Good people-you have work to do in the hay-fieldlet us part--God bless you-good by-farewell.

Half-an-hour since we parted-and we cannot help being a little sad-and fear we were not so kind to the old people—so considerate-as we ought to have beenand, perhaps, though pleased with us just now, they may say to one another before evening that we were too merry for our years. Nonsense. We were all merry together-and what's the use of wearing a long face, at all times, like a Methodist minister? A Methodist minister ! Why, John Wesley was facete, and Whitfield humorous-yet were their hearts fountains of tears-and ours is not a rock-if it be, 'tis the Rock of Horeb.

It has long been well known to the whole world that we are a sad egotist—yet our egotism, so far from being a detraction from our attraction, seems to be the very soul of it, making it impossible in nature for any reasonable being to come within its sphere, without being drawn by sweet compulsion to the old wizard's heart. He is so humane! Only look at him for a few minutes, and liking becomes love-love becomes veneration. And all this even before he has opened his lips-by the mere power of his ogles and his temples. In his large mild blue eyes is written not only his nature, but miraculously, in German text, his very name, Christopher North. Mrs. Gentle was the first to discover it; though we remember having been asked more than once in our youth by an alarmed virgin on whom we happened at the time to be looking tender, "if we were aware that there was something preternatural in our eyes?" Christopher is conspicuous in our right eye-North in our left-and when we wish to be incog., we either draw their fringed curtains, or nunlike, keep the tell-tale orbs fixed on the ground. Candour whispers us to confess, that some years ago a child was exhibited at sixpence with WILLIAM WOOD legibly in its optics-having been affiliated, by ocular evidence, on a gentleman of that name, who, with his dying breath, disowned the soft impeachment. But in that case nature had written a vile scrawl-in ours her hand is firm, and goes off with a flourish.

Our egotism accompanies us into solitude-nay, is

even more life-pervading there than in the hum of men. There the stocks and stones are more impressible than those we sometimes stumble on in human society, and moulded at our will, take what shape we choose to give them; the trees follow our footsteps, though our lips be mute, and we have left at home our fiddle-more potent we in our reality than the fabled Orpheus. Be hushed, ye streams, and listen unto Christopher! Be chained, ye clouds, and attentive unto North! And at our bidding silent the cataract on the cliff-the thunder on the sky. The sea beholds us on the shore-and his one huge frown transformed into a multitudinous smile, he turns flowing affections towards us along the golden sands, and in a fluctuating hindrance of lovely foam-wreaths envelopes our feet!

Proud was that pool, even now, to reflect OUR IMAGE. Do you recollect that picture in the Excursion-so much admired by Wordsworth-of the Ram and the Shadow of the Ram?

"Thus having reached a bridge, that overarched
The hasty rivulet, where it lay becalmed
In a deep pool, by happy chance we saw
A twofold image; on a grassy bank
A snow-white ram, and in the crystal flood
Another and the same! Most beautiful
On the green turf, with his imperial front
Shaggy and bold, and wreathed horns superb,
The breathing creature stood; as beautiful.
Beneath him, showed his shadowy counterpart;
Each had his glowing mountains, each his sky,
And each seem'd centre of his own fair world.
Antipodes unconscious of each other,

Yet, in partition, with their several spheres,
Blended in perfect stillness to our sight.
Ah! what a pity were it to disperse
Or to disturb, so fair a spectacle,

And yet a breath can do it."

Oh! that the solitary, and the pedlar, and the poet, and the priest and his lady, were here to see a sight more glorious far than that illustrious and visionary Two Christopher Norths-as Highland chieftains

ram.

-in the royal tartan--one burning in the air-the other in the water-two stationary meteors, each seeming native to its own element. This setting the heather, that the linn on fire-this a-blaze with war, that tempered into truce-while the sun, astonied at the spectacle, nor knowing the refulgent substance from the resplendent shadow, bids the clouds lie still in heaven, and the winds all hold their breath, that exulting nature may be permitted for a little while to enjoy the miracle she unawares has wrought-alas! gone as she gazes, and gone for ever? Our bonnet has tumbled into the pool-and Christopher—like the ram in the Excursion-stands shorn of his beams-no better worth looking at than the late Laird of Macnab.

