morning; and instead of going directly home, I used to go up to the woods of Scotston and Scotston Moor, scoured the country round them, and then returned home by the Auld Brig. I would reach it perhaps by dinner-time, instead of seven in the morning, although I had to be back at the mill again by eight o'clock at night. Ah, these were happy days! There were no taws to fear, no tyrannical dominie to lay them on. True, the farm people did halloo at me at

times, but I generally showed them a clean pair of heels. The gamekeepers also sometimes gave me chase, but I managed to outstrip them; and although no nests were to be got, there was always something to be found or seen. In winter-time also, when the canal was frozen, a mile of it lay in our way home, and it was capital fun to slide along going to and coming from our work. This was life, genuine life, for the young."

Curiously enough, within the same. generation the most gifted of English poet-women, Elizabeth Barrett, worked herself into a passion of generous song on the subject of factory children. The reader will remember that heartrending outcry of sympathy and indignation, in which, it cannot be doubted, there lay, translated into vehement poetic language, and transformed by impassioned feeling, a foundation of painful truth. Yet this real sketch may be at the same time admitted as a pendant. Here, it is evident, was a factory boy, made half a poet by the ardor of a fresh, unworn, unwearied soul in free contact with the simple fulness of nature-as open to the delights of the skies and woods, to the freshness of the sweet air and dews, to all the beauty of the world, as the poet herself could be with nothing crushed out of him by his labors, though these were longer and harder than (we should have supposed) young flesh and blood could bear. "This was life, genuine life, for the young!" How strange is the contrast between the real and the ideal! Had Edward been a little gentleman making his way to school, happily playing truant now and then among the woods, his life full of indulgences, leisure, and frolic, could his boyhood have been more delightful to him?-though it is inconceivable to us how the child could have lived through it, much less enjoyed it. "These were happy days;" "it was a happy time for me.' From four in the morning till nine at nightwith cold, darkness, rain, and snow to counterbalance those glories of summer

mornings, which intoxicated the little soul with joy. How different is the picture of fancy !-

"It is good when it happens, say the children,

That we die before our time!"

The little Aberdonian had no such notion in his small head, all agog with liveliest curiosity, interest in everything, overflowing activity, and life. There was nothing but life about him, stirring, whirring, humming, in every hedgerow, running riot in the crowded woods, which we call silent, but which little Tam knew to be full of a hundred wild, small voices, calling him with urgent, harmonious clamor. The eyes which ought to have been so sleepy danced with eagerness; the freshness of the north-country atmosphere got into his head like wine. One remembers still, over long tracts of years, what heavenly intoxication was in those mornings, in the great, wide, silent yet murmuring world of sunshine, in which the child stood alone, a wonder to itself, wondering over all around, moving about in this world, not realised, yet which God had made expressly, that very day, for its delight and astonishment. But then the child one wots of had not fourteen hours' work before it, until the equally miraculous evening should succeed that miraculous morn. Thanks to Thomas Edward, we now know that the fourteen hours' work is, after all, an insignificant circumstance, and that no young prince could have been happier than at least one factory boy.

And yet a more ignorant child could scarcely have been found. He could barely read. The mysteries of grammar (as is specially mentioned) were unknown to him; and it seems to have surprised his friends that he afterwards managed to express himself very fairly, even with certain old-fashioned solemnity of diction, without ever having learned, like Mrs. Malaprop, his parts of speech. But nature, and not literature, was his book. He studied not the thoughts of men, but the blameless creatures in their hidden life, of whom we know so little. With a never-failing delight and sympathy he watched the ways of those dwellers in the woods and fields, taking them into his heart, happily with the fresh enthusiasm of the observer, rather than with that eagerness for pos

session which betrays boys and philosophers into needless cruelty. In afterlife, no doubt, this boy-philosopher was seized with the desire to make collections and gather specimens, without which no man can be scientific; but the earliest thirst in his soul was for know

