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forth from his chamber ?-and does he not rejoice as a giant to run his course? Does not all nature grow bright the moment he looks upon her, and welcome him with smiles? Do not all the birds greet him with their merriest notes? Do not even the sad tearful clouds deck themselves out in the glowing hues of the rainbow, when he vouchsafes to shine upon them? And shall not man smile with rapture beneath the light of the Sun of Righteousness? Shall he not hail His Shall he not be cheered rising with hymns of praise and psalms of thanksgiving?

amid his deepest affliction, when the rays of that Sun fall upon him, and paint the arch of promise on his soul? It cannot be otherwise. Only while we are hemmed in with darkness are we harrassed by terrors and misgivings. When we see clearly on every side, we feel bold and assured; nothing can then daunt, nothing can dismay us. Even that sorrow, which with all others is the most utterly without hope, the sorrow for sin, is to the children of light the pledge of their future bliss. For with them it is the sorrow which worketh repentance unto salvation; and having the Son of God for their Saviour, what can they fear? Or, rather, when they know and feel in their hearts that God has given His only begotten Son to suffer death for their sakes, how shall they not trust that He, who has given them His Son, will also give them whatsoever is for their real everlasting good.

Finally, the children of light will also be children of love. Indeed, it is only another name for the same thing. For light is the most immediate outward agent and minister of God's love, the most powerful and rapid diffuser of His blessings through the whole universe of His creation. It blesses the earth, and makes her bring forth herbs and plants. It blesses the herbs and plants, and makes them It blesses every living creature, and bring forth their grain and their fruit. Above all, it blesses man, in enables all to support and enjoy their existence. his goings out and his comings in, in his body and in his soul, in his senses and in his imagination, and in his affections; in his social intercourse with his brother, and in his solitary communion with his Maker. Merely blot out light from the earth, and joy will pass away from it; and health will pass away from it; and life will pass away from it; and it will sink back into a confused turmoiling chaos. In no way can the children of light so well prove that this is indeed their parentage, as by becoming the instruments of God in shedding His blessings around them. Light illumines every thing, the lowly valley as well as the lofty mountain; it fructifies every thing, the humblest herb as well as the lordliest tree; and there is nothing hid from its heat. Nor does Christ the Original, of whom light is the image, make any distinction between the high and the low, between the humble and the lordly. He comes to all, unless they drive him from their doors. He calls to all, unless they obstinately close their cars against Him. He blesses all, unless they cast away His blessing. Nay, although they cast it away, He still perseveres in blessing them, even unto seven times, even unto seventy times seven. Ye, then, who desire to be children of light, ye who would gladly enjoy the full glory and blessedness of that heavenly name, take heed to yourselves, that ye walk as children of light in this respect more especially. No part of your duty is easier; you may find daily and hourly opportunity of practising it. No part of your duty is more delightful; the joy you kindle in the heart of another cannot fail of shedding back its brightness on your own. No part of your duty is more godlike. They who They who od to become like God in knowledge, fell in the garden of Eden. vere confounded on the plain of Shinar. They love, will feel His approving smile and His will bring them nearer to His presence; and

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SCOTT.

THE extract which we give from the most popular author of his time is neither from his poetical nor his prose romances. Those works are in the hands of every reader; and we exclude them from the plan of this selection, for the same reason that we exclude scenes from Shakspere. The following account is from the original introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,' and was written in 1802. That work was the first publication of Scott which developed the nature of his tastes and acquirements. It was the germ, at once, of the 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' and of Waverley.' The life of Scott is not to be told in a brief notice like this. He was born on the 15th of August, 1771; and died on the 21st of September, 1832. His father was a highly respectable writer to the signet in Edinburgh, and was connected by blood with several noble families. Scott was a sickly boy, and lame from his infancy. His delicate health led to the cultivation of his mind according to his own tastes; and the love of fiction gave the chief direction to his studies and amusements. Gradually, however, his constitution was established, though he remained always lame, but wonderfully active. He went through the formalities of a lawyer's education; was called to the Scottish bar in 1802; was appointed Sheriff of Selkirkshire in 1799; and one of the principal Clerks of Session in 1806. During this period he had some independence and much leisure; and from the time when he published a German translation in 1796, to the appearance of the Lord of the Isles,' in 1814, he was cultivating that taste which during ten years rendered him the most popular poet of the day. In 1814 'Waverley' was published anonymously. The success of this remarkable novel, and the rapid appearance of a succession of works by the same master, produced an era in our literature. Never was such triumphant success witnessed during an author's life-time. In 1826, Scott, who was mixed up with commercial undertakings, and who had too freely used the dangerous power of anticipating revenue by unlimited credit, was brought to ruin by the failure of these artificial resources, in connection with publishers and printers. This is the heroic period of his life. His struggles to do justice to his creditors are beyond praise--they are for example, and are sacred. He fell in the contest with circumstances. The last words which he used in a public assembly were significant ones-they were those of the dying gladiator.]

