England. There, even the idle and worthless have an instinctive love of what is decent, and orderly, and pretty in their habitations. The very drunkard must have a wellsanded floor, a clean-swept hearth, clear-polished furniture, and uncobwebbed walls to the room in which he quaffs, guzzles, and smokes himself into stupidity. His wife may be a scold, but seldom a slattern, his children ill taught, but well apparelled. Much of this is observable even among the worst of the class; and, no doubt, such things must also have their effect in tempering and restraining excesses. Whereas, on the other hand, the house of a well-behaved, well-doing English villager is a perfect model of comfort and propriety. In Scotland, the houses of the dissolute are always dens of dirt, and disorder, and distraction. All ordinary goings-on are inextricably con. fused,-meals eaten in different nooks, and at no regular hour,-nothing in its right place or time, the whole abode as if on the eve of a flitting; while, with few exceptions, even in the dwellings of the best families in the village, one may detect occasional forgetfulness of trifling matters, that, if remembered, would be found greatly conducive to comfort,-occasional insensibilities to what would be graceful to their condition, and might be secured at little expense and less trouble,-occasional blindness to minute deformities that mar the aspect of the household, and which an awakened eye would sweep away as absolute nuisances. Perhaps the very depth of their affections, -the solemnity of their religious thoughts, and the reflective spirit in which they carry on the warfare of life, hide from them the perception of what, after all, is of such very inferior moment, and even create a sort of austerity of character which makes them disregard, too much, trifles that appear to have no influence or connexion with the essence of weal or wo. But if there be any truth in this, it affords an explanation rather than a justification.

Our business at present, however, is rather with single cottages than with villages, which of course will be the subject of a future leading article. We Scotch people have, for some years past, been doing all we could to make ourselves ridiculous, by claiming for our capital the name of Modern Athens, and talking all manner of non

sense about a city which stands nobly on its own proper foundation, while we have kept our mouths shut about the beauty of our hills and vales, and the rational happiness that every where overflows our native land. Our character is to be found in the country; and, therefore, gentle reader, behold along with us a small Scottish glen. It is not above a mile, or a mile and a half long, its breadth somewhere about a fourth of its length; a fair oblong, sheltered and secluded by a line of varied eminences, on some of which lies the power of cultivation, and over others the vivid verdure peculiar to a pastoral region; while, telling of disturbed times past for ever, stand yonder the ruins of an old fortalice, or keep, picturesque in its deserted decay. The plough has stopped at the edge of the profitable and beautiful coppice-woods, or encircled the tall elm-grove. The rocky pasturage, with its clovery and daisied turf, is alive with sheep and cattle,-its briary knolls with birds, -its broom and whins with bees,—and its wimpling burn with trouts and minnows glancing through the shallows, or leaping among the cloud of insects that glitter over its pools. Here and there a cottage,—not above half a dozen in all, one low down in the holm, another on a cliff beside the waterfall,—that is the mill,—another breaking the horizon in its more ambitious station, and another far up at the hill-foot, where there is not a single tree, only shrubs and brackens. On a bleak day, there is but little beauty in such a glen; but when the sun is cloudless, and all the light serene, it is a place where poet or painter may see visions, and dream dreams, of the very age of gold. At such seasons, there is a homefelt feeling of humble reality, blending with the emotions of imagination. In such places, the low-born, high-souled poets of old breathed forth their songs, and hymns, and elegies,-the undying lyrical poetry of the heart of Scotland.

Take the remotest cottage first in order, HIll-foot, and hear who are its inmates-the schoolmaster and his spouse. The schoolhouse stands on a little unappropriated piece of ground-at least it seems to be so-quite at the head of the glen-for there the hills sink down, on each side, and afford an easy access to the seat of learning from two neighbouring vales, both in the same parish. Perhaps

thirty scholars are there taught—and with their small fees, and his small salary, Allan Easton is contented. Allan was originally intended for the church, but some peccadilloes obstructed his progress with the presbytery, and he never was a preacher. That disappointment of all his hopes was for many years grievously felt, and somewhat soured his mind with the world. It is often impossible to recover one single false step in the slippery road of lifeand Allan Easton, year after year, saw himself falling farther and farther into the rear of almost all his contemporaries. One became a minister, and got a manse, with a stipend of thirty chalders; another grew into an East India nabob; one married the laird's widow, and kept a pack of hounds-another expanded into a colonel-one cleared a plum by a cotton-mill-another became the Croesus of a bank-while Allan, who had beat them all hollow at all the classes, wore second-hand clothes, and lived on the same fare with the poorest hind in the parish. He had married, rather too late, the partner of his frailties-and after many trials, and, as he thought, not a few persecutions, he got settled at last, when his head, not very old, was getting gray, and his face somewhat wrinkled. His wife, during his worst poverty, had gone again into service, the lot, indeed, to which she had been born; and Allan had struggled and starved upon private teaching. His appointment to the parish-school had, therefore, been to them both a blessed elevation. The office was respectable—and loftier ambition had long been dead. Now they are old people-considerably upwards of sixty-and twenty years' professional life have converted Allan Easton, once the wild and eccentric genius, into a staid, solemn, formal, and pedantic pedagogue. All his scholars love him, for even in the discharge of such very humble duties, talents make themselves felt and respected; and the kindness of an affectionate and once sorely wounded, but now healed heart, is never lost upon the susceptible imaginations of the young. Allan has sometimes sent out no contemptible scholars, as scholars go in Scotland, to the universities; and his heart has warmed within him when he has read their names, in the newspaper from the manse, in the list of successful competitors for prizes. During vacation

