powerful influence upon their contemporaries, have been Mary Queen of Scots, and her great-grandson Charles Stuart. Of all the poets, who has ever so enthralled the hearts of women as George Gordon, Lord Byron, whose maternal lineage was Scotch? Of all lovely and fascinating women whose names will be remembered in the future, is there any fairer or lovelier than Eugenie Marie de Guzman, Countess of Teba, Empress of the French, and scion of the Kirkpatricks of Closeburn? There are flowers that flourish in the sunshine, and flowers that thrive only in the shade; and as it is in the vegetable, so is it in the animal kingdom. There are men whom a perpetual atmosphere of adulation would have transformed into supercilious fops or selfish profligates. Hector Gordon made no such vile return for the tenderness which had been so freely lavished upon him. High-minded and generous-hearted, brave as a Leonidas or a Clyde, he was no bad example for the young men who formed themselves upon him. It was said that there was less bill-discounting and card-playing amongst the officers of the 11th Plungers than in any other cavalry regiment in the service; for it is your dashing young captain rather than your middle-aged colonel who gives the tone to the youngsters of a mess. They may obey their commanding-officer, but they will copy their brilliant companion. But it must not be supposed that under any circumstance Hector Gordon could have come under the denomination of "a good young man;" for it seems an understood thing that the typical good young man must be nothing but good. Hector was neither evangelical nor Puseyite in his tendencies; but rather of that good, easy-going broad Church, which winks good-naturedly at a parson in "pink," and sees no criminality in a cheerful rubber. He went to church once or twice on a Sunday, as the case might be; and did his best to join earnestly in the service, and to listen with sustained attention to the sermon. If his thoughts wandered now and then to the Highland peaks, amidst whose lonely grandeurs he had once shot a mighty white eagle, or to the deer-stalking adventures or grouse-shooting of the last autumn; if his fancy played him false and brought some bright girlish face before him, with the memory of one especially delicious waltz, and one peculiarly intoxicating flirtation--if such small sins as these sullied his soul now and then when the sermon was duller and longer than it should have been, it must be remembered that he was very young, and that the chastening influence of sorrow had not yet shadowed his life, or lessened his delight in the common pleasures of his age.