usually in staving off the catastrophe for a season. In short, the school of the branch bank was a very admirable school; and I profited so far by its teachings, that when questions connected with banking are forced on the notice.of the public, and my brother editors have to apply for articles on the subject to literary bankers, I find I can write my banking articles for myself.

The seasons passed by; the two years of probation came to a close, like all that had gone before; and after a long, and, in its earlier stages, anxious courtship of in all five years, I received from the hand of Mr. Ross that of my young friend, in her mother's house, and was united to her by my minister, Mr. Stewart. And then, setting out, immediately after the cere mony, for the southern side of the Moray Frith, we spent two happy days together in Elgin; and, under the guidance of one of the most respected citizens of the place,-my kind friend Mr. Isaac Forsyth,-visited the more interesting objects connected with the town or its neighborhood. He introduced us to the Elgin Cathedral ;-to the veritable John Shanks, the eccentric keeper of the building, who could never hear of the Wolf of Badenoch, who had burnt it four hundred years before, without flying into a rage, and becoming what the dead man would have deemed libellous;-to the font, too, under a dripping vault of ribbed stone, in which an insane mother used to sing to sleep the poor infant, who, afterwards becoming Lieutenant-General Anderson, built for poor paupers like his mother, and poor children such as he himself had once been, the princely institution which bears his name. And then, after passing from the stone font to the institution itself, with its happy children, and its very unhappy old men and women, Mr. Forsyth conveyed us to the pastoral, semi-Highland valley of Pluscardine, with its beautiful wood-embosomed priory,— one of perhaps the finest and most symmetrical specimens of the unornamented Gothic of the times of Alexander II. to be seen anywhere in Scotland. Finally, after passing a delightful evening at his hospitable board, and meeting, among other gv.ests, my friend Mr. Patrick Duff,-the author of the "Geo

logy of Moray,"—I returned with my young wife to Cromarty, and found her mother, Mr. Ross, Mr. Stewart, and a party of friends, waiting for us in the house which my father had built for himself forty years before, but which it had been his destiny never to inhabit. It formed our home for the three following years. The subjoined verses,-prose, I suspect, rather than poetry,—for the mood in which they were written was too earnest a one to be imaginative, I introduce, as representative of my feelings at this time: they were written previous to my marriage, on one of the blank pages of a pocketBible, with which I presented my future wife :

TO LYDIA.

Lydia, since ill by sordid gift

Were love like mine express'd,

Take Heaven's best boon, this Sacred Book,

From him who loves thee best.

Love strong as that I bear to thee,
Were sure unaptly told

By dying flowers, or lifeless gems,
Or soul-ensnaring gold.

I know 'twas He who formed this heart
Who seeks this heart to guide;
For why ?-He bids me love thee more
Than all on earth beside.*

Yes, Lydia, bids me cleave to thee,
As long this heart has cleav'd:
Would, dearest, that His other laws
Were half so well received!

Full many a change, my only love,
On human life attends;

And at the cold sepulchral stone

Th' uncertain vista ends.

How best to bear each various change,

Should weal or woe befall,

To love, live, die, this Sacred Book,

Lydia, it tells us all.

"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh."

O, much-beloved, our coming day

To us is all unknown;

But sure we stand a broader mark
Than they who stand alone.
One knows it all: not His an eye,
Like ours, obscured and dim;
And knowing us, He gives this book,
That we may know of Him.

His words, my love, are gracious words,
And gracious thoughts express:

He cares e'en for each little bird

That wings the blue abyss.

Of coming wants and woes He thought,

Ere want or woe began;

And took to Him a human heart,

That He might feel for man.

Then O, my first, my only love,
The kindliest, dearest, best!
On Him may all our hopes repose,-
On Him our wishes rest.

His be the future's doubtful day,

Let joy or grief befall:

In life or death, in weal or woe,

Our God, our guide, our all.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Life is a drama of a few brief acts;
The actors shift, the scene is often chang'd,
Pauses and revolutions intervene,

The mind is set to many a varied tune,

And jars and plays in harmony by turns."

ALEXANDER BETHUNE.

THOUGH my wife continued, after our marriage, to teach a few pupils, the united earnings of the household did not much exceed a hundred pounds per annum,—not quite so large a sum as I had used to think it a few years before; and so I set myself to try whether I could not turn my leisure hours to some account, by writing for the periodicals. My old inability of pressing for work continued to be as embarrassing as ever, and, save for a chance engagement of no very promising kind, which presented itself to me unsolicited about this time, I might have failed in procuring the employment which I sought. An ingenious self-taught mechanic,-the late Mr. John Mackay Wilson of Berwick-on-Tweed,—after making good his upward way from his original place at the compositor's frame, to the editorship of a provincial paper, started, in the beginning of 1835, a weekly periodical, consisting of "Border Tales," which, as he possessed the story-telling ability, met with considerable success. He did not live, however, to complete the first yearly volume; the forty-ninth weekly number intimated his death; but as the publication had been a

not unprofitable one, the publisher resolved on carrying it on ; and it was stated in a brief notice, which embodied a few particulars of Mr. Wilson's biography, that, his materials being unexhausted, "tales yet untold lay in reserve, to keep alive his memory.' And in the name of Wilson the publication was kept up for, I believe, five years. It reckoned among its contributers the two Bethunes, John and Alexander, and the late Professor Gillespie of St. Andrew's, with several other writers, none of whom seem to have been indebted to any original matter collected by its first editor; and I, who, at the publisher's request, wrote for it, during the first year of my marriage, tales enough to fill an ordinary volume, had certainly to provide all my materials for myself. The whole brought me about twentyfive pounds,—a considerable addition to the previous hundred and odds of the household, but, for the work done, as inadequate a remuneration as ever poor writer got in the days of Grub Street. My tales, however, though an English critic did me the honor of selecting one of them as the best in the monthly part in which it appeared, were not in the highest order; it took a great deal of writing to earn the three guineas, which were the stipulated wages for filling a weekly number; and though poor Wilson may have been a fine enough fellow in way, one had no great encouragement to do one's very best, in order to "keep alive his memory." In all such matters, according to Sir Walter Scott and the old proverb, “every herring should hang by its own head."

his

I can show, however, that at least one of my contributions did gain Wilson some little credit. In the perilous attempt to bring out, in the dramatic form, the characters of two of cur national poets,-Burns and Fergusson,-I wrote for the "Tales" a series of "Recollections," drawn ostensibly from the memory of one who had been personally acquainted with them both, but in reality based on my own conceptions of the men, as exhibited in their lives and writings. And in an elaborate life of Fergusson, lately published, I find a borrowed extract from my contribution, and an approving reference to the whole, coupled with a piece of information en