OLD ROBIN, THE SAWYER.

OLD ROBIN, the Sawyer. More than half a century has elapsed since I became acquainted with old Robin. For many years, hardly a day passed that we did not see his stalwart form, and hear his halting footsteps on our threshold, for Robin was lame of a limb, and went with two sticks. He was tall, big-boned, and had been a powerful man, but was now grey and stooping; yet, though aged three-score years, still hale and hearty. But being unable to work for several years, he was in consequence very poor, yet not the less welcome to our hearth, where he often sat knitting his stocking and sharing our meals. He was very grateful for any act of kindness shown him, which is not always the case with persons in his condition.

Robin made no great pretensions to a religious profession. His only ambition was to be esteemed an honest man, and this he certainly was. He was not literary, but literal. He admitted no fancy work, no new-fangled notions or scientific discoveries concerning the works of God in creation or providence.

"A primrose on the river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,
But it was nothing more."

To all the revelations of science, astronomical and geological, Robin was a most determined opponnet.

Speak to him of anything having had a pre-Adamite existence, he would thunder forth such a volley of contemptuous and contradictory objurgation as made the house ring again.

Robin always took the Bible for his stand-point in such discussions; indeed, we thought he sometimes used it as a shield to cover his own pertinacious obstinacy. It was blasphemy, he said, to assert that the earth revolved round the sun, while the sun was fixed. "Does not the Bible tell us," said he, "that his going forth was from one end of heaven, circling even to the other, rejoicing as a strong man to run his race; and that 'the earth's foundations are settled that they cannot be moved.' Nothing could shake his belief on these points. "Do you think," he would say, "if you would sit at your own door for twenty-four hours, you would see Glasgow pass by Langloan?" Robin's ideas had become confused in the heat of argument, which they sometimes did when he was hard pressed.

When told that the light of the moon was only a reflection of the sun's rays on her opaque orb"What!" said he; "does not the Bible say, 'God made two great lights-the greater light, the sun, to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night?" When told of the immense size and distance of the heavenly bodies" Ha'e ye gane clean daft, woman?" he would say to my mother; "the sun bigger than the hale yirth. Tak' a leuk o't whan it's cummin wastlins, an' ye can get a glint o't; it's nae bigger than a pyet's nest or my braid blue bannet."

"Robin," said my father to him, "is it not wonderful

to think that the sun is at such a distance from the earth, that a cannon-ball shot from it would not reach us for many thousands of years?" Hearing this for the first time on that occasion, Robin was taken rather aback, and sat with rather a surprised look and open mouth for a minute or so, till he had consulted with himself on the subject and come to a satisfactory conclusion, when he blurted out" Man, gif I kent that a cannon-ball had been shot frae the sun richt doun abune my heid, I wadna staun aneath't for ten minutes."

Poor Robin was not altogether singular in his ideas upon these subjects. The greater part of our peasantry held to the literal meaning of the words of Scripture, not only as a rule of faith and morals, but also in the outward phenomena of nature; not taking into account, that while in matters of faith, doctrine, and obedience to God, the rule of Scripture is infallible, the works of God in nature "are to be sought out of every one that taketh pleasure in them." The inspired writers, we believe, had no inspired revelations in astronomy, geology, or any science whatever. Man's natural and acquired powers of mind, in industrious research and investigation, are sufficient, when wrought out with enlightened and intelligent perseverance, to make him sufficiently acquainted with whatever is necessary and desirable for him to know in natural and scientific knowledge.

Alas! poor Robin. Very desolate, destitute, and distressing was thy condition for some time before death. Even to thy miserable, untended death-bed did want and misery dog thee. Even the grave was not a place

of rest for thee. Very shallow was the grave they dug for Robin. Amongst the poorest of the poor they laid his body. On the following night it was taken up again by some body-snatchers; and I was afterwards informed by a professional gentleman that poor Robin's body was anatomised in the dissecting room in Glasgow College, where his skeleton was preserved for many years, he being, it was said, a remarkably large-boned, double-jointed specimen of humanity.

AULD KIRSTY DINSMORE.

ONE of the first objects that attracted my curiosity when we were settled down in Langloan, was a small cottage of a circular form, which stood in a corner of the little court at the back of our house. In appearance it resembled a low corn-stack, with a door on one side and a window of six small panes. Inside, the accommodation was very small, and the furniture scanty. A truckle bed, a chest, and a couple of stools, half-a-dozen wooden cogs or platters, and a small iron pot, used for boiling greens for "lang kail," or making oatmeal porridge-these two homely dishes were what she lived on for the most part, with the addition of a few potatoes. Never had tea-pot or tea-dishes been seen under that lowly roof, and she, like many other Scotchwomen of her condition, had no source of income but the proceeds of her industry at the spinning wheel. Rarely missing from that little window was old Kirsty Dinsmore. There sat that busy little woman plying her swiftly turning wheel, and crooning an old ballad. How often when my peering, laughing face, darkened the small panes, would that little wrinkled, round face, set in its rim of snow-white hair, turn round with a look of kindness in its pale blue eyes, and she would say—“Cum in, my bairn, an' I'se sing thee the sang