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ཡས ཀ་

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studies in England and Italy, and professional "Not a willing one, sir, I am sure; but my duty, not only occupied me, but kept me ignorant, till now, of the sad blanks it has pleased Providence to make on your hospitable board. Had I been aware of them I would not have intruded now to renew, by my presence, those griefs which I could not alleviate."

Never was the pure healthful mountain breeze Tore welcome than when it swept across our 41shed and feverish brows on emerging from the steaming cauldron within, or the silence of right more grateful than after the din of ple1.an revelry in its most discordant form. But there reigned within the little parsonage an athere holier and more healthful still. powerful contrast, a stranger juxtaposiA on of the lights and shadows of Scottish life man, in a tone that went at once even to a "And wherefore no, Willie?" said the old scarcely be conceived than presented itself stranger's heart; "my brave boys are gone tween the orgies, and sounds and scents, and before me, it is true, leaving their old father ly heaped banquet we had left behind, to buffet a while with the billows. But praised - the hallowed stillness, untainted (nay, be He who lent them! they were such as a the open lattice, perfumed) air of the father can speak of with pride; and to do so -ster's modest apartment, and the inviting with one who knew and loved them is a priviof the little supper table, on whose snow-lege rarely enjoyed. This gentleman, perhaps," linen yet reposed the bibles and psalters | turning courteously toward me, "will excuse ly used in the household's evening devo- the overflowings of a parent's heart at sight of In these we had been (perhaps from ́s sense of incongruity in thus intruding) blessed along with the dark curling heads he one whose fair delicate brow he has often late to partake, but the spirit which had has lived to see laid in the dust. Tall and rated and hallowed them still lingered on pale, and unlikely to live, ye were then, e venerable minister's brow, the flush of de- Willie; but ye have proved the reed that the on on whose aged cheek rebuked more tempest spares when oaks are rended. rongly than a thousand homilies the feverish But we'll talk of our Lilly now," said the old gow of revelry on ours, compared or rather man, cheerfully, shaking the fair hand of his trasted with the "rable rout" of reeling, grandchild as she stooped to collect the sacred ping nymphs we had left (the elite, it must volumes. "I think her mother must have A remembered, even of peasant maidens, were been about her age when you knew the manse; ut, of course, from such a scene). The saw ye ever two creatures liker?” der, retiring figure of the good pastor's ming grand daughter seemed robed in tangel purity; and all, in short, derived ance, as well as interest, from the utmost

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hat there was that about our host which tol no such heightening. Even amid the swd ches of meottish pastors he rose prepre eminent in trials, and in the sant son which disarms them. Of a large I touching family, one daughter alone, mother of the gar! before us, survived; and separated from her gray-headed father by wabs of the great Atlantic, could only chbum by proxy in the person of this in-,

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ww not till after his hospitality had been did for we that G heard from the ally the extent of the pastor's bereave and he would gladly have wished to fers feelings by suppressing all owledgment of former acquaintance. But pints armory the playmates of buried most filial hold; and the Maxwell on receiving us The once more to Boneil,, nty years a stranger."

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host's, who, on hospitable thoughts intent, had The entrance of a worthy old sister of our disappeared on our entrance, turned the conversation to more general topics-among other to the penny-wedding.

spared the degradation of my office by the "I am glad," said Mr. Maxwell, "I was residence of one at least of the hopeful pair in a neighbouring parish; and I wish the idle frolie which united them had been carried on further from my door. I am no enemy to occasional rejoicings, and love to see innocent mirth; but the sport these poor wretches have been called to make will end, I fear, like that of Samson, and bring an old house upon their heads.

may not suppose all our junketings are of so "However, sir," turning to me, "that you boisterous and equivocal a character, I hope you will stay over Monday, and help me to thank my kind people for insisting on keeping my fiftieth anniversary among them. I am sure, Willie, I may count upon you, for auldlangsyne."

palette and pupils," exclaimed the young artist:
"Ay, that you may, sir, come what will of
and my acceptance, if less enthusiastic, was
not the less cordial. To see, in the midst of

a grateful and affectionate flock, the faithful pastor of half a century, is a sight not often to be enjoyed, or lightly to be forfeited; and I too would have perilled fame or business, had they been mine, on the issue.

