small circle of friends. Among the pleasures of the evening, his favourite grand-child, a girl of thirteen or fourteen, had sung to the old Highland air to which they were appropiated, the unlucky Burns' verses of the more unfortunate Hepburn, which had been so much admired in the newspapers of the morning. Mr. Dennistoun was luckily not aware of the author of Letitia's song, or he might have listened, on this night, with impatience. The old melody (Arrie nam badan,) tender at once and spirited, had been first heard by him among the hills of Argyle, more than half a century before. Whether it were in the music, the voice of the singer, or the braes and brackens, and heather-bells and long yellow broom that mingled in the song, that the spell lay, or, as was more likely, in the whole combination, we cannot tell, but the thoughts of Hepburn, which had hung upon the old Scotsman's spirits all day, returned to him more painfully than ever. Not that he repented what he had done, or of any thing save his weak forbearance, and pernicious indulgence of errors of so bad example. Yet a man may be fully acquitted by his conscience, in a particular action, and very far from comfortable in his inward feelings. So at least it was with Mr. Dennistoun, even before a message was brought up stairs that a woman was below inquiring for Mr. Charles Hepburn, one of the clerks, whose wife was dying, while he could be heard of no where! The old gentlemen became greatly agitated. His first thought was indeed terrific. Those excitable hair-brained geniuses like Hepburn, there was no saying what mad act, when in a desperate mood, abandoned of reason and of God, they might perpetrate! He recalled the appearance of the young man, the wild excitement of hilarity, and the fumes of wine scarcely out of his brain, when they must have been succeeded by the fierce extremes of despair and of stinging self-reproach. Late as it was, and in spite of the remonstran. ces of his family, Mr. Dennistoun resolved to accompany the woman to Hepburn's lodging, and his nephew, the mercantile amateur of the muses, attended him, to take care of him home again. The uncomfortable apartment, and its details, were of themselves full of reproach of the thoughtless and improvident habits of the owner. Agnes, recovered from the fainting fit which had so much alarmed the landlady, on the appearance of the two gentlemen, taxed her spirit to its utmost powers to learn the worst that fate had in store for her; but Dennistoun had neither heart nor nerve, nor could he think it wisdom to say more at this time, to the poor creature for whom he felt so strongly, than that he had seen Hepburn early in the day. And, in a tone of parental kindness, he added, "We are both aware, Madam, that our friend Charles is not always the most punctual of men," Agnes sighed. The nephew, who, from delicacy, had not ventured farther than the door of the

room, could from thence see that Hepburn's girlish wife sitting on a low stool by the side of

the cradle, was the most meek, pale, Madonnalike, mournful beauty he had ever beheld. "Hepburn himself was, he knew, a man of great talent, absolutely a genius. He felt the strongest desire in the world to have him pardoned and reinstated. Certainly it was shameful, unkind, disgraceful, to leave so sweet and beautiful a creature pining in poverty in this miserable place, while her husband was revelling, spending a guinea, or perhaps two guineas on a single dinner.

"But yet the light that led astray,

Was light from Heaven!"

As much from pity for Agnes, however, as from sympathy with her husband's poetical and social tastes, he ventured farther into the apartment; and to his uncle spoke something between excuse and vindication of the absent culprit. Agnes then, first looking eagerly up, her eyes swimming in grateful tears, gave him encouragement to proceed; and he urged his suit till he had fairly exasperated the benevolent, but somewhat impatient temper of his senior, and turned against himself the very feelings on which he had relied for Hepburn's exculpation and forgiveness. lauded the genius of those men- - Scotsmen-in whom warmth and exaltation of feeling palliated aberrations unpardonable in the dull, coldblooded, money-making mortals, who lived by square and rule. "There was," he continued in illustration, 66 your glorious Burns"

