ant barks find shelter, which would be cracked or | purely imitative as any copy that ever was done by run down if they took the start in the main stream. a school-boy, and in which almost every bad quality It is a peculiar and special public which welcomes, that can exist in a man without hanging or transfor example, the poetry of Mr. Matthew Arnold. It porting him is visible upon the very surface,-merwould never have found a welcome from a wide, cenariness, delight in superiority, the desire to cause rough-and-ready magazine audience; but the books suffering, utter incapacity to conceive the existence once afloat, they find their public and their public of any but the lowest motives. The same descripgrows. Thus the experience of bookmakers is uni- tion applies to large numbers of the books that are form upon one point, they can rarely get anybody published, it must of necessity do so. When all to see anything in their best efforts till they are sorts of people have acquired the literary knack, we printed, probably by a fluke, or a half-fluke. Then must expect all sorts of writing. But then there is, the square people fall into the square holes, and we all know, a prestige hanging around literature. what the author knew to be good is found out to be There is something about a book which suggests good by a "public" which never saw anything in it superiority, and commands, to start with, a certain before. So much for the effect of a little sympa- degree of respect. In truth, to be able to write, as thetic excitement: if one sheep goes over the hedge things go, no more makes a man worthy of regard the rest follow. But when an author has digested, or attention than a certain other species of benefit as he may, the bitter reflections which occur to him of clergy did in olden days. But if most people at such a pass as this, he has probably to swallow forget this, as they unluckily do in the case of books, something bitterer still: the round public who are they forget it still more disastrously in submitting to mere sheep, following the rest over a hedge, and be guided, without any independent effort of their who do not at all see the subtle adaptations and tit- own understandings, by casual reviewers. The renesses which made the success of the square article viewer is not only a man who can write, he is a man with the square public - come upon the square au- whose office is judicial; he is supposed to be able to thor, and want him to do something like what he did tell you what is good and what is bad. Yet that a before. The utter, utter, fathom-deep blindness man is no more a critic because he writes reviews which prompts this kind of want is, in recompense, than a man is a soldier because he carries a sword, one of the most amusing things in the world. If the may every day be seen. There is a large amount square writer can afford to throw away an opportu- of real critical capacity and real good feeling extant nity, he declines to kill his golden goose for the among the people who write criticisms, and it is round people; if not, he submits to the temptation, able, in a considerable degree, to make itself atand his poor little productive bird is gone forever. tended to; but it not only is, it must be the case, It has been over and over again pointed out, that that the greater part of the criticism which passes to do the same kind of thing over again is a purely under our eye should be incompetent and pernicommercial idea (and it never pays); the artist-idea cious. The persons who write it are of the ruck; is to do something fresh, never to do the same thing and the qualities which go to make a Hallam, a over again, to offer up not dead things, but things Coleridge, a Schlegel, a Lessing, are not to be in which the life is young and glowing. But what picked up like stones in the street. Is every reis the use of pointing things out? When an author viewer, then, to be a Hallam? No, but every has made us admire some of his works, we imme- reviewer should possess in degree, and in similar diately proceed to make him the victim of his own order of combination, the very highest qualities. success; we sacrifice him to a habit of admiration 5. Reviewers are generally a hard-worked and which our own weakness has allowed to grow up in much-irritated class of men. Their power is overour minds; we make over again the very mistake rated; they cannot be said to have much share in we have just repented of- till another sheep hap-forming our permanent opinions of books; and even pens to go over the hedge. the share which the higher criticism has in that work is not what might at first glance be supposed. It is a fact that the general reception of books is like the general reception of a play; in other words, what is best falls flat, what is bad or at all events far short of best is received with applause. Nobody will deny that it is