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of flour scones, a plate of fresh butter, and a mug of black-currant jelly sitting on it. In the window space itself, a blue painted chest. On the little shelf above the half-open room door a brass pan and two smoothing-irons; and straggling round the clean hearth-stone-where the tortoise-shell cat and the venerable little one-eyed terrier quarrelled and made it up again twenty times a day-three or four birch chairs and a couple of wooden stools, on which were seated the family and their friends enjoying their "twal-hours," completed the homely furnishings of my dear old interior.

How I wish I could rise and take my place, in the flesh, among this little circle after spending the forenoon in the old pew at church-sitting down among them as simply, and naturally, as if only a week had elapsed since I had my "twal-hours with them, instead of half a lifetime! Like Colin's guidwife,

"I'm dounricht dizzy wi' the thocht,

In troth I'm like tae greet."

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To look into their dear familiar faces again, so pleasantly relaxed in this easy breathing-time !-for they feel that they have been good children, and can afford to "let down the pegs" a little bit. To listen to their rambling flow of talk, which, if not very subtle or deep, had always in it, as a certain wise gossip averred of man, "a deal o' human nater!" And to taste the old woman's scones and black-currant jelly, washed down with a drink of "fine caller tipple! No scones taste the least like them now-a-days! Whenever I forget myself so far as to give vent to this heresy in Peg's presence, she tells me that I am prejudiced, which, of course, I admit at once, but I am not the least convinced for all that; indeed, I don't know but I hug my delusion to my stupid old breast with more ardour than ever, and would sooner, she cast up to me once, part with the last sound tooth in my head than this same foolish prejudice. I daresay she was not far wrong. If you extract the last tooth the gums are still left, or the dentist may fit you with a new set of grinders; but what is there left in the prosaic present to an old man when you remove this happy twilight through which he views the romantic past.

"When meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparell'd in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream."

I fear more things than the old woman's scones would suffer in value through the removal of this langsyne glamour. One's old wife might even feel different,

"But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,

Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing." But to leave Peg alone. I had not been brought under her sweet sway at the time of which I am picturing. Our stars shone too far apart for the witching light of hers to project itself into this little circle. And to this day I am ignorant to what bright Ariel I am indebted for performing this miracle for me. But I suppose that is one of those

things which, being wrought out in Heaven according to the lover's creed, no fellow, as poor, puzzled Lord Dundreary used to say, can understand.

Unconscious of the good fortune that fate was quietly weaving in the loom of time for me, I sat enjoying my "twal-hours" in the midst of this homely little company, which I was just now so fervently wishing I could rejoin, and which I see so plainly sitting in their accustomed places. The old "Not speaking much, pleased Rather with the joy of his own thoughts,"

man,

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he has divested himself of his black coat, along with his Sunday face, and now looks quite human sitting in his white shirt-sleeves, with his coloured cotton handkerchief spread over the knees of his black trousers, eating his piece, and listening to Betty, an old acquaintance who worshipped at a neighbouring church, and regularly spent her "twal-hours" with them, it being too far to go to her own home and return again in time for the afternoon service. In those old-fashioned days folks like Betty would as soon think of flying as being at the trouble of dressing themselves in their Sunday clothes for half a day's preaching.

Betty always occupied the "laigh chair" opposite the old man, with her big cotton umbrellableached a blae white with the rains of half a genera

tion of wet Sundays-between her knees. Her round, good-natured face is half-drowned among gum-flowers in a capacious brown silk bonnet. Her

broad, stooping shoulders are arrayed in a faded harness plaid, pinned under her chin with a brooch containing a lock of her dead husband's hair-these

and, like most people so designated, was likewise a great talker. Her particular forte, I remember, was genealogy. As the different items of the week's news came under review, Betty invariably set about discovering the pedigrees of such persons as had become public property, for the time being, through entering upon the married state, or adding to the number of their offspring, or contracting a disease and dying, which, with an "a-tweel-a-wat" in every second mouthful of words, she traced back-not always, it must be confessed, in a very direct linetill they were lost in mist, if, indeed, as the slightlybored old man sometimes thought, and said too, after she was gone, they were not lost there before she started.

