The French invasion of Spain was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the invasion of England-the Spanish war broke down the military renown of the Empire, and was pronounced by Napoleon to be the origin of his ruin! The invasion of Russia was a blow aimed expressly at England. Its object was the extinction of English commerce in the whole sea-line of the north-that invasion was punished, by the ruin of the whole veteran army of France! Napoleon himself at length met the troops of England. He met them with an arrogant assumption of victory "Ah! je les tiens, ces Anglais. Never was presumption more deeply punished. This single conflict destroyed him; his laurels, his diadem, and his dynasty, were blasted toge ther! It is not less memorable, that during the entire Revolutionary war, France was never suffered to inflict an injury on England; with one exception-the perfidious seizure of the English travelling in the French territories under the safeguard of the Imperial passports. But this, too, had its punishment and one of the most especial and characteristic retribution-Napoleon himself was sent to a dungeon! By a fate unheard of even among fallen princes, the man who had treacherously made prisoners of the English was himself made a prisoner, was delivered into English hands, was consigned to captivity in an English island, and died the prisoner of England! I speak of events like these, not in the spirit of superstition, nor in the fond presumption of being an interpreter of the mysterious ways of Providence. I record them, in a full consciousness of the immeasurable distance between the intellect of man and the wisdom of the supreme Disposer. But they convey, at least to my own feelings, a confidence, a solemn security, a calm yet ardent conviction, that chance has no share in the government of the world; that the great tide of things, in its rise and fall, has laws, which, if unapproached by the feebleness of human faculties, are not the less true, vast, and imperishable; that if, like the air, the agency of that ruling and boundless authority is invisible, we may yet feel its existence in its effects, rejoice in the acknowledgment of a power which nothing can exhaust, and take to our bosoms the high consolation, that the good of man is the supreme principle of the system. Men actively employed in public life, are strangely apt to think that there is no progress outside their circle. But, on my return to Mortimer Castle, I found this conception amply confuted. The world had moved as rapidly in those shades, as in the centre of cabinets and courts. Time had done its work, in changing the condition of almost every human being whom I had known in my early days. The brothers and sisters, whom I had left children, were now in the full beauty of their prime; my brothers showy and stirring youths; my sisters fair and gentle girls, just reaching that period of life when the countenance and mind are in their bloom together, and the highborn woman of England is the loveliest perhaps in the world. The extravagance of my elder brother had dilapidated the provision intended for the younger branches of his house. My habits, learned in a sterner school, enabled me to retrieve their fortunes, and I thus secured a new tie to their regards. Justice is essential to all gratitude, and I found them ready to pay the tribute, to the full. Among my first visits was one to my old friend and tutor, Vincent. I found him still resident on his living; and with spirits, on which time had wrought no change. Years had passed lightly over his head. His eye was as vivid, and his mind as active as ever. He perhaps stooped a little more, and his frame had lost something of that elasticity of step which had so often tried my young nerves in our ramblings over the hills. But he was the same cordial, animated, and high-toned being, in all his feelings, that I had seen him from the first hour. I found him in his garden, arranging, selecting, and enjoying his flower-beds with all the spirit of a horticulturist. But he apologised for what he termed, "its disorder." "For," said he, "I have lost all my gardeners." On my looking doubtful, "All my girls," said he, 66 are gone; all married; all wedded to one neighbour or another. Such is the way in which I have been left alone." I made my condolences on his solitude, in due form. "Yet I am not quite solitary," added the gay old man, "after all; or my solitude depends upon myself. My girls are all married to our squires, honest fellows, and some of them well enough off in the world. But I made a stipulation, that none of them should marry out of sight from the gazebo on the top of yonder hill; and when I want their company, I have only to hoist a flag. You see that I have not altogether forgotten my days of the sabre and the signal-post; my telegraph works well, and I have them all trooping over here with the regularity of a squadron." The approach of winter made the castle a scene of increased liveliness. I had always looked with strong distaste on the habit of flying to