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And he spoke within the mark, for before I left his establishment, cured, I had to take eighteen. I consider that if the law of England was framed upon equitable principles, it would enable me to" recover "the sum of four pounds ten shillings from the executors of the late Dr. Swishem; but I need not say that such is not the case.

and alterations" alone. I am so ashamed of my "Don't believe it, sir," returned he. "I have had own performance, that I dare not save my fingers hundreds of adult pupils, who all write like thisby employing a multiplying machine," even for only certainly not quite so badly. Not one schoolbusiness-letters. My small children make me blush boy out of ten who has been brought up on classical for my inferiority, when they show me their "pot-principles can write a legible hand. The headhooks and hangers,” and I shall not easily forget that masters ought to be flogged all round.” moment of embarrassment, when one of them, in "Or even where the boys are flogged," suggested the absence of her governess, asked me to set her I; but he did n't understand this allusion. a copy." Dear papa, please write me out a line "You will require to take a dozen lessons instead of Rs." I could as easily have written down the of six, sir," continued he, severely. genealogy of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Even the two ingenious "blind men at the post-office were unable to decipher me except by mutual consultation. My envelopes took ten times the period that other Illegibles did in passing through their hands. | They doubtless puzzled over the efforts of all those who had, like myself, been educated at Minerva Lodge, but the profession of literature the trade of the constant scribbler - had in my case so thoroughly completed the evil which Impositions had begun, that I was facile princeps among even them: the most infamous of all bad writers. Literature needs have no such effect as this, if the previous training has been good. Some foolish persons think it is a mark of genius to write ill, but this is a great mistake. I look over my own epistolary treasures, and see with shame how quite otherwise is the case. Place aux dames. This neat little microscopic hand, every letter of which is legible, belongs to the authoress of Our Village; and these bold and well-poenaed as a witness in the Central Criminal Court. formed lines are from the same fingers which wrote Deerbrook and the Crofton Boys.

My friends, of course, with the exception of the Gentleman of Leisure, were delighted with the result attained; and the compositors who have the pleasure of setting up this paper can scarcely believe their eyes. But I am by no means altogether freed from the consequences of my late deformity (for that's the very word). A most respectable tradesman, to whom I gave my first check after this wondrous change, was, upon presenting it in person at my banker's, at once taken into custody upon the charge of forgery. He has brought an action against the firm for defamation of character, and I am sub

My old check-book will be there produced, and the signatures (?) contrasted with the way which I have recently_acquired - including a beautiful flourish like an Eagle of subscribing my name. It will not, therefore, be necessary to humiliate myself by further confessions, since, for the culmination of this sad history, readers may consult the public papers for themselves.

THE BROOCH OF BRUCE.

This free and manly hand (the best I know) is that which set down the Domestic Annals of Scotland; and this, perhaps the next best, so firm, distinct, and yet so flowing, is the same which has moved mankind at will to tears and laughter, from the days of Pickwick until now. To judge by this bold running-hand, the Woman in White was no Dead Secret to the printer; and here is the clear legible work of those dead fingers which shall paint, alas! no Colonel Newcomes for us any more. THE Highland plaid, called the breacan-feile, or Had I possessed the genius of all these writers" checkered covering," was, originally, a far more combined, I should yet have been as one who important article of dress than it is at the present preaches in an unknown tongue, edifying no Reader day, forming, in fact, the chief portion of the cos(and least of all "the Reader" who is employed by tume. Professor Cosmo Innes would appear to disthe printer), but for the fair Interpretess of whom I believe the antiquity of the Highland checkered have spoken; and even she was useless to me in dress, and is hard upon "the man of fashion who some things. There are letters which one cannot can afford to ape the outlaw of the melodrama." get one's wife to write for one; and my correspond- But General Stewart says that "in the toilet of ents grew rebellious, and threatened to cut off all a Highlander of fashion," the arrangements of the communication with one who gave them so much plaid were of the greatest consequence. It had a trouble. A business-friend in the city, declaring length of four yards and a breadth of two, and was my telegraph-hand was much better than so folded that it covered the body and came down my writing-hand," insisted upon hearing from me to the knee, being confined round the waist by a by the wires only. Finally, a "round-robin" was belt, except in wet weather, when it could be adaddressed to me from the members of my own fam-justed so as to shelter the whole person. When the ily, requesting that I should take writing-lessons of wearer required the free use of both his arms, the a professor, and enclosing thirty shillings to defray plaid was fastened across the breast by a bodkin or his charges for the first six lessons. I make it a rule brooch; but when the right arm only was left bare, never- under any circumstances to return peo- the brooch was worn on the left shoulder. The ple's money, and, at the same time, I am too well-brooch was circular in its shape, and was frequently principled not to apply what I receive to the pur- adorned with crystals, cairn-gorms, and precious pose for which it is intended. At the age of forty-stones; while its silver rim was engraved with varifive, therefore, I began to learn that science which I ous devices and mottoes. Martin mentions some had acquired at eight years old, and lost during my "of one hundred merks value, with the figures of residence at Minerva Lodge. various animals curiously engraved.”