A Scottish Sabbath has been often described, but never, methinks, so as fully to convey to a stranger its exquisite stillness, and the palpable elevation of all in nature above the diurnal level of our "working-day world." It is not alone the absence of all sounds of labour or revelry, the softened tread of the rude hind, the subdued laughter of unconscious infancy, but the very whisper of the brooks and waving of the woods seem attuned to soberer and holier harmonies. The busy highway and toilsome furrow are alike deserted, while a thousand quiet hedge-row paths teem and glitter with long files of holiday-suited elders, and white-robed youth and childhood. If airs of paradise do indeed ever penetrate our world's dense atmosphere, and breathe sweet influences from on high on privileged mortals, it is surely on a summer Sabbath amid the green hills and pastoral vales of Scotland.

The little church of Boneil, primitive as though, instead of being near a metropolis, it had been perched on some lone isle of the Hebrides, was filled to excess on the present interesting occasion with a congregation as perfectly in keeping with the scene and situation as it was novel and striking to me.

There was not a face in the assembly-a sprinkling of rustic noblesse in the gallery hardly excepted-which could have been assigned by a physiognomist to any vocation save a rural one. "In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread" was legible on the toilfurrowed cheek of all who had reached maturity. But it was a graciously mitigated sentence, long merged in the cheerfulness of man's congenial occupation. "Keepers of sheep, descendants in more than their calling from righteous Abel," formed the larger part of the aged pastor's flock; and their blue bonnets, chequered plaids, and above all, inseparable comrades, even in church, the collies or sheep-dogs, looking almost as sensible as their masters, and banishing by their exemplary demeanour all idea of intrusion on the sanctity of the place, afforded a picture not often exhibited to Southern or even Lowland eyes; and which, with scarlet plaids, still thinly sprinkled here and here, over locks of silvery whiteness, and on one or two fair unbonneted female heads in innocent girlhood, their golden tresses confined and set off by a simple black velvet ribbon, the modern substi

tute for the poetical "snood," wanted only the figure of the venerable minister himself, rising like some fitly adapted pillar of a time-worn edifice to crown and complete its harmony.

When he did rise, at length, manfully struggling for utterance, breaths were held in, and the very dogs recalled their dreaming fancies from the dun hill-side, lest a start or suppressed bark should disturb the solemn silence. The beautiful twenty-third Psalm, always so great a favourite in a pastoral assembly, came more home to their feelings than ever when its "green pastures and still waters" were applied, as they evidently were by the venerable reader, to his own tranquil sojourn of a lifetime in the glen of Boneil. The allusion to a darker valley, the inevitable and not very distant termination of a lengthened pilgrimage, woke a yet tenderer chord; and when these words were sung, as the psalmody of Scotland so impressively is, by young and old, it was not the voice of the gray-haired contemporary parishclerk alone that betrayed signs of emotion. The text was the simple words of the psalm

ist "I have been young, and now am old;" and perhaps its most affecting commentary might have been found in the time-worn figure in the pulpit, whose manly proportions age and grief had sapped without being able to obliterate. But when the good man sketched with faltering voice an unpremeditated picture of that gradual pilgrimage from youth to age, every step of which many of his hearers had taken side by side with this tried veteran in the path of duty and affliction; when the young heard him allude with a parent's tenderness to follies they felt years could alone teach them entirely to abjure; and the old saw his venerable face lighted up with joys he had taught many, like himself, to draw from above; tears, fast and frequent, as from dropping caves, attested the sympathy that reigned between the good shepherd and his flock.

