dolphins within a fathom of the shore, and calves of the legs and the heels. The modern sucking in the red heckle among your very system of turning out the toes, and sticking feet. Not an insect in the air, yet then the fly out the legs as if they were cork or timber, is was all the rage. This is a mystery, for you at once dangerous and ridiculous; hence in could do nothing with the worm. Oh! that our cavalry the men got unhorsed in every we had then known the science of the spin- charge. On pony-back we used to make the ning minnow! But we were then but an ap- soles of our feet smack together below the prentice-who are now Emeritus Grand Mas- belly, for quadruped and biped were both unter. Yet at this distance of time-half a shod, and hoof needed no iron on that stone century and more-it is impious to repine. less sward. But the biggest fun of all was to Gut was not always to be got; and on such "grup the auld mare," and ride her sextuple, days a three-haired snood did the business-the tallest boy sitting on the neck, and the for they were bold as lions, and rashly rushed shortest on the rump with his face to the tail, on death. The gleam of the yellow-worsted and holding on by that fundamental feature by body with star-y-pointed tail maddened them which the urchin tooled her along as by a with desire--no dallying with the gay-deceiver tiller. How the silly foal whinnied, as with -they licked him in--they gorged him-and while satiating their passion got involved in inextricable fate. You have seen a single strong horse ploughing up hill. How he sets his brisket to it-and snuves along-as the furrows fall in beautiful regularity from the gliding share. So snuved along the Monarch of the Mere-or the heir-apparent or heirpresumptive-or some other branch of the royal family-while our line kept steadily cutting the waves, and our rod enclosing some new segment of the sky.

light-gathered steps he accompanied in circles his populous parent, and seemed almost to doubt her identity, till one by one we slipped off over her hurdies, and let him take a suck! But what comet is yon in the sky-" with fear of change perplexing mallards?" A Flying Dragon. Of many degrees is his tail, with a tuft like that of Taurus terrified by the sudden entrance of the Sun into his sign. Up goes Sandy Donald's rusty and rimless beaver as a messenger to the Celestial. He obeys, and stooping his head, descends with many diverse divings, and buries his beak in the earth. The feathered kite quails and is cowed by him of paper, and there is a scampering of cattle on a hundred hills.

But many another pastime we pursued upon those pastoral hills, for even angling has its due measure, and unless that be preserved, the passion wastes itself into lassitude, or waxes into disease. "I would not angle alway," thinks the The Brother Loch saw annually another wise boy-"off to some other game we alto- sight, when on the Green-Brae was pitched a gether flew." Never were there such hills for Tent-a snow-white Pyramid, gathering to itself hare and hounds. There couched many a all the sunshine. There lords and ladies, and pussey-and there Bob Howie's famous Tick- knights and squires,celebrated Old May-day, and ler-the Grew of all Grews-first stained his half the parish flocked to the Festival. The Earl flues in the blood of the Fur. But there is no of Eglintoun, and Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, and coursing between April and October-and old Sir John of Polloc, and Pollock of that Ilk, during the intervening months we used to and other heads of illustrious houses, with their have many a hunt on foot, without dogs, after wives and daughters, a beautiful show, did not the leverets. We all belonged to the High disdain them of low degree, but kept open table School indeed, and here was its playground. in the moor; and would you believe it, highCricket we had then never heard of; but there born youths and maidens ministered at the was ample room and verge enough for foot- board to cottage lads and lasses, whose sunball. Our prime delight, however, was the burnt faces hardly dared to smile, under awe chase. We were all in perpetual training, of that courtsey--yet whenever they looked up and in such wind that there were no bellows there was happiness in their eyes. The young to mend after a flight of miles. We circled ladies were all arrayed in green; and after the Lochs. Plashing through the marishes the feast, they took bows and arrows in their we strained winding up the hillsides, till on lily hands, and shot at a target in a style that the cairn called a beacon that crowned the would have gladdened the heart of Maid Marian loftiest summit of the range, we stood and-nay, of Robin himself;-and one surpassing waved defiance to our pursuers scattered bright-the Star of Ayr-she held a hawk on wide and far below, for 'twas a Deer hunt. her wrist-a tercel gentle-after the fashion Then we became cavaliers. We caught the of the olden time; and ever as she moved her long-maned and long-tailed colts, and mount- arm you heard the chiming of silver bells. ing bare-backed, with rush helmets and segg And her brother-gay and gallant as Sir Trissabres charged the nowte till the stirks were trem-he blew his tasseled bugle-so sweet, scattered, and the lowing lord of herds him- so pure, so wild the music, that when he ceased self taken captive, as he stood pawing in a to breathe, the far-off repeated echoes, faint and nook with his nose to the ground and eyes dim, you thought died away in heaven, like an of fire. That was the riding-school in which angel's voice. we learned to witch the world with noble horsemanship. We thus got confirmed in that fine, easy, unconstrained, natural seat, which we carried with us into the saddle when we were required to handle the bridle instead of the mane. "Tis right to hold on by the knees, but equally so to hold on by the

