in the grave! She was free-this lovely young woman; and I was about to be chained for life to Grandmother Hook! She saw my agitation, but of course could not comprehend its cause.

Come," said she with an angelic smile, "I see you do not like my venerable friend; but I am determined to reconcile you to her. She is a grandmother, it is true, and therefore not so young as she has been; but she wears well-she is indeed particularly healthy; and thus, if you form a friendship for her, it is likely to last for many years."

"That is the misery," said I-" that is the misery! If she were but like other old women-if she were but liable to the common diseases of grandmothers, my fate might be endurable !"

"Your fate? What has your fate to do with the longevity of Mrs Hook?"

"I am only going to be married to her-that's all;" and the absurd announcement was no sooner out of my lips, than the fair stranger broke into peals of laughter, that to my ears, at the inauspicious moment, sounded like the screams of an evil spirit.

66

Why adopt such an alternative? Although probably dependent on fortune, you are not too old to work and to struggle. If you will not allow poor aged Mrs Hook to enrich you, there are fortunes in the world still to be made by the adventurous and the industrious."

"Give me a motive," cried I suddenly," and I will both dare and suffer! I cannot toil for so poor a meed as fortune; but place in the distance something worthy of my efforts, something rich enough to reward them, something

"What?" said she innocently.

"Love!" cried I in desperation; and before she could prevent me, I had caught hold of her hand, and smothered it with kisses.'

Upon my word!' interrupted the old maid. "This from a married man-from the husband of Mrs Hook!' But he was not married then!' whispered Jemima softly.

Since you are displeased with such details,' pursued the gentleman, I shall pass them over. Let it suffice that I spent several hours with the lovely widow; that I saw clearly saw-that only a little time was wanting to enable me to gain her affections; and that I at last bade her adieu, extorting a promise that she would not communicate my arrival to Mrs Hook; and that, when I called at the Court, she would see me alone, that I might have an opportunity of telling her what had passed between my uncle and me.'

How could you tell that she lived at the Court?' 'I don't know: I took it into my head; and it happened that I was right.'

Under all circumstances, you seem to have made wonderful progress in so short a time!'

Time is merely a relative word. An hour is occasionally as long as a day or a month; and a month, in other circumstances, passes as quickly as a day or an hour. The widow and I became better acquainted during the single interview I have described, than we should have done in the course of a hundred meetings in ordinary society. But to proceed. I found my revered uncle in a very bad temper, as he had expected

me the day before; and matters were not mended when I mentioned frankly some misgivings I had on the score of domestic happiness.

"Domestic fiddlestick!" cried he. "What more would you have than a good estate and a good wife-and a healthy woman to boot, come of a long-winded race, and as likely as not to lay you beside my old friend Hook? She is a grandmother already: does not that look well?" I laughed nervously.

"You do not think her too young?" and the old gentleman grinned. Another spasmodic cachinnation. "Then what ails you at her- -more especially since you tell me that there is a vacancy in your heart?' But here comes a letter from the Court." And tearing open a large old-fashioned-looking missive, presented to him by a servant, he read as follows:

"MY DEAR SIR-I am told that your nephew has arrived; and as he has been reported upon favourably by one who saw him yesterday, and on whose taste and judgment I can rely, I am tempted to say, with the frankness of my character, that I shall be happy to make his acquaintance. I am truly grateful for the many obliging things I am told he said of me; and I hope one day or other he will find them all realised. My dearest grandchild sends a pretty little kiss to you both; and, with best regards, I remain as usual,

GRANDMOTHER HOOK."

"There!" cried the old gentleman with odious triumph-" there is a spirit for you! Why, you dog, you will be as happy as the day is long!"

'I scarcely heard him, for my thoughts were brooding bitterly over the treachery of the beautiful widow. She had broken her promise, and she had rendered my position a thousand times more embarrassing, by persuading the wretched grandmother that I had been such an ass as to say complimentary things about her age, ugliness, and infirmities! It was clear that she was a jilt; that she had only been laughing at my admiration; and that she was now determined to extract further amusement from my calamities. I resolved, however, to die game; and telling my uncle that, although well acquainted with Mrs Hook from report, I desired to see her personally before coming to a final decision, I threw myself on horseback, and gallopped straightway to the Court.