He

"Be silent, sir!" cried the old man, in a tone of stern severity, which made Agnes start and shudder, and which at once imposed silence on the speaker. "If there be to young men of genius one warning example more impressive and solemn than another, it is that of the life and death of my noble and unfortunate countryman, ROBERT BURNS. And weak, and shallow, and false are they, who dare plead his magnified or imaginary errors in extenuation of their meaner follies, Have the weaklings any right to plead his faults who are neither fired by his genius, elevated by his virtues, nor tortured by his passions and his pride? If Burns has left a few careless verses, which unthinking fools construe to their hurt, has he not given them hundreds of lessons of deep and purifying tenderness; of virtue in its loveliest, holiest simplicity? For one careless expression; for the record-perhaps fictitious-of one reckless carouse, may we not, from his writings, learn of thousands of times when, after a day of hard toil, he wandered away into solitude, feeling within him the first stirrings of the hidden strength, the gropings of the Cyclop round the walls of his cave'-his own splendid image. Do not the address to a Field-mouse and the Cotter's Saturday Night, alone, tell us of months and years of meditation on the loftiest and the tenderest themes that can exalt the thoughts of the true poet, musing on humanity-of the rapt spirit, rising to Him who walks upon the wings of the wind,' or, in another mood, welling up from its depths of tenderness, over the little wild flower lying crushed in his path? And what chilling years of barren toil and hopeless priva❤

tion were those!-I declare, before, Heaven it were enough to make that Mighty Spirit burst its prison-house to hear those drivelling idiots charge their vices and follies upon the memory of Burns!"

The old gentleman struck his cane upon the floor with an energy that recalled his own senses to the obstreperousness of his tone, and the violence of his indignant rhapsody. An octave or two lower, he apologized to Agnes for his violence, while he acknowledged that this was a subject which always provoked him. "There is," he said, "no doubt something wrong, and in false taste in a few of the bravading verses of Burns, and in later things of the same kind from other pens, in which fools read damnation to themselves; but still nothing, whatever, to excuse those who thus construe them to their own hurt. Those scenes of gaiety, merriment, and extravagant conviviality, or of downright degrading sensuality, certainly never had existence, save in the brains of the writers, or the pages of a book. Shall we blame the genius of Schiller, because a few hot-headed excitable, and weak-principled lads chose to band themselves as robbers, and take to the forests in emulation of his hero?"

"Yes," cried Agnes impressively, "the heartbroken mothers and sisters of those misled youths well might blame him whose writings proved so perniciously seductive. Why will not genius enlist itself in a nobler cause.'

"My dear Madam, this 1 fear often resolves itself into a simple question of commerce," said Dennistoun, smiling, "which is another category." The conversation reverted to Hepburn; and, kindly enjoining Agnes to take care of herself and her child, and to send Charles to him early in the morning, Mr. Dennistoun took his leave.

This well-meant advice could not realize itself to the extent of the benevolent man's desire. The forsaken Agnes could indeed undress herself and her child, and fold its little fevered frame to her bosom, and for its sake endeavour to take necessary sustenance; but she could not command her tortured spirit to be tranquil, nor her aching eyes to close.

The first tidings of Charles Hepburn were not obtained by Mr. Dennistoun until the fourth day, and then through a Lancaster Newspaper; in which, for the humane purpose of giving information to friends, a gentleman answering the appearance of Hepburn, was described to be lying in a violent brain-fever, at a little wayside public house. His hat and his linen bore the initials C. H., but no papers, or property of any kind, nor means of tracing him had been found about his person, which had probably been rifled before he was discovered by a traveller passing in a gig. A man had been seen running ❘ from the spot across a field; but there was no visible injury on the person of the stranger. The condition of his clothes showed that he must have wandered far; and probably lain in the open air, for one or more of those severe nights. It was added that the incessant, incoherent, hoarse cry

|

of the unfortunate man, was "Unstable as water thou shalt not prevail."

It was a week later, and far up on the topmost heights of the Fernylees pasture range, that Robin Steele, at all times a much greater newsmonger than his master, read the same paragraph in a Carlisle paper, and instantly left his flock; and only four more days had elapsed before the greyheaded, heart-broken father stood by the bedside of his daughter-in-law and her apparently dying infant, poisoned by the fevered maternal nutriment which should have been its life.

By the prompt care of the humane Dennistoun, Charles Hepburn had, meanwhile, received every attention needful to his condition. He was now in the house of a medical man, in Lancaster, and the strength of his constitution had already overmastered the fever. Of the more enduring and less medicable ailments of his patient, the surgeon knew, and could say nothing, save that it had done Mr. Hepburn immense good to hear that his father was in Liverpool with his wife, and that he might probably join them in a few days. But long years elapsed before that meeting took place.

