habit, when dining out, of occasionally paying an afternoon visit to her on my way to dinner, which was after tea with her, when she had entered upon the second chapter of her day's employment. For as regularly as the hour of five came round, the cardtable was set out, with all its Japan boxes of cards, counters, and Japan saucers for holding the pool, etc., and my grandmother and her old maid sat down to encounter each other at piquette, and so deliberate was the game as to occupy a considerable portion of the afternoon, as the war was not carried on without frequent interlocutory skirmishes, which much prolonged the contest. The one combatant being so blind as to be incapable of ever distinguishing diamonds from hearts, or clubs from spades, while her opponent, who saw sharply enough through a pair of spectacles, so balanced on the tip of her nose, as to be a matter of never-ending wonder to me how they kept their place, was so deaf as to have to guess at the purport of whatever was addressed to her, and as they both blundered each in her own way, it gave rise to contretemps of never-ending recurrence, as the property of each trick was disputed. "Oh, Annie, ye are so deaf and so stupid!" "Yes, meddam, it's a sair pity ye are so blind." "Well, well, Annie, I would rather be blind as deaf." "Yes, meddam, it's my trick." But with all her testiness, there never was a more devoted creature to her mistress, and to

the Stoneywood family, than that worthy old woman, Miss Caw. She was a meagre, ill-favoured-looking little personage, much bent with old age, dressed in a rusty black silk gown, marvellously short in the skirt, but compensated by a lanky, weasel-shaped waist of disproportionate length, from which was suspended my grandfather's watch, of uncommonly large size, which had been left to her by legacy, and was highly valued, and on the other side her scissors and bunch of keys. These garments were usually surmounted by a small black bonnet, and, trotting about with her high-heeled shoes, which threw the centre of gravity so far forward, her resemblance to a crow, or some curious bird of that class, was irresistibly striking, but having been once considered handsome, she was too jealous of her appearance ever to suffer me to use my pencil on so tempting a subject. She was the sister of a person of some note, Lady Jane Douglas's maid, whose evidence was so influential in the great Douglas Cause, and I think she informed me that her father had once been Provost of Perth, but that their family had after his death got reduced in circumstances. had passed almost the whole of her life, which was not a short one, in the service of the Stoneywood family. As to my grandmother, she was a perfect picture of an old lady of the last century. Her fair comely countenance was encircled in a pure white

She

close cap with a quilled border, over which was a rich black lace cap in the form in which several of Queen Mary's pictures represent her to have worn, a grey satin gown with a laced stomacher, and deeply frilled hanging sleeves that reached the elbow, and over her arms black lace gloves without fingers, or rather which left the fingers free for the ornament of rings, about her shoulders a small black lace tippet, with high-heeled shoes, and small square silver buckles; there were also buckles in the stomacher. From her waistband also was suspended a portly watch in a shagreen case, and on the opposite side was a wire-sheath for her knitting. Such was old Lady Stoneywood.'

And now we must leave our window and our bright glimpse into the family within, and go our ways. We might have tarried and seen much else, very different, but full of interest; we might have seen by and bye the entrance of that noble, homely figure, the greatest, the largest nature in Scottish literature, whose head and face, stoop and smile and burr we all know, and who has filled, and will continue to fill, with innocent sunshine the young (ay, and the old) life of mankind. Sir Walter would have soon come in, with that manly, honest limp ;and his earliest and oldest friend would be there with him, he whose words have just painted for us these two old companions in their cordial strife, and whose

own evening was as tranquil, as beautiful, and nearly as prolonged, as that of the dear and comely lady of Stoneywood.

As we said before, what material is here for a story! There is the crafty Bailie and the 'ower canty' Laird of Ellon; the Sunday tragedy; the young loves and sorrows of James and Margaret; the green purse and its gold pieces shining through, and its 'fendy' keeper; the gallant Stoneywood, six foot two, bending in Slains before his Prince; John Gunn with his Cairds, and his dark-eyed, rich-haired wife; the wild havoc of Culloden; the wandering from Speyside to his own Don; the tap at the midnight window, heard by the one unsleeping heart; the brief rapture; the hunted life in Buchan; the cobbler with his 'prentice and their cracks; Mons. Jacques Jamieson,' the honoured merchant and Swedish nobleman; the vanishing away of his seven sons into the land o' the leal; Penelope, her Ulysses gone, living on with Annie Caw, waiting sweetly till her time of departure and of reunion came. We are the better of stirring ourselves about these, the unknown and long time dead; it quickens the capacity of receptive, realising imagination, which all of us have more or less, and this waxes into something like an immediate and primary power, just as all good poetry makes the reader in a certain sense himself a poet, finding him one in little, and leaving him one in much.

So does any such glimpse into our common life, in its truth and depth and power, quicken us throughout, and make us tell living stories to ourselves; leaves us stronger, sweeter, swifter in mind, readier for all the many things in heaven and on earth we have to do; for we all have wings, though they are often but in bud, or blighted Sad is it for a man and for a nation when they are all unused, and therefore shrivel and dwine and die, or leave some sadly ludicrous remembrancer of their absence, as ' of one that once had wings.'

If we grovel and pick up all our daily food at our feet, and never soar, we may grow fat and huge like the Dodo,1 which was once a true dove, beautiful, hot-blooded, and strong of wing, as becomes Aphro

1 This is a real bit of natural history, from the Mauritius. The first pigeons there, having plenty on the ground to eat, and no need to fly, and waxing fat like Jeshurun, did not 'plume their feathers, and let grow their wings,' but grovelled, got monstrous, so that their wings, taking the huff, dwarfed into a fluttering stump. Sir T. Herbert thus quaintly describes this embarrassed creature:- The Dodo, a bird the Dutch call Walghvogel, or Dod Eerson; her body is round and fat, which occasions the slow pace, so that her corpulence is so great as few of them weigh less than fifty pounds. It is of a melancholy visage, as though sensible of nature's injury, in framing so massive a body to be by directed complimental wings, such, indeed, as are unable to hoist her from the ground, serving only to rank her among birds; her traine three small plumes, short and unproportionable; her legs suiting her body; her pounce sharp; her appetite strong and greedy; stones and iron are digested.'-1625. We have in our time seen an occa