wedlock made no part of their institutions, and children mixed not in the train of this moving camp, yet the decorum of their conduct was remarkable and exemplary. Nor was this excursion over the hill-tops of Dumfriesshire undertaken for the purpose alone of picking up men of loose faith, or women of weak and docile belief; of these they attracted few, and though they obtained the personal attendance and support of some men of education, yet they made few permanent converts. The charm of novelty soon wore off, and the prophetic powers of our Lady received some notable and alarming checks, which staggered men of infirm or imperfect faith, and diminished the chance of swelling her congregation with rustic and enthusiastic recruits from the dales of Dumfries. There were other motives for this inroad than the love and the hope of conversion. Many of our Lady's followers were men of substance, whom the sorcery of her conversation had carried from wealthy farms and lucrative callings. Though, in matters of faith, they did not act like wise and prudent men, yet this infirmity they carried not into less elevated speculation, they had regularly surveyed the unappropriated farms as they proceeded, with the resolution of selecting some retired pastoral valley or hill where their wanderings might find a home. As they were scrupulously just and equitable in their dealings, and intruded not upon the faith of their neighbours, they began to obtain extensive respect; and many who lamented the folly of their faith, courted their acquaintance from their dispositions, and the active morality of their Lady. It was eagerly expected by the congregation, that the Lagg hill, with a suitable accompaniment of lowland, would be obtained on lease, and in this they would probably have succeeded, had not an ominous accident obliged them to remove into Galloway.

On the evening before I commenced my acquaintance with these respect able enthusiasts, the whole congregation, with our Lady at their head, moved to the summit of a neighbouring hill to feel the pulses of the stars, and had already begun to plant their circular palisade of boughs. Meantime a crowd of peasants from a neighbouring parish, hearing that the rarest

fortune-teller that ever cut cards, or consulted horny palms, had pitched her tent on Lagg Hill, and that a swarm of bonny lasses always attended her, to be in the way of men, anxious to be married, immediately scaled the encampment, calling out for our Lady. In vain Jenny Jimpansma, a douce and determined damsel, who had been left behind, assured them, that the Lady was a prophetess, cổmmissioned to reveal to men more important and mysterious matters than any regarding cattle, or the domestic joys of wedlock. Some of them laughed; but the majority, incensed at this intrusion of people of motley faith, on the very dominions of the kirk, declared they would break up her establishment, and began to pluck up the palisade of boughs, while others, who professed a more tractable system of morality, plundered the Sack of Mercy, and even drained the Comforter to the lees. One of them, a tippling blacksmith, began to examine and prove the merits of the lock which secured the coffer that contained the accumulated wealth of the people, when he was impeded by the guardian damsel, who, seizing him by the hair of his head, fairly plucked him out of the tent. He uttered an oath, (which, as it was no common one, and might become current in this land of hard swearing, I shall forbear to repeat) and, breaking from the maiden's hands, assailed the coffer with a fist and a gripe nearly rivalling in hardness and force, his own hand hammer and vice. On this the damsel lifted up her voice three successive times, and the whole congregation, quitting their orgies, hastened to the rescue. When they arrived,' the rustic invaders had retreated down the eastern side of the hill; and as they had taken nothing that could be retrieved, no pursuit took place.

Many of the neighbouring farmers, incensed at this unprovoked attack on the property of peaceable people, pursued the delinquents with hue and cry. Our lady, with infinite kindness, instantly interposed, said the young men had taken nothing but what they were welcome to take; and if they would oblige her by another visit, she would give them a sound advice and a good supper. This occurrence, however, made her resolve to leave Nithsdale-it was inauspicious and