Was it not a Paragon of a Parish? But we have not told you one half of its charms. There was a charm in every nook-and Youth was the master of the spell. Small magicians were we in size, but we were great in might. We had but to open our eyes in the morning, and at one look all nature was beautiful. We hav

said nothing about the Burns. The chief was being in the bell;" but in imagination's dream the Yearn-endearingly called the Humby, how sweetly do the seasons all slide into one from a farm near the Manse, and belonging to another! After sleep comes play, and see and the minister. Its chief source was, we believe, hear now how the merry Yearn goes tumbling the Brother Loch. But it whimpled with such over rocks, nor will rest in any one linn, but an infantine voice from the lucid bay, which impatient of each beautiful prison in which then knew nor sluice nor dam, that for a while one would think he might lie a willing thrall, it was scarcely even a rill, and you had to seek hurries on as if he were racing against time, for it among the heather. In doing so, ten to nor casts a look at the human dwellings now one some brooding birdie fluttered off her nest more frequent near his sides. But he will be -but not till your next step would have stopped by and by, whether he will or no; for crushed them all-or perhaps-but he had no there, if we be not much mistaken, there is a nest there a snipe. There it is-betrayed by mill. But the wheel is at rest-the sluice on a line of livelier verdure. Erelong it sparkled the lade is down-with the lade he has nothing within banks of its own and "braes of green more to do than to fill it; and with undiminbracken," and as you footed along, shoals of ished volume he wends round the miller's garminnows, and perhaps a small trout or two, den-you see Dusty Jacket is a florist-and brastled away to the other side of the shallow, now is hidden in a dell; but a dell without any and hid themselves in the shadows. "Tis a rocks. 'Tis but some hundred yards across pretty rill now-nor any longer mute; and you from bank to brae-and as you angle along on hear it murmur. It has acquired confidence either side, the sheep and lambs are bleating on its course, and has formed itself into its first high overhead; for though the braes are steep, pool-a waterfall, three feet high, with its own they are all intersected with sheep-walks, and tiny rocks, and a single birk-no, it is a rowan ever and anon among the broom and the too young yet to bear berries-else might a brackens are little platforms of close-nibbled child pluck the highest cluster. Imperceptibly, greensward, yet not bare-and nowhere else is insensibly, it grows just like life. The Burn the pasturage more succulent-nor do the is now in his boyhood; and a bold, bright boy young creatures not care to taste the primroses, he is-dancing and singing-nor heeding though were they to live entirely upon them, which way he goes along the wild, any more they could not keep down the profusion-so than that wee rosy-cheeked, flaxen-headed girl thickly studded in places are the constellations seems to heed, who drops you a curtsey, and on among sprinklings of single stars. Here the being asked by you, with your hand on her hill-blackbird builds-and here you know why hair, where she is going, answers wi' a soft Scotland is called the lintie's land. What Scottish accent-ah! how sweet-"owre the bird lilts like the lintwhite? The lark alone. hill to see my Mither." Is that a house? No But here there are no larks-a little further -a fauld. For this is the Washing-Pool. down and you will hear one ascending or deLook around you, and you never saw such scending over almost every field of grass or perfectly white sheep. They are Cheviots; of the tender braird. Down the dell before you, for the black-faces are on the higher hills to flitting from stone to stone, on short flight the north of the moor. We see a few rigs of seeks the water-pyet-seemingly a witless flax-and "lint is in the bell"-the steeping creature with its bonnie white breast-to wile whereof will sadly annoy the bit burnie, but you away from the crevice, even within the poor people must spin-and as this is not the waterfall, that holds its young-or with a cock season, we will think of nothing that can pol- of her tail she dips and disappears. There is lute his limpid waters. Symptoms of hus-grace in the glancing sandpiper-nor, though bandry! Potato-shaws luxuriating on lazy somewhat fantastical, is the water-wagtail inbeds, and a small field with alternate rigs of elegant-either belle or beau-an outlandish oats and barley. Yes, that is a house-"an bird that makes himself at home wherever he auld clay bigging”-in such Robin Burns was goes, and, vain as he looks, is contented if but born-in such was rocked the cradle of Pol-one admire him in a solitary place-though it lok. We think we hear two separate liquid is true that we have seen them in half dozens voices-and we are right-for from the flats on the midden in front of the cottage door beyond Floak, and away towards Kingswells, The blue slip of sky overhead has been gracomes another yet wilder burnie, and they dually widening, and the dell is done. Is that meet in one at the head of what you would snow? A bleachfield. Lasses can bleach probably call a meadow, but which we call a their own linen on the green near the pool, holm. There seems to be more arable land"atween twa flowery braes," as Allan has so hereabouts than a stranger could have had any sweetly sung, in his truly Scottish pastoral the idea of; but it is a long time since the plough- Gentle Shepherd. But even they could not share traced those almost obliterated furrows well do without bleachfields on a larger scale, on the hillside; and such cultivation is now else dingy would be their smocks and their wisely confined, you observe, to the lower wedding-sheets. Therefore there is beauty in lands. We fear the Yearn-for that is his a bleachfield, and in none more than in Bell'sname now-heretofore he was anonymous-Meadows. But where is the Burn? They is about to get flat. But we must not grudge have stolen him out of his bed, and, alas! him a slumber or a sleep among the saughs, lulled by the murmur of millions of humble bees we speak within bounds-on their honied flowerage. We are confusing the seasons, for a few minutes ago we spoke of "lint