invariably the worst and the most threadbare jokes which are taken up at a play. It is the same with books; a man's best must be greatly alloyed, or it is not accepted by the majority of readers. This is so strictly true, that persons who have to write for certain publics know perfectly well their cue, and act upon it, unless they can afford to disregard money profit. And the cue is this: write for intelligent people, but always write what used to interest you several years ago. Then again, the highest qualities of all kinds of art, those which yield the most enduring delight, are those which depend upon unity of conception, upon the proportionate development of parts with strict reference to a certain general effect. The best humor and the best pathos are precisely of this kind, and so of other qualities. Now the characteristic of quite average minds is, that they do not care for permanence of effect, and will not, cannot, let us say, dwell patiently upon works of art till the deeper fountains of enjoyment wake up for them. They 4. The relation of the critic of a book, standing, as he so often does, between the author and the reader, is not always a well-considered one. The critic is, by rights, a reader with a trained mind. He is supposed to have disciplined himself to avoid the partialities of the careless or unconscious reading mind. If he has really done this, he must be a man of strong and sensitive conscience, of just that breadth and variety of culture which give a large outlook upon things in general; and if conditions like these are to be combined in one man, that man can scarcely be youthful. Unless, however, our critic be a person who in some high degree answers to this description, he is only a man like the ordinary general reader, and his opinion of a book is a mere pack of partialities. But of necessity the number of critics who do answer to this description must be comparatively small. And in fact there must be a very large number of persons engaged in pronouncing opinions on books who have just no qualifications for the task. At the present time, literature, in its more transient forms, is very much what school-keeping used to be, a resource for hundreds of people who have no other at hand, and the net takes up fish of all kinds. Thus we constantly see reviews and essays in which the writing is as -- UNDER THE SNOW. When autumn days grew pale, there came a troop THE Snowflake, arrested in its descent and trans feel the first attraction, they think that is all, and then they are off to something new. That is their idea of reading. Hence it may truly be said, not only that unity is thrown away upon them, but that it is a positive offence and stumbling-block. Let the artist make a whole as carefully as he will, the public will break it up; as the manager tells the poor theatre-poet in the prelude to Faust, each will pick out his own, just like the little child that I once saw in raptures at one of Turner's pictures, "O pa there's a rabbit!"- as indeed there was and is, in the very corner. Now, to speak in parables, almost every good thing does contain a rabbit, and the chil-ferred to the microscope, is an object of beauty, and dren are welcome to admire it; but it is not cheering teeming with matter for reflection. The landscape to reflect that, though a good writer is usually ad- which the frost traces during the night with delicate mired for what is really good in him, he is not crystals on the window-pane is a mystery to the child always admired never by the general reader and a marvel to the man. Here is exhibited beauty for his best "good." He is liked for "points" which in combination with power. Great agents have been "take." Now here it is that critics do us an impor-"frost and fire" in the physical revolutions of the tant service. It is they who, honestly studying world. How they began, and where they will end, books, and desiring above all things to grasp them let us leave for speculators to dream, and confine as wholes, have the keenest and most enduring de- our business to the world as it is. light in them; and the delight is so keen that their utterance of it is sufficient to lift up the best books over the heads of the multitude to a true level of appreciation. It is not enough to make the best things popular, but it is sufficient to overawe the stupid, and to penetrate the outskirts of popular feeling, with a blind sense of a great sacred sort of merit that must not be meddled with. In this way a book is perhaps said to be "more praised than read," as the phrase is; the presumption in such a case is that it is both read and praised by good judges, and read without praise by a large class besides, class which, if it were so indiscreet as to praise, would be found to have raised the cry of "Stop thief!" against itself. Thus, then, critics have a most important function to exercise in