sire on earth. Till God made you blind, Allan, I knew not how my soul could be knit into yours-I knew not the love that was in my heart. To sit by you with my work-to lead you out thus on pleasant Sabbaths-to take care that your feet do not stumbleand that nothing shall ever offer violence to your face-to suffer no solitude to surround you-but that you may know, in your darkness, that mine eyes, which God still permits to see, are always open upon you for these ends, Allan, will I marry thee, my beloved-thou must not say nay, for God would not forgive me if I be came not thy wife.' And Fanny fell upon his neck and wept.

"There was something in the quiet tone of her voice-something in the meek fold of her embrace-something in the long weeping kiss that she kept breathing tenderly over his brow and eyes-that justified to the Blind Man his marriage with such a woman. 'Let us be married, Fanny, on the day fixed before I lost my sight. Till now I knew not fully either your heart or my own--now I fear nothing. Would, my best friend, I could but see thy sweet face for one single moment now-but that can never be 'All things are possible to God-and although to human skill your case is hopeless-it is not utterly so to my heart--yet if ever it becomes so, Allan, then will I love thee better even than I do now, if indeed my heart can contain more affection than that with which it now overflows.'

"Allan Bruce and Fanny Raeburn were married. And although there was felt, by the most careless heart, to be something sad and solemn in such nuptials, yet Allan made his marriageday one of sober cheerfulness in his native village. Fanny wore her white ribbands in the very way that used to be pleasant to Allan's eyes; and blind as he now was, these eyes kindled with a joyful smile, when he turned the clear sightless orbs towards his bride, and saw her within his soul arrayed in the simple white dress which he heard all about him saying so well became her sweet looks. Her relations and his own partook of the marriage feast in

their own cottage-there was the sound of music and dancing feet on the little green plat at the foot of the garden, by the river's side-the bride's youngest sister, who was henceforth to be an inmate in the house, remained when the party went away in the quiet of the evening-and peace, contentment, and love, folded their wings together over that humble dwelling."

Their married life is happy far beyond what they themselves could have expected on their bridal-day. Allan is favoured by his neighbours, and MUsic, that gift of heaven to the blind, furnishes him with the means of sup porting his wife and the children that grow up, one after another beside his knees. There is a beautiful passage describing the blind man's feelings, which we must extract.

"Whatever misgivings of mind Allan Bruce might have experiencedwhatever faintings and sickenings and deadly swoons of despair might have overcome his heart,-it was not long before he was a freedman from all their slavery. He was not immured, like many as worthy as he, in an asylum; he was not an incumbrance upon à poor father, sitting idle and in the way of others, beside an ill-fed fire, and a scanty board; he was not forced to pace step by step along the lamp-light ed streets and squares of a city, forcing out beautiful music to gain a few pieces of coin from passers by, entranced for a moment by sweet sounds, plaintive or jocund; he was not a boy-led beggar along the high-way under the sickening sunshine or chilling sleet, with an abject hat abjectly protruded with a cold heart for colder charity ;-but he was, although he humbly felt and acknowledged that he was in nothing more worthy than these, a man loaded with many blessings, warmed by a constant ingle, laughed round by a flock of joyful children, love-tended and love-lighted by a wife who was to him at once music and radiance,-while his house stood in the middle of a village of which all the inhabitants were his friends, and of all whose hands the knock was known, when it touched his door, and of all whose voices the tone was felt when it kindly accosted him in

and change was now submitted to his meditation, to give his character, which had long been thoughtful, a still more solemn cast, and a temper of still more homely and humble wisdom.

"Nor did the addition to his happiness come from human life. Once more he saw the heavens and the earth. By men in his lowly condition, nature is not looked on very often perhaps with poetical eyes. But all the objects of nature are in themselves necessarily agreeable and delightful; and the very colours and forms he now saw filled his soul with bliss. Not for ten dark years had he seen a cloud, and now they were piled up like castles in the summer heaven. Not for ten dark years had he seen the vaulted sky, and there it was now bending majestically in its dark, deep, serene azure, full of tenderness, beauty, and power. The green earth, with all its flowers, was now visible beneath his feet. A hundred gardens blossomed-a hundred hedge-rows ran across the meadow and up the sides of the hills-the dark grove of sycamore, shading the village church on its mount, stood tinged with a glitter of yellow light-and from one extremity of the village to the other, calm, fair, and unwavering, the smoke from all its chimneys went up to heaven on the dewy morning-air. He felt all this just by opening his eye-lids. And in his gratitude to God he blessed the thatch of his own humble house, and the swallows that were twittering beneath its eaves.

"Suca, perhaps, were some of the feelings which Allan Bruce experienced on being restored to sight. But faint and imperfect must be every picture of man's inner soul. This, however, is true, that Allan Bruce now felt that his blindness had been in many respects, a blessing. It had touched all hearts with kindness towards him and his wife when they were poor-it had kept his feet within the doors of his house, or within the gate of his garden, often when they might otherwise have wandered into less happy and innocent places-it turned to him the sole undivided love of his sweet contented Fanny-it gave to the filial tenderness of his children something of fondest 55 ATHENEUM VOL. 11.

passion-and it taught him moderation in all things, humility, reverence, and perfect resignation to the Divine Will. It may therefore, be truly said, that when the blameless man once more lifted up his seeing eyes, in all things he beheld God.