nothing but stones! Gather up your flies, and away down to yonder grove. There he is like one risen from the dead; and how joyful his resurrection! All the way from this down to the Brigg o' Humbie the angling is admirable.

that we defy you to show what is biblicalwhat apocryphal—and what pure romance. How we transpose and dislocate while we limn in aerial colours! Where tree never grew we drop it down centuries old-or we tear out the gnarled oak by the roots, and steep what was once his shadow in sunshine -hills sink at a touch, or at a beck mountain3 rise; yet amidst all those fluctuations the spi rit of the place remains the same; for in that spirit has imagination all along been working, and boon nature smiles on her son as he imitates her creations-but "hers are heavenly, his an empty dream."

Where lies Our Parish, and what is its name? Seek, and you will find it either in Renfrewshire, or in Utopia, or in the Moon. As for its name, men call it the Mearns. M'Culloch, the great Glasgow painter-and in Scotland he has no superior-will perhaps accompany you to what once was the Moor. All the Four Lochs, we understand, are there still; but the Little Loch transmogrified into an auxiliar appurtenance to some cursed Wark-the Brother Loch much exhausted by daily drains upon him by we know not what wretch-the White Loch larched-and the Black Loch of a ghastly blue, cruelly culti vated all close round the brim. From his moor

and the burn has become a stream. You the same; for they are so essentially blended. wade now through longer grass-sometimes even up to the knees; and half-forgetting pastoral life, you ejaculate "Speed the plough!" Whitewashed houses-but still thatched-look down on you from among trees, that shelter them in front; while behind is an encampment of stacks, and on each side a line of offices, so that they are snug in every wind that blows. The Auld Brigg is gone, which is a pity; for though the turn was perilous sharp, time had so coloured it, that in a sunny shower we have mistaken it for a rainbow. That's Humbie House, God bless it! and though we cannot here with our bodily sense see the Manse, with our spiritual eye we can see it anywhere. Ay! there is the cock on the Kirk-spire! The wind we see has shifted to the south; and ere we reach the Cart, we shall have to stuff our pockets. The Cart!-ay, the river Cart-not that on which pretty Paisley stands, but the Black Cart, beloved by us chiefly for sake of Cath-Cart Castle, which, when a collegian at Glasgow, we visited every Play-Friday, and deepened the ivy on its walls with our first sombre dreams. The scenery of the Yearn becomes even silvan now; and though still sweet it murmurs to our ear, they no longer sink into our hearts. So let it mingle with the Cart, and the Cart with the Clyde, and the Clyde widen away in all his majesty, till the river becomes a firth, and the firth the sea;but we shut our eyes, and relapse into the vision that showed us the solitary region dearest to our imagination and our hearts, and opening them on completion of the charm that works within the spirit when no daylight is there, rejoice to find ourselves again sole-sitting on the Green-Brae above the Brother Loch. Such is an off-hand picture of Our Parish-bade farewell to the ruined solitudes he had pray, give us one of yours, that both may gain by comparison. But is ours a true picture? True as Holy Writ-false as any fiction in an Arabian tale. How is this? Perception, memory, imagination, are all modes-states of mind. But mind, as we said before, is one substance, and matter another; and mind never deals with matter without metamorphosing it like a mythologist. Thus truth and falsehood, reality and fiction, become all one and