that "

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Impositions, eh?" remarked the Professor as soon as he set eyes upon a specimen of what the painters would call my latest style."

Yes," said I, "that was the beginning of it; but Literature was the finishing-school."

These Highland brooches were preserved as family heir-looms, and were treasured with a superstitious care. Their resemblance to the Roman fibula seems to have greatly impressed the mind of Wordsworth, who, in the brooch and plaid (worn

kilt-wise), could see vestiges of the earliest history of the people, and their communications with the Roman invaders. He says that, before Columba's visit,

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ered in his opponent his friend General Douglas, who was also a fugitive. Then they came down to Ugadale, on the eastern shore, and gained admittance at the house of one Mackay, who was entertaining his friends at a merry-making, and who welcomed them " was not unknown The clasp that fixed the Roman gown ; with Highland hospitality, compelling Bruce to The Fibula, whose shape, I ween, drink a quaigh of usquebangh, saying, "I am king Still in the Highland Broach is seen." in my own house." Then Mackay gave them their The Brooch of Lorn, that "brooch of burning beds and breakfasts, and took them up Beinn-angold," is historical, and forms the subject of the min- tuirc, in order to show them the way to the western strel's song at the feast of the Lord of the Isles. It coast of Cantire. Then Bruce disclosed himself, and was at the defeat at Dalree, in Breadalbane, in promised that when he had regained his throne he 1306, that Bruce, being hotly pursued by one of the would grant Mackay any favor that he should ask of Macdougals of Lorn, slew him with his battle-axe, him; whereupon Mackay replied, that if he had the but left in his death-grasp his plaid and brooch. two farms of Ugadale and Arnicle, he should be as This brooch was carefully preserved at Dunolly happy as a king. Bruce promised him this, and Castle, where it was said to have been lost at the bade him farewell at the spot still called Cross Mhic burning of the Castle in the seventeenth century, and Caidh, or "the Cross of Mackay," telling him to a statement to this effect is made by Sir Walter Scott, come and see him in Edinburgh whenever he should in the notes to his poem, and also by General Stew-perceive a bonfire blazing on a certain hill in Galloart, in his "Sketches" (ii. 442). This, however, is way. Mackay did so, and received from the king erroneous, for the brooch is still preserved by Ad- the title-deeds of the two farms; and when he demiral Macdougal, at Dunolly House, and an illustra-clined drinking a goblet of wine, Bruce constrained tion of it is given in the last edition (1864) of Pro- him, reminding him that he, in his turn, was king in fessor Wilson's "Prehistoric Annals."

very

Another brooch of Bruce, but acquired in a friendly instead of a hostile manner,* has also been preserved to the present day. The brooch is large and handsome; the central stone is a fine cairn-gorm, surrounded with Scotch pebbles, set in silver, much tarnished by age. Within the brooch the letters F. M. K. are rudely marked, being the initials of Farracher Mac Kay, to whom Bruce gave the brooch. The clan of the Mackays of Ugadale was one of ten of the second class of vassals of the Isles; and Gregory mentions that Gilchrist Mac Imar Mackay had a grant of lands in Cantire from King Robert Bruce, and "that from him were descended the Mackays of Ugadale, who, after the forfeiture of the Lord of the Isles, attached themselves to the Macdonalds of Islay."

