is that in his countenance which bespeaks a falsehood impossible :" and she also endeavoured to move towards him, when Johnson threw his arm around her to withhold her.

"Hands off, you land-lubber!" exclaimed the seaman, springing towards them, "or, shiver me! I'll show daylight through your timbers in the turning of a handspike !" and, clasping the lovely girl in his arms," Betty! Betty, my love!" he cried, "don't you know your own Tom? Father! mother! don't you know me? Have you really forgot your own son? If twelve years have made some change in his face, his heart is sound as ever."

His father, his mother, and his brothers, clung around him, weeping, smiling, and mingling a hundred questions together. He threw his arms around the neck of each, and, in answer to their inquiries, replied "Well! well! there is time enough to answer questions, but not to-day-not to-day?"

"No, my bairn! my bairn!" said his mother, "we'll ask you no questions nobody shall ask ye any !-But how-how were ye torn away from us, my love? And, oh hinny! where-where have ye been ?"

"It is a long story, mother," said he, "and would take a week to tell it. But, howsoever, to make a long story short, you remember when the smugglers were pursued, and wished to conceal their brandy in our house, my father prevented them; they left muttering revenge, and they have been revenged. This day twelve years, I went out with the intention of meeting Elizabeth and her father, when I came upon a party of the gang concealed in the King's Cave. In a moment, half a dozen pistols were held to my breast, and, tying my hands to my sides, they dragged me into the cavern. Here I had not been long their prisoner, when the snow, rolling down the mountains, almost totally blocked up its mouth. On the second night, they cut through the snow, and, hurrying me along with them, I was bound to a horse between two, and before daylight found myself stowed, like a piece of old junk, in the hold of a smuggling lugger. Within a week I was shipped on board a Dutch man-of-war; and for six years was kept dogging about on different stations, till

our old yawning hulk received orders to join the fleet which was to fight against the gallant Duncan at Camperdown. To think of fighting against my own countrymen, my own flesh and blood, was worse than to be cut to pieces by a cat-o'-ninetails; and, under cover of the smoke of the first broadside, I sprang upon the gunwale, plunged into the sea, and swam for the English fleet. Never, never shall I forget the moment that my feet first trod upon the deck of a British frigate! My nerves felt as firm as her oak, and my heart free as the pennant that waved defiance from her mast-head. I was as active as any one during the battle; and, when it was over, and I found myself again among my own countrymen, and all speaking my own language, I fancied—nay, hang it !—I almost believed, I should meet my father, my mother, or my dear Bess, on board of the British frigate. I expected to see you all again in a few weeks at furthest; but, instead of returning to old England, before I was aware, I found it was helm about with us. As to writing, I never had an opportunity but once. We were anchored before a French fort; a packet was lying alongside ready to sail; I had half a side written, and was scratching my head to think how I should come over writing about you, Bess, my love, when, as bad luck would have it, our lieutenant comes to me, and says he, ‘Elliot,' says he, “I know you like a little smart service; come my lad, take the head oar, while we board some of those French bumboats under the batteries!' I couldn't say no. We pulled ashore, made a bonfire of one of their craft, and were setting fire to a second, when a deadly shower of small-shot from the garrison scuttled our boat, killed our commanding officer with half of the crew, and the few who were left of us were made prisoners. It is no use bothering you by telling how we escaped from French pri

son.

We did escape; and Tom will once more fill his vacant chair."

Should any of our readers wish further acquaintance with our friends, all we can say is, the new year was still young when Adam Bell bestowed his daughter's hand upon the heir of Marchlaw, and Peter beheld the once vacant chair again occupied, and a namesake of the third generation prattling on his knee.

foot-passenger, with their present cringing tone. At that time one of these gay spirits would not condescend to parley about a placé more or less, and disdained a casual lapin or singe, as much as he cherishes one now-a-days; and in the fulness of monopoly, they scornfully bit their thumbs at fate, and turned their backs on all Paris, whenever they drove towards Ver

sailles..

I look on these poor drivers as I regard a negro, a gipsy, a Jew clothesman, or any other unfortunate being suffering under the ban of proscription. I therefore always give them a helping hand along their comfortless career, and feel much more at my ease when looking up at the ponderous gondole, as its flashy yellow panels flaunt past us on the road. But these gondolets, so much the butt of contempt, have nevertheless many advantages over their gaudy competitors. In the summer season they are much cooler, and at all times to a man of lively fancy much easier. You bave not much rumbling of wheels, and no rattling of windows; no suffocation from bad smells-for the air, like my advice, perhaps, comes in at one ear and goes out at the other." You run no risk of an unpleasant countenance before you, nor of receiving a whiff of garlic into yours, for every one sits front foremost-in contrast to the corps of Irish yeomanry, whose captain, on a retreat always ordered it to "advance backwards!" So if your front rank neighbours fall asleep and tumble forward, you are not the pillow they recline on. You halt when you like, to stretch your legs; you are not hurried at starting or stopping; and you arrive, after all, and within an hour, more or less, of the unwieldy monsters I am writing (since I cannot run them) down.

Then, let me ask, does it go for nothing to have the facetio of the driver cheering your way? Is it nought to have the brave and intelligent soldiers of the guard, flowing over with thrilling anecdotes of flood and field, who go out to spend their Sundays at Versailles? Is it nothing to have the neat, chattering washerwomen-or perhaps the washerwomen's pretty daugh

ters-coming with their linen to Paris on the Monday morning? Nothing to hear all these, and others of their class, reading you lessons of courtesy and gallantry at every step; to hear of sensibilité, and sentiment, and morale and physique, and amitié, and amour and a hundred other delicate distinctions, from the mouths of artisans and "operatives," who in England breath nothing but gin and tobacco?