watering-places at the season when the presence of the leading families of a county is most important to the comforts of the tenantry, and to the intelligent and social intercourse of the higher ranks. I sent a request to Lafontaine and his wife, that they should perform their "covenant,' and venture to see "how English life contrived to get through the dulness of its Decembers." My request was countersigned by Clotilde, and this was irresistible. They came, and were received with a joyous welcome. They too had undergone a change. Lafontaine was graver, and was much the better for his gravity. He was now the sincere and kind-hearted being for which nature had intended him. The coxcombry of French early life had disappeared, and left behind it only that general grace and spirit which makes the maturity of a foreign life its most interesting portion. Mariamne was still more advantageously changed. Her wild vivacity was less subdued than transformed into elegance of manner; her features were still handsome, travel had given her knowledge, and her natural talents had been cultivated by the solitary hours, in which but for that cultivation she might have sunk into the grave. She had brought with her, too, another remembrance, and one of that order which produces the most powerful effect upon the whole character of woman. She had brought her firstborn, a lovely infant, in which her whole soul seemed to be absorbed, and in which she already discovered more beauties and good qualities than fate or fortune had ever given to human nature. But the centre of our circle, and the admiration and love of all, sat my wife, my generous, noble, pure-spirited Clotilde. Time, too, had wrought its change on her; but it was only to give her deeper claims on the feelings of a heart which could not imagine happiness without her. The heroine had wholly disappeared, and given place to the woman; the character of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune, which adversity had made essential perhaps to her being, had passed away with her day of suffering. She was now soft, mild, tender, and confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which, when exposed to the storm, contract and diminish their form and foliage; but, when sheltered, resume their original luxuriance and loveliness. Clotilde, in the sufferings of the emigration, in the terrors of the Revolution, and in the march through the Vendée, might have perished, but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of the trial. But now, surrounded with all the security of rank, and with opulence for her enjoyment, and with love to cherish her, she displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her affections. Thus surrounded, thus cheered, thus looked up to by beings whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty, all the feeling of patriotism, and all the consciousness, that age will neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved, nor shut up theirs to me. believe in the possibility of friendship untainted by selfishness, and I am firm in the faith, of love that knows no decline. I look round me, and am serenely happy. I look above me, and am sacredly thankful. I HOW WE GOT UP THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY, AND HOW I WAS confoundedly hard up. My patrimony, never of the largest, had been for the last year on the decrease a herald would have emblazoned it," ARGENT, a money-bag improper, in detriment"—and though the attenuating process was not ex-cessively rapid, it was, nevertheless, proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances - by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers, I knew none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on the pinnacle of a threelegged stool. The rule of three is all very well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. Augustus," said my poor mother to me, one day while stroking my hyacinthine tresses 66 Augustus, my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that you are a gentleman.' The maternal maxim sunk deeply into my heart, and I never for a moment have forgotten it. Notwithstanding this aristocratical resolution, the great practical question, "How am I to live?" began to thrust itself unpleasantly before me. I am one of that unfortunate class who have neither uncles nor aunts. For me, no yellow liverless individual, with characteristic bamboo and pigtail-emblems of half a million- returned to his native shores from Ceylon or remote Penang. For me, no venerable spinster hoarded in the Trongate, permitting herself few luxuries during a long-protracted life, save a lass and a lanthorn, a parrot, and the invariable baudrons of antiquity. No such luck was mine. Had all Glasgow perished by some vast epidemic, I should not have found myself one farthing the richer. There would have been no golden balsam for me in the accumulated woes of Tradestown, Shettleston, and Camlachie. The time has been when-according to VOL. LVIII. NO. CCCLX. Washington Irving and other veracious historians-a young man