The history of this brooch given by Bruce to Mackay is a curious page in the romantic annals of royal fugitives. According to Cantire tradition, in those days when King Robert Bruce was a fugitive, and had a price set upon his head, he was nigh perishing from hunger and fatigue during a night passed upon the bleak mountain of Sliobhghoil, in North Argyleshire, but was kept warm by a goat who also refreshed him with her milk, in grateful remembrance of which he afterwards made a law that forbade the poinding (or pounding) of a goat. The next morning he walked on to Cantire, South Argyleshire, and met a beggar-man, who gave him a little meal, which the king mixed with water in the heel of his shoe, and ate heartily, saying, "Hunger is a good cook; it is bad to slight food; barley-meal brose out of my shoe is the best food that ever I used." Then he came on to Cantire's monarch of mountains 2,170 feet high Beinn-an-tuirc, "the wild boar's mountain," so called because Diarmid had there slain the dreaded boar, and had lost his own life through the jealousy of Fingal.

Bruce wandered in the forest of Bunlaradh, where

he met a man who would not tell who he was.

So

they fought; and when they had fought till they were exhausted, they agreed that it was pitiful work, and that it would be better for them to tell their names. Whereupon they did so, and Bruce discov

Now in the possession of Captain Hector Macneal, of Ugadale and Lossit, in Cantire.

his own house.

Such, told briefly, is the purport of the popular stories relating to Bruce and Mackay that I collected on the spot in 1860, and which were published in * and in the following year in my "Glencreggan these, as will have been seen, no mention is made of a brooch. Further inquiries on this subject, made during the five past years, have put me in possession of fresh particulars relating to this story, which have not hitherto been published. A Cantire laird tells me: I believe the true version of this story to be as follows, and this I had from old John Macdougall of Killmaluaig, and the late Ugadale so far confirmed it; moreover, the tenure of the Ugadales further vouches for the truth of the story. It would appear, then, from this version of the story, that the king slept at Killmaluaig, a farm (now belonging to Glencreggan) of which Mackay was then tenant. The king was in disguise, and was hospitably entertained by Mackay, who spoke strongly against the him to the ferry for Arran. Mackay not only could Bruce. The king asked Mackay if he could direct do so, but offered to escort him on his way in the morning. They started accordingly, and rested where a stone now marks the spot on the hill of Arnicle, which is still the property of the Ugadales. From this spot Mackay pointed out to the king certain crown-lands, namely, the lands of Arnicle. They proceeded on their journey, and came to Ugadale, which was also pointed out as crown-lands. At length they came to the ferry, where the king sat down on a stone - which is still shown - and where, after thanking Mackay for his hospitality, and giving him his brooch as a farewell token, he declared to him who he was. This put poor Mackay in a great fright, from which, however, he was soon relieved by the king telling him that he need not fear, for that he had entertained him hospitably as a stranger, and that, if he should succeed in obtaining his rights, he would give unto him those crown-lands of Ugadale and Arnicle. The king afterwards carried his promise into effect, and the lands are now held on the obligation of entertaining the sovereign on coming to Cantire.

In this version of the story, General Douglas disappears into his original mythical mists, and there

* "Glencreggan, or a Highland Home in Cantire."

