"Eh, but deserve to be preserved. Exactly such a person did I meet with at Altrive Lake, at Mr. Scott's, the successor of Hogg. He was a jolly wool-buyer; a stout, fine, jovial-looking man, one of that class who seem to go through the world seeing only the genial side of it, and drawing all the good out of it, as naturally as the sun draws out of the earth flowers and fruit. The hearty fellow was sitting at luncheon with Mr. Scott as I went in, and I was requested to join them. His large, well-fed person, and large handsome face, seemed actually to glow and radiate with the fulness of this world's joyousness and prosperity. His head of rich bushy black hair, and his smooth black suit, both cut in town fashion, marked him as belonging to a more thronged and bustling region than these tawny, treeless, solitary hills. The moment I mentioned Hogg, and my object in visiting Altrive and Ettrick, the stranger's countenance lit up with a thorough high-flowing tide of rosy animation. ye should ha' had me in Ettrick wi' ye! I know every inch of all these hills and the country round. Haven't I bought the wool all over this country these twenty years? Hogg! why, Sir, I've bought his wool many a time, and had many a merry 'clash' and glass of toddy wi' him at this verra table." Nothing would do but I must accept half his gig thence to Galashiels that evening, a distance of twenty miles. It was a very friendly offer, for it saved me much time. Our drive was a charming one, and my stout friend knowing all the country, and apparently everybody in it, pointed out everything, and had a nod, a smile, a passing word, for every one that we met or passed in their cottages by the road-side. He pointed out the piece of a wall, the only remains of Hogg's old house at Mount Benger, adding-" Ay, I bought his wool!' We descended the vale of Yarrow, passing through the beautiful woods of Hangingshaw. "Ye'll remember," said he, "what was said by some English noblemen in the rising in '45, when they heard that the lairds of Hangingshaw and Gallowshiels were among the Scotch conspirators. These are ominous names, said they, we'll ha' naething to do with 'em; and withdrew, and thereby saved their own necks." So we went on, every few hundred yards bringing new histories of my jolly friend's wool-buying, and of matters which seemed nearly as important in his eyes. There was Newark tower-a beautiful objectstanding on a lofty green mound on the other side of the Yarrow, the banks of which are most beautifully wooded. The tower, indeed, is included in the pleasure-grounds of Bowhill, a seat of the Duke of Buccleuch's, within sight; and you see neat walks running all along the river-side for miles amid the hanging woods, and looking most tempting. Opposite to Newark my friend pointed out a farm-house. "Do you know what that is?" "A farm-house," I replied. "Ay, but what farm-house, that's the thing? Why, Sir, that's the house where Mungo Park lived, and where his brother now lives." He then related the fact recorded in Scott's Life, of Sir Walter finding Mungo Park standing one day in an abstracted mood, flinging stones into the Yarrow; and asking him why he did that, he told Scott that he was sounding the depth of the river, it being a plan he had dis covered and used on his African tour; the length of time the bubbles took coming to the top indicating the comparative depth, and showing whether he might venture to ford the stream or not. Socn after Park again set out for Africa, never to return. "There, too, I buy the wool," added my companion. "But do you see," again he went on, "the meadow there below us, lying between those two streams?" -"Yes."—"Well, there meet the Ettrick and Yarrow, and become the Tweed; and the meadow between is no other than that of Carterhaugh; you've heard of it in the old ballads. I buy all the wool off that farm." I have no doubt if the jolly fellow had fallen in with the fairies on Carterhaugh, he would have tried to buy their Wool too. Ever and anon, out of the gig he sprung, and bolted into a house. Here there was a sudden burst of exclamations, a violent shaking of hands. Out he came again, and a whole troop of people after him. "Well but, Mr. don't you take my wool this time?" "Oh! why not? What is it? what weight? what do you want?" "It is so and so, and I want so much for it." "Oh, fie, mon! I'll gi'e ye so much!" "That's too little." "Well, that's what I'll gi'e-ye can send it, if ye like the price;" and away we drove,-the man all life and jollity, giving me a poke in the side with his elbow, and a knowing look, with "He'll send it! It won't do to spend much time over these little lots;" and away we went. At one house, no sooner did he enter, than out came a bonny lass with a glass and the whiskybottle, most earnestly and respectfully pressing that I should take a glass! "What could the bouny girl mean by being so urgent that I should take some of her whisky?" "Oh," said he, laughing heartily, "it was because I told her that ye were a Free-kirk minister frae London, and they're mighty zealous Free-kirk folk here." At Selkirk my jolly friend put himself and horse to a great deal of labour in ascending the steep hill into the town, which we might have avoided, that I might see the statue of Sir Walter Scott, by Ritchie, in the market-place. This, however, was but part of his object. Leaving the gig at the inn, he said we must just look in on a friend of his. It was at a little grocer's shop, and, in a little dusky parlour, he introduced me to a young lady, his wife's sister, and we must have some tea with her. The young lady was a comely, quiet, dark-complexioned person, who seemed to have a deal of quiet sense, and some sly humour; just such a person as Scott would have introduced into one of his stories as a Jenny Middlemass, or the like: and it was most amusing to sit and listen to all their talk, and jokes, and his mystifications, and her quick detection of them, and their united mirth over them. The good man finally landed me in Galashiels, and there I had no little difficulty in getting away to my inn; as he thought of nothing less than my staying to supper with him, and hearing a great deal more of all the country round, of Scott and Burns, Hogg and wool-buying, trading and tradition, the old glories of Border-reiving, and new g'ories of Galashiels, and its spinning and weaving, without end. COLERIDGE, whose simple, unworldly character is as well known as his genius, seems to have inherited his particular disposition from his father, the Rev. John Coleridge, the vicar of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. He was a learned man, the head master of the free grammar-school at Ottery, as well as vicar. He had been previously head master of the school at South Molton, and was one of the persons who assisted Dr. Kennicott in his Hebrew Bible. "He was an exceedingly studious man," says Gillman, on the authority of Coleridge himself, "pious, of primitive manners, and the most simple habits: passing events were little heeded by him, and