RUTH AND HER ANCIENT KINSMAN.

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a fairy tale; but the tone of her voice, so sweet and gentle, the serenity of her face, and the meekness of her manner, as she took her seat upon a stool not far from the door, had an effect upon old Daniel Craig, and he bade her come forward, and take a chair 'farther ben the house.'

"I am an Orphan, and have perhaps but little claim upon you, but I have ventured to come here - my name is Margaret Lyndsay, and my mother's name was Alice Craig.' The old man moved upon his chair, as if a blow had struck him, and looked long and earnestly into her face. Her features confirmed her words. Her countenance possessed that strong power over him that goes down mysteriously through the generations of perishable man, connecting love with likeness, so that the child in its cradle may be smiling almost with the self-same expression that belonged to some one of its forefathers mouldered into ashes many hundred years ago. 'Nae doubt, nae doubt, ye are the daughter o' Walter Lyndsay and Alice Craig. Never were twa faces mair unlike than theirs, yet yours is like them baith. Margaret that is your name I give you my blessing. Hae you walked far? Mysie's doun at the Rashy-riggs, wi' milk to the calf, but will be in belyve. Come, my bonny bairn, take a shake o' your uncle's hand.' Margaret told, in a few words, the principal events of the last three years, as far as she could; and the old man, to whom they had been almost all unknown, heard her story with attention, but said little or nothing. Meanwhile, Mysie came in an elderly, hard-featured woman, but with an expression of homely kindness that made her dark face not unpleasant.

66

66

Margaret felt herself an inmate of her uncle's house, and her heart began already to warm towards the old grey-headed solitary man. His manner exhibited, as she thought, a mixture of curiosity and kindness; but she did not disturb his taciturnity, and only returned immediate and satisfactory answers to his few short and abrupt questions. He evidently was thinking over the particulars which she had given him of her life at Braehead, and in the lane; and she did not allow herself to fear, but that, in a day or two, if he permitted her to stay, she would be able to awaken in his heart a natural interest in her behalf. Hope was a guest that never left her bosom and she rejoiced when on the return of the old domestic from the bed-room, her uncle requested her to aloud read a chapter of the Bible. She did so, and the old man took the book out of her hand with evident satisfaction, and, fastening the clasp, laid it by in the little cupboard in the wall near his chair, and wished her good night.

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'Mysie conducted her into a bed-room, where every thing was neat, and superior, indeed, to the ordinary accommodation of a farmhouse. 'Ye need na fear, for feather-beds and sheets are a' as dry as last year's hay in the stack. I keep a' things in the house weel aired, for damp's a great disaster. But, for a' that, sleepin' breath has na been drawn in that bed these saxteen year! Margaret thanked her for the trouble she had taken, and soon laid down her limbs in grateful A thin calico curtain was before the low window; but the still serene radiance of a midsummer night glimmered on the floor. All was silent and in a few minutes Margaret Lyndsay was asleep.

rest.

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WILSON'S LIGHTS AND SHADOWS.

"In the quiet of the succeeding evening, the old man took her with him along the burn-side, and into the green ewe-bught, where they sat down for a while in silence. At last he said, 'I have nae wife — nae children nae friends, I may say, Margaret nane that cares for me, but the servant in the house, an auld friendless body like mysel'; but if you choose to bide wi' us, you are mair than welcome; for I know not what is in that face o' thine; but this is the pleasantest day that has come to me these last thirty years.'

