ner.

The next morning the minister and Jess were abroad betimes, while Aunt Peggy gave herself wholly to solemn preparations for the midday dinThe walk was for Jess's pleasure, that she might see again the more remote rugged lion couchant, Arthur's Seat, and the nearer, smooth, polished, | glittering lions, the shops and the passengers. Among the fellow-passengers of Jess and the minister, while there were some women who ridiculed the country cut of Jess's black silk pelisse, there was more than one man who turned to look after the pair, and remark what a noble-looking lass that was with the gray, stout, old black coat.

The minister had fully discharged his obligations as a cicerone. He had pointed out the "White Hart," at which Dr. Johnson alighted on his way to his tour in the Hebrides; the bookseller's shop where Robbie Burns, in boots and tops, with a riding-whip dangling over his arm, once corrected proof-sheets of his songs; Richardson's, frequented by young Mr. Scott, the author of the poem of Marmion; the houses of Professors Dugald Stewart and Sir John Hall, Captain Basil, the great traveller's father; and the Flesh Market Close, where the best beef steaks in the kingdom were to be eaten. And Jess had wondered, but found it impossible to ask, whether they were near the street where she remembered Sandy's lodgings had been, and where it was just within nature he might be.

"Father," said Jess, suddenly, with a rush of color into her face, "I would like to go in here."

Mr. Stewart and Jess had been proceeding on the plan of a fair division of labor and recreation. The minister's part performed, he had been walking along abstractedly, only waking up occasionally at the distant glimpse of a book-stall, where Jess stood quietly beside him, as he stood quietly beside Jess when the attraction was a linen-draper's or a jeweller's window.

It was not one of the classic pieces, which were the stock pieces there, nor of the battle-fields, nor of the landscapes, but a little family group which was strangely well known to them. They had seen the round table, the straight-backed chairs, the very ivory netting-box, many a time before; and even these dumb pieces of furniture, so far from home, awoke a thousand associations.

Then what of the figures, with living eyes looking out at them? The elderly man putting down his book to ponder its contents; the young man with his face half hidden by his hand, as if weary or sad; the girl entering the room on some household errand; and she was there, sitting in the centre of them as she would sit no more, looking not as she had looked when she was passing away, not as Mr. Stewart with a backward bound of his memory had been given to see her lately, the innocent, ingenuous, lovely girl who had come to the manse of Clovenford, bringing with her sunshine, poetry, and the first tremulous dewy bloom of life, but Sandy and Jess's mother, whose presence, weak woman as she was, had been like a shelter and a stay, full of the security and serenity of experience, the sweetness of the household content.

The drawing might be faulty, the coloring streaky, but there again was the family, those of them who were still going about the streets, and one who on this earth was not. It was a God-given faculty and a loving heart which thus reproduced and preserved the past.

The minister and Jess stood as if spell-bound among the unheeding spectators,. and gazed at the image of what they had lost as if it had been given back to them, with inexpressible longing; when, at a start from Jess, the minister turned round and saw his wife's dead face in Sandy's living one, gazing at them in agitation, as they were gazing at the picture. He was in mourning like themselves, but except that he looked older, his brown hair darker, and that his blue eyes were dimmed for the moment, he was not altered, had as much the air of a gentleman as ever, and had emerged from a knot of gentlemen who were making the circuit of the room and an examination of the pictures with the ease and free-masonry of privileged professional frequent

ets.

The minister and Jess entered into no explanation and offered no comment as they walked slowly up the room, literally dazzled by the display on the walls. However connoisseurs might have disdained the crude attempts of Wilkie, Allan, and Thomson, they were marvels to the country folk, who were only acquainted with the simpering or scowling representations of ladies, like full-blown roses in their own persons, clasping rose-buds between their fingers and thumbs, and gentlemen with fierce tops of hair, breaking the seals of letters, with as much

much struck by the sight of it as the minister, and had only entered the exhibition on the impulse of the moment when she read its name, determined to pay that mark of respect to Sandy, and with what lurking notion of establishing a communication or provoking an encounter between them she had not dared to tell herself.

Jess was in dread of how the minister would behave to Sandy; she might have known her father better, in his sound sense and old-fashioned code of politeness.

"How are you, Sandy?" the minister asked,

holding out his hand to his son, as if nothing had happened.

Sandy was a great deal more put out as he took the offered hand and shook it, and said in a breath, "I am glad to see you looking so well, father; and, Jess, when did you come to town?"

Mr. Stewart satisfied his son's curiosity with a word, and then it was in entire keeping with the man, that his next words were in indignant reprobation,

Sandy, how dared you make your family a gazing-stock on the walls of a public exhibition without even asking their leave?

"I did not think you would dislike it so much, sir," stammered Sandy. "There are many portraits here. I have not put the names, and I did not fancy the original would be generally recognized. The picture is sold to a friend."

