has once more, after more than twenty years' absence, in this haunt of our fanciful youth and imaginative manhood, been granted, and Christopher, he thinks, could again bound along these cliffs like a deer. Ay, well-nigh quarter of a century has elapsed since we pitched this self-same snow-white Tent amid the purple heather, by the Linn of Dee. How fleetly goes winnowing on the air even the weariest waving of Time's care-laden wings! A few yellow weather-stains are on the canvass--but the pole is yet sound--or call it rather mast--for we have hoisted our topgallant, "And lo! the silver cross, to Scotland dear," languidly lifts itself up, an ineffectual streamer, in the fitful morning breezes! Bold son, or bright daughter of England! hast thou ever seen a SCOTTISH THRISSLE? What height are you--Captain of the Grenadier Guards? "Six feet four on my stocking-soles." Poo--a dwarf! Stand up with your back to that stalk. Tour head does not reach above his waist--he hangs high over you--"his radious croun of rubies." There's a Flower! dear to Lady Nature above all others, saving and excepting the Rose, and he is the Rose's husband--the Guardian Genii of the land consecrated the Union, and it has been blest. Eyeing the sun like an angry star that will not suffer eclipse either from light or shadow--but burns proudly--fiercely--in its native lustre--storm-brightened, and undishevelled by the tempest in which it swings. See! it stoops beneath the blast within reach of your hand. Grasp it ere it recoil aloft; and your hand will be as if it had crushed a sleeping wasp-swarm. But you cannot crush it--to do that would require a giant with an iron glove. Then let it alone to dally with the wind, and the sun, and the rain, and the snow--all alike dear to its spears and rubies; and as you look at the armed lustre, you will see a beautiful emblem and a stately of a people's warlike peace. The stalk indeed is slender, but it sways without danger of breaking in the blast; in the calm it reposes as gently as the gowan at its root. The softest leaf that enfolds in silk the sweetest flower of the garden, not greener than those that sting not if but tenderly you touch them, for they are green as the garments of the Fairies that dance by moonlight round the Symbol of old Scotland, and unchristened creatures though they the Fairies be, they pray heaven to let fall on the AWFUL THRISSLE all the health and happiness that are in the wholesome stars.