issue of the rencontre. Such was the kind of life led by this couple up to the time of Burke's entry. The passion of violence produced by inebriation will not always, or indeed often, afford any clue to character. It may be hardly necessary to say that Hare was naturally cruel, yet we have seen that Burke could scarcely be said to present that feature unless when roused by some strong motive, so that we have no difficulty in finding at the first glance an essential difference in the two men;--the one being, in his very nature and constitution, vindictive and malign--the other ready to suffocate the humanity that was in him at the beck of an impulse strong enough to move him. Only one of them could probably have been guilty of such an action as this: On one occasion, when a person of the name of M'Lean (the narrator) was returning from shearing at Carnwath, he got into company with Hare, Burke, and his wife, and the party went into a public-house at Balerno, near Currie, to get some refreshment. When the reckoning was, as they call it, clubbed, Hare snatched up the money from the table and pocketed it, whereupon Burke, in the fear of a disturbance, advanced the sum. On leaving the inn, M'Lean taxed the offender with his trick, who, in place of being ashamed or even pocketing the affront, knocked the feet from his companion, laid him on the ground, and kicked him with his shoe pointed with iron plates. If we add to this inborn malignity which, in feeling, whether expressed by words or acts, arrayed him against mankind, and scarcely ever alleviated by those emotions of friendship which are to be found in the most hardened breasts, that scorn of human nature, not unaccompanied with satirical laughter, to which we have alluded, we have that foundation of character in the man upon which was so easily reared the towering edifice of his crimes.