It is, indeed, long since I have laid aside the pack--to which, after a good education, I had taken, from a wandering propensity--and taken up my residence in the flourishing village of Thornhill, Dumfriesshire; living, at first, on the profits of my shop, and now retired on my little, but, to me, ample competency; but I still have great pleasure in paying a yearly visit to my friends of Mitchelslacks, and in recalling with them, over a comfortable meal, the interesting incidents of the snow storm 1794. THE FAIR MAID OF CELLARDYKES. I did not like the idea of having all the specimens of the fine arts in Europe collected into one "bonne bouche" at the Louvre. It was like collecting, while a boy, a handful of strawberries, and devouring them at one indiscriminating gulp. I do not like floral exhibitions, for the same reason. I had rather a thousand times meet my old and my new friends in my solitary walks, or in my country rambles. All museums in this way confound and bewilder me; and had the Turk not been master of Greece, I should have preferred a view of the Elgin marbles in the land of their nativity. And it is for a similar reason that my mind still reverts, with a kind of dreamy delight, to the time when I viewed mankind in detail, and in all their individual and natural peculiarities, rather than _en masse_, and in one regimental uniform. Educate up! Educate up! Invent machinery--discover agencies--saddle nature with the panniers of labour--and, at last, stand alongside of her, clothed, from the peasant to the prince, in the wonders of her manufacture, and merrily whistling, in idle unconcern, to the tune of her unerring despatch! But what have we gained? One mass of similarities: the housemaid, the housekeeper, the lady, and the princess, speaking the same language, clothed in the same habiliments, and enjoying the same immunities from corporeal labour--the colours of the rainbow whirled and blended into one glare of white! Towards this _ultimatum_ we are now fast hastening. Where is the shepherd stocking-weaver, with his wires and his fingers moving invisibly? Where the "wee and the muckle wheel," with the aged dames, in pletted toys, singing "Tarry woo?" Where the hodden-grey clad patriarch, sitting in the midst of his family, and mixing familiarly, and in perfect equality with all the household--servant and child? My heart constantly warms to these recollections; and I feel as if wandering over a landscape variegated by pleasant and contrasting colouring, and overshadowed with associations which have long been a part of myself. One exception to the general progression and assimilation still happily remains to gratify, I must confess, my liking for things as they were. The fisher population of Newhaven, Buckhaven, and Cellardykes--(my observation extends no farther, and I limit my remarks accordingly)--are, in fact, the Scottish highlanders, the Irish, the Welsh, and the Manks of Fisherdom. Differing