"My brethren," said he, in a conclusion accelerated evidently by overpowering emotion on both sides, "forty years long did the Israelites in the wilderness tempt and provoke Moses, rebelling against his authority, calling in question his kindness, and disobeying, nay, blaspheming his God, yet in his heart he loved and prayed for them still, beseeching that, if need were, his own name might for their sakes be blotted out of the Book of Life. Fifty years long have you, amid much human imperfection and human infirmity, cherished and borne with me-cleaving to my doctrine, following, as God gave ye grace, my counsel, and sympathizing, to the utmost of your ability, in my

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The effect of this appeal may be better imagined than expressed. G―― and I did not breathe freely till, by climbing the highest hill within reach, we had attuned our minds to an elevation somewhat akin to that of the half emancipated pilgrim. The evening calm, which succeeded the converse of the pastor | about his absent (rather than deceased) children, the family thanksgiving for blessings granted and withheld, for comforts to cheer, and trials to wean the immortal sojourner from his exile below, will never, while memory holds her seat, pass from her inmost record.

I awoke on the morrow, fancying all nature decked in tenfold beauty for the joyful anniversary, my own spirits elated with a healthful gladness which courtly fetes may take away, but could never yet bestow. The privileged guests for the day (G-- and myself included), were the elders, most of whose fathers had presided at the minister's ordination-the schoolmaster, who, in the absence of nearer and dearer, had long been to him as a son; and the doctor, who, under a dress and exterior rugged as those of his shepherd neighbours, veiled a skill beyond their simple wants and few-and-far-between ailments.

But a self-invited member was soon added to the group in the person of a young neighbour laird, who made sport an excuse (with those who required any) for farming his own moderate patrimony, and enjoying, unfettered by the etiquettes of society, so called, the style of life most congenial to his age and disposition. At the breakfast-table young Boncil - for so from his property he was styled-walked in, with his heartfelt congratulations, and a bag full of grouse, shot before town dandies had well composed themselves to their first sleep.

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good deeds done, remember, you'll find it a hard matter ever to shut the door on me or my pretensions again."

"God forbid I should, Norman," said the old man, shaking his manly visitor by the hand; "a kind heart and a leal one are aye welcome. Fifty years back your father bore both, and his son is no changeling. Stay with us now, or return, as it best suits you.

"Oh! I dare not stay!" cried the young man, with a significant smile at Lilly and her aunt; “I should be sadly in the way. Besides, I spied a roe in the glen this morning, and must have another hit at the venison. What say you to a pasty, Miss Anne, between this and noon yet?"

"I'll say for her, Norman, that it will be like the savoury meat of Esau that old Isaac valued for the hunter's sake, if ye get it; and if not, we've the will for the deed, and that's just the same. And now off with ye, else your pies in the bush will stand in the way of Aunt Anne's puddings in hand.”

"There goes as fine a lad as ever lived," said the pastor, as he went out. "If he were my own son, I could scarce love him better."

I looked up, and chanced to meet the delighted glance of the retreating Lilly; and it told me, as plain as a thousand words, that the old man might, ere long, take to his heart a grandson!"

Another testimony of grateful affection followed hard on the sportsman's morning tribute. A parcel and letter were put into the hands of the minister from the worthy nobleman whose exemplary tutor he had been at an age when few are able to guide themselves. The letter overflowed with expressions of still youthful kindliness and gratitude. The parcel contained a snuff-mull of beautiful workmanship, inlaid with all the valuable Scottish stones produced on the noble donor's estates.

"If I have any good in me," said the writer, in honest sincerity of acknowledgment, "you dug it out from its native bed like these longoverlooked gems, which but for the hand which set them where they are might have been still trodden under foot or slumbering in their dark hill-sides for ever. When you look on this box, think on your own workmanship, and add one more to the thousand pleasing reflections which make this day a day of pride to all, save your own modest self."

It was not in man to be unmoved by a tribute like this, and from the Duke of, the very model and pattern of a pious and patriotic noble.

"Too much, too much!" sighed the meek

man, as he read, "God made him what he is; | two of the hugest ewe-milk cheeses that ever education can do little for hearts and heads like his."