"Sold!" exclaimed Mr. Stewart, with a great increase of anger and a quaver of consternation in his voice: "how could you do such a thing? Who is the buyer?"

"I meant to take a copy, as I could not afford to keep what I believe is the best thing I have done, though I have sold some other subjects readily enough since my return. I dare say I should have altered this, had not the buyer been an old friend. He bought it at my own price the first morning he saw it," Sandy expatiated, with pardonable pride. He should be a judge of the likenesses, when he is one of your own parishioners. He was here to-day, and yonder he is finding you out - - Birkholm."

Misfortunes do not come alone, nor do old friends meet singly. Adam Spottiswoode was delighted to come in this manner upon the Stewarts, and share the pledge of reconciliation which the group implied, to take it boldly as an omen of other alliances. For Birkholm still hankered after Jess with an inextinguishable hankering, which was beginning to deepen into the glow of true love. In all his experience of life for the last year or two, he had seen nobody yet to come up to Jess Stewart.

People from the same parish of Clovenford, the Stewarts and the laird, encountering each other in the wilderness of a city, were like one family already, and the laird improved the occasion by attaching himself assiduously to the Stewarts, as he would not have had the confidence to do in the Den of Birkholm, acting on the principle that it would be disrespectful to his minister not to join his ranks when they turned up in a public place among strangers, and that in these circumstances he had as good a right to investigate narrowly when the minister and Jess had come, where they were staying, and when they were going home, as if he were as minutely acquainted with the daily routine of their lives when he was at Birkholm and they at Clovenford. And without doubt Birkholm's comely, manly, gentlemanlike presence was like a "kind, kenned face" to the minister and Jess in Edinburgh, however lightly they might regard it in their parish. Jess opened her eyes a little at his attention, but she did not repulse him, and the minister only staggered him for

The

the sense which Birkholm intended at first. minister would pay him back every pound of his money for it, though it should stint his small purse; and the laird had the wit to see, soon, that if he would stand well with the high-spirited old man, he must refrain from offering him a gift of his wife and children's portraits (as for the minister's own, the minister might not have minded that). Until Birkholm had a title to be painted on the same canvas, he had better be modest in his favors.

Mr. Stewart took another lingering look at the picture after it was his own, and examined Sandy strictly on its removal and packing, a little nettled that it was at the service of the Academy for a week or two longer. Afterwards the minister made the rest of the round of the room on Sandy's arm, freely availing himself of his son's information, and making pertinent remarks, which were honorable to the shrewd criticism of an old prejudiced ignoramus.

Before a picture of "John Knox Preaching to the Regent," not without corresponding fire in the handling, Mr. Stewart stood still again, and commended it warmly. He finished by a more personal admission, worthy of the minister, a half-smile playing over his powerful features: “ Sandy, your art is far below the cure of souls, yet I own there is something in it, after all. But it was your mother's face that beat me."

Birkholm accompanied Jess, and saw no necessity for concealing from her what had been his intention regarding the picture; and Jess was not offended, but thanked him softly even when he spoke of a copy, and his project of hanging it opposite the pictures of his father and mother in the dining-room at Birkholm. And if that was not a broad hint, the laird did not know what was.

Jess was so happy — and humble in her happiness that she could not find it in her heart to contra

dict Birkholm; and the young laird, not being at all used to his own way with Jess Stewart, and finding it intoxicating, went on at a fine pace. But first he had the grace to tell her how well Sandy was spoken of among artists, of what promise he was held, and to point out some of Sandy's friends who were not like the portrait painters Jess had seen at Woodend; and to say the picture of the family had excited a sensation, and that if Jess and the minister were doubly recognized as two of the originals, and as the sister and the father of the artist, they would have to bear some staring for Sandy's sake. Here Jess's credulity broke down. This statement was more than she could swallow, though she had been devouring the rest, the notion that though Sandy should be the greatest painter in the land, the minister would be pointed at as Sandy's father!

-

Next, Birkholm's tongue wagged wildly on his own affairs. There was word of his sister Effie's marriage, indeed, he might say it was as good as settled, with one of the Edinburgh writers; and Betsy's captain was with his ship, and Betsy, who was not sailing with him on his present station, was delicate, and wanted Nancy to keep her company in her lodgings at an English seaport, and he would be left all by himself at Birkholm. It seemed he thought no shame of appealing to the charity of a friend, and arrived speedily at direct insinuations that Jess might visit Edinburgh again with him and the minister in a month or two, after harvest and before the hunting season,-or even might make the present visit serve two purposes, as, where people were of one mind, the sooner these things" were done the better.

Saturday

Our friends on the Continent are then carefully warned that literary researches in England impose on their correspondents rather heavy losses of time and travelling expenses, which deserve somewhat more than polite gramercy.

