in this service, was heard to approach, and, after listening with great seeming attention to the strain of the petitions which were made, he, at length, unable to constrain himself any longer, was heard to exclaim, "Haud at him, sirs, haud at him--he's just at the pit brow!" Surprising as it may appear, and incredulous as some may be, there is sufficient evidence to prove that, just about the time when this prediction was uttered, the curate of Closeburn, whilst endeavouring to head and hurry on a party of the military, suddenly dropped down and expired. Is it, then, matter of surprise that with my mother's milk I imbibed a strong aversion to all manner of oppression, and that, in the broadest and best sense of the word, I became "a Whig?" To the mountain, then, and the flood, I owe my spirit of independence--that shelly-coat covering against which many arrows have been directed; to my mother, and her Cameronian and political bias, I owe my detestation of oppression--in other words, my political creed--together with my poetical leanings. But to my venerated grandmother, in particular, I am indebted for my early acquaintance with the whole history and economy of the spiritual kingdoms, divided as they are into bogle, ghost, and fairy-land. I shall probably be regarded as an enthusiast whose feelings no future evidence can reclaim from early impressions, when I express my regret that the dreams of my infancy and boyhood have fled--those dreams of dark and bright agency, which shall probably never again return, to agitate and interest--those dreams which charmed me in the midst of a spiritual world, and taught me to consider mere matter as only the visible and tangible instrument through which spirit was constantly acting--those dreams which appear as the shadow and reflection of sacred intimation, and which serve to guard the young heart, in particular, from the cold and revolting tenets of materialism. From the malevolence of him who walks and who works in darkness--who goes about like a roaring lion (but, in our climate and country, more frequently like a bull-dog, or a nondescript bogle), seeking whom he may terrify--I was taught to fly into the protecting arms of the omnipotent Jehovah; that no class of beings could break loose upon another without His high permission; that the Evil One, under whatever disguise or shape he might appear, was still restrained and over-mastered by the Source of all good and of all safety; whilst with the green-coated fairy, the laborious brownie, and the nocturnal hearth-bairn, I almost desired to live upon more intimate and friendly terms!