looks, and the worship of young men's eyes. When I am translated, and that time is nigh,-thou shalt have my mantle and my rule; but if thou mixest worldly rule with thy dominion, thy power shall fade as fast as these boughs have withered, and they were plucked green yesternight." So saying they departed, and I walked forth into the beaming of the new-risen sun, and the fragrance of the mountain air. The wild enthusiasts of last night existed only in my remembrance, for assuredly the altered scene which I now witnessed might have gone far to persuade me, that the unbridled devotion I beheld at midnight was the visioned pageant of some disturbed dream. Nature and all her works wore the sober and sedate livery of simple rusticity and labour. On a swelling knoll at the sunny side of the hill, I found the women all orderly and silently ranged, and seated on the grass. They were busy with roke and with wheel, manufacturing flaxen thread. Others were summing the amount of their companions' labours on the check reel, at that time not a very old invention, but a very excellent one, and which superseded the ancient mode of numbering the threads audibly as the reel turned round. It's worth hearing how it was invented.-Honest Johnie Tamson of Tupthairm, whose boast it was that he could make a wheel and spin on't-and make a fiddle and play on't, happened once to return home from a market-day carousal rather late, and found his wife numbering her threads in the primitive manner. The thrifty dame, unwilling to stay her labour even for the pleasant pastime of scolding, mingled her admonition and her numbers together, "Where have ye been a' day? -seven-and-twenty-synding yere hawse wi' my thrift-aught-and-twenty-if ye get a sark o' this-nine-and-twenty -may the deel rive't off yere backand that makes thirty." And so he invented the check reel, and ever after obtained his matrimonial admonishments pure and unmixed. To talk of a check reel is no great digression in a tale about thread; so, as I was saying, these maidens were busy making thread, and thread more evenly, firm, and fine, never came cross the haddles. All the male devotees had departed, and on looking down the hill I observed them marching off in groupes in

cr

various directions, with their sickles in their hands, to the neighbouring corn-fields, for harvest was generally begun; and these men, many in the morn, and all in the vigour of life, were willing and excellent labourers. Nor have I heard, that the expected coming of the golden times on earth ever relaxed their exertions-so necessary is labour for man, and so conducive to happiness is the possession of some useful or visible employment. The earnings of the congregation were deposited in the tent of our Lady," so they invariably styled their conductress; and as their wants were few their money increased. The capacious Sack of Mercy, and the Gardduvin, called the Comforter, were often replenished by the open hospitality of neighbouring lairds, who came to examine our lady's rural encampment, and oftener by the private donations of opulent dames, who held a half, or kind of twilight belief, in the stability of the prophecies so plentifully scattered over the country from the Hill of Lagg. On another part of the hill, two brothers, as it happened by birth as well as belief, were employed in manufacturing spinning wheels-the larger as well as the less, and likewise reels and rokes. This latter implement no longer graces the bosoms of the young maids; and it is rare + meet with one unless in the hand some very old person, who wishes be singular, or has an ancient fection for this portable, ladylike. dilatory instrument. Such at time were the staple commodi the district. The ingenuity an ty of the works of the two 1 together with the fame of th lar and harmless people, bro purchasers, and the wealth gregation began to grow

As the golden time nigh-when care and cease on earth-when extend its limits, and become immortal, ma ed an idle and a barr dren were works of as one of the femal gazed down the the whole fra Dumfries, mo ing in the su nary said she, with these

"mott

blishing the belief of her immediate intercourse with heaven. Janet Jimpansma forsook the limited society of people where there was neither marriage nor giving in marriage, and united herself to a staunch Cameronian, and a wealthy farmer. I have sold hose to her children. The fame of their thrift, their spinning wheels, and general industry, still adheres to the diminished remnant at Auchengi

bardhill. And I can aver on my per sonal faith and practice, that the Sack of mercy continues to hold, on the same generous tenure as of old, abundance of choice viands, and the famous Comforter still yields to favoured lips some of the rarest liquor ever distilled or preserved from grain or from fruit. Peace be with the dead, and peace be with the living.

NOTHING is more remarkable in nature than its variety. The flowers of the field, and the leaves of the forest have, each and all, their general likeness, and their particular dissimilarity. It is easy for a botanist to determine the species of a plant from its specific and invariable outlines, when examined by itself; yet no leaves on the same stem, or indeed on any other stem, will be found exactly correspondent. It would be endless to specify and particularize. The same holds true with respect to all the other works of the Creator, and constitutes the eternal distinction between nature and art. The one is bounded and imitative, the other infinite.

The human face is another remarkable and striking illustration. It is scarcely comprehensible by our limited faculties, how, within such a narrow compass, there could possibly exist such a variety of modifications-such a diversity of lines and lineamentssuch a general resemblance-and such an individuality. Nevertheless, such holds true with respect to all the families, and kindreds, and cities, and kingdoms, and regions of the earth, from Zembla to the Tropics, from the swarthy Moor to the blue-eyed Russ. Though an inhabitant of an extensive metropolis is in the daily habit of seeing a thousand different faces, we are bold to affirm that no one, even allowing him to have lived to the age of Thomas Parr, ever beheld two human beings exactly the reflected

shadows of each other.

We may turn from the physical to

AKENSIDE.