Their morality was of a singular kind. The rapine by which they subsisted, they accounted lawful and honourable. Ever liable to lose their whole substance by an incursion of the English on a sudden breach of truce, they cared little to waste their time in cultivating crops to be reaped by their foes. Their cattle was, therefore, their chief property; and these were nightly exposed to the southern Borderers, as rapacious and active as themselves. Hence robbery assumed the appearance of fair reprisal. The fatal privilege of pursuing the marauders into their own country, for recovery of stolen goods, led to continual skirmishes. The warden also, himself frequently the chieftain of a Border ho. Je, when redress was not instantly granted by the opposite officer for depredations sustained by his district, was entitled to retaliate upon England by a warden raid. In such cases, the mosstroopers, who crowded to his standard, found themselves pursuing their craft under legal authority, and became the followers and favourites of the military magistrate, whose ordinary duty it was to check and suppress them. Equally unable and unwilling to make nice distinctions, they were not to be convinced that what was 3RD QUARTER.

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to-day fair booty was to-morrow a subject of theft. National animosity usually gave an additional stimulus to their rapacity; although it must be owned that their depredations extended also to the more cultivated parts of their own country.

The Borderers had, in fact, little reason to regard the inland Scots as their fellow-subjects, or to respect the power of the crown. They were frequently resigned, by express compact, to the bloody retaliation of the English, without experiencing any assistance from their prince and his more immediate subjects. If they beheld him, it was more frequently in the character of an avenging judge than of a protecting Sovereign. They were, in truth, in the time of peace, a kind of outcasts, against whom the united powers of England and Scotland were often employed. Hence, the men of the Borders had little attachment to their monarchs, whom they termed, in derision, the Kings of Fife and Lothian; provinces which they were not legally entitled to inhabit, and which, therefore, they pillaged with as little remorse as if they had belonged to a foreign country. This strange, precarious, and adventurous mode of life, led by the Borderers, was not without its pleasures, and seems, in all probability, hardly so disagreeable to us, as the monotony of regulated society must have been to those who had been long accustomed to a state of rapine. Well has it been remarked, by the eloquent Burke, that the shifting tides of fear and hope, the flight and pursuit, the peril and escape, alternate famine and feast, of the savage and the robber, after a time render all course of slow, steady, progressive, unvaried occupation, and the prospect only of a limited mediocrity, at the end of long labour, to the last degree tame, languid, and insipid. The interesting nature of their exploits may be conceived from the account of Camden.

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The inroads of the Marchers, when stimulated only by the desire of plunder, were never marked with cruelty, and seldom even with bloodshed "less in the case of opposition. They held, that property was common to all who stood in want of it; but they abhorred and avoided the crime of unnecessary homicide. This was perhaps partly owing to the habits of intimacy betwixt the Borderers of both kingdoms, notwithstanding their mutual hostility and reciprocal depredations. A natural intercourse took place between the English and Scottish Marches, at Border meetings, and during the short intervals of peace. They met frequently at parties of the chase and football; and it required many and strict regulations, on both sides, to prevent them from forming intermarriages and from cnltivating too closely a degree of intimacy. The custom also of paying black-mail, or protection rent, introduced a connection betwixt the countries; for a Scottish Borderer, taking black-rail from an English inhabitant, was not only himself bound to abstain from injuring such person, but also to maintain his quarrel, and recover his property if carried off by others. Hence, a union arose betwixt the parties, founded upon mutual interest, which counteracted, in many instances, the effects of national prejudice.

This humanity and moderation was, on certain occasions, entirely laid aside by the Borderers. In the case of deadly feud, either against an Englishman or against any neighbouring tribe, the whole force of the offended clan was bent to avenge the death of any of their number. Their vengeance not only vented itself upon the homicide and his family, but upon all his kindred, on his whole tribe, and on every one, in fine, whose death or ruin could affect him with regret.

The immediate rulers of the Borders were the chiefs of the different clans, who exercised over their respective septs a dominion partly patriarchal and partly feudal The latter bond of adherence was, however, the more slender; for, in the acts regulating the Borders, we find repeated mention of "Clannes having captaines and chieftaines whom on they depend. oft-times against the willes of their landelordes."

Of course these laws looked less to the feudal superior, than to the chieftain of the name, for the restraint of the disorderly tribes; and it is repeatedly enacted, that the head of the clan should be first called upon to deliver those of his sept, who should commit any trespass, and that, on his failure to do so, he should be liable to the injured party in full redress. By the same statutes, the chieftains and landlords presiding over Border clans were obliged to find caution, and to grant hostages, that they would subject themselves to the due course of law. Such clans as had no chieftain of sufficient note to enter bail for their quiet conduct became broken men, outlawed to both nations.

