"There are few men," says a peculiar moralist, "however much they may have been loved and esteemed in their day, whose return to life, after any considerable interval, would not be regarded with feelings of regret." In this observation there is some truth. The places once occupied by the departed have been supplied by others; their return to life would be regretted by those whom they would "push from their stools;" and it may be very well believed that, if the rightful heir of a great estate were to make his appearance in life, after having been long lost and regarded as dead, the feelings of the person whom he would supplant, whose possessions, prerogatives, and ostensibility, he would take away, would not be particularly pleasant. But, when no personal interests are at stake, and no feelings of malign selfishness are awakened, there are few things from which a person well constituted in heart and mind, will derive a more vivid delight, or a more exquisite excitement, than the return, and an unexpected meeting with, a long lost and long absent friend. Mark, in proof, the stare of astonishment, the eyes eagerly looking into each other, while the mind gradually opens into recognition, and such exclamations as, "Guide me! it's no possible! can this be really you?--eh, it's lang since I hae seen ye!--hoo hae ye been a' this time?" In no place are such feelings more vivid, or such exclamations more rife, than on the Scottish Borders, whose good-humoured natives have always been distinguished for enterprising energy, as well as warmth of heart, producing a disposition both to rove and to return.