'It was my intention to have asked for Mrs Hook; but the wily widow was on her guard, for as the door opened, I heard her call to the servant, in her silveriest tones, "Show the gentleman here;" and in another minute I stood once more in the presence of the unknown of the forest. I found her more beautiful-better dressed -younger than the day before; and as I saw, with keener appreciation, the treasure I was about to lose for ever, my resentment died away, and deep choking grief took its place.

"You forgot your promise,” said I: “you make a sport of my misery!"

"What could I say when questioned?" replied she sweetly. "But what misery do you allude to?-the misery of marrying a grandmother?"

"When my heart is devoted to another. But it is needless to talk to you, for you are as incapable of passion as a statue. You could never have loved even your husband."

66

You are in some degree wrong; yet I was so young when I was married-only sixteen-that I looked upon my husband more as a guardian than as a lover. I was not quite seventeen when I became a mother." Is it possible? That is not a great while ago." "Greater than you perhaps suppose; for a sound constitution and salubrious air are very deceitful. Would you take me to be well on to thirty-five?"

"What became of your child?" cried I suddenly. "We all marry young in our family," replied the widow, hanging her head. "It was my daughter's infant," she continued, looking up at me with the most beautiful blush that ever lit the cheek of a girl, "which you gathered yesterday from among the daisies and buttercups; and I am GRANDMOTHER HOOK!"'

THE WORKING-MAN IN AUSTRALIA. A YOUNG man, who had just finished his apprenticeship in London, and who possessed a fair knowledge of housecarpentering, having been informed that higher wages were to be obtained in Australia, set sail for the antipodes, and in due time reached the town of Sydney. Here he learned, on landing, that a letter of credit in which he had invested his all-some fifty or sixty pounds-was worth little or nothing, the person on whom it was drawn having failed; and he thus found himself loose upon the world, with a tolerably good outfit for one in his station, but a very scanty supply of cash in his pocket.

After anxiously seeking employment, and in vain, for about three weeks, he fell in accidentally with a cedarcutter from the Five Islands, who had been living there with his family under a few sheets of bark, but who now wanted a snug little hut run up; and with him the emigrant contracted for the job, on consideration of receiving L.75 in money, with rations during the time, and the assistance of a convict servant in cutting the timber and other work. All being arranged, he set out early one morning on foot, with his convict-mate, for their destination; and in the evening their fatiguing march was enlivened by an Australian conflagration. 'Above us,' to use his own words, the sky was gloomy and still; all round us the far-stretching forests exposed a strange and varied pageant of darkness and fire, accompanied by the crackling of flames and the crash of falling trees. Here was a bridge over a deep creek, now empty with summer drought, with all its huge sleepers glowing in red charcoal, and tumbling together into heaps in the channel, and carrying down with them the top layer of slabs that, covered with earth, had been the roadway; over these we had to leap and clamber as we could, unless there was some track down across the creekbed, by the side of the bridge. Here, again, some huge old tree came thundering down right across the road, and its boughs, kindling from the opposite side, were in full roaring blaze, lighting up everything nigh with ruddy brilliance, and throwing into the dense volume of smoke above a red semi-transparency. Farther on again, where the bush was thinner, and the materials for ravage more scanty, the fire had nearly subsided: all was obscure and silent, except some single trunk, off in the bush, hollow, and old, and headless, through whose chimneylike barrel went upwards, with fierce steady roar, a volume of flame, and crowds of sparks, into the blackness of night; and then, all on a sudden, the fire would reach a cluster of tree-heads, as yet untouched, and go blazing, and crackling, and leaping through them, until nothing was left for it to devour. The heat was in many places intense, and the smoke in others suffocating; whilst snakes, guanas, bandicoots, opossums, &c. were crossing the road in every direction, each in its natural dumbness, or with its wild weak cry of fear.'

The next two nights they passed in huts, where they were received with much hospitality. One consisted of a single apartment formed of bark; while the other was a more aristocratic habitation, built of slabs of wood; but in both the fare was good and substantial. The next day they arrived at a creek, where the only means of crossing was a slender cabbage-tree flung from bank to bank (the rustic bridge of Australia), which the emigrant found somewhat formidable, till the idea occurred to him of fancying himself walking along the joist of an unboarded house.' This exercise of the imagination was successful, although there must have

been some little discrepance between the two bridges; the cabbage-tree swinging over the abyss as the passenger stepped, till in the middle it plashed upon the

water.