maintaining those higher levels of appreciation which are again kept up from age to age by the traditions of literature. For the least competent judges of all are ever ready to accept a tradition. a There is not room at this opportunity to deal with that delightful subject, the traditions of book criticism, nor with that of the importance to a critical reading of books of one peculiar, unusual form of memory, and its equally unusual counterpart, the anticipative apprehensiveness. But these topics can wait. There are some of my readers who could say much wiser and better things than any I have here said upon forming opinions of books, and there is perhaps not one of them who could not and will not correct and supplement me as he goes along. By all means; there is only room in so many pages for so many things, and each must contribute his own threads of color towards the white light. Above all things, I rejoice to think that there are readers in whom simplicity and nobility of soul take the place of faculty and culture, who choose the good without knowing why, whose libraries are a profound lesson to the keenest and most patient of critics. But these bright exceptional instances must not be used to prove too much, and it may be safely said that not one of us who really belongs to the exceptional category has any suspicion of the fact. *Taking up by accident, while reading this proof, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Letters, I find she says of Bolingbroke (19th December, 1754): "I am much mistaken if he is not obliged to Mr. Bayle for the generality of his criticisms; for which reason he affects to despise him, that he may steal from him with the less suspicion." After a night's downfall, as far as the eye can scan, everywhere lies the snow. It makes the leafless trees look elegant, hides the smoke-dried city garden, and buries all evidence of the scavenger's neglect. The town is as trim and clean as a chimney-sweep in his Sunday shirt, and the country one vast table-cloth to which birds are the only guests. But under the snow lies, fearful to contemplate, all the unpleasant experiences of mud and slop. So "frost and fire" conduce alternately to our pleasure and pain. The small experiences of snow which fall to our lot are sufficient to remind us of the glaciers and avalanches of mountainous districts. "The snow which during the whole year falls upon the mountains does not melt, but maintains its solid state, where their elevations exceed the height of 9,000 feet or thereabouts. Where these snows accumulate to great thickness, in the valleys, or in the deep mazy fractures of the soil, they harden under the influence of pressure resulting from their incumbent weight. But it always happens that a certain quantity of water, the result of momentary fusion of the superficial beds, traverses its substance, and this forms a crystalline mass of ice, granulated in structure, which the Swiss naturalists designate nécé From the successive melting and freezing, provoked by the heat by day and the cold by night, the infiltration of air and water in its interstices, the névé is slowly transformed into a homogeneous and skycolored block of ice, filled with an infinity of airbubbles; this is what is called glace bulleuse, bubbled ice. Finally, these masses are completely frozen; the water replaces the air bubbles; then the transformation is complete; the ice is homogeneous, and presents those fine azure tints so much admired by the tourist who traverses the magnificent glaciers of Switzerland and Savoy." Such are the glaciers which fill the gorges of the Alps, and by a gradual progress move onwards to the valleys, where they continually melt, whilst at their sources they are being as continually replenished. Such the means by which great and important changes have been wrought on the surface of the globe, and such the material for many a castle in The parallel roads of Glen Roy indicate the action the air more fragile and evanescent than snow. of the glaciers of Scotland in ancient times, and other evidences may be traced amongst the mountains of Wales. March 10, 1806] At one time a notion prevailed in the vicinity of snow-capped mountains that an avalanche might be brought down by the firing of a gun or the tinkling of a bell; that a trifling sound might cause a small fragment of snow to move, and in its motion downwards to accumulate until it became an avalanche, which, like that of Val Calanca in 1806, might transport a forest from one side of the valley to the other, or bring destruction like that of the valley of Tawich in 1794, which buried the whole village of Bueras "under the snow." THE OLD YEOMANRY WEEKS. I. TIME changes both employments and amusements. Now we have volunteer reviews in place of old yeomanry weeks. But it is worth while looking back on what was so hearty, quaint, and stirring in times