obtain the desired object; and the happy mother, her heart full of pride and her eyes full of tenderness, sate gazing on the glowing face of her favourite, and occasionally stealing a glance at me, as if to read what I thought of the little maiden.

You will think me selfish, Slough-darroch, but I confess the feeling uppermost in my mind that morning was one of extreme bitterness. Here, in a low hovel, through whose small, dim windows the sunshine struggled in a sort of cross-light to the door at the other end, sate a party, whose hearts were running over with gratitude to God and love for one another-and here, too, sate the master of Spernie, blest with all the comforts and most of the luxuries of life-with personal and acquired advantages-with a large fortune and a fine estate, who nevertheless dwelt alone in the lofty halls of Spernie Castle-unwelcomed at his return; unlamented in his absence; mocked with the semblance of human ties in which he had no enjoyment.

I rose and took my leave of the kind cottagers, and when I bid farewell to Beenie, I wrung her hand, more in the agony of my heart than from any prepossession in her favour; and I stood for a moment at the foot of that bleak hill, looking back at the dreary little dwelling I left with a mixture of repining at my own lot and envy of her's.

About four years from the time when Lady Charlotte and myself had agreed to separate, I was sent for by express to attend her death-bed. She had caught cold attending a fancy-ball, and the consequences had been severe fever and inflammation of the brain. She had earnestly desired to see me, but before I arrived she was delirious, and continued so for ten days, at the end of which time she died. I was sitting by her bedside alone; her mother had gone to lie down, and her sisters, who paid her a diurnal visit, had not arrived. I held her hand in mine and looked towards the window, through which the broad daylight was coming, dreading lest it might wake her, yet fearful that any movements of mine would have the same effect, when she suddenly called me by name. My heart throbbed, for I felt that she knew me. I turned, and knelt down with a fervent ejaculation of thankfulness. I looked in her face with a confused hope for the future, but the gleam of recognition faded from those beautiful eyes; an expression of wildness and terror succeeded; and as a fitful flush passed across her brow, she murmured, "Is this death, Campbell?" She grasped my hand as she spoke, as though I could have retained her in this world: the grasp relaxed-the dew stood on that fair, laughing brow, and I was-a widower!

I regretted Lady Charlotte bitterly; her faults were buried with her; the memory of her angelic beauty and playfulness in health, and of her dying hours, alone remained, Yet, after time had in some measure weakened the blow, I felt that I was once more a free man.

That freedom was not of long continuance: it is not in my nature to live alone and be content. My friends told me I should think of marrying again, and I thought seriously of their advice. I considered within myself that the causes of my past unhappiness were peculiar, and I resolved, in my present choice, to shun the brilliant advantages of rank and station, and even of beauty, and to think solely of disposition. It was in the midst of these reflections one evening, that the recollection of Beenie suddenly flashed upon me, and, strange as it may seem, I determined to make her Mrs. Campbell of Spernic.

Poor little Beenie! I shall never think of her without remorse; for I certainly made her life as wretched as my own.

- I calculated that to her, at least, I must seem a superior being; that from her I should undergo no haughtiness,-be stung by no real or affected coldness: to her the fanciful and feverish pleasures of city dissipations were unknown, and the despised Spernie would be a fairy palace to one who had known no home better than a petty Highland farm. In all these conjectures I was right. She loved me ardently, sincerely; she looked up to me as to a God; she had always a glad smile and a kind word, when I returned weary to my home; she watched me in sickness; she entered eagerly (to the best of her comprehension,) into all that interested me; she never sighed but when there was a cloud on my brow; she had neither joy, grief, hope, fear, or feeling of any kind, in which my image had not a principal share. Yet for all this I was not happy! Her birth, education, and habits, the involuntary faults of manner, which I might and ought to have foreseen, all revolted and annoyed me. I grew morbidly sensitive as to the opinions of others respecting my wife. I watched their very looks (when turned on her,) with a mixture of suspicion and irritation. I was too proud to allow that I had again rashly mistaken the road to happiness; and therefore I asked my friends as usual to Spernie; but I was miserable when they came, and my harshness at such times made poor Beenie, who was naturally timid, awkward and reserved beyond expression. She, who had a sort of wild grace in her happy moments, when alone with me, became perfectly mute, abashed, and strange to others. After a while, a change, infinitely worse in my eyes, came over her. With intuitive quickness she saw that the persons who were my friends and equals thought her a match totally unworthy of me, and that I was ashamed of having placed her in her present situation; but in her uneducated mind this conviction produced any thing but a desirable effect. She strove to persuade herself and others that, although fallen in circumstances, her family was of noble extraction; she used to pore over an old book, belonging to one of her brothers, (giving an account of the rebellion of Forty-five,) in which casual mention was made of her great grand uncle's name; and one day, at a large dinner-party, I had the mortification to hear her naturally sweet voice elevated to its highest pitch in a discussion of this kind. I looked down the long table at the mistress of Spernie Castle, and groaned. Dressed in the style commonly called dowdy, with an attempt at a fashionable cap, covering her bright hair and really pretty head, with a profusion of pale pink knots scattered about her costume, rendering still more striking the tinted look of a complexion exposed to all weathers, and at present glowing with unusual excitement, Mrs. Campbell of Spernie sate, with the carving-knife and fork suspended over the joint they were to divide, allowing the eye to dwell at leisure on her little red weatherbeaten hands. Slough-darroch, I was maddened. I rose, and shouted out, "Be quiet!" in a voice which made the roof ring, and Beenie burst into tears.