A Roman prince, well known in the scientific world for his learned discoveries in the history of science during the Middle Ages, had sent one of his secretaries to ransack the old books of the public library of one of the thirty-four capitals of the Germanic confederation. In the mean while he was informed by one of his friends in England, that a gentleman of this country was the fortunate possessor of a manuscript, which the prince had vainly hunted for in all the libraries of the Continent, and which contained invaluable information on the subject of his laborious researches. Having written to the gentleman, whom he knew personally, and ascertained that the manuscript was actually in his possession, he received for his secretary full permission to inspect it and make as many extracts as he pleased. He ordered his amanuensis to interrupt for the present his work in Germany, and to repair to London in order to avail himself of the permission granted.

The secretary, delighted to see London, which he had never visited, soon arrived in the English metropolis; but he heard there, to his no small dismay, that Sir John Oldbuck lived in town but a short time during the season, and was to be found during the rest of the year at his country-seat, about two hundred miles farther north, where he kept all his books and manuscripts. The prince was not aware of this fact; and when acquainted with this startling contre-temps, considering the distance very little compared with the move already accomplished from Germany, he sent instructions to go forward; the secretary accordingly started on his journey northward, in the uncertain hope of finding the country-seat of Sir John near the railway-station at which he was directed to stop.

Arrived there, our Italian was in the greatest possible trouble to make the definitive end of his journey understood. The station-master at length discovered it, and informed him that Sir John resided in a very retired part of the country, somewhat over twenty miles from the station. However, no postmaster would undertake to convey the Italian over the distance, on account of the particularly dilapidated state of the roads, and he would have been obliged to retrace his steps towards London, if a horse-dealer had not agreed, for a very nice consideration, to take him in his gig and put him and his carpet-bag down in view of the mansion of Sir John. On they went, but the roads were so bad, the ruts so deep, that the Italian, nearly jolted to death, and incessantly coming in contact with the unwashed and rough horse-dealer, fairly exhausted his Italian vocabulary of maledictions on English biblomaniacs hiding their treasures in corners accessible only to birds, and heartily wished that some day a swarm of mythological harpies might alight upon them and spare a future Hercules the trouble

ian, fell on the ears of the horse-dealer as on a solid rock. He, perhaps, poor soul, had he been able to understand them, might have been sorely scandalized by the outrageous outpourings of his companion. At

cording to agreement, the Italian was deposited with his carpet-bag on the road to a stately avenue of old trees, and he felt himself relieved from the awful joltings of the gig, and the by no means desirable companionship of the horse-dealer. Was Sir John at home? Would he offer to the weary and sore traveller the hospitality so much wanted? The secretary had now met with so many difficulties, he had so ruthlessly sent his future host to a place not to be mentioned, that, in the hypothesis of an invisible magnetic current between two human brains, he was not at all certain of a kind reception; and, what was worse, as far as his view could extend in the fast coming darkness, he could not see another roof where he could for love or money find a shelter and a tolerable supper.

The mansion was respectable enough, although surrounded by grounds as badly cultivated as they could be, and so covered with decayed trees, untrimmed hedges, and unrestrained undergrowth, that they revealed at once a careless landlord. Our traveller nerved himself to ring the bell, and after a rather long delay heard the bolts withdrawn from the inside, and saw the rosy face of a buxom girl appearing through the half-opened door. Unable to explain his errand in English, the Italian handed Sir John's letter granting permission to visit his library, and was forthwith requested to squeeze himself, as best he could, through the still half-opened entrance.

The secretary's first impression was that such a reception implied a hospitality with a vengeance. But when, according to the polite request of the buxom girl, he had squeezed himself through the aperture, he at once understood the real state of things. The passage was so full of books, heaped in all sorts of queer ways, that actually the door could not be opened more than it had been for himself. Sir John was at home. The secretary was received with the open-heartedness which behooves an English squire. Dinner was on the table, and although there was neither pasta frolla nor mortadella di Bologna, our Italian enjoyed it more than any dinner he had ever had. The host spoke fluently la favella toscana, and the guest, who had felt the impression of being under the incubus of an awful nightmare ever since his arrival in England, was most cheerful when the cloth was removed and Sir John began to talk about old lore with which the Italian was eminently conversant.

All went so smoothly and satisfactorily in the exchange of post-prandial civilities and learned dissertations on medieval antiquities, that our Italian had nearly forgotten the object of his mission, and did not care a bit where he might have to sleep. Nevertheless, the subject was in due time introduced by Sir John himself, who informed the traveller that he had a nice room for him. "But do you move much in your sleep?" inquired the host, after having imparted this information. "Not particularly," replied the Italian, waiting for an explanation. But Sir John gave none, and merely said in answer, "Then it is all right!" and as the time to go to bed was fairly arrived, he took a light and showed the secretary his way to the bedroom.

