Fame they themselves worshipped. So time rolls on, obliterating often the past altogether, and making the

present the past, and the past the present.

"The Grave" may be seldom read, but Blair possessed the spirit of a true poet; it has been compared to the powerful expression of a countenance in which there are no softened lines of regular beauty. It is as deeply saddened as the grave. grave. Many of his images, and there are many, are characterized by a Shakspearian force and Miltonian fancy. The gifted William Blake illustrated an edition with some wild and grand designs. He was one of those who "in times dark and untaught," by his powerful lines began

We do not here desire to give the facts of his life, indeed to do so would be impossible; old time has eaten away, with moth-like severity, much of the information regarding him. Having possessed some private means of his own, he lived more in the manner of a country squire than that of a parish clergyman. His patron, a baronet of an old family, and he were the warmest of friends. In the mansions of the local gentry, and in the humble cots of the farm labourers, and in the comfortable homes of the Lothian farmers, he was always welcome. To the writing of poetry he added a fondness for flowers, both of which, if we are able to believe young ladies, rightly go hand in hand. Declining health and declining years would seem to have ruffled his temper; for Dr. Carlyle of Inveresk, in his charming "Autobiography," tells us when he was writing about the members of the Haddington Presbytery, previously to being licensed as a preacher, that Blair was so austere and void of urbanity, as to make him quite disagreeable to young people."

66

For long and many years after his death the only outward memorial of the man were the letters in the village churchyard on the high iron railing which surrounded his grave, "R. M. R. B., 1746."

"These letters have puzzled not a few," the present talented parish. clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Whitelaw, wrote me. "Their meaning is, the Reverend Mr. (the style_of that day) Robert Blair." Dr. Whitelaw at last, assisted by a Scotch judge, the patron of the parish, a colonel-son of a former minister of the parish-and an intelligent farm steward, erected on the village green a neat, simple obelisk to Blair's memory.

And

this honour the poet, for the simplicity of his life, and the excellency of his poems, most richly deserved. A most neglected looking grave is his; the boundary high wall of the churchyard, two old side walls, and a high rusty iron gate, enclose his resting place; inside the grass is tall and uncut; at one corner grows a young tree creeping close to the wall; there is no stone whatever, only these letters and the date denote his grave. We have wondered how many years have come and gone since the gate was last opened; and many of the farm-servants, dressed in Sunday suits of black, standing round the churchyard gate, and near the porch of the church on Sabbaths, have over that same rusty old iron gate, and those strange letters and figures, often times deeply pondered and pondered again. His grave is very poetic to look at; the tall rank grass, the rusty old gate, the young tree, the strange iron letters, all form fine images in a poet's eyes, but, to common prose eyes, the grave looks desolate, uncared for, unthought of. Its very sight brings up bygone ages.

John Home, his successor, was cast in a different stamp. He was

one of those vigorous, lively, social, pleasant ministers that were very common in those days. He was better fitted for the military camp than for the village pulpit, and shone more to the manner born as a hospitable, cheery host or pleasant guest than either. He lived in more memorable times than Blair did, and is often spoken of by all kinds of men. kinds of men. In Scottish history of that period, we come across bis name every step we take; he knew nearly everybody, and nearly every body knew him. The passionate poet and the kind friend was made right welcome wherever he went. Ten years he was minister of the parish, but it is said that during all that time he never took up his residence in the manse. He appeared generally at the village on Saturday, on horseback, preached on the Sabbath, the Monday found him away like a bird of passage. He lived in quiet lodgings when in the village; and, notwithstanding his flightiness he was warmly esteemed by all the parishioners.

Home was impulsive as a poet, kind, generous. When he reached manhood and had nearly completed his professional studies, the Rebellion of 1745 broke out in Scotland. Along with other young ministers to be and to have been, he entered a corps of volunteers in Edinburgh; the cassock was thrown aside for the tunic, the sword replaced the pen. Then the young divines received"calls" that were not pleas ant. His career in the army was of short duration. Along with other royalists he was taken prisoner at Falkirk battle, but they escaped from their prison-house, along with others, by cutting their bedclothes into ropes and letting themselves. down to the ground from the window of their room. He reached his father's house at Leith in safety; the series of events that he had witnessed cooled his martial spirit,