"The parting genius is with sighing sent;" but sometimes, on blear-eyed days, he is seen disconsolately sitting in some yet mossy spot among the ruins of his ancient reign. That painter has studied the aspect of the Old For lorn, and has shown it more than once on bits of canvas not a foot long; and such pictures will survive after the Ghost of the Genius has

haunted ever since the flood, or been laid be neath the yet unprofaned Green-Brae, above the Brother Loch, whence we devoutly trust he will reissue, though ages may have to elapse, to see all his quagmires in their pri meval glory, and all his hags more hideously beautiful, as they yawn back again into their former selves, frowning over the burial in their bottoms of all the harvests that had dared to ripen above their heads.

MAY-DAY.

murmur-art Thou with thy bold bleak ex posure, sloping upwards in ever lustrous un dulations to the portals of the East? How endless the interchange of woods and mea

ART thou beautiful, as of old, O wild, moor- | other kirkspire, yet how rich in streams, and land, siivan, and pastoral Parish! the Para- rivulets, and rills, each with its own peculiar dise in which our spirit dwelt beneath the glorious dawning of life-can it be, beloved world of boyhood, that thou art indeed beautiful as of old? Though round and round thy boundaries in half an hour could fly the flap-dows, glens, dells, and broomy nooks, without ping dove-though the martens, wheeling to and fro that ivied and wall-flowered ruin of a Castle, central in its own domain, seem in their mor, distant flight to glance their crescent wings over a vale rejoicing apart in an

number, among thy banks and braes! And then of human dwellings-how rises the smoke, ever and anon, into the sky, all neigh bouring on each other, so that the cock-crow is heard from homestead to homestead-while

corn,

as you wander onwards, each roof still rises like it is built, and guarded by some wonderfu unexpectedly and as solitary, as if it had felicity of situation equally against all the been far remote. Fairest of Scotland's thou- winds? No. Thither as yet have we not sand parishes-neither Highland, nor Lowland courage to direct our footsteps-for that vene-but undulating-let us again use the de- rable Man has long been dead-not one of scriptive word-like the sea in sunset after a his ancient household now remains on earth. day of storms-yes, Heaven's blessing be upon | There the change, though it was gradual and thee! Thou art indeed beautiful as of old! unpainful, according to the gentlest laws of The same heavens! More blue than any nature, has been entire and complete. The colour that tinges the flowers of earth-like "old familiar faces" we can dream of, but nethe violet veins of a virgin's bosom. The ver more shall see-and the voices that are stillness of those lofty clouds makes them seem now heard within those walls, what can they whiter than the snow. Return, O lark! to thy ever be to us, when we would fain listen in the grassy nest, in the furrow of the green brairded silence of our spirit to the echoes of departed for thy brooding mate can no longer hear years? It is an appalling trial to approach a thee soaring in the sky. Methinks there is place where once we have been happier-haplittle or no change on these coppice-woods, pier far than ever we can be on this earth with their full budding branches all impatient again; and a worse evil doth it seem to our for the spring. Yet twice have axe and bill-imagination to return to Paradise, with a hook levelled them with the mossy stones, changed and saddened heart, than at first to be since among the broomy and briary knolls we driven from it into the outer world, if still persought the gray linnet's nest, or wondered to mitted to carry thither something of that spirit spy, among the rustling leaves, the robin red- that had glorified our prime. breast, seemingly forgetful of his winter benefactor, man. Surely there were trees here in former times, that now are gone-tall, farspreading single trees, in whose shade used to lie the ruminating cattle, with the small herdgirl asleep. Gone are they, and dimly remembered as the uncertain shadows of dreams; yet not more forgotten than some living beings with whom our infancy and boyhood held converse-whose voices, laughter, eyes, forehead -hands so often grasped-arms linked in ours as we danced along the braes-have long ceased to be more than images and echoes, incapable of commanding so much as one single tear. Alas! for the treachery of memory to all the holiest human affections, when beguiled by the slow but sure sorcery of time.