It was with prospects dark enough that Charles Hepburn, commending, in the most passionate terms, his forsaken wife and his infant to the care and love of his father, and to the tenderness of Agnes the grey hairs he was, indeed, bringing to the grave with sorrow, took a pathetic leave of them both when about to enter as a private seaman a merchant vessel preparing for the voyage to India. His letter was dated at Bristol, where the ship was lying. "Since I cannot live by reason," he said, "I must live by rule; since I cannot be my own master, I must be the slave of another man's will. Need I say, my own Agnes, dearest ! best beloved! most injured! that I go, carrying with me but one feeble hope—the hope of once again appearing before you, if conscience shall, after my long, self-prescribed period of exile and probation, say, that there is still felicity on earth for the veriest wretch its surface now bears."

The rule which the unhappy man had prescribed for himself was as rigid as that of the most self-mortified anchorite. It was more severe, from being practised in the midst of society and business. His rule was not temperance, for he had never been intemperate, but total abstinence from wine. Solitude was not in his power, for he wished to be continually engaged in business; but he resolved never to employ English speech farther than was absolutely needful, nor one superfluous word in any human language. Charles Hepburn left the ship at Bombay. By his conduct he had secured the esteem and goodwill of the captain; and from this circumstance, and the proofs of his superior education and capacity, he obtained the superintendence of an indigo plantation, in the Upper Provinces, where he esteemed himself fortunate in having no European associates-no society whatever, save that of the simple natives. After remaining

here for two years he had money to transmit, and he ventured to write home; but these letters never reached his wife and his father. The money was never claimed. He now imagined himself strong enough to endure better the temptations of society; and he longed to be rich! Who had motives like his for gaining what an Indian would smile at as but a very paltry fortune! The speechless, melancholy man became the supercargo of a private ship trading between Madras and China. His associates-or those human beings about him, were now chiefly Lascars, for still he shunned European society. Again he had written home, but this time he sent no order for money. All he was worth was embarked in trade on his own account; and his intelligence and energy were agreeably manifested in the success of his speculations. At the end of his third voyage he hoped he was reformed! He was at least rich enough in his own estimation, for he had in his possession bills on London for £5000; and letters from Agnes and his father had waited him at Madras, beseeching him to come to them-only to come home!-to love -to happiness-to a share of the bread which, by God's blessing on frugal industry, had never yet failed them-which his industry must increase his presence sweeten !-They had complied with all his proud wishes; never had his name been mentioned by them. It was enough that in their own hearts they knew that he lived and loved them.

About noon on an October Sunday, the Carlisle mail, rolling over the same moor, but at a vastly augmented rate of speed, set down a traveller, on the exact spot, where, ten years before, Charles Hepburn had left his Greysteel. The traveller was a handsome, grave-looking man, between thirty and forty, embrowned by the burning suns of a hot climate, and of the appearance, which, for want of a more accurate definition, is usually called military. He carried a very small portmanteau ; and, as the coach drove off, proceeded on foot up the stony path, merely a bridle-way, which led winding into the hills from the wide open moor. Frequently he paused-looked round the country, or to his watch, and to the sun, which was still high. In one of these halts, he was overtaken by a young shepherd, with his dog, but in his Sunday clothes, for he was returning, as he told, from the Seceder meeting-house, which stood far off on the verge of the moor. In such cir cumstances, conversation was inevitable. intelligent Scottish shepherd is not, by very many degrees, less curious than a Yankee farmer.

An

"An' ye have been in the Indies !—'Od it maun be a queer country the Indies. Was't the place where they have the breed o' sheep Robin Steele tells about, with tails sae braid that ilk ane maun have a whirlbarrow to carry the tail o't after it. Ye'll have seen Sir Pultney and young Craigdarroch, I reckon? Its a desperate place the Indies for making siller." The stranger said he had seen thegentlemen alluded to; and added, "And Robin Steele is alive still?"