bygone. containing their cherished ensigns and symbols,-in their case the very glory of the affair. Along with them in many cases came judicious presents of poultry and game. Beasts, as well as men, had their day in the past. The tramp of horses, their brisk neigh, and the flourish of their long tails added to the general Ice has recently been made the subject of a very attraction. The coats of the yeomen, too, were of interesting communication to a contemporary, in the most sanguinary red. And there were other which the process of crystallization during liquefac- charms. The calling out of the troop for ten days tion has been thus graphically described. "Here involved a muster from all the county for twelve or is a block of clear ice, such as any fishmonger can fifteen miles round. There was thus an inroad of supply. Rows of air-bubbles can be seen running country friends upon the townsfolks. The genial parallel to each other throughout the mass, and in system of billeting was in vogue, too, so that every some irregular places there is a fine gauze-like ap-bed was full. And allies and satellites called, in pearance produced by a web of minute bubbles.happy succession, to share the bustle and glee. A This is but the poetical way in which ice expresses company of respectable theatrical stars, patronized a split; for this beautiful netting is the result of both by officers and privates, visited the town; and nothing more than some accidental blow. Cutting a wonderfully brilliant yeomanry ball, attended a slice from the block across the bubbles, let us hold alike by gentle and simple, wound up the successful it close to a naked gas-flame, and now let us observe interlude in ordinary life. it. The lamp of Aladdin could not have wrought a The little town of Priorton spruced itself up for more wondrous change. The part before clear and its yeomanry weeks, and was all agog, as it never unmarked is now studded all over with lustrous was at any other time. The campaign commenced stars, whose centres shine like burnished silver. A by the arrival on horseback of a host of country fairy seems to have breathed upon the ice, and gentlemen and farmers, in plain clothes as yet. caused transparent flowers of exquisite beauty sud-But they carried at their saddle-bows packages denly to blossom in myriads within the ice, and all with a charming regularity of position. It is the intangible fairy-heat that has worked this spell, The ice was laid down according to the same laws that shape the snow into these beautiful and well- There were such hand-shakings in the usually known crystalline forms so often to be seen in snow-quiet streets, such groomings of horses at stables storms here and elsewhere. Ice is indeed only an behind old-fashioned little taverns, such pipe-clayaggregate of crystals similar to those of snow, which, ing of belts, and polishing of helmets, and, above lying together in perfect contact, render each other all, such joyous anticipatory parties in private invisible and the block transparent. When the heat houses! of the gas-flame entered the slab, it set to work to pick the ice to pieces, by giving it, in certain places, a rapid molecular shaking, and the fairy flowers which appear in the warmed ice are the result of this agitation. On a priori grounds, we should therefore infer that the shape of these liquid crys-being too much for them. But farmers and farming tals for they are merely water-would be the lairds could not well quit their lands unless in the same as the solid crystals which originally built up beginning of July, when the June hoeing of turnips the ice. This is found to be the case. The two are and beans had been got through, the first grass cut, seen to be identical, each has six rays, and the ser- and while there was still a good three weeks before rations in both follow the angle of 60°; just as the barley harvest. Trees were then dusky in their ice freezes, so, under suitable conditions, it liquefies; green, and gooseberries and currants tinted the the ice-flowers, or negative crystals, appearing in the Priorton gardens with rich amber and crimson. same plane as that in which they were formed. The Roses, redder than the yeomen's coats, were in full air-bubbles in ice show this direction. The bubbles flower for every waistcoat and waistband. The collect in widely distant layers, marking the succes- streets and roads were dusty under blue skies or sive stages of freezing; between the layers there is black thunder-clouds; but the meadows were comeither a clear intervening space, or those perpendic-paratively cool and fresh, and white with the sumular rows of bubbles already noticed. Accordingly the ice freezes parallel with the former and at right angles with the direction of the latter bubbles." Beneath the snow and the ice we all direct our hopes for the young year. There lie buried the germs which