time, Allan and his spouse leave their cottage locked up, and disappear, none know exactly whither, on visits to an old friend or two, who have not altogether forgotten them in their poverty. During the rest of the year, his only out-of-doors amusement is an afternoon's angling, an art in which it is universally allowed he excels all mortal men, both in river and loch; and often, during the long winter nights, when the shepherd is walking by his dwelling, to visit his "ain lassie," down the burn, he hears Allan's fiddle playing, in the solitary silence, some one of those Scottish melodies, that we know not whether it be cheerful or plaintive, but soothing to every heart that has been at all acquainted with grief. Rumour says too, but rumour has not a scrupulous conscience, that the schoolmaster, when he meets with pleasant company, either at home or a friend's house, is not averse to a hospitable cup, and that then the memories of other days crowd upon his brain, and loosen his tongue into eloquence. Old Susan keeps a sharp warning eye upon her husband on all such occasions; but Allan braves its glances, and is forgiven.

We see only the uncertain glimmer of their dwelling through the low-lying mist: and therefore we cannot describe it, as if it were clearly before our eyes. But should you ever chance to angle your way up to HILL-FOOT, admire Allan Easton's flower-garden, and the jargonel peartree on the southern gable. The climate is somewhat high, but it is not cold; and except when the spring-frosts come late and sharp, there do all blossoms and fruits abound, on every shrub and tree native to Scotland. You will hardly know how to distinguish-or rather, to speak in clerkly phrase, to analyse the sound prevalent over the fields and air, for it is made up of that of the burn, of bees, of old Susan's wheel, and the hum of the busy school! But now it is the play-hour, and Allan Easton comes into his kitchen for his frugal dinner. Brush up your Latin, and out with a few of the largest trouts in your pannier. Susan fries them in fresh butter and oat-meal-the grayhaired pedagogue asks a blessing-and a merrier man, within the limits of becoming mirth, you never passed an hour's talk withal. So much for Allan Easton and Susan his spouse.

You look as if you wished to ask, who inhabits the cottage on the left hand yonder-that stares upon us with four front windows, and pricks up its ears like a new started hare. Why, sir, that was once a shooting-box. It was built about twenty years ago, by a sporting gentleman, of two excellent double-barrelled guns, and three staunch pointers. He attempted to live there, several times, from the 12th of August till the end of September, and went pluffing disconsolately among the hills, from sunrise to sunset. He has been long married and dead; and the box, they say, is now haunted. It has been attempted to be let furnished, and there is now a board to that effect hung out like an escutcheon. Picturesque people say, it ruins the whole beauty of the glen; but we must not think so, for it is not in the power of the ugliest house that ever was built to do that, although, to effect such a purpose, it is unquestionably a skilful contrivance. The window.

shutters have been closed for many years, and the chimneys look as if they had breathed their last. It stands in a perpetual eddy, and the ground shelves so all around it, that there is barely room for a barrel to catch the raindrippings from the slate-eaves. If it be indeed haunted, pity the poor ghost. You may have it on a lease of seven years, for merely paying the taxes. Every year it costs several pounds.in advertisements. What a jointure-house it would be for a relict! By name, WINDY-KNOWE.

Let us descend, then, from that most inclement front, into the lown boundaries of the HOLM. The farm-steading covers a goodly portion of the peninsula shaped by the burn, that here looks almost like a river. With its out

houses it forms three sides of a square, and the fourth is composed of a set of jolly stacks, that will keep the thrashing-machine at work during all the winter. The interior of the square rejoices in a glorious dunghill, (O breathe not the name,) that will cover every field with luxuriant harvests-fifteen bolls of wheat to the acre. There the cattle-oxen yet "lean, and lank, and brown as is the ribbed sea-sand," will, in a few months, eat themselves up, on straw and turnip, into obesity. There turkeys walk demure-there geese waddle, and there the feathery-legged king of Bantam struts among his seraglio, keeping pertly