had no sooner got into difficulties than a guardian angel appeared to him in a dream, with the information that at such and such a bridge, or under such and such a tree, he might find, at a slight expenditure of labour, a gallipot secured with bladder, and filled with glittering tomauns; or in the extremity of despair, the youth had only to append himself to a cord, and straightway the other end thereof, forsaking its staple in the roof, would disclose amidst the fractured ceiling the glories of a profitable pose. These blessed days have long since gone by -at any rate, no such luck was mine. My guardian angel was either woefully ignorant of metallurgy, or the stores had been surreptitiously ransacked; and as to the other expedient, I frankly confess I should have liked some better security for its result, than the precedent of the "Heir of Lynn." My It is a great consolation amidst all the evils of life, to know that, however bad your circumstances may be, there is always somebody else in nearly the same predicament. chosen friend and ally, Bob M'Corkindale, was equally hard up with myself, and, if possible, more averse to exertion. Bob was essentially a speculative man—that is, in a philosophical sense. He had once got hold of a stray volume of Adam Smith, and muddled his brains for a whole week over the intricacies of the Wealth of Nations. The result was a crude farrago of notions regarding the true nature of money, the soundness of currency, and relative value of capital, with which he nightly favoured an admiring audience at “The Crow; " for Bob was by no means -in the literal acceptation of the word-a dry philosopher. On the contrary, he perfectly appreciated the merits of each distinct distillery; and was understood to be the compiler of a statistical work, entitled, A Tour through the Alcoholic Districts of Scotland. It had very early occurred to me, who knew as much of political 2 G economy as of the bagpipes, that a gentleman so well versed in the art of accumulating national wealth, must have some remote ideas of applying his prínciples profitably on a smaller scale. Accordingly, I gave M'Corkindale an unlimited invitation to my lodgings; and, like a good hearty fellow as he was, he availed himself every evening of the license; for I had laid in a fourteen gallon cask of Oban whisky, and the quality of the malt was undeniable. These were the first glorious days of general speculation. Railroads were emerging from the hands of the greater into the fingers of the lesser capitalists. Two successful harvests had given a fearful stimulus to the national energy; and it appeared perfectly certain that all the populous towns would be united, and the rich agricultural districts intersected, by the magical bands of iron. The columns of the newspapers teemed every week with the parturition of novel schemes; and the shares were no sooner announced than they were rapidly subscribed for. But what is the use of my saying any thing more about the history of last year? Every one of us remembers it perfectly well. It was a capital year on the whole, and put money into many a pocket. About that time, Bob and I commenced operations. Our available capital, or negotiable bullion, in the language of my friend, amounted to about three hundred pounds, which we set aside as a joint fund for speculation. Bob, in a series of learned discourses, had convinced me that it was not only folly, but a positive sin, to leave this sum lying in the bank at a pitiful rate of interest, and otherwise unemployed, whilst every one else in the kingdom was having a pluck at the public pigeon. Somehow or other, we were unlucky in our first attempts. Speculators are like wasps; for when they have once got hold of a ripening and peach-like project, they keep it rigidly for their own swarm, and repel the approach of interlopers. Notwithstanding all our efforts, and very ingenious ones they were, we never, in a single instance, succeeded in procuring an allocation of original shares; and though we did now and then make a hit by purchase, we more frequently bought at a premium, and parted with our scrip at a discount. At the end of six months, we were not twenty pounds richer than before. "This will never do," said Bob, as he sat one evening in my rooms compounding his second tumbler. "I thought we were living in an enlightened age; but I find I was mistaken. That brutal spirit of monopoly is still abroad and uncurbed. The principles of free-trade are utterly forgotten, or misunderstood. Else how comes it that David Spreul received but yesterday an allocation of two hundred shares in the Westermidden Junction; whilst your application and mine, for a thousand each, were overlooked? Is this a state of things to be tolerated? Why should he, with his fifty thousand pounds, receive a slapping premium, whilst our three hundred of available capital remains unrepresented? The fact is monstrous, and demands the immediate and serious interference of the legislature." "It is a bloody shame," said I, fully alive to the manifold advantages