The Mackays retained possession of Ugadale and Arnicle till the end of the seventeenth century, when the estate passed into the hands of the Macneals, of Tirfergus and Lossit, by the marriage of Torquil, a younger son of Lauchlan MacNeill Buy, of Tirfergus, with Barbara Mackay, heiress of Ugadale, from whom the present laird and possessor Sandy was not a scapegrace and a numskull. He of Bruce's brooch, Captain Hector Macneal, is line- was a bonnie laddie, very like his mother both in ally descended. The grave of Mackay, to whom her sweet, fair, sunshiny face, and her sanguine, senBruce gave the brooch and lands, is pointed out sitive, imaginative temperament. He was a shade among the many interesting gravestones that crowd thoughtless as regarded a divinity studied in prothe old burial-ground of Saddell Monastery, Can-spective, with a greater bent for drawing on the

margins of his books and copies, and every scrap of paper he could come by, wonderfully faithful transcripts of " the hills, and woods, and streams around" Clovenford, and clever comical likenesses of the master, his school-fellows, and his acquaintances, than for severe reading.

But his father was persuaded that sedateness and application would come to Sandy with riper years; and except in one instance, when he punished the lad with austerity for depicting the manse cat with a pair of bands round its neck, holding forth from a water-stoup to the cocks and hens, and the rats peeping from the stacks in the glebe yard, calling the sketch a profane and scurrilous jest, he did not trouble himself much about Sandy's shortcomings, Sandy was the apple of the minister's eye, secretly; while openly, the father addressed the son by the comprehensively disparaging corruption "min,”. a term which, in Scotland, with the alteration of one letter, converts the honorable appellation “man into an ostentatiously condescending and slightly contemptuous soubriquet. "O, min, is that all you're good for?" "There was more lost at Flodden, min." And it was true Sandy would have worked a more wonderful sampler, and proved a meeker and more gracious woman than Jess, for whom, with a spice of chivalry, all Mr. Stewart's outward favor was reserved.

train of calves, chickens, dogs, cats, pigeons, laverocks, linties, was also "beyond compare." Jess, carrying a stray lamb in her arms, or a brokenwinged bird in her bosom, showed unmistakably whether she was womanly- that is, motherly —

or no.

Clovenford kirk and manse, with moss, lichen, and weather-stain, doing something to redeem the barn and bothy order of architecture, lay in a nest of wooded and bare hills. The parish did not have the grander and more peculiar features of Scottish landscape,- neither the height nor the breadth of savage mountains and moors, where the eagle rears her bloody-beaked young, and "the whaup cries dreary." But it had the Fir Tap and the Beld Law, the Hare Water and the Den of blackthorns and whitethorns, crabs and geans, ending in the feathery birks and stiff, dark-green boxes and hollies round the old white house of Birkholm. The fields were all heights and hollows, sunshine and shade, like dimpled faces. There were hedges tedded with dogroses and honeysuckles; water-courses yellow with kingcups; feal-dykes nodding with harebells, and twittering with the swallows nestling beneath their eaves. At Clovenford manse the servant lasses still span and sang ballants every afternoon,

- on the bink by the kitchen-fire in winter, and at the back-door in summer. Andro Cornfoot, the As for Jess Stewart, she would have responded minister's man, lived with his deaf wife and his splendidly to her father's wishes but for the trifling catecheesed laddie, the minister's herd, in the accident of having been born a girl, coupled with thatched cottage at the manse offices, came to the the Apostle Paul's prohibition to a woman, She house every evening and was present with the would have made a fine minister, frank, straight-family at "the worship," when the minister comforward, imperative, with a passionate tongue when mended his house, people, kirk, country, and the she was roused; having a real relish for the solid world to the care of the Great Creator. Andro study of history and geography, in opposition to the came again at sunrise to awake the lasses, and to practice of the spinnet and the execution of satin speak in at the minister's window and tell him what pieces in the Miss Allardyces' course of instruction. the weather was like, never thinking to avert his But there was nothing unwomanly or repulsive in light gray-green fishy eyes from the night-cap, Jess; on the contrary, as she outgrew the boister- broad-bordered, and with a large bow right over ousness of her childhood, when she distressed her the forehead, which bore the picturesque Kilmarnock mother by playing more uniformly at boys' games cowl loving company on the pillow. (Sandy in his tender years took up with an oldfashioned, hard-featured doll, Jess's rejected property), and destroying three times as many clothes as Sandy, there was the prospect of her growing up a woman of noble proportions. There was a charm in Jess's fresh, candid, intelligent face- her short, The minister trudged many a long and weary thick black curls in a crop about her brow and neck; mile to do duty at neighboring kirks and canonical her tall, broad-shouldered, firm, erect figure at meetings, in place of hiring a gig from the Crown least equal to that of Sandy's bright blue eyes, san- in Woodend. Mrs. Stewart gave up much of her guine complexion, and slight, but active, long, ele-visiting, for the reason that she was delicate and ungant limbs.