"Howt ay.-Sae ye kenned Robin ?-Alive!

what should ail him :-a doure, steive auld deevil, who ran wi' the souplest o' us at the last games.' "And as great a Whig as ever?" said the stranger smiling.

"Worse," said the man, laughing to see Robin's character so well understood; "a clean Glasgow Radical-It might cost auld Fernylees his tack, if the Deuyke or the Factor were to hear the half o' Robin's nonsense-ay, and sense too, which they like far waur." The stranger held his hat before his face, while his companion eyed him keenly.

"And Robin is still at the Fernylees ?"

"Ye may be sure o' that, and him in the body. How could the place do without Robin, or Robin without the place? All the three years the auld Maister lived in the village, Robin hung on about the farm; and so was there before him, to welcome him and his gude-dochter, when they went back."

"His whom?" inquired the stranger eagerly. "His gude-dochter-that's what the English call his daughter-in-law:-ye'll no understand our Scotch tongue. And a good dochter has she been to him-English and stranger to our country though she be. Yea, in truth, what Ruth the Moabitess was to ancient Naomi, and-better to him than ten sons. Mrs. Charles is, to be sure, an angel upon the yearth-sent to make up to that worthy patriarch o' the Fernylees i' the end of his day for the crossing and cumber he has had with his family, and fight with world's gear-I'm jalousing ye have aynce kenned something o' the Fernylees folk?

The stranger bowed in acquiescence.

"Their tale is soon told. Old Fernylees gave up the farm to Mr. Gilbert, and brought home Charles's English wife and her child just after that good-hearted, hareum- scareum, ne'er-doweel, ran off from her and his bairn to gude kens whither-and-beyont. Tibby Elliott (if ye kenned the lave, ye would ken Tibby, for she was ay the tongue o' the trump in the house of Fernylees) grudged at first a fremit woman, with a young wean, coming home to be a burden on the auld Maister's sma' means; but He who brings good out of ill, made the sight o' that young English lady even the greatest blessing ever fell on the auld Maister's grey head. With her white genty hands she wrought wi' her needle and her shears, late and early, for him and her bairn; keeping a bit school for the farmer's dochters here about and wi' her kindness and her counsel she stayed and comforted him in all his afflictions. The hale country-side blessed her; and when, in the hinder-end of the ither year, the plea about her tocher, carried on by the great Mr. Dennistoun, the Liverpool merchant, out of his own pocket, for her behoof and her bairn's,-lose or win,-was fairly won, conscience! ye would have thought it was the auld Deuyke's birth-day come back, when rents were reasonable, and nae Radicals in the country-side. There was as good as five thousand pound o' it, very convenient it came to buy back the stocking of the Fernylees, when Mr. Gilbert,

seeing every year growing worse than the last in this rack-rent country, would be off to Van Diemen's Land, before the Dyeuke had gotten his last plack. Robin Steele will no let on what the new rent is; but if mercats bide up, there's bread to be made out o' the Fernylees yet, he says, if there were younger e'en to look after it.

Yet it is just wonderful how the auld Mais. ter, in his blindness, goes about the knowes, led by his grandson; but he has kenned the braes all his days."

66

My father! My father!" exclaimed the stranger, surprised and shocked by the information of his father's blindness; and the voluble young shepherd, considerably abashed, now knew in whose presence he stood. Where his now quiet companion's road struck off, Charles shook hands, and parted from him almost in silence.

Charles suffered the shades of night to fall deep before he found courage to leave the hazel copse and approach the house, and peer over the window-curtain into the little green-walled parlour, where, in the blaze of the turf-fire, sat all that was dearest to him, the faces that had haunted him, asleep or awake, in the jungle or at the desk ! On one side of the fire, in his old place, sat his silver-haired blind father; on the opposite seat, his Agnes; and leaning on the old man's knee, with a book-yes, that was his boy! He was now prattling to the grandsire, who spoke and smiled to Agnes; and as she returned his speech and smile, he drew his hand caressingly over the child's head, as if complying with some fond request. Charles could stand no longer. He perceived his friend Tibby, unchanged in looks, dress, or bearing, spreading the cloth on the small table, from which she had just removed the Bible, probably after family-worship, and he drew into the shade of the porch as she passed him to go to the outer kitchen, and smiled internally, yet not without a slight pang, as he heard her say, "Na Robin, ye'll see we are just going to have anither spoiled bairn the auld game o' the young Chevalier ower again. There's the auld Maister consenting that the little rogue shall sit up this night, to the SABBATH NIGHT'S SUPPER: but, to be sure, there's a reason for it; for the bairn repeated the fifth Command in the distinct way it would have done your heart good to hear. I maun make him a pancake."