Corpo di Baccho!" exclaimed the Italian, "I now fully understand the bearing of the enigmatic words of Sir John! must not move in my sleep! Damocles had only a paltry sword suspended over his head, and I see two hundred heavy folios, bound in oak boards with brass clasps, ready to crush me at the first motion of the bedstead!" The perspective was by no means a comfortable one. Heartily disgusted with his impending fate, the Italian fastened the door, tried the piles of books, which were only kept in perpendicular columns by the law of gravitation, removed the bed as far as he could from the threatening mass towering high above him, and, harassed by the joltings of the horse-dealer's gig, he gently crept into bed with sorrowful misgivings. He had prudently left the candle alight, but after a while found it impossible to forget his position. The book-shelves all around the room seemed to reel before his eyes. When looking above his head, he caught a glimpse of the pillars of Knowledge heaped behind him, he saw their tops moving as if to take a leap towards him. Slipping out of bed with minute precautions, he held out the light, and ascertained that the books had not moved from the perpendicular. Ashamed of his fears, our traveller crawled again towards his couch, and after a manly struggle with his fears, at length contrived to get to sleep. But awful dreams haunted his brain. All at once he fancied himself buried under the weight of gigantic folios; he felt myriads of bookworms issuing from the mouldy boards, at first crawling all over his body, then penetrating through the pores of his flesh to attack his heart with their sharp mandibles. He saw himself pierced through and through like a sieve by innumerable round holes; while his face, of which he was proud enough before, was tattooed with labyrinthan zigzags which a New Zealander might have envied, but which were not yet come into fashion in civilized Europe.

Horror-stricken and unable to endure any longer such deadly torture, our traveller jumped out of bed with so tremendous a bound, that he would have brought down all the books on his head if they had not been steadily poised by their own weight. Thus his fears had been groundless; and it occurred to him that he had perhaps after supper indulged too freely in the powerful drinks poured out with lavish hands by the hospitable Sir John. He therefore ceased to consider his life in jeopardy, but on no account whatever was he tempted to expose himself to the return of the terrible nightmare, by imploring again the favor of the pagan Morpheus. The night was far advanced, his light still burning, so he dressed himself quietly, and found on the shelves before him so many treasures of medieval antiquity, that he entirely forgot the harassing journey; and

As soon as breakfast was over, the Italian inquired about the manuscript wanted by the Roman prince, and expressed his readiness to commence at once his work. At this announcement, the good and open features of Sir John became decidedly clouded. "I have not been able," said he dolefully, "to put my hand on this accursed manuscript for the last ten days, although I had carefully put it aside for you, and during the whole week I have incessantly looked for it in every possible corner of the house. But you see I am alone here, without librarian or secretary, surrounded by stupid clowns, who know nothing about books; and so many lots are coming every day from public sales, that it is almost impossible for me to find a book, when unluckily it has got on the wrong shelf."

The Italian cheerfully offered himself to help Sir John in the search for the missing manuscript. Alas! it was bound in vellum, like many thousand similar ones in the house; there was no title on the back; the catalogue of the library, a tremendous work, was still merely in embryo; there was, it is true, some sort of methodical arrangement on the shelves, according to subjects; but the scientific books alone filled two good-sized rooms, and a fortnight would not have been suflicient to ascertain the title of each work and fish out the object wanted. To sum up; after hours of useless search, the manuscript was nowhere to be found, and our Italian, in awful dread of passing another night under the roof of Sir John, insisted for taking leave immediately after dinner, and was seen to the station by a neighboring farmer, who took him in a cart far less comfortable than the gig of the horse-dealer. From London the Italian secretary returned to Germany, where, it is said, he carried so vivid a remembrance of the night at Sir John's mansion, that he cannot remain in the dark in a library without feeling a creeping sensation as of book-worms crawling up his legs to feast upon him.

AN OLD SCANDAL IN A NEW LIGHT.

SOME mention has been made in the Court of Probate upon one or two recent occasions of the case of " Ryves against the Attorney-General." It may not be generally known that, although the cause has not as yet assumed a very important shape, it involves points of historical interest; and when it shall have come fully before the court, it will, we have no doubt, attract a large share of public attention. The suit is undertaken by a mother and her son, who, though they are now living in comparative obscurity, aspire to the high honor of being recognized as members of the Royal Family. In endeavoring to accomplish their end it will be necessary for them to inquire somewhat closely into the private history of King George III., and many curious incidents must of necessity be brought out by the evidence and documents exhibited in reference to this part of the case; for Mrs. Ryves, the petitioner, asserts that she has descended from the issue of a private marriage contracted by the fourth brother of George III., who was known as Prince Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland. The lady to whom the Prince is said to have been married was Olive Wilmot, the daughter of Dr. James Wil