Five years passed away, and I had a fresh source of irritation in seeing a succession of daughters, and yet being without an heir to Spernie: I had four girls, and Beenie was again to be a mother. I persuaded myself that a fatality hung over me; that my hopes and wishes were never to be realized, and, in proportion as I grew inwardly discon

tented, I became harsh to all around me,—even the unchanging sweetness of my poor little wife could not preserve her from bitter words and unjust reproaches. One morning, as I went out shooting, I looked from the hill over which I intended to go, and saw Beenie, walking slowly and apparently feebly, to her mother's cottage, who was settled in the little village of Spernie. Something smote my heart; I paused, and giving my gun to the keeper, ran down the hill to meet her. Seemingly her mother was not within, for she passed on to the door of another cottage, belonging to Donald, a small farmer, who had been in other days an unsuccessful suitor for her hand. I hesitated as I came nearer, whether to advance or retreat, for Beenie was evidently weeping. She sate on a stone by the cottage door, and held on her knee a little boy, about two years old, one of Donald's numerous family: her mother stood beside her, and as the poor thing ejaculated, "Oh! what would I gie, that ye were the Laird's ain wee thing!" She replied, Keep a good heart, Beenie; by the Lord's blessing ye'll may be have a boy-bairn yet."

66

"I'll not live, mither,-I'll not live,-I'm sair worn wi' cold cruel words-my heart's fairly broken." Then suddenly raising her head, and clasping her trembling hands, she said-"Oh, gin I had been content to marry Donald, and the Laird had taken a lady, I should na be going to God before. my time. Mither, mither, why did na ye keep me fra marrying the Laird? ye ken weel that ae word of your's was a law for me;" and she hid her face on her mother's bosom, and sobbed convulsively. The old woman wept too, and spoke some words, of which I only heard the last" and, for the Laird, may God forgie him!" Never shall I forget those words! I contrasted the happiness and pride of the mother's eyes, in the cottage by the falls of Fynne, with her figure now, as she bent over her child, in a vain attempt to comfort her. I could not bear it; I rushed up the hill again; I forbid the keeper to follow me, and I wandered the whole day with the worm gnawing at my heart. I scarcely know where I went; but I recollect suddenly pausing at the brink of a rock, which overhung a small river, and as suddenly resolving on self-destruction. I leapt, and the cool, pleasant waters closed over my head for an instant; the next, found me struggling with mechanical energy for the preservation of that life I had desired to forfeit. I succeeded in reaching the opposite shore, and there I sate down, and resolved within myself to make Beenie's life a happy one, and not to suffer the vain chimeras to afflict me, which had embittered so much of our mutual existence. I felt happier than I had done for some years, as I once more stood at the gate of Castle Spernie. The porter told me I was again a father. I sprang forward-I ran up the magnificent staircase, and reached the apartment where my wife slept; the crimson window-curtains were half down, and the setting sun cast a glow of glory through them on all the objects in the room. As I entered, Beenie raised herself in the bed, and, with a smile of intense joy, she said, "It's a boy-bairn! it's a boy-bairn!" "Bless you, my girl!" said I, as I caught her in my She gave a low suppressed moan, and wept for some minutes, without speaking. "There now," said I, gently disengaging myself, "do not weep any more." Her head sank on the pillow, and I thought she had fainted; but she was gone to that land where there is indeed no more weeping; "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the

arms.

weary are at rest." Poor little, gentle, faithful Beenie! my heart is still very sore when I remember thee.

The present Mrs. Campbell of Spernie was, as you well know, selected more on account of my children than from any other motives; and with her I certainly expected to enjoy a sort of tranquil happiness. She was the widow of an old friend of mine, one of my most eager advisers to matrimony, who, during his lifetime, had frequently fatigued me with oft-repeated eulogiums on his help-mate. He told me she was the best manager; the cleverest housekeeper; the most perfect sick-nurse, the kindest and most motherly person in the world. But I had a housekeeper, and a very good one; my health required no nursing, and for the rest may Heaven defend me from the motherliness of people who have never been mothers!