of a premium. "I'll tell you what, Dunshunner,” rejoined M'Corkindale, "it's no use going on in this way. We haven't shown half pluck enough. These fellows consider us as snobs, because we don't take the bull by the horns. Now's the time for a bold stroke. The public are quite ready to subscribe for any thing-and we'll start a railway for ourselves." "Start a railway with three hundred pounds of capital! "Pshaw, man! you don't know what you're talking about-we've a great deal more capital than that. Have not I told you seventy times over, that every thing a man has his coat, his hat, the tumblers he drinks from, nay, his very corporeal existence-is absolute marketable capital? What do you call that fourteen-gallon cask, I should like to know?" "A compound of hoops and staves, containing about a quart and a half of spirits you have effectually accounted for the rest." "Then it has gone to the fund of profit and loss, that's all. Never let me hear you sport those old theories again. Capital is indestructible, as I am ready to prove to you any day, in half an hour. But let us sit down seriously to business. We are rich enough to pay for the advertisements, and that is all we need care for in the mean time. The public is sure to step in, and bear us out handsomely with the rest." "But where in the face of the habitable globe shall the railway be? England is out of the question, and I hardly know a spot in the Lowlands that is not occupied already." "What do you say to a Spanish scheme - the Alcantara Union? Hang me if I know whether Alcantara is in Spain or Portugal; but nobody else does, and the one is quite as good as the other. Or what would you think of the Palermo Railway, with a branch to the sulphur mines?— that would be popular in the North -or the Pyrenees Direct? They would all go to a premium." "I must confess I should prefer a line at home." "Well, then, why not try the Highlands? There must be lots of traffic there in the shape of sheep, grouse, and Cockney tourists, not to mention salmon and other et ceteras. Couldn't we tip them a railway somewhere in the west?" "There's Glenmutchkin, for instance" "Capital, my dear fellow! Glorious! By Jove, first-rate!" shouted Bob in an ecstasy of delight. "There's a distillery there, you know, and a fishing village at the foot; at least there used to be six years ago, when I was living with the exciseman. There may be some bother about the population, though. The last laird shipped every mother's son of the aboriginal Celts to America; but, after all, that's not of much consequence. I see the whole thing! Unrivalled scenery stupendous waterfalls herds of black cattle-spot where Prince Charles Edward met Macgrugar of Glengrugar and his clan! We could not possibly have lighted on a more promising place. Hand us over that sheet of paper, like a good fellow, and a pen. There is no time to be lost, and the sooner we get out the prospectus the better." "But, Heaven bless you, Bob, there's a great deal to be thought of first. Who are we to get for a provisional committee?" "That's very true," said Bob musingly. "We must treat them to some respectable names, that is, good sounding ones. I'm afraid there is little chance of our producing a Peer to begin with?" "None whatever-unless we could invent one, and that's hardly safeBurke's Peerage has gone through too many editions. Couldn't we try the Dormants?" "That would be rather dangerous in the teeth of the standing orders. But what do you say to a baronet? There's Sir Polloxfen Tremens. He got himself served the other day to a Nova Scotia baronetcy, with just as much title as you or I have; and he has sported the riband, and dined out on the strength of it ever since. He'll join us at once, for he has not a sixpence to lose " "Down with him, then," and we headed the Provisional list with the pseudo Orange-tawney. "Now," said Bob, "it's quite indispensable, as this is a Highland line, that we should put forward a Chief or two. That has always a great effect upon the English, whose feudal notions are rather of the mistiest, and principally derived from Waverley." "Why not write yourself down as the Laird of M'Corkindale?" said I. "I daresay you would not be negatived by a counter-claim." "That would hardly do," replied Bob, "as I intend to be Secretary. After all, what's the use of thinking about it? Here goes for an extempore Chief," and the villain wrote down the name of Tavish M'Tavish of Invertavish. "I say, though," said I, "we must have a real Highlander on the list. If we go on this way, it will become a Justiciary matter." "You're devilish scrupulous, Gus,” said Bob, who, if left to himself, would have stuck in the names of the heathen gods and godesses, or borrowed his directors from the Ossianic chronicles, rather than have delayed the prospectus. "Where the mischief are we to find the men? I can think of no others likely to go the whole hog; can you?" "I don't know a single Celt in Glasgow except old M'Closkie, the drunken porter at the corner of Jamaica Street." "He's the very man! I suppose, |