But yonder, we see, yet towers the Sycamore on the crown of the hill-the first great Tree in the parish that used to get green; for stony as seems the hard glebe, constricted by its bare and gnarled roots, they draw sustenance from afar; and not another knoll on which the sun so delights to pour his beams. Weeks before any other Sycamore, and almost as early as the alder or the birch-the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT, for so we schoolboys called it, unfolded itself like a banner. You could then see only the low windows of the dwelling-for eaves, roof, and chimneys all disappearedand then, when you stood beneath, was not the sound of the bees like the very sound of the sea itself, continuous, unabating, all day long unto evening, when, as if the tide of life had ebbed, there was a perfect silence!

It is MAY-DAY, and we shall be happy as the season. What although some sad and solemn MOUNT PLEASANT! well indeed dost thou thoughts come suddenly across us, the day is deserve the name, bestowed on thee perhaps not at nightfall felt to have been the less de- long ago, not by any one of the humble prolightful, because shadows now and then be- prietors, but by the general voice of praise, al' dimmed it, and moments almost mournful, of eyes being won by thy cheerful beauty. For an unhymning hush, took possession of field from that shaded platform, what a sweet vision or forest. We are all alone-a solitary pedes- of fields and meadows, knolls, braes, and hills. trian; and obeying the fine impulses of a will, uncertain gleamings of a river, the smoke of whose motives are changeable as the came- many houses, and glittering perhaps in the leon's hues, our feet shall bear us glancingly sunshine, the spire of the House of God! To along to the merry music of streams-or linger have seen Adam Morrison, the Elder, sitting by the silent shores of lochs-or upon the hill- with his solemn, his austere Sabbath face, be summit pause, ourselves the only spectator of neath the pulpit, with his expressive eyes fixed a panorama painted by Spring, for our sole de- on the Preacher, you could not but have light-or plunge into the old wood's magnifi-judged him to be a man of a stern character cent exclusion from sky-where at mid-summer, day is as night-though not so now, for this is the season of buds and blossoms; and the cushat's nest is yet visible on the half-leafed boughs, and the sunshine streams in upon the ground-flowers, that in another month will be cold and pale in the forest gloom, almost as those that bedeck the dead when the vault door is closed and all is silence.

What! shall we linger here within a little mile of the MANSE, wherein and among its pleasant bounds our boyish life glided murmuring away, like a stream that never, till it leaves its native hills, knows taint or pollution, and not hasten on to the dell, in which nest

and austere demeanour. To have seen him at labour on the working-days, you might almost have thought him the serf of some tyrant lord, for into all the toils of the field he carried the force of a mind that would suffer nothing to be undone that strength and skill could achieve; but within the humble porch of his own house, beside his own board, and his own fireside, he was a man to be kindly esteemed by his guests, by his own family tenderly and reverently beloved. His wife was the comeliest matron in the parish, a woman of active habits and a strong mind, but tem pering the natural sternness of her husband's character with that genial and jocund cheer

fulness, that of all the lesser virtues is the like the crocus, before the young thrushes had most efficient to the happiness of a household. left the nest in the honey-suckled corner of One daughter only had they, and we could the gavel end. Not a single hair in the churn. charm our heart even now, by evoking the va- Then what honey and what jam! The first, nished from oblivion, and imagining her over not heather, for that is too luscious, especially and over again in the light of words; but al- after such cream, but the pure white virgin though all objects, animate and inanimate, honey, like dew shaken from clover, but now seem always tinged with an air of sadness querny after winter keep; and oh! over a when they are past-and as at present we are layer of such butter on such barley-banresolved to be cheerful-obstinately to resist nocks was such honey, on such a day, in such all access of melancholy-an enemy to the pa- company, and to such palates, too divine to thetic and a scorner of shedders of tears- be described by such a pen as that now wielded therefore let Mary Morrison rest in her grave, by such a writer! The Jam! It was of goose and let us paint a pleasant picture of a May-berries-the small black hairy ones-gathered Day afternoon, and enjoy it as it was enjoyed to a very minute from the bush, and boiled to of old, beneath that stately Sycamore, with the grandisonant name of THE GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT.