Mankind dif

the intellectual world. fer not more in external features than in mental physiognomy. That all men of sound minds possess a range of faculties in common, may be laid down as an axiom: yet in no two individuals will be decerned those minute pecu liarities, those undefinable tendencies, which, however trifling in themselves, go far, when taken in the aggregate, in forming the conduct, and stamping upon the character that complexion which it is destined to bear in the eyes of the world.

When the principles are different, so must necessarily be the produce. We never gather gooseberries from an apple-tree, nor figs from a thorn bush. Circumstances and situations, no doubt, have their peculiar effects, both in regard to the direction and improve ment of the intellectual faculties; but there are inherent varieties of disposi tion, and inherent tendencies of mind, which neither time nor art are sufficient to counterbalance or eradicate. Children, at the most tender age, frequently exhibit the dawnings of that disposition which is to characterize them through life;, while, in other cases, the utmost excellencies of mind have lain dormant and unmarked for a very long period, even the greater portion of life, and have, perhaps, been only at length called into exhibition by a fortuitous circumstance. It has been a matter of dispute for half a century among critics, to whom the palm of superiority should be allotted, Dryden or Pope. The powerful minds of these two men modelled the litera

ture of the age in which they flourished; and when we speak of a certain cast of thought, and a certain manner of expressing that thought, we designate it as an imitation of the school of Pope or Dryden. Yet such was the diversity in the developement of the faculties of these two men, that the one literally "lisped in numbers," while the other exhibited few tokens of excellence till an advanced period of life. When we are told that, in the falling of apples from a tree, the theory of gravitation, from which such stupendous discoveries arose, suggested itself to the comprehensive soul of Newton; or that, to the tones of a Welch harp, posterity are indebted for the bard of Gray, we are not for a moment to suppose, that the like results would have followed from the same circumstances, in any other conceivable situations. They are not links in the chain of invariable sequences; they do not stand in the relation of cause and effect; for every one does not look on nature with the eyes of a philosopher, or draw from the melody of sweet sounds the inspiration of poetry.

Allowing even the groundwork to be the same, the objects of thought, whether relating to the physical or in tellectual world, are tinctured by the very mood of mind in which they are dwelt upon; the scene is coloured by the eye that views it. A foreigner does not look on the landscape around with that keen relish and partiality displayed by the native. The bloomy vales of Languedoc do not appear, in the eyes and estimation of the Swiss emigrant, equal to his own Alpine scenery; not because bare rocks, and cold lakes, and mud cabins, are preferable to rich pastures, and gardens, and palaces, but because with the former are associated a thousand endearing recollections.

"Our first, best country, ever is at home." A European looks with pity on the helplessness, and with contempt on the acquirements, of an African negro. The negro, on the other hand, looks upon us as the serpents of mankind, as the very embodied essences of cunning and cruelty. They paint their devils white.

Some Kamscatdales were brought to the capital of Russia, that they might be educated, and carry back to their tribes some notion of the accomplish

Even the smallest thing in a foreign

land that bears reference to the land

of nativity is treasured up; the like

ness of a face-of a tree-of a stream

of a mountain. In the journal of Park's second Travels in the interior of Africa, we are told that the heart of that illustrious man was, in the extreme, affected by the loss of a soldier, who was wont to amuse their evening loneliness by singing the ballads and songs of his native land. The anniversary of Burns' birth is fondly commemorated by his countrymen in India.

Lord Byron, in his travels through the mountainous tracts of Albania, passes over many a more important topic, to remark, that the dress of these Greeks resembled that of the Scottish Highlanders. Nothing is more delightful than to hear the ac

cents of our native clime beneath far

foreign skies. This has always been, and well it may, a favourite theme for poets. Scott compares the tone of a mournful melody to

"the lament of men, Who languish for their native glen." The author of Childe Harold, in his splendid description of the Dying Gladiator, transports himself back to the barbarous shows of Rome, and pourtrays the slave, as he sinks into the embrace of death, in the midst of the Circus, forgetful of the gazing throngs around, beholding, in thought, his young barbarians at play, their Dacian mother, and the banks of the Danube. Campbell has given scope to the same train of sentiment, in the beautiful lyrics of "the Harper," and "the Exile of Erin." Grahame, in his "Birds of Scotland," has, in his own person, given vent, in the most rapturous and passionate language, to the same patriotic feelings; and Wilson, in his fine sketch of " the French Exile," has represented the blind man lifting up his hoary head in ecstasy,