therefore he was usually characterised as 'the absent man.' Coleridge was born October 21st, 1772, the youngest of thirteen children, of which nine were sons, one of whom died in infancy. Of all these sons, Coleridge is said to have most resembled his father in mind and habit. His mother was, except for education, in which she was deficient, a most fitting wife for such a man. She was an active, careful housekeeper and manager, looked well after worldly affairs, and was ambitious to place her sons well in the world. She always told them to look after good, substantial, sensible women, and not after fine harpsichord ladies. Coleridge used to relate many instances of his father's absence of mind, one or two of which we may quote. On one occasion, having to breakfast with his bishop, he went, as was the practice of that day, into a barber's shop, to have his head shaved, wigs being then in common use. Just as the operation was completed, the clock struck nine, the hour at which the bishop punctually breakfasted. Roused as from a reverie, he instantly left the barber's shop, and in his haste forgetting his wig, appeared at the breakfast-table, where the bishop and his party bad assembled. The bishop, well acquainted with his absent manners, courteously and playfully requested him to walk into an adjoining room, and give his opinion of a mirror which had arrived from London a few days previously, and which disclosed to his astonished guest the consequence of his haste and forgetfulness. The old gentleman, Coleridge also related, had to take a journey on some professional business, which would detain him from home for three or four days: his good wife, in her care and watchfulness, had packed a few things in a small trunk, and given them in charge to her husband, with strong injunctions that he was to put on a clean shirt every day. On his return home, his wife went to search for his linen, when, to her dismay, it was not in the trunk. A closer search, however, discovered that the vicar had strictly obeyed her injunctions, and had put on daily a clean shirt, but had forgotten to remove the one underneath. This might have been the pleasantest and most portable mode of carrying half-a-dozen shirts in winter, but not so in the dog-days. The poor idolized him and paid him the greatest reverence; and amongst other causes, for the odd practice of quoting the original Hebrew liberally in his sermons. They felt themselves particularly favoured by his giving them "the very words the Spirit spoke in;" the agricultural population flocked in from the neighbourhood with great eagerness to hear him on this account; and such an opinion did they acquire of his learning, that they regarded his successor with much contempt, because he addressed them in simple English. This worthy man died when Coleridge was about seven years old only. He seems to have been a delicate child, of timid disposition. Being so much younger than his brothers, he never came to be a playfellow of theirs, and thus to acquire physical hardihood and activity. "I was," he says, "in earliest childhood huffed away from the enjoy ment of muscular activity in play, to take refuge at my mother's side, or on my little stool to read my book, and listen to the talk of my elders. I was driven from life in motion, to life in thought and sensation. I never played except by myself, and then only acting over what I had been reading or fancying; or half one, half the other, with a stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the seven champions of Christendom. Alas! I had all the simplicity, all the docility of a child, but none of the child's habits. I never thought as a child, never had the language of a child. I forget whether it was in my fifth or sixth year, but I believe the latter, in consequence of some quarrel between me and my brother, in the first week in October, I ran away from fear of being whipped, and passed the whole night, a night of rain and storm, on a bleak side of a hill on the Otter; and was there found at daybreak, without the power of using my limbs, about six yards from the naked bank of the river." This anecdote has been differently related by Cottle, and by the author of Pen and Pencil Sketches. They state that little Sammy Coleridge, as they call him, when between three and four years of age, had got a thread and a crooked pin from his elder sister Ann, and, unknown to the family, had set out to fish in the Otter. That he had wandered on and on, till, overtaken by fatigue, he lay down and slept. That he continued out all night, to the consternation of the family, and was found by a waggoner the next morning, who, going along the road at four o'clock, thought he heard a child's voice. He stopped and listened. He now heard the voice cry out, "Betty! Betty! I can't pull up the clothes." The waggoner went to the margin of the river, where he saw to his astonishment, a little child with a withy bough in his hand, which hung over the stream, pulling hard, and on the very point of dragging himself into the water. The child, when awakened as well as frightened, could only say his name was Sammy; and the waggoner carrying him into Ottery, joy indescribable spread through the town and the parsonage. Which version of this story is the more correct, who shall decide? Little Coleridge, at the age of ten, was placed in Christ's Hospital, in London, through the influence of Judge Buller, who had been educated by his father. This school was then, it seems, conducted in a very miserable and unkind manner. Coleridge was half-starved there, neglected, and wretched. The first bitter experiences of children who have had happy homes, of such as have had loving parents or friends, is on going to school. There has, no doubt, been much improvement in these as in other respects of late years. Schoolmasters, like other men, have felt the growing influences of civilization and true feeling; but there is yet much to be done in schools. Let it be remembered that fagging and flogging still continue in our great public schools of Westminster, Eton, and others. Riding the other day on the top of an omnibus through London, we could, from that popular eminence, see the master of a naval and military school exercising his vocation with the cane on one of his unhappy scholars. This, I presume, is a part of what the boys are systematically taught there the preparatory initiation into the floggings that they are likely to get in the army or navy. That is bad and brutalizing enough, but that we are not yet advanced beyond the absurd idea of driving learning into our gentlemen with the cudgel and the birch, says very little indeed for our advance in true social philosophy. Southey gives a very lively idea of the school change in a boy's life, in his Hymn to the Penates: "When first a little one I left my home, I can remember the first grief I felt, And the first painful smile that clothed my front With feelings not its own. Sadly at night I sate me down beside a stranger's hearth; And when the lingering hour of rest was come, |