The Lilly was called, and her eyes sparkled through tears as they glanced on the splendid present and ducal epistle; but they did not glisten, nor her soft cheek glow, as while conning every feather on the dark glossy wing of young Norman's sylvan tribute.

Lilly, too, had her present on the way-one to whose safety, in her eyes, that of empires was as nothing: and never was the delay occasioned by traiking Tibbie's late tumultuous nuptials more acutely felt than when noon arrived, bringing duly Norman's precarious prize, the roe, but no tidings of the fair fabric of Lilly's after-dinner glory-videlicet, a huge cake from the city, which was first to grace with appropriate devices her grandfather's honoured board, and then to gladden, with undreamed of sweets, the eyes and palates of the whole Sabbath-school. The sight of the groups who in holiday attire were already parading in joyful anticipation, deepened her anxieties; and the joy of eighteen, like the joy of eighty, had thus its inevitable drop of alloy.

The manse, meantime, teemed all the morning with unbidden yet privileged guests. Neighbouring pastors came to congratulate the willing fellow-labourer, under whose fatherly shadow themselves had grown insensibly gray-with whom they had "taken sweet counsel and walked in the house of God as friends"-and with whom they hoped, though in all humility, to stand side by side at the great account. Couples married by him in the earlier periods of his incumbency still lived to thank him for half centuries of happiness: while children and grandchildren, christened by his hand, and made Christian by his precept and example, came with them to add their grateful acknowledgments. Widows, whose hearts had been bound up by one acquainted with grief, brought all they had- —a prayer and a blessing, to swell the general tribute; while the Sabbath-school children tottered under the load of a pulpit Bible, purchased out of the hoarded halfpence of the good man's own overflowing liberality.

With this juvenile offering he was fairly upset; and always easily overcome by aught associated with his own childless hearth and earlyremoved olive-plants, he thanked them with tears alone, and deputed the glad Lilly to invite them all to tea on the green. This she could do with an easy mind, for Tibbie had at length arrived: the enormous weight of the cake balanced, though imperfectly, in her panniers, by

owed their existence to mountain gratitude.

Our party, swelled by a few guests of the better order, at length sat down to dinner; and never did feast (for a feast it was, fit for the court of aldermen) yield more unmingled satisfaction. The old man, exhilarated by the spontaneous burst of affection with which his anniversary had been hailed, felt a buoyancy of spirit to which he had for years been a stranger. G― and I were excited to the utmost by so unwonted a celebration. The dominie himself, through the week the "observed of all observers," looked up in delighted admiration to his own exemplary teacher; while the rough diamond of a doctor eyed him with the exact counterpart of the expression with which his dog, of the true shepherd breed, fixed his eyes in mute devotion on his master's well-known countenance. All felt, that like the good centurion in Scripture, he had but to say to any of them, "Do this, and he doeth it; come, and he cometh." Their hearts, under Providence, were in his hand, and they felt it was well it should be so.

But there was in young Norman's reverential gaze something deeper and more filial than any, and strange to say, on this day alone, when all seemed elated and emboldened, it was tempered for the first time with fear. For Norman had a suit to prefer before that evening should close, on which hung his own and another's happiness; and not all the softened feelings of the day of jubilee would, he feared, reconcile the old pastor to the thought of parting with his Lilly. How this was to be brought about, or even hinted at, was more than even a lover could devise; so to Providence he left it, as he had been taught by his pastor to leave all besides.

And strangely was the knot cut, and the difficulty removed ere the thought had well passed from the young man's troubled mind. Among the healths of that eventful evening-"absent friends"-the one ever dearest to the hearts of Scotsmen, was not forgotten; and then for the first time did the pious father allow himself to whisper a regret that his daughter, the only stay of his old age, should dwell divided from him by duty in the new world. True, she was solacing by her kindness, and cheering by her society, the labours in Christian usefulness of a worthy countryman whom the spiritual necessities of his exiled Scottish brethren had induced to forego home and kindred for their sakes. But they had been long, long absent on this labour of love, and a father's heart would yearn, on the proudest day of his life, for a glimpse of his long-banished only child.