Now, since the truth must be told, that was but a flight of fancy—and our apparel is more like that of a Lowland Quaker than a Highland chief. 'Tis all of a snuffy brown -an excellent colour for hiding the dirt. Single-breasted our coatee and we are in shorts. Were our name to be imposed by our hat, it would be Sir Cloudesly Shovel. On our back a wallet—and in our hand a pole. And thus, not without occasional alarm to the cattle, though we hurry no man's, we go stalking along the sward and swinging across the stream, and leaping over the quagmires by no means unlike that extraordinary pedestrian who has been accompanying us for the last half hour, far overhead up by yonder, as if he meant mischief; but he will find that we are up to a trick or two, and not easily to be done brown by a native, a cockney of Cloud-Land, a long-legged awkward fellow with a head like a dragon, and proud of his red plush, in that country called thunderand-lightning breeches, hot very, one should think, in such sultry weather-but confound us if he has not this moment stript them off, and be not pursuing his journey in puris naturalibus-yes, as naked as the minute he was born!

We cannot help flattering ourselves—if indeed it be flattery that though no relative of his, we have a look of the pedlar-as he is painted by the hand of a great master in the aforesaid poem.

"A man of reverend age,

But stout and hale, for travel unimpaired."

An hour or two ago,

"Here was he seen upon the cottage-bench,
Recumbent in the shade, as if asleep;
An iron-pointed staff lay at his side."

Again-any one who had chanced to meet us yesterday on our way to the mountains, might have said,

"Him had I marked the day before—alone,
And stationed in the public way, with face
Turned to the sun then setting, while that staff
Afforded to the figure of the man,

Detained for contemplation or repose,
Graceful support," &c.

And again-and even more characteristically

"Plain was his garb:

Such as might suit a rustic sire, prepared
For Sabbath duties; yet he was a man

Whom no one could have passed without remark.
Active and nervous was his gait; his limbs
And his whole figure breathed intelligence.
Time had compressed the freshness of his cheeks
Into a narrower circle of deep red,

But had not tamed his eye, that under brows,
Shaggy and gray, had meanings, which it brought
From years of youth; whilst, like a being made
Of many beings, he had wondrous skill

To blend with knowledge of the years to come,
Human, or such as lie beyond the grave."

In our intellectual characters, we indulge the pleasing hope, that there are some striking points of resemblance, on which, however, our modesty will not permit us to dwell-and in our acquirements, more particularly in plane and spherical trigonometry.

"While yet he lingered in the rudiments

Of science, and among her simplest laws,
His triangles-they were the stars of Heaven.

The silent stars! oft did he take delight
To measure the altitude of some tall crag,
That is the eagle's birthplace," &c.

So it was with us. Give us but a base and a quadrant— and when a student in Jemmy Millar's class, we could have given you the altitude of any steeple in Glasgow or the Gorbals.

Like the pedlar, in a small party of friends, though not proud of the accomplishment, we have been prevailed on to give a song-"The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," or "Auld Langsyne"

"At request would sing
Old songs, the product of his native hills;
A skilful distribution of sweet sounds,
Feeding the soul, and eagerly imbibed
As cool refreshing water, by the care
Of the industrious husbandman, diffused

Through a parch'd meadow-field in time of drought."

Our natural disposition, too, is as amiable as that of the "Vagrant Merchant."

“And surely never did there live on earth

A man of kindlier nature. The rough sports
And teasing ways of children vexed not him :
Indulgent listener was he to the tongue

Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale,
To his fraternal sympathy addressed,
Obtain reluctant hearing."

Who can read the following lines, and not think of
Christopher North?

"Birds and beasts,

And the mute fish, that glances in the stream,
And harmless reptile coiling in the sun,
And gorgeous insect hovering in the air,
The fowl domestic, and the household dog-
In his capacious mind he loved them all."

True that our love of

"The mute fish, that glances in the stream,"