shall make our fields green, feed our cattle, make our gardens gay, replenish our granaries, fill our tables, store our cellars, and indeed supply all the substantial materials for our daily wants. It cannot cause much surprise, therefore, that at this season of the year, all should feel an interest, though but few express it, of what lies hidden "under the snow." The season was always the height of the summer: not, perhaps, in every respect the best for such a muster. Stout yeomen had even been known to faint while at drill; the combined influences of the fatigue, the heat, and the preceding night's hilarity mer snow of daisies. The bustle of the yeomen, like the trillings of wandering musicians, was heard only in the brooding heat of summer afternoons, or the rosy flush of summer sunset, the prime of the year lending a crowning charm to their advent. It was delightful to be roused by the first reveille of the bugle at five of the clock on a July morning. Youngsters whom naught else could have tempted out of bed so early started up at the summons. They envied papas and uncles, brothers and cousins in the ranks of the yeomen. Comely blooming young faces joined the watch at the windows. Cloaks were loosely cast about rounded shoulders, and caps were hastily snatched up to hide dishevelled hair; while now the yeoman would mount with comparative safety. grass. But the bugle is sounding to drill in the early summer morning. "Tra-li-la," the clear music suits with the songs of the birds and the dew on the The last lagging yeoman is off, gone to receive a public reprimand from his strict commanding officer, but sure to have the affront rubbed out next morning by a similar fault and a similar experience on the part of a comrade. The drill ends at the common breakfast hour, when the yeoman may be supposed to return and The horses were led to the doors; and to the wo-feast sumptuously. Then "civil" work begins, yeomen who stayed at home the mounts were the events men who had offices or shops attending them with of the day. The return of the members of the troop, slight relics of their uniform. A stranger might have now broken to their work, and detached into groups been pardoned had he imagined an invasion was of threes and fours, and chatting and laughing at daily expected, or that an intestine war was on the their ease, was quite tame in comparison. The point of breaking out. In consideration of the hot country gentlemen and farmers were, of course, gen-weather undress uniform was permitted, on all save erally well used to the saddle, and could get upon their Bucephaluses without difficulty, and ride cavalierly, or prick briskly out of sight, as they were in good time or too late. But here and there a solicitor, or banker, or wealthy shopkeeper, ambitious of being among the yeomen, would meet with unhappy enough adventures. He might be seen issuing from his doorway with pretended unconcern, but with anxious clearings of the throat and ominously long breaths, while his nag, strange to him as John Gilpin's, was brought up to the mounting-place. The worthy man would plant his foot in the stirrup next him, but, not throwing himself round decidedly enough, the horse would swerve and rear, while he looked on beseechingly and helpless. Then he would try the other side, still failing to swing himself into the saddle. He would grow more and more flustered. His wife, in her clear muslin cap and spot-perhaps they treated them to the play. less calico wrapper, with her little lads and lassiesone, two, three-would then step out on the pavement to give cautious advice. The would-be yeoman would become more and more nervous, while his comrades rode by with jeering glances, and the passengers stood still. Little boys would begin to whoop and hurrah; and a crowd, even at this early hour, would gather round to enjoy the experiment. "Hey, Nancy! get me a kitchen chair," the townbred yeoman at last would say, in desperation, to his elderly commiserating maid-servant in the distance; and from that steady half-way stand he would climb into the saddle with a groan, settle himself sack fashion, and, working the bridle laboriously with his arms, trot off, to return very saddle-sick. field days, and thus the toiling yeomen enjoyed a little cool in their white ducks and jackets, though the red mark, the helmet's line, was still to be traced on their sun-browned foreheads. There was an afternoon's drill. It was a little of a fag, being in fact rather like a dish heated up a second time, as a duty twice done mostly always is. But the evening was particularly gay. Then the yeomen were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Pleasant, if they had always enjoyed themselves in an innocent fashion. That many of them did so, it is only charitable to believe. And while the fast and foolish, the gross and wicked were swilling and roistering