There, under the murmuring shadow round and round that noble stem, used on MAY-DAY to be fitted a somewhat fantastic board, all deftly arrayed in homespun drapery, white as the patches of unmelted snow on the distant mountain-head; and on various seats-stumps, stones, stools, creepies, forms, chairs, armless and with no spine, or high-backed and elbowed, and the carving-work thereof most intricate and allegorical-took their places, after much formal ceremony of scraping and bowing, blushing and curtseying, old, young and middle aged, of high and low degree, till in one moment all were hushed by the Minister shutting his eyes, and holding up his hand to ask a blessing. And "well worthy of a grace as lang's a tether," was the MAY-DAY meal spread beneath the shadow of the GLORY OF MOUNT PLEASANT. But the Minister uttered only a few fervent sentences, and then we all fell to the curds and cream. What smooth, pure, bright burnished beauty on those horn spoons! How apt to the hand the stalk-to the mouth how apt the bowl! Each guest drew closer to his breast the deep broth-plate of delft, rather more than full of curds, many millions times more deliciously desirable even than blanc-mange, and then filled to overflowing with a blessed outpouring of creamy richness that tenaciously descended from an enormous jug, the peculiar expression of whose physiognomy, particularly the nose, we will carry with us to the grave! The dairy at MOUNT PLEASANT Consisted of twenty cows-almost all spring calvers, and of the Ayrshire breed-so you may guess what cream! The spoon could not stand in it-it was not so thick as thatfor that was too thick-but the spoon when placed upright in it, retained its perpendicularity for a while, and then, when uncertain on which side to fall, was grasped by the hand of hungry schoolboy, and steered with its fresh and fragrant freight into a mouth already open in wonder. Never beneath the sun, moon, and stars, were such oatmeal-cakes, peas-scones, and barley-bannocks, as at MOUNT PLEASANT. You could have eaten away at them with pleasure, even although not hungry-and yet it was impossible of them to eat too muchManna that they were!! Seldom indeed is butter yellow on May-day. But the butter of the gudewife of Mount Pleasant-such, and so ich was the old lea-pasture—was coloured

a very moment in the pan! A bannock studded with some dozen or two of such grozets was more beautiful than a corresponding expanse of heaven adorned with as many stars. The question, with the gawsy and generous gudewife of Mount Pleasant, was not "My · dear laddie, which will ye hae-hinny or jam?" but, "Which will ye hae first?" The honey, we well remember, was in two huge brown jugs, or jars, or crocks; the jam, in half a dozen white cans of more moderate dimensions, from whose mouths a veil of thin transparent paper was withdrawn, while, like a steam of rich distilled perfumes, rose a fruity fragrance, that blended with the vernal balminess of the humming Sycamore. There the bees, were all at work for next May-day, happy as ever bees were on Hybla itself; and gone now though be the age of gold, happy as Arcadians were we, nor wanted our festal-day or pipe or song; for to the breath of Harry Wilton, the young English boy, the flute gave forth tunes almost as liquid sweet as those that flowed from the lips of Mary Morrison herself, who alone, of all singers in hut or hall that ever drew tears, left nothing for the heart or the imagination to desire in any one of Scotland's ancient melodies.

Never had Mary Morrison heard the old ballad-airs sung, except during the mid-day hour of rest, in the corn or hay field-and rude singers are they all-whether male or female voices-although sometimes with a touch of natural pathos that finds its way to the hear But as the nightingale would sing truly its own variegated song, although it never were to hear any one of its own kind warbling from among the shrub-roots, and the lark though alone on earth, would sing the hymn well known at the gate of heaven, so all untaught but by the na ture within her, and inspired by her own de lightful genius alone, did Mary Morrison feel all the measures of those ancient melodies, and give them all an expression at once so simple and profound. People who said they did not care about music, especially Scottish music, it was so monotonous and insipid, laid aside their indifferent looks before three notes of the sim plest air had left Mary Morrison's lips, as she sat faintly blushing, less in bashfulness than in her own emotion, with her little hands play. ing perhaps with flowers, and her eyes fixed on the ground, or raised, ever and anon, to the roof. "In all common things," would most people say, "she is but a very ordinary girl but her musical turn is really very singular