Then there is the lithe, nervous figure of the old woman herself, her dark hair, though now a "sabled silver," still retaining some of its old wavy character where it is parted above her low forehead. The tinge of red on the tops of her cheeks wears its old dusky glow. About her mouth, now slightly fallen in with the loss of her teeth, is lurking as much fun as ever. Her nose, too-her shabby little upturned nose, with its miraculous scent-is character itself, more eloquent sometimes than her tongue. And her eyes: what a vivacity is in those keen grey eyes? How they would twinkle with merriment, or flash with sudden anger at the rehearsal of some meanness, or, at the bidding of a contrary emotion, dissolve as suddenly in a shining mist!

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it more from affectation than necessity. Even when baffled in the threading of her needle-not such an uncommon occurrence now-she condescends in her despair to try the old man's, which, as they give her no help, but strengthen her in her prejudice. She is too young in spirit to brook tamely the idea of the body's decay. She bustles about as light on her feet as a fairy, spreading scones thick with jelly, and pressing them with as much heartiness as if they were cakes of blithemeat, particularly on Betty and the eldest daughter's young man.

This bashful youth was always one of the party at their "twal-hours," sitting nervously on the edge of the blue painted chest standing in the windowspace. Since he was obliged to be on his good behaviour before folk, he generally contrived to give vent to his amorous feelings by abstractedly stroking the back of the tortoise-shell cat, or scratching the venerable head of the one-eyed terrier, with whom he shares his "twal-hours" for so kindly condescending to act as his substitutes. At least, so the roguish youth sitting in the shadow behind old Betty's chair, devouring with much relish his "twal-hours" and the "Bride of Lammermoor" at

presents itself, and the garrulous Betty pauses to take her breath, or a bite of her scone, or arrest, in hot haste, a blob of jelly before it slides over the edge of her piece on to her gown, she courageously applies-usually with a dash of humour-to her own moral sores, or those of the human family in general; she is not the least particular. The constant effect of these sallies is the upsetting of Betty's train of ancestral calculations, when, to the old man's horror, she begins them all over again, till some fresh stroke of humour or satire from the old woman's quiver puts her forces entirely to flight, and compels her to take a new tack.

"An' hoo dae ye think ye're gaun tae like ye're new minister?" asks the old man, just as Betty is rallying from her last discomfiture.

"Deed, I'm sure, a-tweel-a-wat, an' I dinna ken," replies Betty. "They say the chiel's clever, an' it may be na blin'ness that canna see't; though

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the same time, under cover of studying the shorter catechism, used to say when he wanted to tease his sister. Her sedate ladyship, who has just been relieving her mother of some of her household cares, takes her place among the group as far from the chest as possible, thereby demonstrating, by that strange contrariness in lovers' natures, shall we say, her greater nearness to it, and hearkens the demure little maiden, on the low stool by her father's chair, her paraphrase.

The old woman, however, is the life and soul of the whole company: keeping up the conversation when it offers to flag, and rescuing it from dulness when, as not unfrequently happens, it is in imminent danger from that cause. Like the godly minister she sat under, being more of a moralist than a theologian, she always contrived to bring away something from the sermon which just fitted to a nicety the particular phase of experience she happened to be passing through at the time, either in her own person or that of her neighbours. The varied service she would press this single idea into, and its apparent marvellous fitness for the office, was a constant theme of wonder to her less ingenious lord and master. These little rubs of caustic, whenever the occasion

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"Every word o't, a-tweel-a-wat, an' daurna' lift his een aff the book-board for fear he losses the place. Ma pouerless fit has mair delivery, a-tweela-wat, haes 't," making a shuffle on the floor with her paralytic extremity; "an' I'm sure he doesna' tak' aff his forebears in that respec', a-tweel-a-wat; no, they were weel giftit wi' the gab, every ane o' them. He's a gran'son, ye ken, on the mither's side, o' auld Doctor what dae ye ca' him? him that wis sae lang in the pairish kirk; the same, dae ye min', that wis sae sairly han'let by his presbytry for -for-, lo'd I forget; but at onyrate his brither, that is by his second wife, his guid-brither like, she wis a Miss afore she wis marriet, but it's nae matter, gaed again him somehoo or ither, I canna' mak' a story o't now

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"Hoots, Betty," bursts in the old woman, "what does't matter hoo they deliver't, as lang as it's some

thing when it comes, wuman. I reckon naething o' your fine flouery preachers that jist flaff owre your heid a shouer o' rainbow words that daizles your senses, but deil ane o' them bre'ks ony banes."