Had I never gone in a gondolet, I never should have gained all the good things to be picked up in such a way of travellingnever should have learned the adventures of the amazon of the quartier St. Louis, who has seventeen wounds on her corpus, and enjoys the pension of a sous officier-and never should have heard the ghost story of le bon curé de Virofloy, nor seen his cross of the legion of honour, which he won as a soldier, and wears as a priest.

But before I repeat that story, and while he may be supposed reciting it to me as we jogged along in our gondolet, let me, gentle reader, give a hint or two for the passenger who goes thus from Paris to Versailles. Let him, then, above all things rememher not to forget to give a sous at starting, to the infirm, enfeebled wretch, male, female, or epicene, who places a stool for his foot as he steps into the gondolet. Let him laugh heartily, and be pleased at, and give a sous to, those antic, soot-covered, one coloured harlequins, who tumble and caper at the side of the carriage, and pipe their monotonous, cuckoo-noted salutation, and tell you grinningly," Je vous aimerai bien", those little, barefooted, despised, and dirty Savoyards, who come down, poor things! in droves from their mountains, to sweep chimneys and clean shoes; and for whose misfortunes there is lack of soot and mud in the summer season. Let him give a sous to the fine bald-pated octogenary at Sevres, whose head was two or three times anticipated by Rembrandt's imaginings, who tells you of his age, his poverty, his deux bras cassés, and his inability to earn his pauvre pain. Let him give five sous over and above his bargain to the poor driver. Let him-but I need not go on

with these appeals to the charities of men. There are objects enough on the road to give the hint more forcibly than I can.

I must, however, caution the traveller to read, by all means, the parallel lessons each side of him on his journey; to moralize, just on quitting the Place Louis quinze, on the bathing-boys swimming down the river to the left, opposed to the full-grown children floating on the tide of fashion in the Champs Elysées to the right. Then there is the gilded dome of the Invalids, directly fronting the Pompe à feuglory on one hand, and smoke on the other. Passing on, there is the new bridge of St. Cloud, as useful and unpicturesque as art could make it; and the mouldering remains of the old one at Sevres, as romantic and rotting as any natural beauty. The palace of the king rises royally above the woods to the north; and on the south is the cottage hiding itself in verdure, where lived one of our best poets, and after him an unworthy aspirant for the mantle, which (luckily for the world) he has not yet cast away-the very resting-place where genius would love to nestle.

And now-arrived at Virofloy-now for the story of its worthy curate!

"Yes, yes, my good sir," continued the curé, the previous part of our conversation having led to, but not bearing directly on my present subject, "yes, the man who goes through life in the mere routine of its pleasures, or even its crimes, knows little of the true nature of pleasure or the real effect of crime. It is he who cuts short his dissipation in its full career, and retires from the world with all the capability of enjoyment, that sees in the mellow light of reflection the true nature of what he has enjoyed. I have done that; and am now, at fifty, after ten years of reclusion, happy in the memory of delights that will never fade. The darker portion of my problem must be proved, thank Heaven, from other experience than mine. But no one, I firmly believe, can know the terrible consequences of guilt but he who seeks refuge from remorse in solitude. Common contrition, or punishment even, fails to let him into the depths of the suffering he has provoked. If a good man, who has enjoyed life, would wish to enjoy it still, or a bad one would repent his wicked ways, it is there they must retire, to learn enjoyment and do penance."

"That is to say," replied I, " that there imagination has ample play, and brings

back all the scenes of life with tenfold exaggeration-you must have known its power fully, my good father, from the extremes through which you appear to have passed."

"Known the power of imagination!' rejoined the curé, with a peculiar emphasis, a look as if his mind wandered to other worlds, and a gesture of nervous agitation-" of imagination! and pray, sir, what is that? Will you be good enough to define for me the direct line between fact and fancy?"

"Reverend sir," said I, somewhat astonished and piqued at his half serious, half ironical tone, "whoever has learned the first principles of drawing knows that the most difficult of all things is to trace a straight line."

"True, sir, true-excuse my petulance —you touched inadvertently a tender chord I did not calculate how far back or how deep my idle observations would have thrown my thoughts. Be satisfied, however, that I have felt the full force of solitude, in reference to guilt as well as folly."

"The latter, as respects your own early life? The former, as relates to-whom?" asked I, with a rather unjustifiable keenness of inquiry. But there was something in the cure's manner and look that spurred my curiosity beyond the bounds of that arrogant servility which is commonly good breeding.

"Sir," said he, in an impressive and somewhat severe tone, "you may be aware that my duty often leads me into scenes where every human passion is laid bare to me; but at the same time the sufferer-the sinner, let me say-is covered with a sacred veil. Neither the name of the penitent nor the nature of the crime may be breathed from the confessor's lips."

This rebuke silenced me; but I was by no means sulky; and some little attentions to the good curé as we jogged along brought him into his former sociable tone and led to a renewal of our chat. But that epithet is really too familiar and trifling to express the nature of our conversation, which insensibly caught a most serious tinge, and became deeper and deeper at almost every phrase. I thought there was something on the curé's mind connected with recollections that my former random observations had aroused. I made no attempt to check the troubled current of his thoughts. There is a sacredness in the anxiety of a good man which no wise one dares to disturb.