She does her best for my interest it is true, and I ought to be thankful; but, in spite of my large fortune, the old hospitality of Spernie is never conducted in the easy way it used to be. There is a constant struggle to obtain, and contrivance to do without, which depresses my spirits, and causes all my old servants to follow me up and down with complaints from morning till night. My boy (who is a clever handsome child) she ruins by her partiality; and when she has spoilt his temper by constant praises, and comparisons with his sisters' lot, and irritated his stomach with cake and sugar-plums, she administers a dose of rhubarb and magnesia to counteract the one, and makes him repeat Watts's hymn on Human Pride by way of a cure for the other. My girls are little better than upper servants, owing to her rage for making them useful; and she always follows up her own advice with the assertion, "I dare say your poor mother could do that before she was half your age." I wish to God she could forget all poor Beenie probably was able to do, to help herself and others, before she became mistress of Spernie. Then her house-keeping is, in her eyes, a subject of vital interest, the main point in a woman's education after the profession of Christianity, and even when she sits at the head of her table, dressed well, with neither too much nor too little pretension; looking as handsome as a woman of forty can look, and as dignified in appearance as four centuries of Scotch aristocracy can make her; she cannot repress the conscious smile of pleasure which steals over her countenance when some favourite dish, in which she has exerted her skill, elicits an approving remark from any one of the company. No, I am not happy, even now; and I pray to God to send me a severe fit of the gout that I may be able more gratefully to appreciate the merits of my wife. For you, Slough-darroch, who still remain a free man, I have better hopes fly while it is yet in your power; do not, I beseech you, be so mistaken as to imagine that wit, wealth, beauty, sweetness of disposition, or mutual attachment, can promise a security of happiness; bid farewell to Miss Logie of Logie, and live, love, and die-a bachelor.

Your attached friend and cousin,

CAMPBELL OF SPERNIE.

P. S. I have just read in the Morning Post an account of your wedding. Oh! Slough-darroch—but I will say no more. At first I intended to have burnt this long letter, but, on second thoughts, I shall send it, that at least you may begin married life with as little anticipation as possible of future comfort. God protect you!

N.

AMERICAN LIFE AND MANNERS.*

In this matter-of-fact age of the world, when the Schoolmaster is abroad and useful knowledge is diffused, and the public yearns only for facts and science, it is pleasant, and we own we think not unuseful to the mind, to turn aside occasionally from the practical proceedings of life, with its dull round of daily business, to wander in the wild wood, or dwell for a season in the fairy-land of fiction and the enchanted regions of tradition and romance. It has been remarked, perhaps a thousand times, but it is not the less true for being trite, that with all the march of intellect and the advanced progress of knowledge, we often look back with a feeling of undefinable regret to the memory of those shadowy superstitions, which in the days of our innocent and blissful ignorance warmed our imagination and touched our heart. The actual results and philosophical demonstrations of science case our mind, to be sure, with a clear, cold panoply, like the ice of winter crusting the surface of a limpid lake; but we cannot help sometimes reflecting with a sigh on the times when fancy was allowed to people the busy brain with unsubstantial visions that varied with brighter hues the monotony of life, like a breeze stealing over the lake aforesaid in spring-time, rippling its tranquil surface, and causing it to

"Break into dimples, and laugh in the sun."

We confess we think that the prevailing tendency of the present time is to regard too much the storing-up of physical facts, and cultivating the_reasoning faculties, to the exclusion of the powers of feeling and imagination. If there be truth in Spurzheim-and the man is, at least, an able physiologist-the portion of the human brain allotted to the functions of the feelings is far greater than that assigned to the operations of those faculties which are usually considered more strictly intellectual; and it is an obvious practical conclusion, from which the Doctor does not shrink, that a larger supply of mental food, and a greater degree of attentive cultivation, are due to the former than to the latter-that, to use the popular language, it is much more important to educate the heart than the head-to form the disposition than to instruct the mind.

Though the era of imaginative darkness has passed away, and "the elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves," no longer people the paths of even country life, but "are melted into air, into thin air," it does seem somewhat strange, and somewhat, too, to be regretted, that in this wondrous spread of enlightenment, by which we have learned to be so much wiser and sadder men than our fathers, matter seems rather to be gaining the vantage-ground over spirit. The stones and clay, the dust and ashes of the physical world, are explored and explained with far more willing readiness, more curious scrutiny, than the diviner essence which animates the inner man, or which rules and regulates external nature. Men live in cities, cooped-up from year to year in brick and mortar, and rarely looking on the gladsome face of the green earth or the bright sky; or, "sitting under the blossom that hangs on the tree," they catch no inspiration from the free air, and the fresh stream, and the mountain steep, which taught the untutored Indian to "see God in clouds, and hear him in the wind," and which ought to bring home to Christian bosoms a livelier sense of the perpetual presence of the Being who pervades all space, in whom we live and move, and have our being. We own, we turn from the materialized speculations of civilized philosophers, to habits of mental spiritualization, even in a savage, with elevation and gladness of heart, and feel disposed to regard almost with favour

1. Stories of American Life, by American Writers. Edited by Mary Russell Mitford. 3 vols. 8vo.

2. The Water Witch; or, the Skimmer of the Seas. A Tale. 3 vols. 8vo.

3. The Borderers. By the Author of "The Red Rover," "The Spy," &c. 3 vols. 4. Hope Leslie; or, Early Times in the Massachusetts. By the Author of “ Redwood." 3 vols. 12mo.

5. Clarence: A Tale of our own Times. 3 vols. 12mo.