"'Deed, a-tweel-a-wat, it's a truith. I canna' say I'm partial aithur tae haein' the word sot'n aff like playac'in', though I can as ill bide tae hear't read oot tae me by a styte wi' the paper close tae his nose a' the time."

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"As oor minister wis sayin' this mornin'," tinues the old woman, without heeding Betty's rejoinder; "his text wis in Exodus 4th and 10th, 'Oh, Lord, I am slow of speech.' Tak' ma word for't, says he-maybe no in thae words, but that wis his meanin'-tak' ma word for't, if it's something that comes fae the benmost bit o' him, an' worth seein' the licht, it'll no be deliver't withoot a bit strissle o' ae kin' or anither. A bonnie thocht, a' sabbin' wi' new fresh life, an' capable o' workin' a reformation in the breist that gies't a hame, ony mair than a bonny bairn, canna' be born withoot travail. It's no in nater tae expec' it."

"True eneuch, but there's unco differences, atweel-a-wat, is there. Some hae their thochts jist as some puir creat'res get their bit hubble by a hantle-sicht easier than ithers. Nae far'er gaen nor yesterday I wis speakin' tae Nancy Giffin at the pump, but ye'll maybe no ken her, she's ane o' the Giffins o' the toon-en'

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"Nancy Giffin!" ejaculates the old woman.

"She's marriet on a son o' Willie Tamson's," explains her daughter.

"Brawly that; her mither an' me learn't dressmakin' thegither."

"Her gran'faither, ye min', wis fun hingin' tae the post o' the bed ae Hogmanay mornin'," resumes Betty. "He wis a body that took a heavy dram, for twa months at a time whiles. His wife, puir thing, never wis the same after't. It tint her reason a' thegither. She wis related tae the Cam'els; the Bailie wis her uncle

"But what aboot hersel'?" interrupts the old woman, with impatience.

"Weel, as I wis sayin'," returns Betty, "I wis crackin' tae Nancy, wha wis synin' a pickle pratoes at the pump, an' in half-an-hoor after I wis mair nor dumfoun'ert when Jean Aird cries ben tae me that Nancy had gotten anither dochter."

"Anither dochter? Hoo mony o' a fam'ly has

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They're jist in sin an' mees'ry," proceeds Betty. "But, the truith is, they were far owre young marriet. They jist gaed thegither wi' little mair than what they stood in; an' her man has but a wee wage, an' he's no owre weel daein', forby; but he's come o' the wrang kin' tae be ocht else, a-tweel-a-wat, is he. The Tamsons were a' fash'd wi' a drouth. The gran'faither o' him drank a twa-storey hoose in a fortnicht, an' it had ootshot garret windows, an' a back-jam built till't, forby

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“I declare if some thochtless creat'res dinna' bring their pigs tae a puir market," ejaculates the old woman, her mind more absorbed in the unfortunate Nancy than her drouthy husband's pedigree; "but naething 'll ser'e a wheen young anes noo-a-days but they mun be marriet," casting a knowing look in the direction of the chest, "whether they're gether't or no. They little ken, puir silly fuils, the botherations that's afore them!

"A-tweel-a-wat, an' it's weel they dinna"."

But, hark! the bells begin to ring from the different steeples. The youngsters shut their Bibles and catechisms, in which they had been rehearsing the Sabbath-school lessons when they did not happen to be listening to Betty's harangues. The old folk break off their talk, and, shaking the crumbs from their laps, rise to their feet. For the next few minutes all is hurry and bustle. The pile of Sunday finery on the bed is transferred to the heads and backs of their several owners, who now step out to chnrch-the bashful intended and his lady-love, not the least daunted by the dismal side of the matrimonial picture held up for their edification, taking the lead; and the old woman bringing up the rear, after locking the door on the not overly-well-pleased dog and cat, and concealing the key under the bass. And so they pass from my sight.

"Only an unseen presence fills the air,
And baffles my pursuit."

CRITICISM.

By EX-PROFESSOR JOHN STUART BLACKIE.