Having at length reached their destination, they set to work to fell trees for the future hut, living themselves, in the meantime, in a tent composed of a few sheets of bark, leaned together, top to top, tent-like, with one end stopped by another sheet, and the fire a few feet in front on the ground at the other.' This was very well in fine weather; but by and by it came on to rain-with a will. The rain penetrated the roof, and ran through the bottom of the hut like a mill-stream, till their beds got thoroughly soaked. Dick, however, got a flint and steel; and when they had relighted the fire, baled out the water, and solaced themselves with plenty of tobacco and tea; they made their beds (luxuriously turning the dry side uppermost), and went to sleep.

The next adventure was with bushrangers, two of whom called at the hut one night, and after a very moral, not to say philosophical conversation-in which the emigrant was told that if he acted as a man, whether he were free or bond, he would be respected by every man that knew himself'-compelled the mate to pilot them to the employer's farm. Soon after, they returned with a load of rum, tea, sugar, and tobacco; and after eating a hearty supper, set off into the bush with their booty.

This job being completed, and the balance of money paid, it was necessary to look out for farther employment; and the adventurer, shouldering his tools and other baggage, set forth to walk through the cedar forest. He at length reached a hut, the master of which wanted a mate in sawing, and here he remained till his employer's task was finished. We used to get up,' says he, in the winter, and have our breakfast before going to work, on account of the day being so short in the cedar-brush. The lifts in a cedar-brush are very heavy. I have often worked for half a-day together with a lever that I could barely lift into its place. Besides this, the only intermission through the day is one hour at noon for dinner, and perhaps twenty minutes towards the latter part of the afternoon, fifteen of which the topman employs in brightening up his saw, and the pitman in boiling a couple of pots of tea, and throwing the dust out of his pit; the other five are occupied in a very active lunch. Both men, if they are smokers, just light their short pipes, and turn to with them in their mouths. If any man can, without exaggeration, at night say he is as tired as a dog after a hard day's run, it is the cedar-sawyer. A striking peculiarity of the class is their colour, or rather deficiency of all colour. A few months' residence and hard work in the brush leaves most men as pallid as corpses. Probably this is chiefly the effect of shade, but promoted further by excessive perspiration; for it is not necessarily attended by any sensation of illness.'

When this job was completed, his capital amounted to about L.80, a portion of which he invested in cattle, putting them out to pasture to the number of thirtythree, on the thirds;' that is to say, giving up a third of the increase for their keep. His next job was on the banks of the Hawkesbury. Here he found, in passing along, the maize or wheaten cake, the joint of pork or beef, and the fragrant pot of tea, always ready for his refreshment, with abundance of pumpkins, preferable, he says, to any vegetable used in England, and watermelons too delicious to be described in mere words.' The native white girls, by a natural association of ideas, come into the next sentence; and he describes them as being very generally pretty. I do not know how to account for it, but there is common to them, in all points, a singularly marked feminine character-a gentle, simple womanliness, that is peculiarly agreeable.' After finishing his employment on the Hawkesbury, he was cheated of L.20 in the settlement, being compelled to take a portion of the amount due to him in cattle,

the crashing bush: such was the scenery.' In such wilds it is common for unwary persons to lose themselves; and the desolate, treeless plains occasionally met with are nearly as dangerous in this respect, the wanderer getting speedily out of sight of any intelligible landmark. Near the 'run' they at length pitched upon they found several other stock stations, where the people seemed to have very confused notions of the rights of property, clapping their own mark, without ceremony, upon any cattle found without one. 'But it is worth while to observe, that an individual placed in the midst of such a gang, and keeping himself free alike from meddling on the one part against them, and from participation on the other, is in one of the securest of positions; for, in consideration of his forbearance, they will generally do him any service in their power, heading homeward his stray beasts, giving tidings of any lost ones, and a hundred other little offices of like kind.' But the utility of the branding does not appear to be quite clear after all, since the animals themselves are not a consenting party, and in many cases treat the ceremony as a very idle affair. I have known beasts break three strong ropes one after the other, charge everybody out of the yard, and then go over a six-rail fence at a flying leap, and get away unconquered to their wilds again.' Such rebels of course choose their own pastures, frequently in the wild grassy gullies of the mountains, whither they are tracked by individuals technically called gullyrakers, a kind of freebooters, who mark the desert-born families of the fugitives, and carry them off.