In ten minutes afterwards, the boy spoken of, panting and rosy, came flying into the kitchen, crying, "Robin, Robin shepherd! there's a grand gentleman sitting under Judon's ash, just where my grandpa' says his prayers: come and see him." They went out hand in hand.

In three minutes Robin was back-his eyes staring, his hair rising. "As I'm a living sinner, Tibby Elliott, if Charles Hepburn be in the body, he is sitting under Judon's ash, and I have seen him!"

Tibby turned round, the frying-pan in her hand; and brandishing it about, burst into the most extraordinary screaming and eldritch laugh

Nervous disorders and hysterics were rare at the Fernylees.

I' the body! and what for should he no be i' the body! heich! heich! heich! Eh, Sirs!" and down dropt the frying-pan; and Tibby raised her hands, wept, and sobbed, in a manner yet more frightful and eldritch. "As ye are a living sinner! and are na ye a living sinner? I could prove it. And what for should not Charlie Hepburn come hame, and appear in the body to his ain bairn on the very spot where his godly father has wrestled- heich! heich! heich! and she went off into another fit of hideous and wild laughter.

Robin was now almost at his wit's end. It was clear Tibby had lost her senses, so there was no time to lose with her. He had read or heard that cold water was a specific in hysterics, or vapours, or some female ailment or other, and seizing a large cog, that stood full on the dresser, he dashed its whole contents about her, leaving her in the middle of the kitchen like a dissolv. ing Niobe. When Robin went to Judon's ash no one was there! but through the same pane where Charles Hepburn had lately looked, he saw "the blithest sight had e'er been seen i' the Fernylees since the auld Maister's bridal." An instinctive feeling of delicacy, which nature often denies to the peer to plant in the bosom of the shepherdswain, told Robin that this, however, was no sight for him, and he went back to his friend.

"Its just Charlie Hepburn, Tibby lass! come home at last, a wise man and a wealthy. Losh woman! ye canna be angered at me, a feal auld friend! for twa or three draps o' clean cauld water spilt between us, meant a' for your good? me help ye off with your dripping duds, and busk ye quick to welcome the Young Chevalier.

Let

"If I've done ye offence I'll make ye amends." "I freely forgie ye Robin," Tibby sobbed, "freely forgie ye,-ve meant weel. But this should be a SABBATH NIGHT'S SUPPER we ne'er saw the marrow o' in the Ha' House o' the Fernylees. And save us man! draw back the broche! Is this a time to scouther the single dyeuke, [duck meant this time, not Duke,] when I hae skailt in my joy the dear bairn's pan-cake. But ye are no caring dear, deed are ye no," cried the gracious Tibby, as the boy burst bounding upon them, and clasping Robin's knees, exclaimed, "That gentleman is my papa, I took him from Judon's ash, to my mamma. Did you see,

him Robin?" he's a braw gentleman! I have looked at him all this time. Mamma cried, but my blind papa lifted his hands and said his prayers; and my other papa said to me "Run now my boy and call my trusty fere Robin Steele. Let me have all my father's friends about me.”

The "trusty fere" kept the child for some time; and then they went together to summon Tibby's old aid, now a decent shepherd's wife, and mistress of a neighbonring bothie.

Seated by the thrice-blest Agnes at the head of his board, the dim eyes of the venerable old man seemed on this night, to beam with a heav

VOL. I.-NO, I.

