Shortly after the good lord sat down by the fire and got his supper, and, by the quantity he ate, satisfied his lady and family still more that he carried a good body, with as fair a capability of reception as he ever exhibited after a walk at the Figgate Whins. He told them all he had undergone since first he was carried away, not forgetting the two spirits, Batty and Maudge, that had tormented him so cruelly during the period of his enchantment. The lady and family stared with open mouths as they heard the dreadful recital; but a goodly potation of warm spiced wine drove off the vapours produced by the dismal story, and, by-and-by, Lord Durie and his wife retired to bed--the one weary and exhausted with his trials, and the other with her terrors and her joys. RECOLLECTIONS OF BURNS.[F] CHAPTER I. "Wear we not graven on our hearts The name of Robert Burns!"--_American Poet._ The degrees shorten as we proceed from the higher to the lower latitudes--the years seem to shorten in a much greater ratio as we pass onward through life. We are almost disposed to question whether the brief period of storms and foul weather that floats over us with such dream-like rapidity, and the transient season of flowers and sunshine that seems almost too short for enjoyment, be at all identical with the long summers and still longer winters of our boyhood, when day after day and week after week stretched away in dim perspective, till lost in the obscurity of an almost inconceivable distance. Young as I was, I had already passed the period of life when we wonder how it is that the years should be described as short and fleeting; and it seemed as if I had stood but yesterday beside the death-bed of the unfortunate Ferguson, though the flowers of four summers and the snows of four winters had now been shed over his grave. [F] Our author, Hugh Miller, never communicated to the Editor his authority for these "Recollections." Probably it was of the same kind as that possessed by Lucian, Lord Lyttleton, and Walter Savage Lander; but whether so or not, we must at least be well satisfied that the parts of the conversation sustained by the principal interlocutor are true to the genius and character of Burns, and that, however searching the thoughts or beautiful the sentiments, they do not transcend what might have been expected from the Bard himself.--ED.