skilled in psalmody, had done his best to make a singer of me; but he was at length content to stop short, after a world of effort, when he had, as he thought, brought me to distinguish St. George's from any other psalm-tune. On the introduction, however, of a second tune into the parish church that repeated the line at the end of the stanza, even this poor fragment of ability deserted me; and to this day--though I rather like the strains of the bagpipe in general, and have no objection to drums in particular--doubts do occasionally come across me whether there be in reality any such thing as tune. My friend William Ross was, on the contrary, a born musician. When a little boy, he had constructed for himself a fife and clarionet of young shoots of elder, on which he succeeded in discoursing sweet music; and addressing himself at another and later period to both the principles and practice of the science, he became one of the best flute-players in the district. Notwithstanding my dulness of ear, I do cherish a pleasing recollection of the sweet sounds that used to issue from his little room in the outhouse, every milder evening as I approached, and of the soothed and tranquil state in which I ever found him on these occasions as I entered. I could not understand his music, but I saw that, mentally at least, though, I fear, not physically--for the respiratory organs were weak--it did him great good. There was, however, one special province in which our tastes thoroughly harmonized. We were both of us, if not alike favoured, at least equally devoted, lovers of the wild and beautiful in nature; and many a moonlight walk did we take together this winter among the woods and rocks of the hill. It was once said of Thomson, by one who was himself not at all morbidly poetic in his feelings, that "he could not have viewed two candles burning but with a poetical eye." It might at least be said of my friend, that he never saw a piece of fine or striking scenery without being deeply moved by it. As for the mere candles, if placed on a deal dresser or shop-counter, they might have failed to touch him; but if burning in some _lyke_-wake beside the dead, or in some vaulted crypt or lonely rock-cave, he also could not have looked other than poetically on them. I have seen him awed into deep solemnity, in our walks, by the rising moon, as it peered down upon us over the hill, red and broad, and cloud-encircled, through the interstices of some clump of dark firs; and have observed him become suddenly silent, as, emerging from the moonlight woods, we looked into a rugged dell, and saw far beneath, the slim rippling streamlet gleaming in the light, like a narrow strip of the aurora borealis shot athwart a dark sky, when the steep rough sides of the ravine, on either hand, were enveloped in gloom. My friend's opportunities of general reading had not been equal to my own, but he was acquainted with at least one class of books of