in evil localities, generous, manly, gentle souls gratified the matrons with whom they were billeted by walking with them and their daughters through the streets, or into the nearest meadow; or --- Then some stubborn young fellow, possessed with the notion of showing off a dashing horse, would insist on riding a vicious, almost dangerous, animal, which would on no account endure the sight of his flaming regimentals on the occasions of his mountings and dismountings. Once in the saddle, he would master it thoroughly, and pay it back in kind with whip and spur, compelling the furious beast to face a whole line of red coats, and wheel, march, charge, and halt with perfect correctness. But the horse would have its moment of revenge as its rider leapt to and from the saddle. If it encountered the scarlet, and the glitter of brass and steel at that instant, it would get quite wild, paw the air, fling out its hoofs, snort, and dash off wildly, to the danger of its own and its master's life. But the young soldier would not like to be beat. Day after day the contest would be renewed. At length he would resort to a compromise, and his groom would bring out the horse, with its head ignominiously muffled in a sack; and I have only heard of those days. But I should have liked to have seen the bluff, kind faces above the stiff stocks and scarlet coats, and the joyous smiles which shone upon them. I should have liked to have heard the quiet town ringing with such blithe laughter. Little jokes would cause the people to laugh as little accidents would cause them to shake their heads. Sandy Hope's horse, for instance, lost a shoe while at the gallop, stumbled and threw its rider, dislocating his shoulder and breaking his arm. What a sensation the news created! It could scarcely have been greater even had Sandy's brains been dashed out. Not only Sandy himself, but Sandy's kindred to the remotest degree, were deeply commiserated. The commanding officer sent his compliments every morning, with inquiries after him. The troop doctor was besieged by anxious acquaintances. Sandy's comrades never ceased calling upon him, and would sit for hours drinking beer at his open window. Delicious messes and refreshing drinks, a thousand times better than beer, were sent to Sandy. Then the nosegays, the books he got! Sandy received a perfect ovation. It was even proposed that the ball should be put off because Sandy was lying in pain; and it was certain that no fewer than three reputed sweethearts of Sandy stayed at home on the ball night. Yet the stupid fellow was so slightly hurt that within the fortnight he was walking the streets of Priorton more briskly than ever! Priorton was kindly in its gayety, and each had an interest in the other. I should have liked to have known the old town when it was thus given up for ten days, half to military exercises, half to fraternity and feasting. I should have been sorry when the feasting was intemperate, but I would no more have condemned the general feasting because of that circumstance, than I would condemn the gift of speech because some of us are so left to our selves as to tell lies or say bad words. II. It was a well-known and accredited fact, that in consequence of these festivities of the yeomen more marriages were made up in this brief interval than during any other period of the year. Match-making individuals seriously counted on the Yeomanry weeks; and probably far-seeing young ladies had fitting matches in their eye, as well as the fireworks and the introductory gayety, when they came in troops to Priorton to entertain the lucky yeomen. My dear," said Mrs. Spottiswoode, the wife of the chief magistrate, who was likewise banker of Priorton, to her spouse, "your cousin Bourhope has asked his billet with us: I must have my sister Corrie in to meet him." Mrs. Spottiswoode was a showy, smart, good-humored woman, but not over scrupulous. She was very ready at adapting herself to circumstances even when the circumstances were against her. For that reason she was considered very clever as well as very affable among the matrons of Priorton. Mr. Spottiswoode was "slow and sure"; and it was because of the happy alliance of these qualities in him that the people of Priorton had elected him chief magistrate. "My dear," deliberately observed long, lanky Mr. Spottiswoode, "would it not be rather barefaced to have Bourhope and Corrie here together?" "O, I'll take care of that," answered the lady, with a laugh and a toss of her ribbons. "I shall have some other girl of my acquaintance to bear Corrie company, -some worthy, out-of-the-way girl, to whom the visit will be like entering another world," continued Mrs. Spottiswoode with a twinkle of her black eyes. "What do you think of Corrie and my cousin Chrissy Hunter of Blackfaulds? The Hunters have had such a deal of distress, and so much fighting with