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sorrows

Margaret was now requested to tell her uncle more about her parents and herself, and she complied with a full heart. She went back with all the power of nature's eloquence, to the history of her young years at Braehead - recounted all her father's miseries. her mother's and her own trials. All the while she spoke, the tears were streaming from her eyes, and her sweet bosom heaved with a crowd of heavy sighs. The old man sat silent; but more than once he sobbed, and passed his withered toil-worn hands across his forehead. - They rose up together, as by mutual consent, and returned to the house. Before the light had too far died away, Daniel Craig asked Margaret to read a chapter in the Bible, as she had done the night before; and when she had concluded, he said, 'I never heard the Scriptures so well read in all my days-did you, Mysie?' The quiet creature looked on Margaret with a smile of kindness and admiration, and said, that she had never understood that chapter sae weel before, although, aiblins, she had read it a hundred times.'-'Ye can gang to your bed without Mysie to show you the way to-night, my good niece ye are one of the family now- and Nether-Place will after this be as cheerfu' a house as in a' the parish.'"- Trials of Margaret Lyndsay, pp. 251, 252.

6

We should now finish our task by saying something of "Reginald Dalton;"-but such of our readers as have accompanied us through this long retrospect, will readily excuse us, we presume, for postponing our notice of that work, till another opportunity. There are two decisive reasons, indeed, against our proceeding with it at present, one, that we really have not yet read it fairly through-the other, that we have no longer room to say all of it that we foresee it will require.

VI.

GENERAL POLITICS.

A GREAT deal that should naturally come under this title has been unavoidably given already, under that of History; and more, I fear, may be detected under still less appropriate denominations. If any unwary readers have been thus unwittingly decoyed into Politics, while intent on more innocent studies, I can only hope that they will now take comfort, from finding how little of this obnoxious commodity has been left to appear in its proper colours; and also from seeing, from the decorous title now assumed, that all intention of engaging them in Party discussions is disclaimed.

I do not think that I was ever a violent or (consciously) uncandid partisan; and at all events, ten years of honest abstinence and entire segregation from party contentions (to say nothing of the sobering effects of threescore antecedent years!), should have pretty much effaced the vestiges of such predilections, and awakened the least considerate to a sense of the exaggerations, and occasional unfairness, which such influences must almost unavoidably impart to political disquisitions. In what I now reprint I have naturally been anxious to select what seemed least liable to this objection: and though I cannot flatter myself that a tone of absolute, Judicial impartiality is maintained in all these early productions, I trust that nothing will be found in them that can suggest the idea either of personal animosity, or of an ungenerous feeling towards a public opponent.

To the two first, and most considerable, of the following papers, indeed, I should wish particularly to refer, as fair exponents both of the principles I think I have always maintained, and of the temper in which I was generally disposed to maintain them. In some of the others a more vehement and contentious tone may no doubt be detected. But as they touch upon matters of permanent interest and importance, and advocate opinions which I still think substantially right, I have felt that it would be pusillanimous now to suppress them, from a poor fear of censure, which, if just, I cannot but know that I deserve or a still poorer distrust of those allowances which I have no reason to think will be withheld from me by the better part of my readers.

GENERAL POLITICS.

(NOVEMBER, 1812.)

Essay on the Practice of the British Government, distinguished from the abstract Theory on which it is supposed to be founded. By GOULD FRANCIS LECKIE. 8vo. London:

1812.*

THIS is the most direct attack which we have ever seen in English, upon the free constitution of England; —or rather upon political liberty in general, and upon our government only in so far as it is free-and it consists partly in an eager exposition of the inconveniences resulting from parliaments or representative legislatures, and partly in a warm defence and undisguised panegyric of Absolute, or, as the author more elegantly phrases it, of Simple monarchy.

The pamphlet which contains these consolatory doctrines, has the further merit of being, without any exception, the worst written, and the worst reasoned, that has ever fallen into our hands; and there is nothing indeed but the extreme importance of the subject, and the singular complexion of the times in which it appears, that could induce us to take any notice of it. The rubbish that is scattered in our common walks, we merely

I used to think that this paper contained a very good defence of our free constitution; and especially the most complete, temperate, and searching vindication of our Hereditary Monarchy that was any where to be met with: And, though it now appears to me rather more elementary and elaborate than was necessary, I am still of opinion that it may be of use to young politicians, and suggest cautions and grounds of distrust, to rash discontent and thoughtless presumption.