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. Occasionally, too, in a small party of friends, though, not proud of the accomplishment, we have been prevailed on, as you may have heard, to delight humanity with a song--"The Flowers of the Forest," "Roy's Wife," "Flee up, flee up, thou bonnie bonnie Cock," or "Auld Langsyne"--just as the Pedlar "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 vex'd not him: Indulgent listener was he to the tongue Of garrulous age; nor did the sick man's tale, To his fraternal sympathy address'd, 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," is not incompatible with the practice of the "angler's silent trade," or with the pleasure of "filling our pannier." The Pedlar, too, we have reason to know, was like his poet and ourselves, in that art a craftsman, and for love beat the mole-catcher at busking a batch of May-flies. We question whether Lascelles himself were his master at a green dragon. "The harmless reptile coiling in the sun" we are not so sure about, having once been bit by an adder, whom in our simplicity we mistook for a slow-worm--the very day, by the by, on which we were poisoned by a dish of toadstools, by our own hand gathered for mushrooms. But we have long given over chasing butterflies, and feel, as the Pedlar did, that they are beautiful creatures, and that 'tis a sin between finger and thumb to compress their mealy wings. The household dog we do indeed dearly love, though when old Surly looks suspicions we prudently keep out of the reach of his chain. As for "the domestic fowl," we breed scores every spring, solely for the delight of seeing them at their _walks_ "Among the rural villages and farms;" and though game to the back-bone, they are allowed to wear the spurs nature gave them--to crow unclipped, challenging but the echoes; nor is the sward, like the _sod_, ever reddened with their heroic blood, for hateful to our ears the war-song,