This revolution was at first productive of a great increase of comfort in the village, without materially altering the primeval virtues of its inhabitants. Old men began to lay by blue bonnets in favour of hats. A few old hereditary black coats, which had been worn from youth to age, were at last rescued from the twilight of a Sabbath fame, and consigned ungrudgingly to a general use throughout the week. Young men began to abandon hodden gray for Galashiels blue; young women got straw bonnets to cover locks heretofore exposed in cockernonnies, and there were two if not three green gauze veils in the village. In respect of domestic economy, almost every housewife had the pot on three times a-week, so that third day’s kail was beginning to be a thing almost unknown. Tea was also intruding its outlandish face into scenes where bread and milk was erst the only luxury. Some of the husbands held long out against it, but at length they almost all sneaked into a liking for it, and no more thought of wanting it at the end of their day’s work, than they thought of wanting their halesome porridge at the beginning. It was sometimes lamented by the excellent old minister, that family worship was a usage not favoured by this change of circumstances; but still, both at nine in the morning, and about the same hour in the evening, you might have heard, in passing some of the houses, either the rude and tremulous psalmody raised by the father of the household, or the low and earnest prayer which he was pouring forth, with his knees and those of all his family resting upon his clay floor. Then all the good old sports were kept up. The boys, instead of being confined, like those of larger manufacturing towns, in unhealthy cotton mills, were permitted at all hours, except those during which they were engaged at school, to play at the golf and shinty, or at bows and arrows, upon the common haugh by the burn side, or else to roam farther a-field in search of birds’ nests, or to harry the crows in the woods. On the same haugh, in the summer evenings, after work was done, the young men would be seen “putting the stane,” or playing at “the pennystanes” (quoits), or perhaps amusing themselves with the more energetic game of football, while their cowled fathers would walk forth to sympathise in and judge of their feats, and enjoy a hearty unmeasured laugh at every unharming “mischanter” which might befall them. Thither also would repair the trig shortgowned lass, just newly “redd up,” as she would style it, her curls shining in their recent release from paper, over a face to which a good washing had lent a richer glow, and her _tout-ensemble_ in every respect greatly improved—as female figures, somehow or other, always are—by being seen in the declining light of the golden eve. There, while the young of the different sexes interchanged their joke and their gibe, and the old raised the still heartier laugh at every