The serene calmness and holy inspiration of some of our cottage retreats in Scotland are often the envy of the town-poet or philosopher, who looks upon the sequestered spots as possessing all the beauty and repose of the beatific Beulah, where the feet of the pilgrim found repose, and his spirit rest. The desire arises out of that discontent which, less or more, is the inheritance of man in this sphere; it is the residuum of the worldly feelings which, like the clay that, in inspired hands, gave the power of sight to the blind, opens the eyes to immortality. The wish for retirement belongs to good, if it is not a part of the great principle that inclines us to look far away to purer regions for the rest which is never disturbed, and the joy that knows no abatement. Yet how vain are often our thoughts as we survey the white-washed hut in the valley, covered with honeysuckle and white roses; the plot before the door; the croonin dame on her tripod; the lass with the lint-white locks, singing, in snatches of Nature's own language, her purest feelings, like the swelling of a mountain spring! The heart is not still there, any more than in the crowded mart. The birds whistle, but they die too; the rose blooms, but it is eaten in the heart by the palmer worm; the sun shines, but there is a shade at his back. Alas for mortal aspirations--there is nothing here of one side. Like the two parties who fought for the truth of the two pleas--that the statue was white, or that it was black--we find, after all our labour lost, that one side is of the one colour, and the other of the opposite. These thoughts arise in us at this moment, as we recollect the little cottage of Homestead, situated in a collateral valley on the Borders. We were born at a stone-cast from it; and, even in the dream of age, see issuing from it, or entering it, a creature who might have stood for Wordsworth's Highland Girl--a slender, gracile thing, retiring and modest; as delicate in her feelings as in the hue of her complexion; her thoughts of her glen and waterfall only natural to her--all others, fearful even to herself, glenting forth through a flushed medium, which equally betrayed the workings of the blood in the transparent veins--a being of young life, elasticity, and sensitiveness, such as, like some modest flower, we find only in certain recesses of the valleys in mountain-lands. Such were you, Alice Scott, when you first darted across our path on the hills. We have said that we see you now through the dream of age; and, holding to the parallel, there is a change o'er the mood of our vision, for we see you again in a form like that of "The Ladye Geraldine"--your mountain russets off; the bandeau that bound the flying locks laid aside; the irritability and flush of the young spirit abated; and, instead of these, the gown of silk, the coif of satin, and the slow and dignified step of conscious worth and superiority. And whence this change?