embarrassment, though I believe they are getting clearer now, that the poor lassie has had no amusement but her books, and has seen absolutely nothing." town house, amid the glowing gayety of the yeomanry weeks. Accordingly she was constantly engaged in checking off every little detail on the finger-points of her active mind, in order that she might be able to describe them to her secluded sisters and her sick mother at home. She was determined not to miss one item of interest; never to sleep-in so as to lose the mount; never to stray in her walks and fail to be in the house for the return from the afternoon drill. She would pace the meadows among the gay promenaders even when the evening was cloudy, and would not care though she walked alone; she would enjoy the play when Mrs. Spottiswoode chose to take her, and not even object to a squeeze in the box. The squeeze was really part of the fun! But she did not care to have her attention distracted from the stage, even by the proffers of fruit from the yeomen. As to the ball, she did not allow herself to think much of that. Who would ever have dreamt of Chrissy figuring at a fine yeomanry ball! She would not trouble herself because she had only an old worked white frock of her mother's, taken up by tucks to suit her, and yellowed by frequent washing and long keeping: she would not fret because she could not spend money upon a hair-dresser. She must dress her own hair, which was scanty, like every other outward adornment of hers. This was little matter, she reflected, for it would not dress under the most skilful artist into those enormous bows on the crown of the head which everybody then wore, it would only go into combcurls like little hair-turrets on each side of her round, full forehead, which was by no means scanty. She had no ornaments in the way of jewelry, save a coral necklace; while Corrie had a set of amethysts, real amethysts, -ear-rings, brooch and necklace, and a gold cross, and a gold watch which she rarely wound up, and which was therefore, as Chrissy said, "a dead-alive affair." But Corrie was a beauty and an heiress, and ornaments became her person and position; while on Chrissy, as she herself admitted with great good sense, they would only have been thrown away. And what did Chrissy care for her appearance so long as her dress was modest and neat? She could walk about and listen to the ravishing music, and study the characters she saw, from Corrie up to the Countess, wife of the one Earl who came to Priorton, and who was Colonel of the yeomanry. The day or two before the yeomanry arrived was spent by the two girls in walking about, shopping and making calls. Corrie, though a beauty, proved herself a very dull companion for The invitations were despatched, and accepted another girl to walk with. Very pretty to look at gratefully. The guests arrived before Bourhope was Corrie, in a fair, still, swan-like style of beauty; occupied his quarters; ostensibly they came so soon and she had a great many pretty dresses, over which in order to prepare for him. Corrie had nothing she became a little more animated when Chrissy, as Roman about her except her name, Cornelia. She a last resource, would ask her to turn them over and was a tall, well-made, fair-faced, serene beauty, the show them again. Corrie, of course, never dreamt sole remaining maiden daughter of a Scotchman of offering poor Chrissy a loan of any of those who had returned from the Indies with a fortune, as worked pelerines or aprons, which would have fitted so many returned then. He had already endowed either equally well. But Chrissy did not want them, Mrs. Spottiswoode with a handsome "tocher," and and she got a use out of them as they were brought since his marriage had settled within five miles of out one by one and spread before her. Ere the Priorton. Chrissy, again, was one of a large, strug-yeomanry came, Chrissy knew the stock by heart, gling family, a small girl, a very little crooked in figure, and with irregular features and a brown complexion. If she had not possessed a bright, intelligent expression, she would certainly have been plain, as indeed she was to those who did not heed expression. It was a delightful chance to her, this brief transplanting into the flourishing, cheerful Mr. Spottiswoode had no inclination to contradict his wife for contradiction's sake, and as he could rely on her prudence as on her other good qualities, he said, "Well, Agnes, I have no objection; Hunter of Blackfaulds is an honest man though he is poor, and he is righting himself now." -- and could have drawn them and cut out patterns and shapes of them, and probably did so, the little jade, when she got home. Bourhope came with his fellows, and was specially introduced to Corrie and Chrissy. He had had some general acquaintance with both of them before. He gallantly expressed his pleasure at the prospect of |