I CANNOT but regard it as one of the great misfortunes of the educated youth of the present age that so much of their intellectual energy is put forth in the shape of criticism. This evil has its origin in the extraordinary multiplication of literary periodicalsmonthly, weekly, and daily-which has marked the present century: a good thing in itself, no doubt; for knowledge is naturally as much bound to distribute itself as the sun is to radiate light. But in the special

department of criticism it is not always knowledge but crude opinion that is distributed, and that very often in a fashion pernicious both to the critic and to the public. The evil comes in this wise. Judgment in all matters, according to the Hippocratic maxim, is difficult, and experience slippery; it must therefore, like the fruits of the field, have time to grow and to ripen, and can no more be expected to develop itself normally in young men than apples can be expected

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in May to have the sweetness or the flavour of autumn. But, unfortunately, when periodicals are started and books require to be reviewed, while wise old gentlemen of large experience and ripe judgment, like the Weimarian Goethe, are contented to hold their tongues, troops of ambitious younglings are eager to flourish their swords-of wood or of steel, as the case may be in the ventilation of opinion; and, if they can only express themselves smartly and with some show of knowledge, however fragmentary and however shallow, they will find little difficulty of getting critical work put into their hands, of which no very conscientious account needs to be given. The article is smart, and the guinea is profitable; and no further inquiry is made. The effect of this sort of crude writing on the public is bad indeed, as all untruthful dealings with serious matters must be; but it is seldom that a really good book can be permanently damaged by a few shallow or ill-natured criticisms. What is damaged is the character of the critic, whose position from the beginning is false, and who soon becomes thoroughly demoralised by dealing loosely with truth, and cheating the public of its due by vending a hasty opinion for a ripe judgment.

There is a threefold evil involved in the practice of this precocious criticism. First, there is the nourishment given to juvenile conceit which ought rather to be repressed-in the assumption of a character which does not naturally belong to unripe years and limited experience. Then there is the temptation to find faults rather than to admire excellences, a temptation arising from the natural enough notion that the fault-finder possesses some sort of superiority to the person whom he condemns; and this is a habit of mind in the highest degree hurtful to the fault-finder, even when the fault pointed out is a real one. But what if, whether from a desire to appear superior, or from prejudice, or personal hostility, or gross ignorance, or sheer stupidity, the

fault should be imaginary? In this case a new and a much more contagious evil emerges; the faultfinder is feeding the public with husks, and deluding himself with words; the real fault lies in himself, in the narrow range of his ideas, and his want of catholic appreciation. Of course, I have not the least desire to insinuate that all, or the greater part, of the literary criticism at present current is of this shallow, false, and altogether unsatisfactory description; there are many agencies in operation to prevent this evil becoming universal; I only say that there is a great danger to young men in starting as writers of criticism, especially in this country where anonymous writing is so largely favoured; for, whatever may be said in defence of anonymous penmanship, it certainly cannot be denied that it yields itself readily, on any occasion, to act as the shield of ignorance and the mother of impertinence. Instead of being forward to pronounce critical judgment, young men should cultivate love, reverence, and catholic appreciation; and, if they will find fault, let them learn to find fault with their own work in the first place, and then with that of their neighbours. But it is better in every way to put forth the energy of youth in the appropriation of what is good than in the condemnation of what is bad; if the good be carefully sought out, accepted, and assimilated, the bad will naturally fall off by its own badness, and the less said about it the better.

I have been led to make these remarks partly as the result of some fifty years' experience in various departments of literary exertion, partly from the effect produced on my mind by the chapter on "Criticism" in the second volume of Anthony Trollope's excellent Autobiography. That chapter I recommend with all seriousness to the attention of our educated youth, and finish what I have to say at present with the following verses, which flowed from my pen spontaneously when fresh from the perusal of that chapter:

If you are young, and wish to flap your pinion;
If
you know little and would seem to know
Much: if to listen to your crude opinion,

Echoed tenfold where every wind may blow,
Tickles your ears, and lends stilts to your pride,
Then be a critic: you might gain a penny
In some less honest way; and you will guide
At your blind will the blind, unthinking many.
But would you cherish in your faithful breast
The seed of truth, and by that virtue grow
To manhood's bravest stature with the best,

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