The vain wish had crossed like a passing cloud the rarely-dimmed serenity of his mind, and left but a halo behind, when, as Lilly, loaded with the huge remnants of her cake, and assisted by Norman, who was leaving the house to prepare for her juvenile fete, two plainly dressed, but respectable-looking people, opened with something of strange familiarity the garden gate, and asked if Mr. Maxwell, was at home.

"He is," replied Norman, answering for the bashful and surprised girl, "but very particularly engaged with friends, who would be loath to part with him to-night, even on business"

"Lilly, my own Lilly!" sobbed out the female traveller, clasping her daughter to her heart, and then finding breath to say, "How is my dear father?"

"Oh, well! well!" cried the delighted girl, hanging round her father's neck in frantic joy, "come and see him directly!"

"Not just directly, my own Lilly," said he, composedly; "seventy-four is no age for surprises, even joyful ones. Sir" (turning to Norman, who stood studying, all lovers will guess how earnestly, the parents on whose fiat hung his life), "my wife had set her heart on reaching home on her father's day of jubilee. We had a quick passage and a safe one, God be praised! to Liverpool, and travelling day and night, were set down by coach this morning at B. How to get on in time was the difficulty, but the backwoods have made us good walkers, and here we are, not too late for a grace-cup of thanksgiving to Him who has brought us safe to our father's door, and to friends who will make us welcome for his sake. Please, sir, to pave the way for our meeting."

Norman hailed the omen, and came as deliberately as joy would let him into the room. "There are strangers without, sir, who wish to speak with you; and as they have tidings from New Brunswick, perhaps your friends will consent to spare you, though unwillingly."

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From New Brunswick!" exclaimed the old man, hastily rising, then sinking down again from the painful agitation; "you have seen and spoken to them, is all well? Norman, my son, tell me truly."

"All well even as your heart could wish; but there are those without who could tell you better, far better than any words about those you love."

"Are they still without? Oh bring them in, pray!-our friends will excuse."

But will you promise?"

The old man cast a bewildered gaze around -caught a glimpse of Lilly's beaming face as it

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peeped eagerly in at the half-open door, and exclaiming, "My bairn! my bairn!" sank back insensible on his chair!

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We bore him gently out to the open air, whose reviving freshness, and still more, voice and aspect of his darling daughter, soon restored him to himself. Who could describe their meeting half as well as one throb of long-severed hearts will bring it home to every bosom? Suffice it to say, it was a meet consummation for such an anniversary.

THE ICEBERG.

'Twas night-our anchor'd vessel slept Out on the glassy sea;

And still as heaven the waters kept,
And golden bright
-as he,

The setting sun, went sinking slow
Beneath the eternal wave;
And the ocean seemed a pall to throw
Over the monarch's grave.

There was no motion of the air

To raise the sleeper's tress,

And no wave-building winds were there,

On ocean's loveliness;

But ocean mingled with the sky
With such an equal hue,
That vainly strove the 'wildered eye
To part their gold and blue.

And ne'er a ripple of the sea

Came on our steady gaze,
Save when some timorous fish stole out
To bathe in the woven blaze,-
When, flouting in the light that played
All over the resting main,

He would sink beneath the wave, and dart
To his deep, blue home again.

Yet, while we gazed, that sunny eve,
Across the twinkling deep,

A form came ploughing the golden wave,
And rending its holy sleep;

It blushed bright red, while growing ou
Our fixed half-fearful gaze;
But it wandered down, with its glow of light,
And its robe of sunny rays.

It seemed like molten silver, thrown
Together in floating flame;

And as we look'd, we named it, then;

The fount whence all colours came:
There were rainbows furl'd with a careless grace,
And the brightest red that glows;

The purple amethyst there had place,
And the hues of a full-blown rose.

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