ledge, rather than rather than collections, and throughout all his life he was an observer of life, rather than a dealer in death. The happy days, however, of his factory life were soon over, and the unschooled urchin, with his head full of so much eccentric unsuspected knowledge, was apprenticed at eleven to a drunken shoemaker, who made his life miserable. From that time to this he has never escaped from the daily exercise of his trade. He has spent as much time as many a savant, with nothing else to do, in pure pursuit of science; discovered one after another new species; written, discussed, classified; with innumerable difficulties he has worked himself into fame as a naturalist, attained honorary distinctions, and been mentioned with flattering phrases in scientific works; but all the time has never got free from his cobbler's bench. The hours of his study have been stolen from his sleep; they have swallowed up every other kind cf pleasure and relaxation; but they have. never interfered with his trade, and that steady daily work for daily bread which is the condition of existence to a laboring man. We do not remember in all the records of struggling intelligence a more touching or elevating chapter. It is hard upon the man that all his efforts should have brought him so little advantage; but it confers a dignity and grace upon the story which no worldly success could have given. And never was there a time when such a lesson could come with more true potency than now, when every little mental gift seems to fail of its effect if it does not hoist its possessor up into the sphere next above him, and help him to rise in the world. Thomas Edward has not risen in the world. He is a poor shoemaker, as he always was. He has made no mercenary advantage out of the gift which God has conferred upon him. We repeat, it is no doubt hard upon the man for whose toils there is no immediate recompense; but such a picture of disinterested enthusiasm is very good for the world.

It cannot, however, be denied that our hero must have been the most troublesome boy that ever perplexed a household; and that when, after all the troubles of his youth, he settled in life and married, on the prudent foundation of an income of nine shillings and sixpence a-week, he must have been a somewhat uncomfortable husband. Here is an account of the way in which he pursued his course after his early marriage :

"As he did not cease shoemaking until nine at night, nearly all his researches were made after that hour. He had to be back to

his work in the morning at six. His wages were so small that he could not afford to abridge his working-hours. On returning home from his work at night, his usual course was to equip himself with his insect boxes and bottles, his botanical book and his gun; and to set out with his supper in his hand or stowed away in his pocket. The nearest spring furnished him with sufficient drink. So long as it was light he scoured the country, looking for moths and beetles, or plants, or birds, or any living thing that came in his way. When it became so dark that he could no longer observe, he dropped down by the side of a bank or a bush or a tree, whichever came handiest, and there he dozed or slept until the light returned. Then he got up and again began his observations, which he continued until the time arrived when he had to return to his daily labors. Weather never daunted him. When it rained, he would look out for a hole in a bank, and thrust himself into it, feet foremost. He kept his head and his gun out watching and waiting for any casualties that might happen. He knew of two such holes, both in sandbanks and both in woods, which he occasion

ally frequented. They were foxes' or badgers' when he took up his position, they did not dens. If any of these gentry were inside

venture to disturb him.

Numbers

of moths came dancing about him, and many of them he secured and boxed, sending them to their long sleep with a little drop of chloroform. When it rained heavily, he drew in his head and his gun and slept until the first streaks of light appeared on the horizon; and then he came out of his hole and proceeded with his operations."

Had Mrs. Edward objected to this vagrant existence, it would have been very comprehensible. But the good wife, on the contrary, was his aid and steady backer-up, wild as his enterprises. were, having sense enough to see the difference between an enthusiasm of this elevating kind and the vulgar frenzies which do good to no one. When reminded of his wanderings at night, and asked what she thought of them, she replied, "Weel, he took such an interest in

beasts that I didna compleen. Shoemakers were then a very drucken set, but his beasts keepit him frae them. My man's been a sober man all his life; and he never negleckit his wark: sae I let him be." Even by times, when she had earned a little money herself, she would buy him boxes or bottles for his "beasts," or shot for his gun, with tender indulgence for his vagaries. And the two homely people brought up a family of eleven children, in independence and virtue, and had "a glass of wine and a piece of sweet-cake" to offer to a friend, notwithstanding that Edward's wages never seem to have reached to more than fifteen or sixteen shillings a-week all his life. This seems almost as great a miracle, though of a different kind, as the fact that he had himself gathered and prepared the wonderful collection which he exhibited in Aberdeen—an achievement which the Aberdeen people did "not believe possible."

This Aberdeen exhibition is the point in Edward's life at which the highest dramatic interest is reached. The fervor of pursuit which led him forth night. after night with his old rusty gun and his wallets to undergo all kind of trials with nature-cold, storms, drenchings innumerable was naturally varied at times by a desire not only to win some fruit of his toil, but to gain some advantages for the pursuit which engrossed his thoughts more and more, though he felt day by day the difficulties increasing in his path. It was natural that he should wish to be in a position to devote himself to the congenial work in which many competent authorities had by this time assured him he was capable of doing good service, and to get at the means of arranging his discoveries, books, and a society which would understand what he was doing. To enable him to do this, no great thing was necessary, no public benefaction, but only some little appointment, if he could have got it, less exacting than the shoemaker's bench.