"Soon after this time, a small Nursery-garden between Roslin and Laswade-a bank sloping gently down to the Esk-was on sale, and Allan Bruce was able to purchase it. Such an employment seemed peculiarly fitted for him, and also compatible with his other professions. He had acquired, during his blindness, much useful information from the readings of his wife or children; and having been a gardener in his youth, among his many other avocations, he had especially extended his knowledge respecting flowers, shrubs, and trees. Here he follows that healthy, pleasant, and intelligent occupation. Among his other assistant Gardeners there is one man with a head white as snow, but a ruddy and cheerful countenance, who, from his self-importance seems to be the proprietor of the garden. This is Allan's Father, who lives in a small cottage adjoining

takes care of all the garden-toolsand is master of the bee-hives. His old mother, too, is sometimes seen weeding; but oftener with her grandchildren, when in the evenings, after school, they are playing on the green plat by the Sun Dial, with flowers garlanded round their heads, or feeding the large trout in the clear silvery well near the roots of the celebrated Pear Tree."

From the Hour in the Manse," "the Forgers," "Simon Gray," and various other tales in the volume, we could easily quote passages enough to shew that the awful, the terrible dark parts of man and his nature, are as much within the grasp of our author, as the passages we have now quoted shew the pathetic and the beautiful to be. But we despair of being able to quote any passages from the tales of that class, without in some measure injuring the after effect of what we only wish to introduce to our readers' notice. We shall therefore make but one extract more, and it shall be from a story

that stands almost alone in the book a fragment from the noble traditional History of the days of religious persecution in Scotland-the memory of which days is yet fresh in the minds of our old shepherds and cottage matrons upon the moors of Clydesdale and Dumfries-shire.

After describing at some length the state of the people at Lanark, at the time when the Presbyterian worship was not permitted to be celebrated in their parish church, the author introduduces us to the persecuted congregation assembled in the midst of the sublime scenery of Cartland Craigs on the morning of a beautiful summer Sabbath, chiefly for the purpose of having the children, who had been born during the suspension of the public worship of God in the place, admitted into the body of the church by the rite of bap

tism.

"The church in which they were assembled was hewn, by God's hand, out of the eternal rocks. A river rolled its way through a mighty chasm of cliffs, several hundred feet high, of which the one side presented enormous masses,and the other corresponding recesses, as if the great stone had been rent by a convulsion. The channel was overspread with prodigious fragments of rock or large loose stones, some of them smooth and bare, others containing soil and verdure in their rents and fissures, and here and there crowned with shrubs and trees. The eye could at once command a long stretching vista, seemingly closed and shut up at both extremities by the coalescing cliffs. This majestic reach of river, contained pools, streams, rushing shelves, and waterfalls innumerable; and when the water was low, which it now was in the common drought, it was easy to walk up this scene, with the calm blue sky overhead, an utter and sublime solitude. On looking up, the soul was bowed down by the feeling of that prodigious height of unscaleable and often overhanging cliff. Between the channel and the summit of far extended precipices were perpetually flying rooks and wood-pigeons, and now and then a hawk, filling the profound abyss with their wild cawing,

deep murmur, or shrilly shriek. Sometimes a heron would stand erect and still on some little stone island, or rise up like a white cloud along the black walls of the chasm, and disappear. Winged creatures alone could inhabit this region. The fox and wild cat choose more accessible haunts. Yet here came the persecuted Christians and worshipped God, whose hand hung over their heads those magnificent pillars and arches, scooped out those galleries from the solid rock, and laid at their feet calm water in its transparent beauty, in which they could see themselves sitting in reflected groups, with their Bibles in their hands.

"Here, upon a semicircular ledge of rocks, over a narrow chasm, of which the tiny stream played in a murmuring waterfall, and divided the congregation into two equal parts, sat about a hundred persons all devoutly listening to their Minister, who stood before them on what might well be called a small natural Pulpit of living stone. Up to it there led a short flight of steps, and over it waved the canopy of a tall graceful birch tree. This pulpit stood on the middle of the channel, directly facing that congregation, and separated from them by the clear deep sparkling pool into which the scarce-heard water poured over the blackened rock. The water, as it left the pool, separated into two streams, and flowed on each side of the Altar, thus placing it in an island, whose large mossy stones were richly embowered under the golden blossoms and green tresses of the broom. Divine service was closed, and a row of maidens, all clothed in purest white, came gliding off from the congregation, and crossing the stream on some stepping stones, arranged themselves at the foot of the pulpit, with the infants about to be baptized. The fathers of the infants, just as if they had been in their own Kirk, had been sitting there during worship, and now stood up before the Minister. The baptismal water, taken from that pellucid pool, was lying consecrated in a small hollow of one of the upright stones, that formed one side or pillar of the pulpit, and the holy rite proceeded. Some of the younger ones in that semicircle kept