From these enactments the power of the Border chieftains may be conceived, for it had been hard and useless to have punished them for the trespass of their tribes, unless they possessed over them unlimited authority. The abodes of these petty princes by no means corresponded to the extent of their power. We do not find on the Scottish Borders the splendid and extensive baronial castles which graced and defended the opposite frontier. The Gothic grandeur of Alnwick, of Raby, and of Naworth, marks the wealthier and more secure state of the English nobles. The Scottish chieftain, however extensive his domains, derived no pecuniary advantage save from such parts as he could himself cultivate or occupy. Payment of rent was hardly known on the Borders till after the Union of 1603. All that the landlord could gain from those residing upon his estate was their personal service in battle, their assistance in labouring the land retained in his natural possession, some petty quit rents of a nature resembling the feudal casualties, and perhaps a share in the spoil which they acquired by rapine. This, with his herds of cattle and of sheep, and with the black-mail which he exacted from his neighbours, constituted the revenue of the chieftain; and from funds so precarious he could rarely spare sums to expend in strengthening or decorating his habitation. Another reason is found in the Scottish mode of warfare. It was early discovered that the English surpassed their neighbours in the arts of assaulting and defending fortified places. The policy of the Scottish, therefore, deterred them from erecting upon the Borders buildings of such extent and strength as, being once taken by the foe, would have been capable of receiving a permanent garrison. To themselves the woods and hills of their country were pointed out by the great Bruce as their safest bulwarks; and the maxim of the Douglases, that, "it was better to hear the lark sing than the mouse cheep," was adopted by every Border chief. For these combined reasons the residence of the chieftain was commonly a large square battlemented tower, called a keep or peel, placed on a precipice or on the banks of a torrent, and, if the ground would permit, surrounded by a moat. In short, the situation of a Border house, encompassed by woods, and rendered almost inaccessible by torrents, by rocks, or by morasses, sufficiently indicated the pursuits and apprehensions of its inhabitants. No wonder, therefore, that James V., on approaching the castle of Lockwood, the ancient seat of the Johnstones, is said to have exclaimed, "that he who built it must have been a knave in his heart." An outer wall, with some light fortifications, served as a protection for the cattle at night. The walls of these fortresses were of an immense thickness, and they could easily be defended against any small force; more especially as the rooms being vaulted each story formed a separate lodgement, capable of being held out for a considerable time. On such occasions the usual mode adopted by the assailants was to expel the defenders by setting fire to wet straw in the lower apartments. But the Border chieftains seldom chose to abide in person a siege of this nature; and I have scarce observed a single instance of a distinguished baron made prisoner in his own house. The common people resided in paltry huts, about the safety of which they were little anxious, as they contained nothing of value. On the approach of a superior force they unthatched them, to

prevent their being burned, and then abandoned them to the foe.

Their only

treasures were a fleet and active horse, with the ornaments which their rapine had procured for the females of their family, of whose gay appearance they were vain.

Upon the religion of the Borderers there can very little be said. They remained attached to the Roman Catholic faith rather longer than the rest of Scotland. This probably arose from a total indifference upon the subject; for we nowhere find in their character the respect for the church which is a marked feature of that religion. The abbeys which were planted upon the Border neither seem to have been much respected by the English nor by the Scottish barons. They were repeatedly burned by the former in the course of the Border wars, and by the latter they seem to have been regarded chiefly as the means of endowing a needy relation, or the subject of occasional plunder. The Reformation was late of finding its way into the Border wilds; for, while the religious and civil dissensions were at the height, in 1568, Drury writes to Cecil-" Our trusty neighbours of Teviotdale are holden occupied only to attend to the pleasure and calling of their own heads, to make some diversion in the matter." The influence of the reformed preachers, among the Borderers, seems also to have been but small; for, upon all occasions of dispute with the kirk, James VI. was wont to call in their assistance.

But, though the church, in these frontier counties, attracted little veneration, no part of Scotland teemed with superstitious fears and observances more than they did. "The Dalesmen," says Lesley, “ I never count their beads with such earnestness as when they set out upon a predatory expedition." Penances, the composition betwixt guilt and conscience, were also frequent upon the Borders. These were superstitions flowing immediately from the nature of the Catholic religion; but there was, upon the Border, no lack of others of a more general nature. Such was the universal belief in spells, of which some traces may yet remain in the wild parts of the country.

We learn from Lesley, that the Borderers were temperate in their use of intoxicating liquors, and we are therefore left to conjecture how they occupied the time, when winter, or when accident, confined them to their habitations. The little learning which existed in the middle ages glimmered, a dim and dying flame, in the religious houses; and even in the sixteenth century, when its beams became more widely diffused, they were far from penetrating the recesses of the Border mountains. The tales of tradition, the song, with the pipe or harp of the minstrel, were probably the sole resources against ennui during the short intervals of repose from military adventure.

The more rude and wild the state of society, the more general and violent is the impulse received from poetry and music. The musc, whose effusions are the amusement of a very small part of a polished nation, records, in the lays of inspiration, the history, the laws, the very religion of savages. Where the pen and the press are wanting, the flow of numbers impressed upon the memory of posterity the deeds and sentiments of their forefathers. Verse is naturally connected with music; and, among a rude people, the union is seldom broken. By this natural alliance, the lays, "steeped in the stream of harmony," are more easily retained by the reciter, and produce upon his audience a more impressive effect. Hence, there has hardly been found to exist a nation so brutishly rude as not to listen with enthusiasm to the songs of their bards, recounting the exploits of their forefathers, recording their laws and moral precepts, or hymning the praises of their deities. But where the feelings are frequently stretched to the highest pitch, by the vicissitudes of a life of danger and military adventure, this predisposition of a savage people to admire their own rude poetry and music is heightened, and its toue

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