If

£40 or £50 a-year could be obtained, that would be glorious!" one of his correspondents writes: and when one thinks how many people there are in this kingdom within a post of Banff to whom fifty pounds a-year is as a drop of water in the ocean, and who no doubt would have been glad to give it, had it only been

usual so to do! But poor Edward had no way of getting this "glorious" competence. It occurred to him to exhibit the collection he had made at Banff, at the fair; and the success of the little attempt encouraged him to carry his riches to Aberdeen and try his fortune there. It was, however, a complete failure. No one came to see his museum, or at least so few, that this forlorn hope, instead of helping the naturalist up, pushed him down into the dismal abyss of debt from which hitherto he had kept free. Debt is the last of horrors to a respectable working man, and with reason; for it is a burden from which, once established on his shoulder, he can rarely get free. Edward was in despair. Who does not remember the story of poor Haydon raving in the solitude of his empty exhibition-room over his great melancholy failure of a.picture, and seeing the crowds go past him to stare at the miserable little monstrosity who was the fashion of the moment? Edward had no Tom Thumb to drive him mad, but panic and despair had driven him out of himself. He saw no way of escape; and at last the dreadful thought occurred to him to steal away to the familiar sea, and there be drowned as it were accidentally, leaving no stigma. upon his good name, and purchasing pity for his children with his life. How this melancholy purpose came to nothing is as characteristic as anything in the record :

"From the time of his leaving the shop in Union Street until about four hours after, his memory remained almost a complete blank. Unlike a dream, of which one remembers some confused ideas, this blank in his mental life was never filled up; and the purpose for which he wandered along the sands left little further impression on his memory. He remembered, however, the following circum

stances:

"He had thrown off his hat, coat, and waistcoat, before rushing into the sea, when a flock of sanderlings lit upon the sands near him. They attracted his attention. They were running to and fro, some piping their low shrill whistle, whilst others were probing the wet sand with their bills as the waves receded. and darker, and apparently of different habit But amongst them was another bird, larger to the others. Desirous of knowing something of the nature of this bird, he approached the sanderlings. They rose and flew away: he followed them. They lit again, and again he observed the birds as before. Away they went, and he after them. At length he was stopped at Don mouth. When he recovered

his consciousness he was watching the flock of birds flying away to the further side of the river. He had forgotten all his miseries in his intense love of nature. His ruling passion saved him. How long the chase lasted he could never tell. It must have occupied him more than an hour. He found himself divested of his hat, coat, and vest, and he went back to look for them. He had no further desire to carry out the purpose for which he had descended to the sea. His only thought was about the strange bird among the sanderlings. What could it be?"

This curious and touching triumph of mental habit and enthusiasm over the most tragic purpose has a simplicity of nature and truth about it which no fiction could venture upon. The poor naturalist thus escaped from self-destruction was saved from his difficulties by an expedient only less terrible-the sale of his collection. He got twenty pounds for this labor of years, and felt as if the heart was being rent out of his bosomyet lived to make another and sell that too, as the call of another hard necessity arose. His energy never forsook him; and perhaps it was well for the man that he was thus compelled periodically to begin again, and never lost the occupation which declining strength and gathering years did not make less dear to him. When he ceased to be able to roam about through the chill freshness of the northerly nights with his gun and his paraphernalia of bags and bottles, he took to collecting the treasures cast up by the sea in that most primitive of dredging apparatus, the stomachs of the fish taken along the coasts; and in this way discovered some twenty new species of sea-creatures, some of whom figured in a book about the Sessile-eyed Crustacea, whatever they may be. Thus he toiled slowly into reputation, into correspondence with other inquirers, and publications in newspapers; and at last attained to the flattering though empty honors of a Fellowship of the Linnean Society. The poor shoemaker has now been for several years entitled to write the letters A.L.S. after his name, though many greater persons have sighed for them in vain. But this did not put a penny in his pocket, nor smooth one stone out of his daily path. His success was perfect, without alloy of interest or worldly ad

vancement a beautiful fate, but a bar ren one. Let us be thankful that at last he has got the modest sustenance his humility makes enough for him, and that unsought, from the legitimate national fountain of honor.