Having marked their cattle, the next business was to construct a dairy for milking such as chose to submit to the operation; and this was done by digging a hollow in a hill, in order to avoid the excessive heats. They now sent butter to Sydney, and sat fairly down as farmers, giving up entirely the trade of wood-sawing.

Our author's advice to the settler, from personal experience, is this:-1. Let him, by way of an introduction, put his knapsack on his back, and penetrate on foot to the utmost limit of colonisation, to learn the science of living in the desert. 2. Let him then begin by feeling his way, laying out not more than a third of his capital at first, whatever it may be. For the rest he will receive high interest; and in the meantime his food and clothing will not cost him L.30 a-year. 3. Let him look to everything himself, and join personally in all the labour of the farm. 4. Let him treat his hands well, if not from feeling, from policy. To these general rules are added directions for the more immediate business of settling, for which we have no room.

With the exception of a wild adventure into which our ex-sawyer fell, through some informality in his purchase of the cattle, and some little fighting with the aborigines, there is nothing besides in the memoir of special interest to the reader; although we ought to mention one incident in compliment to the author himself-his marriage. The young couple now opened a general store, for the supply of the neighbouring stations; and although avoiding wine and spirit-dealing from conscientious motives, they contrived to make L.300 per annum by the business, although the original capital invested was not more than that sum. 'My wife was the almost sole manager of this portion of our affairs, from the beginning to the end, which was better than seven years. My occupation consisted in bringing the goods from Sydney, looking after our cattle, and getting in every year such a crop of one thing and another as quite covered our own consumption; wheat, maize, potatoes, and tobacco being the staple. My two sons, as they grew up, took kindly, as almost all the Australians do, to rural occupations. The eldest I left chiefly at the out-station, and the youngest was mostly with myself and his mother at the farm I first settled on. My own health at last took such a serious turn for the worse, that the doctor advised a return to my native clime. The hardships I had endured in the early part of my career in New South Wales, along with too great acti

vity afterwards, were the only probable causes for it. I may say that, for years, I slept in wet bedding. The damp is so great in the perpetual shadow of the cedarbrush, that when, during a more than usually long stretch of wet weather, our blankets have become palpably wet, and we have attempted to dry them at the fire before going to bed, the steam would reek up from them as if from a boiling copper. Again, in the bustle of such an active life as mine, one has not time to be ill by instalments, and so I suppose the whole debt of this kind which nature claims of us has to be paid at once. The excitement of strong purpose probably keeps off the sense of exhaustion till this becomes downright illness, and will not be any longer neglected. Suffice it, that there appeared no alternative. When I first arrived in New South Wales, the perspiration used to flow profusely during the hot days; it now was substituted by a constant burning heat, without the slightest moisture; and at times by a sense, for hours, of icy coldness, while to the eye the whole atmosphere was, as it were, in a blaze, and the surface of the earth too hot for the feet to stand, for more than a few seconds, bare on the sand. It may be of advantage to some in the colony who have begun to experience similar symptoms, to learn that, though the voyage was trying, and the cold very painful in England when I first arrived, I am now obtaining the most sensible benefit, and consider myself in the direct road to completely renovated health.'

We have now run through this little narrative; which, the reader will perceive, contains matter that will amply repay his trouble in referring to the volumes themselves, entitled 'Settlers and Convicts, or Recollections of Sixteen Years' Labour in the Australian Backwoods;' published by Charles Cox, London.

CHARLES EDWARD AT PRESTONPANS.
BY D. M. MOIR (A).*

[Written after walking over the Field with Robert Chambers, on the Centenary of the Battle, 21st September 1845.]

GRIM and cloud-begirt the morning
Rose from out the German wave;
Blindly landward clouds of vapour
Through the woods of Seaton drave;
While, amid the dewy stubble,†
Eager for the approach of day,
Prone beneath their plaids and war-cloaks,
Side by side two armies lay.