Jess was the young queen of the parish, and the position lent her an ease, a power, an air of born authority and command which became the girl, and which did not leave her when she passed from the yeomen's houses to those of the gentry, where she could claim no precedence of birth and breeding, and where, on the other hand, her best cloth mantle and white muslin frock were homely and out of date. Young Adam Spottiswoode, of Birkholm, his own master, who opened the balls at Woodend, would rather dance a reel with the minister's than a minuet with the member's daughter. Jess could dance minuets, too; a little French dancing-master, a poor emigré, had imported the true Minuets de la Cour at the service of the public of Woodend, but Jess's reels were something inspiriting.

Again, Jess, with the few old and ailing men and women, who were "on the box" (that is, parish paupers), with bairns, with her mother's endless

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The cloud, the size of a man's hand, in the Clovenford sky began with the expenses of Sandy's college terms; notwithstanding they were met without flinching, bravely borne, and every member of the family took a part in defraying them.

able to accompany the minister in his long walks. Jess could walk with the best, and thought nothing of crossing the parish, six miles from one end to the other, and dancing half the night afterwards; but Jess was called on to resign all the little advantages and enjoyments such as even the farmers' daughters could claim. These were her going to Edinburgh and lodging with her Aunt Peggy, the writer to the signet's widow, in the High Street, and there learning to bake pastry and cut out patterns for her gowns; and her attending the dancing and singing classes for grown-up ladies and gentlemen, opened every winter in Woodend. The very table at the manse was rendered plainer and more frugal on Sandy's account. The box which travelled every fortnight with the carrier to Edinburgh seemed to carry away all the dainties. Mrs. Stewart relinquished her little cup of tea in the morning, protesting she found it bad for her nerves, and made a fashion of supping porridge along with the minister

Mrs. Stewart, moving gently about in her little

and Jess. The minister denied himself his bit of Stilton cheese and glass of Edinburgh ale after din-apple-green shawl, filled in with what manufacturers ner, pretending they made him sleepy. Jess had to be more sparing in preserving the fruit, though it was hanging in abundance in the garden, and the whole cost was the sugar; and to substitute for the old home-brewed wines, the currant, ginger, elderflower, and elder-berry - welcome cordials to the sick of narrow means, who knew no better - the still humbler beverage of treacle beer.

and women call "pines," and the cap of her own netting as fine as gossamer, a light cloud about a face still fair and delicate too fair and delicate for her years - was kept with both body and mind on the rack, acting as a piteous mediator between her two sovereigns.

Yet Mr. Stewart had not swerved for a moment from his purpose, and never supposed that Sandy had committed any grave offence to forfeit what was in a sort his inheritance. Mr. Stewart knew

At first all these sacrifices, regarded as temporary in their nature, were made light of. But as sessions came and went, and Sandy brought home no hon-full well that many a distinguished divine and ors, got no bursary to ease the burden, no private teaching, except once a summer tutorship, they pressed more heavily.

good man had begun life by sowing a crop of wild oats. Could the minister have been aware of it, his heart might have been comforted by the seeming coincidence that gray old St. Regulus was ringing at that moment with the characteristic exploits of " Mad Tam Chaumers," as Scotland was yet to

tor and philanthropist. And the minister would spare his bread as well as his cheese; he would take off his coat, and break stones by a dike side for day's wages, if the laws of the kirk and his parishioners would suffer it, sooner than Sandy should miss his natural call to do his family, his parish, it might be his country and the world, credit.