We cannot refrain from quoting one other passage from Edward's life to show how much more charming and instructive is the observation of life and nature in which he delighted, than those classifications and anatomical preparations which make science hideous to the unscientific mind. The narrative is his own; and the reader will perceive that the untaught cobbler, who never learnt grammar, to the great regret of his patrons, is able to express himself much better than many people who have studied that vanity, and even with a certain florid dignity of diction very characteristic of the old-fashioned Scot.

listening to a reptilian choir-a concert of "I was reclining against a tree one night, frogs. It was delicious to hear the musicians endeavoring to excel each other in their strains, and to exhibit their wonderful vocal powers. The defect of the concert was the want of time. Each individual performer endeavored to get as much above the concert-pitch as possible. It was a most beautiful night-for there are beautiful nights as well as days in the north-and I am certain that these creatures were enjoying its beauty as much as myself. Presently when the whole of the vocalists had reached their highest notes, they became hushed in an instant.

I was amazed at this, and began to wonder at looking about I perceived a brown owl drop down with the silence of death on to the top of a low dyke close by. He sat there for nearly half an hour, during which there was pertect silence. The owl himself remained

the sudden termination of the concert. But

quite motionless, for I watched him all the time. Then I saw the owl give a hitch and move his head a little to one side. He instantly darted down amongst the grass and rushes, after which he rose with something dangling from his claws. It was a frog; I saw it distinctly. He flew up to a tree behind the one against which I was leaning. I turned round a little and looked up to see how the owl would proceed with his quarry, ble him up whole. In this, however, I was whether he would tear him in pieces or gobdisappointed. Although I moved very quietly, the quick eye or ear of the owl detected me, and I was at once greeted with his hoolie-gool-00-00, as loud as he could scream."

Blackwood's Magazine.

CHAPTER X.

WHILE Lady Stanton spread the news of the arrival of the Musgrave children among the upper classes, this information was given to the lower, an equally, or perhaps even more important item in their history, by an authority of a very different kind, to whom, indeed, it would have been bitter to think that she was the channel of communication with the lower orders. But such is the irony of circumstances that it was Mrs. Pennithorne who prided herself upon her gentility, and who would have made any sacrifice rather than descend to a sphere beneath her, who conveyed the report, which ran through the village like wildfire, and which spread over the surrounding country as rapidly and effectually as if it had been made known by beacons on the hill-tops. The village was more interested in the news than any other circle in the country could be, partly because the reigning house in a village is its standing romance, the drama most near to it, and most exciting when there is any drama at all; and partly for still more impressive personal reasons. The Castle had done much for the district in this way, having supplied it with more exciting food in the way of story and incident than any other great house in the north country. There had been a long interval of monotony, but now it appeared to all concerned that the more stirring circle of affairs was about to be gin again. The manner in which the story fully reached the village was simple enough. Mrs. Pennithorne had, as might have been expected, failed entirely with Mary's frock. It would not " come' as she wanted it to come, let her do what she would; and when all her own efforts had failed, and the stuff was effectually spoiled, soiled and crumpled, and incapable of ever looking better than secondhand under any circumstances, she called in the doctor, as people are apt to do when they have cobbled at themselves in vain. The dress doctor in Penninghame and the neighborhood, the rule of NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXV., No. 6

fashion, the grand authority for everything in the way of chiffons, was a certain Miss Price, a lively little old woman, who had one of the best houses in the village, where she let lodgings on occasion, but always made dresses. She had been in business a great many years, and was an authority both up and down the water. It was not agreeable to Miss Price to be called in at the last moment as it were, to heal the ailments of Mary's frock; but partly because it was the clergyman's house, and partly because of the gossip which was always involved she obeyed the summons, as she had done on many previous occasions. And she did her best, as Mrs. Pennithorne had done her worst, upon the little habiliment. "Ladies know nothing about such things," the little dressmaker said, pinning and unpinning with energetic care and rapidity. And the Vicar's wife, who looked on helpless but admiring, accepted the condemnation because of the flattery involved; for Mrs. Pen was elevated over Miss Price by so brief an interval that this accusation was a kind of acknowledgment of her gentility, and did her good, though it was not meant to be complimentary. She liked to feel that hers was that ladylike uselessness which is only appropriate to high position. She simpered a little, and avowed that indeed she had never been brought up to know about such things; and while Miss Price put the spoiled work to rights the Vicar's wife did her best to entertain the beneficent fairy who was bringing the chaos into order. She did not blurt out suddenly the news with which she was overbrimming, but brought it forth cunningly in the course of conversation in the most agreeable way.

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Have you any news, Miss Price?" she said; "but I tell the Vicar that nothing ever happens here. The people don't even die."

"I beg your pardon, ma'am. There's two within the last three months; but to be sure they were long past threescore and ten."

"That is what I say It's so healthy

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