Tolled forth'six' the clock of Preston,
Woke from dawn to day the morn,
And the first red streaks of sunlight
Gilded Westfield's branching Thorn ;
Then the billowy mists disparting,

As the light breeze came and went,
Showed the Highland host in silence
Threading downwards from Tranent.

[Reprinted, with the concurrence of the author, from the Dumfries Herald (newspaper).]

The army of Charles Edward moved from the west to the east side of Tranent, after it had become dark, on the evening preceding the battle, and bivouacked, stretching along the northern face of in a bean-field, amid the cut bunches, which were still on the the slope, from the churchyard eastwards. The Prince himself lay ground, near the farm-house of Green Wells.

This venerable tree in part remains, but the main trunk was blown down in 1833, after having been very much injured by the quantity of fragments abstracted by visitors in the shape of relics. The field was visited by Sir Walter Scott in 1831; and a small drinking-cup, or quaich, constructed from a portion of the thorn, hooped with silver, and suitably inscribed, was prepared, to be presented to him on the occasion of a second promised visit, by Mr That opportunity, however, never took place, the symptoms of Sir H. F. Cadell, of Cockenzie, at whose house he spent the afternoon. Walter's last illness having shortly afterwards shown themselves; and the quaich, consequently, still remains in Mr Cadell's possession.

It was under this thorn, which stands as nearly as possible in the centre of the battle-field, that Colonel Gardiner received his death wound; and hence, to the eyes of many, the spot where the Christian soldier fell is, to use the words of Collins, covered by

'a sweeter sod

Than Fancy's feet have ever trode.'

Shrilly blown, the Royal trumpet

Bade each corps its place assume;

Steeds were mounted, muskets shouldered,

Glittered flag, and nodded plume:

Rose the mists up like a curtain *
To the ceiling of the sky;
And the plain's wide diorama

Lay displayed before the eye.
Fast they closed, two hostile armies,
Hostile, yet of kindred blood,
Till the ranks of either's vanguard
Face to face opposing stood:
For a moment all was voiceless-

Every heart in prayer was hushed;
Then each clan struck up its pibroch,
And the mass to battle rushed!

Boom on boom the deep-mouthed cannon
Raked the ranks with crimson glare;
But the clansmen scrugged their bonnets †
O'er their brows with dogged air;

Clenched their teeth, unsheathed their broadswords,
Cast their cumbering plaids aside,

And, as hedge-like moved their columns,+
Danger scorned, and death defied.
Louder blared the Royal trumpet-
Hoarser rolled the kettle-drum,
As the carbined chargers, neighing,
Forward to the onset come:
Torrent-like, amid the tartans,

Splashed the horsemen's red array;
But stood firm that dingy phalanx,
Like the rock before the spray.

To that grim salute the rifles
With a running fire replied:
Can it be, in spite of Gardiner,

That his troopers swerve aside?

Vainly, to impede their panic,

Wheeled his horse and waved his sword; Vainly he appealed to duty,

Cheered them, checked them, and implored.

As the ocean swell, resistless,

Backward bears the yielding dike,

So the Gael bore down the Saxon,
Mingling bayonet, blade, and pike:
Resolutely Cope and Hawley

Propped the ranks that gave a-way;
While, though vainly, Home and Huntley
Battled to retrieve the day.

Horseless, with his knee on greensward,
As the life-blood from him poured,
'Rally, rally here!' cried Gardiner,
And aloft he waved his sword.
Round him fought a band devoted,
Till he sank upon the field:
Truer hero, Greek or Roman,

Ne'er was lifeless borne on shield!
Wo! for good and gallant Gardiner,
For the soldier and the saint;
Peace's lamb, and battle's lion,
Chivalry without a taint!
Asks the patriot for his tombstone?§
All unmarked his ashes lie;

But the soldier-friend of Doddridge
Owns a name not soon to die!

This scene has been touched with a pencil of light in Waverley, vol. ii. chap. xviii. :- At this moment the sun, which was now risen above the horizon, dispelled the mist. The vapours rose like a curtain, and showed the two armies in the act of closing,' &c.

It was the emphatic custom of the Highlanders,' says Mr Chambers, before an onset to scrug their bonnets-that is, to pull their little blue caps down over their brows so as to insure them against falling off in the ensuing melée.' - History of Rebellion, chap. xxiv.