The fact was, that young Sandy Stewart, in the most critical years of his life, in place of settling down to hard head-work, was flightier and more prone to trifling as it was regarded at Cloven-ring with the virtues and renown of her great oraford than ever. He showed himself addicted to company; not bad company, -a true son of the manse could not at once have degraded himself so far without great moral corruption, but to free mixed company, the company at harvest-homes, fairs, and the clubs, in which Woodend aped more famous places. Gentlemen of higher degree than the minister's Sandy, the young Laird of Birkholm, for instance, - and even ladies, the eccentric old dowagers and spinsters of the period, frequented these scenes blamelessly; but no one of them was to be a minister, a Presbyterian divine, whom a single breath of scandal was sufficient to blast.

It was Jess who came to a different conclusion. It was Jess who declared plainly in her secret chamber: "I don't believe our Sandy will ever be a minister. Better he should not if he do not put more heart into his work, or he will cover himself and us with disgrace, and bring down his father's and mothThe word was not widely applied then; but San-er's gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. It is not dy was tainted with Bohemianism. And the lad was still fonder of making facsimiles of the rural and genial life, inanimate and animated, he loved, - the very materials a waste of money, and the practice, which might have been amusing enough to his family in other circumstances, miserable child's play in a lacking divinity student.

so long since Mr. Home was put out of the kirk for writing a play; and Sandy has songs, though he has not sermons, flying loose about his room when I go in to make up his bed; it is well it is not one of the lasses who sees them. He brags of going every night to the theatre when Mrs. Siddons is in Embro (I wonder where the price of his tickets comes from); Lines of care began to be drawn on Mr. Stewart's and I am sure, if the Assembly put out one man for full massive face. He left off, with scornful magna- writing a play, they could not in honesty keep in nimity, inquiring into his son's progress in his classes, another whose pencil is never out of his hand. I when the result was invariably disappointment; but catched him drawing the bethel and Miss Mysie he suffered his tongue to scoff bitterly at the degen- Wedderburn below the book-board at the very sumeracy of the times, and the effeminate puppyism of ming up of the "heads" last Sabbath; and his ex"birkies," who put their pride in tying up their hair cuse was, he must have their heads out of his head with ribbons, and sporting tights and silk stockings. to be at peace to listen. He cares a deal more for The ribbons at least were cheap, and the stock- the glint of a sunny shower, or the gloom of a thunings were a fond transfer of the last pair of six-and-der-storm, or the crook of a scrag of a tree, or the thirty shillings' worth, a present to Mrs. Stewart, in handsome discount from the gallant old bachelor, the true kirk man, in his snuff-brown wig and purple rig and fur stockings, whom she called genteelly her "merchant" in Woodend. Mrs. Stewart would ten times rather see the stockings on Sandy's legs than on her own, that for once she might have the pleasure of looking on her bonnie laddie in the guise of a fine gentleman, as gentlemen at the Queen's levees and state footmen still figure. It was neither just nor generous in Mr. Stewart to taunt Sandy with his mother's silk stockings, and to add the gratuitous reflection that puppies neither cared where their indulgences came from nor to what they led; but the minister's big heart was

sore.

On the other side, Sandy had a hasty as well as an affectionate temper, and was in constant danger of rebutting unfair aspersions, and speaking back to his father words ill-considered and unjustifiable in the circumstances.

red of a gypsy's torn cloak, than ever I could see he cared for the bearing of a doctrine. What about the minister of Duddingstone? I would like anybody to tell me whether he was not licensed, presented, called, and placed, before he was known, to gentle and simple, as a drawing-master? If Sandy would but mind his own business. I have no faith in a man, however quick, who does not mind his own business. There is Birkholm, as good a judge of a straight rig, or a round stack, or a head of nowt, as ever a farmer in the country; yet he kept his terms at an English university, and he is a member of the Hunt, and well his red coat sets him."

It was Jess who grew to grudge, almost fiercely, every shilling spent on Sandy. Yet deal gently with Jess's memory, for she was no miser, and she was the chief sufferer. She had her father's sense of justice outraged without any of the blindness which accompanies a besetting desire; and Jess was sensible that Sandy's idleness and extravagance