"unmindful though a weeping wife and helpless offspring mourn" while you are inflicting the penalty of summary dismissal from your employment on some poor inebriate for the crime of drinking too deeply of the cup which you have provided for his use, and stored up in your premises, there to be poured out and put into his hands by your servants engaged expressely for that purpose! Nor is this the only mischievous incongruity to be found in their manner of discharging those duties which exist between them and their workmen, in the performance of which they ought not merely to inflict punishment upon the intemperate, but also by showing a good example in personal sobriety, avoid the application to themselves of that upbraiding commentary upon similar actions made by the Apostle, "Thou that teachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal?"

Working-men, before concluding this article, suffer me to ask you if, in the middle of the nineteenth century, you feel that you have not yet come of age as a class, but are still accounted minors, and, as such, not yet entered upon the possession of your lawful inheritance, the natural rights of man-if so, I appeal to you if it is not full time for you to assume the exercise of the noblest birthright ever bestowed upon man, the right of using the abundant means of instruction, knowledge, and refinement, so liberally supplied by a press teeming with the richest productions of the human mind, and easily accessible to the meanest artizan who can read, and, when appreciated, of power to exalt reason, curb the appetites, improve the mind, expand

the heart, and extend the sympathies; which prompt you to give the right hand of fellowship to all who are striving to advance their order by a conscientious discharge of the duties devolving upon them in every relation of life as Christians and patriots, and last, though not least, as sober, intelligent, but not servile, working-men?

Brethren, arise! shake off your shackles ; free your. selves from the worse than Egyptian bondage of ignorance. A glorious inheritance is bequeathed to you, even the right of possessing and appropriating to your own use and advantage all the treasures of wisdom, the stores of knowledge, the riches of mind, the triumphs of science, the glories of literature,-in a word, the accumulated mental wealth of both ancient and modern times. All this is poured out at your feet. Accept the precious boon. Use it wisely and well, and so the attainment of all your just rights will inevitably follow, for "knowledge is power."

SKETCHES

OF

SCOTTISH PEASANT LIFE AND CHARACTER IN

DAYS OF AULD LANGSYNE.

"For who to dumb forgetfulness a prey

This pleasing, anxious being ere resigned,

Left the warm precints of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind."—GRAY.

I HAVE ever held, and now express the opinion, that to give a true and graphic sketch or sketches of Scottish peasant life and character in "days of langsyne," it is necessary that the writer should not draw his information from tradition and hearsay alone, but should, from childhood, have lived, moved, and shared, for a time at least, in the usages, customs, and opinions; in a word, in all the habits and actings both of the inner and outer life "of that bold peasantry, their country's pride" a class which is fast losing its identity. The primitive simplicity of character and manners, and the simple tastes and unaffected piety of our peasant ancestors, these are now becoming, except in some isolated places and families, like dissolving views, fading away in the distance even while we are gazing. These considerations, have prompted me, in this instance, to record some of those traits of character, thought, and feeling, with the mode of living adapted by circumstances to their condition of the Scottish peasantry of bygone days.

The chief source from which I propose to draw my information, and the incidents connected therewith, are from the experiences of my maternal grandfather, and his relation of the incidents and anecdotes connected with that of others known to him. He died in the first year of the present century, aged ninety-seven ; and my mother, who died in 1852, aged eighty-three, had been from her childhood in the habit of treasuring up all his experiences and relations as they fell from his lips, with a reverence and respect second only in degree to that she would have paid to the Apostle Paul, had he been the narrator.

My venerable relative was a person of exemplary piety, sound judgment, and discerning mind, although somewhat blunt and plain-spoken when expressing his opinions, and was much respected in the parish of Shotts, where he lived for the greater part of his life. He was often called upon to arbitrate in disputes between neighbours and relations, and was eminently successful as a peacemaker. My mother was the true daughter of such a father, and I grieve to think that I have not profited more by her instructions and example than I have done. I was but a child when my aged relative lived with us, but I have a distinct remembrance of seeing him once. He was clad in a suit of home-spun grey, his venerable head was bare, and his broad-blue lowland bonnet lay upon his knee; he was sitting in a devotional attitude, with his hand shading his eyes. My mother had the dearest wish of her heart gratified, in having him under her own roof at the time of his death, although they were in poor

circumstances--my parents being strangers in a large town to which they had recently removed.

My grandfather had, in common with all serious persons of his class, a firm and filial reliance on the providence of God, defined in our Church catechism as "His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving, and governing all his creatures and all their actions," and he used to relate an incident in the life of one of his ancestors, who was a trooper under Oliver Cromwell, in proof of this. He being one of a party picketed at a small distance from the royalist army, was in the act of giving his horse a feed of corn out of the lap of his cloak, when a hostile ball cleft the air and fell into his lap, scattering the corn, but injuring neither the horse nor his rider.

Then as to the certainty of the actings of a retributive providence, that was beyond all doubt, and he used to say that he never knew an instance where woman had been betrayed by man, whether by seduction or broken promises of marriage, or of children who dishonoured or neglected their parents, who were not visibly punished even in this life. Of the first class several instances had come under his own observation.

One of the most striking, was in the case of a young girl who, being left a friendless orphan while yet an infant, was taken home by him and brought up with his own children. When she was grown up she went to service, and an innocent and most beautiful girl was Mysie Fairlie, until her master's son acomplished her ruin under covert of the most solemn and reiterated promises of marriage, backed by invocations of the