B

sit by, and among us," he said; as the faithful old servants would on this night have withdrawn;

66

'ye have shared days of sorrow wi' us, we will

share our joy together. Sit ye down, dear friends, while we crave the Almighty's blessing on anither SABBATH NIGHT's Supper,

I was born in a situation the most favourable to happiness of any, perhaps, which can exist; of parents neither too high nor too low; not very rich, which is too likely to be a snare; not poor, which is oftentimes a greater. I might spend many pages, like the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in telling over the bead-roll of all the advantages which belonged to my situation, or in making my separate acknowledgment to the several persons from whom I drew the means of improving these advantages, so far as I did improve them. And, in some instances, it would cost me a dissertation to prove that the accidents of my position in life, which I regard as advantages, really were such in a philosophic sense. Let the reader feel no alarm. Such a dissertation, and such a rehearsal, would be more painful to myself than they could be wearisome to him. For these things change their aspects according to the station from which they happen to be surveyed: in prospect they are simply great blessings to be enjoyed; in retrospect, great pledges to be redeemed. Viewed in front, they form a golden dowery of hope; viewed in the rear, a burthen of responsibility from which an apprehensive conscience will have reason too often to shrink in sadness.

My father was a plain and unpretending man, who began life with what is considered in England (or was considered) a small fortune, viz., six thousand pounds. I once heard a young banker in Liverpool, with the general assent of those who heard him, fix upon that identical sum of six thousand pounds as exemplifying, for the standard of English life, the absolute ideal of a dangerous inheritance; just too little, as he said, to promise comfort or real independence, and yet large enough to operate as a temptation to indolence. Six thousand pounds, therefore, he considered in the light of a snare to a young man, and almost as a malicious bequest. On the other hand, Ludlow, the regicide, who, as the son of an English baronet, and as ex-commander-in-chief of the Parliament cavalry, &c., knew well what belonged to elegant and luxurious life, records it as his opinion of an Englishman who had sheltered him from state blood-hounds, that in possessing an annual revenue of £100, he enjoyed all the solid comforts of this life,-neither himself rapacious of his neighbour's goods, nor rich enough in his own person to offer a mark to the rapacity of others. This was in 1660, when the expenses of living in England were not so widely removed, æquatis æquandis, from the common average of this day; both scales being far below that of the long war-period which followed the French Revolution.

What in one man, however, is wise moderation, may happen in another, differently circumstanced, to be positive injustice, or sordid inaptitude to aspire. At, or about, his 26th year, my father married; and it is probable that the pretensions of my mother, which were, in some respects, more elevated than his own, might concur with his own activity of mind to break the temptation, if for him any temptation had ever existed, to a life of obscure repose. This small fortune, in a country so expensive as England, did not promise to his wife the style of living to which she had been accustomed. Every man wishes for his wife what, on his own account, he might readily dispense with. Partly, therefore, with a view to what he would consider as her reasonable expectations, he entered into trade as an Irish and a West Indian merchant. But there is no doubt that, even apart from consideration for his wife, the general tone of feeling in English society, which stamps a kind of disreputableness on the avowed intention to do nothing, would, at any rate, have sent him into some mode of active life. In saying that he was a West Indian merchant, I must be careful to acquit his memory of any connexion with the slave trade, by which so many fortunes were made at that era in Liverpool, Glasgow, &c. Whatever may be thought of slavery itself as modified in the British colonies, or of the remedies attempted for that evil by modern statesmanship; of the kidnapping, murdering slavetrade,* there cannot be two opinions: and my father, though connected with the West Indian trade in all honourable branches, was so far from lending himself even by a passive concurrence to this most memorable abomination, that he was one of those conscientious protesters who, throughout England, for a long period after the first publicationt of Clarkson's famous Essay,

* The confusion of slavery with the slave-trade, at one time was universal. But nowadays it is supposed by many to be a superfluous care, if one is sedulous to mark the distinction in a pointed way. Yet it was but last year that, happening to converse with a very respectable and well-informed surgeon in the north, I found him assuming, as a matter of course, that emancipation, &c. had been the express and immediate object of Wilberforce, Clarkson, &c. in their long crusade: nor could I satisfy him that, however ultimately contemplating that result, they had even found it necessary to disown it as a present object.

+ Writing where I have no books, like Salmasius, I make all my references to a forty years' course of reading, by memory. In every case except where I make a formal citation marked as such, this is to be understood. My tain: Clarkson's Essay, (originally Latin) published, I chronology on this particular subject, is rather uncerthink, in 1787, Anthony Benezet's book, Granville