An eye-witness of the battle, in a communication inserted in the Scots Magazine of the day, describes their approach by this

characteristic similitude.

g Colonel Gardiner was buried, as were eight of his children, at the eastern gable of the old church of Tranent; but as that building was afterwards demolished for the crection of the present structure, the situation, I have understood, was built over. Before this was done, the tomb was opened, and the body showed itself in a very remarkable state of preservation; but on exposure to the air, the powdered queue, fastened by its black ribbon, dropping off, exposed the skull, with its fatal fracture-a sad proof of identity!

The colonel, as is well known, found an able and affectionate biographer in his celebrated friend Dr Doddridge, who, in 1747, published his 'Remarkable Passages in the Life of Colonel James Gardiner a little work, which to this day continues to enjoy an uninterrupted popularity, and divides the winter evening hours by the rustic hearth with The Scots Worthies,' Thomson's Seasons,' and Burns.'

From that ill-starred field of slaughter
Fled the panic-struck in swarms;
Strewed were all the paths to Bankton,
And to Wallyford, with arms;
On to Dolphinston and Birslie,
Fingalton and Prestonpans,
Rushed the fugitives, fear-scattered,
And pursued the shouting clans.
Day of triumph for the Stuart !
Fitful burst of sunny light!
And, at Falkirk, yet another,
Ere set in Culloden's night:
Then with eagles on the correi,
Or with foxes under ground,
Hunted-homeless-and an hungered,*
Might thy rival, Guelph, be found.
Dismal, too, their after fortunes,
Who, in that mistaken cause,
By a zeal and faith unshaken,

Sought and won the world's applause:
Those laid life down on the scaffold-
These were scattered far and wide-
And, from foreign shores, in exile,
Looked to Scotland ere they died!

Looked to-yearned for-Scotland's mountains;
For the glen in purple glow;
For the castle on its islet,

Mirrored in the loch below;

For the sheiling, wood-and-stream-girt,
Where Romance Youth's summer sped;
For the belfry by the gray kirk,

In whose shadow slept their dead.
Yet full long, from lips of fervour,
When the natal day came round,
Toasted was the name forbidden,
With a quenchless love profound;
And in bosom or in bonnet,

Still the emblem-Rose of White-t
Told the wearer, though he spake not,
Heart and soul a Jacobite !
Under Westfield's Thorn-tree standing,
Here Cockenzie-there Tranent-
On the fields we picture, map-like,
How the battle came and went;
Round are ranged the sheaves of harvest;
This is Preston; where are they
Who were victors, who were vanquished,
Just a hundred years this day?

In that question lies its answer:

None who wished and watched the sun On that morn of stormy warfare,

Now behold its beams-not one!

Year by year, Time's scythe hath thinned them,
Till have vanished quite, at length,

Even the scattered few surviving
Last, by reason of more strength.
Newer wars and woes have followed,
Other fields been fought and won;
Each fresh generation wrapt in
Aims and objects of its own:
And as, loitering, the wayfarer
Casts on Preston crofts his eye,
Deeply from the Past and Present
Reads his heart a homily!

HISTORY.

History is the resurrection of ages past; it gives us the scenes of human life, that, by their actings, we may learn to correct and improve. What can be more profitable to man, than, by an easy change and a delightful entertainment, to make himself wise by the imitation of heroic virtues, or by the evitation of detected vices?—where the glorious actions of the worthiest treaders on the world's stage shall become our guide and conduct, and the errors that the weak have fallen into shall be marked out to us as rocks that we ought to avoid. It is learning wisdom at the cost of others; and, what is rare, it makes a man the better for being pleased.-Feltham.

The three great romantic episodes of modern warfare have always seemed to me-those of Charles Edward and his Highlanders in 1745; of Toussaint L'Ouverture and his Haytians; and of Hofer and the Tyrolese in 1813. When we take into consideration the results flowing from the defeat of Culloden, and that the faith of a poor people was proof against the most tempting rewards, in a cause, moreover, where everything was to be lost, and nothing could be gained, the first of the three is certainly the most extraordinary.

The white rose and the white cockade were the Stuart insignia; and, as such, respected and venerated by their partisans.